The Grey Zone didn't just rain, it wept a greasy, metallic slime that blurred the lights into distorted wounds of color. Inside Building 402, the air was screaming.
May and Lucky had practically carried Nyx through the door, her weight a dead slump between them. They had barely managed to get her onto the worn out sofa when the atmosphere changed. It didn't just get cold, it became heavy, as if the gravity in the room had suddenly doubled.
"Nyx? God, she's burning up," May whispered, her hands shaking as she reached for a wet cloth. She looked up and froze.
Darren stood in the kitchen doorway. He wasn't the quiet, fragile boy they knew. His blue eyes were wide, the pupils blown out until they were pinpricks of light. He wasn't looking at them, he was looking through them, his mind caught in a feedback loop with the rogue servers he had been hacking.
"Darren, hey, it's okay..." Lucky started, stepping forward.
"No..." Darren's voice sounded like shifting tectonic plates. "They... they hurt her. I can feel the poison. I can feel... him."
In an instant, the "Ghost Code" Darren had used to protect them shattered. His telepathic energy exploded outward. The windows didn't just break, they vaporized into a fine glittering mist. May and Lucky were thrown back against the wall, pinned there by a psychic pressure that made their ears bleed.
Outside - The Street
The black armored transport screeched to a halt. Austin gasped inside, blood trickling from his nose as he gripped his seat.
"It's not a sun," Austin wheezed, his Precog vision finally clicking into place.
"It's an event horizon. Malachai, the future is being eaten!"
"Geoffrey, status," Malachai commanded, his silver eyes fixed on the building.
"Dreg's mercenaries are on the perimeter!" Geoffrey shouted, his hands already glowing with the blue hum of his Vector Telekinesis. "They're trying to breach the back! I'll hold the street. Go!"
Malachai stepped out of the vehicle. He didn't run, he walked with the slow, inevitable pace of a god. The concrete cracked under his boots as his S rank Gravity Manipulation flared, pushing back the rain and the psychic static of the boy upstairs.
Inside the Apartment.
The front door disintegrated. Malachai stepped into the wreckage of the living room.
He saw the twins first. Lucky was struggling to stand, his iron pipe gripped in a white knuckled fist, his face streaked with blood. May was shielding her eyes, her ginger hair wild in the psychic wind.
"Who are you?" Lucky roared, his voice cracking.
"Get away from her!"
Malachai didn't even look at him. To an S rank Captain, a civilian with a pipe was less than an ant. He moved toward the center of the room, where the psychic storm was strongest. But as he stepped within ten feet of the couch where Nyx lay, the world went silent.
The pressure in his chest vanished. The "God Weight" he had carried since his awakening the crushing burden of his own power simply blinked out of existence.
Malachai stopped. For the first time in his life, he felt light. He looked at the pale, poisoned girl on the couch. She wasn't just a "Zero." She was a Null. She was a void in the universe that absorbed everything including him.
"Captain! The boy is flatlining!"
Geoffrey's voice crackled through the comms.
"We need to extract now!"
Malachai knelt beside the couch. Lucky tried to lung forward, his desperation overriding his fear.
"I said stay away from her!"
With a casual flick of his fingers, Malachai increased the gravity around Lucky by just a fraction. Lucky hit the floor, pinned by an invisible mountain, his face pressed into the carpet.
"Lucky! No!" May screamed, trying to reach her brother, but the pressure held her back too.
"She is an asset of the state now,"
Malachai said, his voice a low, lethal vibration. He slid one arm beneath Nyx's knees and the other behind her back.
"If she stays here, she dies from the poison. If she stays here, the Council sends men who won't be as 'polite' as I am."
He stood up, carrying Nyx with an ease that suggested she weighed nothing. He looked down at the twins, that looked like a broken set of dolls in the corner of the room.
"Lucky... May..." Nyx's voice was a faint, drugged whisper. Her hand reached out weakly toward them, her fingers trembling.
"Don't take her!" Lucky choked out, his eyes burning with a raw, hopeless devotion.
"Please!"
Malachai turned his back on them.
"Geoffrey, bring the boy. Leave the civilians. They don't exist in the report."
The Separation
As Malachai stepped out of the building, the Chimera Specials moved in with a flash bang of kinetic light. A Force Barrier slammed down, sealing the apartment complex.
Lucky scrambled to the broken window, his chest heaving. He watched as the black transport roared to life. He saw the silhouette of Malachai through the tinted glass, holding Nyx like a prize he had no intention of ever letting go.
"NYX!" Lucky's scream was swallowed by the roar of the engine and the thunder above.
Beside him, May slumped against the wall, her hands over her mouth. She saw the "Chimera" insignia fading into the dark. She knew what the Grey Zone was it was a graveyard for people like them. And she knew that the girl who just left would never be the "Shadow" of the Pit ever again.
Inside the transport, Malachai felt the Null field wrap around him like a cold silk blanket. He looked down at Nyx, his silver eyes unreadable.
"You're a long way from the Grey Zone now, little Shadow," he whispered.