The air in the Siren's Mire wasn't just "toxic." It was a goddamn living nightmare. Thick, humid, like being smothered by a rotting quilt woven from chemical sludge, swamp gas, and the sickly-sweet perfume of mutant flora. It even had a faint, nauseating fluorescence. This place was the city's forgotten sewer, the burial ground for all the First Wave project's dirty little secrets. And according to the archives, Chen Gu's old listening post was hidden somewhere in this hellhole.
Yin Lie's boots made a wet, sickening *squelch* with every step through the viscous mud. The power inside him was a low-grade fever, agitated and restless in the oppressive environment. The wolf's senses were screaming, assaulted by a cacophony of decay so foul he wanted to rip his own nose off. His ice barely held, forming a pathetic, crackling shield around him that did little more than make the air sizzle and clear the filth by a fraction. The Keystone, for its part, was quiet, its alien vision seeing not a swamp, but a graveyard choked with chaotic, corrupted energy.
He owed his path to Su Li's intel, a treacherous route across crumbling catwalks that led to a large biodome at the mire's heart—the biological laboratory. She'd also warned him that while the automated defenses were long dead, the *living* ones were still waiting to say hello.
*"The core is what matters,"* Chen Gu's last encrypted message had said. *"A cryogenic data core. They wouldn't have dared to move it. It's rigged with a failsafe protocol. It's the key to the next step."*
Reaching the dome and prying open the rust-eaten hatch was a battle in itself, the shriek of protesting metal setting his teeth on edge. The air that hit him from inside was even worse, a chemical weapon of preservatives and rot. The lab was a wreck, littered with the skeletal remains of glass tubing. Sickly green mutant vines writhed from cracks in the walls, their pulsing tendrils casting the entire chamber in the light of a ghost house.
He found the data core in the central control room—a massive, humming cylinder with a frosted surface that seemed to vibrate with a low, uncomfortable frequency. It was completely intact.
It was all too easy.
The wolf's intuition screamed a warning a split-second before the attack. Yin Lie had no time to think, throwing himself sideways as a stream of acid spat from the shadows, hissing as it ate into the floor where he'd just been standing. He rolled to his feet and finally saw them.
They crawled from the shadows and shattered containment tanks—the lab's living defenses. They were vaguely humanoid, but with limbs as thin as reeds and joints that bent at unnatural angles. Their skin was corpse-white, revealing the black network of veins beneath. They had no eyes, only smooth, blank faces that swiveled like radar dishes. Failed experiments. Disgusting, hybrid monsters.
One of them let out a series of dry clicks and scuttled toward him like a spider. Another dropped from the ceiling, its elongated fingers tipped with yellowed bone claws.
Yin Lie had no time for pleasantries. It was time to go to work. He slammed his palm on the floor and a miniature glacier of ice spikes erupted, sweeping through the lab. One creature was instantly impaled, frozen in place. The other shrieked and leaped, claws slashing for his throat.
The wolf roared in answer. Yin Lie met its charge with a beast's fury, his shoulder colliding with its frame with a sickening *crack*. He slammed the creature back into a bank of glass tubes, sending shards flying.
But more were coming. Six of them, swarming him like rabid dogs, their only purpose to protect the data core. This wasn't a fight; it was butchery. There was no strategy, only ferocity. He became a meat grinder, tearing through the lab, freezing limbs and shattering them with brute force, carving a bloody path through the wave of monsters.
Finally, silence. Yin Lie stood gasping in the wreckage, surrounded by the broken, frozen bodies of the lab's guardians. His muscles screamed, his power was drained, and adrenaline was the only thing keeping him on his feet. He had new cuts, and his gear was in tatters.
He turned to the data core. The final step.
"Not bad," a calm, female voice echoed from the entrance. "A little on the savage side, though. All brute force, no finesse."
Yin Lie froze, a chill colder than his own power shooting up his spine. Inspector Kai. She stood silhouetted against the ruined doorway, her expression unreadable in the gloom. She was alone. In her hands, she held a pair of those damned energy-neutralizing cuffs, her posture as relaxed as if she were taking a stroll in a park.
"The listening post's data was corrupted, but not completely destroyed," she said, walking slowly into the room. "It only took a little logic to deduce your destination. Chen Gu always did have a flair for the melodramatic, hiding his secrets in monster-infested ruins."
Her presence was an oppressive weight, smothering the fire in his blood. The wolf inside him whimpered, feeling its strength drain away.
"This is the end of the line, Frost Wolf," Kai's voice was cold, clinical. "You're exhausted. Your power is unstable. And you are now the single most wanted asset in this city. You're coming with me."
A faint golden light began to glow around her as she activated her ability. It wasn't an attack. It was a wave of pure order, a physical law that was spreading out to consume his chaos.
Yin Lie looked at the data core, then at Kai, who stood between him and his only goal. He had fought through a swamp and a legion of monsters, only to be cornered by the one person he couldn't beat. Su Li's intel had led him here, but it had also led him into the one trap from which there was no escape.
He wasn't trapped in a cell of steel and concrete anymore. He was in a cage built from the laws of physics.
And its walls were closing in.