Eva found the leader's sanctum at the heart of the facility. It wasn't a throne room; it was a sterile, circular chamber lined with shimmering data-feeds, and in its center stood a single Architect. This one's silver mask bore a single, vertical crimson line. The Superior.
Without a word, driven by the new, fiery power thrumming in her veins and the memory of white rooms and broken ribs, Eva attacked. She moved with Prime precision augmented by Wolfen's scorching gift, a fist wreathed in crimson flame aimed at the mask's center.
The Superior didn't flinch. A hand snapped up, not to block, but to catch her fist. The flame guttered and died against his palm as if smothered by an invisible field. His other hand, moving with casual, devastating speed, pistoned forward.
The punch didn't feel like a hit. It felt like a building collapsing on her. The air left her lungs in a whoosh. She was airborne, flying backwards not through a door, but through the very walls of the facility. CRUNCH-BOOM-CRASH. She plowed through one reinforced bulkhead, then another, and another—a human cannonball through twelve consecutive walls in a straight, perfectly calculated line.
She finally skidded to a stop in a heap of debris and drywall dust, coughing, her newly healed ribs protesting violently.
A shadow fell over her. She looked up.
Wolfen Welfric stood there, hands on his hips, looking down at her with an expression of mild curiosity, as if she were a peculiar insect that had landed at his feet.
"Eva! You're a lifesaver!" he declared cheerfully. "I was completely lost in this architectural nightmare. All these white corridors look the same." He then peered past her, at the neat, person-shaped holes she'd made in the twelve walls leading back to the sanctum. His face grew serious, grave. "And who sent you flying? I want to give them flowers."
Eva groaned, pushing herself up. She pointed a shaky finger back down the catastrophic tunnel she'd just created.
At the far end, stepping calmly through the final hole in his own sanctum wall, came the Superior. He walked towards them with the slow, inevitable pace of a glacier.
Wolfen's playful demeanor evaporated. He matched the Superior's pace, walking forward to meet him in the middle of the ruined corridor. They stopped, ten feet apart.
"Wolfen Welfric," the Superior's voice was a synthetic baritone, devoid of emotion. "If you resist and fight, I will have your sister killed."
The words hit the air like a physical blow. The ambient hum of the facility seemed to quiet.
Wolfen stopped. Everything about him went perfectly, terribly still. "Where," he said, the word a chip of frozen oxygen, "is my sister?"
"Return to your cell," the Superior instructed, "and I will… think about whether you need to know or not."
Wolfen's head tilted. A slow, deadly smile spread across his face, but it was a smile with no warmth, only the promise of an extinction-level event. "You," he said softly. "You want to die. Do you? So be it."
He vanished.
Not with speed, but with an actual, localized discontinuity in space. He reappeared directly behind the Superior, a shard of Umbralite already formed in his hand and plunging towards the base of the Architect's skull.
The Superior didn't turn. His elbow shot backwards with impossible timing, striking Wolfen's wrist and deflecting the blow. In the same motion, he pivoted, grabbed Wolfen by the front of his white tunic, and with a contemptuous flick, threw him.
Wolfen pinwheeled through the air with a yelp of surprise, crashing into a heap right next to Eva, sending up another cloud of dust.
"Ugh," Wolfen groaned, spitting out plaster. "I hate teleporting in enclosed spaces. The acoustics are all wrong."
The Superior stood calmly. "Anger clouds your brain, Welfric. Otherwise, you are quite capable."
He stopped walking and looked past them, down the side corridor from which Eva had originally come. Eva, following his gaze, felt a new, primal dread crawl up her spine.
In the opening of a shattered laboratory door, a woman stood. It was Maya. But not the trembling girl, nor the scaled horror. This was something in between. Her form was mostly human, but her posture was all predatory animal. She was barefoot, her white clothes torn. In her hands, she held the limp, armored torso of a silver-masked Architect. And she was eating it. Not with frenzy, but with a chilling, deliberate relish, tearing into the synthetic musculature with teeth that seemed just a little too sharp.
