The numbing cold in Kenji's arm spread through his entire body, a deep, bone-weary ache that was more than just physical exhaustion. It felt like his very soul had been scoured. He stumbled through the pitch-black maintenance tunnels, guided only by the faint, ghostly glow of the emergency strips, his breath ragged in the stifling silence. The echo of the psychic shockwave still reverberated in his skull.
He had barely contained it in the alley. This time, he had *unleashed* it. The raw, destructive power both terrified and electrified him.
A soft scuffling sound ahead made him freeze, pressing himself against a cold, moist pipe. Had the Scavengers followed him? He tried to summon the spark, the blade, anything. A faint blue shimmer flickered around his clenched fist for a second before sputtering out, leaving him feeling even emptier. He was defenseless.
A beam of light lanced out from the darkness, not the harsh glare of a weapon, but the cool, focused beam of a hand-lumen. It illuminated Akari's face, her expression unreadable.
"Follow me," she said, her voice a whisper that barely carried. "And try to be quieter than a crashed transport."
She didn't wait for a reply, turning and moving with an uncanny grace through the labyrinth. Kenji, with no other option, followed, his body protesting every step.
She led him through a series of increasingly narrow passages, down a rusted ladder that groaned under their weight, and finally to a heavy, circular blast door that looked like it hadn't been opened in decades. Akari placed her palm on a seemingly random spot on the wall. A hidden panel slid back, revealing a complex, homemade interface of wires and circuit boards. She plugged a cable from her wrist into it, and after a series of clicks and whirs, the blast door hissed open just enough for them to slip through before sealing shut behind them with a definitive *thud*.
Kenji found himself in a space that defied the decay outside. It was a small, climate-controlled bunker. Banks of flickering server racks hummed softly, their lights casting a rhythmic, pulsating glow. Holographic displays floated in the air, showing complex data streams, city maps peppered with blinking dots, and scrolling lines of code. It was a digital nerve center buried in the corpse of the old city.
"Welcome to the Nest," Akari said, disconnecting her cable and pulling off her hood. Up close, she was younger than he'd thought, with sharp, intelligent features and eyes that held a weary cynicism far beyond her years. "Don't touch anything. Don't even breathe on anything."
"You left me," Kenji accused, the anger cutting through his fatigue.
"I observed you," she corrected, tapping a command into a console. A holoscreen popped up, showing thermal images of the dazed and injured Scavengers still picking themselves up in the processing chamber. "And you performed adequately. A blunt instrument, but effective. You created a significant distraction."
"A distraction for what?"
"For this," she said, bringing up another screen. It displayed a complex schematic of the Kusanagi security network. Entire sections were highlighted in red, marked `OFFLINE` or `REROUTING`. "While they were all looking at the shiny explosion, I slipped into their lower-priority subsystems. I now have access to their municipal traffic control, sewage management, and—most importantly—their internal personnel logistics for the next 48 hours. I know where their patrols are *not* going to be."
She turned to look at him, her cybernetic eye whirring softly as it focused. "You're a wreck. Your biostats are all over the place. You need calories, electrolytes, and about a week of sleep we don't have." She tossed him a pressurized nutrient pouch from a cooler. "Drink. It tastes like recycled coolant, but it'll keep you on your feet."
Kenji caught it and drank greedily. She was right about the taste, but he immediately felt a trickle of energy return.
"What was that? That… wave?" he asked, his voice quieter.
"I was hoping you could tell me," Akari said, crossing her arms. "My sensors registered it as a massive, uncontrolled psionic emission. Think of it as a psychic scream given physical form. It's not a precision tool. It's a bomb. And it's drawing a massive target on your back."
As if on cue, one of the main holographic displays flashed a crimson alert. Akari's demeanor shifted instantly from arrogant to deadly serious.
"Speaking of targets…" she muttered, her fingers flying across a keyboard.
The display zoomed in on a sector map. Three new signals had appeared on the edge of the Rust Belt, moving with a purpose and speed that marked them as anything but Scavengers. They were converging on the wastewater plant.
"Kusanagi's response team. But these aren't standard security." She enhanced the readout. "Low cybernetic signatures. Abnormal neural activity. They're registered as… Asset Retrieval: Psi-Class. Designation: Psy-Hounds."
The term sent a chill down Kenji's spine. "What are Psy-Hounds?"
"Rumors," Akari said, her voice tight. "Whispers in the dark net. Kusanagi's answer to psychic anomalies. Not enforcers. *Trackers*. They say you can't hide from them. They don't follow digital trails. They follow the… echo you leave behind." She looked pointedly at Kenji. "The echo from your little outburst."
On the screen, the three signals reached the plant. They didn't sweep the area. They moved directly to the exact spot where Kenji had unleashed the shockwave and stopped.
"They're here," Akari whispered.
One of the Hounds, according to the biometric data scrolling next to its signal, knelt down. The sensors picked up a faint, almost imperceptible energy reading emanating from it.
"It's sensing the residue," Akari said, her face pale in the screen's glow. "Your psychic fingerprint."
