Kwandezi stepped out of the containment cell into a corridor bathed in the pulsing, emergency red of the Red Protocol lockdown. The air was cold, the high-pitched whine of the intensified dampeners mixing with the distant, automated bark of system-wide alerts. The four Banisher Praetorian Guards lay crippled in their billion-credit Aegis Suits, their armor hissing and sparking, their bodies neutralized. Elara was a broken heap, her Psionic Mesh suit smoking, her mind mercifully silent.
He was free, but he was in the heart of the BanIns, a fortress now fully aware of a breach.
His off-the-charts instincts kicked in, overriding the dull, psychic ache Elara had left behind. He didn't run. He listened, tasting the air, feeling the vibrations in the steel floor. Guards were moving, fast and in disciplined squads, their heavy boots striking the ground two levels above him and converging on the hangar bay. The data-storm Aisha had unleashed was the primary threat; he was just a localized infection, for now.
I am the symbol of this rebellion, he thought, recalling Zaire's words. They will come to cleanse the symbol.
He needed Aisha. Not for comfort, not for her empathy, but for the briefcase. It was the only leverage in a war of lies. Sub-Level 2. He had to get to Sub-Level 2.
He moved into the corridor, his Ultimate Transmuted twin swords held in a low, ready grip. The Citadel was a maze, but his battle IQ analyzed the layout not as rooms and hallways, but as a system of protocols. The main lifts would be locked. The main stairs would be choked with guards. He needed the artery of the building, the part they didn't guard because they assumed it was secure. The maintenance ducts.
He located a console junction, a sealed panel controlling the sector's utilities. A normal operative would need codes. A brute-force operative would use plasma. Kwandezi simply placed his hand on the panel's lock.
He didn't use a Null-Kinetic pulse; that was too loud, too much energy. He used a subatomic whisper, focusing his will on the lock's core mechanism. He transmuted the hardened titanium pins into liquid gallium. The lock didn't break; it dissolved.
He ripped the panel open. Inside, a tangle of fiber-optic cables and power conduits pulsed with the Citadel's panic. He didn't cut them. He pressed his palm against the central data nexus.
With a surge of focused energy, he transmuted the silicon in the primary monitoring chips into inert carbon dust.
The effect was instantaneous. The red emergency lights in his corridor flickered and died, plunging him into darkness. The automated turrets that were just beginning to deploy from the ceiling retracted with a confused whirr. He had blinded the Citadel to his presence, creating a small, localized bubble of absolute chaos.
Let them fight their ghosts, the Void Host whispered, reveling in the systemic failure.
Kwandezi located the maintenance shaft, unsealed its bolts with another precise transmutation, and slipped into the darkness, climbing.
The Empath's Gambit
Aisha was a caged animal on Sub-Level 2. Her luxurious apartment, once a symbol of the Banisher's arrogant control, was now just a well-appointed prison. She felt the Citadel's lockdown through the floor: the heavy, running boots of guards, the shudder of blast doors sealing, and, most terrifyingly, the sudden, sharp silence from Sub-Level 3.
Elara's psychic spike had vanished. Not faded, not retreated, but been snuffed out like a candle.
"Kwandezi," she breathed. He had won. He had survived the Psychic Scourge.
Her instincts as a handler kicked in. He wasn't just surviving; he was escaping. And he was coming for the briefcase. She looked at the heavy, reinforced door of her apartment. Two Banisher guards stood outside, their orders clear: keep her contained.
She couldn't fight them. But she didn't need to fight them; she needed to fight the protocol.
Aisha ran to the apartment's main environmental control panel. It was a high-tech interface, locked by Banisher command codes. But she was still wearing her Specialist Aegis mesh undersuit. She interfaced her suit's gauntlet with the panel, not as a user, but as a VDC technician.
"Accessing Emergency Protocol 7-B: Critical Fire Suppression," she muttered, her fingers flying as she bypassed the user interface and directly accessed the building's core systems. She was exploiting a loophole—a fire suppression override was a higher priority than a political quarantine.
The system demanded authorization. She provided it, using the stolen credentials she'd lifted from Thorne's data chips—the credentials of a dead, treasonous General.
