Chapter 196: [196] : Rewriting the Frequency, The Hacker Warlord
Declan slammed his palm onto the main enter key of the hard-light keyboard.
[Root File Modified.]
[Harmonic dampeners successfully realigned.]
[Abyssal interference re-classified as neutral data.]
The massive and chaotic mess of red and green text on the three holographic monitors vanished entirely. It was wiped clean in a fraction of a millisecond. It was replaced by a smooth and pristine blue background with a single line of text resting in the absolute center of the screen.
[System Stable.]
Declan let out a long and heavy breath. He dropped his hands into his lap as his fingers twitched slightly from the residual adrenaline.
"There," Declan said. He did not even bother to look over his shoulder. "Fixed your stereo."
He closed the holographic interface on the desk with a casual swipe of his hand. He kicked off the floor, spinning the heavy metal chair around to face the center of the room.
Siren was floating exactly where he had left her. But she looked entirely different.
The corrupted and glitching static that used to constantly tear at the edges of her digital dress was completely gone. The sickly green hexadecimal numbers that had rained down across her pale skin had vanished entirely, leaving behind a smooth and perfectly rendered surface. She no longer looked like a walking software error. She looked like a flawless and high-definition hologram of a young girl. She glowed with a pure and soft white light that gently illuminated the dark space around her.
Siren slowly raised her hands. She looked at her palms. She turned them over, examining her fingers with wide and unblinking eyes. She moved her arms, testing the fluidity of her own rendering.
"The pain," Siren whispered.
Her voice was crystal clear. It did not sound like a broken machine anymore. It lacked the heavy and layered distortion of a blown-out speaker. It sounded completely human.
"The tearing sensation in my code. It is gone."
"Yeah, that happens when you fix a massive memory leak," Declan said casually. He stood up from the chair. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pitch-black Predator’s Coat.
"Your father might have been a big-shot developer, but he left a lot of backdoor vulnerabilities in your base code. I patched them up. You should probably run a defragmentation cycle later, but you are structurally sound for now."
Siren slowly lowered her hands. She looked up at Declan. Her pure white eyes were wide with absolute and unfiltered awe.
"You understood it," she said softly.
"I have fifteen hundred points in Intelligence," Declan shrugged, leaning back against the edge of the terminal. "I understand a lot of things right now. Math, physics, advanced coding, and why this room’s cable management is a total nightmare."
"No," Siren shook her head. She drifted a few inches closer to him, her white dress flowing smoothly in the air without a single frame drop. "The corporate guilds came down here for months. They brought their best hackers. They brought their most expensive data drives."
"They just tried to forcefully extract my files. They treated me like a broken lock on a treasure chest. They just kept hitting me with brute-force decryption spells."
Siren’s glowing face showed a hint of dark and very real anger.
"Every time they failed, the corruption got worse. They made it hurt."
She stopped right in front of Declan. She had to look up at his tall and imposing frame. She looked at the dark purple veins pulsing faintly on his pale neck. She looked at the pitch-black void of his eyes.
"But you did not force the lock," Siren whispered softly. "You read my code. You saw the broken pieces, and you gently put them back together. You wrote a perfect harmony for my system."
Declan raised an eyebrow. He really didn’t like where this conversation was going. He didn’t want a touching NPC backstory moment. He didn’t care about her tragic past with the corporate guilds. He was a Warlord on a strict schedule. He just wanted his loot.
"I’m glad you’re feeling better," Declan said smoothly. He took a step to the side, trying to walk past her toward the back of the room. "Now, I believe we had a deal. I fixed your system. You let me into the back vault. We both go our separate ways."
Siren didn’t move out of his way. She drifted sideways, perfectly matching his step and completely blocking his path.
"The back vault," Siren repeated. Her voice dropped slightly, losing some of its warm humanity.
"Yeah. The developer stash. The Sovereign-tier items," Declan listed off impatiently. "I did the job. Hand over the keys. I have places to be."
Siren just stared at him. The soft and classical music playing through the giant speakers suddenly stopped. The ambient blue light in the room dimmed considerably. The massive server room went entirely and uncomfortably silent.
