The dimensional jump initiated with terrifying, cold certainty. Kael felt the spatial walls of the shuttle compress as an absolute force yanked him toward the Broker's domain. This was no chaotic tear; it was a professional, high-grade transit designed to deliver cargo directly to the source of consumption. Every nanosecond brought him closer to the Dissection Chamber.
He was a single thread of conscious will inside the silent, metallic confines of the Purity Suppressor. He had one shot.
His thread of Absolution was infinitesimal, incapable of physical resistance, yet it was absolute. He focused on the energy signature of the jump drive, visualizing the complex coordinates being fed into the system a flawless calculation of time and space, designed by the Broker's perfect logic.
The Broker deals in certainty. The debt of perfect geometry.
Kael poured the last, pure residue of spring energy into his single thread of power. He wasn't aiming to erase the jump, but to corrupt it. He attacked the fundamental debt of logical order within the coordinates, forcing the system to acknowledge the truth of pure, unadulterated randomness the ultimate antithesis of the Broker's methodical existence.
The precise, cold pull of the transit immediately violently buckled.
Inside the Enforcers' shuttle, a klaxon screamed. The serene blue transit field became a violent kaleidoscope of fractured light and spatial distortion. The shuttle groaned, its superstructure screaming protest against the injection of chaos.
"The coordinates are collapsing!" Echo shrieked, her control panel sparking wildly. "It's not a malfunction; it's contamination! It's injecting... pure entropy!"
"He's awake!" Silas roared, his mask contorted in a rare, raw expression of panic. He abandoned the controls and battered the Purity Suppressor. "He broke the seal! Talon, secure the package before the jump tears us apart!"
But the jump was already failing catastrophically. The single thread of Kael's Absolution had done its work, turning the clean transit into a maelstrom of unpredictable, destabilized space. The chaotic energy ripped through the already stressed shuttle.
The Purity Suppressor, already damaged, detonated violently. Kael was expelled from his prison, not by his own strength, but by the overwhelming force of the dimensional collapse.
He was momentarily free, suspended in the volatile, exposed interior of the shuttle as reality tore apart around them.
Silas lunged for Kael, the Sovereign Siphon screaming, desperate for the recapture. But the dimensional tear was now absolute. The rear section of the shuttle—where Kael floated—was violently ripped away from the main body.
Kael felt the immediate, devastating plunge into the unmapped void—the raw space between cosmic calculations. He was no longer in a ship, nor was he in a destination. He was in the infinite, hostile medium of creation.
The last thing Kael saw was Silas's face, contorted in absolute fury and defeat, before the fractured reality slammed shut.
His exhaustion was absolute. Yet his Absolution, cleansed and fortified by the fight, was all that remained a single, pure point of light in a universe of terrifying, unquantifiable darkness, hurtling toward an unknown consequence. He had escaped the Broker's grasp, but he had traded certain death for absolute oblivion.