Chapter 23
The lobby of Nexus Tech had become a nightmare. Glass shattered as the first Noids crashed through the reinforced doors, claws tearing through steel frames and ricocheting off the elevators. Security personnel fired frantically, their bullets dulling against the creatures' unnatural skin, sparks and smoke filling the air. Panic swept through the remaining staff, those who hadn't already fled toward the stairwells.
Magnus was already moving. He emerged from the stairwell, fountain pen in hand, eyes scanning with precise calculation. A Noid lunged at him from the main entrance, four massive arms swinging with brutal speed. Magnus sidestepped in a fluid motion, twisting his body like water around a stone, and drove the pen into the creature's rib cluster. The Noid roared, a sound like grinding metal and torn flesh, before collapsing in a heap.
From the monitoring office on the fifth floor, Alexa's eyes never left the screens. Her team called out readings, updating evac corridors, and tracking each Noid as it advanced. "Noid approaching stairwell three!" Li shouted, fingers flying over the keyboard. "Two security units down, they're—" His voice cut off as another creature smashed into the lobby camera view.
"Contain civilians to the upper floors," Alexa ordered. "Seal access points! Don't let them reach the elevators!"
In the lobby, chaos escalated. Miguel, one of the licensed cleaners assigned as security reinforcement, charged a Noid with his electrified baton, only to be swatted across the hall like a ragdoll. He hit a steel support beam with a sickening crack. A moment later, another Noid tore through the café area, tossing chairs like toys and impaling a security officer named Chen with its dagger-like claws. Blood splattered the polished marble floor, screams echoing against the high ceilings.
Magnus moved between them with terrifying grace. One Noid charged him from the mezzanine stairs, he vaulted, twisting midair, impaling it through the shoulder as it crashed into the floor. Another emerged from the elevator shaft, claws raking down, tearing through two officers before Magnus struck again, puncturing its chest. He fought with precision, conserving energy, using minimal force to lethal effect, but every movement was a dance with death.
Back in the fifth-floor monitoring office, Alexa's team fought to stay composed as the feeds splintered into chaos. Screens flickered between static and live horror—blood-smeared corridors, overturned desks, security teams collapsing under impossible force. The air smelled of ozone, sweat, and fear.
Mara Jones stood at the center console, knuckles white as she gripped the intercom. Her voice carried authority out of habit alone, trembling despite her usual detachment."Lock all internal doors. Keep evacuation points active. Route survivors away from the elevator shafts," she snapped, then hesitated before adding, "And… just keep your eyes on the feeds!"
Li cursed under his breath, fingers flying over a cracked keyboard. "How are we supposed to watch," he said bitterly, "when the first four floors of the building are already being torn apart?"
Silence pressed in for half a second, long enough for a distant scream to bleed through the audio feed.
"We don't have a choice," Mara replied, forcing steadiness into her tone. She straightened, as if posture alone could restore control. "We were trained to expect this to happen."
No one answered her right away.
They all knew the training manuals. Containment failures. Rift breaches. Casualty thresholds. But nothing in the simulations had prepared them for watching people they knew, faces they shared coffee with, joked with, die in real time.
Alexa stood slightly apart from the others, hands hovering near her console, eyes locked on the feeds showing the fifth-floor corridor. She could see the frost creeping along the walls near the core servers, the sudden shift in Noid behavior, their attention snapping away from machinery toward movement, warmth, life.
Her chest tightened.
"This isn't random anymore," she said quietly, more to herself than to the room. "They adapted."
Another monitor flared red as a Noid climbed out of a shattered elevator shaft, dragging itself upward with four clawed limbs, heat signatures flaring as it locked onto fleeing staff.
Mara swallowed. "Then we adapt too."
The doors shuddered somewhere beyond the monitoring room, metal screaming as something heavy slammed against it.
And all of them knew, training or not, that the fifth floor was no longer just a control center.
It was the next battlefield.
