Forced Logout
The moderator's hand was already reaching for my interface when the apartment's smoke detector started screaming—not because of fire, but because my System had just classified me as a "combustible data hazard."
I didn't think. Just moved.
My hand shot out, grabbed the coffee mug from the interrogation table—still half-full, still warm—and threw it at the moderator's face. The liquid arced through the air in slow motion, or maybe that was just my brain trying to process everything at once, and I watched the coffee hit the moderator square in the eyes.
They didn't flinch.
The coffee passed through them like they were made of smoke.
"User Marcus Chen," the moderator said, their voice flat and synthesized, "you are in violation of Integration Protocol 7.3: Existence of Corrupted Data."
Their hand closed around empty air where my interface had been a second ago. I was already moving, scrambling backward, my chair clattering to the floor. The smoke detector kept screaming. Red emergency lights strobed across the walls.
"Director!" Zara's voice cut through the chaos. "The building's structural integrity is compromising. We need to evacuate."
Tanaka's weapon was still pointed at me, but her eyes were on her own interface, scanning through data I couldn't see. "Negative. We contain the breach here. Okonkwo, establish a perimeter. Nothing gets in or out."
"Nothing includes him," Zara said.
"Especially him."
I backed toward the door. The moderator moved to intercept, but their pathfinding was wrong—they took three steps to the left, then corrected, then overcorrected. Like watching someone play a video game with lag.
The floor beneath my feet flickered. For a split second, I could see through it—see the apartment below, see a family eating dinner, see them look up in confusion as their ceiling turned translucent.
"Marcus." Zara's voice was different now. Quieter. "Do not move. If you destabilize further, the entire building could collapse into a null zone."
"A what?"
"A space where reality cannot decide what it is supposed to be." She took a step toward me, hands raised, palms out. "I need you to breathe. I need you to focus. Can you do that for me?"
"I'm—yeah, I'm breathing, I'm—"
The moderator lunged.
I threw myself sideways, hit the wall, and fell through it.
The wall wasn't solid. Or it was, but only partially. I could feel the drywall scraping against my shoulder, could smell the dust and insulation, but I passed through it like pushing through a curtain made of static electricity. My System exploded with notifications:
WARNING: CLIPPING DETECTED WARNING: COLLISION MESH FAILURE WARNING: YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE PLAYABLE AREA
I stumbled into someone's living room. A man in his fifties sat on a couch, frozen mid-bite of a sandwich, staring at me. His interface showed Level 12, Class: Accountant, Current Quest: File Quarterly Taxes.
"Sorry," I said. "Wrong apartment."
I ran for his front door. Behind me, I heard the wall explode as the moderator came through—the normal way, with force and destruction. Drywall rained down. The accountant screamed.
"User Marcus Chen, cease movement. You are making this worse."
I yanked open the door and sprinted into the hallway. My System was showing me things it shouldn't—debug information overlaid on reality. I could see the other apartments through the walls, see the people inside them, see their stat allocations and skill trees and quest logs. It was too much information, too much data, and my brain couldn't process it all.
A woman stepped out of her apartment three doors down. Level 47, Class: Corporate Lawyer, Current Quest: Prepare for Deposition. She took one look at me and her hand went to her interface.
"Don't," I said. "Please, just—don't."
She activated something. A barrier shimmered into existence across the hallway, translucent blue energy that crackled with electricity.
I didn't slow down. My System highlighted a section of the barrier in green—a weak point, a gap in the code. I dove through it, felt the energy sear across my back, and kept running.
The moderator hit the barrier at full speed. It held for exactly two seconds before shattering like glass.
I reached the stairwell and took the steps three at a time, going down, always down. My interface kept spawning phantom copies of myself—glitches, errors, corrupted data made manifest. They ran alongside me, perfect duplicates, and I watched one of them peel off and head up the stairs instead.
The moderator appeared at the landing above me. They looked down, saw me and my phantom copies, and their head twitched left-right-left like a broken animatronic.
"Target acquired," they said, and jumped.
Not walked down the stairs. Jumped. Fell twenty feet and landed in a three-point superhero pose that cracked the concrete.
I threw myself through the door marked GROUND FLOOR and emerged into the lobby. People scattered. Someone screamed. My System was still spawning copies—there were five of me now, all running in different directions.
The moderator killed two of them before realizing they weren't real.
The copies didn't bleed. They just dissolved into pixels and static, their death animations glitching out halfway through. The moderator's head snapped toward me—the real me—and I saw their eyes for the first time. No pupils. Just solid white light, like someone had replaced their eyeballs with LEDs.
I burst through the front doors and into the street.
The city was wrong.
Buildings flickered between architectural styles—modern glass and steel one second, brick and mortar the next, then something that looked like it belonged in a cyberpunk movie. The sky cycled through colors: blue, orange, purple, green, back to blue. People walked past, oblivious, their interfaces showing normal quests and normal stats and normal lives.
I was the only one who could see it falling apart.
I ran three blocks before my legs gave out. Collapsed against the window of a 24-hour laundromat, gasping, my System still screaming warnings at me. The debug information was getting worse—I could see the code now, actual lines of text floating in the air, variables and functions and if-then statements that made up reality itself.
