The group camped in the ruins of a tilted shopping center—what was once a safe zone, now half-swallowed by digital roots and fogged with static. Rena sharpened her blade against broken concrete. Takumi rechecked traps. Lila adjusted her gloves, eyes darting to the sky as red sparks flickered from a decaying satellite above.
Aiden couldn't sleep.
Something about Natalya didn't sit right. The woman moved like a ghost but spoke like a soldier—someone who knew more about the Game than she should.
He wasn't the only one who noticed.
> PRIVATE MESSAGE [Rena > Aiden]: "She's not just a player. She's part of something bigger. You saw the way her group moved—military precision. And her wristband's modified."
> [Aiden > Rena]: "Agreed. She might be ex-Game Enforcement. Or worse—one of the architects."
---
By morning, the trap was sprung.
Not by the Game.
By Natalya.
They were surrounded—Unit Red in formation, guns drawn. Not AI-crafted, but real hardware—impossible to acquire without a backend access code.
Natalya stepped forward, her voice calm.
"You're smart, Aiden. Resourceful. That Stabilizer Chip you used? It's a key fragment. The Core Ring only opens for teams holding at least three."
She held up one glowing shard of her own. "You have one. We have two."
"What do you want?" Takumi asked.
"A trade. Your chip—for safe passage. Refuse, and we take it by force."
---
Aiden looked at his team.
Rena was ready to kill. Lila looked panicked but alert. Takumi had slipped a knife into his sleeve.
"No deal," Aiden said.
"I expected that."
Natalya tapped her wristband.
A new threat appeared: four Omega-Type Chimeras, cloaked, armored, and faster than anything they had fought before.
The battle was chaos.
One Chimera knocked Takumi into a wall. Another tackled Lila into debris. Rena engaged two at once, dodging claws and retaliating with electrified strikes.
Aiden ran straight for Natalya.
They clashed hand-to-hand—her military training vs. his raw survival instinct. She was faster, but he was unpredictable.
Then he did something insane.
He activated the chip.
The world around them flickered—glitched—then snapped into pause.
CORE ACCESS TEMPORARILY UNLOCKED. ZONE OVERRIDE INITIATED.
Aiden grabbed Rena and Lila. Takumi pulled himself up.
They ran through the collapsing hole in the sky—into the transport beam now shimmering over a fragmenting zone.
Natalya watched, bleeding and smiling.
"Good. You are the one. Let's see if you can survive what's coming next."
---
The group landed inside a shifting maze of metal and light: the outer shell of the Core Ring.
Lila coughed. "We made it…"
Aiden held the drained chip in his palm. "But we burned our key to get in."
Takumi grimaced. "And we just made ourselves the biggest target on the board."
Rena checked the map.
"Then we fight like it."
---