Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Michael stood in the deep shadows of an alley a block away from the storage facility, the brick walls cool and solid against his back.
The air was cold, but he felt a strange heat humming beneath his skin.
It was the Void, coiled and restless, waiting to be unleashed.
"Comms check," Jinx's voice crackled in his ear, a low, tinny whisper from the tiny receiver tucked behind his earlobe.
"Loud and clear," Michael whispered back, his own voice sounding distant, like it belonged to someone else.
"I'm in position," she confirmed. "Got a clear line of sight on the whole west wall. Rifle is calibrated. I've got one of my pretty little Phase-Disruptor rounds chambered and ready to sing."
"Just say the word."
Michael looked at his watch.
The glowing digital numbers read 23:59:45.
Fifteen seconds.
His heart, which had been a slow, heavy drum, began to beat faster.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
He could feel the paranoia creeping back in, a cold sweat prickling at his neck.
This is it. The pull.
The moment the raid leader calls out the countdown and you hope to God the tank knows what he's doing.
Oh wait. I'm the tank.
And the bait.
And I'm wearing a hoodie.
Flawless strategy.
"Ten seconds," Jinx's voice murmured, a steady anchor in his rising panic.
He took a deep breath. He closed his eyes.
He thought of his father's final, desperate shove.
He thought of his mother's sad, beautiful smile made of moss and light.
The fear solidified into something hard and sharp.
Resolve.
"Five," Jinx counted down.
"Four."
He pushed himself away from the wall, stepping to the edge of the alley, his body shrouded in shadow.
"Three."
He held out his hand, palm up.
"Two."
He focused his will, not on a skill, not on a weapon, but on the raw, hungry power that was his birthright and his curse.
He didn't open the floodgates.
He just cracked the door.
"One."
"Mark," she whispered.
A tiny, almost invisible pulse of pure, black energy emanated from his palm.
It wasn't a bang.
It wasn't a flash.
It was a whisper.
A single, silent note played on a frequency that only ghosts could hear.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The city hummed on, oblivious. The traffic flowed. The distant sirens wailed.
Did it work? Michael thought, a new wave of panic rising. Did they even notice?
Then, in his comms, he heard Jinx let out a sharp, indrawn breath.
"Oh, hell," she whispered.
"They noticed."
From her sniper's nest, Jinx watched the world through two lenses.
Through her rifle's powerful scope, everything looked normal – just a fence, a wall, a flickering streetlight.
But when she looked at her scanner, the world was filled with swirling energy.
And now, that energy was going wild, like it was feeding on something.
The instant Michael's pulse went out, her screen lit up.
Three brilliant red dots, which had been stationary at the corners of the facility, flickered once.
Then they moved.
They didn't move like patrol cars or running guards.
They moved like thoughts.
They slid across her screen with a silent, terrifying speed, leaving faint energy trails in their wake.
All three of them were converging on a single point.
The alley.
Where Michael was hiding.
"They're coming, kid," she hissed into her comms, her voice tight. "And they are fast. Like, 'blink and you'll miss it' fast."
Michael didn't need her to tell him.
He could feel it.
The air in the alley dropped twenty degrees.
A profound, unnatural cold washed over him, the signature chill of a Ghost's presence.
It wasn't just one.
It was a symphony of cold.
The shadows at the mouth of the alley seemed to deepen, to stretch, to become solid.
He could see the distortions now.
Three shimmering, man-shaped heat-hazes, glitching into existence at the end of the narrow brick corridor.
They didn't speak. They didn't make a sound.
They just… advanced.
Their silent, synchronized movement was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
"The grid is warping," Jinx's voice crackled, full of a horrified awe. "Your theory was right, kid. The energy drain is massive. It's… it's beautiful."
On her screen, the perfect, geometric web of the sensor field was distorting.
The lines were bending inward, being pulled toward the three Ghosts.
And on the far side of the facility, on the west wall directly in her line of sight, a hole began to form.
It was a patch of darkness on her screen.
A place where the sensor grid had simply ceased to exist.
A shadow in reality.
It was no bigger than a door.
"I have it," Jinx breathed, her heart pounding. "I have the blind spot."
"It's unstable. Flickering. I don't know how long it will last."
Back in the alley, the walls felt like they were closing in.
The three Ghosts were halfway down the corridor now, their pace unhurried, confident.
They were a firing squad, and he was the condemned.
He was the lure. He had done his job.
Now it was time for the hard part.
Survive.
"Go, Jinx!" he yelled into his comms, his voice a raw shout. "Now!"
He didn't wait for a reply.
He turned and ran, deeper into the dark, dead-end alley.
He poured every ounce of his remaining will into his legs, into his power.
The lead Ghost raised its shimmering, transparent hand.
The air rippled. A Phase-Ripper.
It wasn't aiming at him.
It was aiming at the brick wall at the end of the alley.
It was going to collapse the entire corridor, burying him alive.
There was no escape.
He had one shot.
[SHADOW STEP (LV. 1) ACTIVATED.]
ZIP!
The world dissolved into a nauseating smear of purple and black.
For a split second, he was nowhere. A phantom in the void.
Then he was somewhere.
He reappeared on the rooftop of the building across the street from the alley, landing in a clumsy, breathless crouch.
He looked down just as the Phase-Ripper hit the wall.
VWOOM.
The alley simply… vanished.
Bricks, trash cans, concrete – all of it dissolved into a silent cloud of gray dust.
He had escaped.
By a fraction of a second.
He lay on the cold gravel of the roof, panting, his body screaming, his energy reserves almost completely depleted.
He had done it.
He had survived.
A cold, electronic whisper slid directly into his mind, bypassing his ears entirely.
It was the chilling, synthetic voice of the Ghost's network, a sound he had heard once before, in the tunnels.
But this time, it wasn't a broadcast.
It was talking directly to him.
[TARGET REACQUIRED.]
[LOCATION: ROOFTOP. GRID 7-DELTA.]
[ANALYSIS: ANOMALOUS SPATIAL DISPLACEMENT ABILITY CONFIRMED.]
Michael's blood turned to ice.
He pushed himself up, his eyes scanning the empty sky around him.
He was alone on the roof.
[ADAPTING TACTICS.]
The synthetic voice was calm.
Cold.
Curious.
[DISPATCHING SINGLE HUNTER-KILLER UNIT FOR CLOSE-QUARTERS NEUTRALIZATION.]
A shimmering distortion appeared on the rooftop directly in front of him, coalescing out of thin air.
It was one of the Ghosts.
It had followed him.