The server room was no longer a room; it was a furnace. The smell of melting plastic and ionized air was suffocating. Malice stood in the center of the destruction, his silhouette framed by a halo of blinding white light that made the shadows behind him look like jagged teeth.
"Move, Mina," Malice said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You've been compromised by a terrorist. Step aside, and R-nex might let you keep your scholarship. Maybe we'll just tell the press you were a hostage."
Mina looked at Malice, then at the charred remains of the servers containing the truth. She didn't move. She stood trembling, her light-bow flickering back into existence, though it looked like a candle flame compared to the sun standing before them.
"You... you killed them," she whispered. "The witnesses in the North Sector. You called them 'acceptable margins.'"
Malice sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment. "I'm the reason this city sleeps. I'm the reason the stock market hasn't collapsed. If I have to prune a few branches to save the forest, that's not murder, Mina. That's gardening."
He didn't wait for her response. With a flick of his wrist, a beam of solar energy shot toward her.
"NO!" Kai lunged.
He didn't dodge. He slammed his open palm into the beam. The Null-Void erupted, a fountain of absolute blackness clashing against the solar white. The sound was like a plate of glass being ground into a jet engine. Kai's feet skidded across the melting floor, his boots smoking.
He's too strong, the voice in Kai's head—his own primal instinct—screamed. You're trying to swallow an ocean with a thimble!
"Interesting," Malice mused, hovering closer. "Your Graft has grown. You're actually eating my output. But tell me, Kaelen... how much can you stomach before you pop?"
Malice increased the pressure. The light turned from white to a searing, ultraviolet blue. Kai's skin began to blister. The residual "Magma-Blood" he'd stolen from Jax was being incinerated, used up as fuel just to keep the Void open.
"Mina! The ventilation shaft!" Kai roared over the screeching energy. "GO!"
"I'm not leaving you!" she cried, firing three light-arrows at Malice's eyes.
Malice didn't even blink. The arrows hit his face and shattered like toothpicks against a mountain. He turned his gaze toward her, and for a split second, the light around his fist surged.
In that moment of distraction, Kai stopped absorbing. He Mimicked.
He let a fraction of Malice's solar energy pour into his veins instead of through them. It felt like drinking liquid stars. His eyes turned a terrifying, fractured white, and his veins glowed through his skin like neon tubes.
"Get. Back!" Kai released the stored energy in a chaotic, black-and-white blast. The explosion was so violent it ripped the remaining server racks out of the floor and threw Malice back through the blast doors.
The building groaned. The entire floor began to tilt.
Kai grabbed Mina's hand. His arm was shaking, the skin blackened from the brief contact with Malice's power. "We have to jump. Now!"
"We're on the fiftieth floor!"
"Trust me!"
They sprinted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Behind them, the smoke parted. Malice was standing in the hallway, his cape slightly singed, his face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. No more hero. No more symbol. Just a predator who had been nicked by his prey.
"VANCE!" Malice roared.
Kai and Mina shattered the glass and plummeted into the neon-soaked abyss of the city.
As they fell, Kai wrapped his arms around Mina. He reached out with his mind, searching for any Graft nearby. He felt it—a maintenance drone hovering fifty feet below, powered by a "Grav-Lift" Graft. He snatched the connection, nullifying the drone's flight and pulling the gravitational force into his own body.
They slowed down just enough to slam into the roof of a passing mag-lev train. The impact knocked the wind out of them, but they were alive.
As the train sped away toward the "Grey Zones"—the slums where R-nex's cameras didn't reach—Kai looked back at the Academy spire. Malice was standing on the edge of the broken window, a silhouette of golden fire against the dark sky.
He wasn't chasing them. He didn't need to. He had the entire world's media in his pocket. By morning, Kai and Mina wouldn't just be rebels; they would be the most wanted villains in history.
Kai looked at the flash drive in his hand. The weight of it felt like a mountain.
"The hero story is over, Mina," Kai said, his voice cracking. "Welcome to the revolution."
Mina looked at her shaking hands, then at the glowing white scar on Kai's arm. She didn't look like a "True Believer" anymore. She looked like someone who had just woken up in a nightmare.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
Kai looked into the dark heart of the city. "We find the people R-nex tried to bury. We find the other 'Mistakes.' And then... we take the sun out of the sky."