CHAPTER 41: RUN

Rin stood in the doorway of the penthouse suite, his brain seemingly crashing and trying to reboot because the woman standing next to the lunatic scientist wasn’t just some random executive, she was the person who used to make him burnt toast on Saturdays and who had supposedly died in a car wreck four years ago.

"Mom?" Rin asked, his voice sounding small and stupid in the massive room.

She looked exactly the same, maybe a little paler and wearing a combat suit that cost more than his entire neighborhood, but it was her, the same tilt of the head, the same dark eyes, even the way she held her hands clasped in front of her was identical to how she used to wait for him to finish his homework.

"It’s been a while, Rin," she said, her voice smooth and calm, showing absolutely zero concern that he was covered in monster guts and standing next to a guy holding a sword made of golden light.

"This is a joke," Joy whispered, stepping up beside him while keeping her eyes locked on Vance, "Rin, tell me this is a mind game, tell me that’s a hologram."

"It’s not a hologram," Rin said, taking a shaky step forward, his fracture energy flickering and dying out because he couldn’t focus on maintaining the void blade when his dead mother was standing there sipping water.

"How touching," Vance said, setting his wine glass down on a table made of floating obsidian shards, "reunions always make me sentimental, but we really do have a tight schedule."

Director Tau didn’t care about family drama, he was a pragmatic S-rank who saw a target, so he blurred forward, his dao sword swinging in a horizontal arc meant to decapitate Vance and end the war right there.

Rin shouted a warning but it was too late, the blade was inches from Vance’s neck when Rin’s mother moved.

She didn’t block it, she didn’t dodge, she just raised one finger and tapped the air.

A ripple of white energy, the exact inverse of Rin’s purple void, exploded from her fingertip, slamming into Tau’s chest with enough force to crack the sound barrier, launching the S-rank director backward across the room where he smashed through a marble pillar and embedded himself in the wall.

"Senna, please," Vance said, sounding bored, "don’t break the furniture."

"Senna," Rin whispered, the name hitting him harder than a punch because that was her name, Senna Matsuda.

"She’s strong," Nyx said, sliding into a combat stance next to Rin, her usual boredom replaced by a sharp grin, "white fracture energy, that’s new, I want to see what it does."

"Don’t touch her," Rin snapped, panic rising in his chest because everyone was moving too fast.

"She just put Tau through a wall, Rin!" Joy yelled, "Wake up!"

Dr. Helix giggled, actually giggled, and ripped off his lab coat to reveal a body that was entirely wrong, his skin shifting and rippling like there were snakes underneath it.

"I’ll handle the sidekicks," Helix said, and his arms suddenly elongated, stretching across the room like rubber bands made of meat, snapping toward Joy and Tayo.

"Move!" Tayo shoved Joy out of the way and clapped his hands together, unleashing a sonic boom that hit the stretching limbs, but Helix’s flesh just absorbed the impact, vibrating like jelly before wrapping around Tayo’s waist and flinging him toward the window.

"Tayo!" Joy screamed, blasting Helix with a wave of pure terror, but the doctor just laughed harder, his head twisting a full hundred and eighty degrees to look at her.

"I removed my amygdala years ago, dear," Helix said, his jaw unhinging to reveal rows of metallic teeth, "fear is just a chemical reaction I don’t subscribe to anymore."

Rin tried to run to help them but Senna stepped in his path, her movement instantaneous, one second she was by Vance and the next she was right in front of him, smelling like lavender and ozone.

"You need to stop, Rin," she said, her face completely blank, "you aren’t ready for the next phase."

"Mom, what are you doing?" Rin asked, reaching out to grab her shoulder, desperate to find something real, "Vance is using you, we have a tracker, we can get it out."

She grabbed his wrist, her grip like a hydraulic press, and twisted.

Rin yelled as his arm bent at an impossible angle, dropping to his knees.

"Pain is instructive," she said, lifting her other hand which was glowing with that blinding white energy, "stay down."

"No," Rin gritted his teeth, pulsing his own energy, letting the purple void flare up his arm to force her to let go.

She released him as the void energy burned her glove, stepping back with a frown.

"Interesting," she said, looking at her hand, "your integration is messy, unrefined."

"I’m self-taught," Rin spat, scrambling back and holding his throbbing wrist, "you never showed up to the lessons."

Nyx launched herself at Senna, using a gravity well to pull a heavy oak desk across the room and flinging it at Rin’s mom, but Senna didn’t even look, she just waved a hand and the desk disintegrated into dust before it touched her.

"Matter deconstruction," Nyx noted, landing on the ceiling and flipping upside down, "that’s cheating."

Vance was still sitting in his chair, watching the chaos like he was binging a new show, tapping his finger against his knee.

"The integration isn’t messy, Senna," Vance corrected, "it’s evolved, Rin is the chaotic variable, you are the control, that’s why we need both."

Director Tau pulled himself out of the wall, blood running down his forehead, his golden aura flaring up brighter than before, angry now.

"I don’t care who she is," Tau growled, raising his sword, "she’s an enemy combatant."

