The air in the Zero Levels was a mixture of mold and ozone. Elias and Lyra descended into the city's bowels, where surface light reached only through ventilation grates clogged by decades of filth. Each of Elias's steps echoed like a death knell in the concrete tunnel. His head throbbed; precognition, once his most faithful ally, had become a parasite. He saw fragments of walls collapsing where they remained intact and heard screams that would not ring out for another hour.
Lyra, clinging to his shoulder, was a mere shadow of her former self. The wound inflicted by Elias's dagger shimmered with an unhealthy violet glow. She no longer truly walked; she seemed to glide on a thin film of unstable darkness.
"It's here," Elias whispered in front of an armored door covered in synthetic moss.
He didn't knock. He placed his hand on an archaic sensor and projected a pulse of his temporal flux. A moment later, the mechanism groaned, and the door slid open, revealing a massive server room bathed in static blue light. At the center, a man of colossal stature with prematurely white hair sat before a wall of cathode-ray screens. This was Kaelen, known as "The Anchor."
Kaelen didn't turn around immediately. He simply raised a hand, and instantly, the pain in Elias's skull subsided. Time in this perimeter was not stopped, but it was "heavy." Every movement required increased physical effort, but the chaos of visions evaporated.
"You took your time, Elias," Kaelen said in a deep voice that seemed to vibrate through the floor. "And you brought a creature of the Void. You know that if Vane learns I am harboring such instability, he will level this entire sector?"
"Vane has already leveled the Guard, Kaelen. There is no law anymore, only his will."
Kaelen stood up. His power of temporal stabilization created a visible aura, a shimmering of the air around him. He approached Lyra and placed his massive hand on her wounded shoulder. The shadow filaments froze. The pain on the young woman's face vanished, replaced by an expression of lethargic relief.
"I can suspend the corruption of your blade, but I cannot extract it," Kaelen explained. "Your weapon has eaten into her fundamental structure. She is becoming a singularity."
The moment of respite was short-lived. On Kaelen's screens, warning lights flickered. Vane's sabotage was more sophisticated than they had imagined. He hadn't sent heavy troops this time, but Specters: assassins whose temporal signature was perfectly synchronized with the universe's background noise. They were invisible, even to Elias's precognition.
"They are here," Lyra whispered. She didn't see them with her eyes, but she felt the void their bodies created in the darkness.
The combat began in spectral silence. An invisible blade sliced through the air, aiming for Kaelen's neck. The Anchor didn't move, but he dilated time around him, slowing the blade to a snail's pace. Elias, guided by Lyra's sensory perception which now served as his eyes, lunged toward the invisible attacker.
It was an impossible choreography. Lyra projected shards of darkness to "mark" the Specters, and Elias, using reflexes boosted by Kaelen's stasis, delivered the killing blows.
"On your left, in three seconds!" Lyra shouted.
Elias saw nothing, but he struck his dagger into the void. The sound of metal tearing through flesh rang out, and a Specter briefly materialized, collapsing in a pool of black blood before disappearing again. Kaelen, at the center, acted as a conductor, adjusting the density of time to trap enemies in bubbles of extreme slowness, allowing Elias to eliminate threats one after another.
However, the cost was heavy. The effort of maintaining this stasis zone against the repeated assaults of the Specters was exhausting Kaelen. The servers around them began to explode under the energy pressure.
"You must go," Kaelen groaned, sweat beading on his forehead. "The Keystone is in the basement. If Vane gets it, he can erase entire sections of history. Take it and flee through the cooling vents."