The sky over New Heritage City was no longer an expanse of air; it was a bruised, pulsating wound. The ash-fall had turned from a light dusting into a heavy, grey blizzard that tasted of burnt plastic and copper. This was the "New World" Malice had promised—a world stripped of its filter, where the neon glow of the upper districts bled into the smog of the slums until the two were indistinguishable.
Kai led the way, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic. His arms, now permanently encased in that strange, matte-black scar tissue, hummed with a low-frequency vibration. Every time his hand brushed against a rusted railing or a discarded drone, the object didn't just break—it eroded, turning into fine, dark dust that floated away in the wind. The Null-Void was no longer a tool he turned on and off. It had become his skin.
Beside him, Mina was a silent, silver ghost. She had wrapped a tattered R-nex tactical scarf around her face, but her eyes were bright with a terrifying focus. She held the silver brooch—the focus for her light—with a white-knuckled grip.
"They are coming," Vantablack hissed. She wasn't walking; she was a pool of darkness that slid along the walls, her form occasionally rising to manifest a clawed hand or a jagged face. "The 'Perfects' are coming to clean the stain."
They had reached the Aurelian Bridge, the massive twelve-lane suspension highway that acted as the carotid artery for the city, connecting the slums of Sector 9 to the gleaming fortress of the North Sector. But the bridge was blocked.
Standing in the center of the span was a line of six figures. They weren't the "Sovereigns" people saw on cereal boxes. There were no capes here. No smiles. These were the R-nex Erasers. They wore sleek, faceless chrome helmets and pressurized suits that hissed with cooling gas.
In the center of the line stood Lumen, a man whose Graft was so volatile he had to be kept in a containment suit. He was Malice's personal shadow—the man who did the jobs the No. 1 Hero couldn't be seen doing.
"Kaelen Vance," Lumen's voice was a metallic rasp, amplified by his suit. "You have been designated a 'Critical Error.' The Genesis Protocol has been authorized. You, your companions, and the filth following you are to be scrubbed from the record."
"Try it," Kai said, his voice dropping an octave, resonating with the void in his chest.
Lumen didn't waste time with a retort. He raised a hand, and the air in front of him simply ignited. It wasn't fire; it was a concentrated beam of white-hot plasma, a "Sun-Bolt" designed to vaporize titanium.
"NOW!" Kai roared.
Mina stepped behind Kai, her hands slamming onto his shoulders. She didn't hold back. She unleashed a torrent of silver light—pure, focused photonic energy—directly into Kai's back.
In any other human, this would have blown a hole through their chest. But Kai opened the floodgates. He took the silver light, wrapped it in the absolute nothingness of the Null-Void, and projected it through his blackened palms.
The resulting beam wasn't light or dark. It was a Grey-Event.
The plasma bolt hit the Grey-Event and simply ceased to be. There was no explosion, no sound—just a hole in reality where the energy had been. The Grey-Event continued forward, striking the Aurelian Bridge. The reinforced concrete and steel vanished in a perfect, circular arc, leaving a massive gap that exposed the churning, oily river hundreds of feet below.
"The bridge!" Silver-Tongue's voice crackled frantically in Kai's ear. "Kai, you're destabilizing the whole district! If that bridge falls, the North Sector will be cut off, and Malice will trigger the Protocol early!"
"Then we better hurry," Kai muttered, his teeth gritted against the shearing pain in his nerves.
The Erasers moved with terrifying precision. Two of them took to the air using gravity-Grafts, raining down "Shatter-Grenades" that turned the air into a storm of crystalline shards. Another Eraser, a woman with a "Bio-Morph" Graft, let out a scream as her body elongated into a mass of wet, muscular tentacles tipped with diamond-edged bone.
She lunged at Vantablack.
The violence was sudden and sickening. The Bio-Morph's tentacles lashed out, catching Vantablack's smoky form and literally tearing pieces of the shadow away. Vantablack shrieked—a sound that shattered the glass of the nearby abandoned cars.
