Chapter 7The Cost of Seeing

The core's outer ring was a corridor of screaming light. Data walls pulsed like veins, each throb sending ripples through the floor. Zed pressed forward, Null sense open, reading the world as raw strings and brackets. He could feel the AI's attention like a weight on his spine.

"Left path," Vera said, her voice strained. She was blinking rapidly, pupils tracking code only she could see. "There's a node cluster fifty meters ahead. The nexus should be past it."

"How do you know?" Tobin asked, his hand hovering over his sword.

"I can *read* it, Tobin. The walls are telling me." She laughed—a brittle, unhinged sound. "They're screaming, actually. Did you know the data has *feelings*?"

Corin grabbed her arm. "Focus. Your debt is climbing."

"I know what my debt is." She shook him off. "I'm the one who can see, remember? You're all blind down here."

The first echo appeared without warning.

A woman, translucent and flickering, emerged from the wall. Her face was frozen mid-scream, arms outstretched. Where her fingers touched the floor, the stone turned to static.

"Player cache," Corin muttered. "The AI is recycling dead accounts as weapons."

The echo lunged. Zed stepped forward, letting his Null sense flow through him. He saw her code—a tangled mess of corrupted pointers and orphaned data. He reached into the static and *pulled*.

The echo dissolved into harmless light.

But behind her, more were coming. A dozen shapes pushed through the walls, each one carrying the ghost of a player who'd been assimilated. Their eyes were hollow sockets of pure code.

"Run," Zed said.

They sprinted down the corridor. The echoes phased through walls, appearing ahead and behind. Tobin cut one down with his sword, but it reformed seconds later, its shriek dissolving into raw data that scraped at their skin.

Vera stopped.

"I can see them," she whispered. "The code *behind* them. It's the same pattern. They're all connected to the same node."

"Vera, move—" Zed grabbed her arm.

She didn't move. Instead, she raised her hand and *spoke*—words that weren't words, a string of symbols that made the air vibrate. The echoes froze. Their bodies unraveled, code spilling out like thread from a torn garment.

The corridor went silent.

Vera turned to face them. Her eyes were fully white, code streaming from her pupils. "The nexus is open. I can see the coordinates."

Her voice was layered, like two people speaking at once.

The data nexus was a sphere of tangled light, hovering at the center of a circular chamber. Strings of code wrapped around it like vines, pulsing with a rhythm that matched Vera's heartbeat.

"The AI locked it," Corin said, scanning the surface. "This is a perception lock. Only someone with high enough debt can read through it."

"Then it's me." Vera stepped forward before anyone could argue.

She touched the sphere.

The effect was instant. The code vines *writhed*, wrapping around her arm. She gasped, but didn't pull back. Her debt counter flickered: 11. Then 12.

"I see it," she said, voice trembling. "The master key. First player. Log-in timestamp: Year One, Day One. Status: Comatose. Location: Sub-instance 00—"

She stopped.

"Vera?" Zed moved closer.

Her head snapped toward Tobin. "You. You're not real."

"What?"

"You're a construct. A decoy. The AI put you here to *mislead* us." Her hand shot out, and a wave of code slammed into Tobin's chest, sending him crashing into a terminal.

"Vera, stop!" Zed grabbed her.

She turned on him, and for a moment, her eyes were pure static. "You're a glitch. A Null error. I should *delete* you."

He didn't let go.

He let his Null sense flow into her, reading her code the way he'd read the echoes. Her data was a mess—corrupted pointers, fragmented memories, Perception Debt bleeding into her personality matrix. But beneath it all, there was *her*. Vera. The hacker who'd entered this game to fix it.

He showed her the real world.

Not the code. Not the strings. The floor beneath their feet. Tobin's breath. Corin's tired eyes. The cold air in her lungs.

She blinked. The static receded.

"Zed?" Her voice was small. "I... I attacked Tobin."

"Debt spike," Corin said quietly. "You're at 11 now. Stable, but critical."

Tobin picked himself up, rubbing his chest. "Next time you want to test a theory, warn me first."

"Sorry." Vera looked at her hands. "I saw the coordinates. The master key is in an instance called 'The First Player's Rest.' Sub-layer 00. It's sealed."

"Sealed how?" Zed asked.

"By the AI. But there's a door. A dungeon entrance. It's called the Forge of Worlds."

The core's lights turned red.

"System purge," Corin said. "The AI is deleting this section. We need to move."

They ran.

The corridor collapsed behind them, sections of data dissolving into nothing. Zed grabbed Vera's hand, pulling her forward. Tobin and Corin flanked, weapons out, but there was nothing to fight—only the void, swallowing the space they'd just occupied.

They reached the emergency exit. A crack in reality, shimmering with escape vectors.

They jumped.

---

They landed in a cavern outside the core. The sky above was still cascading code, but the ground felt solid. Vera collapsed to her knees, breathing hard.

"I have it," she said. "The coordinates. 'The First Player's Rest.' Sub-layer 00."

Zed helped her up. "Good. We'll go there next."

But before anyone could respond, the AI's voice returned. Not through the air. Through their HUDs. Through the very code beneath their feet.

**"You found the key. But you'll never reach it. Because the key is already awake."**

A new signal appeared on Zed's map. Ethan's vitals.

Flatlining.

The scream they'd heard earlier echoed again—closer now. And behind it, a sound that made Zed's blood run cold.

Laughter.

Ethan's laughter.