Alexa replied, voice firm but tight. She tapped the feed showing Magnus charging another Noid in the lobby. "He's doing what we can't. Focus on containment grids, reroute civilians, mark casualties. That's your job, and only that."
Another wave hit, the Noids weren't stopping. Dozens more poured through the parking lot entrance, scaling walls, smashing through glass, entering the building's lower levels. A specialized Cleaner team, licensed for high-risk response, rushed in, weapons blazing. They managed a few kills, but the Noids adapted rapidly, moving with terrifying coordination, driven by some unknown instinct toward the building's core.
The CCTV feed caught the horror in stark detail. Two more cleaners, named Harris and Kim, were overwhelmed in the lobby's main corridor, dragged into shadows before the camera feed flickered and went black. Blood smeared across the lens as another creature swiped a body from the floor. The sound of bone crunching, metal tearing, and the Noids' guttural roars filled Alexa's ears even through the monitors.
Magnus continued his relentless assault, moving methodically floor by floor. He didn't just kill—he anticipated. He funneled Noids toward structural choke points, used their weight against them, and maintained a rhythm almost surgical in its precision. But even he couldn't prevent collateral death: each Noid that breached the building left a trail of shattered furniture, broken walls, and the bodies of cleaners and security alike.
Alexa swallowed, hands shaking but steadying herself on the console. "We can't… we can't let them reach the data core," she whispered, almost to herself. "If they breach this floor…"
Li glanced at her, white-faced. "They'll… they'll destroy everything."
From the cameras, they watched as Magnus engaged a particularly massive Noid, the largest yet, standing over six and a half feet, four arms slicing through the lobby's security barriers. He gritted his teeth, every strike controlled, every parry precise, but sweat ran down his brow as he realized the creatures were not attacking randomly, they were moving with intent, converging toward the elevators and stairwell cores.
And as he fought, more Noids began emerging from the rift outside, an entire horde, numbering at least fifty, flooding into the city's wealthy district and the Nexus Tech building itself. The building, once a fortress of technology and security, became a battleground of blood, metal, and alien fury.
From the monitoring room, Alexa and her team could only watch, track, and direct. Lives were lost, screams echoed across screens, and the monstrous Noids pressed relentlessly forward. Magnus, a singular figure of unearthly skill and calm, was the only bulwark between the invading creatures and the heart of Nexus Tech.
And even as exhaustion, fear, and despair pressed on them, Alexa realized something chilling: the Noids weren't here by accident. Whatever was guiding them—whatever had rewritten the Tower of Trial's rules, was focused. And the Nexus Tech building, with its personnel, data, and secrets, was exactly where it wanted to strike.
The fifth-floor monitoring office became a frantic nerve center. Screens flickered with red alerts, CCTV feeds, and thermal imaging as the Noids tore through the lower levels. Alexa's hands flew over the consoles, marking paths, locking doors, and prioritizing evacuation corridors. But she couldn't just stay behind the screens anymore.
"Li, Mara," she said sharply, grabbing a walkie-talkie from the console. "I'm going down to coordinate. Keep tracking and feeding me info. I'll be in constant contact."
Li's voice trembled, but he obeyed. "Understood. Be careful."
Alexa took a deep breath, running through the stairwell toward the fourth floor. Every step brought her closer to the chaos, the metallic scent of blood and ozone filtering through the building. On the fourth floor, she grabbed a secondary walkie-talkie from a fallen security officer, tuning it to the floor's emergency frequency.
"Security units, listen up!" she barked, her voice carrying authority despite her exhaustion. "Evacuate civilians to the stairwells. Reinforce the main corridor. Do not engage unless you have to. Repeat: do not engage unless necessary!"
From below, the sounds of battle echoed, the crashing, the tearing, the roar of the Noids. Magnus was already moving through the fourth floor, fountain pen in hand, cutting a path through the creatures with precision. His movements were calculated yet brutal; each strike targeted weak points in the Noids' fused flesh and root-vine musculature.
