The silence between them was a third entity, a suspicious ghost stalking them through the humming corridors of Sector 37. Valeria moved with the crisp, efficient economy of a trained soldier, her sidearm held in a low ready position. She was the point man, the shield. Ren followed a few paces behind, a shadow in her wake. He was the key.
Their alliance was a machine with two mismatched parts, functioning for now, but groaning under the strain of its own internal friction.
"That door," Valeria said, her voice sharp, not looking back. "See anything?"
Ren focused. The door's Covenant was a simple, golden weave, stable and uncorrupted. "It's clean. Standard magnetic lock."
"Good." She accessed the control panel and the door hissed open. She didn't thank him. He didn't expect her to. This was their rhythm: she commanded, he analyzed. He was her sensor, a strange and unreliable piece of equipment she was forced to use.
He didn't mind. The more she saw his ability as a simple tool, the less she would see him as a threat. And all the while, he was watching her, learning her. Her movements, her reactions, the way her eyes scanned every corner for threats. She was good. Disciplined. Predictable.
Predictability was a weakness he knew how to exploit.
They found their path blocked half a kilometer later. A tremor, likely a secondary shock from the Fracture, had torn a massive chasm in the floor of the corridor. It was at least ten meters across, a dark, gaping wound in the city's structure, plunging into the unseen depths. The maintenance bridge that had once spanned it was now a twisted ruin of metal at the bottom.
Valeria cursed under her breath and scanned the area. Her eyes lit on a heavy service crane on a rail system, its claw dangling halfway across the chasm.
"There," she said, her mind already working. "The crane's primary power is out, but the emergency battery should have a few minutes of charge. If I can reroute the auxiliary power, I might be able to swing it close enough for us to cross." Her solution was complex, controlled. It was about restoring order to a broken system.
Ren saw a different solution. It was faster. Messier.
He looked up. The ceiling above the chasm was a chaotic jungle of old infrastructure—massive, decommissioned server racks and thick bundles of data cables hanging from heavy-duty support struts.
"There's a quicker way," he said.
Valeria glanced at him, her eyebrow raised. "Which is?"
"Unspool the supports for those server racks," he said, pointing. "Let them drop. They'll form a bridge of wreckage."
Valeria stared at him as if he'd just suggested they sprout wings. "Are you insane? That's not a bridge, that's a collapse! You could bring the whole ceiling down on us. It's reckless."
"It's fast," Ren countered, his tone flat. "Your plan involves a delicate repair job in the middle of a war zone. We don't know how long it will take. We don't know if the battery even works. My way is guaranteed. Five seconds of chaos, and we're across."
It was their first true disagreement, a clash of fundamental philosophies. Order versus deconstruction. Control versus chaos. Her face hardened.
"We do it my way," she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. "I'm not risking our lives on your… chaotic whims."
Ren gave a slight shrug and stepped back, content to let her fail.
For ten precious minutes, she worked, prying open a control panel and rerouting circuits with practiced efficiency. For ten minutes, the chasm remained unbridged. The emergency battery was dead, its cells corroded decades ago. Her face was a mask of cold frustration. She had relied on the system, and the system had failed her.
It was then that the ethereal wail echoed from the corridor behind them.
It wasn't one Phantasm. The overlapping harmonics suggested at least three.
Valeria's head snapped up, her eyes wide with dawning horror. They were out of time. The logical, orderly solution had been a waste of the only resource they couldn't afford to lose.
She looked at the chasm, then at the jungle of wreckage on the ceiling. Finally, her gaze fell on Ren, a silent admission of defeat in her eyes. The choice had been taken from her. Only the chaotic, insane solution remained.
"Do it," she bit out, her voice a low, desperate command. "Now!"