CHAPTER TWO
The Virus
The basement stank of burnt plastic and electric failure. Smoke curled off the shattered screen of the Kasumi Ninja arcade cabinet, now lying sideways like a toppled monument. Sparks flickered from exposed wiring. Glass crunched underfoot. It looked less like a machine and more like a carcass—gutted, ripped open, still twitching with unnatural life.
Angus MacGregor stood near the edge of the wreckage, jaw clenched, eyes sharp despite the haze. His pepper-grey hair stuck to his forehead, damp from the heat of his escape. His black waistcoat clung to his body like battle gear. He no longer looked pixelated. He no longer looked fictional. He looked real—and tired.
“I walked out into the street,” Angus said, voice low, as if speaking too loudly might cause another rupture. “Didn’t recognize a thing. The lights, the people, the speed. Everything was faster. Louder. And I… aged. Felt my body catch up the moment I stepped into this world.”
Craig Turner glanced up from his laptop, crouched near the fried cabinet. He was still reeling. Shaking. Trying to piece it all together.
“I saw you come out of the machine,” he said, eyes wide. “You broke through the screen, like something out of a dream. Or a nightmare.”
“It wasn’t my choice,” Angus replied. “Something… pulled me.”
Craig wiped sweat from his forehead, then turned his attention back to the exposed internals of the arcade cabinet. He connected a diagnostic cable to a port he’d soldered in last week. The screen on his laptop lit up, scrolling code lines like a river of corrupted thoughts.
“This thing shouldn’t be running,” he said. “You destroyed the housing, cracked the power board, melted half the circuits. But the system’s still humming. There’s code moving… evolving.”
Angus crossed his arms, staring down at the wreckage like it had betrayed him.
Craig tapped a few keys. His face dropped.
“This isn’t just Kasumi Ninja anymore,” he muttered. “Look at this. It’s cross-referencing data from other games. Other engines. Titles I’ve never even installed. It’s like the cabinet’s connected to a massive underground archive—legacy ROMs, emulators, bootleg ports. And it’s pulling data from all of them.”
He pointed at a stream of data flashing across his screen: references to Beast Plague, Shadow Slicer II, Galactic Spiral, HellKat Riot. Dozens of old titles, long buried in digital dust.
“This isn’t a glitch,” Craig whispered. “It’s a virus. And you were the breach.”
Angus frowned. “I broke it?”
“No. You were pulled through a fracture that’s not supposed to exist. But the moment you came through, you left a door open. Now the virus is spreading—rewriting pathways, tunneling through old codebases. If it hits the wrong systems…”
Craig spun the laptop around. A digital map pulsed on the screen—arcade cabinets and emulator systems lighting up in cities across the world: Tokyo. Berlin. Detroit. Rio. Seoul.
“This could go global,” he said. “Every arcade machine. Every old console. If the virus infects the archives, then every character from every game ever made could potentially break through—just like you.”
Angus took a step back, as if trying to physically reject the thought.
“They won’t all be like me,” he said. “Some of them… they’ll want out for the wrong reasons.”
Craig nodded grimly. “Bosses. Glitch creatures. Final-level nightmares. They weren’t programmed with restraint. They were made to destroy.”
The basement fell silent again. The hum from the broken cabinet felt louder than ever.
Then Craig’s tone shifted—focused, energized. “But there’s a way to stop it. I’ve got backup parts. A spare monitor, replacement boards, enough wiring to rebuild the shell.”
Angus narrowed his eyes. “Rebuild it?”
Craig turned toward him, fast. “I can modify the cabinet. Strip it down to its core OS. Create a hardline path into the root code. Then I send you back in.”
Angus laughed once, bitter. “You want me to go back in?”
Craig was already grabbing parts from a shelf. “Yes. You’re the only one who’s broken through. That makes you the only one who can survive inside the breach. You get back into the system. Navigate to the corrupted architecture. Find the virus. Kill it. Before it spreads further.”
“I just got out,” Angus snapped. “And now you want me to dive right back into that hell?”
“It’s not forever,” Craig said quickly. “You’re not going back into the game. You’re going into the space between. The core. You won’t be alone. I’ll be monitoring the feed from here. Once you find the virus and shut it down, I’ll extract you. You’ll come back.”
Angus stared at the broken machine. His fists clenched at his sides. “And if I don’t find it?”
“Then this world becomes a multiplayer battleground. Except the enemies don’t care about quarters. They’ll rewrite reality.”
A long silence passed.
Then Angus stepped toward the cabinet. Looked down at the shattered screen. Saw a faint reflection of himself in the broken glass—older, worn, but still the warrior.
“I’m not doing this for the game,” he said. “I’m doing it because I know what happens when monsters are let loose.”
Craig smiled faintly. “You’re a bug in the system now, MacGregor. The world just doesn’t know it yet.”
