Luna felt it before she saw it.
A distortion—wrong, violent, screaming through her skull like a tuning fork struck against reality. She stopped mid-step, blood already seeping from the corner of her eye before she realized she'd clenched her jaw too hard.
"Four hundred meters," she said. "Ahead."
Zane swore under his breath. Tanya's instruments went wild, needles slamming into red zones they weren't meant to reach.
"That's not just Omega," Tanya said. "That's opposition."
Luna didn't answer. She had already reached out.
Not with force. Not with power.
With intent.
Richard's world was white.
Ice screamed past his face in razored arcs. Spikes erupted from the ground, impaling where he'd been a heartbeat earlier. Clones—dozens of them—shattered and reformed in flashes of frost and sound, each one carrying the same weight, the same pressure.
Zero stood at the center of it all.
Hands in his pockets. Expression bored.
Richard hit him.
A right hook, overflowing with chrome energy, slammed into Zero's jaw hard enough to crater the air. The impact thundered across the containment zone.
Zero didn't move.
Richard snarled and hit him again. And again. And again. Each blow fast enough to blur, heavy enough to rupture concrete beneath Zero's feet.
Nothing.
Ice spears lanced in from behind. Richard twisted, letting one tear through his side, another explode against his shoulder. His left arm—already frozen, already shattered—hung useless, encased in fractured ice like a monument to failure.
Still, he moved.
Chrome energy roared through him, raw and uncontrolled, flooding muscles, tearing ligaments, forcing his body to obey even as it screamed. He tore through clones with his bare hand, shattering them on contact, dodging constructs by instinct alone.
Then Luna's voice cut through the chaos.
Richard.
The world slowed—not physically, but mentally. Like someone had steadied a shaking camera.
You're drowning, she said, calm but strained. Stop fighting everything at once. Focus.
He staggered as another spike pierced his leg. Didn't fall.
Five minutes, Luna continued. That's all I need. Hold him. Don't beat him. Don't chase. Just—exist.
Richard laughed. It came out broken.
"Exist?" he muttered, blood on his teeth.
Zero tilted his head. "Talking to voices now? That's new."
Richard exhaled.
And planted his feet.
Ice crashed down—walls, spears, chains—but instead of dodging, Richard moved through them. Chrome energy surged tighter, denser, wrapping his body like a second skeleton. He let the constructs hit, shatter, reform—absorbing pain instead of avoiding it.
One arm. One stance. One purpose.
Zero's clones rushed him.
Richard met them head-on.
He smashed one with his shoulder, headbutted another, used momentum instead of strength. Ice tore skin, froze muscle, numbed bone—but he didn't stop. He couldn't.
Zero watched with something close to interest now.
"Impressive," Zero said. "You're leaking potential everywhere. Sloppy. Inefficient. But impressive."
Richard didn't answer.
He just kept moving.
Somewhere far away, Luna,Siara,Tanya and Zane ran—blood streaming freely now, vision blurring as she pushed her power past safe limits.
Just hold, she thought desperately. Just don't break.
And in the frozen ruin of the containment zone, with one arm shattered and his body screaming for collapse, Richard Solace held the line against something that should have erased him—
Not because he was winning.
But because he refused to fall.