She looked up, her gaze locking onto the scene. One of her eyes was its normal, terrified blue. The other was a solid, void black, but in its very center was a single, piercing white dot, like a star in a dead galaxy.
She dropped the corpse. It hit the floor with a wet thud.
Then, she moved.
She didn't run. She appeared, the distance between her and the Superior simply ceasing to exist. She landed before him and unleashed a blow that wasn't a punch, but a localized gravitational collapse. The air screamed.
The Superior, for the first time, was forced to defend. He crossed his arms. The impact sent a shockwave that buckled the walls. The Superior was lifted off his feet and hurled backwards down the ruined corridor with the force of a missile, vanishing into the gloom with a distant, metallic crash.
Maya stood, panting slightly, in the spot where he'd been.
Wolfen, pushing himself up, grabbed Eva's arm and squeezed it, hard. His eyes were wide. "Eva," he whispered urgently. "A brilliant idea. Let's talk to the feral god-monster who just ate a guy. I'm sure she's feeling chatty."
Eva shook him off, stepping forward, her hands raised. "Maya," she said, her voice as calm as she could make it. "It's us. We're here to get you out of here."
Maya's head swiveled towards her. The blue eye blinked. The black eye with its white pinprick just stared.
Wolfen looked from Eva to Maya and back again. His expression morphed into one of utter, profound disbelief. He mouthed the words: 'Are you KIDDING me?'
Maya's gaze shifted to Wolfen. Her head tilted, birdlike. Her lips, stained with hydraulic fluid and something darker, parted.
"Oh, come on," Wolfen sighed, throwing his hands up. "Why me? I didn't even say anything!"
A force, invisible and immense, picked him up and hurled him down the corridor after the Superior. He vanished with a fading, "NOT AGAIII—crash."
Eva stood alone with Maya. She took another step. "Maya, please. We need to go."
Maya moved. One second she was ten feet away, the next she had Eva by the throat, slamming her against the wall. The grip was iron, but it wasn't the cold, dissolving touch of the entity. This was raw, monstrous strength.
Eva choked, clawing at the hand. Up close, she could see the white dot in the black eye clearly. It wasn't a reflection. It was an ember. A tiny, controlled point of… something else. Something not of the void.
The voice that came from Maya's mouth was layered—her own soft tone underpinned by a guttural, grinding echo. "If she gets hurt… you are the person I will eat."
Then, the grip vanished. Maya's eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
Eva slid down the wall, gasping, rubbing her bruised throat. Incredible strength, she thought, dazed. And a new… tenant.
A few minutes later, the sound of hurried footsteps approached. Derek, Leo, and Jordan appeared, leading a bedraggled group of a dozen other hybrid survivors from the cells.
Jordan looked… peculiar. His normally severe face was set in a deeper scowl, and every hair on his head was standing perfectly on end, as if he'd been struck by lightning and the effect had decided to stay.
"I get Eva," Derek said, rushing to her side. "Leo, get Wolfen. Jordan, get Maya. We're leaving. Now."
Leo peered down the corridor where Wolfen had vanished. "He's probably having the time of his life." He jogged off to fetch him.
Jordan, without a word, walked over to the unconscious Maya. He looked at her, then at his own hands, then back at her. He carefully slung her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, his posture impeccable even with his electrified hair.
As Derek helped Eva to her feet, a sudden, deep shudder passed through her. The fiery power Wolfen had given her flared, then guttered. A cold, hollow feeling bloomed in its place, a wrongness in her core. Her vision swam.
"Eva?" Derek asked, concerned.
"I feel… weird," she managed, her voice slurring. "Something in me feels… wrong…"
Then, the world tipped sideways, and she fell into a deep, sudden unconsciousness, slumping against Derek as the chaos of their escape swirled around them.