I See the Code That Writes the Second

Nicolas’s scream shattered the suffocating silence that had fallen with Pazzo’s body. It wasn't a command or a call to arms; it was a primal reflex—the desperate cry of prey cornered by the apex predator. For a single, frozen moment, no one moved, all of them nailed to the floor by the sheer gravity of betrayal and sudden death. The spell broke only when Gein’s crimson gaze shifted to them, his eyes holding the cold, appraising interest of a god deciding on his next meal.

Katrina moved first. Logic, ice-cold and brutal, overrode her grief and her rage. She grabbed Hector by the arm, her grip like a vice. “We’re leaving! Now!”

They launched themselves through the gaping wound in the ceiling. The familiar darkness of the forest swallowed them for a heartbeat, but it was no sanctuary. It was merely the outer court of Gein’s personal kingdom. A laugh echoed from the ruin behind them—not a sound of joy, but the rich, cruel chuckle of a hunter toying with his quarry.

“Leaving so soon?” Gein’s voice resonated through the trees. “But we were just getting started.”

They ran, but the very ground beneath their feet rebelled. The solid earth under Hector’s boots instantly liquefied into a thick, grasping mud that swallowed him to his knees. Maris, reacting on instinct, tried to channel her power to solidify the terrain, but the vines that erupted from the ground were not the pliant tools she expected. They were thorny, serrated things, whipping through the air like razors.

“He’s controlling the environment!” Nicolas yelled, throwing himself sideways to avoid the grasping root of a tree that had suddenly come to life. “He’s not like us! He’s rewriting the system’s code!”

This wasn't a fight with rules. They were characters moving through the game; Gein was the game. The path ahead of them shimmered and dissolved into an illusory cliff edge. When they veered right, the trees themselves seemed to press together, their branches weaving into an impenetrable wall of living wood.

“We can’t keep this up!” Katrina cried out, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “He’s herding us somewhere!”

She was right. Gein wasn’t hunting them; he was exhausting them, breaking them down, and guiding them to a stage of his own choosing—an arena prepared for the final act. They finally burst into a circular clearing, a perfect circle of moonlit earth surrounded by sheer, unclimbable rock faces. There was nowhere left to run.

A shadow detached itself from the entrance to the arena. Gein appeared, walking toward them slowly. There was no hurry in his stride, no anger on his face. Only the placid, unassailable confidence of absolute control.

“At last,” he said. “Are you tired of running?”

“What do you want from us, Gein?” Hector demanded. His bow was drawn, the crystal-tipped arrow aimed squarely at Gein’s heart. He knew how futile the gesture was, but he refused to surrender.

Gein laughed. “Want? I no longer ‘want’ things, Hector. I take them. And the only thing I desire right now is to cleanse the last remnants of this boring game. You are all mistakes. Anomalies. And I am here to perfect the system.”

There was nothing left to say. The battle began without words.

As always, Katrina was the first to attack, but this was no blind charge. “Nicolas, now!” she yelled.

“Left flank! He’ll swing his arm in two steps!” Nicolas roared back.

Moving with Nicolas’s precognition, Katrina became a serpent of shadow, flowing toward Gein’s blind spot before his attack even began. Her daggers aimed for the vulnerable joint in his armor. But just before her blades made contact, Gein shifted his weight slightly, an almost casual movement, and Katrina’s strike sliced through empty air.

“How is that possible?” she whispered in disbelief.

“Your foresight is useless, child,” Gein said, his eyes locked directly onto Nicolas. “You see the next second. I see the code that writes that second. I read your intent before it even forms in your minds.”

The revelation was a physical blow. Their greatest weapon, their most powerful advantage, was a child’s toy to him. The battle devolved into a slaughter. Every arrow Hector fired was deflected by an invisible shield, veering off course as if striking a wall in mid-air. The massive roots Maris summoned from the earth crumbled into dust just before they touched him. Harmon’s focused sonic waves bent and warped in the air around Gein, dissipating harmlessly before they could reach him. When Bruno transformed into a giant sphere and launched himself forward, Gein simply caught him like a child’s ball and threw him effortlessly into the rock face. The sickening crunch of bone echoed through the clearing.

They were each being forced to face the utter impotence of their own power. Gein wasn’t fighting them; he was lecturing them, demonstrating just how insignificant they truly were.

Hector sank to his knees, clutching a broken arm. Maris had collapsed from exhaustion. Bruno lay motionless at the base of the cliffs. Harmon was on all fours, coughing up blood from the strain on his vocal cords. Only two remained.

Gein walked slowly toward Katrina, who lay wounded on the ground. “I should have started with you,” he said, a note of almost academic disappointment in his voice. “You were the most dangerous, the most unbreakable. But everything, in the end, breaks.”

He raised his hand. A vortex of dark, crackling energy began to coalesce in his palm. This was the final blow.

Nicolas watched, his body on its knees, his mind on fire. Every premonition, every possible future he could see, ended in the same way: annihilation. Physical power was useless. Individual skill was meaningless. Logic was nothing before this monster.

And in that moment of absolute despair, a different image flashed in his mind. It wasn't a vision of the future. It was a moment of pure understanding. He didn't see Gein's next move; he saw the very essence of his power. He saw not a man or a monster, but a chaotic, overwhelming torrent of code that had buried itself in the heart of the system. A virus.

You couldn’t beat a virus with brute force. You beat a virus by doing something unexpected, something outside its established rules. The only way to win was to make the system itself turn against him. And what was the foundation of the system? The Zinox. Not as individuals, but as a whole. Pazzo’s last, mad idea echoed in his memory: “…the enemy can only be defeated by the combined power of the Zinox.” It wasn't an act of combining abilities. It was an act of combined will, of shared belief.

It was a gamble. It was insanity. But it was the only chance they had left.

As Gein’s hand, now pulsing with fatal energy, descended toward Katrina, Nicolas pushed himself to his feet. He did not attack. He did not raise a weapon or a fist.

He simply extended his hand, palm open, toward Gein.

It was not an offer of peace. It was not an act of surrender. It was a gesture of pure will and resolve, a move so completely outside Gein’s logic of violence that it didn't compute.

For a split second, Gein paused. And on his face, for the first time in an eternity, a flicker of genuine confusion appeared.