Kiera moved through the labyrinthine tunnels with a purpose and speed that left Ryu breathless. She didn't speak, simply pulled him along, her grip like iron on his arm. They ascended through hidden service ladders and maintenance shafts he never knew existed, bypassing the squalor of his own residential block and emerging into a cleaner, quieter section of the under-tunnels.
They stopped before a reinforced steel door, indistinguishable from the dozen others lining the corridor. Kiera placed her palm on a small, nearly invisible panel. A soft chime echoed, and the door slid open with a hiss, revealing not another grimy tunnel, but a brightly lit, spartanly clean room. The air inside was filtered, smelling of antiseptic and calm. It was a pocket of the Core Sectors hidden deep within the filth of the Outer Sector. An Azure Dragon safehouse.
An old man in a medic's coat sat at a table, meticulously cleaning a set of intricate tools. He looked up as they entered, his eyes, magnified by thick lenses, holding a world-weary and deeply cynical gaze. "So, this is the anomaly," he said, his voice a dry rasp. "He looks even more pathetic up close. I'm surprised he's still standing."
"He almost wasn't," Kiera replied, shoving Ryu into a chair. "The Vanguard was about to collect him. His energy leakage is getting worse."
The old medic, whom Kiera called 'Joric,' shuffled over to Ryu. He didn't ask for permission. He simply grabbed Ryu's head, his cold fingers probing the base of his skull. He then took Ryu's hand, the one that had sparked, and ran a small, humming device over it. The device whined, its needle spiking wildly into a red zone marked 'CRITICAL INSTABILITY.'
Joric let out a low whistle. "ChainForce," he breathed, his cynicism momentarily replaced by a flicker of awe. "A raw, untethered manifestation. I haven't seen anything like this in fifty years." He looked back at Ryu, his professional curiosity taking over. "How are you not dead?"
Ryu could only shake his head, the throbbing in his skull intensifying under the medic's probing. "I don't know what you're talking about," he mumbled.
Joric ignored him, turning to Kiera. "The energy is not bonding with his cellular structure. It's using him like a cheap, disposable battery. His body is acting as a crude capacitor, holding a charge it was never designed for. The 'leakage' you're sensing is his life force being burned away to vent the excess energy. The nosebleeds, the headaches... that's just the beginning. At this rate, his internal organs will cook, and his nervous system will simply dissolve. I give him a month. Maybe two."
The diagnosis was delivered with the detached air of a mechanic discussing a faulty engine. Each word was a nail in Ryu's coffin. He wasn't being gifted power; he was being consumed by it. He was a walking time bomb, and the clock was ticking.
Kiera's face remained impassive, but Ryu saw a flicker of something in her eyes. Frustration? Annoyance? "Can you stabilize him?" she asked Joric.
The old medic shrugged. "Stabilize? My dear, that would be like trying to patch a supernova with duct tape. I can sedate the energy, dull its effects, maybe buy him a little time. But unless he learns to control it, to properly integrate it... he's just a ghost with a deadline." Joric turned his gaze back to Ryu, a flicker of something that might have been pity in his eyes. "The ChainForce has chosen you, boy. And it seems it has chosen you to die."