But Vantablack wasn't a victim. She flowed into the Bio-Morph's open maw, her shadows turning into jagged obsidian spikes inside the woman's throat. There was a muffled crunch as the spikes erupted through the Eraser's neck and chest in a spray of dark, arterial spray. The Bio-Morph collapsed, her body twitching as the shadows began to consume her from the inside out, turning her into a hollow husk in seconds.
"Vanta, get back!" Kai yelled, seeing Lumen preparing a second, larger blast.
But Kai was intercepted. Pulse, the speedster they had fought at the Gala, had returned. He wasn't arrogant anymore. He was desperate. He had been "overclocked" by R-nex scientists, his veins glowing with a sickly blue chemical.
Pulse moved so fast that the world seemed to freeze. He struck Kai twenty times in a single second. Each punch carried the force of a wrecking ball. Kai's ribs snapped—a wet, sickening sound that echoed in the quiet space of the speed-force. Kai was sent flying back, his body skipping across the asphalt like a stone.
"You... broke... my... life!" Pulse screamed, appearing over Kai, his fist vibrating at a frequency that could liquefy bone.
Kai looked up, blood leaking from his nose, and smiled. It was a dark, terrifying expression.
"I didn't break it," Kai rasped. "I just turned the lights off."
As Pulse swung his fist, Kai didn't dodge. He reached out and grabbed Pulse's throat.
The Null-Void didn't just drain Pulse's speed; it reversed his momentum. The kinetic energy Pulse had built up had nowhere to go. It rebounded into his own body.
The "Gore" was absolute. Pulse's arm didn't just break—it shattered into a million fragments of bone and flesh, the pressure inside his skin exploding outward. Pulse didn't even have time to scream before the vacuum of the Null-Void sucked the air out of his lungs, collapsing his ribcage into a bloody, concave mess.
Kai dropped the mangled body and stood up, his breathing heavy.
"Mina! Clear the path!"
Mina vaulted over a pile of rubble, her light-bow manifesting in her hands. She fired three arrows in rapid succession. They weren't aimed at the Erasers. They were aimed at the sky.
The arrows exploded into "Flash-Novas," blinding the aerial Erasers. In that moment of distraction, the Army of Mistakes arrived.
From the shadows of the bridge's support pillars, Cinder and Echo led the charge. Cinder launched a wave of blue, inward-burning fire that melted the chrome helmets of the Erasers, while Echo mimicked the sound of a structural collapse, the sonic frequency causing the Erasers' internal organs to rupture through their suits.
It was a massacre. The "Heroes" were being torn apart by the "Errors."
But as the last Eraser fell, a low, ominous hum began to vibrate through the earth. The North Sector—the massive, walled fortress at the end of the bridge—began to glow. Not with the warm light of a city, but with a cold, sterile violet hue.
"The Genesis Field," Silver-Tongue whispered, his voice trembling. "He's doing it. He's starting the purge."
At the gates of the North Sector, a holographic projection of Malice appeared. He was a hundred feet tall, towering over the ruins of the bridge. He looked down at Kai, his face filled with a twisted kind of pity.
"Look at what you've brought to my doorstep, Kaelen," the projection boomed. "A pack of rabid dogs, covered in the blood of their betters. You think this is heroism? You think this is 'truth'?"
Malice raised his hand, and the violet light intensified.
"In ten minutes, the Genesis Field will expand. It is calibrated to the R-nex DNA registry. Anyone without a 'Perfect' signature will be deconstructed at the atomic level. Your 'Army' will become dust. Your 'Vantablack' will become nothing. And I... I will be the architect of the world that remains."
The projection vanished, replaced by a countdown timer in the sky.
09:59.
Kai looked at the North Sector. He looked at Mina, whose hands were shaking, and at Vantablack, who was barely holding her form together. Behind him, the "Mistakes" were looking at him, waiting for a command.
"We don't have ten minutes," Kai said, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate passion. "We have one goal. We reach that tower, or we die as the glitches they think we are."
He turned to the North Sector and began to run.
"Mina! Give me everything!"
Mina didn't hesitate. She grabbed Kai's hand, her light merging with his dark, and together, they became a blur of grey energy, charging toward the heart of the sun.