"Your sentence has been confirmed. Final thoughts?"
The voice was sterile, devoid of mercy.
Kael Dray stood at the center of a circular metal chamber, wrists chained above his head, legs trembling as the cold seeped through his bare feet. The walls pulsed with glowing blue veins—data streams flowing like blood in a machine's heart.
There were no faces in the room. Only Protocol units—faceless humanoid drones with steel-gray bodies and chrome masks. The one speaking stood closest, its mask flickering with runes he couldn't understand. Above it, on a hanging projection screen, a line blinked:
Subject: Kael Dray – Charged: System Terrorism – Status: Confirmed
Kael tried to speak, but his throat was sandpaper. He'd been drugged. Dehydrated. Beaten, then sealed in an iron crate for what felt like days. They hadn't even let him say goodbye to Lira.
He laughed, bitter and broken.
"I didn't do it," he whispered hoarsely.
Silence.
Then, the Protocol unit stepped aside. A panel opened in the floor beneath Kael, revealing a ring of red lights.
"Sentence: Code Erasure. Commencing."
A hum rose in the air. Kael's body seized. The lights grew brighter.
And then—he screamed.
His skin burned. Not fire—worse. It was as if something reached inside him, trying to pull him apart, one line of code at a time. His memories flickered like broken images: his father's face, Lira's laugh, the day of the bombing.
They were erasing him from the system.
But something went wrong.
Halfway through the execution, the lights glitched.
A pulse echoed through the chamber—a surge, like a virus slipping in through the code.
The Protocols froze. Their masks flickered.
Kael's body went limp. His eyes, burned black by the light, stared into the void. But his mind—his mind was not gone.
No.
It had fallen through.
—[REBOOTING]—
—[CONSCIOUS ENTITY DETECTED]—
—[FORM UNKNOWN]—
—[EXECUTION ERROR: CODE 512]—
—[WELCOME, KAEL]—
He awoke in darkness.
But it wasn't true darkness. It shimmered, pixelated, distorted like cracked glass. He floated in a space that felt endless, weightless—but heavy with static.
"Where… am I?"
His voice echoed around him. Or perhaps it echoed within.
And then something answered.
"You are where all erased things go."
Kael turned—if turning was even possible in this place. In the void stood a figure—tall, wrapped in a cloak of flowing static, with no face. Only a single blue flame burned where its eyes might've been.
"Welcome to the Wastenet, Kael Dray. You died, and yet… you remained."
Kael's instincts screamed. He backed away, but there was no ground, no sky. Just code, drifting around them like ash.
"What… what is this? Why am I alive?"
"You were not meant to be. But a fragment of you resisted the Protocol's erasure. A glitch. A ghost."
"So… I'm dead?"
"You are no longer human. Your body is gone. Your mind… is corrupted, but intact. You are now a phantom process. A sentient anomaly. You are… a system error."
Kael clenched his fists. They didn't feel like fists. More like… data folding in on itself.
"Then send me back."
"Back where?"
"To the world. To the ones who did this. I want them to burn."
The figure was silent for a moment.
Then, it extended a hand—a stream of code twisted around it, glowing red like veins of lava.
"Take this seed. Plant it in the heart of the system. Override the Protocols. Rewrite the world."
Kael stared at the swirling code.
"What's the cost?"
"The same as the power you seek: your soul."
Kael didn't flinch.
"They already took that from me."
He reached out and touched the seed.
And the Wastenet screamed.
—[PROTOCOL OVERRIDE: PAIN]—
—[HOST SYSTEM BREACHED]—
—[ERROR: PHANTOM ENTITY ACTIVE]—
—[ENGAGE FAILSAFE? Y/N]—
He landed on his knees in a field of iron dust. Buildings loomed above him—broken skyscrapers, rusted towers, data streams like rain pouring from fractured clouds.
He was back. Somewhere. Nowhere.
His hands glowed with red circuit marks. His skin—it was no longer skin. But something artificial, shifting, changing.
And before him: a beast.
Ten feet tall. Metal jaws. Eight limbs. It roared like a corrupted engine—an AI guardian.
Kael stood.
It charged.
He dodged—barely.
Memories poured into him. Training simulations. Combat data. Movement patterns.
He didn't know how, but he knew how to fight.
He grabbed the beast's jaw and shouted:"OVERRIDE: PROTOCOL OF PAIN!"
The red light surged through his arm—into the beast—and it exploded in a fountain of corrupted data.
Kael stood, panting. His eyes blazed crimson.
"If this is hell… I'm the devil now."