The room was silent, save for the low hum of electronics. The walls were a sterile white, and the air smelled of ozone and recycled air. Director Thorne sat at a polished black table, his hands folded neatly in front of him. He was a man in his late fifties, with graying hair and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. He did not look like the leader of a global organization that hunted gods. He looked like a librarian.
Across from him, a younger operative in a black uniform sat rigidly, his face a grim mask. He was patched with bandages over a bruised eye. "We lost the target, Director," he said, his voice flat. "He's not just an anomaly. The energy signature from the artifact was off the charts. He used it. He moved the trees. He deflected the sonic burst."
Thorne listened without expression, his gaze fixed on the holo-projection of a map that hovered in the air above the table. The map showed the world, with a small, pulsing red dot in the middle of Deadwood Forest. "Confirmed." The word was a statement, not a question.
"Yes, sir. We had no chance. He is… he is the Maker. The field team called him that. It's what our ancient texts call him. The reports were accurate."
Thorne's eyes, magnified by his glasses, were the only thing that showed emotion, a sharp, calculating intensity. He was not surprised, only confirmed. "And the artifact?"
"It's bonded to him, sir. The energy pulse was a locator beacon. He's collected a piece of himself." The operative shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Sir, with all due respect… why are we hunting him? He seems... like a man. He saved people. He didn't want to fight."
Thorne finally looked at the operative. The man's question was a common one, and the Director had answered it a thousand times before. He was a teacher of a terrible truth.
"We are not hunters, Agent. We are Collectors. We don't chase people; we collect anomalies. For millennia, our purpose has been singular: to maintain the stability of existence. The universe, in its raw form, is not stable. It is chaos, a sea of infinite possibility. The Architect gave it form. He created a system, a blueprint, with rules that could not be broken. He gave it gravity, space, time, and entropy."
Thorne leaned forward, his voice a low, precise murmur. "But then, he cast off his power. He left a gun with the safety off. His power, untethered, now acts on instinct, not with the logic of a god, but with the random, chaotic whims of a wild animal. The anomalies you see, the weather shifts, the pockets of reversed gravity, the spontaneous combustions, they are not random. They are the symptoms of a broken system. They are the result of an unfettered power corrupting reality itself."
The Director tapped the floating map, and a glowing grid of data appeared over the red dot. "And that red dot… that is not a man. That is a living paradox. A god, who is a bug in the system. The greatest anomaly of all. He is a walking contradiction to every law he himself created. He is a plot hole in reality. And the more of himself he reclaims, the more dangerous he becomes. When he fought you, he wasn't using his power like a weapon. He was just... changing the rules. He made the trees obey him. He made sound obey him. He made the ground do his bidding. Imagine what happens when he can do that intentionally."
The operative looked at the screen, a dawning horror in his eyes.
"He doesn't want to fight, Agent, because he still thinks he's a man. But the minute he remembers his true nature, the minute he fully embraces who he is, he will no longer be a man. He will be an unfettered force of chaos. The world he created will be nothing more than a playground for his despair and emptiness. We are not protecting ourselves from him. We are protecting the very foundation of reality from a god who has gone mad."
Thorne stood up, the chair scraping against the floor, a single break in the room's sterile calm. "He is not a target anymore. He is the prime objective. The hunt has begun."