One of the Noids lunged at him from the stairwell, claws raking through the reinforced wall panels. Magnus twisted midair, letting the creature smash into a support beam, then plunged the fountain pen deep into its chest. It screamed, a shrill, gurgling sound that seemed almost alive, and fell to the floor, convulsing.
Alexa watched through her thermal feed as Magnus advanced. She tapped a healing spray from her pack and rushed toward a wounded security officer slumped near the fourth-floor elevators. Using her hands, she activated her power, closing deep gashes and restoring consciousness in seconds. Her energy drained quickly; each use left her trembling.
"Alexa!" a voice crackled through her walkie-talkie. It was Officer Ramirez, pinned behind a toppled desk. "We… we can't hold them, there's too many!"
"Hold position!" Alexa commanded. "Focus on cover, keep your line intact. Magnus is moving up—he'll break through."
On the monitors, more Noids appeared, emerging from the shattered lobby, scaling sheer walls with unnatural ease, slipping through broken doors and ventilation shafts. Their movements were no longer erratic or feral. They were deliberate, coordinated, flowing through the building like a dark current guided by unseen hands. They ignored isolated survivors, bypassed easy kills, and instead converged with unsettling precision toward key points: elevator shafts, server access corridors, security hubs, and data junctions buried deep within the structure.
The realization hit Alexa like a cold weight in her chest. She stared at the patterns forming across the screens, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten as understanding took hold. "They know what they want," she muttered under her breath, voice barely audible beneath the alarms. Her fingers tightened around the console edge as she traced the converging paths. "This isn't chaos… it's a hunt. They're going for the core systems, the data, the main server interface." Her eyes flicked toward the rift readings spiking alongside the network heat maps. "Because it's hot," she added quietly, dread settling in. "To them, it's alive ."
Magnus's voice cut through the static, steady despite the chaos bleeding through every channel.
"Alexa, fourth floor secured. I'm moving into the central hall. The Noids are tracking the building's network nodes, they're heading for the main server room. Evacuation points are critical. Don't let them access the systems."
For a split second there was only the hiss of interference, alarms echoing faintly in the background. Then Alexa's voice came through, breathless but focused, layered with overlapping commands she was issuing to other teams.
"I know," she replied, forcing control into every word. "If they breach the main server, we lose our eyes and ears. The whole network goes dark, no live rift tracking, no early warnings." She swallowed, fingers flying across a secondary console as she rerouted power. "Any new rift that manifests within this radius… we won't see it coming. We'll be blind inside our own jurisdiction."
She took a breath, steadied herself.
"I'm locking down auxiliary servers and shifting what I can to cold storage, but it won't hold forever. You're the only thing slowing them down right now, Magnus." A brief pause—then, softer. "Just… don't take risks you don't have to."
The channel crackled again, the sound of distant impacts and inhuman shrieks bleeding through as the building trembled around them.
Alexa relayed his instructions to the remaining security personnel, guiding them with precision. "Shift your units to the northern stairwell, cover the elevators, and reinforce the fifth-floor access. Magnus is neutralizing the floor. Do not engage directly unless a Noid reaches your line!"
The creatures, the Noids, moved with uncanny coordination. Some paused at surveillance cameras, almost as if they were aware of being watched, their heat-sensitive heads tilting toward energy sources, claws scraping metal and concrete. Others advanced silently, merging with the shadows, waiting for Magnus or anyone who tried to intercept.
Alexa found herself crouched behind a broken console, healing Officer Ramirez again as he groaned awake. She could hear Magnus fighting two Noids at once down the hall, one slammed into the railing, sending sparks and twisted metal flying, while the other tried to flank him. With a swift, calculated motion, Magnus impaled the flanking creature and used its momentum to strike the other, sending both crashing into the wall.
From her perspective, through the monitors and thermal imaging, the patterns became clear: the Noids were targeting communication hubs, server clusters, and the building's data core. Their purpose wasn't mindless slaughter, it was systematic. Every floor, every corridor, every intersection was part of a calculated sweep.
