Zen set the GREY SCAR header aside.

Whatever Jax had sent could wait an hour. After three days of trains and tunnels and negotiations and bioscan feeds, what he needed before anything else was to hit something.

He closed the terminal and looked across the table at Nyx.

"I want a fracture zone," he said. "This afternoon."

Nyx looked up from her tablet. "Your pathways only stabilized last night."

"I know."

"The structural integration is still..."

"Nyx."

She stopped.

"Fracture zone," Zen said. "This afternoon."

A pause. Then Nyx set down her tablet with the expression of someone recalculating a schedule they had already built.

"Sector nine," she said. "Lower city. A corrupted server node that has been absorbing Void energy for approximately sixty years." She tilted her head. "The entities it produces are not physical. They are data-ghosts... corrupted information given enough density to manifest in the real world. Your sword will pass straight through them."

"Then I will not use my sword," Zen said.

Across the table, Valeria picked up her coffee cup. "I am coming," she said, to no one in particular.

Nyx looked at her.

"I did not invite you," Nyx said.

"Stop me if you can," Valeria replied, and drank her coffee.

—

Sector nine sat three levels below the surface. It was tucked beneath the busy commercial districts, transit tunnels, and maintenance corridors that Nyx’s teams worked on in shifts. This was the part of the city that people usually didn’t talk about.

The infrastructure down here was old.

The walls were lined with original Aether rune-networks, the foundational layer that everything above had been built on top of.

Zen recognized the architecture right away. It had his own construction marks running along the conduit seams, written in a style no living engineer would use.

He recognized the Void corruption growing through it just as quickly.

Zen activated the new drone and let it float up beside him.

The lens remained dark, with no broadcast light or live feed. He wasn’t streaming today; instead, he was mapping the area. He wanted to understand how a fracture zone looked like within Nyx’s domain before presenting it to an audience.

"System. Preliminary scan."

[Nineteen data-ghost signatures. Hive architecture — shared coherence network running through the rune-grid. Disrupting the central node will cascade through all connected entities. Central node: thirty-eight meters northeast, behind the primary cluster.]

[Warning: Ghosts can phase through any surface connected to the rune-network. That is most of the zone.]

Nyx opened a private channel on her network and began pushing live threat readings into it as her visor mapped the interior. She had synced Zen’s terminal to the channel before they left.

What she didn’t know was that the terminal was dark in his jacket pocket. His System was pulling the feed directly.

"Nineteen confirmed signatures," Zen said aloud, for Valeria’s benefit. "Hive structure. They share the rune-grid as a movement system."

Valeria drew her sword and rolled her shoulder once. "Then we find the head and cut it."

"After we understand what we are cutting," Zen said.

They stepped through.

This zone felt completely different from Ares. While the Iron Scrap Yard was a decaying physical place filled with weight, dust, and the scent of rusted metal, this area was entirely different.

The corridor still looked normal, but the air felt strange as if they were standing inside a machine running a malfunctioning program.

Purple rune-light cast distorted shadows across the walls, and then, the data-ghosts...

Before they had even taken ten steps, the first one came directly through the wall, phasing out of it.

It had a vague humanoid shape made of fragmented data, with flickering edges that constantly rewrote themselves. Its face was barely a face and its eyes were like pure, corrupted light.

Valeria’s sword went through it cleanly.

The ghost didn’t react. Her blade passed through its torso and came out the other side. The shape flickered once and drifted forward.

Valeria stared at it for one full second.

Then two more came through the floor.

"Physical attacks pass through them," Nyx said from behind them, already moving toward the rune-junction on the far wall.

She raised her left hand, and three micro-drones detached from her sleeve. They moved too fast to see, circling the nearest ghost and shooting at the same time a strong burst of energy from three angles at once.

The data-ghost collapsed, dissolving from the center outward until there was nothing left to hold the shape.

Valeria watched this for exactly one second.

Then she turned to the ghost her sword had failed on, compressed her Aegis aura into a tight focused point at her knuckles and drove a single precise pulse into its chest.

The ghost came apart the same way. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

She had needed to see it done once.

Two more ghosts then phased through the floor, while another four came through the walls, filling the corridor with the overlapping static of their movement.

"Fan out," Valeria ordered.

"Do not tell me what to do in my own city," Nyx replied flatly, even though she immediately stepped to the left flank.

Her fingers moved smoothly across an invisible interface while her digital eyes glowed brighter.

"I will tell you whatever I want if it keeps you from getting in my way," Valeria snapped. She took the right flank, the golden aura around her fists thickening. "Just stay behind your little toys, Nyx. I will handle the actual fighting."

"Your definition of fighting is punching empty space until something accidentally dies," Nyx said, not bothering to look up from her terminal. "I prefer efficiency. Six drones deployed."

Small compartments on Nyx’s shoulders opened, releasing six black spheres into the air. They zipped forward, forming a defensive perimeter around the hallway.

"Drones are for cowards who cannot take a hit," Valeria growled, lunging forward.

She drove a fist into the chest of a phasing data-ghost. The golden Aegis mana acted like a solid wall against the corrupted digital entity, shattering it instantly.

"One," Valeria said, throwing a glance over her shoulder.

