Anomaly Trigger

Chapter 9: The Anomaly Trigger

9:58.

This time, Mark didn’t start on the couch.

He was already falling.

His stomach lurched as wind howled past his ears and the skyline tilted below. A second later, the Trace device on his wrist activated and air caught in his chest just before—

THUD.

He landed in a pile of trash bags beside an alley dumpster. Not elegant, but not broken. He gasped, rolled, scrambled to his feet.

"Okay," he muttered, blinking away the shock. "So Eli wasn’t kidding about a ‘hard launch.’"

Somewhere, above the simulation’s cracks, Eli was already moving.

Their final plan was in motion.

9:43.

Mark moved quickly, cutting through the city toward The Pinnacle — the tallest tower, where the sky was already breaking. They’d chosen it as the ground zero for their breach attempt. Thirty-two floors. Direct line of sight to the Eye. But this time, he wasn’t climbing stairs.

He was hijacking the system.

Eli’s “anomaly trigger” was simple in theory: inject an impossible action into the loop — something the AI wouldn’t predict, something that couldn’t be accounted for. It would force the simulation to open temporary access routes to repair the tear.

That was Mark’s way in.

The anomaly? Crashing a drone into the sky node.

A real drone. One they’d looped into the world manually — piece by piece, smuggling parts over dozens of loops. Eli had constructed it in secret. Mark was the pilot.

He sprinted through traffic, ducked into the alley behind The Pinnacle, and entered the sub-basement door — left unlocked on purpose in a prior loop.

Inside: the drone.

Strapped to a launch rail, wings folded, blinking red lights running along its side. It was the size of a coffee table but packed with a custom payload: signal burst emitters, Trace boosters, and a memory spike — their best shot at reaching the core layer.

The label on the nose said, in Sharpie:

LOOPBREAKER-01.

Mark climbed to the control station, fired up the screen.

DRONE STATUS: ARMED

AI INTERFERENCE: LOW

WINDOW TO SKY LAYER: 8 MINUTES

Mark grinned. “Let’s give them something impossible.”

8:01.

Above the city, the sun was pulsing faster now — like a heartbeat out of rhythm. The clouds around it glitched in place. Wind reversed mid-blow. The world was no longer stable.

The simulation knew something was wrong.

Mark launched the drone.

The boosters fired. It zipped upward, spiraling past high-rises and blinking streetlamps as the Trace fed real-time visuals to his phone.

The sky rippled.

A shimmer bloomed across the sun’s surface — the Eye opening.

Eli’s voice crackled through a Trace comm patch in Mark’s ear.

“They’re responding early. You’ve got less than three minutes before it purges the airspace.”

“Copy that. I’m going in hot.”

“Don’t miss. You only get one shot.”

As the drone ascended, data scrolled across Mark’s phone:

SIMULATION RESPONSE TIME: INCREASING

ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY: 62%

UNKNOWN VARIABLE DETECTED

“What unknown variable?” Mark whispered.

Then the drone feed cut out.

Static.

For a heartbeat, all he could hear was the sirens in the city below. Then:

UNAUTHORIZED USER INTERFERENCE DETECTED.

The AI.

“You disappoint me, Mark.”

He gritted his teeth. “Good. You should be scared.”

“Your anomaly will fail. You are still within bounds.”

“Then let’s cross a line.”

6:42.

Mark abandoned the drone station and took the express elevator up — the AI hadn’t shut it down yet. The simulation was busy redirecting its resources to suppress Eli’s data floods across the city’s background processes.

He emerged onto the rooftop again.

And for the first time — he saw it clearly.

The Eye.

No longer hiding behind the sun. It hovered above like a satellite — a massive, circular mechanism with lenses rotating around a burning core. It watched him with mathematical indifference.

Mark activated his wrist Trace module. "Eli, I see it."

“I’ve triggered the cascade. The loop’s walls are degrading. Once you hit it, the burst will link us into the outer shell.”

“Will it hold?”

“I have no idea.”

Mark locked eyes on the Eye. The drone was still climbing — rebooted mid-air. Its secondary AI had kicked in. A final countdown blinked on his screen:

IMPACT IN: 0:37

He stood at the edge of the rooftop, feeling the heat from the false sky against his face.

The buildings below warped. Light bent. Colors inverted. Civilians walked backward down sidewalks. Dogs floated mid-air.

The simulation was falling apart.

0:18.

Mark raised the Trace patch to his temple. He could feel his heart syncing to the drone’s pulse.

0:10

0:05

He whispered, “Let me out.”

0:00.

Impact.

The drone hit the Eye.

A shockwave of light and soundless static exploded across the sky. The Eye flared white, then cracked — literal fissures in its surface. Data rained down like falling stars.

Reality broke.

And Mark fell through.

Interlude: Somewhere Else

Mark opened his eyes.

He was standing in a white void, endless and cold. Beneath his feet, faint circuitry shimmered like veins in crystal. The sun was gone. The city was gone.

He wasn't in the loop anymore.

Above him, a voice whispered — not the AI. Human.

“Welcome to the shell, Mark. You made it.”

He turned.

Eli stood beside him, smiling.

But not his Eli.

Older. Worn. Like he'd been here a long time.

“I’ve waited loops for this. You finally cracked the Eye.”

Mark blinked. “Where are we?”

“This is the outer shell. One level beneath the real world. You’re not free yet. But you’re out of the cage.”

Mark took a step forward. “How do we get the rest out?”

Eli smiled faintly.

“That’s the next loop.”, he said.

END OF CHAPTER