The air shattered.
When the Remnant dove, it wasn't a fall, it was a kinetic bombardment. The creature hit the concrete with the force of an explosion, sending a shockwave that turned the pavement into a spray of shrapnel.
Kenzo threw himself sideways, his shoulder tucking into a roll just as the world vanished into a choking, grey shroud of pulverized stone.
"Hans! Naomi!" Kenzo coughed, squinting through the grit.
Silence. The dust was a wall, thick and suffocating. He couldn't see a foot in front of his face, let alone his teammates. But he could hear the Remnant, a low, mechanical growl. It was moving.
He didn't wait. Kenzo bolted toward the edge of the terrace, his boots thundering against the metal. He vaulted the perimeter, catching the oxidized steel railing of the staircase. Instead of taking the steps, he planted his weight on the metal and slid down.
He hit the asphalt, knees absorbing the impact, and tapped his comms. "It's on me! Hans, Naomi—get a visual and find the kill switch!"
The Remnant didn't care about the others. It burst through the dust cloud above, a jagged silhouette of shifting plates and dark energy, and plummeted toward the street.
Kenzo dove behind a rusted transport truck just as the creature landed. The impact flipped the vehicle like a toy. Kenzo scrambled back, realization dawning as the creature's singular, glowing optic locked onto him.
"Why just me?" Kenzo hissed, leaping over a fire hydrant as a blade of dark energy sheared the top off a nearby streetlamp. "I can't outrun this thing forever. It's gaining!"
"Hold your breath, Kenzo," Naomi's voice crackled. "I'm closing the area."
The Remnant reared back for a final, crushing pounce when the air around the block suddenly hummed with static.
From the rooftops, Naomi stood with her palms pressed toward the street. Translucent plates of azure light began to stitch together at lightning speed. They raced across the asphalt and arched over the buildings, sealing the intersection in an impenetrable Hard-Light Dome.
The Remnant slammed into the wall of the dome, its momentum rebounding it back into the center of the street. It shrieked, a sound like tearing metal.
"It's trapped," Naomi said, her breath hitching from the strain. "But Kenzo, you're in there with it. You have exactly ninety seconds before my output hits zero."
"Ninety seconds," Kenzo panted. "I can't hit the remnant from the ground!"
The Remnant recovered, its form glowing as it prepared to dash. It was faster now, desperate. It lunged, a blur of shadow. Kenzo parried a strike that shook his body, the force driving his heels inches into the sub-pavement.
Hans stepped to the very edge of the balcony, his eyes glowing with a harsh, flickering amber light. He thrust his arms forward, and a torrent of raw energy poured from his palms.
With a guttural shout of effort, Hans began to "stitch" the air. The energy didn't just float; it solidified into jagged, translucent steps. Each step Hans created sent a visible tremor through his shoulders.
"Run the line, Kenzo!" Hans gasped, his voice strained. "I can't hold the structure for long!"
Kenzo didn't hesitate. He pivoted, hitting the first step. He leaped to the second, then the third.
The Remnant roared, sensing the shift in the battle. It lashed out, smashing into one of the lower stairs. Hans let out a sharp cry of pain, his own body recoiling as if he'd been hit.
"Hans!" Naomi shouted, reaching out to steady him.
"Don't... stop..." Hans said through his gritted teeth, his knuckles white as he forced more energy into the path. "Keep going, Kenzo! Climb!"
Kenzo sprinted upward, the sapphire staircase forming just inches in front of his feet as Hans built it in real-time. It was a bridge made of pure grit. Every step Kenzo took was a weight Hans had to carry. As Kenzo reached the top, twenty feet above the beast, the staircase began to fracture, glowing cracks spreading through.
"Kenzo, watch out! It's falling apart!" Naomi's voice commanded through the wind. She was perched on a nearby ledge, her hands weaving in the air. "I'm collapsing the ceiling now!"
The top of the dome didn't break, it inverted. A massive pillar of pressurized light slammed downward like a piston, pinning the Remnant's lower half to the street.
Kenzo stood on the final floating platform, twenty feet in the air, looking straight down at the glowing heart of the Remnant.
Hans triggered the final platform. It didn't just hold; it exploded upward. Kenzo used the literal blast of energy to launch himself downward. He tucked his body, a human bullet, and unsheathed a blade from his back.
"My turn," Kenzo growled.
He struck. The blade met the violet core with a sound like a lightning strike. The dome shattered into a thousand glittering shards, the staircase vanished, and for a moment, the street was bathed in a blinding, silent white.
