Soldiers poured in from both ends, rifles raised, voices barking orders over the shrill wail of sirens.
Anna, Nullis, and Xylo had nowhere left to run.
Anna was the first to move. She surged forward, her gloved fist slamming into a soldier's chestplate with a dull crack. He staggered, and in the instant her bare fingers brushed his exposed skin, glowing glyphs bloomed where she had touched.
He screamed as his stance buckled, his strength siphoned away, his coordination unraveling.
"Don't let her touch you!" someone shouted, panic cracking through the formation.
Anna pressed on, weaving between gunfire, every strike leaving burning glyphs in her wake. Power bled into her veins in bursts, her speed sharper, her reflexes tighter.
Behind her, Xylo slammed his palms down. Frost exploded outward, the floor blooming with jagged ice that climbed walls and ceilings in wicked spikes. A soldier lunged forward, only to skid hard, crashing into the frozen steel as shards impaled his armor. Another's weapon locked, mechanisms frozen stiff in his grip. The hallway transformed into a glittering deathtrap with every flick of Xylo's wrist.
"Romantic ambiance, huh?" he muttered under his breath, but his grin was replaced by clenched teeth.
Nullis flickered past him, her body dissolving into smoke-edged light. She passed straight through a soldier, and his rifle sparked violently, circuits shorting out. She phased back solid just long enough to sweep another guard's legs out, then blurred again, vanishing into cover before suppressive fire tore the air apart.
The three of them moved as one, chaos and precision colliding. Anna's glyphs burned on the Taskforce like brands. Xylo's ice carved the corridors into jagged kill-zones. Nullis darted in and out, sabotage and distraction in perfect sync.
And still—the Taskforce pressed.
Shields locked, lines reformed. Their discipline was relentless, a machine grinding forward with rifles hammering in synchronized bursts. Step by step, the trio was forced backward, walls closing in, breath tearing out of them against the hail of gunfire.
Anna gritted her teeth, sparks of glyph-light flickering across her glove as another enemy fell. She looked past the advancing soldiers, through the glass where Grant hung bound in the rig.
So close.
But the distance may as well have been a world away.
****
High above the chaos, the control tower overlooked the containment wing. Red light from the alarms bathed the glass, painting Colonel Veynar's silhouette in stark lines.
Below, the monitors gave him every angle—the ice-webbed corridors, the flickering trail of Nullis phasing in and out, the glyph-lit devastation Anna carved into his men. The three intruders fought like wildfire, unpredictable and vicious.
Veynar's expression didn't shift. Hands clasped neatly behind his back, he watched like he was observing a training exercise.
"They're holding longer than projected."
A junior officer swallowed, nerves tight as he scanned the feeds. "Sir, Taskforce units are pinned in corridor seven. Losses at—"
Veynar raised a hand. Silence fell. His gaze lingered on Anna, her glowing marks crawling across a soldier's skin like living fire. Then on Xylo, frost erupting in brutal waves. Then on Nullis, slipping through steel and flesh with equal precision.
"Weeds," he murmured, a note of disdain curling through the word. "Always so certain their chaos can topple order."
He turned to the officers. "Release the Silencers."
The order hit the room like a gunshot. Operators stiffened, fingers flying across consoles. Locks disengaged. In the footage, reinforced doors along the compound snapped open one by one.
From the shadows, the Silencers emerged—armored, faceless, their dampener rigs glowing with a cold red light. The air itself seemed to recoil from them, a dead zone radiating in every direction.
"Let's remind them," Veynar said softly, his gaze fixed on the monitors, "that fire is only useful until the furnace takes it."
****
The clash spilled into the containment wing, alarms blaring louder as the corridor shook with gunfire and frost-cracked steel.
Anna broke from cover, sliding hard across the floor until she hit the observation glass. Her palm struck it once—then again, harder, her voice raw.
"Grant! Wake up!"
Inside, the rig loomed like a crucifix of metal and wires. Grant's body hung against it, wrists bound in clamps that hummed with dampener current.
His head hung low. Eyes closed. Breath shallow.
Another impact rattled the glass. Anna pressed her bare hand to the glass, glyph-light sparking under her skin. Her voice cracked.
"Grant—fight them! Fight back!"
For a moment, nothing.
Then his body twitched. A shudder ran through him, convulsions tearing against the restraints. Inside his veins, lightning stirred—unstable, flickering red arcs sparking across his skin.
