The silence of the archive was shattered by the metallic clang of the Psy-Hounds hitting the chamber floor. The sound echoed through the cavernous space, a death knell.
Kenji's breath hitched. The awe he'd felt moments before evaporated, replaced by the cold, familiar grip of terror. The two black-armored figures rose from their landing crouch, their featureless helmets scanning the forest of servers. They didn't rush. They were hunters who knew their prey was cornered.
Akari was already moving, her fingers a blur on the ancient terminal. "Arisaka built security into this place. Legacy systems. Might not stop them, but it might slow them down!"
She slammed a final key. Throughout the archive, heavy blast shutters began grinding down over the server aisles, sectioning off the chamber with deafening roars of protesting metal. Red emergency lights strobed, casting the scene in a hellish, pulsating glow.
One of the Hounds simply raised its hand toward a descending shutter. The immense, multi-ton slab of metal shrieked, buckled in the middle, and froze, jammed in its tracks. The other Hound turned its head, its blank gaze locking onto Kenji and Akari through the maze of server racks. It began walking forward, its pace deliberate, unstoppable.
"Think, Kenji!" Akari yelled over the din, ducking behind the central terminal for cover. "The archive! It's not just a history lesson! It's a manual! Look for something! Anything!"
A manual. The thought was absurd amidst the panic. But the terminal screen was right there, the menu still glowing:
`[2. ENERGY MANIFESTATION & CONTROL]`
Kenji's hand, trembling, shot out and selected it. A submenu exploded into view, filled with complex diagrams of energy channels, neural pathways, and mathematical formulae that made his head spin.
`[2.4 DEFLECTION & ABSORPTION]`
He didn't have time to read. He didn't have time to think. The lead Hound rounded a final server rack, now twenty meters away. It raised its hand. The air between them wavered, and an invisible force, like a freight train made of pure thought, slammed into the terminal.
The impact was colossal. The reinforced obsidian terminal didn't shatter; it was ripped from its moorings and sent spinning through the air, crashing into a server bank fifty feet away in an explosion of sparks and metal. The skeleton of Dr. Arisaka was thrown from the chair, bones scattering across the floor.
Kenji was thrown off his feet, the breath knocked out of him. Akari cried out as she was peppered with shrapnel, a line of blood appearing on her cheek.
The Hound advanced, stepping over the remains of the chair. Its partner was dealing with the other shutters, methodically clearing a path.
*It's over*, Kenji thought, despair washing over him. The knowledge was here, but it was useless. He couldn't learn decades of research in ten seconds.
The Hound stood over him. It looked down with its polished, empty dome. It reached for him.
And in that moment, Kenji wasn't a Psion. He wasn't an inheritance. He was just a scared kid in an alley, about to be dissected for a mistake.
But this time, the memory brought not fear, but a surge of pure, unadulterated rage.
Rage at the Corps for turning people into things.
Rage at the Hounds for hunting him.
Rage at Dr. Arisaka for leaving this cursed legacy inside him.
Rage at his own helplessness.
The static in his head didn't just return; it *screamed*. It wasn't a plea to survive. It was a demand to *fight back*.
As the Hound's hand descended to enforce its null-field, Kenji didn't try to form a blade. He didn't try to push a wave. He remembered the menu. `DEFLECTION & ABSORPTION`.
He didn't understand the theory. But he understood the *feeling*. The feeling of being a conduit. Not a source, but a channel.
He crossed his arms over his face, a feeble, instinctual guard. And he *focused*. Not on creating energy, but on redirecting it. He imagined his will not as a sword, but as a shield. A mirror.
The Hound's telekinetic force hit him.
Agony. It was like every nerve ending was on fire. The null-field sought to crush his mind, to silence the spark. But he didn't try to resist it head-on. He let it in.
And then he *bent* it.
A cerulean sheen, faint at first, then blazing with intensity, erupted over his skin. It wasn't a solid barrier. It was a shimmering, reactive field. The Hound's power flowed into it, and Kenji, screaming with the effort of containing a force meant to obliterate him, *shoved it away*.
The telekinetic force didn't vanish. It was deflected, ricocheting off Kenji's psychic shield and slamming sideways into a nearby server rack. The entire structure crumpled like paper, shearing in half with a deafening shriek of tearing metal.
