The Arcana Gate snapped shut behind him with the sound of a sighing breath.
Darkness.
Silence.
Then the smells hit him.
Damp earth.
Ozone.
And the faint, metallic tang of spilled blood and old secrets.
Michael stood trembling in the heart of the Undercroft, the city's forgotten circulatory system.
The chilling, synthetic voice of the intruder still echoed in his mind, its message burning behind his eyes.
[TARGET ANOMALY DESIGNATED 'ECHO-01' CONFIRMED.]
[DISPATCHING HUNTER-KILLER UNIT: 'THE GHOSTS'.]
[OBJECTIVE: CAPTURE. ALIVE.]
His father's face flashed in his mind.
The desperate shove.
The final, defiant roar.
The sound of the apartment door splintering into pieces.
A wave of nausea and grief washed over him, so strong it nearly buckled his knees.
He was alone.
Hunted.
He clutched the old skeleton key in his pocket, its metal cool and solid against his skin.
A promise.
A legacy.
He couldn't fall apart now.
Not when his father had bought him this chance with his own freedom.
Not when his mother's truth was waiting for him in a cold, metal box in Red Hook.
He took a ragged breath, the foul air steadying him.
The panic subsided, replaced by a cold, sharp-edged resolve.
He was no longer Michael, the student.
He was Echo-01.
He was the Last Scion.
He was a Void Reaper.
And it was time to start acting like it.
He needed to get out of the Undercroft and across the river to Brooklyn.
But the surface was a death trap.
Valerius and the DGC would have every station exit locked down tighter than a drum.
He needed a way out that wasn't on any official map.
He needed a ghost exit.
There was only one person he knew who dealt in ghosts and shadows.
The Alchemist.
Michael checked his inventory.
The nine dull, gray F-Rank cores were there.
And nestled among them, pulsing with a quiet, hungry darkness, was the D-Rank Void-Tainted core from the Skitterer Queen.
He had something to bargain with.
He turned and began to move through the dark, oppressive tunnels, his steps silent and sure.
The Undercroft was more active at night.
The neon signs of makeshift stalls cast long, dancing shadows on the grimy walls.
Hunters with hard, hollow eyes bartered over glowing monster parts.
Information brokers whispered in shadowed corners, their voices low and conspiratorial.
The air hummed with the low thrum of barely-contained power and desperation.
No one paid him any mind.
He was just another shadow in a world full of them.
He found the Alchemist's steel door at the end of the dead-end tunnel, the blue rune on its surface glowing with a cold, unwelcoming light.
He knocked.
The familiar metal slot slid open.
The single, cybernetic red eye whirred as it focused on him.
WHIRRR-CLICK.
"You've got a lot of nerve coming back here, kid," the gravelly voice rasped. "The DGC is crawling all over the surface. They're looking for someone."
"They're looking for me," Michael said, his voice flat.
There was a long, humming silence from behind the door.
"Heh."
A dry, rustling sound that might have been a laugh.
"So the little broken Arcana finally bit off more than he could chew."
The door hissed open with a puff of stale, recycled air.
The Alchemist stood there, leaning on his cluttered counter, his chrome arm gleaming under the harsh workshop lights.
The little spider-drone skittered across the ceiling, its blue lens immediately locking onto Michael.
"I need a way out," Michael said, getting straight to the point. "An exit. One the DGC doesn't know about. One that leads to Brooklyn."
The Alchemist raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"And why, pray tell, would I help you? Charity isn't part of my business model. Your first dose of the serum was a free sample. The well is dry, kid."
Michael reached into his backpack.
He pulled out the ten monster cores and placed them carefully on the counter.
The nine F-Rank orbs were dull, barely glowing.
But the D-Rank core was a thing of dark beauty. It pulsed with a deep, void-touched energy that seemed to drink the light in the room.
The Alchemist stopped polishing his hand.
His red eye zoomed in on the D-Rank core, its internal motor whirring with sudden, intense interest.
"Well, well," he breathed, his voice laced with a raw, undisguised greed. "Look at what the little Reaper dragged in."
He gently picked up the D-Rank core, holding it to the light.
"Void-Tainted. Beautifully pure. The energy signature… it's exquisite."
"This is worth more than ten F-rank cores, kid," he said, his gaze flicking back to Michael. "This is worth a lot more."
"I need an exit," Michael repeated, his voice firm. "And information."
The Alchemist smirked, showing his teeth of steel and bone.
"You've got a deal."
He scooped the cores into a lead-lined box.
"The DGC has a special unit after you," he said, his voice dropping. "Off-the-books. Black budget. They call them the Ghosts."
The word sent a fresh chill down Michael's spine.
"They're not traditional Hunters," the Alchemist continued, tapping a chrome finger on his console. "They're specialists in tracking and neutralizing… unique energy signatures."
"Like yours."
"They don't follow normal patrol routes. They move through the city's energy leylines. They can phase through walls, track a target's soul-echo. They are, for all intents and purposes, specters. You can't fight them head-on. You can't hide from them in the open."
"But they have a weakness."
He pulled up a flickering schematic of the subway system on his monitor. It was far more detailed than any public map, showing dozens of forgotten, sealed-off tunnels.
"They're bound by their own technology. Their phasing ability is tied to the city's power grid and major mana conduits. They can't operate in places where those energies are weak or nonexistent."
He pointed to a long, dark line that snaked its way under the East River.
"This is the old Maintenance Conduit Zero. Decommissioned sixty years ago, after a Gate collapsed inside it and destabilized the whole sector. It's a dead zone. No power. No mana. Nothing."
"It's also filled with the leftover dregs of that Gate collapse. Things that have been breeding in the dark for half a century. It's a suicide run."
He looked Michael dead in the eye.
"But it will get you to Red Hook without a Ghost on your tail."
It was perfect.
"How do I get there?" Michael asked.
The Alchemist grinned.
He walked to the back of his shop and pulled a heavy lever.
With a groan of protesting metal, a section of the floor slid away, revealing a rusted, iron ladder descending into absolute blackness.
"Service with a smile," the Alchemist rasped.
"Now get out of my shop. You're bringing too much heat with you."
Michael nodded, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
He gave the Alchemist one last look.
"I'll be back," he said. "For more of the serum."
The Alchemist's grin widened.
"I know," he said. "The desperate ones always come back."
Michael descended the ladder, the darkness swallowing him whole.
The tunnel at the bottom was cold and silent.
He took a step forward, the key in his pocket feeling like a lodestone, pulling him towards his destiny.
Just as he turned the first corner, a sound echoed from the Alchemist's shop far above him.
It wasn't a voice.
It was a whisper.
A cold, ethereal hiss that seemed to slide directly into his brain without passing through his ears.
Echo…
Michael froze, his blood turning to ice.
He activated his Void Reaper senses, his vision sharpening in the oppressive dark.
He looked back towards the ladder.
For just a fraction of a second, he saw it.
A shimmering distortion in the air at the top of the shaft. A heat-haze in a place where there was no heat.
It was shaped vaguely like a man, but it had no substance.
And floating in the center of its chest was a single, glowing, spectral DGC insignia.
The Ghost was already here.