Absolute Cheater - Chapter 556
Capítulo 556: Anomaly IX
The convoy fell silent.
Smoke drifted from the damaged transports. Emergency lights flashed, but no one moved. The guards who were still conscious stayed down. They knew better now.
Asher walked past them and stopped in front of the central carrier.
Up close, he could feel it clearly.
The thing inside was wrong.
It was dense, compressed far beyond safe limits. Multiple soul signatures forced together, barely held in place by suppression layers that were never meant to last this long.
“They rushed you,” Asher said. “And you’re tearing yourself apart.”
The carrier shook again. Fine cracks spread across the surface as containment struggled to hold.
Asher placed his hand on the outer shell.
The response was immediate.
Pressure surged outward, sharp and chaotic. Not an attack. A reaction. Like something waking up in pain.
Asher grounded himself and pushed back with controlled force. Not raw power. Precision.
He sliced through the outer runes, not breaking them all at once. He severed them in sequence, relieving pressure instead of releasing it.
The shaking slowed.
Inside, the fused core began to destabilize in a controlled way instead of exploding.
Asher drew his blade.
One clean strike.
He cut straight through the center of the construct, splitting the forced bindings that kept the souls merged together.
The effect was instant.
The core collapsed inward. Energy drained away instead of bursting out. The pressure vanished.
The carrier cracked open and went dead.
No blast.
No shockwave.
No survivors inside.
Asher stepped back and checked the area.
Nothing else was moving.
He turned to the remaining guards.
“It’s over,” he said. “Stay down. Report exactly what you saw.”
None of them argued.
Asher collected the remaining data nodes from the carrier. Physical proof. Transfer logs. Authorization chains.
Then he left.
By the time Association recovery teams arrived, the site was already compromised beyond repair.
And the truth was no longer contained.
Back in the city, alarms would be going off. Meetings would be called. Blame would start moving.
Asher didn’t slow down.
The next phase wasn’t about stopping transfers.
It was about the coordinator.
And now, the committee knew one thing for sure.
Asher wasn’t reacting anymore.
He was closing in.
Asher didn’t return to the city.
He changed routes twice, then erased his trail completely. By the time dawn broke, he was already moving through old infrastructure corridors that hadn’t been used in decades.
The data nodes were intact.
That mattered.
He stopped in a secure location and began reviewing them one by one. No emotion. No rush.
Transfer orders.
Emergency overrides.
Phase authorization stamps.
Everything led back to the same identifier.
The coordinator hadn’t just approved the move.
He had signed the acceleration order himself.
“That confirms it,” Asher said. “You panicked.”
More importantly, the logs showed something else.
A fallback location.
Not a lab.
Not an archive.
Not even an Association facility.
A private site.
Buried under layers of misdirection and shell ownership. Registered as a logistics hub that hadn’t handled cargo in years.
Asher leaned back and closed the files.
“They weren’t moving it to save the project,” he said. “They were moving it to protect you.”
That meant the coordinator was exposed.
And exposure changed behavior.
Asher activated his sealed channel again.
One short message.
“Transfer intercepted. Core neutralized. Logs secured.”
He paused, then sent a second line.
“You’re out of time.”
He shut the channel down before any response could return.
Across the city, the committee would be scrambling. Emergency sessions. Damage control. Internal accusations.
But one person would be doing something different.
The coordinator would be running.
Asher stood and gathered his gear.
He already knew where the man would go next.
Not to hide.
Not to flee the region.
To the one place that still made sense.
The private site.
Asher moved out.
This time, there would be no observation period.
No waiting.
No quiet dismantling.
This time, he would walk in.
And the coordinator would finally have to answer for what he had done.
The private site was farther out than Asher expected.
Not remote enough to draw suspicion. Not close enough to be checked often. It sat between old trade routes and abandoned processing zones, masked by outdated registrations and false maintenance records.
Asher approached it by night.
From a distance, it looked inactive. No lights. No traffic. No obvious guards.
That alone confirmed it mattered.
He slowed and scanned the area.
Hidden power lines.
Recent ground reinforcement.
New security layers built under old structures.
“They upgraded without changing the surface,” Asher said. “You were in a hurry.”
He circled once, then moved straight to the main access point.
The outer lock resisted for three seconds before he forced it open. Quietly. No alarms.
Inside, the air was warm and recycled. Machines were running below ground.
Asher followed the hum.
He reached a central chamber.
The coordinator was there.
Not alone.
Three security specialists stood between him and Asher. Not Association guards. Private contractors. Expensive ones.
The coordinator turned slowly.
He looked tired. Not scared. Just worn down.
“So,” the coordinator said. “You came yourself.”
“I always planned to,” Asher replied. “You just made it sooner.”
The coordinator raised a hand slightly. The guards tensed but didn’t move yet.
“You stopped the transfer,” the coordinator said. “You don’t know what you destroyed.”
“I know exactly what it was,” Asher said. “A failed construct held together by stolen souls. You rushed it because you were afraid.”
The coordinator exhaled.
“If we didn’t move forward,” he said, “others would have. This was control.”
“This was escalation,” Asher replied. “You decided losses were acceptable.”
The coordinator looked away.
“They always are,” he said quietly. “Someone just has to sign the line.”
Asher stepped closer.
“You signed every one.”
The guards shifted.
Asher didn’t draw his blade.
“Stand down,” he said to them. “This ends here.”
One of the guards glanced at the coordinator.
The coordinator didn’t give the order.
He knew it was over.
Slowly, he raised both hands.
Asher activated his recorder and placed it on the table between them.
“Start talking,” Asher said. “Names. Sites. Everything.”
The coordinator nodded once.
Outside, the site’s systems began shutting down one by one.
This time, there would be no cleanup.