Level 999: The Glitch King

The Unscheduled Update

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 his knees, his visor facing forward in the sudden onslaught of color.

Behind him, a taxi screamed to a halt, leaving the sound of its skidding tires to echo long after it had stopped, and someone laughed too loudly and too sharply, suggesting it was a joke.

Jace was already pulling his phone from his pocket, surprised that he had even decided to do so, when he saw the words on the otherwise empty screen.

Not coming from any particular application but hovering just above the phone's material as though they had appeared in the space between reality and the glass, the words were stark against the black nothingness. His first thought was that it was some kind of pop-up ad.

[System Notice]

He blinked, watching as more text scrolled down the page in precise, sterile lines.

The Great Architect has chosen Earth for Data Scraping.

Universal Rank: F (Sub-Optimal)

Initiating Global Formatting in 3...

2...

1...

The countdown finished and several people let out nervous chuckles before the sky cracked open.

The blue dome that had encased Manhattan bent in on itself as something massive pushed from the outside and clouds snapped like twine in a storm. A lattice of red-black light spread its way across the firmament like rot and Jace took a step back.

It wasn't some kind of elaborate prank. It wasn't an error in the system that had somehow gotten out of control. His ears were already popping from the sudden change in pressure when the first wails of genuine fear began.

A wave of energy rolled through the street, washing over the gathered masses like the shore of an unseen ocean until it reached a waiting van. This one, instead of exploding as one might expect, simply fractured like a soufflé and hundreds of glowing squares floated up into the sky.

As a suited man sprinted toward the disturbance, his screams were abruptly cut off as his body tore itself apart in thin strips of light.

Then came Times Square.

People pushed and shoved, a mother pulling her two children back from an encroaching wave of destruction as alarms screamed from buildings that no longer had windows. Jace remained rooted to the spot, watching as this strange energy rippled toward him and over crosswalks and newsstands and a bus that wasn't moving.

All Jace could think was that he still had the money in his hand for the hotdog he hadn't bought yet.

It rolled toward him and he braced himself for death to consume him.

Instead, it had consumed the air around him. A shockwave of static electricity erupted from his body, throwing scraps of paper and glass and confetti backward as though he had thrown them and suddenly the energy wave was recoiling.

Jace found himself standing in the eye of something he barely understood, watching as his own hands hovered in the space it had left behind.

"Wait."

The next message appeared not only on his phone, but mirrored across the broken and darkened screens of the city, on the glass of the shops, and the sky itself.

[Warning: Anomalous Entity Detected]

He turned as the wave of energy rolled past his body, dissipating into the distance, and found several dozen pairs of eyes watching him. Mostly because the rest were busy running or screaming or trying to salvage something of value from the destruction, but enough were looking at him that it made his skin prickle in awareness.

Scanning Host Level...

He felt the numbers climb.

1.

10.

100.

500.

They climbed higher and he could swear that his heartbeat was accelerating even as his skin prickled with heat. It surged from his chest now, up his arms in thick, writhing veins of blue light that snapped and crackled like live electricity, making the ground around him dissolve into smoky shadows with every pulse.

The sky blinked and the city blinked with it.

[CRITICAL ERROR: Level Exceeds System Parameters]

Current Rank: Level 999

It didn't mean anything at first, only because it couldn't have meant anything.

Jace was nobody. He was the next in line to stock the hardware store on 9th, forty bucks in debt with no plan to repay it.

If he had a reputation, it was as a coward, never winning a fight and always choosing the back exit when he needed to escape. Whatever this thing was, whatever it was scanning him with its crazy-ass words, had the wrong motherfucking person.

"No," he muttered, mostly to himself.

It didn't listen.

The pressure in his chest became something else entirely, something that wasn't invading but rather unlocking, and for a brief moment his knees nearly buckled. He could hear the sound of the pavement cracking around his feet, spiderwebbing outward until it looked as though the concrete had been split by his very presence.

Above, the sky of red squares snapped open and something spilled out of it. Gold, thick and heavy, crashed to the ground in a mass that reminded Jace of lava but had the consistency of metal. It formed a crater of some sort, fifteen feet long and as it rolled forward another shape emerged from the light.

It wasn't wings, not exactly, but if anyone asked Jace he'd probably say they looked like them. In one appendage the being held a blade longer than a car, humming low enough that it vibrated his teeth. No one made a sound for a long moment, but then the creature turned its head and fixed him with a stare that went right through his bones.

"A Level 999 entity?" It spoke, its voice reverberating through the ground and the shattered glass and Jace's own ribcage. "Impossible. This world has a universal rank of 1. It is a cradle. You are not permitted to exist at this level."

A crushed taxi squeaked under the pressure of unseen forces as the creature tilted its head. "By the authority of the Great Architect, this error shall be quarantined."

Jace looked at the blade in the creature's hand, at the broken sky, at the lights still blinking in the square.

He knew, in that moment, that he had only one choice.

He didn't run, though part of him screamed that it was the smartest decision.

Whatever was in his chest, burning and breaking, wanted terribly to understand what it was. And as the world burned around him Jace realized he was most afraid not of dying but of never knowing who he could be.

"Bye, then," he said simply. "Let's see you try."

The creature's blade fell.