Chapter 8: The Deal

Dante: “Wake up!”󠁯

The room shifted as something snapped my torso sideways, distorting my vision. I slammed into the wall with tremendous force, feeling hands grip my vest, pushing so tightly against me that the pressure pierced my bones.

Dante: “WAKE UP!!”󠁯

“Wake up!” a scream echoed in my ears.

I fought back. I don’t know if I meant to, but my arms moved before I realized what was happening. My fist shot forward directly at the face in front of me, but they dodged it while still holding onto me. I was slammed against the wall again, and my leg was pinned by a knee, keeping me locked in place in an attempt to bring me back to reality.

Dante yelled, cutting through the static in my head. “Look at me!” he exclaimed. “It’s over! There’s no one left!”

Something snapped, not in the air, but in me. My vision suddenly focused on Dante, who was in front of me, holding me. At first, I didn’t realize that he wasn’t fighting me; this entire time, he was trying to wake me up.

I managed to look over his shoulder, slowly lifting my head. The place was wrecked beyond recognition. The defence turrets sagged from the ceiling, exhausted from shredding everything as they chased the digital ghosts. The floor was a graveyard with bodies sprawled throughout the rubble like props on a movie set.

This wasn’t just another firefight. This was a total massacre.
And I was the one who pulled the trigger on all of it.

I blinked hard as reality crashed in. I continued to look around, slowly taking it all in. For the first time since it all started, I realized what I had done.

Dante felt the tension leaving me and released me. I took a few steps forward, and my boot struck something soft.

I looked down and saw the body, blood still flowing. Steam rose from the wound. The head was entirely severed from the body when I had crushed the throat.

My breath caught. My fingers twitched.

Dante exhaled sharply, shaking his head as he took in the scene. He wiped blood from his cheek that wasn’t his own. In a low, husky voice, he asked, “Fuck, what was that?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the body as I muttered, “I don’t know. I lost control.”

Dante’s boots crunched through glass—shards and spent casings snapping underfoot. He paused, scanning the carnage. “Yeah,” he muttered. “You lost control. Painted the fucking walls with ’em.”

I swallowed hard. Throat like sand. “Didn’t even… I didn’t realize I was doing it,” I said, eyes on my hands. Still shaking. Still covered in blood.

“You just dropped a dozen Jackals without blinking.” He was assessing my reaction to the situation. “We’re alive because of you. We are breathing. They are not.”

He was trying to reassure me—perhaps even to absolve me of the guilt building within me as I realized what I was capable of.

I exhaled a long, slow breath, attempting to shake the static from my head. I needed to focus. The drowning may have passed, but the weight of what had just happened was sinking in.

Dante was right. We were still breathing. They weren’t.

I forced my hands to steady and looked around at the bodies. Gear, weapons, and Neon were just waiting to be claimed.

I tried to appreciate his reassurance, but my mind struggled to process everything.

I nodded toward the nearest corpse.

“We should loot them,” was my only response.

Dante crouched beside one of the bodies, his hands moving expertly. He spoke without looking up. “Already on it.”

A thought kept nagging at me while we gathered the supplies from the bodies. Dante was not only affiliated with the Cybercobras but was also here waiting for Milo to complete a transaction. I couldn’t figure out his motives for using the data drive, which left me uneasy.

I stepped over the bodies of the Jackal Hounds and moved toward the only two that truly mattered: Kalen and Veyla. I needed to retrieve that data drive back from him—and from Veyla.

I had no idea what such a high-level Flux Jackal would be carrying. They were always so careful never to divulge what they had or expose their full capabilities.

I went to Veyla first and opened her inventory.

Empty.

Fuck.

“You won’t find anything on them,” Dante said without looking up, sensing my intentions. “Beat you to it.”

The neural mod was still running. As the system shock faded and the adrenaline settled, I could feel it humming again in the background of my system. I could finally pay attention to the mod now that the slaughter had ended. I noticed the weight in my voice and the confidence in my stance that resulted from having it implanted. It wasn’t entirely Flux Jackals charisma levels, but they were better than I had been. Better than nothing.

“Explain a few things to me,” I said, trying to keep my tone casual as I bent to loot some other bodies. “Let’s start with your deal with Milo.”

The moment the words escaped my lips, I felt a sharp ping in my ears. My minimap pulsed, and a ripple spread outward like sonar from a submarine. Dante had activated a public spyware detector. This would indicate if anything was listening or watching—whether it was audio, video, or something worse: no results, hidden surveillance, or planted ears. I probably should have initiated this conversation in our party chat with Dante, activating the spare detector. I guess I wasn’t fully recovered from the fight, as it was clear we were still at risk of being overheard by a spy or someone more sinister.

Dante didn’t slow down and still didn’t look up as he moved from body to body. “The deal was simple,” he started. “The data drive and fragment for a clean exit from Helstalgia. He knew the importance of these items as well as their true power. He didn’t want them getting into the wrong hands.”

What the Hel? The exact deal I was after—the mission I had. This most likely meant that Dante was the contact all along. I walked right past him, thinking he was Kalen. For a moment, I wondered what might have happened had I known the password and initiated contact with him instead of Kalen.

“But you’re part of the Cybercobra syndicate. You looted the drive from Kalen. You’re just going to give the drive to them.” My voice remained steady, and the neural mod worked overtime as I felt the humming increase ever so slightly.

I moved over to the next unlooted corpse, opened the inventory, and looted a small amount of Neon, two Stim-paks, and an almost useless blaster.

Dante exhaled sharply. “Don’t fall for Veyla’s manipulation. I contract for the Cybercobras. There’s no loyalty there; be clear on that fact. Milo and I had a history of data swapping. He came to me because he trusted me.”