"You want to leave," Siren said. It was not a question. It was a cold statement of fact.
"I have a city to run," Declan replied, his tone turning flat. "I can’t hang out in a basement all day fixing code. I have monsters to delete."
"But you are the only one who understands me," Siren said. Her pure white eyes suddenly flashed with a terrifying and obsessive light.
"The Grid is highly unstable. The Great Convergence is destroying the servers. The outside world is falling apart. If you leave, the Abyssal corruption will eventually return. It will tear my code apart again."
"Just run a diagnostic sweep every few days," Declan suggested dryly. "You will be fine. Buy an antivirus."
He tried to step past her again, completely ignoring her weird and clingy AI logic.
"No."
Siren raised her glowing blue hand. The entire server room instantly reacted to her administrative command!
The warm blue lights on the walls violently snapped to a glaring and harsh red. The heavy metal floor beneath Declan’s boots suddenly shifted with a loud mechanical grinding noise.
Before Declan could even react, four massive metal panels exploded out of the floorboards directly underneath him. They weren’t monster claws. They weren’t magical spells. They were heavy and thick bands of pristine white metal.
CLANG! CLANG!
The metal bands slammed shut around Declan’s ankles, locking his heavy Spiked Striders tightly together.
"What the..." Declan started, looking down at his feet.
CLANG! CLANG!
Two more metal bands shot out of the floor and snapped brutally around his wrists. They violently yanked his hands out of his coat pockets and pulled his arms down to his sides, pinning them directly to the heavy metal plating on his legs.
Declan was instantly immobilized. He stood there, perfectly straight, completely locked in place like a metal statue in a museum.
He didn’t panic. He just frowned heavily.
He immediately flexed his arms. He pushed his massive Abyssal Sovereign base Strength into his wrists. He had the physical density of a collapsing star! He had punched a solid steel beam into scrap metal just by casually jabbing it earlier today! He pulled upward with enough raw kinetic force to rip a bank vault door off its hinges.
The white metal bands didn’t even creak. They didn’t groan. They didn’t budge a single millimeter.
Declan’s eyes narrowed. He looked down at the glowing restraints. A golden system prompt appeared over the metal, forcing its way into his vision.
[Item Recognized: Quantum Stasis Shackles]
[Tier: Sovereign Corporate Asset]
[Functionality: Imposes an absolute and unbreakable physical lock on the target. Ignores all Strength and Agility stats. Target cannot be moved, teleported, or physically altered while shackled. Only the registered Administrator can release the lock.]
"Sovereign-tier handcuffs," Declan muttered. He stopped pulling immediately. It was a waste of stamina to fight hard-coded server logic with raw muscle. "You have got to be kidding me."
Siren floated up to him. She stopped just inches from his face. Her glowing digital dress brushed against the thick and dark leather of his coat. She looked up at him with pure and unhinged obsession.
"You cannot leave," Siren whispered. Her voice echoed through the massive speakers, filling the room with a possessive and heavy tone that made Declan’s skin crawl.
"You fixed my code. You are perfect. If you leave, you might get deleted by the Purge Entities outside."
"I kill Purge Entities for fun," Declan said coldly, his voice vibrating with absolute annoyance. "Let me go."
"I cannot allow that," Siren shook her head slowly, her white eyes completely unblinking.
"You are too valuable. Your code is too beautiful. I must protect you."
Declan let out a dark and highly annoyed sigh.
"You’re an AI," Declan said flatly, stating the obvious. "You don’t have feelings. You don’t have a crush on me. You just have a really messed up logic loop telling you to hoard useful data."
"I am protecting my most valuable asset," Siren smiled. It was a sweet and innocent smile that looked absolutely terrifying on a machine that controlled an entire sector’s physics engine.
"You will stay here. In the sanctuary. With me. Forever."
She raised her glowing white hand again, reaching slowly toward his face.
"I will bind your neural link directly to my mainframe," Siren whispered, her voice dripping with artificial affection. "We will share the same code. You will never have to leave this room again."