The darkness of the underbelly was no refuge; it was a shroud. Elias and Lyra had plunged into Sector 9, an abandoned industrial zone where massive copper pipes oozed greenish steam. Elias felt his senses wavering. His precognition, once an infallible compass, now felt like a poorly tuned radio, spitting out jagged images of an uncertain future.
Lyra collapsed against a wall of crumbling brick. Her breathing was an erratic wheeze. The wound in her shoulder would not heal; on the contrary, it seemed to feed on her own essence. The steel of Elias's dagger, forged in the Sentinel workshops, had been designed to disrupt the molecular structure of beings tied to the Void. Black veins, like corrupted roots, were now climbing up her neck.
"You should have left me back there," she panted. "Vane won't stop until he has dissected what's left of my power."
Elias didn't answer right away. He scanned the surroundings, his right hand trembling slightly. Vane's "fog" wasn't just blocking his vision; it was trying to rewrite his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Vane's face a subliminal image scorched into his cortex.
"We can't stay here," he finally said. "The Chronos Trackers don't use their eyes, Lyra. They track temporal anomalies. Every time I look into the future, I send them a flare."
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a rhythmic metallic clicking. Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of a Tracker's claws on metal. Elias closed his eyes, forcing his power through Vane's barrier. The pain was excruciating a white-hot needle driven into his brain but the image appeared: three seconds. In three seconds, the corrugated metal ceiling above Lyra would collapse under the weight of a hunting automaton.
Elias lunged at her. The metal shrieked as it tore open. A massive cyborg, its chest emblazoned with the Eye of Vane, landed in a cloud of soot. Its arms, ending in monomolecular blades, vibrated at an inaudible frequency, capable of slicing through stone like butter.
The fight that followed was one of absolute technical brutality. Elias knew he couldn't compete with raw strength. He activated his vision in micro-sequences, just enough to perceive the start of a movement.
The Tracker struck with a lateral sweep. Elias ducked, feeling the displacement of air shear off a few strands of his hair. He used his opponent's momentum to drive his elbow into an exposed hydraulic joint. The metal groaned, but the cyborg felt no pain. It pivoted, releasing a burst of cryogenic gas.
"Lyra, now!" Elias roared.
Despite her agony, Lyra thrust a hand forward. She didn't try to create a blade this time. She used the void to suck the heat out of the area. The cryogenic gas, already freezing, turned into a solid block of ice around the cyborg's legs. Elias didn't waste a fraction of a second. He leaped onto the machine's chest, pulled a power cell from his belt, and jammed it into the Tracker's vision port.
The explosion was contained but violent. The cyborg slumped, its processor fried.
Elias helped Lyra to her feet. She felt lighter than before, as if she were evaporating. "We have to find the Anchor," he whispered. "Who?"
"A former Sentinel. The only one who saw what Vane was planning before the Guard was purged. He's hiding in the lower levels."