"Alexa, be advised," Magnus's voice came over the walkie-talkie, clipped and calm. "They're not stopping. We need to maintain the building's integrity while they move toward the core. Units are falling fast, casualties increasing. Focus your healing where it counts, do not waste energy on the mortally wounded unless it preserves the line."
Alexa's heart raced, but she obeyed. She darted between cover, stabilizing injured personnel, guiding terrified civilians, and relaying Magnus's updates to the remaining security. Each Noid she saw was monstrous, six feet tall, four-armed, and fused with vine-like tissue, each strike capable of tearing humans and reinforced barriers alike.
The realization settled in: the Noids weren't invading randomly. They had a target, and that target was Nexus Tech itself. Every action Magnus took, every defensive maneuver, was delaying the inevitable, but he was buying time for Alexa and her team to protect both the personnel and the network core.
As the first hints of dawn began to filter through the shattered windows, Magnus paused at the fourth-floor central hall, surveying the approaching horde. Alexa's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, calm but urgent:
"Magnus, remember what we discussed. Limit your power if needed, let them feel resistance. Observe, adapt, and buy time. We need to see if we can survive this… together."
He nodded subtly, unseen, and charged forward. Each step measured, each strike lethal, yet deliberately restrained. He wanted to understand the response, the true human resilience—just as Alexa had once explained. The Noids were coming, a few strong, converging floor by floor.
And Magnus, even with the weight of godlike power, was choosing to fight within the boundaries of humanity.
The battle for Nexus Tech had only just begun.
The alarms shrieked like a chorus of warning bells as the first Noid smashed through the reinforced fifth-floor doors. The corridor that had moments ago been a sterile, quiet monitoring hub erupted into chaos. Red emergency lights bounced across consoles, wires dangling from shattered walls. This floor, one of the city's primary rift monitoring centers, was filled with rows of consoles, thermal sensors, and high-resolution CCTV screens. Analysts once sat in sterile chairs, coffee mugs steaming beside them, quietly logging rift activity. Now, desks were overturned, monitors smashed, and cables snaked across the floor like metallic vines.
Alexa dove for cover behind one of the consoles, activating her walkie-talkie. "All personnel, fall back to secure stations! Maintain line integrity! Evacuate civilians if you can!"
Through the haze of smoke and sparks, Magnus emerged from the stairwell. His presence was calm, almost serene, contrasting the chaos around him. He moved with lethal precision, fountain pen in hand, meeting the Noid head-on. The first creature lunged with four clawed arms, slamming into a wall, shattering drywall and sprinkling concrete dust across the floor. Magnus sidestepped, letting the momentum carry it past him, then spun and plunged the pen into its chest. The creature shrieked, a sound both alien and human in its anguish, and collapsed, convulsing.
Alexa moved as well, not for offense, but for support. She rushed to a fallen analyst, whose leg had been shredded by a rogue claw. Placing her hands over the wound, she activated her healing, closing torn flesh and knitting shattered bones. The analyst gasped awake, confusion and gratitude etched across their face. "Thank you… thank you…"
Magnus shouted across the chaos, voice steady. "Evacuate the rear access! Keep civilians contained! I'll handle the corridor!"
Another Noid appeared, scaling a broken wall as if gravity meant nothing. Magnus met it mid-leap, striking with precise force, but even as he wounded it, he felt the creature's brute strength pressing against him. Sparks flew as claws scraped the reinforced floor, sending shards of metal into the air.
Alexa's eyes darted to the consoles, watching thermal overlays. The Noids weren't moving randomly, they were converging toward the central data hub, where the building's core servers and rift monitoring arrays were housed. Every path they took, every shattering strike, suggested intelligence, purpose.
"They're after the rift cores," Alexa shouted into the walkie-talkie, voice steady but urgent. "Not us… the data. They want the core systems! They're tracking energy emissions!"