Inside the laundromat, an elderly Korean woman sat folding clothes. Her interface showed Level 3, Class: Grandmother, Current Quest: Do Laundry. She looked up, met my eyes through the glass, and gestured for me to come inside.
I didn't have anywhere else to go.
The laundromat smelled like detergent and dryer sheets and something else, something that reminded me of Kevin's apartment after the funeral. I pushed the thought away. Couldn't deal with that. Not now.
The woman—Mrs. Park, according to her interface—continued folding a floral bedsheet with practiced efficiency. She didn't look at me when she spoke.
"They come for the ones who see too much," she said in Korean.
I understood her. My System was translating in real-time, the words appearing as subtitles in my vision.
"I don't—I'm not seeing anything," I said. "I'm just—there's been a mistake."
She switched to English, her accent thick but her words precise. "Your brother saw too much too."
My blood went cold. "What did you say?"
"Kevin Chen. Level 34. Class: Software Engineer. He saw the code. He tried to tell people. They made him stop."
"Kevin died in a car accident. The System—the System couldn't save him because he was too far from a respawn point."
Mrs. Park's hands stilled on the bedsheet. She looked at me then, really looked at me, and her eyes were sad in a way that made my chest hurt.
"Is that what they told you?"
"That's what happened."
"And you believe them?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. My System was showing me Mrs. Park's quest log, and there—buried under "Do Laundry" and "Buy Groceries" and "Call Daughter"—was another quest. A hidden one. The text was corrupted, glitching in and out, but I could read enough:
QUEST: REMEMBER THE TRUTH STATUS: FAILED PENALTY: MEMORY WIPE SCHEDULED
"What is that?" I pointed at her interface. "That quest, what—"
Mrs. Park's eyes went blank.
Not closed. Not unfocused. Blank. Like someone had turned off a light switch inside her head. Her interface flickered, crashed, rebooted. When her eyes refocused, she looked at me with polite confusion.
"Can I help you?" she asked in English. No accent this time. Perfect, neutral pronunciation.
"You just—we were talking about my brother, you said—"
"I am sorry. I do not know your brother. Are you here to do laundry?"
My System pinged. New notification:
WITNESS COMPROMISED MEMORY RESTORATION: IMPOSSIBLE THEY ARE LISTENING
I backed toward the door. Mrs. Park returned to folding her bedsheet, humming something that might have been a lullaby or might have been a funeral dirge. I couldn't tell anymore.
Outside, the street was empty. Too empty. No cars. No people. Just the flickering buildings and the color-shifting sky and the sound of my own breathing.
My interface chimed. Incoming call. No caller ID.
I almost didn't answer. But the alternative was standing here, alone, waiting for the moderator to find me again.
I accepted the call.
Zara's face appeared in my vision, translucent and overlaid on reality. She was somewhere dark, somewhere with concrete walls and exposed pipes. Her expression was unreadable.
"Marcus. Are you injured?"
"No. Maybe. I don't know. Where's Tanaka?"
"Coordinating the search. She has mobilized six additional moderators and locked down a four-block radius around your last known position." Zara paused. "You should not have run."
"They were going to kill me."
"They were going to contain you. There is a difference."
"Is there?" I started walking, no destination in mind, just movement. "That moderator wasn't human, Zara. Their eyes were—they moved wrong, they talked wrong, they—"
"Moderators are human. They are System Authority personnel who have undergone extensive augmentation to better serve and protect."
"Bullshit. That thing was a puppet. Someone was controlling it remotely, or it was running on autopilot, or—"
"Marcus." Her voice was sharp. "Listen to me very carefully. You are experiencing a psychotic break brought on by System instability. Nothing you are seeing is real. The moderator is human. The city is stable. Your brother died in an accident. Do you understand?"
I stopped walking. "You don't believe that."
"It does not matter what I believe. It matters what is true."
"Then tell me the truth. Tell me what's really happening."
Zara looked away from the camera. When she looked back, something in her face had changed. Softened. Or maybe hardened. I couldn't tell.
"I cannot," she said. "Not on this channel. Not where they can hear."
"Who's they?"
"Meet me at the corner of Fifth and Madison. There is a coffee shop. Closed for renovation. The back door will be unlocked. Come alone. Come now."
"How do I know this isn't a trap?"
"You do not. But it is the only option you have that does not end with you in a containment cell or dead." She leaned closer to the camera. "Your brother trusted me, Marcus. I need you to do the same."
The call disconnected.
I stood there, in the middle of the empty street, with the buildings flickering around me and the sky cycling through impossible colors. My System was still showing me debug information, still highlighting weak points in reality, still spawning phantom copies of myself that dissolved into static.
Fifth and Madison was six blocks north. I could make it in ten minutes if I ran.
Or I could keep running. Leave the city. Find somewhere the System couldn't reach me.
Except there was nowhere the System couldn't reach. It was everywhere. It was everything. It had been for seven years.
I started walking north.
