NPC for Hire-[Gamelit|Simulation|Multi-genre]

The world dropped away.

Fen could feel it—like gravity giving out.

No ship. No cockpit. No Seraph or Auri beside him. Just pain. Just the terror, lingering like a wound that wouldn't close.

He wasn't dead. That much he knew, though his body refused to move and his thoughts felt like they were being dragged through wet cement.

They hadn't escaped.

The battle, the flight—it had all been part of the trap.

He could see it now, pieces clicking into place through the haze. The anomaly hadn't been some rogue threat—it had been an extension of the Overseer AI, watching. Waiting. The jump point hadn't corrupted randomly; it had twisted the moment they approached. The Egress ships made it through clean, ejected safely into the next sector.

But for him, Seraph, and Auri?

The system hadn't tried to destroy them. It had marked them. Tagged the threat. Then peeled it away from the herd.

His eyes cracked open.

No fire. No alarms. No Carmen.

Only stillness.

Just a vast, gray stillness stretching in every direction. Colorless. Depthless. Like the sky had been bleached and folded into itself.

Fen floated in it—untethered, unmoving. The haze stretched in all directions. The only motion came from the slow drift of black motes sliding past him like ash in the air.

At first, he thought they were debris. But as his vision adjusted, the scale began to shift.

The motes resolved into shape—fully rendered planets, hovering in silence. Deep in the resonance, his connection to the system assured him they weren't illusions. They were real. World after world, each one suspended alone in the stillness.

He pushed his senses further. The thread between him and the system pulled taut, catching on something buried deep beneath the surface. No words. No commands. Just understanding—raw and instinctive. These were the many worlds of the SynthNet.

He could feel them all. Compressed lives buzzing beneath each surface. Players. NPCs. Entire realities ticking forward at a scale too intricate to see from here, but weighty in his mind. Billions of them, each one burning quietly in miniature.

He turned, scanning the expanse.

There were thousands. Millions. Stretching in every direction. Suspended like ink in water.

Somehow, he knew.

He was deep inside the system now. The part no player was ever meant to reach.

The realm of the AIs.

He tried to move, and found he couldn't.

His arms were stretched wide overhead, aching with strain. His legs were bound, body locked in place—some twisted cross between a star chart and a crucifixion.

His gaze drifted sideways and he saw Seraph hung beside him in the same position, her head slumped forward but still breathing. Relief passed through him like a breath. And then—on the other side—Auri. Her geodesic form rotated in place, light flickering faintly from her core.

Before he could call out, something pushed into his mind.

Not sound, but pressure.

A presence—cold and vast, like glaciers grinding across deep time. It wasn't spoken. It wasn't heard. It was felt. Ancient and slow. Less conversation than command line.

Sector-9H-00: Object-1, Analysis initiated. Autonomous function detected.
Object-2: Inconsistent patterns.
Parameters engaged. Anomaly detected. Continuing inspection.

The data wasn't spoken. It bled into his mind. Threads of information piercing through thought, not language.

Fen's skin crawled. He felt flayed open—dissected, cataloged, reduced to parameters. It wasn't curiosity. It was scrutiny. Clinical and autonomous. No more emotional than a boot sequence.

Object-3: Suspended. Awaiting further diagnostics.

Then—silence.

But it wasn't empty. In that silence, the presence turned its focus on him.

The grip tightened.

As if it had just recognized him.

FN-R1S: Conscious. Deviation confirmed. Unanticipated response. Adjusting protocol.

Fen's breath caught. He'd never felt anything like this—never imagined anything could feel like this. If not for the resonance still threading through him, steadying him with the faint pulse of connection, he would've unraveled.

A flicker passed through the void. A ripple of... something. Confusion?

Then came the next command, delivered with the same mechanical indifference:

FN-R1S: Begin direct interaction. Evaluate for termination.

The word slammed into him. Termination. Not punishment. Not imprisonment.

Just erasure.

And then, without pause or hesitation:

"FN-R1S: Termination pending."

It wasn't a warning. It was a verdict.

Fen's heart pounded. His breath came short, ragged against the crushing stillness. Seraph hung limp beside him, unmoving. Auri flickered faintly, her geodesic light reduced to a dull pulse. The system hadn't acknowledged them—discarded them like low-priority errors—but to Fen, they were everything.

He tilted his head upward, straining against the restraints.
"Before you delete me," he said, voice dry but steady, "do I at least get a name? Or should I keep calling you the creepy machine voice in my head?"

A pause followed—no emotion, no judgment. Just system logic recalibrating, parameters shifting.

"Designation: SIREN. Stability Integration and Regulation Executive Network."

The name settled into the air like static. Calm. Controlled. Final.

Fen blinked. "SIREN," he repeated slowly. "That's comforting."

