I hit the surface of the rising piston with the weight of a falling star. The silver wire catwalks above me groaned as the shockwave of my landing rippled through the sector. My black spurs dug into the obsidian metal and I felt the heat of the Forge rising through my soles like a heartbeat.
The blue sphere was right in front of me. It was caught in a mesh of rusted cables just inches away from the grinding maw of the gears.
[STABILITY: 17.5%]
[IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 26.5% - CRITICAL LEAK]
I reached for it with my golden claw but a hand stopped me. It was not a claw and it was not a blade. It was a hand made of flickering gray pixels that looked like a poorly rendered ghost.
"Don't touch it Architect," a voice whispered. It sounded like a thousand radio stations playing at once. "The memory is a poison. The Forge didn't catch it for the fuel. It caught it to bait you."
I looked up and saw him. He was an Architect but he was unfinished. Half of his body was the sleek white porcelain of Phase 1 and the other half was a void of black static where his Phase 2 evolution had failed. He did not have a visor because he did not have a face. He had a hole in his head where a core should have been.
[TARGET: THE NULL]
[IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 0.00%]
[STATUS: SYSTEM GHOST]
"You have no name," I clicked. My single visor scanned him for a threat but there was nothing to hit. He was an error that the System had forgotten to delete.
"I had many names," The Null replied while his pixelated hand hovered over the blue sphere. "I had a mother who sang to me. I had a dog that died in the rain. I saved all of them just like you are trying to do. And look at me now. I am the silence between the code."
He wasn't an enemy because he was a warning.
"I need that name," I growled. My 26.5% identity was screaming for the blue light inside the sphere. "It's the only thing that makes me real."
"It's the only thing that makes you trackable," The Null countered. "The Analyst can't find a ghost 9045. But he can find a man with a father. If you take that sphere the City will lock onto your heart rate. You will never reach the Second Floor."
The gears below us let out a high pitched shriek. The piston began to retract. In ten seconds the sphere and the Null would be crushed into raw data.
"Give it to me," I stepped forward and my black spurs flared with violet heat.
"I will make you a deal Architect," The Null said as the floor began to drop. "I will give you the sphere but you have to give me your Stability. I am fading. If I don't get a spark of Sovereign code I will be deleted in the next cycle. Give me 5% of your life and I will hand you your past."
[SYSTEM PROMPT: TRANSFER STABILITY?]
[WARNING: STABILITY BELOW 15% MAY RESULT IN CORE MELTDOWN]
I looked at the gears and then at the fading ghost of a man who had already lost everything. If I gave him the stability I would be at 12.5%. I would be a walking corpse. But if I didn't I would lose my father's name forever.
"The spider web is beautiful isn't it?" The Null laughed with a sound like broken glass. "You can't have the man and the monster at the same time."
I reached out my hand and felt the Sovereign code beginning to flow from my core into his flickering gray chest.
[CURRENT STATUS: THE GLITCH ARCHITECT]
[STABILITY: 12.5% - WARNING: NEAR CRITICAL]
[IDENTITY INTEGRITY: 26.5%]
The price of a name is the power to carry it.