Full Server Assault

# Chapter 28: Full Server Assault

Dawn in Neo Angeles looked like a loading screen stuck at ninety percent—gray sky, neon still on, hope still buffering.

The offshore node wasn't a tower. It was a barge. Data barge in international water pretending to be a research vessel, antennas like spines, Nexus logo painted small enough to deny in court.

Sarah stayed city-side with legal triggers and militia jammers. Kira and I took a settlement boat with bad paint and good engines. Marcus ran the net from the clinic—coherence seventeen percent and rising because he'd slept two hours and stolen my coffee metaphorically.

*Council in position,* he reported. *Grandma at door. Education hub masked. Hunters massing on backbone—I'm the bait. You're the knife. Don't screw up.*

"Love you too," I said.

The barge grew on the horizon.

Kira checked her slate. "Venn's on-site. Signal confirmed. Last stand energy."

"He doesn't do last stands," I said. "He does invoices."

"Today he does both."

---

Boarding wasn't cinematic.

It was wet rope, jammer packs, and a militia volunteer named Paz who'd lost an uncle to a Nexus clinic scan and didn't need speeches.

Sarah's voice stayed in my ear—vitals, legal timestamps, calm that meant we'd already started winning in court. Marcus opened with a council broadcast: *Hold doors. Confuse hunters. Zero needs six minutes.* Grandma answered. The medic we'd freed answered. Neighbors became shields because their HOA finally fixed the streetlights.

Kira climbed beside me. "Venn wants quarterly revenue from militias who think souls are ammo."

"Then we sink his quarter," I said.

We hit the barge's maintenance deck. Salt air. Server hum. Hunters waiting—November rebuilt, Oscar replaced by Papa and Quebec, designation chatter crisp again because backup factories loved their alphabet.

Marcus went loud on the net.

Every ghost who could hold a door held a door. Elias routes open. Memes flying. *DISTRACTION TEAM GO* written in caps because Marcus had never learned indoor voice.

Hunters bit.

Papa and Quebec turned toward the settlement relays, toward Marcus's fraying heroic signal.

November stayed to guard the barge backbone.

"Split successful," Kira whispered. "Thirty seconds."

I touched November.

Bridge open. Hand on server rack metal—physical anchor, net anchor, same channel.

November shattered into static and a whisper—*thank you*—from something that might've been a medic once.

We ran inward.

Core room: glass tanks again, smaller scale, same sin. REvenant backup heartbeat pulsing. Venn at the terminal in a windbreaker instead of a suit because even arms dealers got salt spray.

"Zero," Venn said. Calm. "You came to the DLC. Impressive."

"Shut down the node," I said.

"Or?"

"Or I touch every hunter you've got left and unmake them in front of your buyers on the live feed Sarah's lawyers are recording."

Venn's smile flickered. "Bluff."

I didn't bluff.

I pulled the offshore leash map from Kira's slate, opened bridge full, and reached through the backbone into the net where Papa and Quebec hunted Marcus—touched both leashes at once, snapped both, felt coherence rush out of me like a bar draining HP.

Sarah's voice in my earpiece from city-side: "Vitals critical. Zero—"

"Busy," I said.

Papa dissolved into a man's sob—*I didn't know*—and was gone. Quebec followed.

Marcus coherence jumped—eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

*Zero,* he said. *You're insane. Keep going.*

Venn lunged for a kill switch.

Kira tackled him. Paz jammed the terminal. I hit the NX-7 port on the backup core—handshake, accept, kill—

The heartbeat died.

Backup factory offline.

Venn screamed—not rage, arithmetic. "You can't kill demand. Governments—militias—"

"Can buy something else," Sarah's voice said on the feed now, broadcast through legal channels. "Ghost Net charter. Consent-based infrastructure. Oversight. Public audit. You lost the monopoly on afterlife and you lost the monopoly on weapons."

Venn looked at the camera he hadn't noticed Paz had pinned to the rack.

He ran.

Actual run. Lifeboat. Of course.

"Let him," Kira said, blood on her teeth. "He'll drown in subpoenas before he drowns in ocean."

Maybe. Arms dealers were slippery.

We planted evidence beacons—Sarah's legal team loved beacons—and evacuated as the barge's auto-scuttle woke up.

Twenty minutes to sink or explode or whatever corp security meant by *deny assets*.

The boat fled.

I stayed jacked until the horizon swallowed the barge.

Marcus in my chest—twenty-two percent, twenty-three, holding.

*We did it,* he said. *Raid clear. Loot: dignity. Very rare drop.*

I laughed until I cried.

Paz looked away. Kira didn't.

---

City-side aftermath was paperwork and cheering and vomiting over the rail once adrenaline left.

Sarah met us at the dock with blankets and lawyers—actual lawyers, not corp ones, people who said *evidence* and meant it.

Legal seizure requests filed before the barge sank. International partners copied. REvenant buyer list in prosecutors' hands.

Marcus hosted a net party that crashed two relays from joy.

Coherence twenty-five percent by nightfall.

Not full Marcus. Not zero. Enough to roast my boat shoes.

"Venn?" I asked.

Kira watched feeds. "Lifeboat picked up by unknown vessel. Jurisdiction fight incoming."

"So not over," Sarah said.

"Boss phases never are," I said. "But we burned the server."

The Ghost Net council pinged: *Assault successful. Charter vote accelerated. Municipal hearing in seventy-two hours.*

Seventy-two hours.

One more fight.

Not with guns.

With words and law and the boring weapons that kept people alive after the fireworks.

I slept fourteen hours.

Marcus watched the door.

Sarah watched me.

Kira wrote testimony.

Found family.

Full server assault complete.

Final confrontation still on the calendar.

Venn wasn't in a pyramid.

He was in a lifeboat.

And I still had a choice to make about my implant that the patch notes hadn't explained yet.

Tomorrow.

Tonight—rest buff.

Actually sleep.

For once.

---

The boat ride back felt longer than the assault.

Salt on my lips. Marcus at twenty-three percent whispering *raid clear* like a player afraid the screen would fade to black anyway. Paz wrapped a blanket around a volunteer who'd taken foam for us.

Sarah met us at the dock with lawyers who meant *precedent*. Kira bled from her lip and grinned like rage-quit had become religion.

"You touched two leashes at once," Sarah said. "Don't do that again."

"I'll try," I said.

Marcus: *He never promises. Consistent character build.*

We won the server. The war wasn't over. But we'd burned the DLC.