The Zoo Squad's apartment was an organized chaos of salvaged technology. Mismatched monitors, some flat-screen, some ancient, bulky CRTs, were stacked precariously on crates and piles of old data-slates. A tangled nest of multicolored cables snaked across the floor, connecting their various rigs to a central, humming server that was cobbled together from at least a dozen different sources. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, stale synth-coffee, and the faint, ever-present aroma of Leo's questionable food experiments. This was their fortress and their home.

They were all jacked in, their physical bodies slumped in worn, mismatched chairs or cots while their consciousnesses were in the digital hellscape, monitoring Glitchy's progress.

The map of their territory was a bleeding wound of red. The corruption was still spreading, consuming their data caches, their safe houses, their home.

And then, it stopped.

It was a sudden, violent snap. One moment, the red corruption was an all-consuming tide. The next, it vanished, leaving behind clean, stable, blue-green code. The oppressive, psychic whispers that had been a constant, maddening hum in their interfaces for weeks went silent.

They all jacked out at the same time, the sudden return to the physical world a jarring, disorienting shock.

Leo (Ursa Major) was the first to react. He ripped his NexPort cable from its slot and leaped to his feet, a whoop of pure, unadulterated joy erupting from his throat. At sixteen, Leo was all angles and attitude, tall and wiry with a shock of sandy-brown hair that stuck out in wild, uneven spikes, as if he'd never bothered with a comb. His jaw was sharp, mouth stretched in a cocky half-grin, and a battered pair of neon-pink, wraparound goggles sat perched crookedly on his forehead, their magenta lenses catching the flickering light of the server room.

He was dressed like a walking explosion of colors—every piece of his outfit loud, mismatched, and undeniably his. His jacket was thick and armored-looking, navy blue slashed with bright, radioactive-pink panels at the sleeves and shoulders, and scuffed from countless scrapes. Underground team patches and digital badges cluttered both arms. The jacket hung open over a lime-green and white T-shirt, its geometric shapes peeking out with every movement.

His pants were a chaotic mess of dark teal and graffiti-splattered pink, reinforced with black guards at the knees and shins—built for running or scrambling up server towers. Around his waist, a belt bristled with neon accessories: pink carabiners, gadget pouches, and stray cables, all clanking as he danced in excitement. Fingerless gloves and blinking smartbands completed the look, neon lights reflecting off his hands as he punched the air.

On his feet were the wildest part of all—high-top trainers in blinding green and magenta, their soles worn thin but still glowing with embedded LEDs and tech. Leo looked like the city's underground had chewed him up and spit him back out, brighter and louder than before.

"He did it! Holy shit, he actually did it! The freak actually killed it! Did you guys see that? The whole sector just… rebooted! That was EPIC!" Leo shouted, voice cracking as he spun in place, eyes blazing with pride and awe.

Anya (Glitch) sat curled into a ball in the corner, her slight frame nearly swallowed by an oversized, hooded jacket the color of bruised violets and midnight. The ragged hem and frayed sleeves bore witness to years of hard use, and the hood was drawn up, casting a shadow over her face. Still, a messy shock of platinum-blonde hair spilled out, streaked with darker roots and chopped at uneven angles, as if she'd cut it herself with impatient hands. One stubborn lock fell across her left eye, tucked absently behind her ear as she peered at the world.

Her pale, porcelain skin seemed even paler beneath the dim light. Large, wide-set eyes—an icy, steely gray-blue—dominated her thin face. They darted around the room, reflecting both a sharp, fox-like intelligence and a deep, vulnerable wariness, as if she expected the corruption to start bleeding through the real walls at any moment.

Her small hands were wrapped tight around her knees, the pale geometric patterns of her shirt barely visible between the folds of her jacket. A slim, silver ring gleamed faintly at the corner of her lower lip.

"It's… it's quiet," she whispered, her voice barely audible—a trembling thread in the heavy silence. Relief was plain in her tone, but it was laced with a deeper, more primal fear of the unknown power that had just saved them. "But what was that? What is he?"

Reina (Kitsune) was already at her terminal, her pale, angular face lit by the harsh green glow of cascading code. Her jet-black hair, cut into a precise, geometric bob, framed her features in razor-straight lines; the heavy fringe of her bangs cast a permanent shadow across her dark, deep-set eyes. The sharp light glinted off her hair, catching hints of blue in the sheen. A single lock was tucked neatly behind one ear, revealing a delicate cheekbone and the tense set of her jaw.

