The universe narrowed to the single, fraying thread.
Ren pulled.
Pain erupted behind his eyes, a searing white fire. The Covenant resisted with the stubborn inertia of a dying star, fighting its own unmaking. The heavy regulator groaned above Jax and his followers, a low, guttural protest.
[System Lag] critical…
The lullaby was in his ear now, a cacophony of static and stolen innocence. The Mimic was here. He could feel the reality-warping cold of its presence just meters away.
He gave one last, vicious mental tug.
The thread snapped.
Ren didn't wait to see the result. The moment he felt the Covenant break, he turned and ran, diving into a side passage he'd noted earlier. He didn't look back. He didn't need to.
A soundless flash of arcing electricity illuminated the corridor behind him, painting his fleeting shadow on the far wall. Then came the symphony of destruction. The shriek of tearing metal, the explosive crackle of the rupturing power regulator, and the wet, terrified screams of human beings. The sounds were a physical blow, a wave of chaos that washed over him.
He kept running, his lungs burning, his mind a blank slate of pure, survivalist instinct. He put two more corners between himself and the tomb he had just created before daring to slow down.
He leaned against a wall, his chest heaving, and that's when the Flaw collected its price.
The wave of sound that had just assaulted him arrived again, this time as a delayed, ghostly echo, playing out in his mind a full three seconds after it had happened. The world swam. The floor beneath his feet seemed to tilt and sway. He pressed his palm against the wall to steady himself, but the sensation of cold, rough metal only registered a moment later, a phantom touch.
He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting a wave of vertigo. The [System Lag] was worse than before. The regulator's Covenant had been powerful, and its deconstruction had taken a heavier toll. He was free, but he was also blind, deaf, and crippled for these precious, terrifying seconds.
When his senses finally began to resynchronize, the silence was the most damning thing of all. The lullaby was gone. The screams were gone. All that remained was the low, mournful hum of the dying city.
He slowly, deliberately, pushed himself off the wall. He stood straight, his expression cold and unreadable in the gloom. He listened, but heard no pursuit. He looked back, but saw only darkness.
He felt for the expected pang of guilt, the sour taste of remorse. He found nothing. There was no horror at what he had done, no sorrow for the lives he had extinguished. There was only the stark, chilling calm of a problem solved. They had put a leash on him. He had severed it. It was that simple. In the brutal calculus of the Fracture, their lives were a resource he had spent to purchase his own freedom.
He had become the monster in the dark they were so afraid of.
Ren turned his back on the junction and its freshly made graves. The path ahead was dark, unknown, and utterly silent. He was alone, a ghost in the guts of a city that was eating itself alive.
And he was free.
The flicker of hope he'd felt before was gone, burned away by the cold fire of his own actions. In its place was something harder, something more resilient.
Resolve.