The old world ended past the edge of the mapped grid.
There were no lights, no cameras, no Syndicate patrols. Only ruins, half-swallowed by vines and bone-white mist curling over shattered towers. A dead zone, they called it. Forgotten. Dangerous.
Perfect.
Kael moved swiftly through the wasteland, the cloak on his back fluttering behind him like the remnants of a storm. Lira followed, her hood pulled low, eyes darting. Her steps were quieter now. More careful. As if the gravity of her own existence had finally settled on her shoulders.
They were close.
The Hollow.
An underground sanctuary built by runaways and survivors. A place where people with fractured DNA and powers no one understood could exist without chains or numbers.
Kael had been there once. A long time ago.
Before it fell apart.
Before she died.
He didn't let the memory in. Not yet.
"We're almost there," he muttered. "Once we're in, we rest. You'll meet others. Some older. Some younger. Some broken."
"And you?" Lira asked softly.
Kael didn't answer. Just kept walking.
But even as he led her toward shelter, the hunt had already begun.
Elsewhere, in Syndicate Outpost 7C…
"Subject 03 has destabilized Protocol containment in Sector Four," a cold voice reported inside the command room. "Subject Kael Rhys was involved. They've gone dark."
The commander, a silver-haired man with a neural link embedded in his temple, narrowed his eyes. "How long?"
"Seventeen hours, sir. No trace past the underground collapse. They vanished."
He turned toward the massive screen showing flickering footage: Kael surrounded by gravity pulses, Lira wrapped in space-bending light.
"Activate Project Specter."
The officer hesitated. "Sir? That's—"
"I know what it is," the commander snapped. "Release the Phantom Cell. I want them back alive if possible. But if not…"
His voice turned to ice.
"…burn everything around them."
Back in the ruins…
Kael stopped.
The hairs on his neck stood up. Not from power but instinct. A predator's sense. The air shifted, heavy with something unseen.
"We're being watched," he muttered.
Lira spun. "I don't see anyone."
"Exactly." Kael clenched his fists. Electricity arced between his knuckles. "They're good. Too good."
From the mist, a sound emerged. No footsteps. No voice. Just a low, mechanical hum like reality itself was folding.
Then they stepped out.
Three figures clad in shadow-reactive armor. Their presence felt wrong. Like they weren't entirely tethered to this plane. Like they were part ghost, part machine.
"Phantom Cell," Kael growled. "Damn it. They sent them."
Lira backed away, instinctively calling up the flicker of her strange, refraction power but it was wild. Unstable.
"I'm not ready for this," she whispered.
Kael cracked his neck. His voice was calm. Cold. Focused.
"Then stay back."
The Phantom agents moved in near-silence one attacking from the left, blade coated in void-energy, another leaping overhead with a grav-hook spike.
Kael didn't flinch.
The ground split beneath his feet. Gravity bent like water.
He launched forward, slamming a soldier mid-air, sending a pulse that crushed the air between them like a vice. The second agent tried to counter Kael dodged, twisted, and sent a shockwave that scrambled the man's neural link.
The third Phantom, the fastest, blurred toward Lira.
She screamed but then it happened again.
Time skipped.
A flicker. A shimmer. For one second, Lira became three versions of herself.
One stayed frozen.
One vanished.
One reached forward and the world rippled.
The Phantom staggered as space cracked like glass around him. Kael turned just in time to see Lira standing, eyes wide, glowing violet. Not fully in control but not helpless.
"Good," he muttered, a small grin forming. "You're learning."
Together, they stood side by side, storm and mirror.
And this time, they would fight as more than prey.