The entrance to Sector 12 was buried beneath the old industrial zone—past broken rails, collapsed transit tunnels, and long-abandoned warehouses. Ren remembered coming here once before, but only for a brief side mission. Back then, it was a half-finished area with weak enemies and minimal rewards.
Now, it felt like a graveyard.
The neon glow of Kōto City dimmed behind him as he moved deeper underground. His footsteps echoed through cracked concrete and warped metal walkways. The air down here shimmered with glitching textures—whole walls flickering between solid steel and lines of exposed code.
The Resistance used to have safehouses in every major sector. But here?
Nothing remained.
Ren's HUD pulsed as he passed a long-deactivated elevator shaft. The waypoint Aiko had marked on his map grew closer. He descended carefully through a half-broken ladder and landed in a ruined terminal.
Shattered monitors. Blood-stained NPC armor. The Resistance's colors—black and red—torn and half-burned, draped over a collapsed data core.
This had once been a command center.
Now, it was dust.
He knelt near the core and tried to activate it. The screen sputtered, struggled, then blinked to life. A single log entry survived.
[LOG ENTRY – RY-07: FINAL TRANSMISSION]
Konran infiltration successful. Resistance compromised. AI units corrupted. Sector 12 breached. Last known user location: Deep Archive Tunnel B.
If anyone finds this—don't trust the system. We were never supposed to win.
Ren stared at the log. That was his old mission file. The last mission he and Kenji took before Vault 7. Before everything fell apart.
He remembered how it ended—barely escaping, wounded, glitching. Kenji had joked afterward that they'd come back when they were stronger.
They never did.
He stood and moved toward Tunnel B.
The corridor was long and winding, with warning signs posted in broken Kanji. Konran's logo—stylized, cruel—lined the walls. At the far end, he found what looked like a checkpoint. A long corridor with gun turrets mounted in the walls, now disabled.
The bodies of NPC Resistance fighters littered the floor—burned, crushed, shot.
Ren kept walking.
At the end of the tunnel was a sealed door with a triangular lock.
It pulsed.
As if it recognized him.
"Dual Reboot detected."
Ren's breath caught in his throat.
The door unlocked.
He stepped inside—and the world shifted.
Gone were the industrial ruins.
Now he stood in a massive underground chamber lined with digital panels and floating data cubes. Screens hovered midair, showing old mission footage—clips of him and Kenji fighting side-by-side. It was like walking into a memory archive.
Then he saw it.
The Resistance Wall.
It stretched across the room—names carved into its digital surface.
Thousands of players. NPCs. Allies.
All gone.
At the very bottom, flickering faintly:
KenjiSato – Status: Unknown. Last signal: Vault 7.
Ren's jaw clenched.
This was where the Resistance fell.
Konran hadn't just taken over the game.
They had erased the movement entirely.
And yet—Kenji's name remained.
Not deleted. Not dead. Just… lost.
Ren walked to the console below the wall. A prompt appeared:
"Restore Resistance Network?"
He didn't hesitate.
He pressed YES.
The room shook. The panels lit up. A long-dead signal pulsed to life.
And across Kōto, in hidden corners of the code, the Resistance awakened.
Not many.
But enough.
Ren turned from the console, eyes sharp, voice low.
"Hang on, Kenji. I'm coming."