A heavy shoulder smashed into Zero’s chest, knocking the wind from his lungs. His boot slid on the burst fruit pulp, and the world tilted. The pressure in his head spiked, a sharp, white-hot needle of pain, like a warning being burned directly into his nervous system for defying the script.
A motorbike horn screamed, a jagged tear in the soundscape.
Zero twisted, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. The bike’s handlebar grazed his ribs, hard enough to spin him like a top. He crashed into a juice stall, his weight shattering a stack of glass bottles.
Sugarcane juice exploded. It soaked his shirt, cold, cloying, and smelling of crushed grass.
The vendor lunged at him, waving a cleaver. It wasn’t malice, it was the pure, reactionary shock of a man whose livelihood had just been smashed.
Zero ran.
This time, it wasn't clean. It wasn't graceful. He barreled through the crowd, his heart punching against his ribs like a trapped bird. His lungs felt like they were being scraped with sandpaper.
The panic was real, but beneath it, an unwanted electric thrill hummed in his veins. His body knew exactly how to survive this. It knew the friction coefficients of the tile, the weight of the humidity, the exact gap between the moving bodies.
He didn't remember learning any of it.
He ducked into a nearby hawker centre, his sneakers skidding on the greasy floor. Industrial fans rattled overhead, doing nothing but moving the hot, spicy air around. Steam from a giant pot of curry burned his eyes.
He grabbed the first drink a confused uncle handed him, a steaming kopi, and burned his tongue on it just to feel something that wasn't a calculation.
Then, the world lurched.
Above him, the mounting of the massive ceiling fan shrieked. It wasn't a mechanical failure. It was a sequence.
Metal groaned. Sparks spat from the wiring like dying stars.
Zero dove.
He didn't think, he just launched himself toward a table of startled diners. The fan tore loose a heartbeat later, slamming into the concrete floor exactly where his skull had been. The blades shattered, sending shards of heavy plastic into the tile.
Screams tore the room apart. Chaos erupted, but through the noise, Zero heard the hum again.
That wasn't luck. That wasn't a prediction.
That felt like the city itself pushing back against a foreign body.
A man lunged at him from a nearby table. He wasn't shouting. He wasn't angry. His face was a mask of terrifying neutrality. Blank. Empty.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Zero blocked the grab without thinking. Elbow. Knee. The man folded as if his joints had suddenly forgotten their purpose.
Zero stared at his own hands. They felt heavy. Foreign.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A rhythmic, aggressive vibration. He pulled it out, the screen cracked from the fall at the juice stall.
RESIDUAL PATTERNS DETECTED STABILITY, ACCEPTABLE
The blank-faced man surged up again. He moved with a sickening, jerky speed, grabbing Zero’s collar with a grip like a vice.
You deviate, the man said. The voice was flat. It didn't sound like it was coming from a throat, it sounded like a playback.
Zero didn't argue. He pulled the man in and drove his forehead into the bridge of the stranger's nose.
Bone cracked. Blood sprayed, warm and metallic, across Zero’s cheek. The man dropped like a cut kite.
Zero bolted out of the hawker centre.
Outside, the street was twisting. The traffic signals changed with a surgical precision that felt predatory. Cars braked in perfect, synchronized sequences.
At the junction, Zero shut his eyes to block it out, but the map slammed into his mind anyway. Lights. Timings. Bottlenecks. The entire city was a blueprint burned into his retinas.
He charged into the worst alley he could find.
He wanted the rot. He wanted the unpredictability of trash and stray cats. He sprinted through a puddle of stagnant water, his foot slipping on a patch of moss.
His body began to fall. Then, it corrected.
Installed.
Fragments of data hit him mid-run. He felt the weight distribution of the buildings around him. He felt the heat radiating off the metal rails of the fire escapes. He knew he had swallowed the coffee too hot because stopping to let it cool would have wasted 4.2 seconds.
These weren't his memories. They were residue.
The phone buzzed again, a frantic pulse against his thigh.
RESIDUALS PERSIST PROVENANCE, UNVERIFIED
A man in a sharp grey suit stood at the mouth of the alley. He wasn't moving. He was just watching, a vertical line of grey against the grime.
Zero hurled the phone at the brick wall and didn't look back as it shattered.
Footsteps followed. They weren't hurried, but they were perfectly efficient. He vaulted a dumpster, feeling a rusted grate collapse under his palm. It tore his skin, drawing blood, but he barely cleared the drop into the next street.
The suit followed without hesitation, leaping with a grace that wasn't human.
Zero burst into the outskirts of Kampong Glam just as the call to prayer began to roll over the rooftops. His breathing synced to the rhythm of the chant before he could stop it. He bit his tongue, hard, until he tasted the copper of his own blood. Anything to break the synchronization.
The suit closed the gap. Zero swung a metal pole from a construction barrier. The impact rang hollow, as if hitting a pillar of salt.
You are adapting, the suit said.
Zero shoved a spice cart between them. An explosion of dried chili powder filled the air. Screams and coughing followed as the red cloud expanded.
Zero didn't wait. He hit the river rail and didn't stop.
He vaulted over the side. The cold water of the Singapore River punched the air from his lungs. The current was a heavy, muscular thing. He surfaced choking, the city lights breaking into jagged diamonds on the surface.
On the bank, another grey suit stood waiting. Flanking him.
Zero began to swim, his strokes powerful and rhythmic. Inside him, the hum grew louder. It felt furious. It felt eager.
Temporary deviation, it whispered in the back of his mind.
Zero kicked harder, his lungs burning. He didn't know if the next decision would be his, or if he was just watching a ghost drive his body.
But he knew one thing. Whatever was running inside him didn't need his permission.
And it was learning faster than he was.
HE DIDN’T OUTRUN THE RESIDUALS - HE BECAME THEIR GLITCH!! ????
- shoulder-check + motorbike graze → juice stall carnage, sticky sugarcane baptism ????
- ceiling fan assassination → dive under tables as blades rain like shrapnel ????
- blank-faced enforcers with playback voices → "You deviate" → forehead to nose, blood spray ????
- phone screaming RESIDUALS PERSIST PROVENANCE, UNVERIFIED → hurled against brick, shattered ????
- synchronized traffic, predictive alleys, grey suits leaping like salt pillars → river vault, cold current punch ???
- final whisper in the skull: Temporary deviation… but the hum is furious. Eager. Learning faster. ????
- Was the hum protecting Zero from the city’s purge… or quietly claiming permanent driver’s seat?
- Did smashing the phone sever the leash… or just make the residuals louder inside his own nerves?
- Is fighting for unpredictability the last human thing left… or the fastest way to finish becoming the machine?
- Sacrifice agency for survival… or is survival the ultimate erasure of self?
DROP YOUR ECHO BELOW - what broke in you reading this? What synced up? Spill it. No clean answers.
MORE GLITCHES INCOMING!! ????