The first thing I noticed was the silence.
No rain. No hum of the generators. Not even the breathing of the city above.
The underhive had gone dead.
Milo's console sparked once before the lights cut entirely. The screens turned to static, each pixel bleeding crimson, forming three words in the distortion:
"PROTOCOL: CRIMSON – DELETION IN PROGRESS."
Gregor grunted. "I hate that word."
Sofia didn't answer. She was standing in the middle of the dark corridor, motionless, eyes glowing faint white. Her sensors were online — and they were screaming.
"They're inside the feed," she murmured. "No approach detected. No coordinates. Just… intrusion."
Milo gulped. "You mean they're here, but not here."
And then the shadows bent.
At first it was like light moving wrong — bending in reverse, refusing to follow physics. The air warped. The metallic walls rippled like water. And from the distortion stepped a figure of glass and light.
It didn't walk. It phased.
One moment it was ten meters away, the next it was standing in front of us — silent, clean, unholy.
Its armor shifted like mercury, patterns rearranging in fractal geometry, impossible to look at for long. And its face — smooth glass — reflected every one of us at once.
Sofia spoke first, voice low. "Specter-Class Enforcer."
Gregor lifted his axe, the motor screaming to life. "Then let's see if ghosts bleed."
The Specter turned toward him. Its head tilted in a way that was too human — curious, almost gentle. Then it spoke, its voice layered like a thousand frequencies whispering at once.
"Subject Elias Drexler. Circle detected. Deletion authorized."
Its tone was cold, calm — yet heavy enough to make my chest tighten.
---
Me (Elias):
"Everyone—positions! No direct assault. It's not human, it doesn't react like one."
Gregor: snarling
"Then I'll teach it how to!"
He charged, axe roaring. His steps cracked the ground. He swung for its head — clean, heavy, perfect.
The blade passed straight through.
The Specter didn't even move. Gregor stumbled forward, balance broken, and before he could react — the thing appeared behind him. It hadn't moved; it had simply shifted.
A flash of white light. Gregor screamed as a cut appeared across his back — no blade, no gunshot, just light and pain.
Sofia shouted. "It phased through space-time! It's using refractive displacement!"
Milo yelled over the alarms, panic rising. "In human, please!"
Sofia snapped, "It's teleporting through reflections, idiot!"
---
Clara's voice cut through the chaos, trembling but reverent.
"It walks through its own shadow. The angels of LAW."
Her wings spread wide, plasma dripping from the tips. "Then we'll baptize it in fire."
She raised her hand, and her zealots screamed, rushing forward with glowing blades. The Specter didn't even turn.
One by one, they fell. Each body flickered out of existence — not disintegrating, not burning, just erased.
No sound. No blood. Just silence where life had been.
---
Elias clenched his jaw. "Sofia, analysis!"
Her eyes flickered with streams of data. "Its body's not solid matter. It's photonic — light with adaptive density. You can't hit it unless you synchronize phase frequency."
Gregor growled, coughing blood. "And how the hell do we do that?"
Milo's fingers flew across his terminal, rerouting old scavenged tech. "Working on it! If I can sync its frequency to the Core's energy burst—"
Sofia cut him off. "You'll fry the tunnel."
He grinned nervously. "Then it's a good plan."
---
The Specter turned toward me. The reflections in its glass face distorted, showing only myself.
"Elias Drexler. Crimson Core anomaly. Error in evolution."
It stepped closer, the light from its armor painting the tunnel in blue and red. My Core responded — a low hum deep in my bones, like it was growling.
"Correction required."
The word correction hit harder than any bullet.
Because that's what the LAW saw me as — not a man, not a rebel, just a mistake in its design.
I raised my blade, crimson light flaring. "Then correct this."
The Specter moved.
No step, no blur — it was simply everywhere.
Its arm phased through the floor, slicing up through the air toward my chest. I blocked instinctively, sparks spraying in every direction. The impact wasn't physical — it felt like reality itself twisted around me.
My Core flared red, and for the first time, the Specter hesitated.
The feedback pushed it back a step, its body flickering — its light corrupted by streaks of crimson static.
Sofia's eyes widened. "The Core's disrupting its frequency!"
Milo whooped. "Ha! See, boss, even ghosts hate your aura!"
---
I took a breath — the Core thrumming like thunder. "Then we bleed it."
I lunged. Crimson met white. The tunnel exploded in light and steam. Sparks rained like dying stars.
Every swing burned through walls, every impact shattered machinery. The Specter's form bent, duplicated, then collapsed into itself again.
It wasn't fighting me.
It was learning me.
---
Suddenly, its glass face split open into dozens of flickering fragments — each one showing me, my movements, my face.
It spoke again, voice fractured and layered.
"Prediction initiated. You are repeating errors."
I swung high — it dodged perfectly.
It mirrored my stance, my attacks, my rage.
Gregor shouted over the noise, dragging himself forward. "It's copying you!"
I snarled, the Core in my chest pulsing brighter, hotter. "Then I'll give it something it can't copy."
The Core screamed — not metaphorically, but with sound.
A raw, metallic roar filled the tunnel, shaking the steel foundations. The red light expanded, flooding the air with unstable energy.
The Specter faltered, its body glitching, fragments breaking apart.
"UNDEFINED PATTERN—ERROR—"
I didn't stop. I slammed forward, blade blazing, cutting through its center.
The light shattered. The Specter's body split in two — not cleanly, but violently. Its form convulsed, sparks spraying from its frame as it flickered in and out of existence.
And then, in one final flash — it was gone.
---
The tunnel fell silent again.
Steam rose from the cracks in the floor.
Gregor was breathing hard, leaning on his axe. Milo's console was a pile of smoking debris. Clara stood over the ashes of her zealots, whispering prayers to static.
Sofia turned to me slowly.
"You realize what you just did?"
I wiped the blood from my mouth, chest still glowing faint red. "Killed it."
She shook her head. "No. You infected it. The Core's energy corrupted its data field. You didn't delete it, Elias…"
She glanced toward the surface — where the sky above still pulsed red.
"You spread it."