The silence in the Alchemist's Maw was a living, breathing thing. It was a predator, just like him, waiting in the deep, absolute darkness of the sub-basement. Zero was a part of that silence, a knot of focused, patient stillness in his high, shadowed alcove. He had become an extension of the stone around him, his breathing so slow and shallow it was almost non-existent, his heartbeat a low, steady, metronomic drum counting down the final seconds.
He felt the Glimmer-Hulk's approach long before he could see or hear it. It was a growing dissonance in the psychic ecosystem, a wave of pure, chaotic static that washed through the undercity's ancient tunnels. It was a feeling like the air itself was curdling, the fundamental laws of reality groaning under the strain of the creature's proximity. To a normal person, it would have been a vague, unsettling feeling of being watched. To Zero's finely tuned, corrupted senses, it was as clear and loud as a screaming fire bell.
It was close.
His gaze was fixed on the far end of the long, cleared corridor he had so carefully designed, the single, inviting entrance to his kill-box. The darkness there was absolute, a perfect, black rectangle. He waited. The silence stretched, becoming a taut, vibrating wire.
And then, it was there.
It did not walk into the corridor. It did not appear with a flash of light or a crack of displaced air. One moment, the corridor was empty. The next, the Glimmer-Hulk's form simply… resolved into existence. It flickered into being like a bad pict-image, a seven-foot-tall silhouette of shifting, impossible limbs woven from pure, buzzing static.
It stood at the very edge of the corridor, its featureless non-face seeming to survey the path ahead. It was cautious. The psychic bait that had drawn it here had been a powerful, irresistible lure, but the creature was not stupid. It was a predator, and it sensed that it was walking from its familiar hunting grounds into a territory that was not its own. The air here was different. It was still saturated with the chaotic, arcane energy it craved, but beneath that, there was a new, alien scent. The scent of cold, calculating, and utterly unforgiving logic. The scent of him.
Zero remained motionless, a statue in the rafters. He did not attack. He did not move. This was the most critical phase of the plan: observation. He had to let the beast commit. He had to confirm that his understanding of its nature was correct.
The Glimmer-Hulk, after a long, tense moment of stillness, decided to move. But it did not take the clear, inviting path he had prepared. Instead, it turned and seemed to press itself against the left-hand wall of the corridor. Its form began to destabilize, its edges dissolving into a blur of static, its intent clear: it was going to phase directly through the solid stone, bypassing the open corridor entirely.
It was a move Zero had anticipated. A creature that could teleport would naturally see a solid wall as a mere inconvenience.
The beast pushed forward, its shadowy form beginning to merge with the ancient brickwork. And then it stopped. A violent, visible shower of purple and black sparks erupted from the point of contact between the creature and the wall. The Glimmer-Hulk let out a silent, psychic shriek of pain and recoiled, its form flickering violently, its very existence seeming to stutter.
Zero allowed himself the smallest, internal flicker of satisfaction. The first, most subtle part of his trap had just worked perfectly. He had spent half a night meticulously grinding a small portion of his pure-grade iron filings into a fine, almost invisible dust and mixing it with water to create a thin, dark paste. He had then used that paste to paint a wide, horizontal line across the entire length of the corridor wall, a faint, dark smear that was indistinguishable from the grime and mildew of a century. It was an insignificant detail to the naked eye. But to a creature whose very existence was a quantum flux, it was a solid, impassable wall of pure, reality-stabilizing iron.
Its unconventional movement was negated. He had just taken away its ability to cheat.
Frustrated, its attempt to bypass the path thwarted, the Glimmer-Hulk turned its attention back to the main corridor. It was agitated now, its form shifting more erratically. It took a hesitant, glimmering step forward, then another, moving into the kill-box proper. It was still avoiding the clean, central path, hugging the shadows along the right-hand wall.
Zero watched, his mind a cold, calculating machine. He let it come. Let it feel a false sense of security.
The beast reached the main threshold of the circular chamber, the grand entrance to the abattoir. It was still moving cautiously, its strange, multi-jointed limbs stepping carefully around the larger piles of debris. It was a predator, wary of a rival's territory.
It took one more step, its shadowy, claw-like foot coming down on a patch of floor that looked no different from any other.
The moment it made contact, the Glimmer-Hulk convulsed. Another silent, psychic scream tore through the chamber, this one of pure, unadulterated agony. Its entire form flickered and destabilized, large chunks of it momentarily dissolving into pure static before violently re-forming. It was as if it had just stepped on a metaphysical landmine.
It had.
The thin, almost invisible line of iron filings he had sprinkled across the threshold was doing its work. It wasn't a physical barrier, but a chemical one, a line of poison that was attacking the very essence of the creature's chaotic nature. It was disrupting its cohesion, forcing a painful, partial solidity.
The beast was wounded now, not in its flesh, but in its very concept of being. The pain and confusion made it reckless. The cautious, wary predator was gone, replaced by a wounded, enraged animal. It forgot its caution. It forgot the subtle wrongness of the room. All it knew was the pain and the burning, desperate need to find and destroy the source of it.
It abandoned the shadows and charged directly into the center of the chamber, its shimmering teleports now wild and uncontrolled, its rage making it sloppy. It was heading directly for the center of the room, for the cracked, obsidian ring where the ambient energy was strongest, a place where it could try to heal, to re-stabilize itself.
It was moving exactly where Zero wanted it to.
He remained in his alcove, his expression a cold, impassive mask. He was a conductor, and his orchestra of death was playing its first, discordant, and beautiful notes. The beast was off-balance, wounded, and enraged. It had lost control. And in a battle against Zero, losing control was a fatal, and final, mistake.
The first move on the chessboard had been made. The beast had taken the poisoned pawn. And in doing so, it had moved itself directly into the path of the queen. The game was proceeding exactly as designed.