The gates of "The Hub" looked more like a jagged rift leading to an underworld.
The cataclysmic blast three years ago hadn't leveled the structure so much as twisted it into a shape that defied geometry. Steel rebar stretched toward the sky like withered tentacles; concrete walls possessed a semi-transparent quality, as if trapped in a perpetual transition between solid and gas.
The moment Evan stepped inside, the black tactical tape on his right arm began to vibrate violently.
The suppressed crystals within him sensed the Source Energy here—so dense it had practically liquefied. Gravity was a chaotic variable; in some pockets, it was as light as a feather, while in others, it was heavy enough to snap a human spine in an instant.
Evan maintained his five-meter radius.
He was like a bathysphere in the deep ocean. In this ruin where physical laws had defaulted, his radius was the only "reality."
Wherever he walked, twisted spaces were forcibly straightened; floating debris lost its buoyancy and crashed to the floor. But this "restoration" came at a cost. He could feel the black, flocculent sediment slamming against the inner edges of his radius, shrieking like fingernails dragging across glass.
At the entrance to the spiral staircase leading to the sub-basement, Evan stopped.
A young girl was sitting there.
She looked no older than seven or eight, wearing a lab coat far too large for her small frame. Her skin was white to the point of being translucent. She wasn't crying, nor was she smiling; she simply sat there, tinkering with a rusted, wind-up tin frog.
Evan's pupils contracted sharply.
It wasn't just the girl's presence. It was the "field" surrounding her.
A tiny circle, no more than ten centimeters in radius, clung tightly to the surface of her body.
Any chaotic rule attempting to approach her—be it floating dust, warped light, or the pervasive radiation of the lab—vanished without a sound the moment it entered those ten centimeters.
It was a Null Zone far purer and more concentrated than Evan's.
"Don't come closer," the girl said without looking up. Her voice was hollow, echoing as if from the bottom of a deep well.
Evan stood five meters away. His right hand twitched convulsively beneath the tape.
"Who are you?"
"I am Subject 04." The girl finally looked up. Her eyes had no pupils—only two spinning, lightless voids. "Are you... the failed Subject 01?"
Evan's heart gave a violent jolt.
The thousand broken radios in his head went silent for a single, terrifying heartbeat, replaced by a deathly stillness.
"They said Subject 01 was too big," the girl said, tilting her head as she observed Evan's five-meter radius. "Five meters is too loose. You miss too many things. That's why you're growing those ugly stones."
She pointed to his tape-wrapped hand.
"I am only ten centimeters. But I miss nothing."
She stood up. The tin frog in her hand hopped once, and the moment it left her ten-centimeter radius, the erratic gravity stretched it instantly into a long, thin wire of metal.
Evan felt an unprecedented pressure.
This girl wasn't protecting herself. She was, in herself, a collapsed point of absolute singularity.
"Where is the Neutralizer?" Evan asked hoarsely.
"Below." She pointed into the bottomless shadows of the stairs. "But you can't go down there. The 'trash' below is already full. Your five meters can't hold that much. You'll... explode."
Evan looked down at his right hand.
The crystals had begun to prize up the edges of the tape, revealing a glimpse of sickening purplish-black.
"I have to go down."
Evan took a step forward. As his five-meter radius overlapped with her ten-centimeter absolute domain, the air erupted with a grinding screech that set his teeth on edge.
It wasn't a physical collision. It was two different brands of "nothingness" repelling each other.
Evan felt his radius shudder. The sediment accumulated over three years seemed to find a vent, desperately trying to surge toward the little girl.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" she asked softly.
Evan gritted his teeth, offering no answer. He could feel his veins screaming under the pressure of the crystal.
"Saw said I'm a Purge Protocol." Evan locked eyes with the girl. "Since I'm a program, I have to execute until the end."
He brushed past her, heading toward the lower labs filled with aberrations and physical wreckage.
Behind him, the girl sat back down and picked up the elongated metal wire.
"Subject 01."
Evan paused.
"If you really shatter... remember to pull the radius back. Shrink it... until you can hold yourself. That way, it won't hurt anymore."
Evan didn't look back.
He vanished into the subterranean darkness, the black tape on his right arm looking like a dying snake, while his five-meter radius slammed into the deepest chaos with a frantic, all-or-nothing violence.