Chapter 6
Mission: All eyes on me
Nyx moves first with blinding speed, however it surprised Mirage when he moved away even with eyes still locked on her, his body twisting as he sliced the camera on the right side when facing the stage. The attack revealing that it was one of the five hidden cameras that are hidden around the room.
"That's not possible" thought Mirage, unable to believe that he could find any one of the five hidden cameras.
Nyx had been analyzing each area of the room carefully, differently this time, using the symbiote's environmental sensory extension, searching through the vibrations of their steps. It had looked exactly like the other except for its weight, whenever Mirage stomped hard onto the floor to charge at him, her spear striking the ground, slamming him into the ground, caused a vibration that told him where each one was and thus, he read from her breadcrumbs this time.
Nyx moves to the next one until Mirage moved with the reflexes of a cat, appearing next to him, she ruthlessly swung her spear. Nyx deflected it with ease, countering with three continuous slashes across her chest, but sees the wounds heal as fast as his own symbiote. There wasn't any time to think about it now, he had to take their eyes both off and on him at the same time.
Mirage burst forward, her spear arcing like a comet through sterile air, Nyx parrying her strike and counters, just scratching her neck as she seemed to be trying to find out his own maximum speed. Nyx didn't waste time with her, the faster he cut the eyes from the room the faster he can get back to Flair, not wanting to risk the chance of her dying. Even if GM was able to make enough noise, Nyx wasn't sure if GM's enhanced abilities would be able to hold out long enough for Flair to send out a shockwave, let alone take control of the security tower.
Nyx lunged toward the base of the news desk, where a second surveillance camera was cleverly wired into a boom-style microphone mounted to the paneling. He swung upward, blade flashing—intent on disabling it.
The spear intercepted his motion with bone-jarring force, cracking through the sound barrier between them. Metal kissed metal in a blaze of angry sparks. Nyx twisted his wrist and used the momentum to spin behind Mirage, slashing toward her side. She ducked, swept his leg and continuing the motion of her spin attempted to kick him straight in the chest only to be temporarily blocked. His block sliced through her foot and half her leg, but her attack continued forward and collided with his chest sending him flying and bouncing against the wall.
As Mirage is about to pierce his heart, Nyx blocks in a similar fashion, his sword slicing through her spear while curving so it moves at an angle away from him, doing little more than stabbing his cloak while his left hand reached out, another hidden blade stabbing through her shoulder bone and shocking her for more than a minute before throwing her off to the side, running towards the microphone again, slicing it in two.
Two down, yet there now seemed to be a thousand eyes hidden elsewhere from that last collision, the sensation amplified by the symbiote's sensory abilities, created a far greater range of vibrations and shifts both inside and outside the building.
Nyx turned to his next target, a wall opposite to where he had been kicked. There was nothing there, yet his symbiote's sensory had certainly seen sensed something and he could still calculate where it is within the metal wall, and that it was no bigger than a pinkies fingernail. It was hidden by a cloaking device.
He stepped forward, but Mirage was already moving.
She burst from the far side of the room like a shockwave, her spear spinning in a defensive arc. Her shoulder had no damage but a tiny spark, her stance solid. She knew what he was after, and wasn't going to let him reach it.
Nyx feinted left, then twisted right, blade flashing toward the wall. Mirage intercepted, her spear slamming into his sword mid-swing. The impact sent a tremor through the floor. He pivoted, using the recoil to spin behind her, but she anticipated it, her spear reversed direction mid-air, catching his blade again and driving it upward.
The wall camera blinked once.
Nyx gave a wolfish snarl, the symbiote feeling the same, wanting to used more than just 0.5% of its strength. Nyx didn't allow it, even if the two felt the same, he wasn't going to expose his triumph card now, it was enough to survive.
Before the two could interact more with each other, Mirage pushed him back, attacking him with a barrage of thrusts from her spear, giving him no moves to parry and focus on dodging only. Mirage moved like a well-oiled machine, not a single movement felt like it had fatigue held within, she didn't allow a single parry or deflect from his sword.
Nyx then threw his sword up into the air, using his gauntlets to deflect her spear four times, then grabbing it and giving her a backhand to the face. Nyx then jumped up into a flip, kicking his sword towards the hidden camera, Mirage saw this and had the spear ready. Nyx however caught her hand just before she released it, stopping her as his sword pierced the camera and destroyed the cloaking device that hid it.
'One left' thought Nyx, though it barely echoed in his mind when he suddenly felt his body bouncing on the metal floor three times by Mirage's attacks with her fist like an angry basketball player.
Mirage then landed on him, left knee against his chest with her right foot pressing against his right arm. Mirage tried to stab the spear into his neck, while Nyx held it back with his left hand. It was a power struggle of who would give up first.
"You are so annoying…yet so interesting" came Mirage's voice, almost sounding delightfully curious. Mirage broke the lock by stabbing the floor next to his head, Nyx tried to stab her but she grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the ground and grabbed his throat, squeezing tightly.
Before more could be done Mirage heard something break above her, looking up to see the last camera destroyed and the light fixture falling along with a piece of the spears broken blade. Both separated and moved away as it fell.
