Aisha was a prisoner in a luxury apartment. The lockdown of the Banisher Citadel was absolute, a suffocating blanket of silence and high-level security protocols. The red alert lights had ceased, replaced by a tense, eerie calm. She knew, with the certainty of a trained operative, that the Citadel wasn't just locked; it was hunting. The data she had unleashed via the Scholars was a virus, and the Banisher immune system was now attacking every cell in the body to find the source.
Her gaze was fixed on the apartment'Known as. It displayed a tranquil, holographic image of a forest, but she knew beyond it was a corridor of reinforced steel, likely patrolled by Banisher Praetorian Guards. Her link to Kwandezi was severed. She had no way of knowing if he was alive, contained, or already neutralized.
She had spent the last hour pacing, her mind racing through tactical scenarios. Her Specialist Aegis mesh felt like a useless skin, her plasma pistol a hollow weight on her hip. She was an empath trapped in a box, her senses screaming at the ambient, controlled panic she felt bleeding from the Citadel's command structure.
Then, a new feeling cut through the noise. A cold, surgical, and utterly alien spike of malice. It was not the raw, chaotic energy of a Void-borne, nor the hot fury of a human. It was the focused, psionic energy of a predator.
"Elara," Aisha whispered, her blood running cold. She knew that signature. It was the Psionic Specialist, and she was on the move. Aisha's empathic senses tracked the spike as it moved down, past her own level, plunging deep into the Citadel's foundations.
"Sub-Level 3," she breathed, her hands clenching into fists. "Kwandezi."
Elara wasn't going to talk. She was going to purge. Aisha was trapped, helpless, forced to listen to the distant, psychic rumble of the coming execution.
Deep in the windowless, sound-dampened cell, Kwandezi was on his feet. The oppressive hum of the energy dampeners had spiked, a painful, ultrasonic whine designed to scramble complex thought and suppress kinetic energy. But beneath that whine, his off-the-charts instincts detected a far greater threat.
He felt it not as a sound, but as a slithering pressure against his skull. A mind, cold and sharp, was approaching. It felt like the tip of a surgical needle pressing against his mind's eye.
They come to play in your mind, Host, the Void Host whispered, its voice resonating with a cold, predatory amusement. The insect tries to dissect the storm. Let us show them what a mind truly is. Let them see the true Void.
Kwandezi ignored the Host's eager malice. He grabbed his twin shortswords from the cot. The blades, now perfected by his Ultimate Transmutation, felt impossibly light and perfectly balanced, vibrating with a cold, perfect energy that resisted the dampening field. He stood in the center of the cell, his breathing slowing, his entire being sinking into the pure, lethal focus of a survivor. His battle IQ analyzed the scenario: the dampeners were high, meaning large-scale molecular transmutation of the environment was inefficient. This fight would be close, fast, and brutal.
The heavy Corundum-Steel door hissed open.
It wasn't just guards. Commander Elara stood in the doorway, her Psionic Mesh suit shimmering with contained energy. She was flanked by four Banisher Praetorian Guards, their charcoal-gray Aegis Suits heavily modified with anti-kinetic plating and helmets laced with psionic-buffering nodes. They were armed not with plasma rifles, but with heavy-gauge sonic disruptors and energy-net launchers. They were here for containment, not a firefight.
"Asset Kwandezi," Elara stated, her voice a synthesized monotone that carried over the dampener's whine. "By order of the Banisher High Council, you are subject to Psychic Scourge Protocol. Your memories regarding the Ironclad data breach are required. Your resistance is irrelevant."
"My mind is my own," Kwandezi replied, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He didn't raise his blades. "You are not welcome here."
"Physicality is a primitive defense," Elara said, as if to a child. "Secure the asset."
The four guards moved as one, their training flawless. They fanned out, two firing energy nets designed to ensnare and shock, while the other two raised their sonic disruptors to shatter his concentration.
Kwandezi's instincts took over. He didn't try to use his power on the nets—they were energy, not matter. He didn't try to block. He moved.
He dropped low, the two nets harmlessly intersecting above his head. He was a blur of motion, his Ultimate Transmuted blades a whisper of steel. He didn't attack the guards' heavy armor; that was inefficient. He attacked their function.
His first strike was a precise, upward thrust that severed the primary power cable running to the first guard's sonic disruptor. The weapon died with a pathetic whump. Before the guard could react, Kwandezi's second blade was already moving, slicing through the hydraulic lines in the guard's knee joint. The guard crumpled, his Aegis suit hissing as it lost pressure.
