The fire in Alex's veins didn't burn him out. It froze.
The agonizing heat of the Level 2 Stalker Core surged through his nervous system, reaching a crescendo that should have boiled his brain. Then, in a single, violent heartbeat, the temperature inverted.
Heart rate dropped from 180 BPM to a resting 30. Steam rising from his skin vanished instantly.
Opening his eyes, Alex didn't see the room in blue anymore; he saw a wireframe grid of temperature gradients. He saw the heat leaking through the micro-fractures in the steel door. He saw the intense, white-hot bloom of the Thermal Lance cutting the final hinge.
Looking down, his hands appeared pale, almost translucent. The veins were no longer blue lines; they were invisible.
[System Alert: Assimilation Complete.] [New Trait Unlocked: Thermal Void.] [Effect: Body temperature synchronized with ambient environment. Thermal Camouflage Active.]
He wasn't running hot anymore. He was running at exactly -64°C. To the universe, and to the thermal sensors of the Frost-Line power armor, Alex had ceased to exist.
CLANG.
The final hinge of the penthouse blast door gave way, molten steel dripping onto the floor.
"Breach! Breach! Breach!" The Captain's voice roared from the hallway, distorted by static and rage.
A heavy boot slammed into the compromised slab. The ten-inch steel door fell inward, crashing onto the tiles with a sound like a collapsing building.
"Flash out!" A black canister tumbled through the smoke, bouncing once.
BANG.
A magnesium star ignited in the confined space of the airlock. 170 decibels of sound overpressured the room, a physical hammer blow against the walls. If Alex were human, his eardrums would have ruptured.
But he wasn't human. And he wasn't on the floor.
Muscles re-knit by the Stalker Core locked into place. Fingers, now hard enough to puncture concrete, dug deep into the plaster of the vaulted ceiling. The Stalker gene expressed itself perfectly—anti-gravity positioning. Inverted like a spider in its web, Alex hung five meters above the kill zone.
As the soldiers stormed in, heavy boots crunching on glass and ice, they swept their rifles left and right, helmet-mounted floodlights cutting through the smoke.
"Clear left!" "Clear right!"
Two heavy troopers moved with practiced efficiency, their movements hydraulic and jerky. The one-armed Captain followed, his remaining gauntlet gripping a pistol.
"Where is he?" The Captain shouted. "Thermal, scan the corners!"
"Scanning..." The lead trooper paused, tapping the side of his helmet. "Sir... HUD is glitching. Target Lost. I'm getting zero heat signatures. It's like looking at a wall of ice. The room is empty."
"Impossible! Check the vents!"
They looked at the floor vents. They looked at the blown-out door mechanism. They didn't look up.
High above, Alex's vertical pupils—glowing with a faint, cold chemical light—tracked the soldiers below. He released his grip on the ceiling with one hand, letting gravity wait.
He didn't reach for a weapon. He looked at the severed, frozen Frost-Line power gauntlet lying on the floor—the heavy titanium chunk the Captain had lost minutes ago.
"Captain," Alex whispered, his voice dropping from the ceiling like a shard of ice.
The Captain froze. He looked up. "Above you!"
Alex released.
Gravity accelerated his descent. 180 pounds of enhanced biological density plummeted five meters. He didn't land on the floor. He landed on the lead trooper.
Mid-fall, Alex's hand snatched the severed power gauntlet from the tiles. Using the momentum of the drop, combined with his new Strength 3.0, he swung the titanium fist like a meteor.
CRUNCH.
The sound was wet and brittle. The heavy composite helmet caved in. The visor shattered, and the skull beneath vaporized. Pressurized atmosphere vented instantly, spraying a mist of red blood that froze into pink snow before it hit the ground.
"Contact!" The second trooper spun, racking the slide of his shotgun.
Too slow. Alex was already moving. Staying low, moving on all fours like the beast he had consumed, he lunged. He didn't strike the trooper; he backhanded the shotgun barrel, ripping it from the soldier's grip.
Before the trooper could draw a sidearm, Alex grabbed the soldier's faceplate with both hands.
"Open wide."
THUD. THUD.
Alex slammed the soldier's head into the steel doorframe. The helmet cracked. The seal broke. The -64°C air rushed in. The soldier fell to his knees, clawing at his throat, suffocating on his own frozen breath.
Only the Captain remained.
Standing in the breach, the one-armed officer stared at the carnage. "You... What are you?"
Alex stood up slowly amidst the bodies, rolling his neck with a sickening pop. He walked over to the corpse of the first trooper and picked up the Thermal Lance.
"I'm the landlord," Alex said. "And you're late on rent."
"Go to hell!" The Captain fired. The bullet sparked harmlessly off Alex's shoulder.
Alex pulled the trigger on the Lance.
VWOOM.
A beam of concentrated plasma swept across the hallway. It didn't just cut the Captain. It erased him. The beam sliced through the remaining arm, the chest plate, and the wall behind him. The Captain fell in two cauterized halves.
[System Log:] [Combat Ended.] [Enemies Neutralized: 3/3.] [XP Gained: 450.] [Level Up! You are now Level 3.]
The penthouse door was gone—a slagged, gaping hole venting his precious air.
"Seal the breach," Alex muttered.
Dragging the corpse of the second Heavy Trooper, Alex jammed the four-hundred-pound armored body horizontally into the bottom of the doorframe. Stacking the first trooper on top, he filled the gap.
"Meat and ceramic," Alex noted. "Better insulation than steel."
Aiming the Thermal Lance at the edges, he welded the dead soldiers' armor directly to the penthouse structure. Molten metal dripped, hissing as it hit the ice, locking the corpses into a grotesque barricade.
"Alpha Team! Respond!" The radio on the Captain's belt screamed. "Seismic pattern confirms a localized epicenter! It's not walking past... it's stopping!"
Alex snatched the radio. "This is the Resident. Your team is scrap metal. Tell me about the Titan."
"You idiot! You've doomed us all! The Titan isn't hunting by sight! It hunts by thermal displacement!"
Alex froze. Thermal displacement.
The Thermal Lance had just vented 25°C air into a -65°C hallway. To a thermal predator, the penthouse was a flare.
BOOOOM.
The floor jumped. Dust rained from the ceiling. Alex walked to the shattered window. The snowstorm had momentarily cleared.
It was there.
The Titan (Level 5) stood in the middle of the six-lane avenue. A humanoid shape composed of frozen debris and concrete, thirty stories high. It didn't have a face. It had a singular, vertical vent running down its head, glowing with a pulsing violet light.
And it was turning toward the 24th Floor.
"It sees the heat," Alex realized. "I need a decoy."
The Captain's severed power-gauntlet lay near the stairwell. It contained a micro-nuclear fusion cell. Snatching the titanium limb, Alex keyed the overload sequence.
Beep. Beep. Beep. [Warning: Core Destabilization Imminent.]
"Hey big guy!"
Muscles coiling with Strength 3.0, he hurled the gauntlet out the window, spinning it toward the abandoned luxury hotel opposite Riverside Gardens.
The gauntlet crashed through the window of the hotel's 30th floor.
FLASH.
A miniature sun detonated. The fusion cell went critical. The Titan's head snapped toward the massive thermal bloom. Turning its massive torso, ignoring Riverside Gardens, it began to stride toward the burning hotel.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Alex stood in the dark, watching the monster tear the roof off the hotel.
[Milestone Reached: Survived a Level 5 Encounter.] [Reward: Shop Level 3 Unlocked.] [New Category: Heavy Ordnance & Fortification.]
Alex grinned, his blue eyes reflecting the distant fire. "Now... let's see what I can buy to kill a mountain."