The steam that coiled through the upper levels of the Elysian Bathhouse was meant to be cleansing, a warm, humid veil for the city's elite to shed their sins and secrets. To Yin Lie, it was just camouflage. Down here, in the sub-basement, the air was cold, sterile, and hummed with the silent, predatory thrum of a high-security server farm.
This was Qi Yan's private data vault. His Aegis. A black site hidden beneath a palace of indulgence.
"The security patrols loop every ninety seconds," Chen Gu's voice, a clipped whisper in his ear piece, was the only warmth in the frigid corridor. "The server core is behind that door. Plasteel alloy, mag-locked. You have one window. Get the data fragment and get out. Su Li's 'assistance' only guarantees us an entry point, not an exit."
Yin Lie moved with a silence that was more than just stealth. It was an active suppression, a thin aura of cold that dampened the sound of his footsteps and bent the light around him just enough to make him a deeper shadow among shadows. The Keystone was a quiet, humming compass in his soul, no longer a screaming invader but a constant, alien presence he had learned to coexist with. It gave his senses a third layer: the geometric, shimmering lines of power flowing through the conduits in the walls.
He reached the vault door, a seamless slab of black metal. He didn't carry explosives or hacking tools. He was the key. He placed his palm flat against the surface, and a network of fractal frost patterns spread from his fingertips. He wasn't trying to break the lock. He was targeting the power conduit he could now *see* inside the wall. With a focused pulse of absolute cold, he flash-froze the junction box.
The magnetic lock died with a soft, defeated click. The heavy door hissed open.
The server room was a cage of humming, black monoliths, their indicator lights blinking like the eyes of sleeping beasts. In the center, a cylindrical data core floated in a magnetic field, bathing the room in a cold blue light. He had the data spike in his hand, moving toward the core, when the door hissed shut behind him.
*CLANG.*
The sound of the magnetic lock re-engaging was deafening in the silence.
"I knew you'd come sniffing around," a voice growled from the shadows between the servers. It was a wet, guttural sound, like stones grinding in a slaughterhouse. "The boss said you were a persistent cockroach."
A figure stepped into the blue light, and the wolf in Yin Lie's blood went rigid. The man was a mountain of scarred flesh and crudely stitched muscle grafts, his skin a patchwork of old wounds that never quite healed right. He was bigger and more grotesque than Yin Lie remembered from the Undercity ambush. This was Scab, Qi Yan's butcher, and he was grinning.
"Welcome to my parlor," Scab snarled, cracking his knuckles. The sound was like bone breaking. "Last time, you were clever. This time, there's nowhere to run."
He charged, a reckless, brutal assault. Yin Lie sidestepped, letting the brute's momentum carry him past. He lashed out with a backhand, not aiming for flesh, but for the server rack beside Scab. A spray of jagged ice shards erupted, peppering the brute's side.
Scab grunted, ignoring the dozens of shallow cuts as they began to bleed. But then he frowned. The bleeding slowed, but didn't stop. Little coronas of frost clung to the edges of the wounds.
"My healing factor," Scab growled, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. "What did you do?"
"Your power is biological," Yin Lie stated, his voice a low monotone, the ice in perfect control. "A chaotic regeneration. Cold brings order. It slows things down."
He had learned. He was no longer just a blunt instrument. He was a surgeon.
Scab roared in fury and charged again. This time, he was more than just a charging bull. He slammed his fists into the floor, and a wave of kinetic force buckled the metal plates. Yin Lie leaped, landing atop a server rack as the shockwave passed beneath him. He fired down a volley of razor-sharp ice daggers. Most bounced off Scab's unnaturally tough hide, but one found its mark in his shoulder.
The brute simply laughed, reached up, and tore the dagger out. The wound began to bubble and steam, the flesh knitting itself back together in a horrifying display of accelerated healing. The ice was an annoyance, not a solution.
This was a battle of attrition, and Scab was a walking fountain of life.
Yin Lie dropped back to the floor, his mind racing. He couldn't outlast him. He couldn't overpower his healing. He had to end him. He drew on the wolf, letting its feral heat rise, not to fight the ice, but to fuel it, to supercharge it. The air around his hands began to shimmer, a visible aura of cold so intense it warped the light.
Before he could unleash the attack, a calm, feminine voice echoed from the room's intercom system, cutting through the tension like a scalpel.
"Asset designated Frost Wolf. Your unauthorized access has been noted. The facility is now under full lockdown. Surrender for processing."
Inspector Kai.
Yin Lie froze, his head snapping toward the ceiling speaker. On a small monitor by the door, a red light blinked, indicating all exits were sealed. She hadn't breached the vault. She had simply taken control of the cage, locking him inside with the monster.
Scab laughed, a booming, triumphant sound. "Looks like your friends are here! Doesn't matter. They can have what's left."
He saw the momentary distraction and seized it, lunging forward with a speed that defied his bulk. Yin Lie reacted a fraction of a second too late. Scab's fist, a hammer of flesh and bone, slammed into his side, lifting him off his feet and throwing him into a server rack.
Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in his ribs. The rack sparked and died as his body hit it. His vision swam. The fragile harmony of his powers fractured. The wolf roared in pain and rage, and the ice lashed out wildly, coating the damaged server in a thick, uncontrolled crust of frost.
He was losing. He was trapped. He had one objective, and two hunters closing in.
An idea, born of desperation and cold logic, took shape. He couldn't fight both of them. But perhaps they could fight each other.
He staggered to his feet, clutching his side. He ignored Scab's gloating advance and lurched toward the central data core.
"Nowhere to run!" Scab bellowed.
Yin Lie ripped the data spike from his belt, slammed it into the core, and initiated the emergency data purge. Not a download. A wipe.
Alarms blared. A synthesized voice announced, "Aegis Protocol engaged. Coolant system failure imminent. Core meltdown in sixty seconds."
"What are you doing?!" Scab roared, his grin vanishing, replaced by panic. This was his master's most precious data.
Yin Lie didn't answer. He ripped the spike out—the download had been a lie, a five-second slice of the most critical data was all he ever needed—and slammed his palms onto the thick coolant pipes running from the core into the floor.
He didn't just freeze them. He unleashed everything. The full, unbound fury of the ice, fed by the wolf's desperate, pained rage. The supercooled liquid inside the pipes flash-froze, expanded, and with a series of explosive reports like cannon fire, the primary coolant lines ruptured.
A torrent of cryogenic gas and liquid nitrogen flooded the room, a billowing, deadly white cloud that instantly dropped the temperature to unsurvivable levels.
To Yin Lie, it was a blizzard. To Scab, whose power relied on a superheated biology, it was hell. He screamed as the liquid nitrogen washed over him, his regenerative powers fighting a losing battle against absolute zero.
"Kai!" Yin Lie yelled at the ceiling, his voice cutting through the hiss of the gas. "The vault is compromised. The asset is yours!"
He pulled a rebreather from his belt—a precaution Chen Gu had insisted on—and plunged into the chaos. Using the Keystone's vision to navigate the churning whiteout, he found what he was looking for: an emergency maintenance vent near the floor, one that Kai's lockdown wouldn't have accounted for.
As he crawled into the narrow shaft, he glanced back. He saw two shapes through the freezing fog. Scab, a struggling, freezing giant, and the vault door hissing open to reveal Inspector Kai, her hand glowing with the golden light of her neutralization power, her face a mask of cold fury as she realized she'd been played.
He was gone, a ghost escaping a self-made hurricane, leaving two of his most dangerous enemies to tear each other apart in the ruins of Qi Yan's sanctum. He had the data. But he had also made it personal for both of them.