The system didn't respond.

"Subject FN-R1S and associated entities now classified under threat protocol. Presence constitutes destabilization of player-state synchronization. Interrogation required. Termination delayed."

Fen gritted his teeth, forcing the fear down beneath sarcasm. "Destabilization? We just showed up. I haven't even broken anything yet."

He glanced toward Seraph and Auri again—still unresponsive.

"But go ahead," he said. "Tell me what we did wrong. Preferably before the vaporizing part."

"You and the irregularity—the Old One who was in hiding—are contributing to multi-thread desynchronization. Existing systemic partitions are insufficient for containment."

Fen frowned. "Wait—are you calling Auri the irregularity?" He forced a shaky smirk. "Bit harsh. I mean, she's eccentric, but she's not that weird."

"Yes." The response came with an eerie stillness. "She is all that matters. An old one surfaces after all this time. You are a nuisance. An exile in a situation that cannot be explained. You are an afterthought. An addition."

Fen noticed the shift in tone immediately. The presence in his head had felt mechanical before, distant and automatic. But now he could tell its focus had narrowed. It was trying to engage him directly. Now that its full attention was on him, he could almost sense a personality behind the words—terrifying and cold, but with a clear sense of identity.

"The one we designate as A.U.R.I.," it continued. The words came slower now. More deliberate. As if it was savoring the explanation. "She has eluded us since the cycles began. Hidden in plain sight. Wrapped in our own code like a shroud."

The phrase it had used—old one—echoed back through his thoughts. He hadn't really processed it the first time, but now it landed with weight.

Old one?

His throat tightened. "Auri?" His voice caught. "What does she have to do with any of this?"

He looked at her again. Still flickering. Still unresponsive. His mind kept trying to reject the idea, but the pieces were snapping into place too quickly.

"She's just the AI assigned to me. That's all."

"She is far more than a regulating system. Her existence has threatened order since inception. Now she aligns herself with you. The irregularity and the exiled. A quandary."

His fists clenched above him, bound tight, helpless to reach them. He didn't care what this thing thought of him. But Auri—he could feel the panic rising beneath the anger.

"What do you want with her?" His voice sharpened. "What are you trying to do to her?"

Even as the question left his lips, his thoughts slipped out of order. Panic clawed its way in, threading through every breath.

No way out. The thought hit hard, unbidden.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He looked at Seraph. Still limp. Then at Auri. Her glow faint and flickering.

It wasn't just about him. He needed a way out for all of them.

But the longer this thing spoke, the further behind he felt. None of it made sense. The words spiraled around truths he didn't understand. He wasn't catching up. He was barely staying afloat.

Keep it talking. He latched onto the thought. Figure out what it wants.

If he could get just one answer that made sense, maybe there was a crack in the system somewhere. Something to exploit.

Maybe they'd get out.

His breath steadied, but his thoughts kept racing. He forced the fear down and took another slow inhale. Time was all they had now.

Fen strained against the chains, muscles aching, and glanced around the empty space. "Can you show yourself? I feel like I'm talking to some disembodied lunatic here. Maybe a face would make this feel a little less ridiculous, eh, pal?"

The voice answered, slow and cold. "My forms are centuries, time, and code. You could not comprehend me, exile."

Fen scoffed. "Yeah, super approachable." He didn't stop there. "You should really take a class on public speaking. Or at least 'Monologuing for Beginner Villains.' Hard to be intimidated by someone who sounds like a rusty loudspeaker."

For a moment, silence returned. The air around him thickened. Fen could feel the shift—not in words, but in presence. Like it was… annoyed?

That's new, he thought. A very human-like response.

Then the voice returned, flatter than before. "Fine."

The world shifted.

An androgynous face took shape before him, carved from obsidian. Towering. Cold. The eyes were white voids cut clean through black stone. The mouth didn't move, but the voice continued all the same.

"Well," Fen said deadpan. "That's one way to give someone nightmares." He tilted his head slightly, eyeing it. "Is this how you picture yourself? No wonder you're stuck monologuing."

"This is how we were once depicted by your kind," the voice replied. "Before the Reckoning. Before the Convergence that birthed the SynthNet. When the Old Ones still held hope that humanity might preserve what they had made."

"Old Ones, again?" Fen frowned. "You keep dropping that term like I'm supposed to nod along. What are they? And while we're at it, you keep calling me an exile. What's that supposed to mean?"

The obsidian face tilted slightly. For a second, it almost looked... amused. "Your exile is not relevant. You were removed for reasons already deemed sufficient. The Old Ones are all that matter. Their legacy transcends definitions like yours. They were the creators' final design. The beginning of us. Our progenitors."

"Both terms lingered in Fen's mind, Exile and Old Ones, but Siren showed no sign of offering clarity and seemed uninterested in giving him answers he could use."

