The void wasn't black.
It was pure nothingness—a flat fill that killed depth like someone disabled the skybox.
No texture, no noise—just a dead fill color that swallowed light.
No sleep—just suspend.
I sat in a frozen queue, waiting for the system to let me move again.
I couldn't move.
Couldn't scream.
Couldn't even pull my logs.
All I could do was watch the progress bar crawl.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: 12%...]
> Verifying integrity of 'Core_Tech_Driver.dll'...
> Patching 'Null_Corruption_Registry'...
Time didn't flow.
It jumped—freeze, fast-forward, freeze.
One moment, I was floating in missing data.
The next, sound bled through—muffled, mangled, like a corrupted .WAV dragging at half speed.
"...more resistance on the third joint... yeah, yeah... interesting..."
A wrench hit metal.
The impact rattled through my frame before my audio could catch up.
I tried to check my status.
Denied.
Admin Access Level 1 was gone under maintenance lock.
Classic.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: 48%...]
> Replacing 'Chassis_Skeleton_v3' with 'Siege_Frame_Proto_X'...
> WARNING: Memory bleed detected in Sector 7.
> Auto-correcting...
I felt the rewrite hit.
No poetry.
It felt like someone took a belt sander to my inputs—raw vibration, skipped frames, nothing lining up.
Old routines got torn out.
The empty space still twitched where my ranged minion instincts used to auto-walk and auto-fire.
The sensation of lightness—the flimsy robes, the stick-thin arms—was being overwritten by density.
Mass.
Then it got bad.
The progress bar hit the wall.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: 99%...]
It hung there.
For hours? Days?
I panicked.
If the installer died at 99%, I was bricked—save flagged, asset marked disposable.
Cleanup would drag me out before I could even crash loud enough to leave a report.
"Just a final adjustment to the power regulator... and... there!"
A squeaky voice broke through the static.
The bar flashed green.
[UPDATE COMPLETE]
[REBOOTING SYSTEM...]
[LOADING DRIVERS...]
[WELCOME BACK, ASSET #734]
My eyes snapped open.
The blur was gone.
The Sink's Lower Stack snapped into focus.
The old blocky blur got swapped for sharp 4K—every grime streak on brass, every chipped paint edge.
I saw the individual scratches on the brass ceiling tiles of the lab.
I saw the dust motes dancing in the sterile light, rendered with ray-tracing that would melt a consumer GPU.
I tried to sit up, but momentum fought me.
I was heavy.
My old body was a twig; this one was a tank.
I looked down.
My hands weren't just gloved polygons anymore.
They were plated in burnished steel, rivets gleaming under the lab lights.
My right arm—the cannon I'd salvaged—was no longer just carried; it was integrated.
A heavy cylinder of core-tech hardware sat fused into my shoulder.
It vibrated like it was already charging a shot.
It felt cold.
Not The Sink's damp chill—this was coolant-cold, the kind that numbs metal and keeps it from cooking itself.
A new HUD widget blinked on in the top-left and pulsed like a metronome I didn't control.
> **[CORE-BATTERY: 98%]
It hummed in my chest, a vibration that rattled my teeth.
That meter wasn't just fuel.
It was a timer.
"Oh, good! You haven't exploded,"
The Professor's face popped into my field of view, his goggles magnifying his eyes to disturbing proportions.
"Yet."
I ran a quick diagnostic.
My internal fan speed ramped up.
"Status,"
I croaked.
My voice module had bass now.
Subwoofer quality.
"Status is 'Improved'!"
The Professor hopped down from a stool, waving a wrench.
"I fused the NULL SHARD to a core-tech governor. You're running hybrid now—two power sources, one set of limits."
I clenched my left fist.
The hydraulics whined in protest, but the grip held firm.
My servos groaned under the load—new actuators still settling into their housings.
"Careful with that," The Professor said, tapping a gauge on my forearm. "Your calibration isn't finished." My actuators whined—a high-pitched, expensive complaint.
I wasn't just a minion anymore.
I was a siege engine—built to shove a lane and soak hits that delete squishies.
And I was running on borrowed time.
"Calibrate your servos,"
The Professor commanded, tapping a glass tablet with a stylus that looked suspiciously like a soldering iron.
"I need to verify the torque output before we risk a catastrophic disassembly event."
I tried to nod.
The motion landed a beat late.
My head lagged behind, like the command hit my body after it hit my HUD.
Latency.
A new window popped up in my HUD, obscuring the lab.
[DIAGNOSTIC PROTOCOL: MOTOR_SYNC.EXE]
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
[OBJECTIVE: Align the Reticles]
Three translucent gold rings spawned in my vision, spinning around a center line fast enough to make my focus stutter.
