The safe house had never felt so small.
Silence pooled in every corner—heavy, suffocating, thick enough to squeeze breath from your chest. Servers hummed like angry wasps, pumping out enough heat to warp the air. Beneath it all lingered the metallic tang of Yin Lie's blood, sharp and unsettlingly familiar by now.
He stood before the wide window, muscles coiled tight, gaze fixed on the city below. His forearm throbbed from the fresh cut—another reminder of how close they'd come to losing even as they clawed out their victory.
But they'd done it.
They finally had the last piece.
The raid on the sunken Directorate data-barge felt like a fever dream now—zero-visibility water swallowing sound, the crushing pressure, the strobe of electric torches cutting across dead machinery. And behind them, Inspector Kai's hunters slicing through the dark like silent wraiths. They'd escaped by seconds. Maybe less.
Behind him, Thorne hunched over the holographic interface like a starving priest bent over forbidden scripture. Sweat drenched his face, glistening under the shifting blue light.
Six crystalline data fragments floated in the air—pale ghosts humming with the secrets of the First Wave Project.
Thorne's fingers darted across the holographic keys.
"The encryption isn't static," he muttered, breathing hard. "It learns. It changes. Chen Gu… the man was half genius, half demon."
Yin Lie didn't answer. He didn't need to. His senses were already stretched outward, cast like a net over the city.
The wolf in him tasted the acrid electricity in the air.
The ice felt the faint shiver of the steel in the walls.
And the Keystone… the Keystone studied the city's power grid with a cold, alien curiosity.
A soft vibration pulsed at the base of his skull, echoing the fragments' resonant hum.
He was the lock.
The fragments were the key.
He could feel it.
"Almost… almost there…" Thorne whispered.
Then everything clicked.
A final golden strand of code lanced out, weaving the six fragments together. The light condensed into one shimmering core—and the room dropped several degrees at once. The new file opened with a dead, suffocating silence.
Not a map.
A warning.
Coordinates flashed:
A dead zone outside the city.
Then the text beneath it:
WARNING: STASIS FIELD INTEGRITY AT 17%.
BIOLOGICAL DECAY IMMINENT.
FINAL PROTOCOL WINDOW: 72 HOURS.
A soft click.
An audio file played.
A scientist's trembling voice—thin, terrified, breaking.
"Her dreams… they're cracking the walls. The Keystone isn't to control her.
It's the only thing keeping her together.
If she wakes up wrong… she'll tear herself apart.
And the continent goes with her—"
The recording shattered into static. Then—
A scream.
Something inhuman, violated, ancient.
The message ended.
And the trap sprung.
Not with explosions. Not with shouting.
A single, cold click.
The lights bled into a violent red.
Magnetic locks slammed shut.
The massive window went dark.
Every exit sealed.
Su Li's voice slithered from the walls.
"Truly excellent work, gentlemen. Your diligence has exceeded my expectations. Consider this my… dividend."
Thorne staggered back, color draining from his face.
"Su Li—no, no, no—she was helping us—!"
"She played us," Yin Lie growled. Ice crackled over his knuckles, thin and brittle. "We did all the work for her."
But another voice cut through Su Li's theatrics.
Sharp.
Calm.
Victorious.
"Oh, you misunderstand, Mr. Lie. Su Li didn't manipulate you. She was merely the board."
The screen flickered.
Su Li vanished.
Inspector Kai replaced her—standing inside the building's fortified security hub. She hadn't hacked in.
She'd taken the entire building.
"Your mentor taught you stealth," Kai said. "But even ghosts disturb the air. Every mission, every clue, every fragment you stole… you led me straight to the endgame."
A faint hum filled the room. Yin Lie staggered as a cold pressure pressed into his skull.
Kai's nullification field.
Not the crude blast she'd used before—this was surgical.
Delicate.
Precise.
Designed to peel his powers apart strand by strand.
His senses screamed under the encroaching void.
Then—
Static crackled over his wrist-comm.
Impossible.
Kai should've blocked everything.
Chen Gu's face appeared, pixelated, flickering, far older than Yin Lie remembered. His eyes burned with a grim, final determination.
"Lie… she was always ahead. That was my mistake. So there's only one move left."
Behind Chen Gu, impossible streams of corrupted code spiraled like a digital hurricane.
Yin Lie's stomach dropped.
He knew that code.
Knew exactly what it meant.
Chen Gu was erasing everything.
Everything he'd built.
Everything he was.
"What are you doing?" Yin Lie demanded, voice tight.
"Opening a door," Chen Gu whispered. "And slamming another one shut. Kai can have this building. But I'm giving her the entire damn grid to choke on. She won't be able to breathe."
Sirens erupted outside.
Lights died.
The city's infrastructure screamed as Chen Gu unleashed chaos.
"The coordinates are burned into your device," Chen Gu said. His voice was fading. "You're the balance, Lie. You always were…"
The signal died.
One word replaced him:
—GOODBYE—
Pain hit Yin Lie like a physical strike.
Rage followed—white-hot, obliterating.
Kai's suppressive pressure vanished as she diverted everything to stop Chen Gu's catastrophic attack. She would recover fast. Seconds, maybe.
The magnetic locks stayed shut.
Yin Lie stepped toward the steel door.
No balance.
No restraint.
"Thorne! Back. Now!"
He planted his hands on the door.
And let the wolf, the ice, and the Keystone converge.
Not to freeze.
Not to burn.
To unmake.
The steel warped and shrieked, peeling open like charred parchment. Yin Lie burst into the corridor as terrified guards screamed at the sight of him.
He was no longer a ghost.
He was a storm.
The hunt had begun.
Thorne's voice crackled through the static of their comms.
"Lie! They're locking down the entire building! You need to move!"
But Yin Lie was already running.
Every step was for Chen Gu.
Every breath for the sleeping god.
Every strike a vow carved into the world:
He would be the balance.
He would choose the ending.
No one else.