Review :

Snake557 : Definitely on the right track, there :) Ora's story gets expanded on closer to the end of this story!

ThoreLB : 2014! That's when I started Defying Code, so basically the beginning if you ask me haha. Thank you so much for sticking with me and for enjoying the saga, I'm honored to have the handful of loyal readers I have. It's been a fun ride so far, that's for sure, all thanks to you guys :)

chuckiboo : Yes, absolutely! Light is definitely there... Gideon's definitely getting closer, he's a lot closer to it than I think I've lead on, in these recent chapters, believe it or not haha. Thank you so much for reading along and for leaving reviews, it really means a lot to me, truly. Reviews and hearing your guys support and excitement for my writing really makes an impact on me and pushes me to carry on, so it's really appreciated, thank you.


Song Listened To :

Mankind by LICK & No Etiquette


T/W :This chapter contains mild gore/torture


*Chapter 170*

"Let me go, let me go," Gideon grunted in desperation.

Due to the sheer amount of struggling he had done, said guards managed to get Gideon's hands and arms tied up behind his back. Although Gideon was still strong and capable, he lacked any shred of his wrecking skills and strength, making this yanking excursion through darkened arena corridors slippery and messy due to just how much he thrashed around in the anticipation that said thrashing would even work. The tight metal ring about Gideon's jugular was attached to a thick pole, one of which the main guard was holding. No one said a word, no one adhered to Gideon's pleas, no one made clear just where they were taking him, all Gideon knew is that he was screwed. Realization that simply mentioning leaving was the thing to break the illusion, everything was beautiful until he peaked out the windows of this funhouse, the facade he now was deeply regretting even so much as falling for. The raw idea that the grass definitely wasn't greener on the other side was something he was terrified would now haunt him for the rest of his tortured days here in The Block. He heavily panted as he scuffled and tried not to choke, though as they rounded a corner, Gideon peered to the end of the corridor they continued to traverse and felt his pupils tighten as to just what was on the other end.

As if hit between the eyes, a blast from the past, he recalled a vivid nightmare he had of this corridor. Every ounce of his intuition and reach for the universe's goodness came down and smacked him in the face, screamed 'where've you been', he heavily panted and stared headlong down this dark corridor that simply ended with a massive, terrifying looking floor-to-ceiling metal door that closed by bars and grooved teeth sunk firmly into one another. With the hang of the bright, ominous red light, Gideon recalled his nightmare including Kepa's stone statue standing at the end of this hall, weeping, a foreboding tell of just the agony he was about to endure, the agony he was about to let fly into the sky, he prayed it somehow wouldn't reach Kepa, even though she certainly had any and all feelers out for any sign of life. Gideon heavily panted in full panic and continued to quietly urge the guards to free him, though said pleas only made the guards tug on him harder, yank him down the corridor faster, and as the huge, rusty metal doors began to croak in a slide open, it revealed a huge, terrifyingly black room with a single spotlight directly in the middle of it. Gideon was dragged to said spotlight, thrusted to his knees and pinned in a half-bow to the ground due to the main guard fastening the pole, which was attached to Gideon's jugular, into the ground directly in front of Gideon.

"Please, don't leave me here," Gideon loudly called in terror as he looked up and seemingly watched every guard vanish into the black.

He grunted to try and free himself, though flinched the second a few other lights came on, about two dozen feet ahead of him. With said reveal, Gideon's heavy panting ceased to a crawl of terrified confusion, dainty, gleeful curiosity so briefly kissed his skin, though with the way his eyes collected with this familiar stranger, he scoffed a trembling huff of a desperate breath and narrowed his gaze in mortified confusion as he opened his mouth to utter the name, a name he was certain was long gone from his vocabulary, the last person he was expecting to see hovering over him in a menacing loom. The eclipse of the light against his blonde, curly hair, the glint of dark blue stabbed tight into Gideon's terrified gaze, Gideon could hardly get the word out.

"Callum?" Gideon hoarsely whispered in a pin-prickle of full terror that now coursed his veins.

"C'mon, Gideon, let's... Let's just TALK about this," Callum's gentle voice soothed, he gestured his arms out and smiled, he looked totally cleaned up, dressed in pristine black clothes, he clasped his hands together and gave Gideon a look of almost forlorn concern, though Gideon could tell, right off the bat, that Callum had changed, hardened into someone that now certainly wasn't on his side, "You know you can't leave... You came here for a reason, didn't you?"

