The Secretary's God-Tier Glitch

Chapter 10: Falling into the Void

The silence of the void wasn't empty; it was a deafening, static-filled roar.

Bimo slammed into something that felt like cold, pressurized glass. He gasped, his lungs burning, his fingers clawing at the air until they locked onto a gauntlet.

"Arka? You still in one piece?" Bimo wheezed, his vision swirling with neon artifacts.

"I’m here," Arka’s voice was strained, distant. "But I think we just broke the map. Where the hell are we?"

Bimo sat up, his limbs feeling like they were lagging behind his brain. The landscape was a fractured mosaic of half-rendered cubicles, floating office chairs, and jagged, violet-tinted clouds.

"Looks like the 'Unallocated Memory' folder of the universe," Bimo muttered, clicking his jaw back into place. "Great. I’ve gone from unemployed to living in a trash bin."

Arka stood up, his armor flickering, patches of his plate mail turning into jagged pixels. "You’re an idiot, Bimo. You realize that, right? You blew up the server. You literally nuked our exit strategy."

"I saved your life, Arka! I’m not letting you get deleted because of some buggy HR-controlled code!"

"And what happens now? We’re floating in a dead zone, our mana is flatlining, and you’re still talking like we’re in a coffee break."

Bimo looked at their joined hands. The golden glow was dying, pulsing weakly like a failing Wi-Fi signal. "Because if I stop talking, I have to think about the fact that I’m probably dead. And I hate dying. It’s bad for my career prospects."

"You don't have a career! You have a dumpster fire of a life!"

"Hey, watch the ego," Bimo snapped, tugging Arka closer. "You were pretty happy to have my 'reckless idiocy' when that Void Overlord was trying to turn you into a snack."

Arka’s grip tightened. His face was inches from Bimo’s, his violet eyes burning with a mix of fury and something raw—something that made the static in the air feel suddenly, terrifyingly hot. "I didn't want you to die, you moron. I signed up to be the shield. You were supposed to be the one who got away."

Bimo blinked, his throat going dry. "The shield? You think I’d just watch you be the 'container'? I’m a consultant, Arka. I fix problems. And my biggest problem right now is that you seem to think you’re disposable."

"In this world, I am!"

"Well, I’m the Host, aren't I?" Bimo’s voice leveled out, losing its panic, gaining an edge of cold authority. "I’m changing the parameters. If we’re stuck here, we rebuild the connection. Not as a battery and a bin. As a team."

"It doesn't work like that. The System—"

"Forget the System! I’m the one holding the gauntlet. I say we rewrite the protocol."

Arka stared at him, the tension in his shoulders finally dropping. He let out a ragged, humorless laugh. "You’re absolutely delusional. You know that, right?"

"I’m an optimist with an admin password. Now, stop worrying about the 'pruning' and start helping me anchor this space. Unless you want to spend eternity floating in 404-error land?"

"What do you need?"

"Energy. Share the load. Don't let it dump into me—push it back. Create a loop."

Arka nodded, his expression shifting from frustration to a quiet, terrifying focus. He leaned in, his forehead resting against Bimo’s. "If this kills us, I’m going to haunt you."

"Duly noted. Try not to miss me too much."

Bimo closed his eyes, centering his focus. He could feel Arka’s energy—not as a drain, but as a steady, rhythmic thrum. It was like syncing two watches. He dragged the reality around them, stitching the fragmented cubicle-clouds together into a solid floor.

"That’s it," Bimo whispered. "Keep pushing. Don't let the void take the space back."

"I’ve got you," Arka murmured, his voice softer than Bimo had ever heard it. "Just… don't let go of my hand."

"Never."

The air stabilized. The jagged pixels smoothed into solid stone. The flickering void quieted into a strange, twilight-lit chamber. But the peace was short-lived. A sudden, violent tear ripped through the center of their new sanctuary, white-hot and jagged.

"Bimo, look," Arka hissed, drawing his sword, his body moving in front of Bimo automatically.

"That's not a glitch," Bimo said, standing up, his heart hammering against his ribs.

From the rift, a figure stepped through. It wasn't a shadow, or a beast. It was a man in a crisp, white suit that looked far too clean for this hellscape. He held a tablet in one hand and looked at Bimo with the weary, bored expression of someone who had just found a bug in a multi-billion dollar build.

"You know," the man said, his voice echoing with the authority of a god and the annoyance of a regional manager. "I specifically told the team to keep the 'Bimo' variable under wraps until the quarterly rollout."

Bimo stared, his hand trembling. "Who are you?"

The man tapped his tablet, and a hologram of the entire city flickered to life. He sighed. "I’m the one who writes the code you keep breaking. And quite frankly, Bimo, your performance has been... disappointing."

Arka stepped forward, his blade glowing. "Who is he, Bimo?"

Bimo’s breath caught in his throat as the man looked up, his eyes turning into swirling, complex equations.

"I’m the Founder," the man said, and the air itself seemed to crack under his weight. "And I’m here to initiate the hard reset."