The knocking came again, harder this time.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
It was the sound of a closing cage.
"DGC!" a muffled voice shouted from the hallway. "Marcus! Open up! We have a warrant!"
Marcus moved with a speed that defied his tired, broken frame. The old S-Rank instincts flared to life, a dying star burning brilliantly one last time.
"Basement," he hissed, grabbing Michael's arm, his grip like steel.
"What?"
"There's a panic room. Elara built it. Go. Now."
"I'm not leaving you!" Michael shot back, his own adrenaline surging.
"You don't have a choice, kid!" Marcus snarled, shoving him towards the back of the apartment. "They aren't here for me. They're here for you."
He pulled a loose floorboard from beneath the hallway rug, revealing a dark, square opening.
"They can't get a scan through the walls. It's shielded. It will buy you time."
"Time for what?"
Marcus's face was grim. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, old-fashioned skeleton key, its metal worn smooth with age.
"Her legacy," he said, pressing it into Michael's hand. "It's all I have left of her."
"In the storage unit. Number 347. Red Hook."
"There's a safe. This key opens it."
"Inside… is everything. All the proof. The unredacted mission logs from the Ever-Gate. Her personal research. Everything I gathered to burn Gideon to the ground."
Michael stared at the key. This was it. The real Legacy Archive.
"I could never open it," Marcus admitted, his voice tight with frustration. "It's sealed. It needs an Arcana signature to unlock the final encryption."
"It needs you."
The sound of the apartment door splintering broke the moment. CRACK!
Heavy boots thudded in the living room.
"Go!" Marcus roared, giving Michael one last, desperate shove towards the hole.
Michael hesitated for only a second, then dropped into the darkness, pulling the floorboard back into place over his head.
He landed on a cold concrete floor in a small, cramped space that smelled of dust and old memories.
He could hear the commotion from above. Shouting. Furniture being overturned.
"Where is he, Marcus?" It was Captain Valerius's voice, sharp and cold.
"Gone," Marcus's voice replied, defiant and mocking. "You're too late, Val."
"We have the building surrounded. Thermal scans on every floor. He can't hide."
"You underestimate my wife," Marcus chuckled, a dark, humorless sound. "You always did."
Michael crouched in the dark, clutching the key, his mind racing.
He had to get out. He had to get to Red Hook.
He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, its screen providing a dim, ghostly light.
No signal. The shielding was absolute.
He was trapped.
But he wasn't alone.
"Warden," he thought, his panic giving way to a cold focus. "Status."
The familiar blue screen flickered to life in his vision.
The text was crisp and calm, a stark contrast to the chaos above.
[COMMAND: STATUS]
Name: Michael
Level: 4
Class: Void Reaper (Awakened)
Title: Last Scion
…
He scrolled down, past his stats, past his skills.
A new quest had appeared, overriding everything else. Its border was a blood-red, pulsing with an urgency that made his stomach clench.
[PRIORITY OVERRIDE: LEGACY QUEST GENERATED]
[QUEST: THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE]
[DESCRIPTION: Your father has entrusted you with the key to your mother's legacy. The data drive contains the uncorrupted truth of the Ever-Gate incident and the crimes of Project Chimera. Retrieve it. Unlock it. Expose them.]
[OBJECTIVE 1: ESCAPE THE DGC PERIMETER.]
[OBJECTIVE 2: RETRIEVE THE LEGACY DRIVE FROM STORAGE UNIT 347.]
[OBJECTIVE 3: ???]
[REWARD: 5000 EXP, SYSTEM INTEGRATION WITH LEGACY ARCHIVE, ???]
[FAILURE: CAPTURE. SOUL-WIPE. PERMANENT ENSLAVEMENT TO PROJECT CHIMERA.]
The stakes had never been higher.
"Escape," he muttered to himself. "How?"
The Warden's voice echoed in his mind, its usual weary amusement gone, replaced by a grave seriousness.
"Your mother was not only a warrior, child."
"She was a genius of spatial manipulation."
"This panic room is more than just a shielded box."
"It is a nexus."
"Look to the far wall."
Michael turned, his phone's light falling on the cold, blank concrete.
As he watched, faint, glowing lines of purple energy began to trace a pattern on the wall, forming a complex, circular rune. It was the symbol for the Legacy Archive.
It was a door.
"She built a backdoor into the city's forgotten spaces," the Warden explained. "A private network of tunnels and safe houses, completely off the DGC's grid."
"This door leads to the Undercroft."
The black market. The den of rogues and criminals.
It was the perfect hiding place.
"It requires an energy source to activate," the Warden continued. "Void Energy. A significant amount."
Michael looked at his status.
[VE: 125/125]
It would take almost everything he had.
He placed his hand on the rune. The concrete was cold, but the lines of energy pulsed with a faint warmth, like a sleeping heartbeat.
He could hear Valerius losing her patience upstairs.
"Last chance, Marcus! Tell us where the anomaly is, or we take you apart piece by piece!"
There was a sound of a struggle. A grunt of pain from his father.
Michael's jaw clenched.
He closed his eyes and poured his will, his energy, his entire being into the rune.
[ACTIVATING ARCANA GATE. DRAINING 100 VE.]
The purple lines flared with a brilliant, silent light.
The solid concrete wall dissolved into a shimmering, liquid portal, revealing a dark, grimy subway tunnel on the other side.
He didn't hesitate.
He took one last look up at the floorboards, a silent promise to his father hanging in the air.
I'll be back.
And I will burn them all to the ground.
He stepped through the portal.
The moment he was through, it snapped shut behind him with a faint hiss, the rune fading from the wall as if it had never been there.
He was standing in a dark, abandoned tunnel, the air thick with the smell of mold and ozone.
He was safe. For now.
He checked his status.
[VE: 25/125]
He was running on fumes.
But he was free.
He had a key.
He had a destination.
And he had a burning, all-consuming rage that felt hotter than any fire.
He was no longer just a student caught in the crossfire.
He was not just a son trying to understand his past.
He was a Void Reaper.
He was the Last Scion.
And he was at war.
Just as he took his first step towards Red Hook, a new notification pinged on his HUD.
It wasn't a quest.
It wasn't a status update.
It was a system-wide alert, bordered in a terrifying, glitching black.
The robotic voice of the System was gone.
It was replaced by a cold, synthetic, and utterly malevolent voice he had never heard before. A voice that came not from the Warden or the Legacy Archive, but from an outside influence that was trying to hack its way in.
[EXTERNAL SYSTEM INTRUSION DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: DGC // DIVISION ZERO // PROJECT: CHIMERA]
A new window opened, displaying a grainy, thermal image of him standing in the tunnel.
He was being watched. Not by eyes, but by something far more advanced.
The chilling, synthetic voice spoke again, the text appearing in his vision like a death sentence.
[TARGET ANOMALY DESIGNATED 'ECHO-01' CONFIRMED.]
[BLOODLINE MATCH: ELARA. PROBABILITY: 99.8%.]
[DISPATCHING HUNTER-KILLER UNIT: 'THE GHOSTS'.]
[OBJECTIVE: CAPTURE. ALIVE.]