The air in Warehouse 7 was thick with the smell of ozone and mistrust.
Michael stayed perfectly still, pinned by the beams of a dozen high-powered flashlights.
His hands were raised, his heart hammering a frantic, panicked rhythm against his ribs.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
He was caught.
It was the one thing he couldn't afford.
Captain Valerius circled him slowly, her boots crunching on the grimy concrete floor. She moved like a predator, her eyes sharp and analytical.
"ID," she snapped, her voice leaving no room for argument.
"Michael," he said, his voice hoarse. "My name is Michael."
"No last name, Michael?" she asked, a sarcastic edge to her tone. "Or should I just call you 'Son of Marcus'?"
He flinched. The name was a brand, a legacy he had tried his whole life to avoid.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
Valerius let out a short, humorless laugh.
"Don't you? You have his eyes. That same stubborn, 'I'd rather die than follow an order' look."
She stopped in front of him, her face grim.
"We detected an Unregistered power signature spike just before this Gate collapsed. A big one. Far too big for an E-Rank nest of Skitterers."
She gestured to his tattered hoodie and the ichor staining his jeans.
"You look like you've been through a war. Yet, my scanner says you're not hurt. Not a scratch."
Her gaze sharpened, becoming dangerously focused.
"And most interesting of all… your Mana reading is a flat zero. A perfect zero."
Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's impossible. To fight in a Gate, to kill monsters, you need mana. Everyone knows that. So, tell me, kid. What kind of power did you use in there?"
Michael's mind raced.
He couldn't tell her the truth.
'Hi, I have a magic video game system in my head inherited from my mother's secret lineage of Void-witches, and I just unlocked a forbidden skill that lets me eat souls.'
They wouldn't just arrest him. They'd lock him in a lab so deep underground he'd never see the sun again.
He needed a story. A plausible lie.
He took a breath, focusing on the acting lessons of a lifetime of hiding things from his father.
"I… I don't know," he stammered, making his voice tremble. "I was just walking by. I saw the Gate. Something… pulled me in."
He looked at his hands, feigning confusion and terror.
"There were monsters everywhere. One of them attacked me." He pointed to the silvery scar on his arm. "It burned me. The pain… it was… and then there was just… light. A blast of energy. When I woke up, the monsters were dead and the Gate was gone."
It was a classic, textbook case of a Traumatic Awakening. It happened all the time. It was believable.
It was also a complete load of crap.
Valerius stared at him, her expression unreadable. She didn't buy it. Not for a second.
"A spontaneous awakening," she said, her voice dripping with skepticism. "How convenient."
She turned to one of her agents. "Scan his pockets. Gently."
Michael's blood ran cold.
The cores.
The Void-Tainted cores.
An agent stepped forward with a handheld scanner. As he passed it over Michael's pockets, the device let out a high-pitched, frantic scream. BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEEEEP!
The agent recoiled as if he'd been shocked. "Captain! I'm getting a massive reading… but it's not mana. It's… corrupted. Null-energy. Off the charts."
Valerius's eyes narrowed into slits. "Null-energy," she repeated, the words tasting like a curse.
Before she could give another order, the Warden's voice echoed in his mind, calm and ancient.
"The Legacy Archive has decrypted another data fragment, child. A result of your… proximity to an agent of the old guard."
A new window, bordered in gold, flickered to life in Michael's vision. It was a memory file. His mother's memory.
[FRAGMENT UNLOCKED: THE PARTNERS]
He saw a younger Captain Valerius, her hair shorter, her face less hard. She was laughing, standing beside a man in gleaming silver S-Rank armor.
His father.
Marcus.
They were a team. Partners. The DGC's golden duo.
He saw them fighting together, their movements a perfect, practiced dance of fire and steel.
Then he saw another scene. A clandestine meeting in a dark room.
A shadowy figure, a high-ranking DGC official, was talking to his mother, Elara.
"The Arcana power is a wasted resource," the official said. "We need a weapon that can close Gates permanently. You are that weapon."
"It is not a weapon," Elara's voice replied, firm and cold. "It is a balance. To use it as you suggest would be to invite disaster."
"Think of your husband, Elara," the official pressed. "Think of your son. In this world, the only way to protect your family is with power."
The memory ended.
The Warden's voice returned, a low, grim hum.
"They knew. At least, some of them knew. They pushed her. They manipulated her fear for you and your father. The Ever-Gate incident was not an accident. It was an experiment. An experiment that went catastrophically wrong."
A cold, hard fury settled in Michael's gut.
