Subverting The World [Cyber] - Chapter 14

Early the next morning, White Tower’s special response team arrived at the site—a landscape of hardened cement and thick, oily mud.

All of them wore stark white uniforms. Their masks looked more like scuba gear than anything you’d see on land—equipped with oxygen filters and sealed tight against whatever contamination the site might hold.

The sludge coating the ground shimmered with an iridescent sheen in the sunlight, looking unsettlingly slick and unnatural.

“Disgusting,” muttered one of the male guards, scanning the slick terrain. “Feels like something dragged itself through here.”

A tall woman among them glanced at the device strapped to her wrist. It resembled a watch crossed with a depth gauge—an indicator moved erratically, jumping between 10 and 25 meters like a dial caught in a storm surge.

“Definitely some activity below,” she said, cool and composed. “We’ve got deep-sea signal bleed. I’m diving to confirm. If it’s something from the deeper zones… we may need to notify the Execution Division.”

None of the others reacted with surprise. They were trained for this. Behind their goggles, all their eyes carried the same detached calm.

The woman reached into her gear pack, pulled out a pair of dark glasses, and slipped them over her mask.

Glasses, mask, and hat—three protective layers. More than just gear, they were psychological armor. Together, they helped insulate the mind from deep-sea contamination. Without them, most wouldn’t last five minutes. Exposure led to irreversible cognitive breakdown—those who drowned in that chaos often returned as something… else.

This was the difference between a trained descent and total submersion.

She inhaled deeply and began her dive.

Around her, light fractured into colored fragments. Reality bent as the world she entered peeled itself away from the surface.

No swirling horrors met her immediately—just emptiness. But her clearance only allowed for dives up to 100 meters. Any deeper, and she’d risk losing herself.

At 90 meters, she spotted wreckage.

She froze—forgetting, for a second, that she wasn’t in open water.

A deep breath later, she opened a line to her team.

“Contact the Execution Division. We’ve got a ground-penetrating worm.”

Even the larval forms of these things registered at 600 meters deep—the dim-light zone. No one had ever recorded a full adult. If those ever made it to the surface… the results would be catastrophic.

White Tower had mapped the deep-sea anomaly layers down to 8,000 meters:

• 0–200m: surface tier

• 201–1000m: dim-light tier

• 1001–4000m: twilight tier

• 4001–8000m: abyssal darkness

Anything from below the surface tier couldn’t be neutralized with conventional methods. If a full-sized ground-driller had breached this far, it meant something terrifying had made contact with reality.

That’s where the Execution Division came in. Their task? Prevent any anomaly from touching the normal world.

And if the threat couldn’t be neutralized?

Then everything that could act as a lure—people, places, even memories—was erased. Individuals. Families. Entire districts.

The woman’s voice was urgent now, relaying the data.

Unstable thoughts act like bait. Monsters smell them from below, drawn up like sharks to bl00d. And some, in turn, draw even darker things behind them.

The Execution Division existed to sever those lines—ruthlessly.

Before she finished her report, the woman noticed something odd about the worm remains.

Only half its body was there—encased in hardened cement.

Where was the rest?

She approached the site with suspicion. Something didn’t add up. She noted the strange scene in her log and surfaced.

“How was it?” the team leader asked as she returned. “We were about to sound the emergency call.”

“It’s confirmed. We’ve got part of a ground-drilling worm embedded in that pit,” she reported. “But it’s strange—it’s frozen in cement.”

“Impossible,” the team leader said, frowning. “That thing’s whole ability is turning its surroundings into sludge. Cement, metal, stone—it can turn them all to mud.”

“If I hadn’t trusted your word, I’d call that nonsense.”

“In our labs,” she continued, “even cured concrete doesn’t hold against them for more than a second.”

“They’re called ‘ground-penetrators’ for a reason. They don’t just tunnel—they liquefy everything but glass.”

“Someone stopped it mid-action. We need to find whoever did it.”

“Pull local surveillance,” she ordered. “If they fought this thing, they left traces. Check for footprints.”

“I saw some near the pit,” a colleague added. “We can match them for size and pattern.”

She paused, almost admiring. “Honestly, it’s textbook execution.”

Her teammate agreed. “Smart move—using quick-dry cement to interrupt its transformation process. That’s what our latest research suggested might work in theory.”

“Right,” another added. “Perfect storm: an open construction site, a wandering anomaly, and no civilian casualties. Weirdly fortunate.”

“There’s no other evidence of interference, so we’ll file this one for record.”

Elsewhere…

Shi Xu sneezed.

Her “name”—the metaphysical record of her—had just dipped again.

She sensed it but didn’t know why.

She was back home now, facing the fallout after being anonymously reported.

Of course she was reported. She’d known it was coming.

But admitting she actually downloaded Nightmare Invasion? That was unthinkable.

In White Tower’s jurisdiction, everything outside their curated list—literature, art, music, games—was illegal.

They controlled what people were allowed to know, what they could experience. Anything else had to be destroyed.

So Shi Xu couldn’t clear her name completely. The best she could hope for was damage control.

She realized something crucial—her identity in both worlds was linked. Fame carried across. But neglect either one, and it would decay. Like a character in an MMO left unplayed, one would eventually collapse.

She had to maintain both to survive.

Ironically, building renown in a brutal, virtual cyber-world was easier than in the sterile order of White Tower.

There, standing out was dangerous. Difference was something to be erased.

So Shi Xu played the game—but stayed just within the limits. Not too loud. Not too quiet. Enough to be remembered, not punished.

White Tower disconnected all systems after 10 PM. She had time.

Booting up her computer, she opened a game she’d bought on a whim but never touched.

“Surrounded by Hot Guys and Stunning Girls!”

Despite the name, it wasn’t a dating sim. It was a first-person shooter.

Each level you cleared, a gorgeous character joined your team. Eventually, you met the “Blessed Lord”—some strange final boss or reward. And that was it.

It was infamous in the gaming community. Many called it the most absurdly corrupted game on record.

But by White Tower standards? The entire concept of gaming was polluted.

Most of the games they did allow involved little more than simulated labor or repetitive “moral training.” Some developers had only ever produced a single title before vanishing.

Shi Xu hovered over the “Activate” button.

She sighed.

“Guess this is what we’re doing.”

Click.

Her game library lit up—one more bizarre entry added.

She snapped a screenshot, composed a message, and posted it online:

“Watch out for scams! Thought this was something else. Turns out it’s that game.
But I love the Blessed Lord and am feeling blessed 😇”

Expressionless, she sent it.

She wasn’t feeling blessed.

But she knew what the internet loved most—not success stories, but people messing up. The more ridiculous, the better. They’d flood the post with laughter and forget it the next day.

At least, she hoped so.

Because even ridicule counted as fame.

She hadn’t wanted to do it—but now she had to keep up the act.

Outside, the morning trumpet sounded. Drones began their daily patrols across the towering residential complexes.

She walked to the window.

Forcing a smile onto her face, she pulled open the curtains.

“Good morning!” she chirped, waving at the drone scanning her window.

All around, in the circular hive of buildings, other curtains lifted in unison. Uniform smiles met the morning light like puppets in a synchronized show.

It was like watching a forest full of mechanical birds emerge on cue.

A soft click—a camera captured her expression, comparing it to yesterday’s.

Shi Xu’s smile twitched.

It was the same in prison.

Each day started with routine. The same drills. The same fake grins. An endless loop.

Among the sea of buzzing machines, one drone flew straight toward her.

Shi Xu held her breath.

“Citizen Time Talk,” it said in a flat mechanical voice. “Prepare. You are due for review.”