Chapter Eighty-Seven: Holders of the Directive
Section One: Pressure Trigger
Two in the morning, Iron Valley's midsection, the night fog thick as a crust. The temperature plummeted, cloaking gray-zone outposts—abandoned power corridors, broken walls, sealed beacon boxes—in an infrared haze like floating isles.
Rust Street's S-6 channel broadcast cut out. Five minutes earlier, process suggestion prompts were sealed by the system, pages flashing: "Process interference too high · Validation failed." Simultaneously, a strong signal from the southeast began invading the main frequency in a secondary diffusion pattern, displacing existing process codes, steadily replacing them.
It wasn't the first time, but this was different.
The invading signal carried real-time broadcast sync commands and an auto-execution authorization pack—any device connecting would default to BV-S9 process group standards, silently recognizing it as an "authorized process."
"They're bypassing negotiation," Maria said, her voice hoarse.
Jason stood at the main console, eyes dark as the night. Fuxi flashed a prompt:
[Current process structure entered "template forced signal binding state"]
[Judgment: This behavior is the highest-level attempt at process self-designation, aiming to strip grassroots evaluation and trust transition structures]
Zhao Mingxuan tapped the secondary console, adding intel, "The process unit's advanced to 200 meters from S-6's perimeter, with two BV process officers, ten outer guards, beacon lances, command shields, signal injection packs."
"The goal isn't clearance," his voice dropped, "it's to seize the process in front of the crowds."
Two hours ago, Blackvine Society deployed its "Process Reconstruction Corps," aiming for "power slippage" without direct conflict.
The corps' goal wasn't combat but replacing "conflict feedback" with a "command framework."
Their tactic:
Process broadcast → On-site process deployment → Signal injection → Crowd default → Organization retreat → Control secured
They'd pulled it off three times in other peripheral zones.
Today, they aimed to try it on Rust Street's turf.
Jason reviewed the full plan report, silent. He pulled Fuxi's prediction tree, a network rapidly turning red.
"If S-6 is process-overwritten, the system will default control to BV process groups within 72 hours.
Crowds need not consent—mere non-resistance equals execution complete."
Tarn stood beside him, murmuring, "They treat processes like liquid, pouring into any void."
"This isn't negotiation—it's grouting."
Jason nodded.
"Then we block this ground first."
He issued an order:
"Process-bound combat team, full activation."
This was Rust Street's first true process-carrying armed unit.
Each member wore clearly marked gray armor, shoulder patches stamped with "HX-S1" process codes, armbands designating process executors. They weren't just soldiers but living embodiments of process trust.
The team didn't exist to crush enemies, but for one statement:
"We represent the process."
They didn't execute the process—they made it live through them.
At three oh-five in the morning, the gray-armor team reached S-6.
Their arrival was quiet, no fanfare, but every crowd member saw: the process wasn't on walls, broadcasts, or programs—it was on them.
No orders behind them, but the wounds on their backs were why the process existed.
A group of workers, moments ago wavering on accepting BV's process broadcast, saw the gray-armor line and silently powered down their devices, setting aside beacon receivers.
"We don't choose processes."
"We choose these people."
When Blackvine's BV process team arrived, S-6's broadcast tower was mute.
They initiated sync broadcasts per plan, but no crowd devices connected.
They injected processes into the data tower, only to find access ports severed.
The process officer demanded, "Who tampered with the process sync equipment?"
Tarn stepped from the line, facing him.
No gun drawn, no threats.
He held a coded card:
"HX-S1—Execution Unit: S-6 Process Executors"
"The process is active."
"No room for insertion."
The officer frowned, "You lack central authorization."
Tarn's gaze was steady, "We've had casualties."
As the officer opened his mouth to argue, Jason's voice came from behind.
"A process isn't data."
"It's forged from lives."
"You want to overwrite us, fine."
He took a slow step forward, eyes like blades.
"Pay with blood first."
Section Two: Infusion
S-6 zone, above the skyline, three eighteen in the morning.
The Blackvine process officer raised a signal gun in his right hand, his left arm's shield unfolding, projecting "BV-S9 Process Standard" in a beacon data stream, forming a clear 3D broadcast interface in the air.
"Process syncing."
"All organizations in this zone, submit process compatibility codes."
"Non-compliant entities default to process conflict status."
The words were read by rote.
The officer's tone held no anger, no emotion—just mechanical.
Rust Street's gray-armor team didn't respond.
