The command core vibrated as Rourke stepped toward the Alpha, the Heart's pulse echoing through his bones. Light streamed down the chamber walls in flowing patterns, spiraling toward him, wrapping around his limbs like luminous tendrils.
The Alpha Hunter's red eyes narrowed.
It recognized this shift—
and it feared it.
Seren backed up to higher ground, coughing but steady. She aimed her pistol anyway, even though she knew it wouldn't pierce the armor of a simple Hunter, let alone the Alpha.
"Rourke," she shouted, "don't try to tank that thing head-on! Use the room! Use the—"
The Alpha blurred.
One moment it stood twenty meters away.
The next, it was in front of Rourke, its arm a jagged spear of collapsing gravity.
Rourke spun aside.
The spear slammed into the floor, cratering it and sending cracks racing up the walls.
Rourke threw a hand forward—
and gravity inverted beneath the Alpha's feet.
The creature stumbled.
Only slightly.
But it was a crack in its perfection.
The Alpha's voice deepened.
"Your control… accelerates."
Rourke didn't wait for it to finish speaking.
He hurled a gravitational blast that twisted into a spiral mid-flight. It struck the Alpha in the chest, bending its plating inward and forcing it backward several steps.
The Hunters behind it shifted uneasily—
their leader had not been moved in a thousand years.
Seren shouted from a higher platform, "Yes! Do THAT again!"
Rourke tried.
He summoned a second spiral, faster, sharper—
But the Alpha caught this one.
Caught it.
It held the spinning gravitational force in one hand, absorbing it as if peeling off a piece of brute strength.
"Predictable."
It flicked a finger.
The force exploded back toward Rourke like a tidal wave.
Rourke braced, raising a shield of bent gravity—
but the wave shattered it.
He hit the ground hard, sliding across the platform and nearly falling off the edge.
The guide flared brightly.
"Rourke Talon—keep your field stable! The Alpha is manipulating the same nodes you draw from!"
Rourke groaned and rolled to his feet. "Then help me disrupt its link!"
The guide extended its glowing hands, channeling a counter-frequency into the sphere's gravitational web.
The Alpha suddenly turned its head—
as if surprised to feel resistance.
Rourke surged forward.
Two Forces Collide
He attacked again—
not with brute force this time, but precision.
Small distortions.
Sharp pulls.
Micro-shifts.
The Alpha deflected each one with clinical ease, but Rourke wasn't aiming to overpower it. He was mapping its rhythm. Its timing. Its patterns.
He saw an opening.
Rourke snapped his fingers—
and gravity collapsed beneath the Alpha's left leg.
The creature stumbled.
Rourke followed with a burst of upward pull from its right side.
The Alpha twisted awkwardly, armor plates grinding.
Seren whooped from above. "You've got it off-balance!"
But the Alpha recovered instantly.
Its chest opened—
revealing a swirling gravitational core unlike anything Rourke had ever seen.
Three layers rotated in opposite directions.
A miniature black sun.
Seren yelled, "Rourke, MOVE!"
The Alpha unleashed a focused beam—
not of energy,
but of compressed gravitational collapse.
Rourke didn't dodge.
He couldn't.
The beam hit him.
The world folded inward.
Sound died.
Light dimmed.
Every atom in his body screamed.
He forced his mind to stay conscious, clinging to the Heart's pulse inside him.
The guide's voice cut through the choking pressure.
"Do not resist with brute force—redirect it!"
Rourke clenched his teeth.
Redirect.
Not block.
Not absorb.
Redirect.
He twisted the gravitational field around him—
tilting the collapse beam just a fraction of a degree.
It slid past him, ripping a massive hole through the platform behind him.
Seren stared in horror. "That would've vaporized you!"
Rourke wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. "Working on the not-dying part."
The Sphere Responds
Rourke spread his arms wide.
He reached into the sphere—
deeper than he had before.
The command core responded violently.
Nodes lit up.
Panels unfolded.
Energy streamed into the air like rivers of blue fire.
The Alpha stiffened.
Its eyes brightened from crimson to blinding white.
"UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS."
Rourke ignored it.
He pulled.
Not at the Alpha.
Not at himself.
At the sphere.
The entire chamber shifted—
gravity twisting into new alignments that only the Solarii would understand.
Platforms reoriented.
Conduits shifted.
The Heart's resonance crescendoed.
Seren held onto a pillar as the entire room reconfigured itself. "Rourke, what are you doing?!"
"Changing the battlefield."
The New Arena
The chamber unfolded like a blooming mechanical flower.
The Alpha lost its footing for the first time, its weight thrown off by the shifting gravity.
Rourke hovered above the central pillar—
not floating randomly,
but standing on a gravitational plane only he could feel.
The Alpha steadied itself, eyes burning brighter.
It leapt—
a bolt of dark power shooting upward.
Rourke raised a hand.
Gravity bent.
The Alpha's trajectory curved sideways, slamming it into a rotating conduit. Sparks exploded. The creature recovered mid-roll and launched a counter-shockwave.
Rourke spun it around him like a ribbon, redirecting it into a different platform.
The Alpha roared—
not mindlessly,
but in recognition.
"You are beginning to wield it as they did."
Rourke's chest tightened.
Something inside him surged.
His voice deepened slightly, carrying the Heart's resonance.
"I'm not wielding this like a Solarii."
He stepped forward, the air pulsing beneath each motion.
"I'm wielding it like me."
The Equal Strike
Rourke shaped gravity into a spear—
a long thread of compressed force.
Not sharp.
Not lethal.
Precise.
The Alpha mirrored him, forming a spear of its own—
dark, swirling, unstable.
The chamber dimmed.
Even the Hunters lining the far walls stepped back.
Seren whispered, "Oh no. Oh no, no, no—"
The two spears met.
Silence.
Then—
BOOM.
Gravity exploded outward like a supernova.
Platforms shattered.
Lights broke.
The entire command core bent inward for a split second, collapsing reality around the two combatants before springing back.
Seren was thrown into a railing. The guide shielded her from falling debris.
When the shockwave faded—
Rourke remained standing.
Barely.
The Alpha staggered backward, armor cracked, one arm sparking violently. A chunk of its plating fell away, revealing an exposed core pulsing erratically.
Rourke took one shuddering breath.
The Alpha studied him—not enraged, but… curious.
"Your duality is unstable.
But powerful."
Rourke wiped sweat from his brow. "Thanks. Now fall down."
The Alpha tilted its head.
"No."
It raised its remaining arm—
And the chamber around them began to collapse.
Not physically—
but gravitationally.
Rourke's eyes widened.
The Alpha was about to unleash something catastrophic.
The guide shouted—
for the first time with fear:
"Rourke Talon—STOP IT!
That attack will tear open the sphere!"
Rourke inhaled slowly.
The Heart pulsed.
Everything around him blurred.
He leaned forward, bending gravity around his body, preparing to intercept the Alpha head-on—
Because if he didn't…
Everyone in the sphere would die.