The entrance to the listening post was not a door; it was a scar. A circular, rust-fused maintenance hatch hidden in the city's deepest geothermal substructure, a place where the air was a crushing blanket of heat and the low hum of the planet's core vibrated through the steel floor. Su Li's information had been perfect, guiding him through a labyrinth of forgotten service tunnels to this precise point. Now, he was on his own.
He laid his palm on the hatch. The metal was almost too hot to touch. He didn't try to force the ancient lock. Instead, he channeled a precise, needle-thin stream of cold directly into its mechanism. The shriek of tortured metal was shockingly loud in the oppressive silence as the lock's tumblers, flash-frozen and brittle, shattered internally. With a groan, the heavy hatch swung open into darkness.
The air that billowed out was stale, carrying the scent of ozone and dust that hadn't been disturbed in twenty years. Yin Lie dropped inside, landing silently on a grated catwalk. Below him was a cavernous space, dominated by the hulking, dormant machinery of a bygone era. This was Substation Echo. It felt less like a data center and more like a tomb for forgotten gods of technology.
His three-way vision cut through the gloom. The wolf saw the residual heat signatures of ancient, shorted-out power conduits. The ice saw the structural integrity of the decaying catwalks, the stress fractures in the support columns. The Keystone, however, saw the truth: a single, thin, shimmering line of pure energy, almost invisible, running from a central console deep within the station to a heavily shielded chamber at the far end. That was the prize.
He moved with a predator's silence, a ghost in the dead machine. Su Li's intel had mentioned automated defenses, but the station seemed utterly inert. He made it halfway across the main floor before his senses screamed.
It wasn't a sound or a sight. It was a pressure change. A sudden, violent displacement of air.
From a darkened alcove, a machine lunged. It was not one of the Directorate's sleek drones. This was a monster of a forgotten age—a "Warden," according to the fragmented schematics. A nine-foot-tall automaton of thick, pitted plating and piston-driven limbs, its optical sensor a single, baleful red light. It moved with the brutal, unstoppable momentum of a locomotive.
Yin Lie didn't have time to think. He threw himself sideways as a massive, piston-powered fist smashed the spot where he'd been standing, shattering the concrete floor. The Warden was old, but it was fast and unbelievably powerful.
He unleashed a barrage of ice shards, razor-sharp and propelled by the wolf's explosive energy. They hammered against the Warden's chassis, the impacts echoing like gunshots. The shards didn't penetrate; they just scored the ancient metal, leaving spiderwebs of frost that sublimated instantly in the geothermal heat.
The Warden's torso swiveled, its red eye locking onto him. A panel slid open on its shoulder, revealing a weapon that crackled with contained energy. A plasma caster. Obsolete, but brutally effective.
He couldn't fight it head-on. He had to be smarter.
As the plasma bolt fired—a blinding sphere of white-hot energy—Yin Lie dove behind a massive, dormant turbine. The plasma hit the turbine, and the air filled with the stench of vaporized metal. He was pinned.
His eyes scanned the environment, his mind racing. The station was powered by geothermal steam. Massive, insulated pipes, two decades old and under immense pressure, lined the walls.
The Warden advanced, its heavy footfalls shaking the floor. Yin Lie waited, every muscle coiled. When it was ten feet away, he moved. He didn't attack the machine. He lunged for the wall, slamming his palm against the main steam pipe directly beside the automaton.
He didn't try to freeze the whole pipe. He focused a single point of absolute zero on one of the rusted joint-seals.
The effect was catastrophic. The superheated, high-pressure steam inside met the section of metal that was now as brittle as glass. With a deafening roar, the pipe ruptured. A jet of superheated steam, invisible and lethally hot, erupted from the wall, engulfing the Warden completely. The machine's red eye flickered and died as its internal systems were instantly cooked. It seized up, a statue of smoking, ruined metal.
A second Warden activated at the far end of the room, alerted by the noise. It began its heavy, thunderous advance.
Yin Lie was already moving. He didn't have time for another direct confrontation. He sprinted for the shielded chamber, the path the Keystone's vision had shown him. The chamber door was a thick slab of lead-lined steel, controlled by a heavy, manual wheel. He threw his entire body into it, the ancient mechanism groaning in protest.
He squeezed through the gap just as the second Warden reached the chamber, its fist hammering against the closing door with enough force to make the entire wall shudder.
He was safe. For now.
The chamber was small, sterile, and cold. In the center, on a simple pedestal, was not a computer terminal, but a single, flawless, fist-sized crystal that seemed to drink the light. A Mnemonic Crystal, the pinnacle of First Wave data storage. This was the archive.
He placed his hands on it. The moment he did, the Keystone inside him roared to life. It wasn't an attack; it was a recognition, a key sliding into a lock. His mind was ripped from his body and plunged into someone else's memory.
He saw—no, she saw—a sky. A perfect, impossible blue, scarred by the white trails of birds. She felt a gentle breeze, smelled the scent of grass and clean, open air. It was a memory of freedom. A memory of a world before Nocturnal Shadows.
The beautiful vision lasted only a second before it curdled into a nightmare.
*The sky vanished, replaced by a sterile white ceiling. The breeze became the cold, recycled air of a laboratory. The smell of grass was replaced by the sting of antiseptic. Men in lab coats stood over her, their faces impassive. She felt a profound, soul-crushing terror. The feeling of being a specimen. A cage not of steel, but of expectation and fear.*
It was Chimera's memory.
The psychic backlash was a physical blow. Yin Lie was thrown back from the pedestal, a scream tearing from his throat as the Keystone's agony became his own. He crashed against the far wall, his vision fracturing, his power spiraling out of control. The very air in the chamber began to crystallize into chaotic, razor-sharp snowflakes of pure energy. He was a beacon, a psychic lighthouse screaming his pain and location to the entire city.
He struggled to his knees, his mind a battlefield of his own warring powers and a dead woman's stolen memories.
A soft, feminine voice, amplified by the chamber's acoustics, cut through his agony. It was calm, precise, and utterly devoid of emotion.
"Gravitational anomaly detected. Power signature matches the asset. The hunt is over, Frost Wolf."
Yin Lie looked up. Standing in the ruined doorway, framed by the smoking wreckage of the second Warden which she had evidently dispatched with silent efficiency, was Inspector Kai. Her hand rested on the hilt of a device at her belt, and her analytical eyes held no malice, only the cold, certain finality of a hunter who had just cornered her prey.