Wealth Accuracy

Chapter 3. Anomaly

The following days were a lesson in controlled paranoia. Every flicker of a light, every distant chime of an academy alert, every glance from a passing student felt like a potential accusation. Roewi moved through his routine like a ghost, but for the first time, he felt solid. The hollow ache of rejection had been filled with a thrumming, dangerous energy. Vextor was a constant, silent passenger in his mind, a presence he was slowly learning to navigate, like learning to live with a new, powerful limb that occasionally had a mind of its own.

His curiosity was a live wire. He couldn't risk another major energy spike in his dorm, but the academy was vast, full of forgotten corners and poorly monitored training zones. His target was the Auxiliary Training Dojo #7, a dusty, rarely-used chamber tucked away in the older section of the campus. Its systems were outdated, its security logs famously glitchy. It was the perfect place for a ghost to practice being real.

The air inside was still and carried the faint, metallic scent of old ozone. A single, flickering holographic sparring drone hovered in the center of the room, its projectors dim. Roewi stood before it, his heart a drum against his ribs.

[Initialize low-level combat simulation,] he thought, the command feeling both alien and instinctual.

[Acknowledged. Accessing drone control matrix... Bypassing primary security... Complete.] Vextor's response was a whisper of data at the edge of his consciousness.

The drone hummed to life, its projectors glowing a steady blue. It was a basic model, programmed for simple, predictable attacks. A training wheel.

"Begin," Roewi said aloud.

The drone lunged, a pre-programmed fist of hard light shooting towards his chest. A week ago, he would have taken the hit, stumbling back with a grunt of pain. Now, his body moved before his conscious mind could process the command. It wasn't a fluid, elegant dodge like Ereun's. It was a sharp, efficient shift of weight, just enough to let the energy fist whistle past his shoulder. The movement felt guided, his senses fed data on the drone's trajectory and velocity in real-time.

[Trajectory analysis complete. Predictive algorithm active.]

The drone reset and attacked again. A sweeping kick this time. Roewi didn't just duck; he dropped, one hand touching the floor for balance, his body coiling like a spring. As the kick passed over him, he saw it, a faint, shimmering line of code superimposed over the drone's leg joint. A structural weakness in its simulation.

[Exploit?] Vextor prompted.

Yes.

He surged upwards, not with a punch, but with an open palm aimed directly at that shimmering line. He made contact. There was no physical impact, but a sharp crackle of corrupted data erupted from the point of contact. The drone's leg pixelated, dissolving into a shower of blue static. It listed to the side, its balance compromised, emitting a confused error chime.

Roewi stared, his chest heaving. He hadn't thrown a punch. He hadn't summoned a weapon. He had simply… broken the code. The reality of it was intoxicating. This wasn't fighting within the system's rules. This was hacking the fight itself.

He spent the next hour in a feverish trance. He commanded the drone through increasingly complex patterns, not to fight it, but to dissect it. With Vextor's guidance, his perception peeled back the layers of the simulation. He could see the "if-then" loops of its programming, the energy allocation nodes, the simple AI's decision-making process. It was like reading a book in a language he never knew he understood.

He discovered he could subtly alter the drone's parameters. He made its attacks slightly slower, its reactions a fraction delayed. He was not just a participant in the simulation; he was its editor.

The thrill was cut short by the sound of the dojo's main door hissing open.

Roewi's head snapped up. The HUD in his vision flashed a warning: [Unauthorized Bio-Signature Detected. Profile: Myra Cendrel.]

He instantly willed the simulation to end. The drone froze and powered down, returning to its dormant state. The data-stream overlays vanished from his sight, leaving the mundane, dusty dojo in their place. He tried to look as if he'd just been catching his breath.

Myra stood in the doorway, her technician's coverall smudged with grease, a diagnostic tablet tucked under her arm. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, widened in surprise. "Roewi? What are you doing down here? The system logs showed anomalous energy readings from this sector. Minimal, but... persistent."

His blood ran cold. Minimal. Vextor was learning to hide its footprint, but it wasn't perfect. He forced a casual shrug, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. "Just... trying to burn off some steam. You know. The old-fashioned way."

Myra didn't look convinced. She stepped inside, her eyes scanning the room, lingering on the dormant drone. "On a Level 2 combat drone? By yourself?" She walked over to the drone, tapping on her tablet. "These readings are weird. Its core programming has minor corruptions. Glitches I haven't seen before." She looked directly at him, her gaze piercing. "It's like something... overwrote parts of its code."

Roewi's mind raced. Myra was the best junior technician in the academy. She saw the code that held their world together. She could be his greatest ally or his most dangerous threat. He had to tread carefully.

"I don't know what to tell you, Myra. It's an old drone. Probably just falling apart."

She hummed, a non-committal sound, her fingers flying across her tablet. "Maybe." She paused, then looked up, her expression softening from suspicion to something closer to concern. "Roewi... are you okay? After the other day in the arena... I was worried."

The genuine care in her voice was a gut-punch. This was Myra, his oldest friend. The one who used to share stolen energy bars with him behind the dorms when they were kids. The one who had failed her own synchronization, though not as spectacularly as he had. She of all people should understand.

But telling her the truth was impossible. It would put her in unimaginable danger.

"I'm fine," he said, the lie tasting like ash. "Just... figuring things out."

Myra studied him for a long moment, her technician's eyes missing nothing. She saw the new tension in his shoulders, the lack of the usual defeated slump, the strange, focused light in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

"Okay," she said finally, not sounding okay at all. "Just... be careful, Roewi. The system has been extra sensitive lately. Division Zero has their sniffers running deep-level diagnostics network-wide. They're looking for something."

The words landed like a physical blow. Division Zero. The secret police of the system world. The bogeymen.

"Why?" he managed to ask, his throat tight.

She shrugged, but her eyes were serious. "Rumors. Anomalies in the core code. Unexplained energy signatures. They think there might be a... glitch in the system. A big one." She gave him one last, unreadable look. "Don't stay down here too long. It's creepy."

She turned and left, the door hissing shut behind her, leaving Roewi alone in the silence.

The triumph he'd felt moments ago was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp fear. Myra knew something was off. And if she could see it, how long until someone else did? How long until Division Zero's "sniffers" picked up the scent of the forbidden protocol lurking in the academy's veins?

He looked at his hands. They had just effortlessly dismantled a combat simulation. He had power now, real power. But it was a power that came with a countdown. He was no longer just an outcast. He was a fugitive, hiding in plain sight. The hunt had begun, and he was the prey. And the only thing standing between him and erasure was a cold, ancient voice in his head whose ultimate purpose remained a terrifying mystery.

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