By nightfall, Elian could feel it.
Eyes in the code.Lines rewriting themselves just a little slower whenever he passed.Whispers—not in the air, but in the System.
[System Alert: Observation Protocol Level 1 – Active][Your presence has triggered 3 unauthorized AI scans in the past 24 hours.]
He turned to Kalith as they set up camp near the edge of a burned-out subway tunnel. "How do I turn it off?"
"You don't," she said, voice tight. "You hide it, mask it, or fake another identity. But with what you did in the Glitched Outpost? You're on the System's radar now."
Elian looked over the logs again. The fragment from Lyra, the echo commands, the boss that tried to delete him—none of it made sense. But Kalith's silence worried him more than the corrupted code.
"Why did you really bring me to Hollow Verge?" he asked.
Kalith didn't answer immediately. Instead, she tapped open her personal data hub and held it up.
It displayed a name:
[Target: Elian Ward – Classification: Rogue Admin – BOUNTY ACTIVE]
"Because," she said quietly, "you're not the only one the System is tracking. There's a global bounty on you now. And it just went live."
Ten minutes later, the world responded.
A pulsing sound echoed through the abandoned subway. Kalith swore under her breath, grabbing her staff.
"They sent Hunters."
From the shadows came five figures. Cloaked in digital fog, each one masked, their Class tags hidden behind scrambled characters. Only one thing was clear: they weren't players. Or NPCs.
They were something in between.
System-sanctioned enforcers.
[Entity Detected: System Hunter v2.3 – Non-Human Classification][Target: Elian Ward – Capture Priority: Alpha]
The lead Hunter raised a palm—and the world around Elian froze. Literally. Particles in the air slowed. Even Kalith's movements began to desync.
But Elian's Admin Interface flared.
[Override Opportunity – Echo Line Accessed][Do you wish to issue a false logout protocol?]
"Yes," Elian hissed.
[Command Accepted – Hunter Perception Scrambled]
A glitch storm burst around him—sheets of visual noise and scrambled coordinates.
The Hunters began to fight each other, misreading their target pings.
Kalith grabbed his arm. "MOVE."
They ran through the storm, ducking through maintenance tunnels, until they burst out of the other side of the hill—emerging into a junkyard of collapsed satellites and scorched skyglass.
Only when the noise died behind them did they stop.
Elian gasped for air. "Why are they trying to capture me? Not kill me?"
Kalith leaned against a beam. "Because killing you resets your data. Capturing you lets them reprogram you. Turn you into one of them."
"And why would they want that?"
"Because," she said slowly, "the only thing more dangerous than a free Admin... is a loyal one."
Elian stared at the sky, where a new message now hovered in red:
[Bounty Tier Upgraded: Open Claim Now Active – Reward: Admin Clearance Fragment + 10,000 EXP]
This wasn't just survival anymore.
Now, it was open season.