Server 9-Chapter 34: The Harvest Timer

Malachi’s face filled the air above the lobby, projected like a god on a cheap billboard.

He was older than in the corporate portraits, he had silver hair that slicked back, perfect jawline, eyes like polished ice. But there was something wrong about him. His gaze didn’t move like a human’s. It glided, as if he were scanning codes instead of actually looking.

"Welcome, Elias Vance," he said, smiling. "Level 15. [Devourer]-Class anomaly. I admit, I’m impressed. Very few rats make it all the way to the pantry."

I raised my left hand. The urge to blast his smug hologram apart was strong, but pointless. He wasn’t here. He was everywhere.

"Malachi," I said. "We’re shutting this place down."

He laughed softly. "Shutting it down? Elias, my boy, this is the place that keeps your world spinning. Without the Hub, your precious Sector 4 crashes. With riots. Looting. And starvation. Is that what your sister would want?"

He said "sister" like he was tasting the word.

My jaw clenched. "Leave Jasmine out of your mouth."

"Oh, but she’s very much in my system," he said mildly. "She at server 12, actually. She’s On a budget tier. Did you know she spikes in processing efficiency when she dreams of you? It Quite touching. And Quite profitable."

Sarah stepped forward, With her eyes flared with fury. "Malachi."

He turned, the hologram refocusing on her. His smile widened.

"Director Lysandra," he said. "You look... smaller in person."

"I quit that title the day I realized you were turning people into coal," she said. "You stole my code. And You weaponized it."

"I optimized it," he corrected. "You built a paradise that required a price. I simply decided who would pay for it."

Glitch moved closer to me, whispering under his breath. "I’m tracing the feed. He’s not routing from here. This is a dumb terminal. If we take the Hub, we cripple one limb, not the brain."

"Good," I said. "I’ll start by taking a limb. After that, we’ll see."

Malachi’s smile faded slightly. "You are here for the Harvester Queue, yes? The fifty thousand scheduled to be disconnected?"

A hologram blinked into existence next to his face—a massive timer.

[HARVEST CYCLE 7]

[DISCONNECT IN: 09:59]

The numbers began to tick down.

"Sarah," I said. "Can you stop it?"

She was already at the nearest console, fingers flying over the glass.

"I’m in the local schema," she muttered. "I can slow the commands. Reroute it. But I can’t cancel the Harvest from here. The kill-signal originates from the Core below."

"So we go down," I said.

Malachi sighed. "Must we do this? You have no idea what you’re interfering with. Do you know how many simulations we can run with fifty thousand fresh cores? The stock market, sure. But also climate models. Cure simulations. Food allocation. You’re not saving lives, Elias. You’re wasting them."

"Funny," I said. "From where I’m standing, you’re throwing them into a furnace."

I stepped forward.

"Turn it off."

He cocked his head. "No."

Then out of no where the floor responded before I could react.

CLACK-CLACK.

A sections of the pristine marble retracted, revealing a gunmetal plating beneath. The panels in the ceiling slid open.

Turrets with mechanical arms dropped down. Slender drones, sharp as needle, unfolded from hidden alcoves along the walls.

"SANITATION PROTOCOL: ACTIVE," a flat voice said.

Malachi’s hologram faded, has his last words was echoing.

"If you insist on dirtying my floors, I’ll have to clean you up."

"take cover!" I shouted.

The lobby erupted.

BRRRRT-BRRRRT.

The ceiling turrets opened fire, bullets was ripping across the floor. Marble and plastic shattered, fragments flying everywhere. Drones bursted from the walls, their arms crackling with electricity.".

Maya dove behind a server column, returning fire with her Enforcer rifle.

Glitch slid behind an a flipped bench, and hurried to set up a portable jammer.

Sarah flattened herself against a console, and plugged herself in with a physical cable.

I didn’t have the luxury of hiding.

I sprinted straight into the crossfire.

[Skill: Overcharge — Body]

I flooded power in my body. Everything became clearer. The world slowed down. The turrets were aiming where I used to be.

