Dust and the sweet, cloying smell of the pacification gas filled his lungs, a suffocating blanket that tasted like poison and defeat.
He was on his knees, his body a single, throbbing symphony of pain.
His vision was a flickering, static-filled mess.
[VOID ENERGY: 2/125]
[WARNING: CRITICAL ENERGY DEPLETION DETECTED.]
Well, no kidding, his inner monologue groaned, the sarcasm a thin, pathetic shield against the agony.
I just used my ultimate ability to break a wall.
I'm pretty sure my soul's credit score is now in the toilet.
A new line of text flickered on his HUD, its purple glow a sickening, venomous color.
[SOUL CORRUPTION: 2.6%]
It went up.
Of course, it went up.
Using the cheat codes always comes with a price.
The hissing of the gas grew louder, closer.
He tried to stand, but his legs felt like they were made of wet noodles.
He was done.
Empty.
A hand grabbed the front of his hoodie, yanking him forward with a strength that was pure, desperate adrenaline.
"Get up, you idiot!" Jinx's voice snarled, rough and ragged from the gas. "The mission isn't over until you're dead, and you're not allowed to die yet!"
She coughed, a wracking sound that shook her small frame.
She was hurt. He could see the dark stain spreading across her shoulder, but her eyes were burning with a fierce, stubborn fire.
She slung his arm over her shoulder, half-carrying, half-dragging his dead weight.
He was the asset.
And she was the scrapper, hauling her broken tool out of the fire.
"Chloe!" Jinx yelled into her comm, her voice a raw gasp. "We're through the wall! What's next on this magical mystery tour of bad ideas?"
Chloe's voice cut through the static, a lifeline of cold, hard logic in the swirling chaos.
"Straight ahead. Thirty meters. There's a storm drain access grate. It leads into the primary sewer nexus."
"Move!"
Jinx didn't need to be told twice.
She dragged Michael through the smoking, freshly-made crater in the wall, their feet splashing in the foul-smelling water of the storm drain below.
The world above, with its flashing red lights and screaming alarms, vanished as they plunged into the suffocating, subterranean dark.
The stench was overwhelming.
It was a smell that had been fermenting in the city's guts for a hundred years.
"Oh, great," Michael mumbled, his head lolling against Jinx's shoulder. "Another sewer level. My favorite."
"Shut up and breathe through your mouth," she grunted, her breath coming in ragged pants.
They stumbled through the darkness, guided only by the faint glow of Michael's HUD and Chloe's clipped, precise instructions.
"Left turn at the next junction."
"Watch your step. There's a four-foot drop ahead."
"Maintain your pace. DGC patrols are sweeping the surface grid directly above you."
Michael was barely conscious, a dead weight on a girl who was running on pure grit and spite.
He was the weapon.
The key.
The Last Scion.
And right now, he couldn't have won a fight with a particularly aggressive pigeon.
The irony was not lost on him.
Two blocks away, in the sterile, humming interior of the DGC mobile command van, the world had gone insane.
Every screen was flashing red.
Every alarm was blaring.
"Report!" Captain Valerius snapped, her voice a whip-crack in the chaos.
A terrified-looking technician spun in his chair, his face pale.
"I… I don't know how to report this, Captain."
"Try using words, Ensign," she said, her patience worn down to a single, fraying thread.
"The Ghost sensor grid just… crashed," the ensign stammered. "All three primary anchors went offline simultaneously."
"What caused it?"
"We registered an energy event from inside the facility just before the crash," he said, his fingers flying across his keyboard. "But the readings… they don't make any sense."
He turned the screen towards her.
Valerius stared.
It wasn't a spike. It wasn't a wave.
It was a hole.
A perfect, data-sucking black hole that had appeared on their energy map for a fraction of a second.
It was a power signature that registered as less than zero.
A fundamental violation of the laws of physics.
"It absorbed all ambient energy in a twenty-meter radius," the technician whispered, his voice full of a horrified awe. "It didn't just overload the Ghost grid. It starved it."
Before Valerius could process the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing, the van's door slammed open.
Commander Rourke stormed in, his face a thunderous mask of pure fury.
"He's gone!" he roared, slamming his fist on a console. "The asset blew a hole through the east wall and escaped into the sewer system!"
"My teams are in pursuit, but it's a labyrinth down there!"
He rounded on Valerius, his eyes blazing.
"This is your fault, Captain! Your 'covert posture' gave him time to plan! Your hesitation cost us the asset!"
Valerius met his gaze, her own expression a mask of cold, hard ice.
She thought of Marcus.
She thought of the boy with his father's stubborn eyes.
She thought of the impossible, physics-defying power she had just witnessed.
Rourke was a bulldog, snarling and snapping, thinking he was hunting a fox.
He had no idea he was chasing a dragon.
And he had just followed it into its lair.
"My hesitation, Commander," she said, her voice dangerously quiet, "may have just saved your men's lives."
"Now, if you'll excuse me," she said, turning back to her own console, her mind already working through the tactical implications. "I have a real containment problem to solve."
"Almost there," Chloe's voice urged in their ears. "Another fifty meters."
Jinx's lungs were on fire. Her shoulder was a universe of throbbing pain.
The kid she was dragging was getting heavier with every step.
She didn't know how much longer she could keep going.
Then she saw it.
A faint, square patch of light high on the tunnel wall.
A maintenance ladder.
A way out.
"We're here," Jinx gasped into the comm.
"Surface level in sixty seconds," Chloe's voice came back, sharp and final.
"There will be a vehicle waiting."
"Don't ask questions."
"Just get in."