The Price of a Shutdown

Sssssssss...

"Ugh..."

As I submerged my prosthetic arm in the water, bubbles boiled up and steam hissed into the air.

The flesh of my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠forearm where it met the prosthetic was scalded white, looking like a peeled hard-boiled egg. I didn't know if it would ever heal back to normal. Coin-sized blisters had burst in several places, weeping a mixture of clear fluid and blood. A searing pain radiated deep into my bones.

CC spat out another string of unintelligible characters.

I had no idea what she was saying, but I could tell she was furious.

"Deal with it. What else was I supposed to do in this situation?"

A message dripping with resentment scrolled past.

But there was no other way.

During the fight with F, CC had run high-intensity calculations on loop.

As a result, by the time I logged out, the temperature of my prosthetic arm had soared far past critical limits. The section housing the quantum processor was glowing cherry-red, radiating heat you could feel from a distance.

I had rushed to turn on the bathroom sink to cool it down, but not a single drop came out.

All I got was a hollow, sputtering gurgle of air.

Desperate to find any cooling source immediately, my mind flashed to the one place in the apartment that always held standing water.

I had no choice. I flipped the lid and shoved my arm inside.

And that was how my prosthetic arm—and CC's quantum processor—ended up submerged in the toilet bowl.

Whether it was due to the extreme heat or something else, CC had been glitching out ever since I woke up.

I turned my head toward the window to avoid the steam rising from the toilet bowl.

The sirens outside were still wailing.

"So that bastard survived after all."

The moment I pulled the final trigger, CC had forcibly logged me out.

I couldn't even remember the sensation of pulling it. Had I squeezed it properly? Had the shot even fired?

"It couldn't be helped. If you hadn't logged me out, I wouldn't even be able to stay in Maetan anymore."

If you fail to log out, your data remains active on the server.

It means your avatar exists on the server even when you aren't actively connected.

If that happens, you can't log back into Intra-Maetan from reality because of a duplicate connection error.

And in Maetan, anyone who can't access Intra-Maetan is as good as dead—they can no longer live here.

Just as the water in the toilet and the temperature of my prosthetic arm were finally beginning to equalize...

SLAM!

Men burst into my apartment, blowing the front door right off its hinges.

They wore bulletproof vests and full-face helmets, carrying tactical batons in their hands and rifles slung over their shoulders.

Only one group of people in Maetan could walk around armed like that.

"Maetan Security?"

"He's here! In here!"

"What's the meaning of this?"

They didn't answer. Instead, a steel baton came whistling toward my head.

Clang!

I blocked the baton with the prosthetic arm I'd just yanked out of the toilet, sending water droplets flying in every direction.

I hooked my fingers under the chin of the guard's helmet and twisted his head sideways, helmet and all.

"Argh!"

The guard was forced to follow my hand's movement. He had to, unless he wanted his neck snapped.

I spun him around to use as a human shield and shouted,

"Wait! What is this about? I didn't do anything!"

"Get him!"

The other guards swung their batons.

They didn't care about collateral damage. The steel batons rained down, mostly striking their own comrade instead of me.

Realizing words were useless, I went on the offensive.

I kicked the guard I was holding into the others to break their formation, then started throwing punches at the closest targets.

They were wearing bulletproof vests, but that didn't matter.

If anything, it made things easier since I didn't have to hold back my strength.

Thud! Crack! Clang!

"Gah..."

The guards' body armor dented in the shape of my fists, and their helmets cracked. Every time I threw a punch, another man hit the floor.

Of course, I didn't escape completely unscathed—one of the guards crashed into the toilet as he fell, shattering it to pieces.

Great. Where am I supposed to take a shit now?

"Y-you bastard...!"

The guard at the back finally drew his firearm.

I scooped up a sharp shard of the shattered toilet from the floor.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

A woman's voice rang out from where my front door used to be.

A woman with messy, unkempt long hair, thick glasses, and an oversized hoodie stepped into the apartment.

It was Choi Soyeong.

A guard blocked her path.

"Get out! It's dangerous! He's infected!"

Infected?

Me?

"Infected?! Are you absolutely sure?! This man fought F until the very end! Have you even tested him?!"

Soyeong raised her voice.

It was the first time I'd ever heard her shout.

"W-well, we were trying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to test him, but he suddenly attacked us..."

"Who the hell is this girl anyway? Hey! Get it together! Why did you let a civilian in?!"

As the guards barked orders, another guard who had been keeping watch outside hurried in and whispered,

"Sir, she's the Director's granddaughter..."

"What...?"

"Answer me! Did you test him?!"

"...We were going to, but he resisted..."

Test, my ass.

I kicked a stray baton aside and said,

"You're the ones who came in swinging batons without saying a word."

Soyeong glared at the guards with utter disgust.

Though I couldn't see it through his full-face helmet, I heard one of the guards click his tongue.

Soyeong turned to me.

"...Let's do the test first, Juhyeok. They need to check your neck-hub to see if F is inside. ...Please put that down and cooperate just this once."

I tossed the toilet shard onto the floor.

One of the guards approached, holding a cable that extended from his own neck-hub.

An extra device was plugged into the USB slot of his neck-hub—likely a portable firewall.