The serum howled in his system, a storm that had nearly drowned him. But through it—through the shadows and static—Anna's voice threaded like an anchor.
His fingers curled against the clamps. His head lifted, slow, unsteady.
The dampener coils around the rig stuttered, their glow sputtering as stray bolts lashed against them. Sparks rained down, the machines struggling to cage what was no longer willing to be caged.
Grant's eyes snapped open, burning with fractured light.
And the glass between him and Anna hummed with the first cracks of strain.
Taskforce fire chewed the corridor to splinters. Silencer rounds screamed against Xylo's ice, each impact splintering the barricade into glittering shards. He crouched low, palms white with strain as the frost began to fracture.
Nullis flickered across the crossfire, barely a blur before a burst of suppressor fire clipped her shoulder. She re-formed with a hiss of pain, stumbling back toward Anna. "Can't—keep—this up!"
Anna planted herself in the open, chest heaving. Heat roared through the hallway, her own glyph-light bleeding through torn glove. "Hold the line," she rasped, though her voice was cracking. She looked past the soldiers, past the dying ice, to the figure slumped inside the rig.
"Grant!" Her shout sliced through the din. "You're not their weapon—"
Her hand slammed against the trembling glass. "You're ours. You're mine."
A sound like tearing metal answered her.
Inside the chamber, luxium shackles split down their seams. Red lightning spider-webbed the rig, arcing along the coils.
The floor vibrated, dampeners shrieking as their circuits overloaded.
"Fall back!" a commander barked, but it was already too late.
The reinforced glass fractured with a thunderclap. A surge of incandescent light burst outward, shredding the containment field and hurling soldiers through the air as if the hallway itself had exhaled. Weapons skittered across the floor. Steel buckled.
Anna threw an arm across her face as a wave of electric heat washed over them, her skin tingling with static.
Through the fading storm stood Grant—unchained, lightning crawling over his skin in wild, crimson arcs. His eyes burned with a power that made the air itself hum.
The Taskforce line, once unbreakable, faltered.
Grant stood at the epicenter, red current crawling through the luxium fused into his bones. Every breath made the lights flicker.
Soldiers who only minutes ago pressed forward now held their ground, weapons trembling, eyes wide.
Overhead, the intercom spat to life.
"Phase II begins," Colonel Veynar's voice boomed, icy and assured. "Red Tempest—obey."
Grant tilted his head, crimson eyes catching every strobe of the alarms. The order slid across him like water over stone. No hesitation. No submission.
He moved—and the world blurred.
A crack of thunder, and Anna was gone from the soldiers' sights, whisked into the humming dark beyond the blast doors. Another flash and Nullis vanished, her form dissolving in his grip before the sound had finished echoing.
A third strike of red light and Xylo clasped Grant's forearm, a sharp grin flashing just before they winked out together, the corridor collapsing into echoing silence.
In the control tower, monitors spasmed with static. Veynar gripped the rail as the floor vibrated from residual charge.
For the first time, his voice faltered.
"Impossible…"
Below, soldiers stood amid drifting smoke, weapons slack, staring at the empty chamber—unsure of what just happened.
A final surge of light seared the room. Grant reappeared in a heartbeat of thunder, staring straight up at the control deck. His voice was low but carried like a strike of lightning.
"There are no strings on me."
Then he turned and ran.
Red lightning streaked behind him as he tore through the shattered compound, past twisted steel and slumped soldiers. Each stride was a sonic crack, his speed a storm carving open the night.
Anna, Nullis, and Xylo were miles ahead by now—he could feel the tug of their presence like a beacon, the Ampers' safehouse calling him home. Faster. Faster. The city's lights blurred into ribbons of color.
But the world began to bend.
At first it was a shimmer at the edges of his vision, a ripple in the pavement beneath his feet.
Then the ground splintered into fragments of black glass.
Grant pushed harder, refusing to slow—until the street itself peeled away.
One heartbeat he was racing through Westvale's outer roads, the next he was weightless, momentum carrying him onto a jagged platform of a dark stone suspended in endless void. Stars stretched in every direction, cold and infinite.
Grant staggered to a halt, red lightning flickering across luxium-laced bones, the only sound his own unsteady breath.
The Ampers' base—and the world he'd been running toward—was gone.