He charged again, this time faster, turning into a streak of light, attacking Senna from three angles simultaneously, but she parried every strike with constructs made of white light, shields that appeared and vanished in milliseconds.

Rin looked around the room, it was falling apart, Tayo was trying to cut Helix’s limbs with a combat knife while being dangled over the balcony, Joy was throwing everything she had at the doctor but nothing was sticking, and Nyx was fighting a losing battle of physics against someone who could delete matter.

He had to do something.

’Burst won’t work,’ Rin thought, watching his mom dismantle an S-rank Hunter without breaking a sweat, ’she’s stronger, faster, and has admin privileges on reality.’

He looked at Vance.

The Architect wasn’t fighting, he was just watching, confident, arrogant.

Rin didn’t go for his mom, he didn’t go for Helix, he turned and sprinted straight at Vance.

"Rin, wait!" Joy yelled.

Vance saw him coming and didn’t even stand up, he just smiled and raised a hand, but instead of energy, the air in front of him pixelated, forming a wall of blue digital blocks that solidified into a barrier.

Rin slammed into it, his fracture energy sizzling against the hard-light construct.

"You think I built this empire with just biology?" Vance asked, swiping his hand to the side.

The floor under Rin pixelated and vanished.

Rin fell, catching the edge of the hole with one hand, his legs dangling into the server room below where massive cooling fans were spinning fast enough to mince him.

"Fracture energy is just code," Vance said, standing up and walking to the edge of the hole, looking down at Rin, "and I wrote the source."

"You’re a hacker," Rin wheezed, trying to pull himself up, "a glorified IT guy."

"I’m the admin," Vance corrected, raising his heel to stomp on Rin’s fingers.

A sound wave slammed into Vance, knocking him off balance.

Tayo had managed to free himself from Helix, sliding across the floor with blood on his face but his emitters humming.

"Get up!" Tayo yelled, firing another blast that shattered Vance’s pixel wall.

Rin vaulted out of the hole, pulsing his energy into a spear, he lunged at Vance, the purple tip aiming for the man’s chest.

Senna appeared between them.

She caught the spear tip with her bare hand, the white energy neutralizing the purple void instantly, the spear shattering into sparks.

She looked at Rin, and for a second, just a fraction of a second, her left eye twitched, a tiny crack in the porcelain mask.

"Run," she whispered, so quiet only he could hear it.

Then she blasted him.

It wasn’t a kill shot, it was a kinetic wave that hit Rin’s entire body, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward, through the glass wall of the penthouse, out into the open air of the Namib desert night.

"Rin!" Joy screamed.

Rin tumbled through the air, sixty stories up, wind roaring in his ears, shards of glass falling with him like diamonds.

He couldn’t fly, he couldn’t hover, he was just falling.

’Think, think, think.’

He tried to form a platform but his concentration was shot, the energy sputtering.

A shadow dived after him.

Nyx.

She streamlined her body, falling faster than him, catching up in seconds, she grabbed his collar and slammed a gravity anchor onto his chest, increasing his weight to stabilize the spin, then flipping them both so she could fire a repulsion blast at the ground.

They didn’t land softly, they crashed onto a balcony ten floors down, rolling across expensive patio furniture.

Rin groaned, staring up at the shattered window of the penthouse way above them.

"Your mom hits hard," Nyx said, spitting blood over the railing.

"She told me to run," Rin rasped, sitting up, clutching his ribs, "right before she threw me out a window."

"Mixed signals," Nyx noted.

Above them, the sky tore open.

It wasn’t a portal, it wasn’t a fracture, the entire sky above the Glass Fortress turned purple, clouds swirling into a massive funnel that looked exactly like the storm that had put Rin in a coma two years ago.

"What is that?" Rin asked, scrambling to his feet.

"That," Nyx said, her face losing all humor, "is a global broadcast."

A massive projection appeared in the sky, visible for miles, showing Vance’s face.

"Citizens of the old world," Vance’s voice boomed, echoing across the desert, "the beta test is over."

The Glass Fortress began to hum, a low frequency that vibrated the fillings in Rin’s teeth, and then a beam of white light shot from the spire, straight up into the funnel cloud.

"He’s not opening a dungeon," Rin realized, watching the energy spread across the sky like a spiderweb, "he’s merging them."

The desert floor began to crack, purple light bleeding up from the sand.

"We have to get back up there," Rin said, ignoring the pain in his entire body.

"We can’t," Nyx pointed to the edge of the balcony, "look."

Rin looked down.

The army of monsters wasn’t fighting the Association anymore, they were retreating, forming a defensive ring around the tower, but that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the massive, glitching portal opening in the middle of the battlefield, tearing reality apart pixel by pixel.

And stepping out of it wasn’t a monster.

It was a man in black armor that seemed to absorb the light around him, holding a spear that dripped shadow.

"Who is that?" Rin asked.

"That," Nyx said, taking a step back, "is the reason I’m a double agent, that’s Kael."

"Kael is dead," Rin said. "I saw the file."

"He was terminated," Nyx corrected, "and then he was rebooted."

The man looked up, locking eyes with Rin from ten stories down, and smiled.

Rin’s phone buzzed in his pocket, a single text from an unknown number.

Level 2 Start.