Chloe led them into the city's forgotten bones.
The safe house wasn't an apartment.
It wasn't a hideout.
It was a statement.
Hidden in the cavernous sub-basement of a derelict textile factory, it was a high-tech island in a sea of urban decay.
The main door, a slab of reinforced, soundproofed steel, hissed open to reveal a space that was less a hideout and more a mission control center.
Banks of humming servers lined one wall, their blinking lights reflecting in the polished concrete floor.
A large, holographic display table dominated the center of the room, currently showing a detailed, three-dimensional map of the city's power grid.
In one corner was a fully stocked, military-grade medical bay.
In another, a weapons maintenance bench that would have made Jinx's secret workshop look like a child's toy chest.
The air was cool, sterile, and smelled faintly of ozone and expensive electronics.
"Well," Michael's inner monologue drawled. "Looks like the scary robot lady is also Batman."
"A less fun, more condescending Batman."
Chloe gestured towards the medical bay with a clinical wave of her hand.
"Scrapper," she said, her voice echoing slightly in the large, open space. "See to your wound."
"The antiseptic spray is on the second shelf. The auto-suturing kit is in the drawer marked 'Trauma'."
Jinx just grunted, limping towards the med bay without another word.
She was clearly impressed, but she'd rather get eaten by another Phase Hound than admit it.
That left Michael alone with Chloe.
The silence was heavy, broken only by the low hum of the servers.
Chloe walked over to a sleek, minimalist chair that sat in the middle of the room, connected by thick cables to a nearby console.
It looked less like a chair and more like something you'd get strapped into before an evil A.I. tried to steal your brain.
"Sit," she said.
It wasn't a request.
"You know, I'm getting a little tired of people pointing at scary-looking chairs and telling me to sit," Michael said, his sarcasm a fragile shield.
"Is this the part where you scan me for Midichlorians?"
Chloe's expression didn't change. She didn't get the reference, or more likely, she simply didn't care.
"This is the part where I run a full diagnostic," she stated flatly. "I need to quantify the asset I'm working with. I cannot effectively wield a weapon if I do not understand its mechanics."
Asset. Weapon.
He was really going to have to get used to that.
He sighed and sank into the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable, the cool material molding to his exhausted frame.
Restraints, smooth and silent, slid out from the armrests and locked gently around his wrists and ankles.
"Okay, now it feels more like what I was expecting," he muttered.
Chloe ignored him, her fingers flying across the keyboard of her console.
"Beginning primary energy scan," she announced to the empty room.
A low hum filled the air as a device lowered from the ceiling, its tip glowing with a soft blue light. It began to move slowly over his body.
The whispers in his head stirred, agitated by the machine's hum.
Threat… unknown energy… analyze… the Cable Hound's cold logic hissed.
Protect the asset… protect the Legacy Drive… the Phase Hound's loyalty echoed, a confused, phantom command.
Michael clenched his jaw, pushing them down, forcing them into the dark corners of his mind.
On the console, a series of complex graphs and data streams flickered to life.
Chloe watched the screen, her cold, gray eyes widening almost imperceptibly.
"Fascinating," she breathed, the word a soft, reverent whisper.
"Your bio-signature is stable, but your energy output… it's a thermodynamic impossibility."
She pointed to a spiraling, chaotic graph on the screen.
"It does not generate. It does not radiate."
"It consumes."
"It's a power source that creates a localized vacuum, drawing in and converting ambient energy. It violates a half-dozen known laws of physics."
She looked at him then, not as a boy, not as a person, but as the most interesting puzzle she had ever encountered.
"The reports from the storage facility were accurate," she murmured. "A negative energy reading. A localized null-field."
Her gaze shifted to another screen, this one showing a complex, branching diagram that looked vaguely like a human brain, but was threaded with sickening, deep purple lines.
"And this…" she said, her voice laced with a new, sharp intensity. "The psychic data degradation you're experiencing…"
"Soul Corruption?" Michael asked, his own voice sounding hollow.
"A crude term," she corrected him. "But functionally accurate. You are not just absorbing energy. You are absorbing data. Fragmented consciousness. The residual psychic imprint of the entities you… consume."
"It's a cognitive virus," she stated. "And it's integrating with your own neural pathways. The current degradation is at 2.6%. The rate of infection appears to be accelerating."
She sounded like a doctor discussing a particularly interesting strain of space-flu.
The scan finished. The restraints hissed and retracted.
Michael pushed himself out of the chair, feeling violated and deeply, unnervingly understood.
He felt a sudden, sharp pang of guilt.
He had been terrified of Jinx's fear.
But Chloe's fascination? Her cold, scientific curiosity?
That was infinitely worse.
Jinx emerged from the medical bay. Her face was clean, her shoulder neatly bandaged with a sterile, white dressing. She looked tired, but the stubborn fire was back in her eyes.
She held up the small, black rectangle of the Legacy Drive.
"Alright, Batman," she said, tossing the drive to Chloe. "You wanted it. Here it is. Work your magic."
Chloe caught it with an easy, practiced motion.
She walked over to a large, heavily shielded analysis machine and slid the drive into a port.
She typed a series of commands.
The machine whirred for a moment, then a single, loud, angry alarm blared through the safe house.
BZZZZT!
On the main screen, a single line of red text flashed.
[ENCRYPTION DETECTED: BIO-GENETIC LOCK // BLOODLINE: ARCANA]
[SYSTEM ACCESS DENIED.]
Chloe stared at the screen, her professional composure finally showing a hairline crack of frustration.
"It can't be hacked," she stated, the words clipped.
"The encryption isn't just software. It's woven into the physical hardware of the drive itself. It's keyed to a specific genetic signature."
She turned, her cold, gray eyes fixing on Michael.
"It's keyed to you."
"Only a member of the Arcana bloodline can interface with it directly," she explained.
Jinx let out a dry, humorless laugh. "So the kid's a living, breathing skeleton key. Great."
"There's a problem," Chloe continued, her gaze unwavering.
"My analysis indicates that to bypass the final layer of the bio-lock, the drive requires a direct, sustained infusion of high-output Void Energy."
She looked at Michael, her expression a cold, hard calculation.
"It requires a massive, stable burst of your power."
"Far more than you used to break down that wall."
"And in your current, degraded state," she finished, her voice a final, damning verdict.
"Attempting such an output would be… unpredictable."
"The feedback would likely overwhelm your conscious mind. The psychic backlash from the corrupted data you carry…"
She didn't need to finish the sentence.
Michael understood.
If he tried to open it now, he wouldn't just be unlocking a hard drive.
He'd be opening a cage.
A cage with his own name on it.
And the whispers of the monsters inside him would be the only ones left to answer the door.