They'd formed a semicircle before the data tower, each chest bearing an "HX-S1 Executing" indicator, armor surfaces catching the dim light to reveal fire scars and code scratches.
This wasn't new armor.
This was process armor that had fought.
Tarn's voice was iron, "HX-S1 process is executing, no authorization for replacement, no need for compatibility."
The officer's face didn't shift, "HX-S1 isn't in the central process archive, no superior directive."
"Surrender execution rights."
Tarn replied calmly, "Come try."
Signal infusion began.
Blackvine's process guard activated a "signal override program," five process subcommand packs forced into public beacons.
Broadcast frequencies flipped, S-6's ground devices screeched with callback noise, crowd terminals jammed, some crashing.
This was violent replacement—not attacking people, but seizing their electronic breath.
"They're not executing a process," Zhao Mingxuan said coldly in the control room.
"They're making it so you can only hear theirs."
Jason ordered, "All process-bound teams, advance ten meters."
The gray-armor formation pushed forward in sync, process codes on their backs flaring bright, beacon identifiers reigniting the channel.
Tarn pressed his exoskeleton's shoulder module, voice command activating:
"HX-S1 Process Conflict Response Protocol · Clause One: If facing forced process overwrite, mark process execution rights with 'physical presence.'"
He raised his hand, shield forward.
"Process cannot be overwritten."
"We're still standing."
The Blackvine officer's helmet buzzed with a new signal:
"Force-activate 'Process Clearance Team' protocol."
A six-man squad broke from the guard's main line, shields up, wielding non-lethal shock guns and suppression rounds. Two carried armored pulse modules, capable of five-second short-wave bursts to down anyone within twenty-five meters not synced to their directive.
They weren't "fighting"—they were "stripping people from the process."
The gray-armor team didn't retreat.
The process lived in their execution; they were the process itself.
Tarn ordered the front three, "Close defense, engage."
The trio locked shields forward, their "Process Execution Unit" barcodes flashing red: process entering high-interference response.
The next moment, shock guns hit.
The first blast struck a front gray-armor's chest, the armor's resistive layer flaring wildly, then a pulse roared, staggering him half a step, but he didn't fall.
His process confirmation module fired back a marker:
"Process still executing."
He gritted his teeth, roaring, "Your process is well-written."
"But I'm not down—I'm still executing!"
The second shot hit the right flank, shattering a shoulder plate, the man tumbling meters.
The third drew a pressure spear, charging with shield, slamming a clearance member into a scrap car wreck, ripping off their helmet, and pinning them to the mud.
In that moment, the process broke between them.
Not whose process was better written, but who shut the other up first.
Fuxi's main console flashed a judgment:
"Process execution entering 'physical recognition phase.'"
"Process authority has shifted from textual logic to the executor's physical persistence."
"Recommendation: Maintain formation, issue no unified commands; let individual executors form the trust structure."
Zhao Mingxuan translated quietly, "The process isn't the content anymore."
"It's whether these people's shields still hold."
Tarn sprinted forward, the BV-S9 standard process still droning calmly from broadcasts:
"Process process process process process process…"
He grabbed the speaker pole's base, wrenching it from the ground.
The broadcast cut, drowned by a metal-tearing screech.
Standing before the shattered process equipment, he said to Blackvine's remaining clerks, "Next time you execute a process, bring your body first."
"Then talk process."
Section Three: Fractured Rhythm
The telecom beacon collapsed before dawn.
S-6's process battle hit its seventeenth minute. After Tarn toppled the broadcast tower, Blackvine's electronic beacons failed, the system locking into "process attribution freeze."
By all accounts, it should've ended.
But the enemy didn't withdraw.
The process officer issued a final helmet command:
"Enter manual affiliation process execution mode."
"All non-compliant with standard processes are deemed illegal organization members."
"Clear the field."
They drew live weapons.
Six switched to live rounds, process exoskeletons shifting to assault mode, the line advancing in a wall-crush formation—not to kill, but to break the gray-armor's ability to maintain process execution.
If the gray-armor scattered and process codes were smashed, they could claim, "Execution failed, process terminated."
Tarn understood.
"They're not here to win," he said quietly.
"They're forcing us to stop ourselves."
ARGUS flashed a bold alert:
"Process directive authority facing strong suppression, requires injection of anomalous tactical execution entity."
[Resonance] → [Great Strength]
Interpretation: "Halt with force, break with the extraordinary; don't resist, use the unexpected."
Zhao Mingxuan turned, "Who's the execution entity?"