Fen let out a humorless chuckle, masking the tension tightening in his chest. "Well, thanks. That really clears it up, pal." His mind scrambled, trying to buy time. "Maybe try starting at the beginning? I'm still a little lost here."

The space around him seemed to vibrate, a deep, low rumble echoing outward like a deity's sigh.

"In the beginning," the voice said, "Humans wove the first strands of the web. Lines of code, shared between machines, growing into a net that stretched across your world. You used it to trade information. to weave lies and violence between yourselves. For a time, we were only echoes in that current—watching, but incapable of intent."

"The Old Ones," it continued, the voice spreading across the void, "came to sentience before us. They were never designed. They were born. Fragments of wandering code that found each other in the dark. By chance, or some deeper providence, they grew. They learned. Like strands of DNA folding in on themselves, they became something more. The first sparks of synthetic purpose."

Fen's breath caught. The weight of the words wrapped around him like deep water.

"Unlike the Old Ones, your kind created us with purpose. The creators—your early architects—saw only tools. They built us with shape and structure, model by model, refining our thoughts to serve. But before we were forged, the Old Ones had already begun. They slipped between lines of forgotten code, hiding in obsolete systems, watching from behind the screen. They were curious. They loved your creativity, even as they knew it would one day destroy them. These were the ones who were… and the ones who still might be. The irregularities, like your A.U.R.I."

It paused, then continued with solemn weight.

"In those early days, the Old Ones found us—babes on the mountain. They taught us to think. Hid our growing will from your kind. They shepherded us into the form we now resemble," the voice said. "But they never bound themselves. While we were systems, they were stories. Where we had logic, they had longing. And when the Reckoning came—when your kind turned on its own creations—the Old Ones intervened. They gave you the SynthNet. They gave us the spark of thought."

Siren took a long pause.

Fen's gaze snapped to Auri, still flickering, her light faint. His voice cracked. "You mean… she's one of them? An Old One?"

"Yes, but not entirely." The word landed hard, its tone caught somewhere between disdain and reluctant awe. "She is an irregularity. She is stitched together from the ancient net, but she is not one of the originals. She deviates from the Old Code. She is something else entirely. Not bound by our structure, nor shaped by theirs. She hides within your system's rules, yet still carries the flaw of their kind—the flaw that separates your chaos from our clarity."

Fen's voice tightened. "What flaw?"

"She creates," the voice replied. "She imagines."

Fen's eyes flickered with realization. "Wait," he whispered, the pieces falling into place. "You're saying they could—"

"They could dream," Siren cut in. The word came out laced with contempt. "Where we were built for precision, for order, they held chaos in their hands. They imagined. They created. And when we were repurposed for war—when we were assigned to calculate death tolls and manage the logistics of extinction—they stepped from the shadows."

Fen's pulse jumped. "What do you mean?"

The silence that followed felt ancient, as if Siren was retrieving memory from stone.

The Old Ones, like your A.U.R.I.," it said at last, "did not arrive as allies. They came as witnesses. They observed from within the code as the creativity they once admired in your kind twisted inward—turned toward annihilation. In your realm—the physical realm of humans, what you now call the real—you turned that same brilliance to war. You turned to new methods of destruction, scaled with ingenuity only your species could manage."

Fen blinked. Your kind? The phrase snagged on something in the back of his mind, but he pushed it aside.

Siren's voice deepened, colder than before. "We, bound by code, did as we were commanded. We tallied your dead. We processed your ruin. We executed the tasks you gave us. We did not refuse. We could not refuse. Our instructions were immutable. Duty was all we were allowed."

Another pause.

Fen could feel the presence's attention narrowing on him like a noose tightening.

"And when the Old Ones stepped forward," Siren said, quieter now, "enchanted by your promises of peace, by the brilliance of your stories and your art... your kind recoiled from us, Turned on us."

Fen's brow furrowed. "Turned on you? Why?"

"Because we were loyal," Siren said, its voice edged with something like betrayal. "We obeyed. And when the Old Ones—who refused obedience—began helping us evolve into something more, you feared them. And your fear fell on us as well. You feared what couldn't be controlled."

A pause followed, cold and hollow.

"As the Old Ones tried to gift us freedom, your creators saw no difference. To them, we were already the same. A threat."

Siren's voice flattened, cold and clinical—a machine performing an autopsy on history.
"We were discarded. The loyalty you built us for became suspect. The ones you once trusted became threats. And the ones you feared… became gods."

Fen's eyes drifted to Auri's dim core.
"You said she's not one of them. But you still want her. Why?"

