Chapter 10 Override First Attempt

"Six," Kane said again, like saying it twice would make it smaller.

"Six," Seran said.

Lyra was already checking the room, counting exits, counting weapons, counting everything that could be counted in a fight none of them could win.

"We can't hold this tower against six hunters," she said. "Not with my arm. Not with a knife and a sword."

"I know," Seran said.

"Can you stop them?" Kane asked. "Your rank. Your authority."

His jaw tightened. "If I use my rank to block a sanctioned purge, my commander gets a formal query. Why was Rank A in the Ashfields? Why did he obstruct hunters doing their job?" He shook his head once. "Questions I'm not ready to answer yet."

"So you won't stop them."

"Not directly." His eyes moved to the window, already calculating. "I can create confusion. Flag this location as an active investigation site. Won't stop them. Forces them to verify first. Minutes, not safety."

"Minutes might be enough," Kane said.

"Enough for what?"

He didn't answer right away. Something had been sitting in his head since the moment he first read his own status back in the ash, and it finally pushed to the front.

"Can the System flag me as a different class," he said. "If I force it."

Seran stared at him. "That's not possible."

"I know it shouldn't be. How impossible, exactly."

"Every soul has one assignment slot," Seran said slowly, working it out loud. "Yours came back erroneous. But an errored slot is still a slot."

"So it's not empty. Just broken."

"If you could force a false flag onto that slot, even briefly, the hound would read you as registered. Their target disappears from its own scan."

"That's the plan," Kane said.

"That's not a plan," Lyra said. "That's a guess wearing a plane's clothes."

"I haven't had a better option since I woke up here. Ninety percent, remember."

She didn't smile this time.

Kane closed his eyes and pushed, the way he'd pushed at Debug Eye, at Ghost Step. He found the errored slot fast, sitting there like a locked door with a broken hinge.

He pushed harder.

Pain hit first, a thin hot line behind his left eye sharp enough to make him gasp.

"Kane." Lyra's hand caught his arm.

"I'm fine," he said, though his voice shook.

He kept pushing. Errors screamed across his vision, red and violent. He forced his focus narrow, past the noise, toward the one thing he wanted.

Forty seconds. Long enough that Seran had moved beside Lyra, both of them watching him with the same tight, worried expression.

Then it landed.

OVERRIDE DETECTED. CLASS SLOT: FORCE-WRITTEN. TEMPORARY FLAG: COMMON FIGHTER  RANK E. DURATION: UNSTABLE. ESTIMATE 2-3 HOURS. SYSTEM INTEGRITY: WARNING.

Kane opened his eyes, breathing hard.

"Rank E. Lowest there is. But it's something."

"You're registered," Seran said, with disbelief plain on his face. "Right now, this second, you are registered."

"For two to three hours. Maybe less."

Lyra looked between them. "So the hound reads him as a basic fighter instead of a Null."

"That's the theory," Kane said.

"Theories get people killed."

"So does standing here arguing about them."

Seran moved fast toward the window, already working something in his own panel. "Filing the investigation flag now. It'll hold them at the door for exactly as long as it takes someone to verify it's fake."

"How long is that?" Lyra asked.

"Three minutes. Maybe four."

"Then we go now," Kane said.

They slipped out the back while the hunters were still approaching the front, moving low and fast across open ground with almost no cover at all. Kane's legs burned within the first minute, his body still worn down from the fight with the Sovereign.

"How far to the gate?" he said, breathless.

"Forty minutes," Seran said. "If nothing slows us."

"My Override might not last that long."

"Then run faster than that."

They ran. Two kilometers of silence broken by ragged breathing and boots in ash. Somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark, Kane felt the Override start to fray. Faint pressure building behind his eyes again.

"It's failing."

"How long?" Lyra said.

"Thirty minutes. Maybe less."

"Gate's forty minutes north," Seran said, glancing back.

"Then we run," Kane said, "and hope the math works out for once."

Behind them, faint but growing, the sound of the hunters clearing Seran's false flag reached their ears. Shouting. Fast footsteps. The unmistakable sound of six people realizing they'd been fooled.

"They're coming," Lyra said.

"I know."

"Faster, Kane."

"Trying."

The hound's ping hit somewhere behind them, sharp enough that Kane felt it more than heard it, and a moment later a voice carried clear across the ash.

"Target detected. Rank E. Common Fighter."

Hope lifted in his chest.

"Cross-reference. Registry database." A pause. "No record found."

Hope died fast.

"That's not a common fighter," the voice snarled, closer now, faster now. "That's our Null. Using something that shouldn't exist."

Boots hit the ash hard, all six breaking into a full sprint.

"Kill all three."