The smoke was thick enough to choke a normal human within minutes. Tony walked through it like moving through dense fog, his enhanced perception cutting through the haze. Heat signatures appeared as bright spots in his vision. Structural integrity showed as patterns of stress and weakness. The fire was spreading faster than campus security had probably anticipated, consuming wood and paper with hungry efficiency.
Third floor. West wing. Yuki's location.
Tony moved toward the stairs. The main stairwell was blocked, flames licking up from the second floor, superheated air creating a convection current that would cook anyone who tried to pass through. He diverted to the emergency stairwell at the east end. The door was hot to the touch but intact. He pushed through.
The stairwell was clearer, designed with fire-resistant materials. Tony climbed quickly, his body moving with more precision than any normal human. Two years of living as Tony Code, eighteen years of being this fragment, but underneath it all was something else. Divine essence wrapped in mortal flesh. He'd never fully understood what that meant.
Third floor. The door to the west wing was partially blocked by fallen ceiling tiles. Tony shoved them aside, stepped through. The smoke here was worse, toxic and black. Fire had consumed most of the study carrels along the eastern wall. The structure groaned, wood and metal protesting the heat.
"Yuki Tanaka," Tony called out, his voice flat, emotionless. "Identify your location."
No response. Either she couldn't hear him, or she'd already succumbed to smoke inhalation. Tony expanded his perception, searching for heat signatures that matched a human body. There. Northwest corner, behind the reference section. Moving, but weakly.
He navigated through the burning maze, his mind automatically calculating the safest path, which supports were still stable, which sections of floor would hold his weight. A bookshelf collapsed ten meters to his left, sending up a shower of sparks. Tony didn't flinch.
He found her behind a overturned desk, curled against the wall, a wet jacket pressed against her face in a makeshift filter. Smart. It had probably saved her life. Her eyes were closed, breathing shallow but present.
"Yuki Tanaka," Tony said, kneeling beside her. "I'm extracting you now."
Her eyes opened, unfocused, struggling to process. "Tony? How did you..."
"Explanations later. Can you walk?"
She tried to stand, stumbled. Tony caught her, noting her core temperature was elevated, signs of heat exhaustion present. Carrying her would be more efficient. He scooped her up easily, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back.
"Hold on," he said, though he wasn't sure why. It seemed like something humans would say in this situation.
The return path was already compromised. The ceiling section he'd passed under moments ago had partially collapsed. Tony recalculated. Alternative route: the north stairwell, but it meant crossing through the main reading area where the fire was most intense.
Acceptable risk.
He moved quickly, Yuki's weight barely registering. Behind them, something large crashed, possibly the entire eastern wall giving way. The building was dying, consuming itself.
They reached the north stairwell. The door was blocked, warped by heat. Tony adjusted his grip on Yuki, braced himself, and kicked. Once. Twice. The third impact tore the door from its hinges.
The stairwell was filled with smoke but navigable. Tony descended rapidly, his footfalls precise despite the burden. Second floor. First floor. Ground level.
The exit door burst open, and they emerged into afternoon sunlight and relatively clean air. Campus security and emergency responders had established a perimeter. Someone shouted. Multiple someones rushed toward them.
Tony set Yuki down on the grass, away from the building. Paramedics converged immediately, checking her vitals, placing an oxygen mask over her face. She was coughing, struggling to breathe properly, but alive.
Mission accomplished. Objective achieved. Outcome: optimal.
Tony straightened, turned to assess the situation. The library was fully engulfed now, flames reaching through the upper windows like grasping hands. Fire trucks were present but maintaining distance, the structure too far gone to save.
"Tony!"
He turned. Grimmey was jogging toward him, clothes singed, face smudged with soot, but grinning like he'd just won a competition. "You got her out! Nice work, man."
"The pyrokinetic?" Tony asked.
"Ran off. Guy's fast when he wants to be." Grimmey glanced back toward the front of the library. "But before he left, he said something you need to hear."
"Which was?"
Grimmey's grin faded. His voice dropped, serious. "He said, 'He's found. Zeus will know.'"
