The first thing Nyx felt wasn't the poison. It was the silence.
The Grey Zone was never truly quiet. It was a constant, low frequency hum of distant sirens, dripping pipes, the buzzing of illegal neon, and the psychic "static" of thousands of miserable souls crushed together. But here, the air felt vacuum sealed. It was sterile, smelling of ozone and expensive, cold chemicals.
Nyx tried to shift her weight, and a bolt of white hot lightning shot through her right arm. The memory of the Pit the drugged water, the crushing blow to her jaw, and the sound of Darren screaming rushed back.
"Don't move," a calm, clinical voice commanded.
Nyx's eyes snapped open. She wasn't on her lumpy, mismatched mattress or a blood stained medical cot in the Pit. She was lying on a bed of shimmering blue light a kinetic suspension field inside a room made almost entirely of reinforced, polarized glass.
Her right shoulder was encased in a translucent blue brace that hummed with a low frequency vibration. It looked like something from a Noble's fever dream.
"My shoulder..." she rasped, her throat feeling like it had been scrubbed with industrial sandpaper.
"The fight... Darren? Where is my brother?"
"Your brother is in the adjacent wing," the voice replied.
A woman in a sharp, slate grey uniform stepped into her line of sight. She was holding a digital tablet that flickered with red warning icons.
"He's stable, though his mental frequency is... unusual. But you, Nyx? You're a medical disaster."
Nyx gritted her teeth, trying to sit up despite the suspension field's resistance.
"Where am I? This isn't the Grey Zone."
"You are in the Chimera Spire. The highest point in the Green Zone," the woman said, her eyes narrowing behind thin spectacles.
"I am Dr. Aris, the Unit's Chief Medic. And you are currently the reason my healing nanites are melting."
Aris pointed to the shoulder brace. "Usually, this kinetic tech repairs a bone deep bruise in six minutes. For you? It's been six hours, and the tissue is barely responding. It's as if your body is actively eating the energy used to heal it. Every time we pump regenerative 'Light' into you, it simply... vanishes."
Nyx looked at the brace. She remembered the silver eyes of the man in the hallway. She remembered the feeling of being carried the only time in her life she hadn't felt like she was carrying the weight of the world.
"Where is he?" Nyx demanded, her voice gaining strength.
"The Captain. The one who took us."
"The Captain is currently in a debriefing with the Council," Aris said, her expression hardening.
"He's fighting to keep you out of a high-security research facility. I suggest you stay still. The neurotoxin Dreg used was meant to paralyze an A rank Brute. The fact that you're even speaking is a miracle."
The Observation Deck
Above the medical bay, behind a one way mirror that looked like an expanse of black marble, Malachai Crowe stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He wasn't wearing his tactical coat now, he wore a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the corded muscle and faint, jagged scars on his forearms reminders that even S-ranks had to bleed to reach the top.
He watched Nyx struggle against the suspension field. She looked small in that glass room, but his sensors told a different story.
"You've been standing there for nearly two hours, Mal," Geoffrey said, leaning against the doorway with a protein bar in his hand.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were fascinated by our little 'Zero.' Or maybe you're just enjoying the fact that she's the only person in the building who isn't vibrating with fear when you walk by."
"She isn't a Zero," Malachai said, his voice a low, resonant rumble.
"Zeros are empty vessels. They have the potential for power but lack the spark. She is an absence. A hole in the fabric of the world."
"Whatever she is, the Council is already drafting the transfer papers," Geoffrey warned, his face losing its usual playfulness. "They've seen the footage of the Sector 7 outburst. They want her and the boy in the Green Zone Research Labs by dawn. They're calling her a 'Class Zero Biological Hazard'."
Malachai's jaw tightened. He thought about the way the "God Weight" of his gravity manipulation had simply blinked out when he stood near her. It was a peace he hadn't known since he was five years old.
"Tell the Council the asset is medically unstable for transport,"
Malachai stated, his gaze never leaving Nyx. "Tell them that if they want her, they'll have to send an extraction team with a higher Rank than mine to collect her."
Geoffrey whistled softly, a sound of genuine shock. "That's treason, Captain. You're declaring war over a girl who can't even lift her right arm."
"She'll lift it," Malachai said, a ghost of a predatory smile touching his lips as he watched Nyx finally manage to sit up, her grey eyes burning with a defiance that no amount of Green Zone luxury could dim.
"And when she does, I want her to be holding a weapon for us, not them."
The Medical Bay
Nyx finally swung her legs over the side of the bed. The blue brace on her shoulder sparked a tiny, sharp crackle of failing electronics as her "Null" field interfered with its power source. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck, but the anger was a better fuel than the synthetic morphine Aris was trying to give her.
She looked at the glass wall. She couldn't see Malachai, but she felt that same "Gravity" from before a heavy, magnetic pull that set her teeth on edge.
"I'm coming for you, Darren," she whispered to the sterile, silent room.
She reached up and, with a hiss of agonizing pain, manually unlatched the humming brace from her busted shoulder. The blue light died instantly as the tech hit her skin, its energy drained by her very touch. Her shoulder was still a mess of purple and black, the bone aching with every heartbeat, but she stood anyway.
She didn't know where she was, but she knew the rules of the Grey Zone: If they give you a bed, they're planning to put you in a coffin.
The Shadow didn't stay in cages. Especially not cages that smelled this clean.