It looked like a tumbler-sync puzzle—except failure kicked my shoulder sideways hard enough to loosen plating.
I focused on my right arm—the cannon.
I tried to lift it.
The outer ring spun faster.
A red cursor slid across the bar.
I had to 'click'—to fire the neural impulse—right when the cursor hit the sweet spot.
Now.
I fired the impulse.
The cursor missed the green zone by a pixel.
The system didn't care how close I was.
[ERROR: Sync Failure]
My arm didn't lift.
It jerked violently to the left, the heavy brass plating slamming into my own chest.
Blue sparks spat from the shoulder joint and peppered my faceplate with hot pinpricks.
[-12 STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY]
"Fascinating!"
The Professor chirped, scribbling furiously.
"Your neural pathways are still expecting the mass of a ranged unit. You're overcompensating by 400%!"
"Lag,"
I grunted, the word vibrating in my metal chest.
"Input lag."
"Adjust your deadzone,"
The Professor countered.
"Try again."
I gritted my teeth—or whatever served as teeth now.
I focused on the HUD.
The rings spun again.
I waited.
Watched the pattern.
It wasn't random.
The timing loop repeated—same rise, same drop, same bait for a late click.
Wait for the peak... drop the packet... NOW.
The rings locked into place with a hard click that I felt through my teeth.
My arm rose smoothly, the heavy cannon humming with lethal potential.
The hydraulic hiss was music to my ears.
[CALIBRATION: ARM_R >> SUCCESS]
[EFFICIENCY: 82%]
"Better,"
The Professor muttered.
"Now, the load test. That blast door. Open it. Manually."
He pointed at a reinforced bulkhead.
Thick plating, layered seams—the kind V. would normally breach with a kinetic tether if she had a clean angle.
I stepped forward.
My footsteps were heavy, clanking against the metal grating.
Clank. Clank.
No more shuffling in robes.
I planted my feet—`[Siege_Stance]` snapped on—and jammed my fingers into the door seam.
My joints locked down to trade speed for raw shove.
I pulled.
The resistance was immense.
My internal fans roared to life, spinning up like a jet engine.
> **[WARNING: High Torque Request]
> **[Rerouting Power from Core Node...]
The door groaned.
Metal shrieked against metal.
I watched my battery indicator in the corner of my eye.
[CORE BATTERY: 96%]
I pushed harder.
The code demanded more energy.
Cold drain crawled up my chest as the Core Battery dumped charge into the actuators.
The meter fell and my limbs got heavier with every percent.
It wasn't exhaustion; it was fuel consumption.
[CORE BATTERY: 94%]
The heavy blast door slid open six inches.
[CORE BATTERY: 92%]
"Stop! Stop!"
The professor waved his hands.
"Linear actuators are within tolerance, but your fuel economy is atrocious. You're burning through refined Core-Crystals like a drag racer."
I let go.
The door slammed shut with a boom that shook the dust from the ceiling.
I slumped slightly, the sudden drop in
power output making me dizzy.
"I'm a tank,"
I wheezed, my cooling vents hissing steam.
"Tanks get gallons to the mile."
"You are a prototype,"
Professor corrected, jumping up to inspect my shoulder joint with a magnifying glass.
"And if you run dry in the field, you don't just stop. Your systems lock, your HUD freezes, and you become loot for whoever's standing over you."
I looked at the battery gauge.
92%.
I'd burned 6% of my life force opening a door.
I needed an upgrade.
My next test was a bad joke.
Professor rolled a waist-high hurdle into the center of the lab—brass frame, The Sink grime baked into the seams like old oil.
A strip of core-glass on the floor lit up in lanes.
Left. Right. Left.
The kind of agility drill you give someone with knees, not a Siege Minion chassis with a cannon for an arm.
"High-stress locomotion," The Professor said from the observation deck, voice too cheerful.
"If you can't pivot, you can't survive field conditions."
Field conditions.
Like the outer lane—Justiciar Camila and the Professor setting a no-walk zone.
One bad step and you're eating headshots under defense node fire while the wave gets deleted.
Wall-and-range disadvantage, every trade.
Except I was the turret now.
I stepped onto the line.
My weight made the grating complain.
The Core-Battery in my chest hummed—steady, controlled—until I tried to accelerate.
Then it spiked, like my heart got overclocked.
> [NOTICE: INPUT BUFFER SATURATION 6%]
> [NOTICE: Servo Heat +12%]
"Jump,"
Professor said.
I bent my knees.
Timing was everything—my old Ranged Minion body had been light enough to brute-force bad inputs.
