Page 98 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

The watchdogs rounded the corner behind him, their six-legged forms a blur of dark polygons and razor-sharp data fragments. The lead dog lunged, emitting another corruptive burst. Zed jinked left, the burst searing the wall where his shoulder had been. Static bloomed like a wound.

Option:Trap the threat.

Zed diverted processing power. He focused on the corridor junction ahead. With rapid code injections, he rewrote the parameters of the shimmering data-wall forming the right-hand path’s dead end. He thickened it, reinforced its firewall protocols, transforming it from a barrier into a temporary containment cell. Simultaneously, he weakened the structural integrity of the corridor ceiling just before the junction.

He sprinted towards the reinforced dead end, the watchdogs mere meters behind, their claws sparking against the grid floor. As he neared the junction, he triggered the destabilization code for the ceiling section. With a silent cascade of collapsing data-streams, a chunk of the ceiling dissolved, crashing down in a torrent of fragmented code and shimmering debris, partially blocking the left corridor and forcing the watchdogs to swerve instinctively towards the right – towards Zed’s trap.

Zed reached the reinforced wall of the dead end. He didn’t stop. He slammed his free hand against the shimmering surface. Pre-written decryption keys flowed from his fingertips, not to open it, but to trigger the temporary lock sequence he’d just embedded. The wall flared, solidifying into an opaque barrier of dense, swirling encryption.

The watchdogs hit the barrier a fraction of a second later, slamming into the reinforced data-wall with a silent impact that vibrated through the grid floor. They scrabbled relentlessly atit, claws sparking, emitting furious data-growls that shook the corridor. Trapped. For now.

Containment duration estimate:78seconds. Optimal.

Zed didn’t wait. He turned and sprinted back down the corridor, past the debris pile blocking the left path, veering instead down a new, narrower passage he’d scanned during the diversion. The central processor’s core signature was stronger here, a pulsing beacon of complex code.

The maze tightened. Corridors branched less frequently. Security protocols thickened. Zed encountered another firewall door. This one was smaller, less ornate, but pulsed with a deep, resonant energy. Its lock was a complex fractal pattern of shifting authorization ciphers. The core lay beyond. He was certain.

He deployed his skeleton-key protocol. Tendrils of adaptive code extended, probing the fractal lock. The pattern shifted, resisting, evolving countermeasures faster than his initial algorithms could adapt.

Decryption probability:8.4%.Suboptimal.

Zed initiated a secondary protocol. His free hand shifted. The fingers elongated, reconfigured, forming into a concentrated beam emitter. A searing lance of coherent energy, manifesting as a brilliant white line in the dataspace, lanced out from his hand and struck the center of the fractal lock.

Direct assault. High risk. High reward.

The fractal pattern flared violently, absorbing the energy, fighting back. Sparks of corrupted code flew. The dense doorvibrated. Zed poured more processing power into the beam, focusing its intensity. The fractal began to warp, a small section near the center glowing white-hot, softening.

Progress:41.7%.

A new sound cut through the whine of the energy beam and the fading growls of the contained watchdog. Not a growl. A chorus. Multiple guttural data-growls, converging from multiple directions. Close.

Threat Assessment:Secondary watchdog pack activated by the direct assault on Level Gamma security.ETA:12seconds.

Zed scanned the corridor. Behind him, the way he’d come. To his left, a junction. To his right, another dead end. The beam was still cutting, the lock only half-compromised. The growls intensified, echoing, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The corridor ahead shimmered, resolving into the forms of three new watchdog constructs, identical to the first, emerging from a side passage, their featureless heads swiveling towards him, maws gaping.

Trapped. The beam cut the lock ahead. The watchdogs closed in behind. The dead end offered no escape. The containment on the first watchdog would fail any second. His avatar stood poised between the half-open door to the core and a pack of lethal deletion protocols. Cornered. Processing pathways narrowed to survival imperative: finish the cut, breach the core, execute the hack before deletion.

Success probability recalibrated:4.2%.

CHAPTER 36

Letitia’s palmswere slick with sweat. She wiped them surreptitiously on her jumpsuit thighs, leaving dark smears on the worn fabric. The bridge felt smaller than usual. The red emergency lights had been dialed back to a dull, throbbing crimson, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to pulse in time with the ship’s wounded engines.

Norvik sat in the command chair – Carmen’s chair – his blue face emotionless in the gloom, his yellow pupils fixed on the main viewscreen. His calm was unnerving, a glacier in the face of a supernova.

On the screen, theStar Shrike’s lander hung in the void, a predatory insect silhouetted against the broader mass of the pirate vessel. It was close. Too close. Letitia could almost feel the targeting sensors crawling overAntilles’s battered hull.

The memory of Zed’s chassis vanishing in that silent, searing flash made bile rise in Letitia’s throat. She swallowed hard, forcing it down.

She knew the bluff was their only logical play. But what if Norvik decided logic dictated cutting their losses? Handing over Mila for real? Abandoning Carmen? The thought sent ice water coursing through her veins.

“Probe status?” Norvik’s voice cut through the tense silence, flat and devoid of inflection.

“Charging sequence complete,” Letitia replied. She didn’t look away from her weapons console, his fingers trembling slightly over the controls. “Ready for launch on your command.”

She refused to call him, “captain.” She didn’t want to put any put any ideas in his head.

The lander drifted closer, its maneuvering thrusters flaring briefly, adjusting its position. It slid slowly across the screen, its dark bulk momentarily obscuring the viewport of theAntilles’s port-side probe launch tube.