"Let me go, Callum let me go," Gideon grunted pleadingly, tears welled in his eyes, the raw fact that he was face to face with someone from his past made the whole reality of his poor decisions far scarier, far more real, he shook his head and narrowed his gaze in full desperation, "I just want to return to Kepa, I don't care about anything else, I just need to get back to her."

"Gideon, what about our plan?" Callum hissed in full frustration, though as Callum continued on, a huge, terrifying creature was seen off to the side, behind Callum a ways, he stood at what looked to be a control station, and it was in a few flips of a switch did Gideon understand that he was knelt on a plate of incredibly intricate grid lines. Callum huffed a sorrowful noise and narrowed his haunting gaze for emphasis, "What about taking over Sugar Rush? The whole Arcade? Finding the portal? Duplicating the User's powers? It could all be ours."

"I don't want it, Callum, you can have it, I just need to get back to the lighthouse," Gideon whimpered, tears of desperation now flood his being. He grit his teeth and outwardly showed remorse, full emotion he had been stuffing for so long, he sobbed out to the room and didn't care what Callum thought, "You can have it all, just please... PLEASE let me go. I'm begging."

"I hear you, Gid," Callum muttered in soft remorse, he bobbed a nod and shrugged, "I'll let you go..."

"Thank you," Gideon whimpered quietly, though he flinched in rocked surprise the second a huge, thick band of circuitry illuminated the metal plate Gideon was knelt on, as if to be plugged in and turned on.

"Under one condition," Callum eased quietly, to which Gideon squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in ironic agreeing.

"Any, name it," Gideon pleaded quietly, to which Callum donned a cocky little smirk and peered to Gideon down the bridge of his nose.

"I'll let you piece it together," Callum muttered darkly, though just as Gideon opened his mouth to reply, he was hit with a cold shock wave of electricity his body couldn't afford.

Gideon arched his back in rocked surprise, jolted with the eruption of aggressive electricity that grappled his coding and jarred in gaping, frozen shock for a second before the heat settled, though only barely. Suddenly, the metal plate he was sitting on became hot to the touch and acted as if it were a drain at the bottom of the ocean, proverbially opening and sucking every single last thing into it. Gideon felt as if his skin was coming unglued from his skeleton, and with hot realization as to just what was happening, the sheer pain overrode every single last ounce of rationale that could even take place. As if clawing out his coding with a hundred rusty knives, Gideon threw his head back and urgently uttered a hard bellow of agony out into the universe. His whole body shook as said plate relentlessly began to suck every last ounce of power to his name out of his mainframe. All at once, the machine let up, leaving Gideon sagging in his aggressive kneel, though with said let up, his coding desperately tried to rush back into the empty gaps in his DNA, only to find the stick-straight circuits underneath his skin had now begun to coil in on themselves in messy, unorganized spirals of curling confusion.

"Callum!" Gideon desperately cried, he heavily panted and urgently uttered the loudest, bellowing scream of unimaginable pain out into the black abyss about him, though before he could do whatever he could to try and give Callum a proper reason to let up, the plate underneath him hummed with the bass of electric power, once more.

Gideon arched as the electricity now tore the coding from his spine, he scrunched his face in terror and bellowed a cry of furthering agony out into the room as he could feel every ounce of his coded DNA leaving his body. Every ounce of his wrecking and glitching abilities left him, though as the idea hit him between the eyes, he quickly understood that what Callum was after was Gideon's manifestation. Tears streamed his cheeks, sweat dripped down his temples, blood dripped from his ears, and it was here was he terrified to feel his eyes begin to feel as if they were due to popping out of his skull. He did everything he could to squeeze his eyes shut and somehow endure, though as it let up, one more time, the small amount left of his coded ability confusedly swam in the empty space underneath Gideon's skin. His arms fervently glitched about in haphazard splays of white, the circuitry of his once pristine, stick-straight purple mainframe was now a mess of white squiggles and frayed wires, he felt his lungs want to collapse with the urgent, bellowing call of terror that continued to echo about the empty void of a room they were stationed in. Gideon arched once more as the metal plate angrily illuminated, and as it sucked nearly every single last ounce of Gideon's power from his skin, it finally ceased, leaving Gideon a crumpled, tied up mess of harrowing noises and drooling, crippling pain.

"Get Vye down here," Callum snipped into a minuscule little walkie gently tucked into the collar of his coat. He broadened his gaze to Gideon and gently began to step over to him, "Alright, Giddy, thanks for your contribution. Vye's gunna take it from here..."

