Chapter 7 Into the Beta Source
Kaelan felt a torturous combination of heat and cold coursing brutally through the nerves along his spine. Every breath he drew felt like a dagger plunging into his body. Yet beneath the overwhelming biological pain lurked something far more terrifying, a pure, raw, primal urge: hunger.
This was not the ordinary kind of hunger that whispered warnings from an empty stomach. This was a vast mechanical void inside his consciousness, a digital abyss demanding to be filled immediately, or it would fill itself by devouring Kaelan's sanity.
[WDS: PRIMARY CORE MALFUNCTION. URGENT NEED FOR EXTERNAL DATA INTAKE.]
[CURRENT ENERGY RESERVES: 18%]
[SYNTHETIC METABOLISM RATE: CRITICAL.]
The White Dragon System spat out the warning at the edge of his vision. Red alarms flashed, glowing amid the lingering dark silhouettes of the damp, musty underground corridor. Kaelan's success in maintaining seventy-five percent organic integrity after defeating the Annihilator Beast and absorbing the previous Data Node had not been an absolute victory. It had been nothing more than a brief pause before the real race against death began.
That pure energy was draining at an alarming rate.
"Damn it... not now," Kaelan whispered, clutching his pounding chest.
His breathing quickened, producing thin wisps of vapor in the corridor's cold air. Amid his growing frustration, the image of Alessa imprisoned within the Nexus fortress flashed through his mind once more. Her face, her fear, and the promise he had yet to fulfill ignited a fire in his chest.
"I've only just started moving forward... I can't collapse in a dump like this! Alessa... wait for me..."
His resolve hardened, refusing to surrender to the limitations of his fragile body.
Kaelan swept his gaze across the metal plates surrounding him. The debris from the battle lay scattered everywhere, but to eyes now accustomed to the system's scans, the dust and lingering data fragments floating through the air glittered enticingly. The nerves in his fingertips trembled.
The urge to consume those foreign particles disgusted the human side of him, yet the system inside his head regarded them as a lavish feast. The dizziness worsened. This was withdrawal, the effect of a WDS addiction desperate for a supply of raw data.
[WDS: DETECTING TRACES OF ORGANIC GLITCH MATTER. POTENTIAL DATA SOURCE.]
A glowing purple marker appeared on his HUD, about ten meters away in a corner of the corridor. It was an irregular lump, quivering and peeling away from the remains of the destroyed Annihilator Beast. It was much smaller, but its potential to quiet the howling hunger in his mind was very real.
Kaelan forced his legs to move despite his unsteady body and the slow decline of his organic integrity to sixty-five percent.
"Hah... just finished fighting, and now you're asking for food again," he hissed hoarsely.
Walking through this corridor made him feel like a junkie chasing the next dose simply to stay alive.
But these were the rules of the game.
Play, or die.
As he approached, the lump of organic data suddenly moved away, as though it possessed its own survival instinct and feared the predatory aura emitted by the WDS.
"Don't even think about running, kid," Kaelan muttered, trying to suppress the wild craving in his head that made his voice tremble with selfish hunger. "Your big brother needs a meal, and you look just right for us."
He extended his right hand. His fingertips sensed the distortion of pure electrical currents. This was organic data, untouched by the metal materials of the tunnel.
His controlled touch locked onto the lump before it could roll any farther.
[DETECTING SMALL DATA ORGANISM: TYPE Z-7 (EMERGENT)]
[DATA MASS: MINIMAL. DATA CONTAMINATION: NONE.]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE DATA INGESTION FOR CORE STABILIZATION.]
Emergent.
A newborn data organism born within these digital ruins.
Without hesitation, Kaelan crushed it.
The next instant, a cool sensation seeped into him. Unlike before, it did not burn. It flowed gently through his skin's pores, spreading into the chip pathways behind his ears. The lump melted like ice, evaporated, and merged with his internal systems.
[DATA ORGANISM Z-7 ABSORBED (100%).]
[XP GAINED: 15]
[WDS LEVEL INCREASED: LEVEL 2 (240/500 XP)]
[CORE STABILIZATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE. ENERGY RESERVES: 23%]
Relief washed over Kaelan as a strange warmth began restoring the energy that had nearly reached critical levels.
The experiment proved one thing.
Anything with a digital nature in this forsaken place could become a source of power.
He steadied himself and continued through the maze of rusted metal. White light radiated from his body, slicing through the darkness of the corridor. Yet that same glow reflected off the filthy walls, turning him into an unmistakable target visible from afar.
