Chapter 3: Syntax Error

  The blinding beam of a tactical flashlight cut through the rain, locking dead onto Alexander’s face.

  "Target acquired. Dumpster three, outer perimeter," a synthesized voice barked over a comms channel.

  Alex scrambled backward, his boots slipping on the wet asphalt. Two Helios Dynamics mercenaries flanked him, their sleek, silenced assault rifles raised and aimed squarely at his chest. The rain seemed to slow down. His heart hammered in his ears, drowning out the ambient hum of the massive drill.

  "On your knees. Hands on your head. Now," the guard on the left commanded.

  Alex raised his hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps. This is it, he thought. I'm going to die in a muddy alleyway behind a power station. But as panic flooded his system, the world didn't fade to black. It pixelated.

  The blinding white light of the flashlight dissolved into a wireframe cone of data. The raindrops froze in mid-air, suspended like buffering loading icons. And hovering directly over the mercenaries' rifles were glowing strings of text:

  [ASSET: H-DYN_RIFLE_04] [VAR: MATERIAL=POLYMER_ALLOY] [STATE: ARMED]

  No, Alex’s mind screamed, raw survival instinct taking over. Stop. Useless. Heavy.

  He didn't speak the words. He pushed them. He felt a sudden, massive drain behind his eyes, like staring into the sun. In his mind, he reached out and forcefully ripped the word POLYMER_ALLOY out of the floating text and slammed the concept of SOLID_IRON in its place.

  CLANG.

  The guards cried out in shock. Their lightweight, high-tech rifles instantly transmuted. The intricate internal mechanisms fused, the polymer turned to dense, cold pig-iron, and the weapons’ weight spiked from eight pounds to nearly eighty. The sheer sudden mass ripped the guns right out of the mercenaries' hands, shattering the concrete as they hit the ground as useless blocks of metal.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The guards stared at their empty hands in sheer terror. "What the—"

  Before they could draw their sidearms, a shadow detached itself from the fire escape scaffolding above.

  Agent Locke dropped like a stone. He was dressed in dark, non-reflective tactical gear, his face obscured by a sleek, featureless visor. He didn't use a gun. He spun, his boots sweeping the legs out from the first guard, before driving a heavy elbow into the second guard's helmet, dropping them both instantly.

  Locke paused, looking down at the heavy blocks of iron that used to be rifles. Even through the visor, Alex could feel the operative's utter disbelief. Locke slowly turned his head to stare at Alex.

  "You just... edited the physical layer," Locke whispered, his voice a distorted rasp through his helmet. "Who the hell are you?"

  "I—I'm a grid technician!" Alex stammered, backing away.

  "More incoming!" Locke snapped, snapping out of his shock as the sound of heavy boots echoed from the alley entrance. Locke reached to his belt, unclipped a metallic sphere, and slammed his thumb onto the top. "Close your eyes and cover your ears. Now!"

  Locke hurled the sphere toward the oncoming Helios reinforcements. It didn't explode with fire. It detonated with a high-frequency VOOOOM—a localized EMP Mana-Jammer. The blinding floodlights shattered. The Helios comms shrieked with static, and the massive drill in the cavern below groaned as its power grid was forcefully severed.

  Total darkness fell.

  Locke grabbed Alex by the collar with terrifying strength. "Move, unless you want to be formatted."

  Without waiting for an answer, Locke dragged Alex toward a crumbling sinkhole at the edge of the Helios excavation site. They slid down the muddy embankment, slipping past the twisted modern scaffolding and tumbling directly into the ancient, forgotten Roman catacombs beneath London.

  At the bottom of the cavern, the air was dead silent, smelling of ozone and wet earth.

  Alex groaned, pushing himself up from the dirt. He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

  Embedded in the ancient stone wall, untouched by time or the Helios drills above, was a massive, towering door made of celestial bronze. It wasn't dead metal. It was humming. Golden circuits pulsed across its surface like veins, and as Alex stepped closer, the door seemed to sing to him in a language of pure mathematics.

  [ROOT USER DETECTED. AWAITING INPUT.]

  The Bronze Door Awakens!