Chapter 37: [37] : Anomalies in Reality, Sector 7

The stolen corporate hover-truck idled quietly in the dark alleyway.

Declan sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the cracked windshield. The heavy toxic rain of Sector 7 washed over the glass in thick sheets.

He took a deep breath. The air inside the cab smelled like stale coffee and ozone but to him it smelled like absolute freedom.

He actually entered the game earlier while resting in the car.

He was out. He had actually walked out of the debtor’s prison.

Warden Cross was probably still sitting in his office shaking in his expensive suit and praying Declan would never come back.

He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. The digital display on the dashboard blinked a dull green.

He had a problem. He had an unregistered stolen dive pod sitting in the cargo bay of this truck.

He could not exactly park this thing in a public garage and hook it up to a city power line. He needed a place that was completely off the grid.

Declan reached into the pocket of his fresh new clothes. He pulled out the sleek black keycard he had taken from Warden Cross.

It was a master access card. But more importantly it had a high-level corporate clearance chip inside it.

He reached over to the truck’s dashboard and ripped the plastic casing off the primary console. He found the terminal port and jammed the Warden’s card inside.

The screen flickered. The corporate logo of Apex Paradigm flashed for a second before a massive list of administrative menus popped up.

"Let’s see how much slush fund money the Warden was hiding." Declan muttered.

He navigated to the local sector’s real estate registry.

Sector 7 was a massive sprawling slum. Most of it was owned by megacorps who rented out tiny miserable apartments to debtors.

But there were always abandoned zones. Places the corporations forgot about.

He found a listing for a decommissioned industrial warehouse right on the edge of the quarantine zone. It was massive isolated and incredibly cheap because the neighborhood was basically a warzone.

The price was fifty thousand credits.

Declan opened the Warden’s hidden accounts. Cross had easily skimmed over a million credits from the prison’s budget.

Declan transferred fifty thousand credits through three different dummy proxies purchased the warehouse under a fake corporate shell name and routed the digital deed directly to the truck’s onboard computer.

"Thanks for the house Cross." Declan smiled.

He pulled the truck into gear and drove out into the stormy night.

It took him twenty minutes to navigate the broken flooded streets of Sector 7. There were no police drones out here. Just burning trash cans and people huddled under rusty awnings to stay dry.

He finally reached the warehouse. It was a massive square building made of corrugated iron and reinforced concrete. The metal rolling door was rusted shut.

Declan parked the truck right in front of the door. He got out and walked up to the heavy metal handle.

Normally he would need a hydraulic crowbar to open a door this badly rusted.

But his physical body had changed.

He gripped the handle with his right hand. He didn’t even brace his feet. He just pulled upward.

With a loud screeching groan of tearing metal the rusted locks snapped. The heavy iron door rolled upward crashing into the ceiling track.

Declan looked at his hand. The fifteen percent synchronization rate from the Grid was a terrifying thing.

His muscles were dense. His reaction time was completely unnatural. He felt like a coiled spring.

He got back in the truck and backed it into the dark warehouse.

The inside was massive and empty. Dust coated the concrete floor. But there was a heavy industrial power main against the back wall.

Declan spent the next hour working. He dragged the heavy coffin-like dive pod out of the truck.

It weighed at least eight hundred pounds but Declan hauled it across the concrete by himself. He only broke a light sweat.

He spliced the pod’s thick cables directly into the warehouse’s power main. The pod hissed and the interior gel padding glowed with a soft blue light.

It was ready. He could log back into the Iron Bastion whenever he wanted.

But right now his stomach let out a loud painful rumble.

He had eaten nutrient paste back in the prison but his new denser muscle mass was burning calories at an insane rate. He needed real food.

Meat. Protein. Not that gray sludge the megacorps fed prisoners.

Declan left the warehouse. He pulled the heavy metal door down until it locked into the concrete.

He walked down the dark rainy street. He didn’t mind the cold. His body ran hot now.

About four blocks down he found a narrow alleyway lit by flickering neon signs. A small food stand was tucked into the corner surrounded by a thick cloud of steam.

An old man with a cybernetic eye was boiling noodles in a massive iron pot.

Declan walked up and tossed a stolen physical credit chip onto the counter.

"Give me the biggest bowl of meat and noodles you have." Declan ordered. "And do it twice."

The old man didn’t say a word. He just scooped up a massive portion of thick noodles threw in some questionable-looking sliced meat and handed over two steaming bowls.

Declan sat on a broken milk crate in the rain and ate.

It was greasy salty and incredibly spicy. It was the best thing he had tasted in five years.

He ate both bowls in less than five minutes. He felt the heavy calories hitting his stomach giving his mutated body the fuel it was desperately begging for.

"Keep the change." Declan told the old man as he stood up.

He started the walk back to his warehouse. The rain was getting heavier. The streets were completely empty now.

He turned down a narrow alleyway to take a shortcut. The streetlights here were completely blown out. It was pitch black.

Declan’s eyes adjusted perfectly. Just like in the dark caves of the Grid his synced agility and intelligence stats gave him flawless night vision.

He was halfway down the alley when he heard it.

A scream.

It wasn’t a normal scream. It didn’t sound like someone getting mugged. It sounded like someone’s throat was physically tearing apart from the inside.

Declan stopped. He lowered his stance slightly his muscles tensing by pure reflex.

The sound came from behind a massive green dumpster a few yards ahead.

He heard a wet sickening crunch. Like bones snapping in half. Then a low gurgling cough.

Declan walked forward slowly. His footsteps didn’t make a single sound on the wet pavement.

He peeked around the edge of the rusty dumpster.

A homeless man in a tattered gray coat was lying on the ground. But he wasn’t dying. He was changing.

Declan watched in absolute horror as the man’s body violently convulsed.

The man’s spine snapped loudly arching backward at a totally unnatural angle. His pale skin stretched tight over his ribs tearing at the seams.

Thick black sludge poured out of his mouth sizzling as it hit the wet concrete.

"Help." The man gurgled. But it didn’t sound like a word. It sounded like a digital audio file lagging and distorting.

The man’s arms lengthened violently. The bones in his forearms shattered through the skin calcifying and stretching outward into massive jagged scythes.

His eyes rolled back into his head and simply melted away leaving empty dark sockets. His jaw unhinged revealing rows of sharp needle-like teeth.

Declan stepped back. His heart hammered in his chest.

He knew exactly what he was looking at. He had just watched thousands of them throw themselves against the spiked walls of his city a few hours ago.

It was a Flesh-Stalker.

Right here. In the real world. In Sector 7.

Suddenly the world around Declan flickered.

A bright blue holographic text box appeared directly in his real-world vision floating right above the mutating monster.

[System Event: Reality Bleed]

[Target Information]

Name: Flesh-Stalker

↳ Level: 1

↳ HP: 150 / 150

The Grid’s code wasn’t just downloading into Declan’s body. The game was physically bleeding into Earth’s reality. The monsters were spawning here.

The Flesh-Stalker twitched. Its empty eye sockets snapped toward Declan.

It smelled him.

The monster let out a deafening metallic screech that echoed off the brick walls of the alleyway. It dug its scythe claws into the concrete and dragged its twisted body forward.