Gideon grunted in heavy panting and peered his crazed, terrified gaze up into Callum's in rocked desperation, though as Callum hovered, he meanly pressed on.

"You've got a long road ahead you... Lots of time to think about where your loyalty should lie, Gideon," Callum muttered, "There's nothing in Litwak's worth going back for, you know this... For how shitty they treated us, for every time they wronged you... You'll realize the weight of our original plan, and hopefully you'll wise up."

Gideon did everything he could to manually get himself to breathe. Now that his coding was entirely shot, it wiggled about in panicked confusion and wondered even how to get his organs to cooperate. He trembled violently, his ears bled, his teary gaze peered up into Callum's in rocked desperation that he was certain he had never been so low, so entirely down and out in his entire life. The only thing keeping his head looking up, from here, was the raw idea that he was alive, it was any shred of an opportunity to be in Kepa's arms once more. A nearby door was heard croaking open, from far across the way, and as Callum turned to greet whoever it was, Gideon strained to try and desperately stay coherent.

"What the hell is going on? Who's trying to leave?" Vye demanded in full confusion as she neared, Gideon crumpled and now felt the overwhelming urge to spill every ounce of his knowledge of Kepa to her, though as he grunted a whimper of a noise to get words out, he faltered due to the shooting pain in his jaw and mainframe.

"Got a runner... I'm shocked it'd be Gideon, actually," Callum mumbled dryly as they both peered down to Gideon's messily knelt figure, arms tied, eyes sunken, blood trickled his clavicles, "Take him to a red room... Show him who's boss. He won't act up ever again."

"Sir," Vye stated with calm certainty, Gideon felt his pupils tighten with the raw idea that Vye was actually answering to Callum, and though Gideon was sure his influence had stemmed from knowing Flint, he was swiftly reminded that Flint was the guy behind this whole ordeal. Harrowing information that tried to hit his brain, on top of desperately trying to keep him from going into cardiac arrest. Vye grunted, grappled the pole that had Gideon's throat in a chokehold, unpinned it from the locked position it was in the ground and skillfully dragged Gideon's weak body to a clumsy stand, "C'mon. You should know better."

"Please," Gideon whimpered, he only barely could mouth the words, he grunted and stumbled on his now wobbly legs as Vye skillfully strong-armed Gideon out of the room. Gideon croaked a noise above a crackled whisper and felt as if his bones were gelatin, "M-My powers..."

"Shouldn't have run," Vye stabbed meanly as the two left in the direction from which Gideon came.

Although Gideon had a billion retorts, a billion questions, a billion concerns, it was all met with haphazard grunting and panting, the only things he could afford out of his lungs. Dizzy with pain, he felt as if he was suddenly given a brand new set of coding that absolutely wasn't his, lifeless coding that had zero compatibility with his body, and due to Vye's strong arming about the darker, narrower corridors, he hardly had any sense of up from down. After about two minutes of stumbling walking with his arms viciously tied behind his back, of Vye meanly berating Gideon to get good, his desperate attempts to get words out, she finally swung him into a room with a low ceiling and sealed the two in, once and for all. The second Gideon was in this room was the second he realized it was sound proof due to the way their scuffling now became infinitely louder and clearer. Gideon heavily panted through his nose and did everything in his power to so much as even feel his feet on the ground beneath him, though as he got a few terrified darts of glances about this room, he felt another wave of terror plague him.

The room was gently illuminated, though barely. There was a singular chair with arm ties on one end, and a video camera on the other. Lined on the walls were all sorts of weird, terrifying looking torture devices, and just as Gideon thought this nightmare couldn't get any worse, he sucked in a breath of continued desperation and did everything in what little power he had left to source a single drop of energy. Due to Vye being prepared to set Gideon up, to live stream this torture session to sick individuals on the dark web for a price, Gideon inhaled a thick breath and jolted into action, ultimately catching Vye entirely off guard. Gideon managed to utter a hard, crackling yell of desperation out to the room, though as Vye sucked in a gasped and whirled around, the two collided in the mess of a scuffle that had Vye immediately baring her claws and skill. Vye uttered a hard yell of defiance and, although Gideon had his arms tied and a grapple of a metal pole secure about his jugular, he still powered into her with the full force of his body weight alone, ultimately blindsiding her with the burst of his energy.

