PLANET ORYXS - MORRIAN CITY

The Sentinel slowly turned its head left, then right, as if it was searching for something. It let out another metallic screech and seemed to wait in place.

Atticus didn’t move. The magnet made him invisible to the system, but only so long as he didn’t interact with anything. It was another one of those things Atticus didn’t quite understand, but he assumed that the system was tracking the anomalies he created in the software and not Atticus himself.

There was another metallic screeching sound from somewhere behind him. It sounded far away, but the nexus didn’t follow the laws of physics so he couldn’t be sure.

He pulled at the data around him and, a split second later, slammed his hands into the floor with as much internal force as he could. Enormous, jagged, red spikes of corrupt data erupted like a wave in the direction of the first Sentinel.

Atticus heard it screech from behind one of the spiked pillars as he took off, heading down the nearest hall.

Each door he ran past had a locked symbol on it, asking for passwords. The hall seemed to stretch on with no breaks or turns anywhere. Atticus risked a look back over his shoulder and saw not one, not two, but three Sentinels running after him. They were gaining fast.

Atticus made a beeline for one of the walls, gathering data as he ran. He encased himself with a red shield that sparked and zapped at his surroundings, corrupting anything it touched like a slow-moving virus. The collision with the wall was more like running into a soft pillow made of static as the wall warped and yielded to the red mass. With a snapping noise, the wall tore open, slowly disintegrating into a shiny dust in his wake.

On the other side of the wall was a long room full of holodisplays. Each one showed a different angle of the streets and buildings from the point-of-view of the drones that patrolled outside. Atticus had an idea. It was risky, but he was already in danger.

Atticus let go of the data shield. The corruption fell away and began to spread through the room. He moved away from the epicentre and stood still, waiting. Like spider webs of red, the infection spread quickly, growing and clambering up the walls until it began to seep into the displays. One after another, the displays fizzled and glitched, turning red and cutting off the live feed.

The three Sentinels entered the room and paused. A chorus of screeches and wailing rang out in Atticus’ head as they looked around, unable to tell where the anomaly was amongst the fiercely glitching environment.

Atticus used the opportunity to slowly back away through the opening he had punched into the wall. The data was still fraying at the edges of the breech. As he suspected, the creeping darkness of the ‘isolation protocol’ was engulfing the area of the hall to prevent the corruption from spreading further. Relief washed over him as the wall flickered and a blue, transparent shield encased the room, including the three Sentinels.

“Query.” The floating search bar popped up. “Location of Oryxs Access Node M4012.”

Atticus couldn’t get out the same way he got in; the method of getting in relied on being isolated from the outside. The door wasn’t the exact location of the apartment, but it would be close enough that he could figure out how to get home once he left the nexus and entered a local network.

As he ran back down the hall, Atticus kept an eye out for a glowing light. It wasn’t until he found the hall with the red data spikes that he was sure he was going in the right direction. Sure enough, when he turned around, he saw a glowing light in a doorway. He was so ready to leave this place.

Atticus slid to a stop, nearly missing the door. His hands hit the floor, but his eyes were locked on the Sentinel on the other side of the door. Profanity after profanity raced through his mind while he tried to stay dead still so the Sentinel wouldn’t notice him.

The killing machine didn’t move. It stayed standing with its back to the hall, like a statue. OX6405 was printed on the back of its metal-plated armour. Each Sentinel had an ID number that denoted the planet on which they were stationed along with its unit number. ‘OX’ was the planet Orxys, and ‘6405’ was its production number.

Only NexTech knew how many Sentinels existed. They had been instrumental in humanity’s survival after the dimensions collided. More creatures had spilled out of the gates than humanity could handle by themselves with their primitive weapons. NexTech came to the rescue. The Sentinels were one of the first official defences humanity created against the monsters, but they were expensive to make. They were powered by mana in the air and didn’t break often. As a result, they were not manufactured in bulk. For all Atticus knew, the unit in front of him could be hundreds of years old.

Atticus got to his feet again, ducking ever so slightly. He took a big step forward, anxiously anticipating the Sentinel to turn towards him. If he could just get around it, there was access to the local network on the other side. Sentinels couldn’t follow him out of the nexus.

The Sentinel didn’t move.

Atticus took another big step forward.

It still didn’t move.

Atticus frowned. Is it broken? He took a third step.

The Sentinel whipped around, taking Atticus’ neck in one hand before he could react. The touch was sharp like razor blades as its fingers closed, preventing Atticus from moving. Black darkness crept through his body, starting at his neck and working its way out slowly toward the rest of his limbs. It felt like ice shards spreading through his soul, cracking and splintering.