"Four," Nyx corrected.

The six drones fired simultaneously, crisscrossing blue energy beams that instantly vaporized three ghosts trying to flank Valeria.

"Stop stealing my targets!" Valeria shouted.

"Stop moving so slowly," Nyx replied calmly.

"System," Zen muttered under his breath, keeping his eyes on the shifting purple environment. "Assess the respawn rate."

[Assessing.]

[The hive node is regenerating entities at a rate of four per second. Current strategy is inefficient. At this pace, stamina depletion for Valeria will occur in forty-one minutes. Drone battery depletion for Nyx in thirty-nine minutes.]

"They are regenerating faster than you two are killing them," Zen announced, stepping deeper into the corridor.

"Then I will hit them harder," Valeria said.

"You cannot hit a network harder, Valeria," Nyx sighed, her drones spinning up for another volley. "It is a systemic corruption. Zen is correct. The central node is feeding them."

"Then find the node and point me at it," Valeria ordered.

"I am currently tracking the data streams. The node is constantly shifting its physical anchor within the rune-grid. It is not a stationary target."

The air in the corridor hummed violently before Valeria could argue, and the purple lighting shifted to red.

[Warning. Hive architecture is adapting to localized threats.]

The data-ghosts that were currently phasing through the walls suddenly stopped. They didn’t dissolve. Instead, they began to merge, layering their corrupted code over one another.

Nyx’s drones fired another volley of blue energy. The beams hit the merged ghosts and simply reflected off, scorching the ceiling.

"What was that?" Valeria demanded, stopping her advance.

"My thermal lasers just bounced," Nyx said, her voice losing a fraction of its bored tone. "They have shifted their structural frequency. Energy weapons are now experiencing a ninety-six percent drop in efficacy."

"So your toys are useless. Good. Step aside." Valeria lunged at the nearest merged entity, swinging her sword with enough force to cleave a tank in half.

The blade struck home, sending a massive shockwave through the corridor and blowing dust from the ancient vents. But, the ghost remained intact. Valeria’s sword was caught mid-swing, firmly embedded in the creature’s chest.

"Let go of my blade, you piece of static!" Valeria roared, pouring more golden mana into the hilt.

"Physical impact absorption is up by eight hundred percent," Nyx read from her terminal. "Valeria, your raw kinetic force is currently feeding its density matrix. You are making it stronger."

"I am going to rip its head off!"

"You can’t," Nyx stated.

"Both of you, stop," Zen ordered.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried the distinct authority of a man who used to command millions. Both women froze for a fraction of a second.

"Nyx, what is the exact cycle rate of your disruptors?" Zen asked.

"Point-two seconds per cycle," Nyx answered immediately.

"And their new frequency?"

"They are fluctuating their density every point-eight seconds. I cannot lock a firing solution fast enough before they shift again."

Zen looked at Valeria, who was still struggling to pull her sword free from the static-entity. "Valeria. Your Aegis pulse is too fast. You are striking when their density is at its peak."

"A punch is a punch, Zen!" she argued, gritting her teeth.

"Not down here," Zen said. "Down here, it is a rhythm. Nyx, link your drone targeting system to my terminal."

"Done. You have the feed."

Zen pulled the terminal from his jacket. The holographic display flared to life, showing a complex waterfall of red and purple data.

He didn’t have the physical strength to fight these things, but he still had a five-hundred-year-old tactical brain and a System that calculated probability in real-time.

"Valeria, let go of the sword," Zen commanded.

"What? No! It is a grandmaster-forged..."

"Let it go, step back, and wait for my mark."

Valeria let out a frustrated growl, abandoned the hilt, and leaped backward, landing heavily beside Zen.

"Nyx," Zen said, his eyes scanning the numbers. "Command your drones to fire on a point-four second delay. Not point-two. Point-four."

"That is mathematically inefficient," Nyx argued.

"It is an offset," Zen corrected. "You are going to force them into a staggered frequency."

"And then?" Valeria asked, cracking her knuckles.

"Then," Zen said, "I will tell you exactly when to hit them. Nyx. Fire."

Nyx waved her hand. The six drones fired in a staggered, pulsing rhythm. Pew. Pause. Pew. Pause.

The merged ghost vibrated violently, its red static flickering back to purple as it struggled to adapt to the broken timing.

"Valeria," Zen said. "Half a second delay. Strike the center."

Valeria didn’t argue this time. Dashing forward with her fist cocked back, she waited for the exact moment Zen specified before driving her fist forward.

The ghost exploded into a shower of harmless digital rain. Her sword clattered to the ground.

"Hah!" Valeria cheered, scooping up her blade. "See? I killed it."

"With my data offset," Nyx pointed out dryly.

"With my fist," Valeria corrected.

[Alert. Central node has detected critical interference. Activating defensive protocol.]

The entire corridor shook. The ancient rune-networks carved into the walls began to glow violently.

"What did you do?" Valeria asked, looking around.

"Me?" Nyx said, her fingers flying across her terminal. "I did nothing. The central node is reacting to the localized destruction. It is pulling all remaining corrupted data in the sector to a single point."

"Where?" Zen asked.

"Right in front of us."