The Data-Crypt was a digital graveyard. Buried deep beneath the city's old financial district, it was a forgotten server farm from a bygone era, a place where dead information went to decay. The air was frigid, thick with the smell of ozone and cold dust. Ghostly, corrupted data streams flickered across dead monitors, the last synaptic twitches of a forgotten consciousness. This was Chen Gu's latest breadcrumb: the physical server that held the final, encrypted piece of the Chimera project's location.
Yin Lie moved through the aisles of silent, monolithic servers like a priest in a tomb. The months since the archive heist had been a relentless grind. Under Su Li's "patronage," he had become a scalpel, dispatched to cripple Qi Yan's resurgent network and silence her other rivals. Each mission was a transaction, paid for with the resources and intel he and Chen Gu needed to continue their hunt. He was a weapon in a gilded cage, and the bars felt tighter every day.
His power had changed. The internal war was no longer a chaotic brawl; it was a state of being. His three-way vision had integrated into a constant, shimmering tactical overlay. He saw the world as it was, as a map of heat signatures, and as a geometric web of energy, all at once. The Keystone hummed in his core, no longer a parasite but a silent, watchful co-pilot. He had found a new, dangerous harmony on the unraveled edge, a balance that felt less like peace and more like a perfectly calibrated weapon.
He found the server bank, its casing marked with the faded logo of the First Wave Project. He could see the data core within, a pulsing nexus of dormant energy.
"I'm at the target," he whispered into his comm, the sound swallowed by the oppressive silence. "Beginning extraction."
"Be careful, Lie," Chen Gu's voice, a tinny ghost from their remote link, crackled back. "This is the last piece. The one they would guard most fiercely."
"It's not guarded," Yin Lie murmured, his senses spreading through the crypt. "It's a trap."
He felt it before he saw it. A perfect, unnatural stillness began to descend, starting from the edges of the massive chamber and collapsing inward. It was not the absence of sound, but the erasure of energy. The hum of the emergency lights faded. The flickering data-ghosts on the monitors died. The wolf's fire in his blood banked to a sullen ember.
It was Inspector Kai's signature. A null-tone that unwove the very fabric of his power.
She stepped out from behind a server bank at the far end of the aisle. She wasn't in uniform. Dressed in simple, black tactical gear, she looked less like an officer and more like a hunter. Her face was set in a mask of calm, professional focus. She held no weapon. She was the weapon.
"Yin Lie," she said, her voice even and clear in the deadened air. "You've been remarkably difficult to pin down. But your mentor's trail was… predictable."
Her field washed over him, a pressure that felt like being submerged in deep water. His connection to his power became a distant, frayed thread. He tried to summon a shard of ice, and only a puff of chilled air manifested at his fingertips.
"It's over," she stated, taking a measured step forward. "You've caused enough chaos. The data you're looking for is a matter of Directorate security."
"It's a matter of survival," Yin Lie countered, slowly backing away, his mind racing. He couldn't fight her head-on. Her power was a perfect counter. But Su Li's intel had been specific. She harmonizes and projects a counter-frequency. She wasn't an off-switch. She was a tuning fork, striking a note that cancelled out his own.
He looked at the pulsing data core, then at Kai. He couldn't fight her, and he couldn't get the data. So he would have to change the equation.
"You're right," Yin Lie said, straightening up, a strange calm settling over him. "The hunt is over."
Kai paused, her brow furrowing slightly at his change in demeanor.
He didn't try to attack her. He turned and slammed his open palm against the server housing the data core. He didn't use the ice. He didn't use the wolf. He used the one thing she couldn't predict. He poured the raw, untamed, chaotic energy of the Keystone directly into the ancient machine.
The effect was instantaneous. The dead server shrieked to life. Lights flashed, fans whirred at impossible speeds, and the dormant data within the core—decades of encrypted, corrupted information—surged. The entire crypt became a conductor for a blast of pure digital noise.
Inspector Kai cried out, stumbling back as her nullification field wavered. Her power was designed to counter a single, organic energy signature. It had no defense against a tidal wave of chaotic, raw data flooding the environment. Her perfect note was drowned out by a million screaming voices.
In that single moment of overload, Yin Lie's power flooded back, a torrent bursting through a broken dam. But he didn't form a weapon.
He let the wolf, the ice, and the Keystone roar together in his soul, not in harmony, but in a deliberate, weaponized dissonance. It was the cacophony of the soul he'd used against Qi Yan, but this time it was controlled, focused. A three-note chord of impossibility.
The psychic shockwave, invisible and silent, slammed into Kai. Her eyes went wide, her body seizing as her own power, trying desperately to harmonize with an energy that was fundamentally disharmonious, turned on itself. It was like trying to match the pitch of an earthquake.
She collapsed to one knee, a trickle of blood leaking from her nose, her null-field shattering completely.
Yin Lie didn't press the attack. He ripped the glowing data core from the overloaded server with his bare hands, the metal groaning as it was flash-frozen and torn free. Alarms, shrill and panicked, finally blared through the crypt.
He gave the downed Inspector one last look. "Stay out of my way."
Then he was gone, vanishing back into the Undercity's shadows just as the first Directorate response teams began their descent.
---
In the secure room Su Li had provided, Dr. Thorne slotted the data core into a waiting console. Chen Gu's face was a grim, holographic specter watching over his shoulder.
"The data is fragmented, but the core encryption is a location marker," Thorne said, his fingers flying across the holographic interface. "It's… it's not a facility. It's a dead zone. A region of profound magnetic distortion fifty miles off the coast, a place where satellites go blind and compasses spin. They didn't build a prison. They hid her in a natural one."
He cross-referenced the data with the previous fragments. A single, final set of coordinates solidified on the screen. The location of Project Chimera.
They had it.
Their victory was a cold, quiet thing. They had the map. But Yin Lie's confrontation with Kai had been a tipping point. The Directorate would no longer treat him as a rogue element; they would treat him as a direct, Alpha-level threat.
As if on cue, a notification from Su Li appeared on the main screen. A single sentence.
Congratulations. It seems your hunt has concluded. I trust you'll be leaving the city? Do be careful. Qi Yan has just escaped Directorate custody. I imagine you and he are heading to the same destination.
The cold victory turned to ash in Yin Lie's mouth. The long, desperate search for clues was over.
The final, desperate race had just begun.