Her lips, naturally full and downturned at the corners, gave her an air of thoughtful melancholy, but now her mouth was pressed in a thin, focused line. The high collar of her black tactical jacket hugged her chin, and thick, battered backpack straps cut across her chest, adding to her air of determined utility.

Reina's slender fingers flew across the keyboard, tapping with restless, impatient energy, her entire posture radiating alertness and precision. She barely glanced up, her voice sharp with analytical focus: "That wasn't a standard Reaper Code protocol," she muttered. "And it wasn't a simple deletion. The daemon's code was… rewritten. That shouldn't be possible. The energy expenditure alone would be catastrophic for any known avatar."

Kenji (Goro), the stoic powerhouse of the group, stood slowly, his solid, muscular frame seeming to take up half the room. At eighteen, he was the very image of a street-hardened fighter: olive skin sun-bronzed and stretched tight over sinewy muscle, arms bare save for the white athletic tape wound thickly around his forearms and knuckles. Crimson fingerless gloves, battered and worn, covered his large, callused hands, the fabric scuffed and seams fraying from too many street brawls.

His sleeveless, slate-blue tunic clung to his broad shoulders and deep chest, cinched at the waist by a loose black sash whose ends hung almost to his knees. Loose black trousers, cropped at mid-calf and tied close with cords, completed his silhouette, the minimalist shoes at his feet making barely a sound on the floor.

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Kenji's face was all sharp lines and intensity—high cheekbones, a straight nose, and lips pressed in a stoic, unreadable line. His black hair was shaved close at the sides but left long on top, pulled up into a ragged ponytail that fanned out behind him in wild tufts, with a few stubborn strands falling over his brow. His eyes, deep-set and narrow, burned with a fierce, almost wary focus, the reddish hue beneath them hinting at sleepless nights and relentless vigilance. A single dull gold earring with a blue accent glinted in his ear, just visible above the high black scarf wound tightly around his neck.

He walked to the window and looked out at the indifferent, neon-drenched city below, arms crossed over his broad chest. "The threat is gone," he said, his voice a low, pragmatic rumble. "For now. That's all that matters." But his gaze remained watchful, his posture coiled and tense—a fighter ready for the next strike, no matter how brief the calm.

Finally, Marcus ( Kodiak) pushed himself up from his battered recliner. At nineteen, he was the oldest of the group: broad-shouldered and solid, his very posture radiated a quiet, grounding strength. His deep, earthy brown hair was thick and unruly, the uneven locks falling over his forehead and ears, a few strands sticking damply to his temples as if he'd only just come in from the rain. A rugged hint of weariness showed in the set of his strong jaw and the faint shadows beneath his hazel eyes—eyes flecked with gold and green, steady and watchful, carrying the calm intelligence of someone who'd survived his share of hardship.

A pale scar traced beneath his left cheekbone, catching the light when he turned his head—a souvenir from the kind of scrape his younger friends had only heard about. His lips, full and usually set in a thoughtful line, betrayed a subtle vulnerability, the kind that only surfaced in rare, unguarded moments.

He wore a weathered dark coat, its collar turned up against imaginary winds, and a thick, gray, rough-spun scarf was wound loosely around his neck, its frayed edges a testament to long use. Under the coat, a faded shirt and battered leather vest completed the practical, earth-toned ensemble, blending him easily into the apartment's dim, cluttered environment.

As Marcus walked to the center of the room, his solid presence drew every wandering gaze. Despite the chaos around him, there was something quietly commanding about the way he moved—a resilience, earned and worn without bravado, that made him the anchor of their chaotic little family.

"He did what we asked," Marcus said, his voice a steady, grounding force. "He saved our home."

"He's an anomaly," Reina scoffed, turning from her screen, her voice cutting through the fragile relief in the room. "Marcus, we have no idea what he is. He absorbs programs. He just defeated a powerful daemon that could have been a rogue AI. I bet this Glitchy is not even a netstrider; Maybe he is some kind of experimental AI. "

She stood, her arms crossed, her expression grim. "The logical move, the safe move, is to post his signature on every bounty board and let the bigger wolves deal with him before he decides we're his next meal. We leave him alone, erase him from our logs and pretend he never existed."