Tony processed this information. Zeus. The name meant nothing to him, but the context suggested importance. Authority. Threat. "Who is Zeus?"
"I don't know. But whoever he is, fire guy was reporting to him. And now he knows you're here." Grimmey looked at the burning library, then back at Tony. "Whatever you are, whatever you've been hiding... I think your grace period just ended."
Before Tony could respond, reality bent.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The air in front of them rippled like water, light refracting at impossible angles. Space folded, compressed, twisted. And then, in a flash of golden light so bright Tony's enhanced vision momentarily overloaded, someone appeared.
No. Not appeared. Had always been there, and reality was just catching up to acknowledge it.
A man stood before them, tall, lean, with features that seemed somehow too perfect, too symmetrical. He wore modern clothes, jeans and a jacket, but something about him felt ancient. His eyes were sharp, calculating, missing nothing. And around him, barely visible, the air shimmered with barely contained speed.
Behind Tony, the humans were moving in reverse. Not backwards, but their motions were reversed, time flowing wrong for them while flowing normally for Tony, Grimmey, and this newcomer. A paramedic's hand that had been reaching for equipment was now pulling away. Students who'd been running toward the library were running away from it. The universe rewinding around this man's presence.
"Tony Code," the man said, his voice carrying an edge like drawn steel. "You're coming with me."
Tony tensed. In the shadows around them, more figures materialized. Five of them, dressed similarly modern but each radiating something wrong, something other. Their auras flickered between human and not-human, blessed mortals, demigods, something else entirely.
The man in front took a step forward. "My name is Marcus Kane. And you've just become a person of interest to some very dangerous people. We can do this easy, or we can do this hard. Your choice."
"Who are you?" Tony asked, his voice flat, emotionless.
"Someone who's been watching you for a long time." The man's eyes locked onto Tony with unsettling intensity. "Someone who knew your mother."
Tony's world tilted. Mother. The goddess of Knowledge. How did this man know?
Grimmey moved, positioning himself defensively. "Back off. You don't want to do this."
The man, Marcus, smiled. It wasn't friendly. "Actually, I do. And you can't stop me."
He moved.
Not fast. Impossibly fast. Faster than Tony could track, faster than thought, faster than causality should allow. One moment Marcus was three meters away. The next, his hand was on Tony's shoulder, grip like iron.
Tony tried to pull away, to activate his data manipulation, to teleport through the network. But Marcus was already there, everywhere, existing in every possible position Tony could move to. The man didn't just move fast. He deleted distance. Existed between moments. His movement couldn't be blocked because it wasn't movement at all.
"Got you," Marcus said.
Grimmey lunged, hand outstretched, gravity shifting around him. But one of the other figures, a woman with tattoos that glowed faintly blue, raised her hand. Space compressed, and suddenly Grimmey was yanked backward, held by invisible force.
Tony felt Marcus's grip tighten. Felt something else, a presence reaching out from the man, assessing, measuring. And then Marcus's eyes widened fractionally. "Interesting. You really don't know, do you?"
"Don't know what?" Tony managed.
"What you are." Marcus looked past Tony to Yuki, who was watching all of this with growing horror, oxygen mask dangling from her hand. Something flickered in Marcus's expression. Recognition? Concern? "And her. She's..." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. All three of you are coming with us. Now."
"Why?" Tony asked.
"Because," Marcus said, his tone brooking no argument, "the demigod who attacked you today sent a message to Zeus. Which means in approximately seventy-two hours, every hunter in the 3rd Dimension will converge on Tokyo looking for you. And I'd prefer to have this conversation before they arrive."
He looked at one of his team, a young man with eyes that glowed faintly purple. "Kaito. Take us home."
The young man nodded, stepped forward, and raised both hands. The air around all of them began to shimmer, reality bending in ways that made Tony's perception scream with wrongness.
"Wait," Tony said. "I don't..."
But it was too late. Space folded. Light compressed. And Tony Code, Yuki Tanaka, and Grimmey were ripped from campus, from Tokyo, from everything familiar, and hurled somewhere else entirely.
The world went white.
When it cleared, they were somewhere completely different.