Darkness folded back into light, and the duo returned to the Command Centre back at the mansion, the familiar hum of servers and the blow glow of the monitors illuminating them as Tyrone released the Cloak slowly.
Tandy staggered the moment her feet hit solid ground. She took a could deep breaths, her chest rising up and down quickly as she clenched her hands so tightly her knuckles had turned white.
For a long second, she didn't speak.
Then she turned on him.
"You said we couldn't save them, " Her voice wasn't loud. It sounded as if she was very calm, but Tyrone could tell from their bond that she was absolutely furious.
"They were already dead," he said quietly. "They just didn't know it yet. We had to get out of there,"
"That's not, " Her voice cracked sharply. She dragged a hand through her hair, pacing across the floor, "That's not good enough. They were alive. They were right there. We were right there."
Her Light surged brighter with every step.
Tyrone stayed where he was, but his shadows shifted subtly, keeping the energy in the room from spiking dangerously.
"They designed it that way," he said, "The overload and failsafe. Anyone who found that place would've died in the explosion. It was a last straw to avoid any evidence being taken,"
Tandy spun back toward him, eyes bright with fury and grief, "So we just leave them?"
"No," Tyrone said firmly, "Upload all the data your suit collected while we were there. I'll breeze through it, there's definitely things in that data we can use as evidence or leads to figure out more."
He said, already having a plan of what they'll be doing in the future, "Plus, trust me, I want just as much as you to crush these guys. We'll find every person involved in this operation and make sure they can't ever do this again,"
Tandy's breathing slowed slightly. Her Light dimmed from chaotic flares into something tighter.
"You promise?" she asked.
Tyrone didn't hesitate, "Of course,"
Tandy stood there for a moment longer, searching Tyrone's face like she was anchoring herself to something solid. Then she nodded once.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll upload everything."
She turned away from him and walked toward the equipment alcove along the far wall, where the suit interface terminals were built directly into the architecture.
The LVC-01 responded to her presence instantly. Fine lines of light traced along the seams of her bodysuit, subtle ports opening at her wrists and collarbone as the system synced with the command center.
A soft chime filled the room.
DATA LINK ESTABLISHED
SUIT TELEMETRY STREAMING…
SENSOR LOGS: 98% INTEGRITY
ENVIRONMENTAL SCANS: 100%
BIO-SIGNATURE CAPTURE: 87%
UNKNOWN ENERGY SIGNATURE: 100%
Tyrone's eyes flicked up to the central screen as information began to pour in.
The underground facility reconstructed itself in three-dimensional wireframe: corridors, chambers, pod formations, energy conduits and more.
Heat maps were overlaid alongside power flow diagrams and biological readings pulled directly from the pods of the victims they had seen and interacted with.
Everything they had felt and interacted with were translated into data for them to analyze. Tandy watched the screens for only a moment before looking away.
"I hope you find something," she said quietly, voice steady now but still heavy, "Something big. Something that makes this… worth it."
Tyrone turned to her, "I will. Trust me,"
She studied him for another beat, then gave a small nod and began walking toward the stairs.
"I'm going to shower and head home," she said. "Try to sleep. If I can."
She paused halfway up, glancing back over her shoulder. "Just… tell me when you're ready for the next move."
"I will," Tyrone promised.
She disappeared up the staircase, her footsteps soft against the stone while Tyrone turned back to the wall of monitors.
"Alright," he murmured to himself. "Let's see what you left behind."
He gestured, and the systems responded instantly. The holographic reconstruction expanded across the room, each data layer peeling back like skin.
Facility Architecture Analysis - The underground complex was far larger than what they'd physically seen. Their teleportation drop point had landed them in one sector, but the scans revealed branching tunnels extending for miles in multiple directions, most of which had collapsed when the plant detonated above.
Purposefully.
Structural modeling showed demolition charges embedded into the support columns. Triggered remotely. Designed to turn the entire complex into a tomb.
It was a very professional cleanup mechanism. Tyrone pulled up the energy data next.
That strange blue signature was now broken down into thousands of data points. Frequency, Wavelength, Emission pattern & Volatility.
The resulting analysis concluded that the energy behaved like something alive, adaptive, reactive, almost predatory. It responded aggressively to stress, increasing output when the body weakened instead of stabilizing. Like it was trying to force evolution by brute violence.
"It's more like weaponized transformation," Tyrone muttered.
He overlaid it with the combat footage from the attackers over the past few nights and as if he didn't need more proof, it was a 100% perfect match. Every enhanced individual they'd fought had been running on the same energy.
This was the supply chain. Which meant that Roxxon and whoever they were partner with, were manufacturing disposable meta-humans.
He swiped the screens aside and opened a new search lattice.
QUERY: ROXXON CORPORATION
FILTER: SCANDALS, LEGAL ACTIONS, WHISTLEBLOWERS
TIME RANGE: LAST 15 YEARS
SORT BY: REPRESSED / BURIED / RETRACTED
The monitors flooded with information.
At first, it was the expected stuff.
Environmental lawsuits quietly settled. Worker safety violations paid off with fines that meant nothing to a company with their wealth. Lobbying records that showed entire regulatory boards essentially bought and paid for.
But Tyrone wasn't interested in the obvious.
He dug deeper.
Cases that vanished.
Articles that were published, then mysteriously pulled.
Journalists who abruptly changed careers.
Scientists whose research was absorbed into patents after they "resigned."
Protest organizers arrested on unrelated charges days before key events.
Then he pulled up Jaded Energy.
QUERY: JADED ENERGY
STATUS: DEFUNCT
ACQUISITIONS, ASSETS, BOARD MEMBERS, LEGAL HISTORY
The public records were clean, but Tyrone didn't stop there. He needed to find their connection to Roxxon.
He cross-referenced:
• Former Jaded executives or employees → current Roxxon shell companies
• Jaded patents → quietly acquired by Roxxon intermediaries
• Jaded research grants → funded by foundations linked to Roxxon donors
• Jaded security contractors → now working private detail for Roxxon facilities
After searching for these things, he found some. A ghost connection.
Jaded Energy had never truly gone away. It had been dismantled on paper and absorbed piece by piece into Roxxon's ecosystem under layers of legal insulation.
Some low level employees, who most of the time would be ignored in this kind of research, had instead reappeared in Roxxon, alongside some of their patents.
It was a front, a perfect disposable mask for illegal experimentation, and Tyrone was still peeling the layers away.