Zack narrowed his eyes. It didn't take a doctor to see that Hank was out of his mind. The answer to what happened lay with him. Zack shifted his gaze. His visor flickered, scanning Hank's identity through old-world databases.
A name flashed on the holographic display.
***
Hank.
Age: 18.
Middle School Student.
***
Zack exhaled through his nose. Still just a kid. "Hank." His voice was calm, but firm. "Tell me what you saw."
The young man's body tensed at the mention of his name. His eyes lifted slightly, his lips trembling. "…Ghost…" he whispered.
Zack's expression didn't change. "Describe it. What does it look like?"
Hank didn't answer. Instead, he started shaking violently, his hands gripping Zack's armor like a lifeline. "Take me away!" His voice cracked, pure desperation filling every word. "It's coming! I don't want to die! Please!" Tears streamed down his face, his entire body wracked with sobs.
Zack's patience thinned. "Explain. What the hell did you see?!" The chilling weight of Zack's tone made Hank flinch—the armor itself simulated Zack's presence, projecting an almost suffocating aura of dominance.
Hank collapsed inward, pressing himself into the cold, filthy tiles. "I don't know! I didn't see anything!" His voice broke into a sob. "It was just… there…It was always there…following me from the hospital…" His fingers dug into his hair. His breathing grew shallow, erratic.
Zack's gaze darkened. And then— A puddle formed beneath him. Even as a mutant, Hank was so petrified that he had lost control of his body. Zack scoffed. "Pathetic."
Raising his right palm, he aimed it directly at Hank's head. A soft hum filled the air as his palm cannon powered up. The moment the arc light flickered to life— The temperature dropped.
"Sir! Something's approaching!" Ego's voice rang out. The thermal imaging display inside Zack's visor turned an immediate, overwhelming blue. there was no red, no orange—nothing.
Every heat signature—including Hank himself—vanished in an instant. The young man's body froze solid where he sat. His tear-streaked face locked in terror, the drops of water at the corners of his eyes turning into frozen beads. His body—burned on the outside, but frozen on the inside. A perfect replica of the Fearless Warriors.
Then, Zack felt it. The biting cold tore through the Apex Mk2 armor. Even from across the city, lying on his recliner in NYC, Zack shuddered. The neural feedback system sent the sensation straight to his body—it was like being dropped naked into an Arctic storm. "Shit—!" His hands shot up, yanking the VR neural control glasses off his face.
Back to reality. Zack exhaled sharply, feeling his breath mist in the air, even though the room was temperature controlled. Ego's voice cut in. "Sir, the Apex Mk2 armor has been attacked."
Zack scowled. "No shit." He threw the VR headset back on. The screen flickered back to life. The armor's systems rebooted. The life support kicked in, heating the suit from the inside out.
Even with all of its advanced tech, it took a moment to fight back against the freezing effect. Zack muttered under his breath. "…This thing can ignore armor completely."
Now, it made sense how the sixteen Fearless Warriors had died. It didn't break through their armor. It didn't physically attack them. It phased through, spreading an impossibly low temperature, instantly killing the people inside. "Damn…" Zack exhaled. "Good thing I'm not actually in there." His eyes flicked back to Hank's frozen corpse. Exactly the same as the others.
"Sir, the unknown entity has left." Ego's alert drew Zack's attention back to the thermal imaging display.
The deep blue trail was there—cutting straight through the outer wall, then through the armor and Hank, and then out the other side of the building. Zack followed it with his gaze. Through his thermal visor, he saw it— A winding, freezing path, floating between buildings… Before it faded out of sight. It was gone. For now. Zack clenched his fists. He had felt it. Experienced it. And in that moment, a name surfaced in his mind.
At first, the word "ghost" came to him. But his scientific mind quickly overrode it with something far more terrifying. He inhaled sharply. "…Ego. You know what I'm thinking."
"Affirmative, Sir."
In unison, Zack and Ego spoke the name together. "Bose-Einstein Condensate."
In the natural world, matter is commonly understood to exist in three states: solid, liquid, and gas. But that's only part of the truth. There are actually six known states of matter. Beyond the three conventional states, there exists a fourth state—plasma—and a sixth state—fermionic condensate. And then, there's the fifth state—Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC)—which is exactly what Zack had just identified.
His eyes narrowed in thought. "If I'm right… That so-called 'ghost' is actually an object in a BEC state." Bose-Einstein Condensates, or wave-condensed matter, are simple in concept—matter that has been cooled further and further… until it can't get any colder.
At such an extreme, when the temperature reaches absolute zero (-273.16°C), something bizarre happens. All atoms in the substance collapse into a single quantum state. In essence, every atom becomes indistinguishable from the next. The result? A strange, fluid-like entity that exists in a unified, undetectable state. This is Bose-Einstein Condensate—the fifth state of matter.
In the real world, the first observation of BEC was made in 1995 by three physicists, earning them a Nobel Prize in Physics. Now, Zack had encountered something even more extreme—an entity made entirely of BEC matter, moving freely through the world. And suddenly, everything clicked. "The reason it's invisible to the naked eye," Zack muttered, "is because of optical density differences."
BECs can slow down or even completely stop light passing through them. Meaning—light doesn't reflect off them. If light isn't reflected… then there's nothing for the human eye to perceive. It was the perfect cloaking mechanism—not through technology, but through fundamental physics.
A creature made of BEC matter wouldn't need to hide—it simply wouldn't exist visually. A shadow without form. A presence without an image. And suddenly, the terror of the unknown made perfect sense. Zack let out a slow breath. Now that he understood the science, the fear faded away. Fear, after all, thrives in ignorance. But once you know the truth, even the most horrifying things lose their edge.
This wasn't a ghost. It was just physics. But physics… could be exploited. And Zack? He was going to kill it. "To generate BEC matter, you'd need an immense amount of energy to cool something down to nearly absolute zero," Zack mused aloud. "…Which means…Our little ghost probably isn't natural." A cold smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
"Sir," Ego chimed in, "if the target is a BEC-based entity, then ceramic materials may be able to contain it."
Zack shook his head. "No, Ego. I don't want to trap it." His gaze flicked to the faint blue trail still visible through thermal imaging. "I want to destroy it." With that, he engaged the Apex Mk2's thrusters, bursting through the window and shooting into the sky.