Evan hid in the mezzanine of the District 3 cold storage plant.
Rime-covered gas pipes snaked around him, and a thick, icy mist flowed across the floor, concealing his cracked leather boots.
He extended his hand, fingers splayed.
Five meters.
That was his habit. His constant. But moments ago, while dodging a Security Bureau patrol drone, he'd felt the invisible edge shudder. Like a battery nearing its end, or a kerosene lamp flickering in a gale.
The radius had shrunk.
The absolute five meters had snapped back to four for a fraction of a second. A single meter—a gap small enough to ignore for some, but large enough that the drone's sensor sweep had nearly caught the fabric of his hood.
"Frequency," Evan whispered to himself.
He checked the terminal on his wrist, staring at the chaotic jumble of his heart rate monitor. His pulse was 15% higher than usual. It wasn't just the heart; something in his blood was boiling. Years of suppressing the supernatural Code seemed to have left a sediment in his veins—a backlash of pure, raw existence.
If the radius continued to fluctuate, he would no longer be a stable black hole. He would be a leaking plug.
He had no time for rest.
The last message from the Rat indicated that a private warehouse belonging to Hephaestus Industries held a shipment of "Source Suppressants." They weren't meant for Espers; they were contraband stabilizers for the "Broken"—those unfortunates whose gene-awakening had failed and left them rotting from the inside out. For Evan, it was the only thing that could cool his raging blood.
He had to get inside.
The warehouse was at the far end of District 3, a fortress of reinforced steel surrounded by traps laid by Tier-3 "Sensation-type" Espers.
Evan stepped across rusted exhaust fan blades, moving like a black cat on a high-wire.
Ten meters below, two guards were on patrol.
"Did you hear that?" The guard on the left stopped, hand hovering over the detector at his belt.
"Hear what? Just the wind and the hum of the turbines."
"No. The detector jumped. For a second, every signal in this sector just... vanished."
Evan pressed into the shadows, holding his breath.
His radius was shrinking. Four meters... three-point-five... three.
As the circle contracted, the suppression of nearby electronics and supernatural fields became denser, more concentrated—and paradoxically easier for sensitive instruments to detect as a "unnatural silence."
He had to strike at the exact moment the radius expanded to its limit.
Four meters. Four-point-five.
Now.
Evan dropped from the beams.
There was no supernatural glide, no powered descent. He relied entirely on gravity and the explosive power of his own muscles. He adjusted his posture in mid-air, a silent meteorite slamming into the gap between the two guards.
Five meters!
The radius snapped back to full strength. Before the guards could even register a warning, the neural synapses connecting them to their exoskeleton comms were severed.
It wasn't a jam. It was an erasure.
Evan's blade cut the air.
Pfft. Pfft.
Two soft sounds.
No flash of steel. Manganese opened the throats. Hot blood sprayed onto the frosted floor of the cold storage, rapidly congealing into dark red ice.
Evan shoved open the heavy lead-lined door of the warehouse.
Inside were thousands of cryo-capsules. In these glass tubes flowed the most precious liquids of the era.
He found the box marked "Zero-Negative."
However, as his fingers brushed the cold glass of the vial, a violent tremor erupted from his heart.
The radius went feral.
Five meters... ten meters... three... one.
The frantic expansion and contraction acted like a localized man-made earthquake within the energy-rich warehouse.
"Caught you, little rat."
A woman's voice drifted from the depths of the cold mist.
She wore a dark crimson dress. She didn't walk; she hovered ten feet in the air, twirling a vivid red rose between her fingers.
Evan looked up. His radius was struggling at the one-meter mark.
If she attacked now, he was a dead man.
"I'm the Safety Director for Hephaestus. You can call me 'Rose'." She elegantly tore a petal from the flower and flicked it.
The petal hardened instantly, transforming into an Esper-bolt capable of punching through a tank's hull.
The bolt screamed toward Evan's chest.
Three meters.
Two.
Evan felt the blood rush to his brain. He didn't retreat. He lunged toward the bolt.
At one-point-five meters, the bolt slowed. At one meter, the petal lost its supernatural charge, reverting to a soft piece of plant fiber scented with perfume.
It brushed harmlessly against Evan's chest and fell to the floor.
"Interesting," Rose narrowed her eyes, watching the boy as he stood at the center of his flickering domain. "Your 'Field' is broken, isn't it?"
Evan gripped his blade.
His body was shaking, but his eyes remained as flat as a stagnant pond.
"Broken or not," he said. "It can still kill you."
He reversed his grip on the knife. The ground beneath him began to crack as the radius vibrated with violent, unstable energy.
He was no longer relying on a steady five meters. He was going to complete his next harvest within the jagged, broken gaps of the rules.
Outside, the rain continued to fall. Greyfog City cheered because its enemy was bleeding.
Evan knew the rules of the chapter had changed. But he didn't care.
Physical laws might fluctuate, but the feeling of a blade cutting through flesh was always constant.