The abandoned subway control room felt like a place the world had forgotten.
Cold air drifted through broken vents. Dust floated in the pale blue glow of a single holographic map. It painted the faces of Yin Lie, Chen Gu, and Thorne like ghosts standing around a lantern in the dark.
This was the deepest they had ever gone into the city's hidden layers.
A dead zone.
A place erased from official records.
The perfect place to plan something dangerous.
Yin Lie stood away from the table with his eyes closed. He wasn't sleeping—he was listening.
Inside him, the three powers that usually fought for control were finally quiet.
The wolf sharpened every sound. He could hear distant water drops, tiny metal vibrations, even the slow beat of Thorne's nervous heart.
The ice kept his thoughts sharp and calm.
And the Keystone's strange vision let him "see" the energy inside the walls, like glowing lines in the dark.
For once, he didn't feel like a cage struggling to hold three beasts.
He felt like he was guiding them.
Chen Gu's rough voice broke the silence.
"It's the last piece," he said.
The holographic map showed a black, empty space deep under the city—a location not labeled on any digital system.
"Black Site 7-Omega," Chen Gu explained. "They called it the Sarcophagus. It isn't a normal archive. It doesn't store files on servers. It stores physical, crystal drives—information too dangerous to ever put online."
He touched the dark spot on the map.
"That's where I hid the original, unedited data about Project Chimera."
Thorne swallowed hard and pushed up his glasses.
"Security will be… extreme. The Sarcophagus is controlled by an AI named Cerberus. It doesn't just protect the place—it learns, adapts, and deletes anything it thinks is a threat."
"So another suicide mission," Yin Lie said softly.
Chen Gu met his eyes.
"We've been doing suicide missions since the beginning. This one just matters more."
A shimmer of blue light appeared in the corner of the room.
Su Li's hologram stood there, calm and elegant, like she didn't belong in a dirty underground bunker at all.
"Cerberus," she said smoothly. "Such a dramatic name. But even the fiercest dog has a command string."
She flicked her hand, and a data packet jumped to Chen Gu's console.
"A virus key," she said. "It will put Cerberus to sleep for ninety-seven seconds. That is all the time I can buy."
She smiled at Yin Lie—not kindly, not cruelly, but with interest.
"Try not to die. My investment in you is becoming… promising."
Her image faded away.
Yin Lie's voice was low.
"We can't trust her."
"We don't need to," Chen Gu said, already inserting the virus into their equipment. "We just need to use what she gave us. The plan is simple: I get into the core console. Thorne guides me from the link. Yin Lie—your job is to get us there alive."
Thorne suddenly spoke again, voice shaking slightly.
"There's something you both need to understand."
He held up a cracked First Wave data fragment.
"Chimera isn't just a strong variant," he said. "She isn't a leader, or a source. She's a Reality Anchor."
He looked at Yin Lie and Chen Gu, fear clear in his eyes.
"Her psychic energy doesn't just create power—it keeps variant powers stable. Her dream state is what keeps reality from bending too far. If she wakes up wrong… she might change the rules of the world. Maybe everyone becomes too powerful to control. Or maybe all our powers shut down and kill us."
He swallowed.
"We're not searching for a weapon. We're searching for the switch that could turn our whole kind off."
Silence filled the room again—
but this time it was heavier.
Like the air itself understood the danger.
Later, when Thorne worked nervously on their remote link, Chen Gu found Yin Lie standing alone on the empty train platform. The tunnel ahead looked endless and pitch black.
"You didn't have to come this far," Chen Gu said softly. "You could've run after the docks. Or after the safe house. You didn't have to keep going."
Yin Lie didn't turn around.
"You once told me that running is just a slower way to die."
Chen Gu gave a tired, sad smile.
"I wish I hadn't taught you that."
Yin Lie finally looked at him.
"This Chimera… you were there from the start."
He studied his mentor's expression.
"This isn't just a mission to you."
Chen Gu's gaze drifted into the darkness, like he was staring at a memory he didn't want to remember.
"I helped build her cage," he said quietly. "I watched them take a girl and turn her into a project. A formula. A god trapped in a box."
His voice cracked just a little.
"I've lived with that guilt for twenty years. This isn't about redemption… it's about responsibility."
A long moment passed between them.
A moment where teacher and student were suddenly the same—two men carrying a burden too heavy for anyone else.
Yin Lie turned toward the black tunnel, eyes steady and sharp.
"Then let's go find the ghost."