Freedom was a heavy, silent thing.
Ren moved through the tunnels, a ghost in his own city. The absence of the mimicked lullaby left a void, filled only by the groaning of stressed metal and the drip of unseen liquids. He was alone, and for the first time, it felt less like a vulnerability and more like a strength. No one to slow him down. No one to betray. No one to put a leash on him.
His resolve was a cold, hard stone in his chest. He would climb. He would survive. He would unmake any part of this gilded cage that got in his way.
After an hour of careful navigation, he found a vertical service shaft. The ladder was slick with grime, but it was a path upward. He climbed, leaving the sector of his bloody rebirth behind.
The air changed first. The thick, oily scent of lubricants and decay gave way to the crisp, sterile smell of ozone and hot metal. The corridors on this new level were wider, cleaner. Massive bundles of fiber-optic cables, thick as his arm, ran along the ceiling like metallic vines, their surfaces occasionally pulsing with faint, violet light. Server racks lined the walls, their panels dark and dead. This was a data hub. A nerve center.
He had reached Sector 37.
A new kind of unease settled over him. The danger here felt different. The air itself seemed to hum with a strange energy, a high-pitched whine of corrupted data that made the hairs on his arm stand on end. He stayed in one spot for too long and saw a flicker in his peripheral vision—a ghostly afterimage of himself, a step behind where he actually was.
He shook his head, the image vanishing. The very space here was unstable, saturated with informational ghosts. Another layer to the nightmare. He had to keep moving.
He was deeper in the sector when he heard the first sound. It wasn't the shriek of an Aberration, but a sharp, energetic snap-hiss, like a whip cracking through the air. It was followed by a muffled, angry curse.
Ren froze, every instinct screaming at him to turn back. Voices meant people. People meant complications. He'd just bought his freedom at a steep price; he wasn't about to risk it for strangers. He was a survivor, not a rescuer.
He began to retreat, melting back into the shadows.
But then he heard it. A new sound. A high-pitched, ethereal wail that seemed to slice through the very air, followed by the sickening crackle of failing energy and a sharp cry of pain.
His retreat halted. That wasn't a Gamma's scream of terror. It was the grunt of a fighter, someone trained, someone who was losing. And that ethereal wail… it was a new threat. Something he hadn't seen before.
Pragmatism warred with self-preservation. To survive, he needed to understand every threat. To ignore a new type of Aberration was to walk into a future ambush blind. He couldn't afford that.
He wouldn't help. He wouldn't intervene. But he would watch.
He turned, his movements silent, his body a shadow within the greater darkness. He crept forward, following the sounds of the one-sided battle. The snap-hiss of the energy barrier deploying again, weaker this time. The ethereal wail, closer now, mocking.
He reached a junction and peered carefully around the edge of a massive server rack.
In the center of the wide corridor, a lone figure in the sleek, armored uniform of a Beta security officer was on one knee. A shimmering, hexagonal barrier of golden light flickered in front of her, cracks spreading across its surface like fractured glass.
Floating before her was the source of the wail. It was a humanoid shape made of pure, hard light, its form constantly shifting and glitching. It had no face, only a smooth, glowing surface. It raised a long, intangible blade, and with an effortless grace, phased its arm directly through the Beta's failing barrier.
The officer cried out as the blade passed harmlessly through her armored shoulder, but the cold, corrupting touch of the Aberration was clearly agonizing. Her barrier collapsed with a final, dying pop.
The Hardlight Phantasm raised its sword for the final blow.
Ren watched from the shadows, his heart pounding a cold, steady rhythm. This was his chance to see how the city's enforcers dealt with a real threat. To see what true power looked like.
And to watch it fail.