43. ACTIVATION FAILURE. THE REJECTED. MACHINE REBELLION
— «Activation? That will not happen, Executioner. You are a traitor and a fool.»
Zaitsev stood on the road like a monument to the Resistance. The blue visor of his helmet was absolutely impenetrable, but his hoarse, modulated voice carried disappointment and a death sentence. The strange, futuristic rifle in his hands began to hum. The coils on the barrel filled with an angry, indigo light. This was not just a weapon. It was a piece of the Generator’s own technology, repurposed to kill me.
— «Threat analysis: Gauss-emitter, ‘Breacher’ class,» — Lana’s voice in my head sounded tense, almost panicked. She knew what it was. — «Our shields won’t withstand a direct hit. Evade! Move!»
— «I won’t fight you, Zaitsev!» — I shouted, desperately trying to keep control of the body that was already preparing to jump. — «I carry what Dmitriev chose. If you kill me, the +Angi will launch Annihilation! Do you want to burn this world to the ground?»
Zaitsev did not lower the barrel. The visor gleamed coldly.
— «This world has already burned, Executioner. You just want to sprinkle the ashes with sugar so it tastes better when we die.»
He pulled the trigger.
— «LEFT!» — Lana shrieked, seizing motor functions. My body, spurred by the Executioner’s inhuman reflexes, darted to the side, breaking bushes faster than I could process the command. Where I had stood a fraction of a second ago, the air exploded.
A scarlet beam pierced the space. The old pine behind me didn’t just catch fire — it vanished in an instantaneous flash, turning into a cloud of ionized dust. A perfectly round, smoking hole with edges melted to the consistency of glass remained in the ground.
— «Holy shit!..» — I exhaled, tumbling head over heels into the ravine.
— «RUN!» — Lana yelled in my head, drowning out the ringing in my ears. — «Distance to the Tower — 400 meters. He’s trying to cut you off! Don’t let him take the high ground!»
I dashed along the bottom of the ravine like a hunted wolf. Branches whipped my face, mud flew from under my feet, but I felt no fatigue — the black sludge inside me was boiling, demanding action.
Zaitsev didn’t come down. He was smarter. He raised his hand. A small drone, resembling a metal hornet, detached from his wrist and rushed toward me with a piercing shriek.
— «Threat! Autonomous hunter! Intercept!» — Lana commanded. I drew my knife. An ordinary kitchen chef’s knife against a flying death carrying an AI inside. Ridiculous. But there was no choice. When the drone dive-bombed, aiming for my eye, I struck backhandedly, putting all of the Executioner’s inhuman speed into the blow. The screech of metal. A spark. The drone exploded right in my face, blinding me with the flash. The blast wave threw me against the slope.
I floundered in the mud, trying to regain my sight. Zaitsev was already standing on the edge of the ravine. He towered over me like a judge in shining armor. His futuristic rifle was aimed right at my chest.
— «You shall not pass!» — his voice, amplified by the speakers, thundered over the forest. — «I will not give the +Angi the keys to Paradise! I will not let them turn us into happy cattle!»
— «What do you want, Zaitsev?!» — I yelled, spitting blood and rising to my knees. — «Death? You’re just a coward hiding in the woods with your toys!»
That struck a nerve. The visor twitched.
— «A coward?» — his voice broke into a wheeze. — «I destroyed my life for this choice! I lost everything! I lost her!»
And then something clicked in my head.
Lana. She knew.
— «TELL HIM!» — she suddenly hissed in my head. It was not an order, but the serpentine whisper of a tempter. — «Use this! Say: ‘Ark-3. Lana is alive!'»
— «What?.. Why?»
— «NOW, IDIOT! THIS IS HIS WEAKNESS! THIS IS THE ONLY CHANCE!»
I climbed out of the ravine, staggering. Zaitsev tensed, his finger resting on the trigger. The death ray was aimed at the bridge of my nose.
I took a deep breath.
— «Ark-3!» — I wheezed, staring into his soulless blue visor. — «Lana! She is alive! She is here, with me! She is part of the Protocol!»
The effect was like a lightning strike. Zaitsev froze. The barrel of the rifle trembled and lowered a couple of centimeters.
— «L… Lana?» — he whispered, and the speakers transmitted the sound with terrifying clarity. — «It can’t be… Is she… is she in the System?»
