The moment the data chip, now a missile of pure Void energy, struck the Geothermal Core, the universe went silent. The deafening, ambient thrum of the reactor stopped. In its place was a new sound: a high-pitched, terrifying whine, like a star tearing itself apart.
"WARNING! CORE CONTAINMENT FAILURE IMMINENT! REACTOR OVERLOAD IN T-MINUS 90 SECONDS!"
The Citadel's automated voice, cold and synthesized, was now a death knell echoing through the superheated chamber.
"He's insane..." Zaire's voice, a whisper of shock, was lost in the rising scream of the core.
"Now we run," Akanni roared, his voice pure command. He grabbed Aisha by the arm, bodily hauling her toward the gaping hole he'd punched in the chamber wall. He didn't wait to see if Kwandezi would follow.
Aisha scrambled into the darkness of the waste conduit. Kwandezi was right behind her, his face a mask of terrible, ecstatic rage, the purple light of the Void Host blazing from his eyes. He gave Zaire one last look—a look of pure, nihilistic triumph—then plunged into the darkness after them, the sound of the dying, screaming Citadel core at his back.
The waste conduit was a black, claustrophobic tube of crumbling concrete and rusted rebar. It smelled of decay, iron, and the sulfurous heat of the core.
"T-MINUS 70 SECONDS."
"Move! Move!" Akanni bellowed. He was their battering ram, his massive Geokinetic-enhanced body smashing through centuries of calcified debris and rusted-shut maintenance gates. His survival instinct had completely overridden his political maneuvering.
Aisha was right behind him, her Aegis mesh suit's tactical light cutting a frantic, bobbing circle in the blackness. She was clutching the briefcase, its contents—the locket, the financial ledgers—now feeling impossibly heavy.
Kwandezi was last. He ran in a detached, fluid silence. The Void Host was sated, the catastrophic emotional surge that had fueled his power now receding, leaving a cold, vast emptiness in its wake. The purple in his eyes began to flicker, the blazing inferno dimming to a dull, exhausted glow. He could feel the tremors through the soles of his boots: the Citadel above them was tearing itself apart.
"T-MINUS 50 SECONDS. STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AT 40%."
A massive tremor threw them from their feet. The concrete floor of the conduit heaved. Aisha screamed as a section of the ceiling collapsed just ahead of Akanni, blocking the tunnel in a solid wall of dust, rebar, and shattered rock.
They were trapped.
"No..." Aisha scrambled to the debris, pushing at the multi-ton wall of rubble. "No, no, no!"
Akanni put his shoulder to the wall, his Scion power flaring. The glowing red cracks on his skin pulsed as he roared, pushing with all his might. The rocks groaned, shifting an inch, but held. "It's too dense! I can't get leverage!"
Aisha rounded on Kwandezi, who was standing ten feet back, his expression utterly blank, his swords hanging limply at his sides. He was just... watching.
"Do something!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with terror and fury. "You did this! You killed us all! You killed the whole Citadel! Do something!"
Kwandezi looked at her, his eyes now a dull, lifeless shade of purple. The rage was gone. The grief was spent. All that remained was the apathy, the crushing, hollow reality of his action. He had just potentially murdered thousands, and he felt nothing. The Void Host was silent, and the man, Kwandezi, was empty.
"I can't," he whispered. His voice was hoarse, the voice of a boy.
The realization hit Aisha like a physical blow. The power wasn't just in him; it was fueled by him. Fueled by the rage and grief she herself had stoked. Now that the emotion was gone, he was just a container.
"Useless!" Akanni roared, turning from the wall. He grabbed Kwandezi by the front of his combat mesh, lifting him bodily off the ground. "You worthless anomaly! You started this! You will finish it! Break the wall, or I will break you!"
"T-MINUS 20 SECONDS. CORE BREACH IMMINENT."
The threat didn't register. The fear didn't register. Kwandezi just stared, empty.
Aisha saw it. The apathy that his synopsis had warned of. The thing that cost him his humanity. She had to reignite the flame. She had to hurt him. It was the only way.
She scrambled forward and ripped the locket from the briefcase. She shoved it into Kwandezi's face, her fingers digging into his cheek.
"He's watching, Kwandezi!" she screamed, her voice a raw, desperate gambit. "Zaire! He's still up there! He's watching you die like this! Helpless! Pathetic! The anomaly that couldn't even save himself! He let your mother die, and now he's watching her son die in a sewer! He wins!"
The word wins was the key.
The emptiness in Kwandezi's eyes shattered. It was replaced by a single, focused point of pure, cold, and absolute hatred. It wasn't the explosive rage of the Host; it was the refined, tactical fury of his battle IQ.
Akanni dropped him. Kwandezi landed on his feet. He didn't scream. He walked to the wall of debris.
"Move back," he commanded.
He placed his hand on the solid rock. He didn't unleash a Null-Kinetic blast; that would bring the whole tunnel down. He focused. He saw the molecular structure of the concrete, the iron rebar, the packed earth.
He transmuted it.
He didn't turn it to dust, which would choke them. He didn't turn it to liquid, which would trap them.
He transmuted the solid matter into a rapidly destabilizing, breathable aerosol. A dense cloud of harmless gas.
The entire wall of rubble simply vanished in a silent, expanding cloud of gray mist. A 20-meter stretch of the tunnel was now clear.
"Go," he ordered, his voice flat.
Akanni and Aisha, stunned into silence by the sheer, casual, terrifying control of the act, plunged into the mist. Kwandezi followed, his face a mask of cold fury.
"T-MINUS 5 SECONDS..."
They burst out of the tunnel into a vast, cavernous cistern. It was the end of the line, a massive underground reservoir, half-filled with stagnant water. They were outside the Citadel's primary wall.
"T-MINUS 1..."
"Down!" Akanni roared, grabbing both of them and pulling them toward the water.
There was no sound.
For one, agonizing second, the entire world held its breath.
Then, the universe tore.
It was not an explosion; it was an erasure. A low, subsonic THUMP that was felt more than heard, a shockwave that flashed the water in the cistern to steam, a pressure wave that cracked the cistern's three-meter-thick concrete walls.
The Geothermal Core had gone critical. The Banisher Citadel, the fortress of obsidian and steel, the heart of the VDC, had just been vaporized from the inside out.
"Dome!" Akanni bellowed, using the last of his Scion strength. He slammed his hands on the cistern floor. He didn't try to stop the shockwave. He redirected it. He tore a massive slab of concrete and earth from the floor, pulling it up and over them, creating a crude, thick shield.
The main shockwave hit. The sound was absolute—a physical, crushing weight that felt like the planet itself was cracking in two. The world turned to a roaring, agonizing, vibrating white noise.
Aisha screamed, but the sound was instantly stolen from her lungs. Kwandezi felt the Ultimate Transmuted weave of his own combat suit strain and then hold, the perfected molecules resisting the force that should have shredded him. Akanni held the dome, his muscles shaking, bloodvessels bursting in his eyes from the sheer, catastrophic pressure.
Then... darkness. The roaring stopped. The ground ceased to shake.
They were alive. Buried deep beneath the ruins of the Capital, in a pocket of darkness created by a Scion's will, the three of them—the Traitor, the Empath, and the Anomaly—were the only survivors of the Citadel's fall.