The effect was immediate.
The apartment's internal alarms blared. A synthesized voice screamed, "WARNING: CRITICAL FIRE DETECTED. SECTOR 2-DELTA. VENTING ATMOSPHERE."
The two guards outside her door cursed, their comms exploding with conflicting orders. Their protocol was to contain Aisha, but the Fire Suppression Protocol mandated they secure the breach.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heavy, wet foam began to pour from the ceiling vents, instantly filling the room. The apartment lights died, replaced by flashing red strobes.
The guards outside, blinded by protocol, forced the door open, their Aegis Suits pushing through the rapidly accumulating foam, their sonic rifles raised. "Operative! Stay where you are! We are evacuating you!"
This was the chaos Aisha needed.
The Intersection of Chaos
Kwandezi moved through the cramped, dark maintenance ducts with silent, predatory grace. He was above Sub-Level 2, following the thrum of the power lines. He felt the sudden shift in the Citadel's systems—the fire alarm, the venting of atmosphere. His instincts screamed. Aisha. It was too precise, too chaotic, to be a coincidence.
He found a ventilation grate directly above the corridor outside Aisha's apartment. He didn't break it. He transmuted the steel hinges to brittle rust, pushing the heavy grate aside silently.
He dropped to the floor below, landing in a scene of absolute pandemonium. The corridor was knee-deep in fire suppression foam. Red lights strobed through the haze. The two Banisher guards were blinded, disoriented, their helmet sensors useless against the chemical and electronic noise of the false alarm.
"Aisha!" one of the guards yelled, wading through the foam toward the open apartment.
A figure burst from the apartment, moving low and fast. It was Aisha. She wasn't in her civilian clothes; she was in her full, black Aegis mesh, her face set in a mask of grim determination. She clutched the Void-sealed briefcase in one hand and her Plasma Pistol in the other.
She saw him. Their eyes met across the chaotic corridor.
"He's the breach!" the second guard shouted, finally seeing Kwandezi's silhouette. He raised his sonic rifle.
Kwandezi was faster. His battle IQ had already calculated the shot. He didn't attack the guard. He raised his hand and transmuted a small patch of the floor beneath the guard's feet into a super-dense, high-friction polymer—like stepping on industrial glue.
The guard's boot hit the patch and stopped dead. His momentum, however, did not. He pitched forward with a yell, his Aegis-suited body crashing face-first into the foam.
The other guard turned, but Aisha was already on him. She fired her plasma pistol, not at the guard, but at the ceiling, striking a power conduit. The conduit exploded in a shower of harmless, blinding white sparks, adding to the sensory chaos.
"This way!" Aisha yelled.
Kwandezi moved to her side, his twin swords sheathed. They were a single unit again, the Anchor and the Asset, moving as one.
"You have the data," he stated, not a question.
"And you just declared war on your own family," she replied, her voice tight. "We're trapped. The lockdown is absolute. We can't get out."
"We don't need to get out," Kwandezi said, his eyes fixed on the end of the corridor. "We just need a different handler."
They skidded to a halt at the main intersection. The path to the hangar bay was blocked by a dozen more Praetorian Guards, their weapons raised. They were completely, utterly surrounded.
Then, a new sound cut through the alarms. The heavy, rhythmic thud of a single, massive figure.
Captain Akanni emerged from a side corridor, blocking their only other route of escape. He wasn't in his massive Scion-Class Aegis Suit; he was in his formal VDC officer's uniform, his greatcoat pristine despite the chaos. His glowing red eyes, the mark of his earth-bending lineage, were fixed on them, his expression utterly unreadable.
He looked at the crippled guards, the foam-filled hallway, the two rogue operatives, and the briefcase in Aisha's hand.
"Asset. Operative," Akanni's voice was a low, gravelly rumble that cut through the alarms. "You have caused a significant, and very expensive, amount of trouble."
Aisha raised her plasma pistol, but her hand trembled. Kwandezi stepped slightly in front of her, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
They were trapped between the political hammer of the Banishers and the raw, unpredictable power of Captain Akanni.