The sterile service corridor became a kill box. From the entrance to the penthouse, three of Thorne's personal guards fanned out. They weren't standard corporate security; they were augmented. Their movements were too fluid, their eyes glowing with a faint crimson light behind their tactical visors. Their armor hummed with the same crude hybrid energy as the lab's ward—a bastardized fusion of tech and stolen Prana.
[Nexus: Hostiles identified. Chronos Enforcers. Augmentation: Low-grade Asuric infusion. Enhanced strength, speed, and resilience. Vulnerable to pure Prana disruption.]
Ash didn't wait for them to open fire. He was a ghost in their sensor suite until he moved, and when he moved, it was with the devastating finality of a thunderclap.
He met the first guard's charge head-on. The man swung a powered fist that could crush concrete. Ash didn't block. He flowed under the blow, his own hand lancing out, fingers stiff. He didn't aim for armor. He aimed for the meridian point on the man's wrist where the corrupt energy flowed, a node the Nexus highlighted in his vision.
Prana Disruption.
It wasn't the brute force of Vajra Fist. It was a surgical strike. A needle of pure, golden energy injected into the corrupted system. The guard screamed, a raw, electronic sound as the foreign energy in his body short-circuited. His arm went limp, the glowing veins under his skin darkening. Ash finished him with a sharp, precise blow to the throat.
The second guard opened up with an assault rifle that fired shards of crystallized darkness. Ash threw himself behind a server rack. The shards punched through the metal, sizzling with corrosive energy.
"Ash, their comms are jammed, but Thorne is in the panic room! He's initiating a total tower lockdown!" Kai's voice was tense in his ear. "All elevators are freezing. Stairwells are sealing. You're about to be trapped in a can."
"Working on it," Ash grunted, peering around the corner.
[Chakra: 280/450. Dimensional Step unavailable.]
He needed another way. His eyes fell on the ceiling—the same utility conduit he'd descended from.
The second guard advanced, laying down suppressing fire. Ash focused, pushing Prana to his legs. He wasn't just fast; he was dense, his connection to the earth through his Muladhara chakra making him an unstoppable force in a single direction. He burst from cover, a golden blur. The guard tracked him, but Ash was already in the air, leaping off the wall, his foot connecting with the man's helmet. There was a crunch of composite material and bone. The guard collapsed.
The third enforcer hung back, raising a device that looked like a sonic cannon. Ash didn't give him the chance. He snatched a fallen shard of crystallized darkness from the floor and, in one fluid motion, threw it. It wasn't a skilled throw, but it was empowered. The shard flew like a bullet, striking the cannon and causing it to overload in the man's hands. The resulting explosion of negative energy vaporized the guard where he stood.
Silence, broken only by the blaring alarm and the hiss of sparks from the broken servers.
"The conduit, Ash! Now!" Aurora's voice was a razor's edge in his comm.
He jumped, grabbing the edge of the open maintenance hatch and hauling himself back into the vertical shaft. Below, he heard the heavy clang of magnetic locks sealing the service corridor entrance. He was just in time.
"New problem," Kai reported. "The lockdown includes the internal blast shutters on every floor. You can't go down. The entire tower is a sealed fortress."
Ash looked up the seemingly endless ladder. "Then I go up."
"To what? The roof is a helipad, but it'll be swarming, and you'll be exposed!"
"It's the only exit not inside the tower," Ash said, already climbing. "Silas, I need an extraction. Something fast and untraceable."
"On it," Silas's voice was a calm, grounding rumble. "Just get to the roof. I'll handle the rest."
The climb was a race against the tower's own immune system. He could hear the whine of systems powering up, the thud of security teams mobilizing on the other side of the shaft walls. They knew his general location. It was only a matter of time before they cut into the conduit.
He reached the top of the shaft, finding another hatch. This one led to the roof's mechanical room. He could feel the cold night air, hear the thrum of the tower's massive air conditioning units. He burst out onto the roof, the wind whipping at his clothes.
The scene was exactly as Kai predicted. The rooftop helipad was swarming with more augmented Enforcers. At the center, standing next to his private tilt-rotor aircraft, was Arthur Thorne. He held a heavy, rune-etched pistol, his face a mask of cold, controlled fury.
"You," Thorne spat, his voice amplified. "I knew you were more than you seemed. A corporate spy? A government asset? It doesn't matter. You've seen things that will die with you."
The Enforcers raised their weapons. Ash stood alone, surrounded.
"Silas," Ash said quietly into the comm. "Any time now."
Thorne smiled, a cruel, victorious thing. "There's no one coming to save you, boy. This is my sky."
As if on cue, the sky ripped open.
Directly above the helipad, the air shimmered and tore, not with the golden light of Ash's Dimensional Step, but with the violent, purple-and-black energy of a rupturing Gate. But this was no natural phenomenon. From the tear, a single, sleek, black aircraft dropped out. It was utterly silent, its design unlike anything on Earth—a predatory shape with no visible wings, engines, or cockpit. It was one of Silas's deepest black projects, a vehicle designed for interdimensional insertion.
It hovered for a split second, a hole irising open in its underside.
"Jump," Silas commanded.
Ash didn't hesitate. He took a running leap off the edge of the tower.
For a breathtaking moment, he was in freefall, the city lights a dizzying sprawl a hundred stories below. The Enforcers stared, stunned. Thorne's triumphant smile vanished, replaced by sheer, incandescent rage.
The black aircraft dropped, matching his fall. He passed through the iris, landing smoothly on his feet inside a dimly lit, circular bay. The opening sealed shut, and the craft shot away into the night, leaving the Chronos Tower roof in chaos.
Inside, Ash leaned against the cool, alien metal wall, catching his breath.
On the roof, Thorne screamed in frustration, firing his pistol uselessly at the empty sky where the craft had vanished. He turned, his eyes falling on the smoldering ruin of his lab's server bank, visible through the penthouse window. All his data. His life's work. Gone.
He keyed a private comms channel, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "He has it. The E-Rank. Asher Cross." He took a shuddering breath, his ambition curdling into a personal, all-consuming vendetta. "I don't care what it costs. I don't care who you have to burn. Find him. Bring me his heart. And bring me that book."
Back in the command center, Ash stood before the main holo-display as the Nexus began decrypting and organizing the stolen data from Project Vritra. Schematics of the Asura Seed, Thorne's logs, his plans for global domination—it was all there.
"He won't stop," Li Yue said, watching the data stream.
"No," Ash agreed, his voice calm but resolute. "He won't. He's seen a glimpse of true power, and he's desperate to possess it. He's just declared war."
Ash looked at the holographic image of the pulsating, malevolent Seed.
"But he made a mistake," Ash continued, a cold fire in his eyes. "He thinks this is a corporate war. An espionage thriller."
The data on the screen shifted, showing the Nexus's analysis of the Asuric energy, its weaknesses, its patterns.
"He's wrong," Ash said, finality in his tone. "He brought a knife to a fight with a god. And now, he's shown me where he keeps his heart."
The game was no longer about hiding. It was about hunting.