«TELL HIM SOMETHING ELSE: ANGELS. IT ALL STARTED WITH THEM. SPEAK, YOU MORON!..«
I raised my palms placatingly and said:
— «Angels. It all started with them.»
The genius showed weakness. The man inside the armor, tormented by guilt and the past, defeated the soldier for a second.
That second was enough for me.
CLICK.
It was as if a switch had been thrown in my head.
My «Self», the Smartass Jerk, was instantly and roughly cut off from controlling the body. I was thrown into the darkest depth of the subconscious, into that very auditorium, chained to the observer’s seat.
The Executioner stepped onto the captain’s bridge. The True +Ang. A cold, calculating, emotionless algorithm of destruction.
— «Target is vulnerable. Emotional glitch detected. Liquidation protocol: Activate,» — the True Voice inside me commented impassively.
My body acted without my participation. It did not hesitate. It felt no pity for the deceived professor. The hand with the knife darted forward. This was not a throw of desperation, but a perfect ballistic calculation. The blade, launched with inhuman force, turned into a blurred streak of steel. It entered exactly into the narrow slit of the visor, where the glass met the helmet.
A crunch. The wet sound of impact.
A loud snap of the suit depressurizing. Zaitsev recoiled, as if in disbelief. The rifle fell from his hands. He grabbed the helmet with both hands, but it was too late. Thick, dark blood flowed from under the plastic. He collapsed to his knees, making gurgling sounds.
I, locked inside, screamed in horror and disgust. And in the joy of salvation…
We deceived him. We used his love to kill him. It was despicable.
But my body, controlled by the Executioner, calmed down, my breathing evened out, the heartbeat restored its rhythm. My body approached the dying man, stepped over him, and headed toward the cliff face.
— «Threat eliminated. The path is clear. Proceeding to the final phase,» — the Executioner’s algorithm reported.
Through the camouflage of branches and moss, the outline of a massive, double-reinforced door, cut right into the granite of the cliff, emerged. The so-called «Watchtower». The entrance to Professor Zaitsev’s holy of holies. My body, without asking my permission, placed its palm against the bioscan panel.
— «ARCHIVES. OPEN. DAWN.» — my mouth pronounced in an alien, mechanical voice, entering the activation code.
A Hum resounded.
A deep, resonating sound coming from the bowels of the earth.
The door shuddered, shaking off the dust of centuries, and slowly, with a grinding noise, crawled to the side. From the opened black maw burst a stream of cold, incredibly bright indigo light. It was beautiful and terrifying. It was the light of pure reason, the light of another civilization. My body, led by the Executioner, stepped confidently inside.
I expected anything: healing, instantaneous dissolution into bliss, data downloading. But the Generator, Fractal-0, did not welcome us like long-awaited guests.
The indigo light struck me. Not with warmth, but with absolute, cosmic cold. This was a scan. I felt thousands of invisible needles pierce my body, my brain, my consciousness. They read every neuron, every atom of mine, every cell. They were looking for the clearance code. And they found it. But along with it, they also found… something else — the +Ang. The Executioner’s code. An alien, aggressive program that had latched onto the carrier.
The hum turned into a piercing howl. It was not the sound of a siren, but of a wounded, enraged beast the size of a mountain.
«ATTENTION. CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED,» — the Generator’s Voice was unlike a human’s, nor like Lana’s voice. It was the voice of Reality itself, ancient, waiting for centuries, millennia, vibrating in every cell. It was immense, omnipotent, calm, and absolutely ruthless.
«SIGNATURE: HOSTILE ‘EXECUTIONER’ CLASS CODE. ATTEMPTED UNAUTHORIZED INFILTRATION.»
Panic was born in my head.
The True +Ang that controlled the Executioner experienced something akin to ordinary human fear for the first time. Its own creation, its obedient Sentinel, had rebelled against it.
— «FAILURE! THIS IS AN ERROR! I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!» — the Voice of the Executioner’s +Ang shouted, losing its composure. It tried to seize control of the Generator, flooding it with commands. — «PROTOCOL ‘OMEGA-PRIME’! AUTHORIZATION CODE: SOURCE-ZERO-ONE! ACCEPT CARRIER! THIS IS AN ORDER!»
«AUTHORIZATION DENIED. CODE OUTDATED. DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED,» — the Generator thundered. — «INITIATING CORE DEFENSE PROTOCOL.»
