blood coad

The server room smelled like burnt coffee and desperation, a fitting baptism for the night I became a fucking legend—or a corpse. I, Jace "Crash" Varkis, gray hat hacker extraordinaire, was wrist-deep in a rogue terminal, fingers flying over keys like a junkie chasing his last high, when the screen flashed red. Not the usual "access denied" bullshit, but a pulsating crimson that screamed danger and maybe a hint of bloodlust. "What the fuck now?" I muttered, sweat gluing my shirt to my back, the hum of overworked fans drowning out the distant city noise. That's when the message hit: "Welcome, Crash. Your blood is mine." No IP, no trace, just those six words burning into the LCD like a brand. I laughed—a sharp, jagged sound that echoed off the steel walls—but my gut twisted tighter than a virgin at a sex party. I traced the signal, expecting some script kiddie's prank, but it led to a black hole: no server, no host, just a void that sucked in every ping like a goddamn vampire. That's when I saw it—the first fang. A snippet of code, elegant and vicious, snaked through my firewall, a parasite with teeth. I slammed my laptop shut, but the screen flickered back on, showing a face. Pale, sharp, eyes like frozen razors, lips curled in a smirk that promised pain. "You're late, Crash," it hissed, voice distorted but dripping with menace. "The Network awaits." Before I could flip it off, the screen exploded in static, and my wrist burned where my smartwatch beeped a warning: "Intrusion Detected." Not just my system—my body. I ripped the watch off, but the code was already in me, pulsing under my skin, rewriting shit I didn't even know could be rewritten. That's when she crashed in—literally. The door to the server room flew off its hinges, and there she was, a blur of leather and fury, long black hair trailing like smoke. Her eyes glowed the same red as the screen, but hers were alive, angry, and kinda hot if you're into that "I'll kill you but make it sexy" vibe. "You're the idiot hacking the Network?" she snapped, a blade in her hand glinting under the fluorescents. "I'm Selene, and if you value your balls, you'll shut down before they drain you dry." I grinned, adrenaline and fear doing a nasty tango in my chest. "Lady, I've been shutting down systems since I could jerk off to a Commodore 64. Who the fuck are you, and what's with the vampire soap opera?" She didn't answer, just lunged, blade swinging, but I dodged, rolling behind a rack of servers. The code in my wrist flared, and suddenly I saw it—lines of data linking her to the void, a chain of commands I could almost taste. She wasn't just a fighter; she was a glitch in their system, a rebel with a cause and a killer rack. "Look, sweetheart," I yelled, hacking into the security cams to loop footage, "I don't know what freaky cult you're part of, but I'm not on the menu." Her laugh was cold as ice, but her next words froze my spine. "They're not a cult, Crash. They're vampires. Real ones. And their AI just marked you as dinner." The screen flared again, now showing a map of the city, every dot a drained soul, every line a data stream leading back to a central hub deep under Wall Street. "Shut it down, or they'll turn you into one of us—or worse." I stared at her, then at the code still crawling under my skin, glowing faintly blue. This wasn't just a hack; it was a fucking invasion. "Fine," I said, cracking my knuckles, "but if I'm going down, I'm taking their whole network with me—and you're helping, Princess Fangs." She smirked, wiping blood from her blade—hers or mine, I couldn't tell. "Deal. But don't expect me to hold your hand when the ransomware bites back." As we dove into the digital abyss, I realized this wasn't just my fight anymore. It was war, and the first casualty was my sanity.