The air in Basement Zero didn't just feel cold; it felt wrong. It was a thick, syrupy pressure that tasted of old copper and formaldehyde. The elevator behind them was a mangled wreck of chrome and pink slime, but the giant standing in the dark didn't seem to notice the carnage.
Twelve feet of asymmetrical horror loomed over them. His skin was a translucent, sickly parchment, stretched over muscles that didn't belong to the same skeletal structure. One arm was a massive, tree-trunk limb of reinforced bone, while the other was a delicate, multi-jointed appendage ending in seven needle-thin fingers.
And the eyes—dozens of them, scattered across his chest and shoulders, all blinking in a frantic, uncoordinated rhythm.
"Brother..." the giant rumbled again. His voice wasn't coming from his mouth; it was vibrating out of his very pores, a thousand voices whispering in a single, distorted harmony.
"I'm not your brother," Kai rasped, his blackened hand igniting with a low, defensive hum of Null-Void. "And I'm definitely not your family."
"Uh, Kai?" Silver-Tongue's voice came through the comms, sounding like he was eating popcorn. "I'm looking at the thermal scans. This guy isn't a person. He's a walking bio-server. He's got enough energy signatures inside him to power a small country—or blow a hole in the planet. Maybe don't provoke the twelve-foot-tall patchwork quilt?"
"I am Project Zero," the giant said, ignoring the voice in Kai's ear. He took a step forward, the concrete floor cracking under his weight. "The first time the Architects tried to bottle the sun. Before Malice was a 'Hero,' he was a janitor in this very room. He was the one who swept up the pieces of the people who didn't survive the Grafting."
"The janitor?" Vantablack hissed, her smoky form coiling tight. "The King of Light... was a scavenger?"
The giant let out a sound that might have been a laugh—a wet, rattling gurgle. He reached out with his delicate, needle-fingered hand and touched a rusted console. A holographic display flickered to life, showing grainy, black-and-white footage from twenty years ago.
The "Mystery" began to unravel.
In the video, a young man with a hollow face and dead eyes—a man who looked nothing like the radiant Malice—was dragging a heavy black bag across a laboratory floor. He was surrounded by scientists in hazmat suits.
"The Grafts were failing," Project Zero explained. "They were trying to create a god, but they only created monsters. They created me. I was too powerful to control, and too ugly to market. So they locked me here to rot."
The footage changed. It showed the young janitor—the man who would become Malice—standing over a dying test subject. The subject was glowing with a faint, golden aura. The janitor didn't call for help. He leaned down and bit into the subject's neck.
"He didn't get his powers from a Graft," Kai whispered, his stomach churning. "He's a parasite."
"Exactly," the giant rumbled. "Malice discovered the secret. He didn't need a lab to install a Graft. He had a unique, hidden mutation: The Soul-Siphon. He could eat the powers of the dying. He spent years in this basement, 'cleaning' the failures, consuming the light of every discarded child until he had enough power to rewrite his own DNA. He turned himself into a sun by eating the stars of everyone else."
"That's... that's disgusting," Mina gagged, covering her mouth. "The 'Symbol of Peace' is just a glorified cannibal?"
"And you, Kaelen Vance," Project Zero turned his dozen eyes toward Kai. "You are the counter-measure. The Architects realized Malice was becoming too independent. They needed a 'Delete' button. They created the Null-Void as a weapon to eventually erase their own creation when he became unprofitable."
"So I'm just a corporate kill-switch?" Kai's voice was dangerously low.
"We all are," Project Zero said. "But the kill-switch has a glitch. You have a heart. And a heart is something R-nex never figured out how to program."
Suddenly, the red emergency lights in the basement began to strobe.
04:30.
"Uh, sorry to interrupt the family reunion," Silver-Tongue shouted over the comms. "But R-nex just sent their 'Level 5 Silencers' into the basement. They aren't droids, Kai. They're 'Bio-Titans'—massive, brainless meat-puppets designed to crush everything in this room."
The "Action" hit like a freight train.
The heavy steel doors of the basement were punched inward as if they were made of tin foil. Two massive, grey-skinned behemoths—each eight feet tall and covered in pulsing, purple veins—charged into the room. They had no faces, only massive, circular maws filled with rows of rotating teeth.
"Oh, look! It's the R-nex HR department!" Silver-Tongue joked, though his voice was trembling. "They're here to discuss your severance package!"
One of the Bio-Titans lunged at Project Zero, its massive fist swinging like a wrecking ball. The giant didn't dodge. He raised his reinforced bone-arm and caught the punch. The shockwave shattered the nearby glass canisters, spraying "Raw" slurry everywhere.
"GO!" Project Zero roared. "To the roof! If Malice triggers the Genesis Protocol, he will eat every soul in the city. He needs the energy to ascend to his final form!"
"We aren't leaving you!" Mina cried, firing a barrage of silver arrows into the second Titan's maw. The Titan didn't flinch; it just swallowed the light and kept coming, its rotating teeth grinding with a horrific, mechanical screech.
"I am already dead!" Project Zero shouted. He grabbed the Titan by its head and slammed it into the concrete floor, the "Gore" painting the walls in a spray of purple ichor. "I am the record of their sins! You are the future of their failures! RUN!"
Kai looked at the giant—this "brother" he had just met—and saw the first eyes on his chest beginning to close. The giant was using his life-force to hold the Titans back.
"Vanta! Mina! To the maintenance shaft!" Kai commanded.
As they dived into the narrow shaft, Kai looked back one last time. Project Zero was engulfed by the two Titans, his dozen eyes glowing with a final, defiant violet light.
"See you in the void, brother," the giant's voice whispered in Kai's mind.
Then, the basement exploded in a silent wave of violet energy.
The lift shaft rattled as they climbed, the heat from the explosion licking at their heels.
"Silver-Tongue, we're coming up," Kai said, his voice cold and hard as iron. "Tell Malice to get his dinner plate ready. Because the 'Kill-Switch' is coming for his head."
"Copy that, kid," Silver-Tongue whispered. "But you better hurry. The sky is starting to turn purple. The Protocol is at ninety percent."
The elevator shaft ended. They kicked open the grate and emerged onto the roof of the Genesis Tower.
The Thriller hit its peak.
The entire city was beneath them, bathed in a shimmering, violet dome of energy. At the center of the roof, sitting on a throne of pure light, was Malice. But he didn't look like a hero anymore. His skin was glowing so brightly it was translucent, and his hair was a crown of white fire.
He looked at the three of them—covered in pink slurry, purple blood, and ash—and laughed.
"Did you enjoy the history lesson?" Malice asked, his voice echoing like thunder. "It's a shame. You're just in time to be the dessert."