If you leave enough scars, something always comes sniffing for blood.
It's after midnight when the city's temperature drops, every Specter Scar suddenly pulsing like a wound. Swan feels it first as heat up his spine—then static in the gauntlets; the metal hums with a warning note low as thunder. In the Cell, Echo jerks upright, her voice stretching across ten seconds in a recursive loop: "There's—something—coming—coming—coming—"
Outside, the old courtyard shudders—shadows growing too thick, neon lamps warping to violet, cats and birds vanishing from their usual haunts. On the edge of campus, something shifts reality's pattern.
It's here for him.
They know its name before they see it: Specter Predator. The thing that comes hunting the over-bold.
It enters through a glitching lamp-post, its body flickering—animal one moment, a tangle of static faces the next. Its eyes are wrong, too bright, filled with fragments of data-animals and erased nightmares, its movements stuttering as though the city's timeline can barely support its weight. The metal in Swan's gauntlets sings, resonance growing as the beast's spectral claws click on cracked pavement.
The Cell's internal alarms scream "Evacuate!" but Swan shakes his head. "No. We try running, more ghosts will die further down the tunnels. We face it together—right here."
He steps forward—bare hands flexing, sweat pricking every scar. The gauntlets absorb the city's red and blue light, etchings glowing with memory and risk.
The Specter lunges, teeth howling with noise; Swan meets it head-on. He relies on everything real: strength, speed, elbows, headbutts, the painful training Echo drilled into each Cell member the week before. He dodges and swings, avoids Specter Code—knowing that feeding the beast any more data risk will only empower it.
But it's brutal. The thing is not animal, not fully machine, not memory—it's the logic of prey meeting predator, of every glitch that ever hunted for closure. Its shadow claws rip concrete; its roars sound like corrupted childhoods.
The Cell's ghosts coordinate in the chaos—Maya spins a length of chain through the rippling air, River flings handfuls of encoded salt, Echo's voice emits memory-static, confusing the Predator's senses. The team is messy, imperfect, but it keeps the thing from focusing all its hunger on Swan alone.
Swan gets in close, grabs the beast by a flickering jaw, the gauntlets burning with the effort. He headbutts the Specter, shattering a half-formed snout—its stutter-cry is part pain, part old music, part attempted plea.
For a second, he falters. Is it aware? Does it remember who it was?
But then Elara, voice trembling from the sidelines, shouts: "Don't stop! It's not a person anymore, Swan, it's only hunger—no mercy, no reasoning!"
With one last effort, Swan slams the back of the gauntlet into the Predator's "skull," channeling every bruise, every memory of loss into the strike. The beast fractures—ribbons of light pour out, animal eyes fading as the amalgam collapses into the ground. The city holds its breath.
But before it dissipates, the Specter darts forward, blurring into Swan's arm—a cold, biting pain. Everyone watches in horror as a new mark—circular, spectral, luminous—glows on his right forearm, pulsing in time with the sparser citylights.
Swan falls to one knee—gasping, half in terror, half in triumph. The Cell surrounds him, catching his shoulders, Echo repeating "Wewonwewonwewon," Maya whispering, "You did it, Ghost."
But Swan can't fully celebrate. The mark doesn't fade. The skin murmurs with a distant hunger. It's both a wound and a warning.
"The city saw us win," Elara whispers, "but it also witnessed what it cost—more than just bruises."
In the aftermath, the Cell is shaken—not just by the battle with the Predator, but by the fear it plants: is Swan now a beacon for more? What else did their presence awaken? Whose hunger must be sated, whose memory must break, and how much longer can the ghosts resist internal fracture?
Above ground—or maybe in some hidden node of code—Morozov and Lilith watch footage of the mark's emergence. One grins coldly, the other darkly satisfied.
And as the Cell regroups, rumors spark and splinter—some saying the mark is a curse, others a badge, still others the final warning before the next great cost.
Either way, Swan now wears it, burningly real:
If you leave enough scars, something always comes sniffing for blood.
[END OF CHAPTER]