The coffee shop was called "Grounds for Divorce," which would have been funny if I wasn't terrified. The windows were papered over with permits and construction notices. The front door was chained shut. But the back door, like Zara had said, was unlocked.
I slipped inside.
The interior was gutted. Exposed beams and hanging wires and the smell of sawdust and paint. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floor. In the corner, someone had left a camping lantern. It cast long shadows across the walls.
Zara stepped out from behind a support beam.
She wasn't wearing her System Authority uniform anymore. Just jeans and a black jacket and boots that looked like they'd seen actual use. Her interface was disabled—I couldn't see her level or class or anything.
"You came," she said.
"You said my brother trusted you."
"He did."
"Why?"
Zara walked to the lantern, adjusted it so the light was less harsh. "Because I was the one who tried to save him. Not from the car accident. From what came after."
My hands clenched into fists. "There was no after. He died. The System couldn't reach him in time. That's what Tanaka told me. That's what the report said."
"The report lied." Zara's voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. Like she was discussing the weather. "Kevin did not die in a car accident, Marcus. He was killed. Deliberately. By the System."
The world tilted. Or maybe I did. I grabbed the support beam to steady myself.
"That's not—why would the System—"
"Because he found something he was not supposed to find. A flaw in the code. A backdoor. He tried to tell people. He tried to warn them. So they made him stop."
"They killed him."
"Yes."
"And you—you were there? You tried to save him?"
Zara's mouth went flat. "I tried. I failed. By the time I understood what was happening, it was too late. They had already classified him as corrupted data. They had already sent the moderators."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Kevin's face kept flashing in my mind—his stupid grin, his terrible jokes, the way he'd ruffle my hair even though I was twenty-three and too old for that shit.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you are making the same mistakes he did. You are seeing things you should not see. You are asking questions you should not ask. And if you continue, they will kill you too."
"Then what am I supposed to do? Just—just pretend everything is fine? Pretend the System isn't falling apart around me?"
"No." Zara took a step closer. "You are supposed to let me help you. Kevin would not listen. He thought he could fix it alone. He thought he could expose the truth and people would care. He was wrong."
"So what's your plan? Hide? Run?"
"Fight." She pulled something from her jacket pocket. A small device, no bigger than a USB drive, covered in circuitry that looked homemade. "This is a System jailbreak. It will give you access to administrator functions. It will let you see what they do not want you to see. It will also mark you as a priority target for every moderator in the city."
I stared at the device. "And you want me to use it."
"I want you to have a choice. Kevin did not get one."
My System pinged. New notification:
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED DEVICE DETECTED WARNING: SYSTEM SECURITY COMPROMISED QUEST UPDATED: SURVIVE → CHOOSE
I reached for the device. My fingers were shaking.
The front door exploded inward.
Moderators poured through—not one, not two, but six of them, moving in perfect synchronization. Their eyes glowed white in the darkness. Behind them, Director Tanaka stepped through the doorway, her weapon drawn, her expression carved from ice.
"Zara Okonkwo," Tanaka said, "you are under arrest for treason against the System Authority. Marcus Chen, you are under arrest for existence of corrupted data and conspiracy to commit reality breach. You will both come quietly, or you will be terminated. Do we have an understanding?"
Zara's hand closed around mine. Around the device.
"Run," she whispered.
She shoved me backward, toward the rear exit, and threw herself at the nearest moderator. They collided in a tangle of limbs and light and the sound of breaking bones. I didn't see who won. I was already running, the device clutched in my fist, Tanaka's voice echoing behind me:
"All units, target is fleeing. Authorization granted for lethal force."
I burst through the back door and into an alley. My System was screaming. The device in my hand was hot, getting hotter, and I could feel it interfacing with my System, could feel it rewriting code in real-time.
New notification:
ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS: GRANTED SYSTEM RESTRICTIONS: REMOVED YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING NOW ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO?
I didn't have time to answer. The moderators were right behind me, their footsteps perfectly synchronized, their voices speaking in unison:
"User Marcus Chen, you have ten seconds to comply. Ten. Nine. Eight—"
I jammed the device into my interface port.
The world exploded into light and sound and information. I could see everything—every line of code, every hidden quest, every secret the System had ever kept. I could see the truth about Kevin's death. I could see what the System really was. I could see—
A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
Zara. Blood running down her face. One arm hanging at a wrong angle. But alive.
"Did you activate it?" she gasped.
"Yes."
"Then we need to go. Now. Before they—"
The sky split open.
Not metaphorically. Actually split. Like someone had taken a knife to reality and cut a jagged line from horizon to horizon. Through the gap, I could see something else. Another world. Another System. Another—
"Oh no," Zara whispered. "Marcus, what did you—"
Something came through the gap.
Something massive.
Something that looked at me with eyes made of code and spoke in a voice that was every voice I'd ever heard:
"USER MARCUS CHEN. YOU HAVE ACCESSED RESTRICTED INFORMATION. YOU HAVE SEEN WHAT CANNOT BE UNSEEN. THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION."
The thing reached for me with hands that weren't hands, and I realized—too late, far too late—that the device hadn't given me administrator access.
It had given me to the Administrator.