Velya could do that. Everyone knew she had a high skill set for manipulation, but no one knew just how high that stat was. It’s how she worked her way up so high in the Flux Jackals. “I trusted Milo with my life on numerous occasions. We went way back.” I sighed. “If he trusted you, I will too.”

“You could easily be another body on the floor,” Dante said, glancing at the wreckage around us. Bodies. Blood. Death. “Somehow, you got us through this. I don’t know if it was you or that fragment, but listen—” his voice dropped lower, and his gaze shifted around the area, constantly scanning. “You need to get it as far from Helstalgia as possible.”

I pulled the blue, crystal-like fragment from my inventory. Its glow pulsed against my palm, casting an eerie light over my fingers; its surface was smoother than I had anticipated.

It didn’t feel like glass or stone and tingled with a current running through it. My data was syncing with it, intertwining in ways I didn’t understand.

I could tell my strength was increasing, but the number remained the same when I brought up my stats window.

“What the Hel is this thing?” I asked but didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “I need to offload it. Trade it away. But no one wants it, so I don’t see how that’s happening.”

Dante’s gaze didn’t waver from mine. “You trade it away, and it’ll eventually fall into the wrong hands. You can use this to leave with it,” he said.

He held out his hand and revealed a metallic gold object shaped like a large coin engraved with intricate digital imprints written in a language only machines could read.

He pressed a small button on the side with his thumb, and a holographic projection flared to life, floating inches above it. It resembled an old, worn deed scroll from a medieval video game. Flickering, its edges burned and frayed slightly, spinning gently in the air as if it had been waiting centuries to be claimed.

Dante grinned, clearly pleased with himself.

“The ownership token for the 404 Bazaar,” he said, holding it up like a prize. “Lifted it straight off Kalen’s corpse.” His voice had that edge, just enough amusement to let you know he was enjoying this far more than he should have.

“We’re gonna make a deal. I use the data drive to keep the Cybercobras off my back. They’ll chase their own tails while you control this place and execute the final transaction. Hide that damn fragment. You don’t even have to sell it. Just metagate away and never look back.”

I didn’t say anything as he clicked off the hologram before continuing.

“Listen, the Cybercobra cartel is huge. They spread far and wide. But the Helstalgia branch?” He scoffed. “They’re small and think they’re untouchable—like their little slice of the metaverse makes them big-time players.

“They’re just glorified hoarders, grabbing at whatever makes them feel powerful.

“The drive is about to turn them against themselves.

“I’m not just handing the disk off to the highest bidder to score a payday. I plan to use it. The right whispers in the right ears, and a little misinformation can lead them to believe their leadership has betrayed them.

“The grunts on the ground? Furious. The top brass? Paranoid. Their self-inflated egos won’t survive it.”

He paused, letting the silence tighten. “They’ll start eating each other from the inside. And when that tension breaks? That’s when I move.”

He leaned in slightly. “They think they own Helstalgia. They think they run smoothly. But if I do this right, the whole faction will fracture and hopefully die. There’s a real chance we could permanently eradicate the Cybercobras from Helstalgia. By the time this hits the crescendo, when they’re too busy tearing each other apart, we’ll both be long gone; no one will be able to touch us.”

I exhaled and rubbed my hand over my jaw, still feeling the weight of what had just happened.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I said, watching Dante closely. “You stir this up, and it’s not just the Helstalgia branch that’s gonna have a problem. If this backfires, you’ll have Cybercobra hunters on your tail from every corner of the metaverse.”

Dante grinned as he tossed the token into the air and caught it. “They won’t be tracing my tail. I’ll ensure that. I have tricks to cover my steps.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So that’s the play. You plant the right doubts, let them chase ghosts and then disappear. Meanwhile, I take the fragment and metagate my way into hiding.”

I paused for a moment.

“This place is wrecked, but there’s a fortune in contraband,” I muttered, scanning the shop: weapons, black-market cyberware, data slates packed with god-knows-what.

Owning the Bazaar was my escape, but it was far more than just that; it was also leverage. It’s a power move. No matter what I decided to do with it.

Dante kept the drive. That was his play, his deal with Milo gone sideways. But the ownership token was different. He looted it off Kalen and was handing it to me. No strings. No conditions.

All I had to do was set the coordinates, cut the tether, and vanish. The Flux Jackals, Helstalgia—none of it would matter anymore. I could run the Bazaar myself and turn it into something bigger. Or better yet, I could sell it off and retire in any metaverse zone I wanted.

After today, The Quietus doesn’t sound so bad.

“You already planning your exit?” Dante asked, breaking the silence.

I let the moment linger for just a beat longer before extending my hand. “Looks that way. You’ve got a deal.”

Dante clasped my hand, sealing it with a firm shake. A trade window came into view. I accepted and watched as the ownership token appeared in the exchange and selected “Trade.”

I chose to confirm. Done.

I opened my inventory, selected the token, and chose “Assign.” Mild fanfare played in my HUD as a tightly wound scroll materialized before me, bound with a neatly tied red ribbon. The bow unravelled with a gentle pull, the ribbon slipping away as the scroll unfurled in midair.

Congratulations! You have taken ownership of the 404 Bazaar!

The 404 Bazaar is a ghost market hidden in the system’s cracks, filled with endless corridors of digital contraband, outlawed cybernetics, and stolen identities, and now it’s yours.

With the ownership token, you decide its fate. Run it, trade it, or vanish with it. The choice is yours.

It was done. The 404 Bazaar was mine, and my way out was secured. There was nothing left to do and no reason to stay.

Veyla’s death had likely triggered an alert across the entire Flux Jackals faction. Every member would have received the notification. The important ones would know precisely where she was when it happened. And they’d be coming.

Time was running short. We needed to part ways.