The descent was a fall into a silent, sterile hell. The hiss of the cables was the only sound, a metallic whisper counting down the floors. The psychic pull of the Keystone echo intensified with every meter, no longer a beacon but a crushing weight, a psychic pressure trying to suffocate his senses. The wolf paced restlessly in his soul, hackles raised. The ice drew inward, a defensive shell against an unseen corruption.
He landed on the roof of the elevator car at the bottom of the shaft with a silent, controlled impact. Before him, a single set of reinforced blast doors stood humming with power. This was it. The heart of the void.
He didn't need to force the doors. As if sensing his arrival, they hissed open with perfect, calibrated smoothness, revealing the room beyond.
It was not a dungeon or a workshop. It was a laboratory that looked more like a sanctuary. The walls were pristine white, the lighting was a soft, indirect glow, and the air was cold, filtered, and utterly still. In the center of the massive, circular room, floating in a containment cylinder filled with shimmering translucent gel, was Specimen Zero.
It was more horrifying in person than in Forge's grainy image. It was a pale, skeletal thing, its limbs too long, its skin smooth and featureless, devoid of hair, eyes, or any discernible expression. It was a blank slate of a person, a canvas of flesh waiting to be painted with purpose. Wires and cannulas, thin as spider silk, connected it to the machinery of the tank.
And standing before it, his back to Yin Lie, was Qi Yan.
He was dressed not in combat gear, but in a perfectly tailored dark suit, his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed to be admiring his creation. He didn't turn around.
"I must admit," Qi Yan's voice was calm, resonant, filling the oppressive silence of the lab, "I expected you to be messier. More… bestial. The reports of your loss of control at the docks were quite vivid. It seems you've had a good teacher."
Yin Lie said nothing. He moved into the room, his body coiled, ready to strike. Every instinct screamed that this was a trap.
"But teaching can only refine what is already there," Qi Yan continued, finally turning. His face was handsome, his expression one of polite, academic curiosity. There was no malice in his eyes, only an unnerving certainty. "And what is there is chaos. You, all of you variants, are walking calamities. A storm of untamed power and emotion that threatens to tear this city, this world, apart. I am not a tyrant, Yin Lie. I am the cure."
"You're a butcher," Yin Lie growled, the wolf's fire beginning to rise.
Qi Yan smiled, a thin, pitying expression. "Am I? Or am I simply the only one with the courage to do what is necessary?" He gestured to the tank. "This is the future. Order. Control. An end to the chaos you represent." He looked directly at Yin Lie. "And it begins now."
He touched a control panel on his wrist.
The effect was not an explosion or a sound. It was a sensation of tearing.
A wave of invisible, psychic static washed out from Specimen Zero's tank. For Yin Lie, it felt like a thousand fishhooks digging into his soul and pulling. The perfect, hard-won harmony between the wolf and the ice was ripped apart. The link between them shattered, replaced by a screaming void.
He staggered back, a cry of agony catching in his throat. The furnace of the wolf's power became a guttering flicker. The absolute zero of the ice became just… cold. He could feel them, two separate, wounded parts of himself, thrashing weakly in a cage of psychic interference. His power wasn't gone. It was neutered. Muzzled.
"What… did you do?" he choked out, a sudden, terrifying weakness flooding his limbs.
"The Keystone amplifies," Qi Yan explained, walking calmly toward him. "Specimen Zero, amplified by the fragment I acquired, doesn't project power. It projects order. A field of absolute neurological suppression. Within this room, your gift, your 'curse,' is reduced to a dull ache. You are no longer a Frost Wolf. You are just a man."
Qi Yan stopped a few feet away. His movements were brutally efficient as he shed his suit jacket, revealing a frame that was lean but corded with muscle. "And I have been training my entire life to deal with men."
He lunged.
Yin Lie reacted on pure instinct, but his movements were sluggish, clumsy. His preternatural speed was gone. He raised an arm to block, but Qi Yan's strike, a precise blow to a nerve cluster in his shoulder, sent a jolt of paralyzing fire down his side.
He tried to summon the ice, to form a shield, a blade, anything. A pathetic dusting of frost appeared on his knuckles and immediately sublimated. It was like trying to start a fire with wet matches in a hurricane.
Qi Yan was relentless. It wasn't a brawl; it was a dissection. Every strike was aimed at a joint, a nerve, a weak point. He sidestepped Yin Lie's desperate punch and delivered a sharp kick to the back of his knee, forcing him to the ground.
"You see?" Qi Yan said, standing over him, not even breathing hard. "Without your power, you are nothing. You are an animal, declawed and defanged. All of you are."
Yin Lie pushed himself up, his body screaming in protest. The wolf inside him was a caged, frantic thing, useless. The ice was a distant memory. He was alone, weaker than he had been in years.
Qi Yan shook his head in disappointment. "Such a waste of potential." He raised his foot, preparing to deliver a final, crushing stomp to Yin Lie's head. "Don't worry. Once I have the echo from your signature, your power will be put to much better use. It will become another brick in the foundation of my new, orderly world."
Trapped, powerless, and staring up at his executioner, Yin Lie's mind raced. He couldn't fight fire with fire. His fire was gone. He couldn't fight ice with ice. His ice had melted.
All he had left was the cage. The two warring, wounded prisoners inside him. Maybe… maybe the cage itself was the key.