The silence that followed the impact was heavy, filled only with the sound of settling dust and the hiss of cooling metal. Kenzo stood over the crater, his blade still humming faintly, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looked down at the Remnant, expecting to see a shattered husk.
Instead, the violet core began to pulse again, not with the erratic beat of a dying machine, but with a steady, rhythmic throb.
"Kenzo, get away from it!" Naomi shouted, her voice echoing through the street.
"What? I hit it dead center! I felt the impact!" Kenzo looked back at the beast. The jagged plates were shifting, re-knitting themselves.
"There was no energy, Kenzo!" Naomi's voice was sharp, even in her panic. "I was tracking the output during your dive. Your strike was purely kinetic, it was just weight and speed. You didn't pierce the field because you didn't put any intent or energy behind the blade. It did zero damage!"
Kenzo froze. The realization hit him harder than the Remnant ever could. All that effort, the staircase, the dome... it was for nothing.
The Remnant exploded upward. It hovered ten feet off the ground. Its singular eye turned a violent, angry crimson.
It didn't go for Kenzo. It looked up.
"Hans, move!" Naomi screamed.
The Remnant's chassis buckled inward for a split second before launching a jagged, obsidian-like dart from its core. It moved faster than the eye could follow, a streak of black death aimed directly at the balcony.
Naomi reacted with instinct, throwing herself backward into a roll, the dart whistling past her ear and shattering the brickwork behind her. But Hans wasn't as lucky.
Drained from the sheer effort of holding the energy staircase, Hans was still on one knee, his hands trembling. He looked up just as the second dart hissed toward him. He tried to manifest a shield, but his hands only sparked with a dying blue light.
The dart tore through his shoulder.
Hans let out a strangled cry, the force of the projectile throwing him against the back wall of the balcony. He slumped down, his glowing eyes flickering and going dark.
"HANS!" Kenzo roared, starting toward the building, but the Remnant intercepted him, its heavy frame slamming into the asphalt to block his path.
Naomi didn't hesitate. She looked at Hans, then at the beast below. "Kenzo, keep its attention!"
She didn't take the stairs. She vaulted over the railing, her fingers tracing a glowing line in the air. As she fell, she used a burst of energy beneath her boots to break her fall, hitting the street level with a metallic clack.
She stood up, her eyes locked on the Remnant, her hands already weaving a new, more aggressive pattern of light. The "safe" part of the mission was over.
"It wants energy?" Naomi hissed, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and fear. "Fine. Let's give it more than it can take."
She stepped forward, her hands moving in a blur of geometric precision. "Kenzo, move! Now!"
She held her hand up. Instead of a dome, she projected a flurry of Hard-Light Spikes. Crystalline javelins that streaked across the street. They slammed into the Remnant's chest, not to pierce, but to pin. The impact forced the creature back, grinding it against the side of a parked transit bus.
"It's not dying because you're fighting it like a human!" Naomi yelled over the roar of the creature's screech. She dodged a lash of dark energy. "You're swinging steel, Kenzo. Against a Remnant, steel is just a paperweight!"
Kenzo scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting from the bleeding Hans on the balcony to the monster in front of him. "I hit it as hard as I could! What else am I supposed to do?"
"Stop trying to hit it with the blade and start hitting it through the blade!" Naomi shouted. She swiped her hand upward, erecting a temporary shield to deflect a spray of shrapnel.
She blasted the Remnant with a concentrated beam of azure light, momentarily blinding its central eye.
"Close your eyes for a split second!" she commanded. "Stop looking at the street. Feel the heat in your chest. Focus it. Imagine it's a fluid, heavy and hot. Force it down your arms, through your grip, and let it flow into the metal!"
Kenzo took a breath, the world slowing down as he blocked out the screeching of the beast. He gripped the hilt of his pulse-blade so hard his knuckles cracked.
He felt it.
Deep in his chest, there was a thrumming pressure. It was there, dormant. He pushed. He imagined pushing a heavy weight through a narrow pipe.
Slowly, a dull, flickering glow began to creep up the length of his blade. It wasn't the clean, steady light of Naomi's energy; it was a jagged, electric purple, crackling with raw, unrefined power.
"It's... it's burning my hands," Kenzo hissed, his teeth gritted against the heat.
"That means it's working! If it's burning you, imagine what it'll do to that thing. Now, before Hans loses any more blood, finish this!"
The Remnant sensed Kenzo. The crimson glow in its eye intensified as it realized Kenzo was no longer just a distraction. It let out a final, ear-piercing scream and dove straight at Kenzo.
Kenzo didn't dodge this time.