Vye bared her fangs, erupted in a vicious cat scream and wildly clawed her hands outwards at Gideon's face to slow him. In the catch, lightning-fast swipes of her ability, she slashed both his pecks and flung back for another hit to his face, ultimately swiping him down the right and front part of his face, over his eye and mouth. Gideon sucked in a gasp of pain, and though this ultimately jarred Gideon from his push of movement, Vye grit her teeth, allowed her hefty, long cat-like tail to thump to the ground underneath her, and as she laid her whole body weight into the gentle bend and spring of her tail, she lifted both of her powerful feet and gave Gideon a swift, gut-rearranging kangaroo kick straight to his abdomen. Gideon was flung backwards due to the force, he fell to the ground, ultimately taking the camera out with him, though as Vye snarled and grappled the pole attached to Gideon's neck, so to yank him back to a clumsy stand, she snarled in his face and feverishly delivered him a nasty threat.

"Y'got a lot of nerve for a little bitch who just lost their powers," Vye loudly snarled, she tugged on the pole and watched as Gideon's face now dripped with blood, "I'll stay in here ALL day, buddy, I got time!"

Gideon grunted a noise amidst his raspy panting to attempt to beg Vye to listen, though he jolted with Vye's movement, ultimately shaking the last tiny byte of his glitching powers out of him and directly into the pole Vye gripped. Upon the blip of a grapple of coding, his desperate energy gripped to hers in a dive of a hug, as if to beg that she hold still and allow the information to course through her without words, and with a great deal of success Gideon was certain wasn't in his favor, Vye wildly flinched, long-blinked in panting bewilderment and allowed the last shred of Gideon's coding to soak her soul in waves of feverish plea. Vye gasped a noise and held still as her and Gideon loudly panted in each other's faces, he grimaced and gave her a look through his crazed, golden eyes as he hurriedly delivered the raw, shoved away images of Kepa's face he had so desperate done what he could to not revisit, though in this single instance, he knew this was the one thing to ultimately save his life. Vye's furrowed, snarling look sagged into terrified shock as her creepy blue eyes dart all about Gideon's bloody face, alive with the fresh gash she had just delivered, though in unadulterated shock, she shoved the pole out of her hands, unhanded Gideon, took a few scuffles backwards and allowed her chest to heave in the switch up of whispery panic that now crawled over her.

"How the hell do you know about my little sister?" Vye sharply and meanly whispered, Gideon sagged his shoulders and felt as if this moment was way too good to be true, he choked the noises out as best as he could.

"Kepa's my g-girlfriend," Gideon's voice hardly held any decibels, he trembled as the two stood in each other's loose presence, once and for all, "P-Please... Sh-she's all I have. I love her..."

"She's alive," Vye whispered in rising terror, just what this meant for her and her family, she continued to pant and urgently dart her eyes about the room, as if to suddenly understand that switching motives was something that she didn't technically want to do, but now had to do.

"Yes," Gideon whimpered, more tears splayed his bloody face, "Please... I-I'm begging you, please..."

"Please what," Vye hissed as she flattened her ears and clenched her fists at her sides, as if Gideon's plea was enough to jar her from her rushing ideas, though Gideon squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

"PLEASE let me go, please... I-I have to get back to Litwak's, to Sugar Rush," Gideon wept, "Have my coding, have my powers... Kepa's worth it. Take everything I have, just please... I'm begging you, Vye..."

Vye panted through her nose and peered to Gideon as a whole, a beast of a man now robbed of every ounce of powers to his name, bloody and mangled, tattooed and pierced all to hell, she was shocked that even he was willing to endure even more torture to return to her sister, who she was only now discovering was alive. She shook in full confusion and felt frozen in plagued fear. The only shred of bought time they had was in this little torture chamber, though as she feverishly began to look about for ideas, she took note of the coded, brick of a hard drive near the small stand that hung at the edge of the room. She understood that due to Gideon's mainframe now being far smaller in byte size and information, she wondered if she could simply transfer his coding to the drive and sneak out of the building with it. Understanding the detriments behind helping Gideon, here, she silently peered into his eyes, alive with purpose though so battle-worn and sunken with raw, terrified, desperate defeat. Vye exhaled a trembling breath through her nose and felt terror plague her as she bobbed a finalized nod and peered deep into Gideon's eyes.

"Save my family," She shakily whispered as she pointed down to the ground, a feverish demand she knew Gideon was ready to whole-heartidly accept, "Stop at nothing to save us... Tell Kepa that I love her..."

"Done," Gideon hoarsely assured.