The engine roared low beneath him, a steady vibration that bled through steel and bone.
Mephisto's signal had arrived while Sylus was still interrogating Diana.
Sherman's goons had followed Elara into Elysium. Just as planned. The right information leaked to the wrong men always did the work for him.
The city blurred past in streaks of neon and smog. The air here always smelled of ozone and wet metal — N109 Zone's scent, where industry had curdled into decay. Above, broken billboards flickered with half-dead advertisements, their holograms glitching through decades of slogans no one remembered. Below, the streets pulsed with scavenged light and predatory noise.
Wind cut across his face as he steered through the old expressway, his mansion shrinking behind him — but his mind hadn't left the containment chamber.
When he'd entered the cell, Diana had still been asleep, body slack against the wall, murmuring something under her breath.
He'd stood there longer than he should have, watching the minute shifts in her expression — the small tremor in her fingers, the way her breathing stuttered mid-dream.
For a brief, fleeting moment, he'd felt the echo of recognition.
It was impossible not to compare Diana and Elara. The same bone structure. The same tilt of the jaw. Diana was built from the same design — only older, harder, less idealized. Elara was the prototype rewritten in softer lines.
The resemblance was too precise to dismiss as coincidence.
Blood? No. The records didn't show it. But records lied all the time. He knew — he'd written most of them.
Then she'd opened her eyes. Jet black orbs — unfocused at first, then sharp. Eyes that told him nothing. And everything.
At first, Sylus assumed her avoidance was weakness — fatigue from hunger, exhaustion.
Yet the longer she kept her gaze fixed on the floor, the more he realized it wasn't passivity. It was choice.
And the longer she denied him that connection, the more he wanted it.
So he closed the distance and forced her to meet his eyes.
And then… nothing. Just those eyes — dark and clear and unyielding.
No flicker of fear. No plea. No opening.
He'd believed her lie about the light because it was easier than admitting she'd unsettled him.
Then there had been that moment. When she'd said, You'll do both — destruction and study — and he'd paused.
For the first time in a long time, someone had seen him too clearly. Not as the legend. Not as the weapon. But as the contradiction beneath it.
And that, he admitted, was the closest thing to danger he'd felt in years.
Then she'd looked up — only after he'd given her something she wanted, an answer. A calculated gesture. Deliberate. A reward.
He'd understood it the instant it happened, and the realization had made him smile. Not because he'd been fooled — but because she'd chosen to play.
Most people broke under pressure. Diana adjusted. Adapted. Waited.
He wondered, just for a moment, what she'd do if he stopped holding her down — if he let her regain her strength, gave her enough freedom to test the cage from the inside.
The thought shouldn't have interested him as much as it did. He told himself it was tactical curiosity — a controlled experiment.
But when he felt that faint echo of thrill — the spark he hadn't felt in years — he knew better.
He throttled the bike — and the thought — away. It thinned into the roar of the engine. Neon swallowed the road ahead.
Control restored through velocity.
The N109 Zone unfolded around him, a maze of rust and color. Once, it had been the crown of progress — the place where human ingenuity reached too far into the dark. Now it was rot and neon stitched together, crime wrapped in circuitry. Every shadow hid a deal. Every light hid a corpse.
Elysium came into view like a wound in the street — it wasn't a place so much as a performance. The scent of iron and perfume, the low hum of hidden weapons, the ghost of music still trembling in the air — all of it a mask of civility stretched thin over violence. Aislinn's kind of poetry — curated chaos with a price tag.
As he approached, gunfire was already echoing inside.
Sherman's men had arrived ahead of schedule. He'd expected that. He'd even planned for it.
He parked the motorcycle in the narrow alley beside the bar, the neon reflections bleeding across the black metal like veins of light.
Inside, the air hit him — heat, liquor, ozone — the kind that clung to skin like smoke. The chaos was deliberate — overturned tables, bodies sprawled on the floor, the sour scent of spilled liquor and blood.
He moved through it without hurry.
He rang the bell once — a sharp, metallic chime that silenced what was left of the noise.
Aislinn froze mid-motion behind the counter. Smart. She knew better than to pretend ignorance.
"Where is she?" he asked.
The woman's eyes flicked toward the utility corridor for half a second. That was all he needed.
He didn't move toward it. He didn't have to.
A faint whistle drifted from the far side of the room — one of Sherman's lieutenants, a wiry man with a jaw stitched together by wires. The sound grated, more machine than melody. His men were tearing through the back rooms, shouting in half-coded slang, all noise and no discipline.
Sylus tilted his head slightly, listening — not to the words, but to the rhythm of them.
Fear beneath bravado. Disorganization beneath rage.
He'd seen this pattern before. Always ended the same way.
A shadow passed over him — a flicker in the periphery. The lights dimmed for half a second. And then the Mephisto came.
Black wings tore through the haze like a blade, its screech cutting through the air. Chaos detonated. The gunmen turned upward, firing blindly.
Perfect.
He stepped through the noise.
When he reached the corridor, he saw her — Elara — slipping from the utility hatch, low to the ground, eyes sharp with fear and calculation. Her movements were careful, but not careful enough. He caught her collar just as she cleared the shadow.
She spun, gun half-raised, face pale but defiant.
"So," he said, tone light, almost amused, "when someone saves you, do you always point your gun at them to express your gratitude?"
Her hand didn't drop. Her aim didn't waver. But her eyes gave her away.
He didn't wait for her to respond.
The first bullets came from behind her — three sharp bursts that he didn't bother to look at. The air folded, space twisting as if something invisible had clenched its fist around the projectiles. They stopped midair, collapsed inward, and fell as dust.
Then the goons began choking.
When the last body hit the floor, the only sound left was the soft hum of the lights.
"Your underlings aren't exactly obedient," Elara said, her voice biting, breathless. She was trying to sound in control.
"Focus on yourself first."
The air tore open. The Wanderers emerged, roaring as they charged straight for them.
"Backup?" she muttered. "Isn't that cheating?"
He reached out, catching her wrist before she could fire blind into the swarm. Her pulse jumped against his fingers.
"Do you expect people from the N109 Zone to be nice and polite?" he said, pulling her closer to steady her aim. His voice stayed calm, but his attention was already elsewhere — measuring the field, tracking motion vectors in the corner of his mind, calculating outcomes before they formed.
"Hold steady," he murmured, guiding her trigger finger toward the shadow that wasn't quite a man at the room's center.
The gun went off.
The recoil barely registered in his hand. The sound of the gunshot rolled through the room like the closing of a circuit — one more loop completed, one more signal returned.