The Northern Sector was a graveyard of cold steel and silence. Unlike the South, there were no flashy turrets or loud patrols here. Only the "Silent Sentinels"—invisible laser grids that could slice a man into pieces before he even felt the heat.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the forbidden zone. In his hand, he held a small, rusted metal sphere he had recovered from a derelict laboratory years ago. To anyone else, it was junk. To him, it was a frequency jammer tuned specifically to the Aegis Guard's old-gen sensors.
"Jax is busy cleaning up the mess in the South," Kaelen whispered, his eyes narrowing as he watched a drone hover a hundred meters away. "And Anya... Anya is staring at her screens, wondering why the math doesn't add up."
He stepped forward.
Pulse. Step. Pause.
He moved in perfect sync with the rotation of the overhead satellites. He wasn't just walking; he was dancing through a minefield of data. Every time a sensor swept over his position, he squeezed the metal sphere, emitting a low-frequency burst that made the AI computer register his heat signature as a "stray shadow cat."
Aegis Command – North Sector.
Anya Petrova leaned closer to her primary monitor. Her brow furrowed.
"Report," she commanded.
"Status green, Commander," the technician replied. "South sector neutralized. Sergeant Jax is returning. North sector is quiet. No movement detected."
Anya didn't relax. "Zoom in on Sector 4-B. Near the old relay station."
The screen flickered, showing a grainy, thermal view of the jagged rocks. Nothing moved. But Anya's eyes stayed fixed on a tiny flicker of static. "Run a diagnostic on the sensor frequency. There's a ghost in the feedback."
"Ma'am, it's probably just Miasma interference. The Gateway is particularly active tonight."
Anya stood up, her hand resting on the hilt of her sidearm. "Miasma doesn't have a rhythm. This static... it's pulsing every three seconds. Send a tactical drone to those coordinates. Now."
The Perimeter Wall.
Kaelen felt the vibration in the air before he heard the hum. A drone. She's faster than I anticipated.
He didn't run. Running would create a thermal spike that even his jammer couldn't hide. Instead, he dropped into a narrow crevice between two obsidian rocks and pulled a thin, metallic sheet over himself—a "Cold-Shroud."
High above, the drone hovered. Its red eye scanned the area, the searchlight cutting through the dark like a divine spear.
Kaelen held his breath. His heart rate slowed. He had practiced this for years—suppressing his own biology to mimic the coldness of the stones around him.
The drone lingered for ten agonizing seconds. Then, it pivoted and flew back toward the base.
Kaelen emerged, his face pale but his expression unchanged. "Close," he murmured. "Too close."
He reached the base of the Great Wall. Here, the stone of the Dark World met the reinforced carbon-fiber of the Human World. He found the maintenance hatch he had identified months ago through long-range observation.
He didn't use force. He pulled out a small glass vial filled with a glowing green liquid—acidic bile from a High-Tier Shadow Crawler. He poured it slowly into the lock mechanism. The metal hissed and dissolved silently.
With a soft click, the hatch opened.
A blast of filtered, sterilized air hit him. It smelled of ozone, chemicals, and something he hadn't smelled in a century: Life.
Kaelen stepped inside. He was no longer in the wasteland. He was inside the veins of the enemy.
"Now," Kaelen said, his white eyes dimming to a natural gray as he adjusted to the internal lights. "Let's see if the Human World is as soft as I remember."
He wasn't just a refugee. He was an infection. And the Aegis Guard had just let him in.