The basement lights flickered as the heavy, rhythmic rumble of the Syndicate's armored vehicles vibrated through the concrete floor, sending ripples through the tub of slushy ice Mu Han had been using to regulate her core temperature. Above them, in the "Golden Dragon Laundromat," the front glass door shattered with a violent, crystalline crash that signaled the end of their brief sanctuary.
"Thermal scanners are active," Deng Wei whispered, his voice cracking with a tension he couldn't hide. He sat hunched over his makeshift console, the blue light reflecting off his glasses as his fingers flew across a keyboard in the dark. "If we stay here, they'll find the heat signature from the server racks in five minutes. And once they see the Aether-leakage coming from Zhao Yan's chest, they'll level this entire block to get to us. We have to move. Now."
"How?" Zhao Yan asked, his skin still pulsing with a dull, angry orange glow. He looked like a man made of dying embers, his breath coming out in short, heated gasps. "The front is swarming with agents, and I can hear the high-pitched whine of at least three tactical drones circling the back alley. We're boxed in."
Lin Feng stood up, his hand resting on the hilt of his Generation 1 Zephyr Blades. They weren't the elegant katanas he had envisioned; they were crude, sharpened industrial fan blades salvaged from a ventilation shaft, lashed together with high-tensile wire and duct tape. But as he touched them, the wind in the basement began to swirl, whispering around the edges of the metal.
"We don't go through them," Lin Feng said, his voice dropping an octave as he looked toward the narrow service ladder. "We go through the city itself. Mu Han, can you mask us? If we don't vanish, we're just target practice."
Mu Han stepped out of her tub, her boots squelching on the concrete. She looked pale—exhausted from the constant effort of suppressing her powers—but her eyes remained as sharp as ice. She reached out toward the damp copper pipes running along the ceiling. With a sharp, agonizing tug of her will, she didn't just pull the condensation out—she commanded the very moisture in the air to surrender.
A thick, swirling mist began to fill the basement, smelling of laundry detergent and cold rain. It wasn't a natural fog; it was heavy, opaque, and cold enough to make Deng Wei's teeth chatter.
"Lin Feng, take the lead," Mu Han commanded, her voice a frosty rasp. "I'll keep the mist tight around us. It'll confuse their thermal optics and refract their laser sights. But I can only hold this density for ten minutes before I pass out."
They moved like ghosts. Lin Feng led the way up the narrow service ladder, using his wind power to create a localized vacuum around the rusted rungs, ensuring not a single creak reached the ears of the agents above. As they emerged into the rain-slicked alleyway, the world was a nightmare of violet searchlights and the barking of orders. A Syndicate drone hovered just twenty feet above, its red sensor eye sweeping the ground like a predatory insect.
"Now," Lin Feng whispered into the comm-link.
He didn't use a blast of wind that would give away their position. Instead, he reached out and created a Vacuum Pocket directly around the drone's rotors. Without air to push against, the drone tilted sharply, its stabilization software screaming in a silent, electronic panic as it tumbled toward the overflowing trash cans.
Before it could hit the metal and trigger a proximity alarm, Chen Shi moved. Despite her massive density, she moved with a terrifying, silent efficiency. She caught the heavy machine mid-air with one hand, her grip so strong that the drone's carbon-fiber frame buckled like a soda can.
"Clear," she grunted, her boots sinking an inch into the asphalt under the sudden weight of the catch.
They sprinted through the fog, a small, moving bubble of invisibility in the heart of Xinhai. They could hear the Syndicate agents—men in tactical gear with "Xinhai Bio-Security" patches—shouting orders just a few feet away. One agent walked right past the edge of Mu Han's mist, his gloved hand inches away from Lin Feng's shoulder, but he saw nothing but a swirling gray cloud.
"Deng, where's the extraction point?" Zhao Yan panted, his boots smoking slightly as he struggled to keep his heat from igniting the trash bags they passed.
"The XUST Engineering Tunnels," Deng Wei replied, his eyes glued to a handheld tablet that was frantically spoofing their location data. "There's an old drainage pipe three blocks east that leads directly under the Physics building. It's a labyrinth of 1950s infrastructure that isn't on the modern digital maps. It's the last place they'll look—right under their noses."
As they reached the rusted manhole cover at the edge of the university district, the mist began to thin. Mu Han stumbled, her knees hitting the wet pavement. Zhao Yan caught her, his hands steaming as they touched her cold skin.
"Almost there," Lin Feng urged, gripping the edge of the manhole and heaving it open with a controlled burst of air.
One by one, they dived into the darkness of the university's underbelly. As Lin Feng lowered the cover back into place, he looked back through the narrow slit. The Golden Dragon Laundromat was now engulfed in a blinding violet searchlight, surrounded by men with heavy weapons. Their first home was gone, reduced to a crime scene in a war they hadn't asked for.
But as they descended into the lightless tunnels, surrounded by the smell of ancient stone and the hum of university power lines, the fear that had gripped them on the mountain was replaced by something sharper. They were no longer just students running for their lives. They were becoming a unit.
"Deng," Lin Feng said, his voice echoing in the tunnel. "When we get to the Physics basement, I want you to start working on the Generation 2 designs. Those fan blades aren't going to last another fight."
Deng Wei looked up from his tablet, a grim, determined smile crossing his face. "I'm already ahead of you. I just need to find a way to steal ten kilograms of carbon-fiber weave and a cooling unit from the aerospace lab."
"Consider it done," Zhao Yan said, his orange eyes glowing in the dark.
The infiltration was a success, but the weight of their new reality was settling in. They were ghosts in their own city, hiding in the crawlspaces of the very institution that was supposed to be their future.