Desperate terror took over Atticus’ mind as he clawed at the hand on his neck, trying to pry himself free. Its grip on him was too strong. He tried to gather the data around him but there was no response. If he’d had a physical body, his windpipe would have been crushed under the immense pressure.

Pain flooded Atticus’ mind as dread set in.

The Sentinel screeched in his face; the haunting cry only Atticus ever heard.

Atticus screamed, too.

Suddenly the pain stopped. The Sentinel still had him by the neck, but they weren’t in the nexus anymore. That shouldn't have been possible. They were in pitch-black darkness. 

He realised that the Sentinel wasn’t moving after a long pause. A light flickered overhead to reveal they were in some kind of corridor. It looked vaguely familiar, but Atticus couldn’t place it. The node he was looking for wasn't a corridor like this; this was somewhere different.

He tried again to free himself from the Sentinel’s grasp, but it didn’t budge.

“What is this place?” He looked around the corridor again for something that might be helpful.

The Sentinel’s screen lit up with a bright light, startling him. The screen typed one letter at a time as it flickered and glitched.

 “h̵͍̻̃͂o̴͚͆ṁ̶͍e̷̜͊̈́”

An abrupt hot searing sensation pulsed in the back of Atticus’ head. He screamed as his consciousness whooshed backward and crashed hard into his physical body.

Atticus opened his eyes and sat up, taking a deep breath. He could taste blood in the back of his mouth. The stench of pee stung his nose and his face crinkled. He did not miss that smell. He was sitting on the living room floor, leaning against a wall.

He looked up to see his brother sitting on the chair, glaring down at him under the dull ceiling light. Whatever he had been doing, Dion hadn’t cleaned himself up yet. He looked awful.

“I was only gone for a few minutes, I swear,” Atticus pleaded.

“How long is a few minutes?”

“Just after I called you.”

“You called me six hours ago,” Dion stated coldly, tossing Old Fart at Atticus before stalking off to his bedroom without another word.

Atticus glanced outside and sure enough, the sun had well and truly set. There were 59 missed calls and 17 unread messages on his DataCuff. He swore under his breath, wiping blood away from his nose. More than 15 minutes jacked in was dangerous. It triggered Atticus’ seizures and, in turn, the slow shutdown of his physical body.

On the table nearby was a clear glass bottle with a cloudy dark blue liquid. The bottle was nearly empty; there was only enough for one more dose before they would be completely out.

The little NexTech logo on the label had haunted Atticus his whole life. It was the warden to his prison sentence. Whatever the blue liquid was, over the years, Atticus had come to understand that it wasn’t a typical medicine that any doctor or hospital could distribute.

Every doctor they had ever visited had always been a crooked back-alley quack that charged an excessive number of Digits; sometimes more money than the average person could make in two years working a legitimate day job. There had been more than one occasion where they’d had to steal it, but just finding someone who had it to start with was equally a challenge.

-

Dion slammed the door closed behind him. He leaned against it and let himself slide to the floor, rubbing at his chest. He was breaking out in a cold sweat, shivering violently as a result of the poison. Every part of Dion wanted to cry and sob as he sat there in the dark, but he just didn’t have the energy left. The overwhelming emotions swirled around in his fever-addled mind, elevated by the discomfort of nausea.

He was angry with Atticus, but more than that, he was afraid. Who would look after his brother if Dion wasn’t around? The reckless boy had no sense of mortality. Dion had only planned to be out for a few hours, and Atticus had immediately jumped into a shark tank unsupervised.

It had only ever been the two of them. Without Dion, who would Atticus turn to for help? No one came to mind.

Dion rubbed at his face and flinched when the bruise from Krause’s punch ached. Running wasn’t an option this time. Ren was a lot of terrible things, but a liar wasn’t one of them. If Yoshida let him go alive, Ren did have a way of tracking Dion anywhere he went.

He needed to get a lot of money and needed it fast.

Dion pulled an old DataCuff out of his jacket pocket and twirled it between his fingers. He had stopped to pick up another one on the way home. This one had only cost 2 Digits, it was so ancient that the band had disintegrated and been replaced with a paracord. Outside of making calls and sending messages, it had no other working functions; even the time on it was wrong.

A little blue light lit up to indicate it was recording when Dion pushed a red button. “I need something big. Really big and soon. I need 4 Octuple Digits in a hurry. I’ll take anything.” He pressed another button to send the message to the only person in the Galaxy who could help him now.

Dion waited quietly in the dark until he heard Atticus go to his room before he crawled onto his bed, letting the fever pull him into a deep sleep.