The hand offering me the cable was trembling.

I took the cable from him and plugged it into my own neck-hub.

After a brief pause, the guard spoke.

"...He's clean. No signs of infection."

"Whew..."

"Haaaaah..."

Soyeong let out a massive sigh of relief.

But the guard who had tested my neck-hub looked infinitely more relieved than she did.

"I'm sorry. But... you have to understand our position. If we connect to test a neck-hub and the target is actually infected, we get infected instantly. Then we become the ones slated for extraction..."

"Isn't that a firewall on the back of your neck?"

"This? Ha! Even Intra-Maetan's security got breached. You think the King of the Machine Species can't bypass a cheap portable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠firewall like this? It's basically just an alarm to let you know you're screwed."

It was a device designed to detect F's hacking and infection; if a massive influx of data flooded the neck-hub in a short span, the alarm would trigger.

The guard conducting the test was literally risking his life.

The guards gathered their fallen comrades.

Soyeong approached me.

"A-are you okay? I was so worried... I came over as soon as I logged out..."

She had been so confident a moment ago, but now her stutter was back.

More importantly, how did she know where I lived? Did she keep tracking me even after I told her to back off?

"Oh, your apartment... I, um, used my grandfather's authorization to look at the employee directory... just a little..."

Soyeong avoided my gaze, nervously brushing her hair back.

She was a terrifying woman.

Since I'd blocked her hacking, she'd resorted to using political power.

"I'm going to get in... a lot of trouble later, but it's fine. I'm just glad I could help..."

She was right. Without her, I'd probably still be locked in a life-or-death struggle with the guards.

I was grateful for that much.

I gestured toward the guards who were gathering their batons and leaving my apartment.

"Who are they?"

"They're a hastily assembled extraction team."

Extraction team.

If a player in Maetan was infected by F, these were the people tasked with finding them faster than anyone else and forcibly extracting their neck-hub.

"M-Maetan shut down the Intra-Maetan servers. As you know, Maetan believes F might have slipped into the neck-hubs of those who didn't log out until the v-very last second. They're testing all of them. I heard there are about eighty people... so they rushed to form extra extraction teams using the security guards."

"There were about seventy when I checked right before logging out."

"Information doesn't update in real-time outside of Intra-Maetan... so Maetan's data was probably from a bit earlier than yours. More importantly, what happened, Juhyeok? Did you win? Or..."

"I won the battle, but lost the war."

I had been on the verge of defeating F, but I couldn't eliminate it before the server shutdown. And this was the result. F had escaped into someone's neck-hub, and I had lost my front door and my toilet.

"You almost won? Against F... and Kang Sihyeon...?"

Soyeong stared at me, her mouth hanging open in shock.

She quickly looked away and brushed her hair back again.

"I-I'm not doubting you, it's just..."

"Who exactly were the people who stayed until the very end?"

"Huh?"

"The seventy people who didn't log out of Intra-Maetan until the last second."

Soyeong replied,

"They probably had their reasons. Maybe they fell asleep while logged in... or they didn't realize how serious the situation was. The security staff were logged in until the very end to reinforce the Monolith Gate's firewall. And... there are always people who try to loot Intra-Maetan once everyone else logs out and leaves it empty."

"Looting?"

"Yes. Shop owners all log out at once, leaving their stores completely unattended. Some people stay behind to steal their inventory. Honestly, most of them are probably looters."

Soyeong quietly added, "It happened last time, too."

She was likely referring to the previous infection incident that occurred before I arrived in Maetan.

I kicked the shattered pieces of the toilet into a corner and walked back into my room.

Darkness had settled over the room. Moonlight filtered through the empty doorframe where my front door used to be, casting a faint glow.

Soyeong looked around my room with curiosity.

"You live... very cleanly."

She was using "clean" to describe a room that had absolutely nothing in it except a bed.

Then again, considering the state of her own apartment, she might have meant it as a genuine compliment.

The broadcast repeated on a loop.

"Why cut the power?"

Thanks to that, the water had stopped running, forcing CC into the toilet.

"Because F could exploit it. What do you think would happen if F managed to access a private server? Everyone connected to it would get infected instantly. I heard they cut the power to prevent those private servers from running. They'll only keep the absolute minimum power active for essential survival facilities."

Apparently, the running water in my apartment didn't qualify as an essential survival facility.

Since this was their second time dealing with this, Maetan seemed to have developed some protocols.

I walked outside with Soyeong.

At the end of the alley lay the path leading to the civilian market. Normally, the street vendors' lights would keep it as bright as day, even at night.

But now, not a single light was visible.

The vendors were silently packing up their stalls in the dark.

Bang!

A gunshot.

After the first shot, several more rang out in rapid succession.

It was clear that multiple people ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were firing, not just one.

I thought of the rifles slung over the guards' shoulders and immediately headed toward the sound of the gunfire.

"Juhyeok?"

Soyeong ran after me.

Unaccustomed to running, she was already panting heavily, her arms flailing wildly.

I was sorry, but I didn't have time to wait for her.

I accelerated, leaving her behind.

"Aaaah!"

"Dad! Dad! Daddy!"