The Hound recoiled, a minute stumble that spoke volumes. Its blank helmet tilted. Its attack had not just failed; it had been turned against the environment. This was not in its programming.
Behind the terminal wreckage, Akari stared, her blood forgotten. "You... you absorbed it..."
Kenji didn't hear her. He was on his hands and knees, gasping, the protective glow around him flickering and dying. The effort had drained him more than any previous explosion. It was precise. It was controlled. And it had saved his life.
The Hound recovered. It analyzed the new data. New tactic. It raised both hands now. The air grew thick, charged with psychic power. It was going to hit him with everything it had.
"Kenji, the source!" Akari screamed, pointing at the Hound. "It's not endless! It's a battery! A corp-made battery! You have to overwhelm it! Find its limit!"
*A battery.* The words cut through his fatigue. The Hound wasn't a person. It was a machine. A tool. And tools could be broken.
The Hound unleashed its full power. A visible distortion, a wave of crushing force, shot toward Kenji.
He didn't try to absorb it this time. He knew he couldn't. Instead, he reached for the other thing he'd seen. The first thing on the menu.
`[2.1 FOCUSED KINETIC PROJECTION]`
The blade. But not a wild, desperate slash. A focused projection.
He didn't form it in his hand. He formed it *in the air*, between him and the oncoming wave.
A single, perfect, shimmering point of cerulean light appeared. It was no bigger than a coin.
The telekinetic wave hit the pinpoint blade.
And it parted.
The energy split around the focused point like water around a razor-sharp rock, exploding harmlessly to either side of Kenji, tearing gouges in the floor but leaving him untouched.
The pinpoint winked out. Kenji swayed, his vision graying at the edges. The precision was exponentially more draining than the wild deflections.
The Hound paused again. Its partner, having cleared the shutters, now joined it. They stood side by side, assessing the anomaly. The variable was demonstrating unacceptable resilience.
They raised their hands in unison. A combined attack. It would be enough to pulverize him, shield or not.
"Hey! Scrap-heaps!"
Akari's voice echoed through the chamber. She stood atop a half-crushed server, holding Dr. Arisaka's skeletal skull in her hands. She drew her arm back and threw it, a pathetic, bony missile, arcing through the air toward the Hounds.
It was a meaningless gesture. A distraction.
But for a split second, the Hounds' flawless focus wavered. Their helmets tracked the absurd projectile.
It was all the opening Kenji needed.
He didn't have the strength for precision. He didn't have the focus for defense. He had only one thing left: the raw, screaming fury that had started this.
He tapped into the well of rage. He thought of the alley, of the Scavengers, of the crushed Nest, of the scattered bones of the doctor who had made him. He pulled it all into a single, burning point in his chest.
The two Hounds finished tracking the skull, their hands coming up to unleash their final, combined strike.
Kenji didn't raise his hands. He threw his head back and *screamed*.
It was not a sound of fear. It was a sound of pure, psychic release.
A storm of cerulean energy, wild and uncontrolled, erupted from him. But this time, it wasn't a wave. It was a *volley*. Dozens of jagged, shard-like projectiles of psychic energy, screaming through the air like frenzied, crystalline birds.
They slammed into the Hounds, not cutting, but impacting with brutal kinetic force. The Hounds were thrown backward, their armor cracking under the assault. They crashed into server racks, which collapsed on top of them in a cascade of metal and glass.
The psychic shards dissipated. The emergency lights continued to strobe.
Silence returned, broken only by the hiss of sparks and Kenji's ragged, sobbing breaths. He collapsed to his knees, completely spent, on the verge of unconsciousness.
Across the chamber, the mountain of wreckage that had buried the Hounds shuddered.
A single black, armored hand burst through the debris, fingers clawing at the air.
Then another.
They were still moving. Weakened. Damaged. But not defeated.
Akari was at Kenji's side in an instant, hauling him to his feet. "Time to go! Now!"
She dragged him away from the heart of the archive, toward a dark service corridor she'd identified on the terminal map before its destruction. As they fled into the darkness, Kenji took one last look back.
The two Psy-Hounds were pulling themselves free from the rubble, their movements slower, jerky, but their featureless helmets were already turning, once again, toward their fleeing prey.
He had fought them off. He had even hurt them. But he had not won.
The inheritance was his. But so was the wrath. And the hounds were still hunting.