The basement beneath the "Golden Dragon Laundromat" was a tomb of damp concrete and exposed copper wiring that smelled of ozone and industrial-grade detergent. Above them, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of twenty heavy-duty washing machines provided a constant acoustic camouflage, vibrating through the floorboards and masking the hum of high-end cooling fans. This was the sanctuary Deng Wei had secured, a space forgotten by the city's urban planners and, more importantly, invisible to the Xinhai Syndicate's initial sweeps of the university dorms.
Deng Wei stood in the center of the cramped room, illuminated by the harsh, flickering glow of four monitors he had "liberated" from the university's server room during the orientation chaos. Cables snaked across the floor like neon vines, all leading to four mismatched chairs where the team sat, hooked up to a web of biometric sensors and improvised electrodes.
"I need everyone to stay perfectly still," Deng Wei muttered, his fingers flying across a holographic keyboard. His eyes were bloodshot, and a streak of grease was smeared across his forehead. "I've spent the last six hours cross-referencing the energy spikes from the lecture hall with the data I pulled from the North Peak impact site. I initially thought my sensors were suffering from a hardware malfunction. I thought the Syndicate was testing a localized EMP."
"And?" Mu Han asked, her voice trembling slightly. She was sitting with her feet in a plastic tub of water she'd brought from the sink upstairs. It was a desperate attempt to regulate her internal temperature, but a thin, jagged layer of ice had already formed on the water's surface, creeping up the sides of the tub like frozen lace.
"And it's not the environment," Deng Wei said, turning the primary monitor around so the group could see it. The screen displayed five distinct DNA helices, but they weren't the standard double-helixes taught in their first-year biology textbooks. They were glowing, triple-stranded structures that pulsed with a rhythmic, violet light. "It's you. Every single one of you. The shards didn't just 'stick' to you like a piece of jewelry. They merged at a sub-atomic level. You aren't just carrying the Aether; your bodies have become generators for it."
Zhao Yan looked down at his hands. Even in the dim light of the basement, his skin was emitting a faint, orange luminescence, and the air around his fingers shimmered with heat. "So... what are we? Mutants? Some kind of biological glitch?"
"Mutant is such a 'low-budget movie' term, Zhao Yan," Deng Wei scoffed, though his hands were visibly shaking as he adjusted a dial on his console. "Technically, you are now Biological Aether-Conduits. You've become a bridge between our physical laws and whatever dimension that meteor originated from. Lin Feng, you're basically a high-pressure weather system contained within a human frame. Chen Shi, your mass density is currently defying three separate laws of thermodynamics."
Deng Wei hit a final key, and a 3D model of Zhao Yan's heart appeared on the main screen. The organ wasn't beating like a normal heart; it was a white-hot core of energy, spinning like a miniature sun.
"You're not having a fever, Zhao Yan," Deng Wei whispered, the snark finally leaving his voice as the gravity of the data set in. "You're a star. If I don't get these Sync-Bands calibrated to vent your excess thermal output within the next hour, you're going to turn this laundromat—and probably this entire block—into a smoldering crater."
Lin Feng stood up, and as he did, a small, violent whirlwind kicked up the dust around his sneakers, knocking over a stack of empty detergent boxes. "So there's no 'fixing' this? We can't just go back to being students? I have an Aeronautical Engineering exam in three weeks, Deng."
"The university thinks you're a technical anomaly. The Syndicate thinks you're corporate property," Deng Wei said, looking at his friends. He reached into a crate and pulled out a high-precision soldering iron, the blue tip glowing with intense heat. "But I think you're the only thing standing between Xinhai and whatever is coming next. If the world is going to hunt you, you might as well give them a reason to be afraid."
He motioned for Lin Feng to extend his arm. "Lin Feng, give me your wrist. We're going to stop being victims of a 'sickness' and start being the Syndicate's worst nightmare. I'm locking the first-generation Sync-Bands now. It's going to sting."
As the soldering iron met the metallic band on Lin Feng's wrist, a spark of violet light filled the room, and for the first time since the mountain, the "sickness" didn't feel like a burden. It felt like power.