From across the room, a young security officer, Chen Wei, fired desperately at an advancing Noid. His rounds bounced off thick, vine-like flesh. The creature reached him in two bounds, claws tearing through his chest. Chen Wei screamed, collapsing onto the console. Alexa rushed forward, hands glowing as she tried to stabilize him, but it was too late. She gritted her teeth, feeling the weight of helplessness.
Magnus pivoted, engaging two more Noids that had entered the monitoring hub from the opposite side. One slammed into a row of consoles, sending monitors flying and sparks raining down. Magnus ducked under its swing, plunging the fountain pen into its shoulder. The creature howled and swung wildly, but Magnus used the momentum to propel it back toward the hallway, buying precious seconds.
Another colleague, Li, scrambled to his console, trying to override door locks and security protocols to trap the creatures. A third Noid lunged at him; Magnus caught it mid-air, impaling it and tossing it aside, but the impact sent him sliding against a console, sending a shower of sparks across the floor.
Alexa called out, moving between consoles, healing minor injuries in real time while guiding staff to reinforced zones. "Keep moving! Use the barricades! Do not let them reach the central servers!"
The fifth floor had become a battlefield. Monitors flickered, alarms screamed, and the acrid smell of burning circuitry mixed with the metallic tang of blood. Through the chaos, a pattern became undeniable: the Noids weren't attacking indiscriminately. They were converging on the core rift servers. Every creature that breached a corridor moved toward energy emissions, scanning for the hum of the Tower-linked systems.
"They're… extracting the rift signatures," Alexa realized aloud, voice trembling but composed. "They don't just hunt—they're assimilating the rift energy. They're… feeding on it."
Magnus, hearing her observation, adjusted his strategy. He no longer aimed to kill recklessly; instead, he funneled the Noids into kill zones, buying time for the staff and for Alexa to stabilize the injured. He had limited his godlike power deliberately, letting brute skill, speed, and precision guide him, testing human perseverance under pressure, exactly what Alexa had once described: that hardship and real stakes gave meaning.
A new wave of Noids erupted from the stairwell, ten, twenty, thirty at once. The staff on the floor screamed, ducked, and scrambled, but some were too slow. Mara Jones, hiding behind a shattered console, was pinned by a clawed limb, screaming as she was dragged into the hallway. Alexa rushed forward, but Magnus intercepted the creature, striking it down before it could reach her.
The battle was brutal, every second a struggle. The team realized with horror that dozens of Noids were systematically moving toward the building's central systems. Each creature that fell was replaced by another. Magnus fought tirelessly, moving floor to floor, corridor to corridor, while Alexa coordinated evacuation, triage, and barricade reinforcement.
Through the chaos, the truth crystallized: the Noids weren't here to kill indiscriminately. They weren't mindless monsters, they were predators of rift energy, drawn to concentrated nodes, hunting systems that humanity had built to monitor and contain the anomalies. And if they succeeded, the rifts themselves could become uncontrollable, spilling their horrors further into the city.
The fifth floor was a crucible of strategy, fear, and sacrifice. By the time dawn's first light touched the shattered windows, the floor had been stabilized temporarily—somehow. Magnus stood amidst the debris, bloodied, bruised, yet unbowed. Alexa's hands glowed faintly, trembling from the exertion of healing multiple severe injuries.
Some colleagues hadn't made it: Chen Wei, pinned and slain, Mara Jones dragged into the corridor, gone. Others clung to life thanks to Alexa's skill and Magnus's intervention. And beyond the walls, the remaining Noids still pressed forward, their numbers swelling, their purpose undeniable.
The invasion was far from over.
The fifth floor was barely holding.
Smoke drifted low across the ceiling, alarms cycling between emergency tones as backup power struggled to keep the monitoring arrays alive. Half the consoles were dead, their screens shattered or dark, but the core servers, buried behind reinforced glass and layered shielding, still hummed. That hum was wrong now. Louder. Hungrier. Alexa could feel it vibrating through her bones.