The second guard fired his net launcher at point-blank range. Kwandezi spun, using the first crippled guard as a partial shield, while his left blade flashed, cutting the launcher's arms clean off the weapon's chassis. He followed the move with a brutal pommel-strike to the guard's helmet visor, cracking the psionic buffer and sending the man staggering back, blind.
The remaining two guards converged, attempting to pin him. Kwandezi's battle IQ saw the pincer movement. He didn't retreat. He attacked the space between them. He used a low, spinning kick to shatter the ankle joint of one, while simultaneously using his free hand to drive the hilt of his sword into the neck seal of the other.
The entire fight lasted less than eight seconds. Four elite Banisher Praetorians were left crippled, hissing, and neutralized in their billion-credit suits, but all of them were alive. Kwandezi's instincts, honed by a life of survival, knew that killing them would bring Zaire's full wrath. Disabling them bought him time.
He stood in the center of the wreckage, breathing heavily, his purple-tinged eyes fixed on the only remaining threat.
Commander Elara was completely unfazed by the failure of her physical defense. "A predictable, if efficient, display of animalistic survival. But you cannot cut a thought, Asset."
She raised her hand. The Psychic Scourge began.
It was not a subtle probe. It was a full-frontal, brutal assault. The world vanished. Kwandezi was no longer in a cell; he was in a hurricane of sensory agony. He heard a million voices screaming, the sound so loud it felt like his eardrums were bursting. He smelled burning iron and rotting flesh, the stench filling his lungs. He felt the illusion of razors sliding under his skin, of his bones turning to ice, of his heart stopping in his chest.
Elara was attacking his core perception of reality, attempting to shatter his consciousness and sift through the broken pieces for the data she needed.
Kwandezi collapsed to one knee, his swords clattering on the floor. His body was paralyzed by the psionic onslaught.
Yes... good, the Void Host roared in triumph from the center of his besieged mind. Let her in. Let her see the true Void!
Elara pushed deeper, her psionic form a needle of ice, driving past his defenses, searching for the memory of the data leak, of Aisha, of Femi. She found the core of his rage, his self-loathing, the memory of his mother.
"All this pain," she whispered, her real-world voice a monotone, her psionic voice a scream inside his head. "All this trauma... just to protect a petty conspiracy. Give it to me."
She was breaking him. But Elara made a fatal error in calculation. She mistook Kwandezi's mind for the only thing in the vessel. As she plunged her psychic probe into the core of his being, she didn't find a broken boy.
She found the Void Host.
It was a vast, cold, and ancient consciousness, an abyss of pure, indifferent reality. It wasn't angry. It was amused.
Elara's psionic form recoiled in sheer, unadulterated terror. What... what are you?
We are the end of your logic, the Host replied.
Kwandezi, still on his knees, his body shaking, his nose bleeding from the psychic strain, lifted his head. His eyes were no longer purple-tinged; they were solid, swirling abysses of pure Void energy. He couldn't move his limbs, but he could still use his will.
He focused on Elara. Not her mind, not her body, but the Psionic Mesh suit she wore. His battle IQ knew he couldn't beat her psionically, but he could break her tools.
He focused all his remaining power on the energy regulators in her suit—the very devices that protected her from her own immense power.
With a final, agonizing surge of will, he transmuted them. He didn't destroy them; he perfected them into flawless, absolute conductors.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Elara's suit, designed to channel and amplify her psychic energy, suddenly lost all its safeguards. Her own psionic power, now unregulated, fed back into her own mind in an uncontrollable, infinite loop.
Elara screamed.
It was a raw, human, and utterly agonizing sound. She collapsed, smoke rising from the superheated energy nodes on her mesh suit. The psychic backlash was catastrophic, instantly frying her own neural pathways. She was neutralized, unconscious, and broken, not by Kwandezi's power, but by her own.
Kwandezi fell forward, catching himself on his hands, the Void receding, leaving him shaking and gasping in the ruined cell. The smell of ozone and his own blood filled his nostrils.
He had survived. He had won.
He pushed himself to his feet. He knew he couldn't stay. This was a failed assassination. The next attempt wouldn't be so surgical. He picked up his Ultimate Transmuted shortsword. He walked to the Corundum-Steel door.
He focused his will one last time, channeling his power through the perfected blade. He didn't strike the lock. He unwove it, transmuting the complex molecular bonds of the locking mechanism into brittle, useless iron. The lock clicked, shattered, and the door hissed open.
He stepped out into the red-lit, chaotic corridor of Sub-Level 3. The Citadel lockdown was in full effect. He was a rogue element in his own family's fortress.
He had one goal. He had to find Aisha. Not to protect her, but because she held the briefcase—the one piece of leverage he had left. He was now officially at war with the Banisher Family.