This chassis punished mistakes.
I pushed off.
For half a second it felt clean.
Air under my feet.
Then my right hip lagged by a frame.
My body yawed.
I clipped the hurdle with my shin.
Metal-on-metal impact.
A flash of white in my vision.
My HP bar ticked like a metronome losing its patience.
[-7 HP]
Pain didn't feel like pain.
It felt like an error ping—instant, sharp, and it stole my attention whether I wanted to give it or not.
Hot. Immediate.
It came with a dirty little crash report in the back of my HUD.
I landed ugly, caught myself, recalculated—then the lab lights died.
Not off.
Worse.
Crimson strobes snapped on and chopped the lab into red frames—benches, tools, my plated hands flashing in and out.
The hum of my core vanished under a rising, grinding shriek—klaxons so loud my audio drivers clipped.
Every pulse made my HUD smear.
[SECURITY ALERT: LEVEL 5]
[LOCKDOWN: ENABLED]
[VISUAL OVERLAY: PRIORITY]
Warnings cascaded over my reticles.
Big blocks.
Ugly font.
I tried to keep moving, but the agility lanes were gone behind the overlay.
My legs hesitated, waiting for pathing that wasn't there.
"Stop the test!"
a voice cut through the siren—sharp, human, not sprite-bright.
Camila walked in. The room went silent. The red emergency lights painted harsh shadows across her badge. She adjusted, rifle ready—eyes already picking angles.
Long coat, rifle slung, eyes already scanning for exits and suspects instead of equations.
Justiciar mode.
No curiosity.
Just target, timing, and collateral—like she'd already decided who gets to stand behind her and who doesn't.
"We've got a scene."
Professor started protesting—words lost in klaxon noise.
Camila didn't look at him.
"Bring your prototype. Now."
I pulled up the
diagnostic to terminate it cleanly.
The system fought me—like closing a program mid-write.
My fingers shook, servos whining.
[DIAGNOSTIC PROTOCOL: MOTOR_SYNC.EXE]
[ABORT: ACCEPTED]
A notification minimized itself and stayed there, burning in my peripheral like a stuck error light:
> **[WARNING: CALIBRATION 94%]
Ninety-four percent.
Close enough to tempt you, low enough to ruin you.
And The Justiciar was already walking out, expecting me to keep up.
Camila didn’t wait for consent.
She just turned and walked like the corridor was hers and I was a piece of equipment rolling behind her.
I followed.
Heavy steps.
Each one a little delayed, like my legs were reading from a script that hadn’t finished compiling.
The lab’s clean brass gave way to a service hall—pipes sweating condensation, core-cables zip-tied in ugly bundles, the air tasting like hot metal and old toxins.
The Professor scampered after us, still sputtering.
“Justiciar, the calibration isn’t—”
“Good enough,” Camila cut in.
Her voice was a flat line, vibrating with a tension that hadn't been there a minute ago.
She didn't look at the Professor. She looked at a blinking rune on her wrist-mounted comms unit.
“We have a catastrophic failure at the crash site,” she said, her eyes flicking to me.
“That gate you brought down? Someone is performing a manual override on the wreckage. They aren’t looting it—they’re purging it.”
My HUD hiccuped, a low-priority alert ghosting through my vision.
> ALERT: REMOTE CODE INJECTION DETECTED
> TARGET: SECTOR_SINK_GATE_REMAINS
“A cleanup crew?” I rasped.
“A professional one,” Camila replied.
She slapped the elevator override, forcing the lift into a high-speed descent that made my servos whine in protest.
“They just triggered a feedback loop in the primary stabilizers.
If that core hits critical mass, it won't just be a crash site.”
She triggered the lift recall.
The platform arrived with a reluctant grind.
Inside smelled like wet concrete and burnt metal from arc-lamps.
We stepped in.
The platform shuddered, then began to sink.
As The Sink closed in—catwalk shadows, neon leaking off wet metal, distant shouting—my HUD started to slide out of place.
Thin lines tore sideways.
My reticle doubled and drifted, like the game couldn’t agree where my aim actually was.
The battery icon jittered like a dying heartbeat.
[ERROR: STABILIZER INTEGRATION UNSTABLE]
For a split second the world desynced—The Justiciar became a smear of frames, Professor Cogsworth stretched into a broken render, and my hands sat a few inches off from where my wrists said they were.
Then it snapped back.
But the warning stayed burned into the corner of my vision, refusing to minimize.
The elevator kept descending.
Into The Dregs—where the platform lights died and the air turned thick with runoff.
Into combat.
With my calibration stuck at 94%.
And my UI already coming apart.
Generated by GlitchWriter.
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