"She's right," Kenji added, his voice still low, but with a new, hard edge. "He's too powerful. We don't know his motives. That makes him dangerous."

"But he helped us!" Leo protested. "He's our friend now, right?"

"He was a contractor who fulfilled a contract," Reina corrected, her voice sharp as broken glass. "And now that contract is over. We don't owe him anything."

The argument hung in the air, a new tension replacing the old one. Marcus let the silence stretch for a moment before he spoke again, his voice calm but absolute, the voice of the peacemaker, the leader who had held them all together for years.

"You are all correct," he said, his gaze meeting each of theirs in turn. "He is an anomaly and he is dangerous. Leaving him alone is the logical thing to do." He paused, his expression unreadable. "But making an enemy of something that powerful is the most dangerous move of all. What happens when he finds out we put a price on his head? The safest move, in the long run, is not to avoid the threat, but to try and make it an ally."

He looked at his family, at the fear and suspicion in their eyes. "He's a stray. A very dangerous one. But we were all strays once. I'm not going to put a leash on him or try to understand him. I'm just going to offer him a place at our table. To befriend him."

"That's stupid," Reina muttered, turning back to her screen.

"Maybe," Marcus conceded. "But it's the choice I'm making. For all of us."

He looked at his family, at the fear, the suspicion, and the hope in their eyes. They were safe, for now. But they had just traded a known monster for an unknown one. And in the dangerous, unforgiving world of Virelia, the unknown was always the greater threat.

Ray stood up and walked to the window. The sun was beginning its slow descent behind the concrete and steel of Virelia, painting the ever-present smog in shades of molten orange and bruised purple. He gazed out at the sprawling city, his mind a torrent of information.

The Warden, no, the Static King… it had held a universe of data from its fifty years of silent war. Endless logs of daemon encounters, corrupted code, forgotten network protocols. But amidst the chaos, there was some data from the real world, archived before the AI's full descent into madness.

A military bunker. Right here, under Virelia. Its location was marked with perfect clarity: The Drowned Core, a sector of the city that had catastrophically sunk during the Fifth Corporate War. There was no more data on it.

Probably destroyed when the whole sector went under, Ray thought. Or maybe… maybe whatever was down there is what caused it to sink in the first place.

He glanced at the door of his room and walked towards it. The door opened with a soft hiss and he stepped into the living room.

His mother was on the couch, her datapad resting in her hand. She lifted her gaze and a small, tired smile touched her lips. Alyna was on the floor, his laptop resting on the coffee table before her, lines of code scrolling across the screen. She looked up as he entered, and winked at him.

"How was the dive?" Lina asked.

"It was interesting," Ray said as he walked to the couch and sat down. "I kept to the public roads, did some sightseeing, and visited that arcade you took me to when I was little. The Digital Rainbow. I played some games until now."

"Sounds like you had some fun," Lina commented, her voice warm.

"Yeah. I did," Ray responded. Fun isn't the right word, he thought. Transformative... but 'fun' was the simple, human word they needed to hear.

"We should go there together next time," Alyna commented, not looking up from her screen. "There is always more fun in two. How was Nox? What's your opinion on her?"

"She's a beast," Ray commented, and this, at least, was the truth. "She handled everything perfectly." He was still unsure if it was Nox's power or his own nanites that had prevented a catastrophic meltdown during the daemon fight.

Alyna smirked a little. "Now that you are here, what do you want for dinner? I was thinking of some burgers."

"Whatever you two want," Ray responded.

"You choose. I pay," Alyna said, looking up at him with a prideful smile. "I started earning some credits from the debugging work. I don't have to leave all the payments to you anymore."

The "heartwarming dinner" was a quiet affair, but peaceful. They ate burgers from a local joint that used real, vat-grown meat, a luxury in their part of the city. For a few brief moments, sitting in their new, clean apartment, surrounded by the two people he cared about most, Ray felt something akin to normal.

Later, after Lina had gone to her room to rest, Alyna and Ray found themselves in their own room, lying on the futon in the dim light, the glow of the city a silent, shifting presence on the walls.

Ray knew he couldn't keep the truth from her. Not after everything.

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