Bullets struck the ground behind me. One barely hit my leg. It hurt, but the power running through me suppressed the pain.

"ARES would love this place," Glitch shouted. "Everything talks to everything!"

"Then shut them up!" I yelled back.

I ducked under the path of a stun-drone, feeling its electric shock pass just inches from my neck. I grabbed its thin body while it was still in the air.

[Skill: Energy Siphon]

I drained it dry. The drone twitched and went still in my hand.

I throw the empty shell at the nearest turret.

CLANG.

The hit knocked the barrel out of line. For a moment, its aim went crazy and it shot the wall instead of the floor

Maya took the opening.

BANG-BANG.

Two clean shots. The rounds hit the turret’s swivel joint. Sparks and oil sprayed. It drooped, then hung there, dead.

"One down!" she called.

"Three left!" Glitch shouted. "And they’re learning! Their automatic aiming system is adjusting to match how fast you’re moving, Elias – so they can still hit you!"

Of course it was. The System always adapted.

I slid behind the main pillar, breathing hard. My burned right arm throbbed under the med patch. My energy bar blinked at 35%.

It’s wasn’t enough energy to keep fighting in a long, up-close fight.

"Sarah?" I called. "Talk to me."

Her voice came through gritted teeth. "He’s blocked the main system with a firewall, but I can still use the auto-cleanup programs to get in or do something. But I can’t shut them down yet, but..."

Her eyes snapped open. They were glowing faintly blue.

"I can make them blind."

She pressed a key.

For half a second, every turret in the room stuttered. Their targeting lasers flickered, sweeping nowhere.

[STATUS: LOCAL SENSOR JAMMED — 3.0 SEC]

"Move!" she screamed.

I did.

I burst from my cover, sprinting through the kill zone. I jumped, and grabbed a maintenance cable hanging from the ceiling, and swung up toward the closest turret.

It tried to track me. But Its barrel jittered, confused.

Too slow.

I landed on top of the machine, gripping the armored casing with my left hand.

[Skill: Disrupt]

I sent a focused EMP burst straight into its logic core.

ZZT.

The turret drooped. Then Died.

[XP GAINED: +50]

I launched myself toward the next one, using the dead turret as a springboard. My Shadow-Weave boots scraped sparks off the metal as I pushed off.

Below me, Glitch’s jammer finally kicked in.

A low-frequency pulse rolled through the lobby.

"Jammer online!" he yelled. "Drone comms are scrambled. They’re on local logic only!"

The slim needle-drones faltered mid-air, their formation broke. One clipped another. They tumbled to the floor in a tangled mess.

Maya executed them with quick, efficient shots.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Last turret!" I yelled.

It saw me coming. Even with partial blindness, its predictive code aimed where I would be, not where I was.

It fired.

I twisted mid-air.

The rounds grazed my ribs, slamming into my armor plating. Warning lights flashed red in my HUD.

[ARMOR INTEGRITY: 20%]

I crashed into the turret hard, knocking it off its base. We fell together, slamming into the floor in a rain of shrapnel.

I hit first. The air left my lungs. The turret landed on my legs, pinning me to the ground.

It was still alive. barrel slowly turned downward, scraping along the floor. It stopped. It pressed against my chest, with the end of the barrel only a few centimeters from my face.

"Elias!" Maya shouted.

"Don’t shoot!" I barked, staring up into the spinning barrel. "You’ll hit me!"

The turret whined, adjusting It barrel. It was charging for a full burst.

I couldn’t move my legs at all. My right arm was useless. My left hand was pushing against the machine’s body to hold it back, but I wasn’t strong enough

I did the only thing left.

I opened my mouth.

This was stupid, and Insane. But i was desperate.

Fitting.

[Skill: Devour — Raw Input]

I bit down on the exposed cooling cable near the turret’s base.

Electricity flooded my mouth. It tasted like burning metal and static and every bad decision I’d ever made.

My vision went white.

[ENERGY: +40%]

[HP: -10%]

The turret jerked suddenly. Its barrel drooped. Half its systems went dark as I ripped its lifeblood through my teeth.