The system showed one name:
Tu Qing.
Half an hour earlier, in a low-level signal shack in the northern scrap district, Wei Ran opened his terminal, receiving a private chain relay from Fuxi.
One line:
"We need you to use the person you least want to."
He stared, silent for a long time.
"You really think he's controllable?"
No response.
He pulled an old comm code, long dormant but never deleted.
He said only, "The process team's hitting flesh. Still watching?"
A minute later, five words came back:
"Location. Are they still there?"
Wei Ran smiled.
"They're there. Guns in their face."
Now, atop S-6's outer heating platform, a figure stepped onto a rusted ventilation tower.
Snow swirled, but he wore no armor, no process, no team.
Just a half-rusted, unyielding long-handled cleaver, a thin steel chain slung over his shoulder.
Gray clothes bloodstained, steps silent.
A process clerk glanced back, "No ID code, who's this?"
No one answered.
The next moment, the figure kicked a side wall, leaping ten meters from the scrap building.
He landed, rolled, charged, raised the blade.
The first strike split a process guard's neck-side exoskeleton, blood mist spraying with the crack.
The process system tried to ID the attacker, failed.
He bore no process.
He was his own process.
Tarn saw the landing slash from afar, his eyes flickering.
"Why him?" he asked quietly.
The radio hissed three seconds, Zhao Mingxuan's voice low, "You know who he is."
"We block processes."
"He—cuts them."
Tu Qing elbowed a gunman down, right hand yanking the steel chain to drag another into a scrap well, cleaver swinging wide, severing limbs in a spray.
He said nothing.
He'd said before: want a process, prove it with your life.
You give your life to the process.
He comes to take it.
The BV process officer tried to retreat, issuing, "Unidentified system code, possible rogue entity, execute lockdown!"
But before the words landed, a bloodied blade pierced his side, exiting his back, shredding exoskeleton.
The process projection flickered in the air, then died.
The process's flesh executor was cut by someone the process couldn't outmatch.
ARGUS judged:
"Process system's core binding removed."
"Enemy system entered 'no-command remnant' state."
"Current S-6 zone process execution rights default: Rust Street · HX-S1 · Bound."
The battlefield quieted.
Tu Qing didn't speak or sheathe his blade.
He glanced at the blood on him, eyed the crowd, then turned, walking into the scrap building's depths.
No one dared stop him.
No one dared say, "Good execution."
He wasn't yours.
He was the hand left when your process failed.
Section Four: Burned Body, Proven Directive
Three forty-five in the morning, S-6's process hub ruins became an open killing ground.
The fallen broadcast tower lay across the main passage, flames still burning, a half-melted process directive plaque skewed—one half buried in concrete, the other's charred text warped into gibberish.
The last four digits of process code [BV-S9] had melted into iron droplets.
The ground was littered with cracked armor shards, bloodstains, fragmented gear from fallen clerks and gray-armor. The air reeked of scorched high-frequency currents.
But it wasn't over.
Blackvine's three remaining process guards didn't retreat, instead hammering the gray-armor team's right flank, aiming to seize the beacon controller's local core module.
Their moves were no longer process-driven but high-pressure mercenary: precise coordination, lethal angles, no commands, just clean strikes.
Tarn had only two men still fighting.
One, shot in the leg, knelt behind a wrecked car, using a micro-frequency jammer to block enemy process sync signals.
The other, chest armor torn, auxiliary exoskeleton exposed, propped a fallen metal beam to block a clerk's short-pulse blast mine.
Tarn, wounded, held the frontline.
His breath carried blood, arm armor warped, charging with his main shield, each step splashing in gore.
He wasn't upholding the process.
He was ensuring—as long as he stood, no one else could read a process here.
An opposing clerk tried reinserting a process interface, one reaching two meters from the beacon port, pulling a backup sync module from a pack.
If it connected, the process wouldn't be Rust Street's.
Tarn wouldn't allow it.
He roared, right arm heaving his cracked shield, charging two steps.
The clerk reacted, turning with a shock shield. The shields clashed, sparks flying, the shockwave bursting nearby comm modules into flames.
Tarn spun with the blast, elbow smashing the clerk's neck exoskeleton joint, jarring their helmet. The clerk drew a gun.
Tarn gave no chance.
Knee to gut, fists pounding head, forcing three steps back, a final elbow sent the clerk crashing into a data box, embedded.
The sync module fell, ignited by sparks, exploding.
