Sheena's instincts screamed. This wasn't a fight. This was a slaughter. Ormazd, the mighty, the cunning, the divine Ormazd, was gone in an instant, reduced to nothingness by a silent, terrifying force. Her own enhanced senses, which had detected Black's presence, now recoiled from the sheer, overwhelming power radiating from him. Survival instincts took over.
"Scatter! Flee!" she shrieked, her voice a guttural, terrified rasp, a primal fear seizing her. She launched herself towards the entrance, intending to escape into the Ghost Terrace, to warn Dante, to run and never look back.
But as she reached the precipice, a figure materialized directly behind her. Not descended, not walked, but simply appeared. It was Dante, the Chronos Syndicate leader, his face a mask of cold fury. Sheena gasped, a sudden, sharp intake of breath. How could he have known? How was he here?
"You fail me, Sheena," Dante's voice was a low, chilling whisper, devoid of all warmth, utterly devoid of the arrogance he usually projected. His eyes, normally calculating, now burned with an unnatural, hungry light. This was not the Dante she knew. This was something else. This was the Demon Man, Dr. Orion, in his most perfect, terrifying shapeshifted form. He had learned from his creation, perfected his own abilities, and now, he wielded them.
Before Sheena could utter a single word, before her tiger instincts could even twitch, Dr. Orion, in Dante's form, extended a hand. A dark, pulsating energy, like hungry shadows, lashed out from his palm and wrapped around Sheena. She couldn't move, couldn't scream. Her muscular form began to shrivel, to desiccate. Her vibrant stripes faded, her glowing eyes dimmed. The raw essence of her life force, her very being, was being drained, sucked into the cold, empty void of Dr. Orion's hand.
Sheena convulsed, a silent, agonizing gasp. Her last breath hitched in her throat, a final, primal fear twisting her face. She looked at Black, her fading eyes pleading, warning, before the last spark of life winked out. Her body, now a withered husk, crumpled to the ground, nothing but dust and bone.
Dr. Orion, still in Dante's perfect likeness, turned to the remaining, terrified Chronos Syndicate enforcers. "Tell your master," he commanded, his voice now a booming, resonant echo of Dante's own, a perfectly crafted lie. "Tell him… that the Black Zombie lives."
Then, he looked directly at Black, who stood motionless amidst the carnage, the terrifying power still radiating from him. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Dr. Orion's lips, before he returned to his own fractured form.
He approached Black, his eyes gleaming with pride and a chilling determination. His friends, now fully recovered and enhanced, stood beside him, watching with a mixture of awe and terror. They had seen Black's terrible power, and now they had seen Dr. Orion's chilling mimicry.
"We are not ready yet," Dr. Orion rasped, his voice ancient and resonant, a strange, terrible tenderness in his gaze as he looked at Black. He looked at the withered corpse of Sheena, then out into the vast, silent city. "But we will be. Tell him," he boomed, projecting his voice outwards, a psychic shout that would ripple through the Syndicate's surveillance network, "tell your pathetic master Dante... that we will kill every one of his maniacs, and then, we will come for him!"
The message, carried by the terrified survivors of the Chronos Syndicate, would reach Dante. But it would not be a message from Black. It would be a message from a new, terrifying alliance, forged in the crucible of the Dead City, waiting to unleash its impossible power upon the world. The true war had only just begun.