I spat out a mouthful of copper and blood and wire.

Then I grabbed the half-dead machine and, with my boosted strength, shoved it off me.

THUD.

It lay still.

[COMBAT COMPLETE]

[XP GAINED: +200]

Silence.

The lobby was a mess of, smoking turrets, shattered glass, bullet-pocked marble. And The hologram of Malachi had vanished.

The timer hadn’t.

[HARVEST CYCLE 7]

[DISCONNECT IN: 06:18]

"That cost us three minutes," Sarah panted, unplugging herself from the console. "We need to reach the Core now."

"Where?" I asked, forcing myself to my feet. My legs shook, but they held.

She pointed to a massive freight elevator at the far end of the lobby. It was a black slab set into the floor, ringed with yellow hazard lines.

"Down," she said. "The Harvester racks and the command node are in the Deep of this building. In the sub-levels."

"Of course they are," Glitch muttered, limping after us. "Evil always keeps its heart in the basement."

We ran to the elevator.

There was no button. Just a biometric scanner.

"Key?" I asked.

Sarah wiped blood from her lip. "Same as the door. It listens for authorized signals."

I looked at the crushed legs of Beta still sticking into the lobby from under the sealed doors.

"I have an idea," I said.

I knelt, And grabbed the severed legs by the ankle, and dragged them across the polished floor. The white armor scraped along, leaving a black streak.

"Elias, what are you—" Maya asked.

"Recycling," I said.

I pressed the remaining part of Beta’s foot against the scanner.

It beeped.

[ACCESS GRANTED]

The freight platform shuddered. The black slab parted, revealing a huge circular elevator That’s descends into darkness.

A rush of cold air hit us from below.

Ozone. And burnt hair.

"That’s the smell of active Harvest," Sarah said quietly. "They’ve already started getting their nervous systems."

We stepped onto the platform.

I looked back once at the ruined lobby, the dead Guards, and the shattered guns.

Sector 4 had never seen violence like this.

Good.

"Glitch, kill the jammer," I said. "Save the battery. We’ll need it."

He nodded and switched it off. The low hum in the air faded.

The elevator began to descend.

The lobby above us disappeared from sight as we moved down inside the elevator tunnel. Red warning lights blinked on the walls as we went further down.

My HUD pinged.

[NEW OBJECTIVE: STOP HARVEST CYCLE 7]

[PENALTY FOR FAILURE: 50,000 DEATHS]

"Sarah," I said quietly. "If we stop this... does it stop all Harvests?"

She shook her head. "No. This is one Hub. There are others in other sectors. But this one... this one is the biggest. It feeds Malachi’s private Aether cluster."

"So we hit him in the teeth," I said. "He’ll feel this."

"He’ll do more than feel it," Glitch muttered. "He’ll come for us with everything he has."

"Let him," I said.

The platform slowed.

Below us, the shaft opened into a massive chamber.

Rows and rows of capsules like pod stretched into the distance, stacked five levels high. Each pod held a person, their bodies wired up, their eyes taped shut, their mouths frozen in silent screams.

Blue lines of energy flowed from the capsules into a tall central column of light in the center of the room.

The column counted together with the Harvest Timer.

[DISCONNECT IN: 04:01]

I felt it before I saw it.

The energy flowing through the column was sweet. Intoxicating. A river of pure, compressed consciousness. XP like I’d never tasted before.

My stomach twisted. My mouth watered.

The Devourer inside me roared.

"I can eat that," I whispered, horrified at the hunger in my own voice.

"I know," Sarah said softly, not looking at me. "That’s why Malachi is afraid of you."

The elevator locked into place with a heavy clunk.

Standing at the base of the glowing column, arms folded behind his back like a gracious host, was another familiar figure.

Not a hologram this time.

A man. Flesh, blood... and cables.

His skin was grey, he was slim. Wires ran from a port at the back of his head into the column behind him. And his eyes glowed softly with blue light.

"Welcome to the beating heart," he said.

Malachi smiled.

"Shall we negotiate?"