The room was too clean.
That was the first thing Netoshka noticed.
After hours of fighting through smoke, broken concrete, and bodies stacked in hallways, the command chamber at the core of the main building felt surgically untouched. White composite walls. Transparent floor panels revealing data conduits beneath. Holo-displays floating in perfect alignment.
No blood.
No panic.
Just control.
Inferius fanned out instinctively—Ron and Alev covering the flanks, Raine locking down the rear corridor, Lyra standing just off Netoshka's shoulder with her hand never far from her weapon. Circe immediately jacked into the nearest console, fingers moving fast.
"This is it," she muttered.
"Central coordination node. Media uplinks. Chemical oversight. Everything routes through here."
Netoshka stepped forward.
At the center of the room stood a cylindrical containment column, reinforced glass wrapped in electromagnetic locks. Inside it, suspended in crimson mist, were canisters—sleek, matte-black, marked with a red sigil that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
The air felt heavier near it.
Surgien's voice came low.
"Chemical weapon."
"No," Circe corrected, staring at the readouts with growing dread..
"Worse."
The displays activated on their own.
Director Malicer appeared—calm, composed, impeccably dressed, as if he were standing in a broadcast studio rather than a collapsing war zone.
"Welcome," he said pleasantly.
"You arrived exactly when I predicted."
Weapons raised instantly.
"End the transmission," Ron growled.
Circe shook her head.
"It's not a transmission. It's pre-recorded—but it's keyed to our presence."
Malicer's image walked slowly across the holographic stage.
"What you see before you is Project Red Equilibrium's final instrument," he continued.
"A compound designed not merely to kill—but to redefine order."
The name appeared behind him in stark red lettering:
"BLIGHTMIST 9"
> Neuro-reactive, fear-amplifying, suffocation-inducing aerosol
Exposure results in systemic collapse, hallucination, and neural failure
A refined terror weapon.
A perfect one.
Netoshka's jaw tightened.
"Bastard, You built this didn't you?," she said flatly.
Malicer smiled.
"I perfected it."
The hologram shifted.
Footage played—Eastern districts, slum sectors, industrial ruins.
Bodies.
Red mist rolling through streets.
People collapsing.
Screaming.
Then—
Her.
Glitched footage of Netoshka tearing through gang territory. Her earlier vengeance, corrupted and reassembled into a single narrative.
Overlay text flashed:
DOMITECH-ASSOCIATED ENTITY CONFIRMED
GAS DEPLOYMENT ATTRIBUTED TO SUBJECT NETOSHKA
Lyra snapped,
"That's a falsified Command—look at the layering—"
"Doesn't matter," Malicer interrupted smoothly.
"Truth is irrelevant once consensus is achieved."
His image turned directly toward Netoshka.
"You have a reputation for being," he continued. .
"War criminal. Reality aberration. Anomalous vector. Nations and the world really already fear you. I simply… gave them a reason to agree."
The screens shifted again.
Live data feeds.
Emergency broadcasts.
Foreign intelligence channels.
Every major power receiving the same packet at once.
Netoshka watched herself become a headline.
A monster.
A scapegoat.
Circe's voice shook.
"He's pushing this globally. Framing you as the origin point. If this sticks—"
"There will be no sanctuary," Ron finished grimly.
Malicer clasped his hands behind his back.
"Cerevra required a villain," he said.
"Someone monstrous enough that the world would accept absolute retaliation."
The containment column hissed softly.
"The irony," Malicer continued, .
"is that you truly believe you're fighting monsters. But you are merely convenient."
Netoshka stepped closer to the glass.
"You're going to release it anyway."
Malicer inclined his head.
"Of course. But now, when the Red Gas spreads… history will remember your name."
The lights dimmed.
Alarms finally began to wail—not panicked, not frantic.
Controlled.
Timed.
"Circe," Netoshka said quietly.
"Can you shut it down?"
Circe swallowed.
"I can slow the release. Not stop it. He designed redundancies around human interference."
Malicer smiled wider.
"Precisely."
The hologram began to fade.
"One final note, Netoshka," he added. "The more violently you resist what comes next… the more convincing my story becomes."
The feed cut.
The containment locks began to cycle.
Red light flooded the chamber.
Inferius moved instantly—deploying seals, activating filters, smashing auxiliary conduits—but the sense of inevitability settled heavy in the air.
Netoshka stood still.
This wasn't just a weapon.
It was a sentence.
And Malicer had just pronounced it—on her, on Inferius, on the world.
Outside the chamber, the building groaned.
Structural failure warnings screamed.
Something had been set in motion that could no longer be contained.
And whatever came next would not be solved with bullets alone.