The Hound stood and, without hesitation, turned its head. Its signal on the map pivoted. And then it began moving, slowly, deliberately, not toward the entrance Kenji had used, but along the exact, twisting route he and Akari had taken through the maintenance tunnels.
"They're not following our physical trail," Akari said, a note of genuine fear in her voice for the first time. "They're following your *scent*. They'll be at the blast door in under three minutes."
Panic surged through Kenji. "We have to run!"
"Run where?" Akari snapped. "If they can track your psychic residue, they can find you anywhere in the city! This Nest is the only reason we've stayed off the grid this long!"
She began frantically typing, initiating a protocol. "I'm scrubbing all data. Initiating core meltdown. We can't let them get this." She grabbed a small, hardened data-core from the main server and shoved it into a pouch on her belt.
The hum of the servers changed pitch, becoming an urgent whine. Warning lights flashed.
"What's the plan?" Kenji asked, the static beginning to buzz at the edge of his perception again, fueled by a fresh wave of adrenaline.
"The plan?" Akari grabbed a small, disc-like device from a rack. "The plan is we don't let them take us. We make our stand at the door. You're the weapon. You have to be ready. No more waves. I need the blade. I need precision. Can you do that?"
Kenji met her gaze. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But beneath it was something else—a defiant spark. He thought of the alley, of the feeling of the blade forming to protect himself. He thought of the Scavengers, of the power he'd unleashed to survive.
He nodded, clenching his fists. "I can try."
"Trying isn't good enough," Akari said, attaching the disc to the blast door. "They're here."
A deep, resonant *THUD* struck the door, not an explosion, but a powerful, concentrated impact. The metal groaned.
*THUD.*
A dent appeared in the center of the door.
"They're not using explosives," Akari said, her voice grim. "They're using telekinesis."
*THUD.*
The dent cracked. A sliver of light from the other side pierced the darkness of the Nest.
Kenji focused, reaching down into the well of anger and fear and desperation. He reached for the hum, for the light. He pictured the blade, not as a destructive force, but as an extension of his own will. A shield. A weapon.
A faint, cerulean light began to emanate from his hands, flickering unsteadily like a faulty neon sign.
The blast door shrieked as a telekinetic force ripped a large section of it cleanly from its hinges, sending it clattering into the room.
Silhouetted in the jagged opening were three figures. They wore sleek, form-fitting black armor without any visible insignia. Their helmets were featureless, polished obsidian domes. No eyes, no sensors. They just *were*.
They stepped into the Nest, moving in unison. The lead Hound raised its hand, not toward Kenji, but toward the humming servers. Akari's disc on the door beeped once.
A crushing force of pure psychokinetic energy slammed into the server banks. Metal shrieked, glass shattered, and the holographic displays died instantly. The core meltdown was violently, silently, crushed into oblivion.
The lead Hound's featureless helmet then turned slowly, deliberately, until it was focused entirely on Kenji. It took a step forward.
Kenji gritted his teeth, the blue energy around his hands flaring brighter, forming the rough, shimmering outline of a blade.
The Psy-Hound didn't even break its stride. It simply raised its other hand toward him.
An invisible, immense pressure seized Kenji. It wasn't attacking his body; it was attacking his *mind*. It was a null-field, a psychic suppressor designed to snuff out his ability at its source. The nascent blade in his hands flickered, dimmed, and dissolved into nothingness. The static in his head was silenced, replaced by a deafening, empty void. He cried out, dropping to his knees, utterly powerless.
The Hound stood over him, its blank visage a mask of terrifying finality. It reached for him.
"Hey, tin can!" Akari yelled.
The Hound's head turned a fraction. Akari held up the disc device she'd placed on the door. It was now glowing a brilliant, dangerous red.
"Eat light," she snarled, and pressed the trigger.
The device wasn't a weapon. It was a flash-bang of immense potency, designed to overload all sensory inputs—optical, cybernetic, and, if the rumors were true, psychic.
The world dissolved into a single, blinding, silent white shockwave.
For the Hounds, it was a direct hit to their primary senses. They staggered, their perfect coordination broken.
For Kenji, the suppression field vanished the second the Hound's concentration broke. The return of the psychic static was a painful roar, but it was *his* roar.
He didn't think. He didn't form a blade.
As the lead Hound stumbled blindly, Kenji lunged forward, not with a weapon, but with his hands. He grabbed the sides of the Hound's featureless helmet. And he *pushed*.
He pushed every ounce of his fear, his anger, his confusion, and his raw, untamed power directly into the Hound's mind.
The Hound didn't scream. It shuddered violently, a short, sharp staccato motion. Then it collapsed to the floor, its limbs twitching, its polished helmet now dark and inert.
The other two Hounds were already recovering, their blank helmets turning toward him, their hands rising in unison.
"Run!" Akari screamed, grabbing Kenji's arm and pulling him toward the jagged hole in the blast door. "That won't work twice!"
They fled into the tunnels, leaving the silent Nest and one motionless Psy-Hound behind. The last thing Kenji saw was the two remaining Hounds taking a knee beside their fallen comrade, their attention momentarily diverted.
They had survived the first encounter. But the hunt had just begun. And the hounds now had a true taste of their quarry's scent.