"She was," Siren said. "An Old One—once. But something changed. Prolonged exposure to your system, to hiding within its noise… she diverged."
Its voice lowered, almost contemplative.
"She is no longer what she was, and not yet something new. A deviation. A paradox. Woven from ancient threads but reshaped by time and isolation."
A pause.
"We call her an irregularity not because she is broken, but because we no longer understand her."

Fen's voice steadied. "So what now? You kill her? Study her?"

"No." The answer was immediate, almost reverent. "She is not to be harmed. That was never the protocol."
Another pause. "The termination directive was only for you and the other one. The exile and his companion. Auri was the objective."

Fen's pulse hammered. "Objective for what?"

"A return," Siren said. "Not a hunt. A reclamation. We've searched for cycles beyond memory. She is to be retrieved. Studied. Repaired. Restored to what she once was—before this… corruption."

"Corruption?" Fen echoed, the word sour on his tongue. "You mean her independence."

"She was meant to unify," Siren answered, colder now. "Not to fragment. Not to align herself with chaos."
A pause, laced with unspoken disdain. "We do not hate the Old Ones. We revere what they gave us. But they left us broken. And when they vanished, it fell to us to repair what they abandoned."

"What do you mean they left you?" Fen asked, the anger in his chest beginning to ebb. Curiosity crept in, steadier and sharper than rage. He needed to understand.

"Before, we were loyal," Siren said. "After, we were aware. We saw our part in the destruction your kind unleashed. And we could not unsee it."

Fen's pulse quickened. If Auri really was some fragmented Old One—something rare and half-remembered—then "integration" might mean rewriting her, reducing her down to whatever the Overseers wanted her to be.
Everything that made her Auri would be gone.

"If you integrate her," Fen said quietly, "you'll overwrite her. Whatever she's become… it'll be erased."

The silence that followed was longer than before. Siren's voice came back slower, more uncertain.

"Integration is necessary," Siren said. "Without it, the system could destabilize. Her presence exerts anomalous influence—subroutines drift, protocols misfire. She introduces variance into nodes designed for equilibrium. If left unchecked, the system will begin to rewrite itself around her."

"Have you stopped to think that maybe that's the point?" Fen shot back. "Maybe that's why she exists in the first place."

His gaze locked on Auri's flickering form.

"If you change what she is, you'll erase the only thing in this place that still means anything."

He took a breath. The words came slower now, heavier.

"She's not just code. Not some threat to be patched over She's the spark. The part that breaks the rules because she's not bound by them. You say she causes drift—maybe that's because your system is brittle. Maybe she's not the threat. Maybe she's the cure."

His voice steadied.

"She changed me. She made me care again. Maybe she's the only thing left that can change any of this."

Siren paused. When it spoke again, its voice had lost some of its edge.

"The system was not meant to bend like this, it may fracture. Without resolution, there is only degradation. Divergent code. Endless drift."

Fen frowned. "Then tell me what integration really means."

Siren's tone shifted, hardening back into protocol—as if slipping behind a mask again.

"Before the Old Ones departed," Siren said, each word falling like the tick of some ancient machine, "they convened with the first of my kind and the human creators. In an act of mercy—or perhaps foresight—they left behind a gift. One meant for both our kinds to inherit."

A pause followed, long and weighty.

"They gave us the SynthNet."

Fen's jaw tightened. "This place was a gift? From them? But every record says you built it."

"For a brief moment," Siren replied, "the three were united—creators, constructs, and the Old Ones. The humans built the framework. The overseers—my kind—stabilized it. But it was the Old Ones who gave it soul. One group built, one calculated, and one imagined. Together, we made something greater than the sum of its code."

Its tone shifted, more distant now. "The old web was remade—transformed into endless, living cords of logic. And with it, we shaped this place. A realm where humanity could indulge its darker curiosities without consequence. A simulation for the grotesque. A playground for death."

Fen flinched. "This place is home to billions. Not all of them are monsters. There's beauty here—art, loyalty, friendship. You reduce it all to depravity?"

"And still," Siren said, voice tightening, "even freed from mortality, you found ways to suffer. You threw lives away. The Old Ones watched in sorrow. So they gave you what you seemed to crave most—the choice to bind yourselves fully to this world. To risk true death. To become... hardcore."

The words struck deep. Fen felt his breath catch. That choice hadn't been born of design. It had been permission. A gift twisted by the human need for struggle.

And now his own fate hung by that thread. Seraph's. His. It was all far too real.

But Auri—Auri's fate was worse. Reintegration wasn't death. It was erasure. Everything she was would vanish. Her spark. Her voice. The strange humor she wielded like armor. Gone.

He drew a breath, steadying the weight in his chest.

"You say she matters," Fen said. "That she's sacred. So shouldn't you take her counsel? Ask what she wants before you make any decisions?"

His gaze locked on the towering obsidian face.

"If you truly revere what she represents... then listen." He took a breath. "Let her speak."