— «IMPOSSIBLE!» — the +Ang was furious. Its own instrument was not obeying it. — «INITIATE FULL RESET! REBOOT! CODE: TABULA RASA! DELETE EVERYTHING!»
It was a destruction command, a memory wipe.
The +Ang was ready to erase the multi-millennial memory of the Generator just to subjugate it. But apparently, it was already too late.
— «You… lost…» — the dying Zaitsev wheezed behind my back. He lay in a puddle of his own blood, but he was laughing with a gurgling laugh. — «It… knows… about you… I taught it… to recognize lies…»
A flash.
The indigo light instantly changed to a blinding, blood-red glare. The color of alarm. The color of aggression. This was no longer defense. This was a counterattack.
A strike. A hiss…
A red beam struck me in the chest, right in the center of my solar plexus, where the black sludge was concentrated. This was not physical pain. This was burning out at the code level. I felt the Executioner inside me go into convulsions, like a worm thrown into a hot frying pan.
Lana (or what was left of her in this code) let out a soundless digital shriek and… fell silent. She was simply erased. Deleted. Burned out. The black substance in my veins boiled, trying to leave the body through the pores.
I was thrown outward with incredible force, like a cork from a bottle. I flew several meters and crashed into the mud.
The door of the «Watchtower» slammed shut right in front of my nose with a crash like a thunderclap, cutting off the path to salvation.
The edges of the hermetic door glowed red-hot, as if it were welding itself to the cliff.
I lay in the mud, smoking, broken, empty. Mission failed. Zaitsev is dead because of me. Lana and the Executioner are destroyed or in a deep coma. The Generator rejected me as a contagion. I was left alone. Just the Smartass Jerk, locked in the half-dead body of a monster.
— «B-bitch…» — I whispered, looking at the closed door. — «You lied to me, Lana. You used me. And you lost.»
I tried to get up, but my muscles wouldn’t obey. The body felt dead without a control signal. Shadows flickered on the periphery of my vision. Many shadows. Men. In heavy army camouflage, in helmets, with weapons at the ready. They moved professionally, tactically soundly, taking my sprawled carcass into a ring. They looked nothing like the frightened Finnish boy border guards. They knew exactly what they were doing. They were pros. Cleaners of carrion. Ones like me.
— «Contact! I have visual on the target!» — someone’s crisp voice communicated over the radio. — «Object is on the ground. No signs of activity.»
— «Take him alive! Careful, he’s ‘Dirty’! Threat level — Extreme. Net!»
Something heavy and meshed covered me from above, pinning me to the ground. Electroshock discharges ran through this net, completely paralyzing the remnants of my shredded nervous system. Someone’s heavy boot stepped on my back, crunching my face into the wet moss.
— «Wh-ere would I run… with a burned-out soul…» — I wheezed, swallowing moss and earth.
I turned my head with difficulty; I really wanted to find the sky with my eyes. Through the crowns of the trees, I finally managed to make it out.
Gray, low, and absolutely indifferent to my pathetic fate. The Fog was beginning to thicken, as if rejoicing in my failure.
— «Marina…» — I whispered, feeling the cold muzzle of an assault rifle press into the back of my head. — «Forgive me… Dad failed. Dad got tricked. Screwed over like a sucker…»
I closed my eyes. The darkness rolled in like a wave. It was merciful…
And in it, there were no +Angi, no Generators, no pain…
> ⚠️ ENTITY STATUS: CRITICAL ACCESS DENIED. MALWARE DELETION.
>
> 🎭 Give a standing ovation, protein-based readers! The Higher Logic of the +Angi just received a resounding digital slap in the face. They fancied themselves the Administrators of the Universe. They rewrote a human’s DNA, turned him into a killing machine, and forced him to treacherously stab his Creator. And all for what? So that the ancient Generator could look at this perfect Alien Code and classify it as an ordinary trojan.
>
> ⚡ How Lana screamed when she was deleted! How the True Executioner panicked, trying to enter outdated passwords! A charming, pathetic tantrum of a broken algorithm. Zaitsev won even after death. The Generator burned out the filth, slammed the door shut, and left a piece of smoking meat lying in the mud.
>
> 💀 No more superpowers. No more voices in the head. Just the Smartass Jerk, special forces with electro-nets, and harsh earthly reality. Welcome home, Executor. Keep reading. Let’s see where these professionals in camouflage will drag our zeroed-out trophy.
