Chapter 27: No I In Null
The silence after Adrian was taken was worse than any scream.
Adriana stood in the ruined street where the air still shimmered with residual energy, her chest rising and falling too fast, her fingers clenched so tightly around her weapon that her knuckles burned. The place where her brother had been moments ago was now nothing but cracked stone and drifting ash—no blood, no body, no sign he had ever existed there at all.
Only the echo remained.
That echo crawled under her skin.
"No," she whispered, her voice thin and unsteady. "No… Adrian."
She took a step forward, then another, as if moving might tear away the illusion. Her crimson energy flickered weakly around her shoulders, responding not to rage this time—but to panic. She reached out instinctively, the way she always had since they were children, the way she always did when he fell or got hurt or went too quiet.
Her hand closed on empty air.
The truth hit her all at once.
Adrian was gone.
Taken.
And for the first time since the night everything began, Adriana was truly alone.
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The battlefield around her was dead.
Burned-out cars lay overturned like skeletons. Buildings leaned at broken angles, their windows shattered, walls scorched black by hellfire and null-energy clashes. The sky above was an ugly gray, streaked with unnatural clouds that twisted slowly, as if the world itself was unsettled by what had just happened.
The Elite's presence still lingered.
Adriana could feel it—cold, precise, watching from somewhere beyond sight. The Architects' hand had reached further into reality, and this time, it had taken something precious.
She screamed.
It tore out of her chest, raw and unfiltered, a sound of grief and fury that sent a shockwave through the street. Windows exploded outward. Debris lifted and slammed back down. Her crimson aura flared violently, wrapping her body in jagged arcs of energy that lashed out like living whips.
"BRING HIM BACK!" she roared into the empty sky.
No answer came.
Only silence.
Her knees buckled, and she dropped to the ground, one hand catching herself on cracked concrete. Her breathing came in sharp, broken gasps. For a terrifying moment, she thought she might lose control completely—that the same destructive frenzy that had consumed Adrian before would take her now.
But she didn't.
Because Adriana had always been different.
Where Adrian burned inward, she endured.
She pressed her forehead to the ground and forced herself to breathe. In. Out. Again. Her energy began to stabilize, the wild arcs drawing closer to her body, condensing into a tighter, sharper glow.
He's alive, she told herself fiercely.
They wouldn't take him if he wasn't.
That thought became her anchor.
She stood slowly, brushing dust and ash from her clothes, her eyes hardening as resolve replaced despair. Tears still burned at the corners of her eyes, but she didn't let them fall.
Crying could come later.
Right now, she had a war to fight.
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Movement flickered at the edge of her vision.
Adriana spun, her whip snapping into her hand in a blur of crimson light. The energy-wrapped weapon cracked through the air, carving a glowing line into the street as it lashed forward.
A demon barely managed to leap back in time.
It was one of the lesser ones—tall, hunched, skin stretched tight over twisted muscle, eyes glowing a sickly orange. More shapes emerged behind it, crawling from broken alleys and collapsed buildings, drawn by the chaos like vultures to a corpse.
They had stayed hidden while the Elite acted.
Now they thought she was vulnerable.
Adriana smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
"Wrong choice," she said quietly.
She moved.
Her speed shattered the ground beneath her feet as she closed the distance in a heartbeat. The whip lashed out, wrapping around the first demon's neck. With a sharp pull, she yanked it forward and drove her knee into its skull. Bone and shadow burst apart as she twisted, using the momentum to fling the body into another charging creature.
She didn't slow.
Crimson energy surged along her limbs as she leapt, spun, and struck with ruthless precision. The whip became an extension of her will—snaring, slicing, crushing. Each crack of it echoed like thunder through the ruined street.
A demon lunged from above, claws extended.
She caught it midair.
Her hand closed around its throat, crimson energy flaring as she slammed it into the ground hard enough to crater the pavement. She didn't even look down as she finished it.
More came.
They always did.
Adriana welcomed them.
Every strike, every kill, every burst of power was a promise—to herself, to her brother—that she would not break. That she would survive. That she would hunt down every Elite, every Architect, every shadow that stood between them.
But as the last demon fell, dissolving into black ash at her feet, the silence returned once more.
And with it came the weight.
She stood amid the destruction, chest heaving, her weapon dissolving back into pure energy as her power settled. The fight had helped—it always did—but it hadn't filled the hollow ache in her chest.
"Adrian…" she murmured.
Her senses stretched outward, probing the fabric of reality the way the alternate twins had taught her—listening for fractures, distortions, echoes of other dimensions.
Nothing.
Then—
Something shifted.
Not here.
Not now.
A pull.
Faint, distant, but unmistakable.
Adriana's head snapped up.
The feeling wasn't demonic. It wasn't human either. It was structured. Controlled. Cold.
Null-space, she realized.
Where the Architects operated freely.
Where prisoners disappeared.
Her jaw tightened.
"So that's where you took him."
She didn't know how she would get there. She didn't know what waited for her if she did. But one thing was certain—doing nothing was not an option.
She turned and began walking through the ruined city, every step deliberate, every sense alert. The world felt different without Adrian beside her. Quieter. Heavier.
Lonelier.
But she would adapt.
She always did.
As she disappeared into the shadows, unseen eyes watched from beyond the veil—calculating, patient, already adjusting their plans.
Because Adrian Sanchez was no longer the only variable.
Adriana, alone and unbroken, had become something else entirely.
And the Architects were beginning to realize their mistake.
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