The high-pitched whine from the Vanguard Syndicate's motion-trip laser ripped down the steel shaft, that tiny red LED on the sensor blinking wild and fast. Every few seconds, it splashed a warning on the tight metal walls—get any closer, you're about to meet a whole squad with heavy weapons.
Next to Vance, Axiom—huge, panicked, tail twitching—tensed up, muscles bunched and ready to lunge. You could feel it: the beast wanted nothing more than to tear through the vent, claws first, and shred anything that moved on the other side.
Vance crushed down on their mental link, holding the Tether so tight it hurt. "Hold," he thought, shoving the command at Axiom—sharp, absolute. No way he was letting raw instinct get them both cut down by a team waiting with plasma guns, not here, not in a damn tube where moving was almost impossible.
The strain almost broke him, and his stomach twisted hard enough to make him gag. Every part of him screamed—the last twenty-four hours had already used up everything he had. His right foot throbbed with that deep, bone-deep ache, leftover from when the parasite reassembled it, stealing years off his life just to keep him moving. His left arm burned, electrical stitches pulling and grating with every short crawl. Much worse, a cold, unnatural chill radiated from the brand at the base of his skull—cooler and more terrifying than the pain, a constant reminder of the ancient god who'd marked him. He was falling apart, kept upright by patchwork magic and sheer refusal to quit. Even so, every motion came down to a deal with the pain in his body. Lie down, give up—every part of him wanted that. But the blinking red light up ahead, well, it had other plans.
Down the shaft, metal crashed and bolts clicked back. Someone ripped the grate away; white light glared in, so bright it hurt. Shadows flooded over Vance. Two figures squatted at the opening, armored—matte gray, gold trim—the unmistakable look of Vanguard Tier-3 "Black-Ops." Sound-dampened, loaded for war.
He didn't need a second look. He recognized the gear, the design of the neck guards, the shape of their plasma carbines. He knew these people: nameless, trained to kill, ghosts rebuilt into weapons. One ran a gloved hand around the vent's edge, checking for anything loose. Where they moved, it was too quiet—like they'd learned to operate without breathing. Only minutes ago Vance and Axiom escaped a priority target—raw chaos and violence. But now, with these soldiers, it was all sharp chrome, clean lethal intent. If Axiom so much as twitched, they'd cut the cat to pieces and drown Vance in plasma.
One of them tapped a control on their gauntlet. A drone broke loose from their shoulder, sphere-shaped, unfolded with a click—a mess of glowing lenses blinking online. Thermal seeker. That thing would scan right through walls, find a heartbeat anywhere. Vance knew its tricks: the software ignored spots at absolute zero, so it wouldn't get tripped up by coolant leaks or freezer malfunctions from old tech.
He snapped another command down the Tether. "Pull the heat. Now." He didn't let Axiom hesitate—the order drilled deeper than instinct.
Axiom shuddered, then complied. Instantly, everything went pure arctic. Frost bloomed over Vance's coat, his skin, the sweat on his face froze solid, each breath a knifelike stab of ice. For a few seconds, he stopped breathing altogether. Maybe it was only a moment, maybe longer—time didn't make sense in that freeze.
The drone drifted overhead, flicking through its search pattern. It saw nothing—no heat, no anomaly. Only the cold bodies, ground-hugging, frozen to the floor. A muffled report filtered through over comms: just some weird pressure in the duct, nothing serious. The drone zipped back, armor moved away, grate slammed shut, and darkness dropped like a curtain. They didn't bother locking it this time.
Vance waited, listening for boots. Once the sound died, he let Axiom release the freeze. Numb and shaking hard, Vance forced himself forward—every step twisting pain through his leg. He finally reached the end, battered the loose grate open, and it landed on the polished floor with a crash that echoed like a gunshot.
He pulled himself out, and the world changed in an instant. No more ancient stone—he staggered into a spotless, blinding white lab. Everything here gleamed: steel tables, server racks buzzing behind glass. The air even tasted different—clean, all chemicals, none of that dusty, haunted, underground grit. Axiom followed, their dark, heavy body streaming melting frost onto the bright floor, looking wild and monstrous in all that fluorescent light. Vance leaned against the nearest wall just to keep upright, sweat, dirt and blood standing out in this place like all the things that didn't belong. Yet here they were, deep in the heart of Vanguard, past every security layer they could think to build.
Vance hobbled over to a row of centrifuges, keeping most of his weight on his good leg. He scanned the lab. Empty—no guards, no turrets, but a terminal near the far wall still glowed with life. The lockout screen flickered, daring someone to try. He moved fast—found the hidden menu, punched in an old code he'd memorized ages ago. The lock melted away.
Data flooded the screen, layer after layer scrolling too fast to read—logs, test records, all of it worse than he'd guessed. Vanguard wasn't just poking around the ruins. They'd set up a whole automated extraction system, harvesting corrupted, fossilized blood from Arthur Prescott—the monster, the founder himself, still wandering the grim underworld below. Drones stabbed him with needles, drawing out the black stuff drop by drop while he smashed himself against the vault walls.
Even worse, the next files spelled out the truth. The blood—some kind of temporal mutagen—ended up right here, in these centrifuges. They injected it into kidnapped, low-tier Siphons dragged in from the slums. They weren't studying, they were forcing evolution—trying to make new gods by torturing people to the brink. And it never worked. Most of the subjects ended up dead within seconds—their bodies failed, burned, or just came apart.
Vance couldn't look away. Every new line raised the stakes. Vanguard's whole operation, all that power, built on blood and loss. His hand hovered over the keys—then the screen flashed. Hard lock. External override—crimson light, then nothing. Only his reflection stared back, and over his shoulder, Axiom crouched low, hair on end.
Right behind Vance, in perfect silhouette, a Cartel Scientist raised a stun baton, the prongs crackling blue with power.