[IMPACT ZONE: LAS VEGAS BOULEVARD]
[TIME: 22:05 HOURS]
BOOM.
The shockwave didn't just cushion the fall; it dug a crater.
The asphalt of the Vegas Strip exploded outward, shattering the windshields of nearby cars and toppling a palm tree. A cloud of dust and pulverized concrete billowed into the neon-lit sky.
In the center of the crater, Lucas Thorne lay on his back.
He wasn't moving.
"Lucas!" Elena coughed, crawling out from under the shelter of his body. Her emerald gown was shredded, her skin scraped raw, but she was alive.
She grabbed Lucas's helmet. The visor was cracked. She ripped it off.
Lucas's face was pale, sweat streaming down his forehead. But his eyes were open.
"Status," he rasped. It sounded like gargling gravel.
"We're alive," Elena said, checking his chest plate. "The Seismic Cushion worked. It pushed against the ground right before impact."
"The arm," Lucas whispered. "Check the arm."
Elena looked down. She gasped.
The containment sleeve—the metal armor designed to keep the virus cool—was gone. It had been blown off by the force of the blast.
What remained was... terrifying.
Lucas's right arm was no longer vaguely human-shaped. It was a solid, jagged monolith of dark blue diamond. The elbow joint was fused shut. Spikes of crystal protruded from the shoulder, piercing the remains of his tuxedo jacket and digging into his neck.
It looked heavy. Dead.
"I can't feel it," Lucas said. He tried to move his fingers. Nothing happened. The crystal hand remained frozen in a claw shape.
[SYSTEM ALERT: LIMB LOCKOUT.]
[CALCIFICATION: 100% (LOCALIZED).]
[MOVABILITY: 0%.]
"It's fully crystallized," Elena said, panic rising in her voice. "It's just a rock, Lucas. You're lugging around fifty pounds of dead weight."
WEE-WOO-WEE-WOO.
Sirens. Close.
"We have to move," Lucas gritted out. He tried to sit up.
He couldn't. The weight of the diamond arm dragged him down, pinning him to the asphalt. He was a superhero turned into a turtle on its back.
"Help me," Lucas said, hating every syllable.
Elena didn't hesitate. She grabbed his left arm—the human one—and pulled. She was strong, but Lucas weighed nearly 280 pounds with the crystal.
"Up!" she screamed.
Lucas gritted his teeth, firing the hydraulic pistons in his legs. With a metallic whine, he forced himself upright, the crystal arm hanging uselessly at his side like a stone pendulum.
"The police are coming," Elena said, scanning the crowd of terrified tourists gathering around the crater. "And if the police are coming..."
"The Banker owns them," Lucas finished.
A police cruiser screeched to a halt twenty yards away. Two officers stepped out. They didn't draw tasers. They drew assault rifles.
"Target identified!" one officer yelled. "Open fire!"
"Run!" Lucas roared.
[THE ALLEYWAYS]
They didn't run like heroes. They ran like rats.
Lucas was slow. Every step sent a jolt of agony through his fused shoulder. The crystal arm banged against his hip, bruising the bone. Elena led the way, kicking open a service door into a dark alley behind a strip club.
Bullets chipped the brickwork behind them.
"In here!" Elena shoved Lucas into a dumpster alcove.
She pulled a compact EMP device from her clutch purse—a gadget disguised as a makeup compact. She threw it at the alley entrance.
ZAP.
The streetlights in the alley popped and went dark. The pursuing officers' radios screeched with static.
"Lost visual," a voice echoed from the street. "Sweep the grid."
Lucas slid down the wall, clutching his frozen arm. His breath came in ragged gasps.
"We need... extraction," Lucas wheezed. "Call Tank."
Elena checked her phone. "No signal. The EMP fried the local tower. We're dark, Lucas."
She looked at him. The "Grandmaster" looked broken. The crystal spikes on his shoulder were glowing faintly, pulsing with a sick, rhythmic light.
"You need coolant," Elena said, touching the hot diamond. "You're cooking from the inside out. If that heat reaches your heart..."
