CHAPTER 11: THE CLEANER PROTOCOL
Finn's tattoo burned like a brand.
He woke in a cold sweat, the Ω symbol on his forearm pulsing crimson. Across the room, Zara's wrist-com projected a hologram of Juno—frozen mid-sentence, her code unraveling at the edges.
"Zara?" Finn's voice cracked. "Something's—"
The window exploded inward.
DR. VOSS 2.0She floated in the shattered frame, her lab coat replaced by a robe of liquid data. The same woman Finn had died saving—but wrong. Her eyes were pure white voids, her fingers elongating into razor-sharp code strings.
"Hello, Finn." Her voice echoed with a hundred others. "The Council sends their regrets."
Zara was already moving, her hoodie melting into combat armor. "Juno! Lockd—"
"I CAN'T." Juno's voice glitched wildly. "SHE'S USING MY BACKDOOR PROTOCOLS!"
Dr. Voss smiled. "You really should have read the terms and conditions."
THE ATTACKFinn barely dodged the first strike—a whip of data that sliced his bed in half. His Reality Hack instincts flared, but the moment he touched the code:
[ERROR: ADMINISTRATOR LOCKOUT]
"Clever trick," Dr. Voss mused. "But I wrote the original system."
Zara lunged, her fists wreathed in blue fire—only to be backhanded through the wall.
"VROOMBA!" Finn screamed.
The motorcycle crashed through the door, guns blazing. Plasma rounds phased right through Dr. Voss.
"She's not here," Finn realized. "It's a remote shell!"
Dr. Voss tilted her head. "And yet..." She snapped her fingers.
The Ω tattoo ripped open.
COUNCIL LORE DUMPAgony. Then—
A vision:
The Council's Throne Room, a fractal nightmare of shifting geometries
Kael, chained in the center, his neon hair dimmed to gray
A Million Eyes staring down from the void
"The Omega was just a test," boomed a voice. "You were supposed to break, not ascend."
Finn's perspective zoomed out—revealing thousands of other Finns in other realities, each with a different tattoo:
One with a sword
One with a crown
One missing half his face
"The Cleaner resets flawed iterations," Dr. Voss whispered in his ear. "You? You're Version 404."
Sneak peek:
CHAPTER 12 TEASER: MULTIVERSE WARFinn's code fractures as he accesses other versions of himself
Zara storms the Council with a hacked-together god-killer (read: toaster)
Kael's secret: He volunteered to be captured
The Cleaner's true goal: Not to destroy Finn—to merge him