A serious risk if any Nexus patrol units happened to pass through.
Sure enough, that fear became reality within seconds.
[ALERT: HIGH-FREQUENCY TRANSMISSION DETECTED. SOURCE: PROXIMATE.]
[TRANSMISSION ANALYSIS: SECURITY ENCRYPTION LEVEL: HIGH.]
[PROTOCOL SIGNATURE: NEXUS PATROL INITIATIVE.]
Kaelan's heart dropped.
The warning alarm blared inside his head, shattering the brief peace he had just gained. Memories of the Nexus Corporation soldiers hunting him through the sewers surged back, triggering panic and adrenaline in equal measure.
They had detected his energy spike.
They were coming to eliminate him.
Kaelan accelerated into a full sprint.
Strangely, running no longer felt exhausting. The WDS continuously pumped power into his leg muscles, granting him fleeting euphoria amid the suffocating anxiety.
At the end of the corridor, the path split in two.
Left and right.
The digital map on his HUD was completely blank. This region of ruins did not exist in Nexus public archives.
"Left or right?" he muttered, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.
Suddenly, a voice brought him to a complete stop.
From the corridor on the right came a raspy laugh, provocative and filled with bizarre electronic distortion. It echoed through the tunnel, sending a chilling sensation across Kaelan's entire body.
It was clearly not human.
And it certainly did not belong to a Nexus military unit.
[DETECTING UNIDENTIFIED ACOUSTIC SIGNATURE: NON-HUMAN ORIGIN.]
[SIGNIFICANT LEVEL OF DATA FRAGMENTATION.]
His survival instincts screamed at him to turn left, toward the path that appeared quiet and safe.
Yet overwhelming curiosity, mixed with a strange magnetic pull from his system, guided his steps slowly toward the right.
Holding his breath, he peered around the increasingly dark corner.
The lights along the right corridor flickered strangely, shifting periodically from deep blue to rich violet.
That was where he saw it.
Not an ordinary digital insect, but an entity formed from a dense mass of living purple mist. The mist stretched into tentacle-like shapes before shrinking back into something resembling a miniature storm cloud.
At the center of the swirling haze, a pair of dimly glowing eyes blinked rapidly. They stared directly at Kaelan before the creature unleashed another horrifying burst of raspy laughter.
"Who... who are you?!" Kaelan shouted.
His fist clenched tightly. Veins stood out along his arms, ready to unleash his power if the creature attacked.
"Answer me! Are you one of this system's monsters?!"
The creature did not attack.
Instead, it writhed with excitement, as though Kaelan's arrival was entertainment it had been waiting for.
One of its purple mist tentacles shot forward with incredible speed. It did not strike him. Instead, it pointed toward a tiny hidden crack in the wall of the right corridor.
Instantly, Kaelan's HUD detected an extraordinarily powerful and stable energy signal beyond the opening.
[POTENTIAL DATA NODE: SOURCE LEVEL: BETA (STABLE). DATA MASS: MODERATE.]
Source Level Beta.
A reservoir of pure energy capable of erasing his system's hunger in an instant.
Kaelan froze, staring back and forth between the crack in the wall and the pair of purple eyes before him.
"You're... showing me where the food is?" he asked in disbelief.
The mist entity abruptly stopped laughing.
Without warning, its cloudlike body swelled grotesquely. Its eyes widened and blazed with blood-red light.
Instead of guiding him, the creature suddenly opened a funnel of darkness within its body and unleashed a shriek, a blast of high-frequency electronic noise so deafening it seemed to tear the air apart.
The sound thundered through the underground tunnels, bouncing along the walls and ripping apart the night's silence.
Kaelan dropped to his knees, screaming in agony while clutching his ears as thin streams of blood began trickling from them.
At the same moment, the system in his head erupted into the most terrifying roar of panic he had ever heard.
[CRITICAL ALERT: HIGH-FREQUENCY TRANSMISSION INITIATED.]
[SOURCE: MULTIPLE PROXIMATE UNITS.]
[IDENTIFIED AS: NEXUS PATROL DRONE - TYPE 7 x 3.]
[ALERT: WEAPONS LOCKED. SYSTEMS COMPROMISED. YOU ARE TRAPPED.]
The purple entity released one final laugh, sounding unbelievably satisfied, before its misty body shot backward and vanished into the darkness.
It left Kaelan frozen at the intersection.
From the tunnel ceiling behind him came the rapidly approaching hum of Nexus killing machines, closing in at full speed, ready to tear his body into lifeless fragments.