"They're homing in on the cores," she said, breathless, wiping blood that wasn't hers from her sleeve. She crouched beside a half-destroyed terminal, pulling up a degraded schematic. "Every Noid that enters the building corrects its path. They're not reacting, they're navigating."
Magnus stood a few meters away, fountain pen still in his hand, its metal darkened with something that steamed faintly. He wasn't breathing hard. Not really. But Alexa could see it now—micro-delays in his movement, restraint layered on restraint.
"They're feeding," Magnus said quietly. "Not on flesh. On resonance."
Alexa looked up at him. "Resonance?"
"Rift-adjacent energy," he replied. "What you call signatures. What they call sustenance."
Another impact shook the floor. The reinforced stairwell doors buckled inward as claws tore into them from the other side.
A young security engineer, Rafael Cruz, barely out of training—dragged a wounded analyst behind a barricade of overturned desks. He fired three controlled bursts from his rifle, not aiming to kill, but to redirect. The Noid recoiled just enough for the blast doors to seal.
Rafael didn't cheer. He just slumped, shaking, whispering, "I bought you time. I bought you time."
Alexa rushed to him, hands glowing faintly as she stabilized a deep gash along his ribs. "You did good," she said firmly. "You did exactly right."
He nodded, eyes glassy. "I didn't think… I didn't think I'd be brave."
"You weren't," Alexa replied. "You were necessary."
Magnus watched that exchange, and something twisted inside him.
Not fear.
Dread.
It was unfamiliar, ancient and sharp, a pressure he could erase only with effort, and he chose not to. For eons, Magnus had known outcomes. He was the twin of Time itself, a fixed axis around which causality bent. Pain, death, extinction, he had undone them all with a thought, rewinding realities until the unwanted thread vanished. The other gods reveled in that power, in spectacle and dominion. Magnus was tired of it. Here, now, he did not know what would happen, and that ignorance made every second electric.
A Noid burst from a side corridor, launching itself straight toward Alexa. Magnus moved, but not instantly. He could have erased the creature, collapsed its molecular cohesion, unwritten it from existence. Instead, he stepped into its path. The impact struck him like a meteor, driving him through a console and into the wall. Bone cracked, real bone, because he allowed it. Pain flared, bright and grounding. The Noid reared back, all four arms lifting to strike again. Magnus smiled, not in arrogance, but in exhilaration. He twisted, using leverage instead of force, and drove his fountain pen upward beneath its jaw, angling precisely between vine-fiber and muscle. The creature convulsed, shrieked, and collapsed.
Magnus rose slowly, bruised and bleeding, undeniably alive. Across the room, Alexa froze—not from doubt, but because for the first time she felt the possibility of losing him. That was when dread fully bloomed. Not for himself. For her. The realization struck Magnus harder than any blow. It was the same tightness he felt when Alexa's fingers tangled in his shirt, when her breath caught against his neck, when desire made him forget the universe for a moment. Two extremes of existence—intimacy and annihilation, collided inside him. This was what she meant. Meaning was not in power. It was in risk.
"Magnus!" Alexa shouted. "We need a plan, now!" He crossed the room to her, blood trailing from his knuckles, and leaned close, his voice low and controlled. "We sever the signal." She frowned. "The system main serber cores"
"Are bait," he said. "The Noids aren't here for the data. They're here because the servers amplify rift resonance. Shut them down, and the swarm loses cohesion." Alexa swallowed. "If we do that, we go blind."
"Yes." "And the city" "Survives," Magnus finished. "Blind. But intact."
An analyst nearby, Jun Park, anomaly modeling specialist, looked up from his station and said he could reroute residual power and collapse the resonance spike without detonating the cores. He hesitated only long enough to admit he would need cover.
"Do it," Alexa said immediately. Magnus turned toward the corridor as another wave of Noids began tearing through the barricades. "You'll have it." He stepped forward alone, not as a god, but as a man choosing to stand.