Mirage hissed, voice lower now, less composed. "You think removing their vision weakens their intent?"
Nyx stood tall, his sword already back in his hand from his quick movement now that eyes weren't on him. "No. just their expectations." Her claws extended slowly, fully now.
"Based on that reaction, you're more than just a hire" says Nyx, his stare as lethal as daggers. "Who's the chancellor and his Conceal of misfits"
Mirage stood there, silent for a beat too long, the glimmer of her cloaking field twitching behind her as if unsure whether to activate or retreat. Her injured wrist and shoulder still sparking faintly beneath the slick weave of her suit.
"The Chancellor…" she finally said, voice low and reverent, like saying the name of a deity who still breathed fire. "No one's seen his true face in twenty years. He speaks through broadcasts and proxies. Old-corps lineage. Surgically fused with predictive algorithms. Some say he was once human—before he let the system rewrite him."
She paced a half-step, claws clicking faintly against the prompt desk.
"And the Conceal...we're the ones pulled from nowhere. Failed experiments, discarded agents, fractured minds remade by digital doctrine. Each of us bound to his signal by purpose engineered." Mirage's gaze flicked up, her head tilting ever so slightly. "I wasn't hired, Nyx. I was repurposed."
A flicker of tension built in the room "Repurposed? Your certainly no machine Mirage...wait" Nyx's mind flashed through there exchanges thus far, no reaction of pain, blood, but the only thing that was even still affecting her was the electricity that he shot through her. "That's not possible, living liquid metal?" Nyx breathed out in astonishment, his sword instantly pointed at her on guard.
"My, my, you are intelligent. Yes, yet there's more to it" says Mirage with a sassy authoritive tone, walking into Nyx's sword, its penetration meaning nothing to her as it slid through her center mass like it was cutting through dense gel without resistance, nor was there blood this time around. The blade shimmered within her torso, suspended in artificial tissue that rippled around the wound instead of collapsing. Mirage's hand rested lightly on the exposed hilt, as though it were a brooch instead of a weapon embedded in her body.
"You pierced my shape," she murmured, voice lazy and sweet, "not my function."
Her form pulsed once, a subtle tremor of metallic fluid as even the blood she left behind turned white and merged back into her body.
Nyx didn't pull the sword back; his eyes narrowed beneath the mask. The implications were spreading like wildfire through his thoughts—shape-shifting alloys, neural mimicry, biochemical dampening. This was beyond tech, it was sentience molded by synthetic will, so similar to his symbiote, was it DNA or perhaps blood that gave it life?
Mirage leaned closer, her voice a whisper wrapped in allure. "You're not the only one with something inside him, Nyx. But unlike yours…" she traced a finger across the sword's exposed edge without slicing her skin, "mine was built to serve."
Then, with an elegant twist, she phased backward—slipping off the blade, her body reconstituting instantly. The blade dripped faint traces of her internal core, but it was already hardening mid-air like cooling lava.
From above, sensors flickered back to life, and a thousand eyes appeared on the walls and ceilings. Clarity washing over Nyx like water, this is what is symbiote had sensed before, all eyes are centered on him. While beneath her coy façade, Mirage was recalibrating.
Nyx watched as her form reconstructed in appearance, unsure of his next move. He is heart was still racing, as her words echoed in his mind. 'You're not the only one with something inside him' Nyx hopped it was a bluff, yet it felt like wasn't, she really did know.
Nyx sprinted forward, he wasn't sure if it would work again, since she could not only be reconstructing her appearance but also her matter in having a resistance to electricity. Nyx reached his hand out, shocking the liquid with the hidden blade. It appeared to have some effect but then she finished reconstructing her body, having the appearance of a female cat. "You're done" mutters Mirage, punching him in the chest as he flies into a wall, bouncing off when Mirage slams him back into it.
Nyx's body collided hard, the impact leaving the biggest crack thus far in the wall's surface as dust and thin circuitry hissed out behind him.
Mirage then flipped him to the ground with a hard bounce back into the air, standing beside his floating body as it raised it in slow motion to her, Mirage brought her double fist down and slammed it into Nyx, causing the floor to break beneath him in an even greater size then the wall.
A sharp stutter of pain ricocheted through his ribs despite the symbiote's protection, his mouth splattering blood on the inside of his mask, while the symbiote did all it could with its 0.5% enhancement, reinforcing pressure on vulnerable tissue before full fractures could settle.
Mirage walked around Nyx with slow, feline elegance—her new form sleek, agile, fur reflective like silk stretched over living steel.
The catlike visage wasn't just for intimidation—it was efficiency. Sleek for aerodynamics. Low profile for rapid movement. Her claws flexed once, dripping faint plasma trails. This wasn't arrogance. This was inevitability.
"You're adapting fast," Nyx muttered, coughing behind his mask. "Almost like you're enjoying this."
Mirage didn't deny it. She crouched low like a cat poised on a ledge. "You bring out the better codes," she purred, amused. "And I think I'll keep slicing until one of your secrets spills out."
Nyx's laid still as he calculated, his options have become extremely limited.