Level 999: The Glitch King

The world didn't end. It unraveled around a hot dog. Jace was fumbling with his phone as he waited for his lunch hour to begin, a sweaty palm nearly dropping the folded bills as he prepared for another late arrival to the office, when every fucking screen in Times Square suddenly went dark red. Not the red of warnings or child kidnappers, but something deeper and nastier that sucked all conversation from the streets as passersby stopped in their tracks, waiting for someone to explain what the hell was going on. First came the giant advertisements, then the store fronts, the kiosks and the flashing signs overhead all seizing at once as though something had reached beneath the city and switched them off. No one seemed to react immediately. It wasn't until the phones began vibrating that the first astonished gasps and shrieks escaped the crowd. A woman next to Jace dropped two shopping bags in her efforts to free her phone from her grip while a courier cursed and dropped to

The crater held. That was the first thing Jace realized, once the ringing in his ears had dulled enough for him to hear anything else. The glass-smooth hole in the ground where Times Square had once been should have been swallowing itself whole, edges folding in on the mess within, half the block consumed in the process. It held. Jace stood at the center of it, blood drying at the corner of his mouth, the last fragments of the system's text messages fading from his vision. The ground beneath his boots did not give. Around him, the broken remains of Times Square stretched out. A bus lay on its side, one wheel still spinning. A storefront had been swallowed whole. Down the block, someone was still screaming a name that would not answer. Jace flexed his fingers. They responded, this time, if stiffly. The blue light beneath his skin had burned away to thin lines along his wrists and forearms. He was still sore where the spear had found his ribs, his shoulders still ached, but

Jace remained on the floor longer than he intended. The throne room was silent except for the groaning of the broken fleet above Manhattan and the pulse in the Spire. His burned hand had already left a stain on the stone floor, palm upturned to reveal the darkened, shifting edges of the mark. Along the edges of the opening in the ceiling, the gold line was spreading outward. The remaining ships had fallen silent. All of them faced away from the Spire, presenting their battered fronts to the unseen force beyond the red lattice. Jace shoved himself onto his side. "That better not be another fleet." Seraphina stood near the entrance to the chamber, her good hand pressed to the gap in her shoulder armor. She had not taken her eyes off the sky since the last panel had opened. "THE KING HAS BEEN NOTIFIED." The message still hovered in the air. Jace turned to her. "You got quiet." "That message was not only for you." "Then who was it for?" "Everyone above us." The l

The gold lines did not so much as flicker at his warning.The center Collector only tilted his head, the black glass of his mask catching what little light the Spire still gave off. Beside him, the other two stood exactly where they had risen out of the floor, patient in the specific way of men who had never once needed to hurry.The vibration came first. Jace felt it in his molars again, the same low hum as before. This time it didn't stop at the walls.PASSIVE CONTAINMENT ACTIVEThe words settled somewhere behind his eyes, unhurried, the way all the worst things were. Movement Efficiency, they informed him, was down eighteen percent. Access Response was delayed. Pain Awareness was, unhelpfully, increasing....Corruption Load: 84% → 85%..."That's new," Jace said, because saying something was better than finding out how much of him still worked."It is not designed to injure you," the Collector said. Up close, his voice had the same terrible gentleness as before, like a man reading a