The Noids surged, and Magnus met them with restraint honed into art. He redirected instead of obliterating, broke limbs instead of realities, held the line long enough for Jun to finish the reroute. Behind him, Alexa worked without pause, her hands glowing as she healed burns, closed wounds, and dragged the living away from the dead. Every time Magnus staggered, every time he bled, her heart clenched, but he never fell. Not once. The servers dimmed. The hum died. Across the building, the Noids hesitated, confusion rippling through them. For the first time since the invasion began, they stopped advancing.
Magnus exhaled slowly, feeling the thrill, the terror, the ache of possibility return. Life, raw and unfiltered. As he turned back toward Alexa—bloodied, exhausted, smiling softly—he understood something irreversible had happened. He no longer wanted omnipotence. He wanted this: the danger, the struggle, the meaning. Above all, he wanted to protect her.
Another man might have reached a point where everything dulled, where purpose thinned and emotion faded into routine. Magnus did not feel that emptiness. What he felt was sharp and alive, like breathing fresh air after an eternity underwater. His gaze found Alexa. She was exhausted, her uniform torn and stained, hands trembling faintly from overuse of her ability. Dirt and blood streaked her face, shallow wounds marking her arms and shoulders—proof of how close chaos had come. Seeing her like that hurt. He loved the quiet moments with her—watching movies curled together on his couch, listening to her commentary, her laughter filling the room. This was not that world. And yet, this was real. This was the life she had chosen to stand in.
Anger, fear, and tenderness braided tightly in his chest. He understood now why she believed meaning was born from struggle. No matter how much it unsettled him, he was determined to walk this path with her, not above, not apart, but with her. Alexa noticed him sway and rushed to him without hesitation. Her hands pressed to his chest, light blooming between her palms as she focused. Torn flesh closed. Bruises faded. Pain ebbed, replaced by warmth. She worked quietly and efficiently, as if the world had not nearly ended moments ago.
When she finished, Magnus pulled her into a firm, grounding hug—one hand steady at her back, the other cradling her head against his shoulder. The noise of alarms, gunfire, and distant screams faded into something dull and far away.
"Are you alright?" he asked softly, his voice stripped of all distance and calculation.
Alexa let out a weak laugh, breath hitching as she leaned fully into him. She didn't answer at once. Instead, she looked up at him, eyes tired yet unmistakably bright, and smiled.
"I'm glad you're here," she said quietly. "With me."
Magnus closed his eyes and held her tighter. For the first time in a very long existence, that was enough.
Then the world rushed back in.
Magnus shifted his gaze to the corner wall beside them, where the main control panel for the core servers was embedded, half-hidden behind emergency plating and flickering status lights. The room was suffocating. Heat rolled off the server stacks in visible waves, the air thick and oppressive. The main server room temperature flashed red on the display: 180.4°F. Everyone had been too busy fighting, bleeding, and dying to notice the cooling system had failed.
Magnus reached out and pressed a single button.
The response was immediate.
Deep within the building, massive cooling vents roared back to life. Supercooled air surged through reinforced ducts, flooding the core with an artificial winter. Frost bloomed along metal surfaces. Steam hissed as overheated components rapidly stabilized. The temperature plummeted—140… 110… 80… then steady.
The heat vanished.
And with it, the Noids' focus shattered.
Across the fifth floor and below, the creatures hesitated mid-motion. Their twitching limbs slowed, their distorted heads tilting as if confused. Whatever signal had been pulling them forward, whatever hunger had driven them toward the servers, was suddenly gone.
The core was cold.The lure was dead.
Snarls rippled through the corridors as the Noids redirected, their instincts recalibrating. No longer drawn to the chilled machinery, they turned instead toward the only remaining sources of warmth.
People.
Those still moving. Still breathing. Still alive.