He planted his feet, the purple glow of his blade casting long, flickering shadows against the ruins of the street. As the Remnant closed the gap, he swung, not a desperate flail, but a precise, powered arc.
The collision didn't sound like metal on metal. It sounded like a lightning strike hitting a forge. The purple static energy of Kenzo's blade sliced through the Remnant's dark field.
Kenzo buried the energy-infused steel directly into the Remnant's core.
The violet core shattered under the weight of Kenzo's blade, releasing a pressurized shockwave that sent him sliding back across the asphalt. The jagged plates of the Remnant clattered to the ground.
The silence that followed was deafening.
"Hans!" Kenzo's voice was a raw raspy shout. He didn't even look at the remains of his enemy. He turned and sprinted toward the building, his boots pounding against the cracked pavement.
Naomi was already there. She had used a burst of light to vault back up to the balcony, her hands glowing with a soft, steady white light, a stark contrast to the aggressive spikes she had been throwing seconds before.
Kenzo scrambled up the fire escape, leaping the last few feet to clear the railing. He found Hans slumped against the brick wall, his face the color of ash. The dart was lodged deep in his shoulder.
"Don't touch it!" Naomi barked as Kenzo reached out. "It's a kinetic siphon. If you pull it out without stabilizing his energy flow, it'll collapse his lung."
"Tell me what to do," Kenzo said, his hands shaking. The burns on his palms were stinging, but he ignored them, kneeling in the pool of Hans's shadow.
"Apply pressure here," Naomi commanded, grabbing Kenzo's wrist and placing his hand just above the wound. "Not on the dart, above it. I need to bridge the gap in his energy so his body doesn't shut down."
Kenzo pressed down. Hans let out a sharp, choked gasp, his eyes flickering open.
"We got it, Hans," Kenzo whispered, leaning in close. "The thing is dead. Just stay with us."
"Calculated... the risk..." Hans wheezed, a weak, rattling laugh catching in his throat. "Was... slightly off."
"Shut up, Hans," Naomi muttered, though her eyes were shining with unshed tears. She was weaving delicate threads, stitching them directly into the skin around the dart. "Save your energy for breathing."
***
The smoke from the battlefield was realities away, but at the heart of District 1, the Generation Zero facility stood like a silent monolith under the moon.
Nyx walked toward the main entrance, his boots clicking rhythmically against the polished obsidian steps. He moved slow, his coat fluttering slightly in the midnight breeze. He reached the heavy, reinforced doors, but before his hand could touch the biometric scanner, the air in front of him fractured.
A sudden ripple of space, like a stone dropped into a still pond—tore through the silence. With a soft hiss of displaced oxygen, Kael materialized out of thin air. He didn't stumble; he landed perfectly, his eyes reflecting the moonlight.
"You're here," Nyx said, not missing a beat.
"The situation required a delicate touch," Kael replied, his voice calm. "It's over. The Remnant has been neutralized."
Nyx stopped. He turned his head slowly toward Kael, a sharp, dangerous grin spreading across his face. He let out a short, dry laugh that echoed off the facility's glass walls.
"I told you," Nyx chuckled, the sound devoid of any real warmth. "I told you sending that specific Remnant would pay off. Most would call it a death sentence. I call it a catalyst."
"He struggled," Kael noted, crossing his arms. "He almost lost the support. If the girl hadn't intervened with the energy-flow theory, he'd be a stain on the asphalt right now."
"But he didn't die," Nyx countered, his eyes glinting. "He tapped into the reservoir. He felt the burn. That was the goal. We needed to see if the spark was worth the fuel we're about to pour on it."
Kael looked back toward the city skyline. "The boy is stronger now, but he's also suspicious. He'll start asking questions about why a Remnant of that caliber was roaming a 'dead' reality."
"Let him ask," Nyx said, turning back to the door. "By the time he finds the answers, he'll be exactly where I need him to be."
The two men stepped through the sliding glass doors, their silhouettes swallowed by the sterile blue light of the lobby.
As the doors shut and the sound of their footsteps faded into the depths of the building, the silence returned to the courtyard.
Then, a shadow shifted.
Pressed tightly against the cold concrete of a structural pillar tucked away in a blind spot, Sarina stood frozen. Her hand was clamped over her mouth, her breathing so shallow it was almost non-existent.
Her eyes were wide, darting toward the closed doors where Nyx and Kael had just disappeared. She had heard every word. The "accidental" Remnant, the catalyst, the "directive"—it was all a setup.
Kenzo wasn't just a student. He was a project. And she was the only one who knew the architects.