In the distance, ARGUS's main console flashed:
"Detected BV-S9 temporary process module: local directive link failed. Beacon no longer accepts process control."
Zhao Mingxuan exhaled, "We held it."
But Blackvine had one last play.
The process deputy triggered emergency mode, pulling a small data blast beacon from his belt—not a weapon, but a tool to torch process code records.
If the current process chain was destroyed, Rust Street's HX-S1 would shift from system-linked to "uncertified structure."
They'd lose directive control.
He pressed the trigger.
Three-second countdown.
A gray-armor man reacted, rushing from cover to block the blast module with his body.
Too late.
The deputy hurled it toward the process storage core.
It was a simple comm relay—Jason's deliberate "process existence point."
The process needed a place to "live."
Now it faced destruction.
At that moment, from the ruins' far end, a familiar figure reappeared.
Tu Qing, vaulting from a broken wall.
Not running—exploding forward.
He slid, right hand gripping the cleaver, left flinging the steel chain, snaring the blast beacon.
Two spins in the air, landing behind him.
He didn't disarm it.
He pinned the man to the beacon, using himself as the final blast shield.
Boom.
High-frequency data pulses erupted, the module not fully destroyed, but the blast threw Tu Qing into data frame shards, armor shattering, blood spraying the process core platform.
His gray armor's process code flickered, then stabilized:
HX-S1
Status: Executing
Holder: Recorded
ARGUS's main judgment:
"Process code [HX-S1] maintained logical structure integrity during blast."
"Executor's blood trace auto-bound to directive path."
"Process designated 'post-battle remnant authority structure,' entering special retention state."
Fuxi said nothing.
Jason knew:
They won.
Not because the process was well-written.
Because in that moment, someone bled and stood before it.
Section Five: Blood Directive
Dawn's S-6 looked like a steel furnace just quenched.
The air mixed tar, burned data coatings, ozone from fried conduits, the ground strewn with process shell fragments, shattered identifiers, and a bent broadcast plaque—its "Process Unity · Compliance is Legitimate" charred beyond recognition.
Half the gray-armor team was wounded, two still bleeding, but standing.
Post-battle, the first notice wasn't broadcast but scrawled on a scrap wall:
"Process has people."
The process endured.
HX-S1 wasn't revoked.
When all devices were shot through, broadcasts destroyed, and process papers burned, someone stayed.
Still executing.
Even ARGUS, a structure-logic platform, had to concede:
"This process faced live combat; executors didn't abandon post."
"Logic chain unbroken, process intact."
"Judgment: Process executors bound to process core · Process remains active."
This was "holding the directive."
Not your process winning.
But you guarding it while bleeding, so it won.
Jason stood at the main console, scanning ARGUS's feedback. Zhao Mingxuan spoke briefly, "The process held."
"Crowds are using this standard—whose blood guards the process, that's the real one."
Maria, voice weary, "So we've admitted 'executors matter more than process'?"
Jason's answer was soft, a knife into reality, "Executors don't matter more."
"Executors *are* the process."
"Process was never words—it's people."
Fuxi updated hexagram: [Great Strength] → [Contention]:
"Directives born from blood, disputes from trust; not fighting for name, but for holding. Guard with death, then directives can be named."
Prompt:
"Current process trust structure established.
Process itself gained 'executor-bound structure rights.'
Proceed to next phase: Process Holder System."
The Process Holder System's core: no one could issue a process alone—it required an "executor-bound" person accountable for execution history, site memory, signal response, and chain strategies.
In other words—the process wasn't written in meetings, but by someone stepping up:
"This is my process."
"I've bled for it."
That afternoon, Rust Street publicly released an HX system upgrade draft:
HX-S2: Process-Bound Executor System (Trial)
Key Points:
All processes must bind an "executor code"; unbound processes lack release eligibility.
Executors must provide "execution record" certifications—combat, defense, or successful evacuations.
Crowds may demand executors disclose their "blood points" and "directive guard records" before accepting execution.
System defaults "blood-mark data" above formatted text process priority.
Failed holders' processes are frozen, non-transferable.
This wasn't a process.
It was a battle-won system.
Jason didn't use processes to write order—he made the person guarding the process the order itself.
Tu Qing's code—HX-S1 · Holder 0001—was permanently locked in the process system.
Three days later, Blackvine issued a process return statement:
"We cannot overwrite your process; we recognize its existence.
We deny your right to write processes but acknowledge your process holders.
Because you—made the process bleed."