The rain vanished a fraction of a second before it touched Evan's body.
He walked toward Clinic Seventeen, the purple crystalline shell on his right hand emitting a faint, ominous pulse in the dark. The black tactical tape that once bound his arm had been reduced to charred cinders, clinging to the edges of his flaking skin.
The pain had shifted from a sharp sting to a deep, perpetual vibration—as if an engine were idling at impossible speeds inside his very marrow.
The meat-packing plant housing Clinic Seventeen was surrounded.
Four "Inquisitor-class" heavy exoskeletons stood at the entrance, massive electromagnetic interference towers strapped to their backs. The machines were painted a cold, matte black, the Hephaestus logo on their chests shimmering in the rainy night.
No demands. No warnings.
These special units existed for a single purpose: Recovery.
Evan stopped thirty meters from the perimeter. He could feel White Owl's presence in the basement—faint, flickering like a lamp about to run out of oil.
"Target detected."
The lead Inquisitor raised its rotary autocannon.
Evan didn't dodge. He looked down at his right hand, took a shallow breath, and forcibly began to contract his radius.
Five meters. Three. One.
Finally, the invisible field clung tightly to his form, creating a "membrane" roughly ten centimeters thick.
The air began to wail.
Due to the extreme energy density, the space around him warped visibly. Evan's body appeared encased in a layer of semi-transparent black flame—not fire, but highly compressed, non-purged supernatural sediment.
"Fire."
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A deluge of armor-piercing rounds tore through the air.
Yet, as the bullets entered the ten centimeters surrounding Evan, they didn't ricochet or shatter.
They ceased to be.
Like raindrops falling into a star, the moment the bullets touched that membrane, their physical attributes—mass, velocity, form—were forcibly zeroed out.
Evan took his first step.
His movement wasn't fast, yet it carried a desperate, constant rhythm.
The gunner let out a terrified roar, increasing the rate of fire and even launching two micro-missiles. The missiles struck Evan's shoulder area, failed to detonate, and simply vanished into the black membrane like wax melting into a void.
"Impossible... he isn't a shielding field. He's a devourer!"
Evan reached the first Inquisitor.
He raised his right hand.
He no longer needed the short blade. The violet crystal covering his fingertips, combined with the ten-centimeter compression, was itself the most efficient slicer in existence.
He swept his palm lightly across the twenty-centimeter-thick composite armor of the exoskeleton.
There was no resistance.
Like a hot knife through butter, or light passing through air.
The steel husk of the Inquisitor was severed neatly in two. The cut was as smooth as a mirror; even the internal wiring and the pilot's body were erased at the point of contact before any physical reaction could occur.
No blood sprayed. Because the moment the wound was created, all biological tissue fell into a state of suspended animation due to "lost rules."
Evan didn't pause. He moved like a dark phantom between the remaining three machines.
His movements lacked any flourish—only basic cuts and thrusts.
Ten centimeters was his absolute defense, and his ultimate edge.
By the time he stepped into the clinic's basement, he left behind only neatly sliced scrap metal and a factory wall slowly collapsing in the wake of the black membrane's passage.
Inside the basement, "Saw" stood over the unconscious White Owl, gripping a custom-made pistol. His camera-eye let out a high-pitched whine of overload as he saw Evan.
"You... you actually made it back," Saw whispered, staring at Evan's violet crystalline arm.
Evan said nothing. He reached into his hoodie, pulled out the vial taken from the Source Core, and slammed it onto the operating table.
"Save her."
The moment those two words left his lips, the ten-centimeter black membrane flickered violently and collapsed.
The accumulated agony surged back in a flood.
Evan spat out a mouthful of blood flecked with grey crystalline shards and dropped to one knee.
"Don't you dare die here," Saw shouted, his hands moving with mechanical precision to inject the Neutralizer into White Owl. "If you die, your radius will expand instantly and wipe everything within a kilometer off the map."
Evan's lips twitched into a self-deprecating smirk.
He looked at his right hand, which no longer looked remotely human, his eyes filled with a hollow stillness.
"I'll... try to last a while."
On the bed, White Owl let out a soft groan. As the Neutralizer flowed into her veins, a ghost of color returned to her pale face.
She slowly opened her eyes and looked at Evan.
"Evan..."
"Yeah."
"Inside... that membrane... I saw it," White Owl's voice was barely audible. "Your origin... isn't the lab. You fell in... from the Outside."
Evan's head snapped up, his left hand gripping the edge of the operating table with bone-crushing force.
"Outside?"
"Greyfog City... is just a laboratory," White Owl's eyes leaked tears of blood. "And you... are the rag... used to wipe it clean."