Software patches serve as critical updates, designed to fix vulnerabilities or flaws in compromised systems. When software is afflicted by bugs, outdated code, or external threats like malware, its functionality and security are jeopardised.
Patches act as targeted solutions. They address specific weaknesses, often enhancing performance and compatibility in the process. Like a bandage applied to a wound, patches don’t rebuild the entire system from scratch, rather they modify or replace the damaged components, disabling problematic features altogether or implementing safeguards to prevent future exploitation.
Patches are, however, reactive by nature. They address issues already identified, but cannot predict emerging threats or uncover hidden systemic flaws.
Worse still, patches can introduce new complications. Risks that may prove more harmful than the first issue.
Your transformation into The Night has been of similar ilk, hasn’t it, Peter? Just as a software patch repairs a corrupted system, you were once a man riddled with flaws. Addictions, poor choices, and a lifetime of vulnerabilities which left you wide open to exploitation.
Like outdated software plagued by bugs, you were inefficient, unreliable, and unstable. Your vices made you a liability, not just to yourself, but to those who thought they could control you, and when Drexl decided to make an example of you – torturing you and leaving you for dead – the system that was Peter Mare crashed entirely.
In that moment, everything changed. Trauma became the catalyst for your reset, wiping away your flaws and leaving a blank slate to reprogram. Just like a patch being applied to broken code, your mind restructured itself. It stripped away vulnerability and replaced it with a singular, solitary purpose.
Vengeance.
The Night wasn’t a rebirth, Peter, no matter what you tell yourself. He was a fix; a reactive solution. Streamlined and hyper-focused, he emerged to eradicate the weaknesses that once defined you.
But like any patch, this transformation didn’t rebuild you from the ground up. It failed to address the underlying systemic damage, and in reality was a reactive solution to the immediate problem: your inability to protect yourself and those you loved.
The Night, like a patch, was an efficient yet limited bandage, and your existence became a single-minded feedback loop.
Locate the threat, eliminate it, and repeat. Efficient, maybe, but at what cost?
Just as poorly implemented patches can introduce new issues, your transformation left you hollow. The parts of Peter Mare that made you human – your hope, your capacity for connection, your ability to heal – were erased, and now all that remains is an empty program, endlessly running on the fuel of retribution.
To you, Peter, we pass this burden. A truth you must grapple with, whether you have the strength to confront it or not.
But as for The Night, the answers you seek may already well be carved into the darkness you now inhabit.