The fire in the oil drum died with a final, pathetic hiss.
Its orange warmth was sucked away, replaced by a cold so profound it felt like it was coming from inside Michael's own bones.
The flames guttered and turned a sickly, corpse-blue.
Jinx swore, a low, guttural curse that was swallowed by the sudden, oppressive silence of the tunnel.
"Get down!" she yelled, her voice a raw burst of sound in the dead air.
She kicked the oil drum, sending it skittering across the concrete with a deafening CLANG.
The world plunged into near-total darkness, broken only by the faint, menacing glow of the three shimmering figures.
They were a trinity of death, forming a perfect, inescapable triangle around the small alcove.
The lead Ghost, the one that had tagged him, drifted forward.
It didn't walk. It didn't float.
It moved with a sickening, unnatural stutter, like a corrupted video file skipping frames.
HERE.
Then THERE.
Never in between.
It raised a hand that was nothing more than a distortion in space, a hand made of rippling, transparent energy.
"Phase-Ripper!" Jinx screamed, her voice tight with a terror that cut through her usual cynical growl.
She yanked Michael by the collar of his ruined hoodie, pulling him hard behind a thick, crumbling concrete pillar.
"Don't let that touch you!"
A wave of pure disruption, a silent ripple in the fabric of reality itself, shot from the Ghost's hand.
VWOOOM!
It struck the spot where they had been standing a second before.
There was no explosion.
No sound of impact.
The concrete wall and a chunk of the floor simply… ceased to exist.
They dissolved into a cloud of fine, gray dust that hung in the air like a gravestone marker.
Jinx peeked out from behind the pillar, her face pale under the streaks of grime, her electric-blue eyes wide with a fear she couldn't hide.
"See?" she hissed, her breath ragged. "They're not weapons, kid. Not really."
"They're reality erasers."
The Ghost tilted its faceless head, a gesture of cold, inhuman curiosity.
It had missed.
The other two Ghosts began to drift inward, their glitchy movements tightening the net.
One to the left.
One to the right.
They were cutting off all escape routes, herding them.
Michael's blood ran cold. This wasn't a fight. It was an execution.
"They're not trying to capture me," he whispered, the realization a block of ice in his gut. "The Alchemist was wrong."
"No, he was right," Jinx grunted, shouldering her heavy, modified energy rifle. The weapon hummed to life with a low, angry buzz. "Their main objective is to capture you. But their secondary protocol? Erase any and all witnesses. That's me. I'm the acceptable collateral damage."
"I'm the target," Michael said, his voice hardening. "I have to draw their fire."
Before Jinx could protest, he moved.
"Hey!" he yelled, his voice cracking but loud. "Ugly! Over here!"
He channeled the dregs of his power, feeling the Void Energy drain from his nearly empty reserves.
[SHADOW STEP (LV. 1) ACTIVATED]
ZIP!
He reappeared twenty feet away, directly behind the lead Ghost.
He thrust the Reaper's Fang forward, the black dagger glowing with a faint, hungry purple light.
His blade met nothing but empty air.
The Ghost's form became completely transparent for a single, jarring moment, its body phasing out of sync with reality.
It flickered back into existence a few feet to his left, its faceless head swiveling to track him.
It was too fast. It wasn't just moving; it was predicting him.
A high-pitched, electronic screech echoed through the tunnel, a sound that bypassed his ears and drilled directly into his brain.
It was a signal. A command.
The other two Ghosts attacked in perfect, terrifying synchronization.
The one on the right fired its Phase-Ripper, aiming not at Michael, but at the ground just in front of him, forcing him to leap backward.
The one on the left moved to cut off his retreat.
They were playing with him, forcing him exactly where they wanted him to go.
WHUMP!
A shot from Jinx's rifle slammed into the left Ghost's chest.
It didn't do any damage. The heavy energy slug simply passed through its shimmering form.
But it worked.
The Ghost flinched, its form stuttering violently as it was forced to phase defensively. The disruption broke its rhythm for a split second.
It was the only opening Michael needed.
He didn't attack. He ran.
He scrambled away from the closing trap, diving behind another crumbling support pillar.
"They're adapting!" Jinx yelled from her position, firing another shot that went wide. "They know your moves now!"
"My energy is almost gone!" Michael shouted back, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He checked his status with a frantic thought.
[VE: 10/125]
Two more Shadow Steps, maybe. One weak Void Slash. Then he was just a kid with a knife.
The lead Ghost drifted forward again, its hand glowing with the terrifying, world-erasing energy.
Michael knew what was coming.
He braced himself.
But the Ghost didn't fire at him.
It fired at the pillar Jinx was hiding behind.
VWOOOM!
A huge chunk of their cover dissolved into gray dust.
Jinx screamed as she threw herself to the side, concrete shrapnel stinging the air around her.
They weren't just herding him anymore. They were taking away his only ally.
They were systematically breaking them down.
"They're too smart!" Jinx yelled, her voice laced with panic. "This isn't DGC standard tactics! This is black-ops! Hunter-killer programming!"
Michael's mind raced, a chaotic storm of fear and desperation.
They couldn't fight.
They couldn't run.
Cover was useless.
His power was fading.
They were trapped in a box, and the walls were closing in, threatening to wipe them from existence with every silent, shimmering blast.
The three Ghosts began to advance again, their movements slow, deliberate, and utterly final.
They had finished playing.
They were closing in for the kill.
Jinx looked at him, her face a mask of grim resolve. She was out of options, her rifle now little more than a club against these enemies.
Michael clutched the Reaper's Fang, its cold weight doing little to reassure him.
This was it.
This was how it ended.
Hunted down in a forgotten tunnel, erased by specters of a conspiracy he barely understood.
He thought of his father.
He thought of the key in his pocket.
A surge of hot, defiant rage cut through the cold fear.
No.
Not like this.
Jinx seemed to feel it too. Her eyes, which had been darting frantically between the three advancing Ghosts, suddenly went still.
She wasn't looking at them anymore.
She was looking up.
Up at the ceiling of the massive conduit.
Up at the thick, cancerous tangle of rusted pipes and sparking, ancient power cables that snaked across the rock ceiling like sleeping metal serpents.
A wild, desperate, and utterly insane light sparked in her electric-blue eyes.
"Kid," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper that was somehow louder than the silence.
"I have an idea."
She gave him a crooked, terrifying grin.
"It's stupid."
"It's probably going to get us both killed."
"But," she said, her grin widening, "it's a hell of a lot better than being erased."