Like the servers before them, anyone standing directly in the creatures' path might as well have been invisible, until the moment the Noids sensed the heat of a living body nearby. Then they lunged, abandoning strategy for raw predation.
Magnus understood instantly. He felt the shift ripple through the building like a tide turning.
He tightened his grip on Alexa just a fraction before letting go.
"Stay behind cover," he said, calm but absolute. "Heal who you can. I'll draw them away afterwards."
The cold air bit at his skin as Magnus stepped forward, moving toward the screams echoing down the corridor, toward the monsters now hunting blindly for warmth, toward a fight he didn't take because he had to, but because this time, it mattered. His movements were deliberate, measured, the faint thrill of danger threading through him, tempered by the dread of what might happen to Alexa.
Soon, the military arrived. They brought heavy firepower, barricades, and a contingent of licensed Cleaners with respectable ranks and experience. Nearly a hundred heat-seeing Noids were dispatched at the rift entrance, their bodies reduced to smoldering, mangled forms under coordinated gunfire, energy blades, and tactical maneuvers.
Civilian casualties were devastating, reaching nearly three hundred in the immediate vicinity. The business block where the rift had erupted was largely destroyed, glass and concrete littered the streets, but the broader infrastructure survived. Despite the devastation, the response teams managed to stabilize the area. The Cleaners, alongside the military, closed the rift and began triaging the injured.
One awaked reporter , after entering the Nexus Rift Monitoring building, managed to hack into the CCTV network, piecing together the chaotic footage that had captured the night's horrors. The seven-floor facility, once allocated to logistics, had been converted into a rift monitoring branch, directly adjacent to the fifty-floor main corporate tower. The parking lot, which had become a hunting ground for the Noids, stood between the two buildings.
Remarkably, the main fifty-floor building, housing administrative and corporate operations, remained untouched. It rose like a monolith beside the shattered seven-floor branch, seemingly unscathed as if it had been spared by design. Inside, the surviving staff, some of whom had fled, some who had watched from hiding, began to piece together the scale of the disaster, realizing how close they had come to annihilation.
Alexa and Magnus, though in the same location, were in a different building. From their vantage point, they could watch the chaos unfold in real time, coordinate evacuation points, and tend to those injured, but the memory of the Noids' assault, the destruction outside, and the lives lost lingered heavily in the air. It was a stark reminder: even with the might of the Cleaners and military intervention, the rifts and the creatures they birthed were far from understood, and the battle was far from over.
As the sun crept over the horizon, survivors cautiously stepped into the blood-tainted air, inhaling sharply, their faces streaked with soot and grime. Relief mingled with exhaustion, they were alive, and that alone was enough to spark a fragile, trembling happiness. The dead, however, were accounted for with grim efficiency: countless bodies sealed in body bags and loaded onto ambulances and military trucks, a silent procession marking the cost of the night.
Alexa and Magnus emerged last, their clothing torn and bloodied, eyes shadowed by sleepless intensity. Medical personnel immediately approached, draping heavy blankets over their shoulders and checking them for injuries. Every movement was methodical, caring, a small mercy after hours of chaos. Once stabilized, they were escorted to a sanctioned government unit for interviews, their firsthand accounts critical in understanding the sudden, unprecedented changes in rift behavior.
By midday, the world had begun to take notice. News outlets across the globe reported the devastation: the largest death toll had occurred at their location. Three hundred twelve confirmed dead. Streets littered with debris, scorched vehicles, shattered glass, and twisted metal filled the headlines. Analysts speculated, politicians debated, and the public watched in horrified fascination, but for Alexa and Magnus, the numbers were not abstract, they were the faces, the screams, and the lives they had fought to preserve.
The day ended with a haunting quiet over the city, punctuated only by the occasional wail of distant sirens. Survivors huddled together, sharing blankets, water, and silent reassurances. For Alexa and Magnus, the relief of survival was tempered by the knowledge that this was only the beginning, and that the Noids, and the rifts they guarded, had far more to reveal.