"I know," Lucas snapped. Then he softened. "I know."
He looked at the neon sign buzzing above them: LADY LUCK PAWN SHOP.
"The Banker controls the odds," Lucas said, thinking. "He knew the chandelier would fall. He knew the floor would break. He's probably calculating exactly where we're hiding right now."
"He's using an algorithm," Elena realized. "Alexander said it. Chaos Theory. He has a predictive engine."
"Then we need to be unpredictable," Lucas said.
He stood up, using the wall for support.
"Give me your gun."
Elena handed him the compact SMG. Lucas took it in his left hand. It felt light, wrong. He was right-handed.
"What are you doing?"
"Robbing a pawn shop," Lucas said. "We need tools to cut this armor off. And we need a phone that isn't tapped."
[INSIDE THE PAWN SHOP]
The bell on the door jingled.
The clerk, a greasy man with a shotgun under the counter, looked up. He saw a giant man in a shredded tuxedo with a glowing blue rock for an arm, and a woman in a torn evening gown holding a broken heel like a shiv.
"We're closed," the clerk said, reaching for his shotgun.
Lucas didn't have time for a speech. He raised the SMG with his left hand and fired a warning shot into the ceiling.
"Liquid Nitrogen," Lucas barked. "And a burner phone. Now."
The clerk froze. He looked at Lucas's glowing arm.
"You... you're the guy on the news," the clerk stammered. "The terrorist. The Crystal Freak."
"The items," Lucas stepped forward. The heavy thud of his crystal arm hitting the counter made the glass display case crack. "Or I start breaking things."
The clerk scrambled. He ran to the back room and returned with a canister of industrial coolant (used for jewelry repair) and a cheap flip phone.
"Take it!" the clerk yelled. "Just get out!"
Lucas grabbed the canister. He didn't wait. He ripped the nozzle off and poured the freezing liquid directly onto his shoulder.
HISS.
Steam filled the small shop. Lucas roared as the extreme cold battled the viral heat. The crystal hissed and cracked, turning a dull, frosty white. The pain was blinding, but the pulsing stopped.
[CORE TEMPERATURE: STABILIZING.]
[LIMB STATUS: STILL LOCKED.]
"Better," Lucas exhaled.
Elena grabbed the burner phone. She dialed a number from memory.
"Pick up, old man," she muttered.
"Hello?" Alexander Vane's voice answered. "I assume you're not dead, seeing as I haven't inherited your debt yet."
"We're stuck," Elena said. "The arm is fused. We have no weapons. And every cop in Vegas is hunting us."
"Yes, I see that on the news," Alexander said dryly. "The Banker has placed a bounty. Fifty million dollars. Everyone from the cartel to the valet parking attendant wants to kill you."
"How do we beat him, Alexander?" Lucas grabbed the phone. "We can't fight him. He manipulates luck."
"He manipulates data," Alexander corrected. "I've been analyzing his pattern. The Banker isn't psychic. He has a server farm beneath the casino—The Oracle. It processes global variables to predict outcomes with 99.9% accuracy."
"So he knows our next move," Lucas said.
"He knows your logical next move," Alexander said. "He predicts you will try to flee the city or attack him directly. Both result in death."
"So what do we do?"
"You do the one thing a computer cannot predict," Alexander said. "You cheat."
"How?"
"There is an old maintenance tunnel," Alexander explained. "From the Prohibition era. It runs directly under The Oracle server room. It's not on any digital map. The Banker's algorithm doesn't know it exists."
"We destroy the server," Lucas realized. "We blind him."
"Exactly," Alexander said. "But Lucas... to get there, you have to go through the 'Boneyard'."
"The Boneyard?"
"The underground dumping ground for old slot machines," Alexander said grimly. "And apparently... where the Banker keeps his failed experiments."
Lucas looked at his useless, heavy arm. Then at Elena.
"We're going underground," Lucas said.
"Great," Elena sighed, reloading her pistol. "I was hoping to avoid sewer levels."
Lucas kicked the pawn shop door open.
"Let's go break the house."