They had used her.
They had caused her death. Her sacrifice.
And now her old partner's successor was standing here, interrogating him.
"Kid, I'm going to ask you one more time," Valerius said, her patience clearly gone. "What happened in that Gate?"
"I want to call my father," Michael said, his voice suddenly hard, stripped of any feigned weakness.
Valerius was taken aback by the sudden shift in his tone.
She studied him for a long, silent moment.
Finally, she sighed, a sound of pure frustration. She knew she couldn't get anything more out of him here. Not without crossing a line that would bring the full, wrathful attention of a retired S-Rank legend down on her head.
"Fine," she spat. "Make the call. Let's see if the old ghost still answers his phone."
She tossed him a military-grade satellite phone.
He punched in the familiar number, his fingers steady.
It rang once.
Twice.
"Michael?" His father's voice was tight with a worry that was almost suffocating. "Where are you? I saw the alert for the Navy Yard…"
"I'm fine, Dad," Michael said, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. "But… there's a situation. The DGC is here. They have questions."
There was a dead silence on the other end of the line.
Michael could feel the shift, even through the phone. The quiet, tired man on the couch vanished, replaced by something older, colder, and far more dangerous.
He was no longer talking to Marcus, the retired widower.
He was talking to the Hunter who had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with S-Ranks and stared down gods and monsters.
"Don't say another word, Michael," Marcus said, his voice a low, threatening growl. "Don't move. Don't let them touch you."
There was a pause, and then a single, chilling promise.
"I'm on my way."
The line went dead.
Michael handed the phone back to Valerius.
"He's coming," he said simply.
For the first time since he'd been caught, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Captain Valerius's face. She, more than anyone, knew what that meant.
They waited in a silence so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Twenty minutes later, the sound of a single, beat-up pickup truck roaring to a stop outside broke the tension.
The warehouse doors slid open.
Marcus strode in.
He wasn't wearing armor. He was in a faded t-shirt and worn-out jeans. He looked like any other tired, middle-aged dad.
But the way he moved, the way every DGC agent in the room tensed, the way the very air seemed to grow heavy around him - that was not normal.
He ignored everyone else, his eyes locking onto Michael. He did a quick, professional scan, checking for injuries, for trauma, for any sign of a fight.
His gaze fell on the new, silvery scar on Michael's arm.
His expression tightened.
Finally, he turned to Captain Valerius.
"Valerius," he said, his voice flat and cold. "You look old."
"Marcus," she replied, her voice equally frosty. "You look like hell. Your boy was trespassing in a live Gate."
"My boy is a civilian," Marcus shot back. "And you are holding him without cause. Release him. Now."
"I can't do that," Valerius said, shaking her head. "We detected a massive, unregistered energy signature. His mana is zero, but he walked out of a monster nest without a scratch and he's carrying restricted materials. I have to take him in."
Marcus took a slow step forward.
It was just one step, but it felt like an earthquake. The pressure in the room became immense.
"You will not," Marcus said, his voice a low promise of violence. "You will not take my son."
Valerius stood her ground, but a single bead of sweat trickled down her temple.
She was outmatched. She knew it.
They all knew it.
"He's my son," Marcus said, his voice softening, but filled with an iron will that could bend steel. "He's coming home with me. We can sort out the paperwork tomorrow."
It was an order disguised as a suggestion.
Valerius held his gaze for a long ten seconds. The silent battle of wills was more intense than any physical fight.
Finally, she broke.
"Fine," she ground out through clenched teeth. "Get him out of my sight. But this isn't over, Marcus. The Bureau will have questions."
"Let them," Marcus said, turning his back on her. He walked over to Michael and put a hand on his shoulder. "Let's go home, kid."
The ride back to the apartment was silent, the air thick with unspoken words.
When they walked through the door, Marcus finally broke the silence. He didn't yell. He didn't rage.
He just looked at Michael, his eyes filled with a pain and a sorrow so deep it seemed bottomless. He looked like a man who had seen a ghost.
He took a deep breath.
"It's not your fault, kid," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "It was always going to happen. The blood… it always calls out."
He sank onto the couch, looking defeated.
He looked at Michael, his gaze piercing, searching.
He didn't ask what had happened. He didn't ask if Michael was okay.
He asked a question that ripped the world from under Michael's feet, a question that proved he knew far more than he had ever let on.
"Tell me the truth, Michael," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "When it happened… when you Awakened in that cave… did you see her?"
He paused, his own voice cracking with a fifteen-year-old grief.
"Did you see your mother?"