Clinic Seventeen was buried in the basement of a meat-packing plant that reeked of rot.
The air inside was a suffocating mix of cheap disinfectant and stale blood. Evan leaned against the wall, his right hand entirely rigid. The crystallization had surged past his wrist and halfway up his forearm, refracting cold, mottled grey light under the dim emergency lamps. Every second, he could feel the jagged crystals attempting to puncture his veins, rooting themselves toward his heart.
"Saw" was crouched over an operating table, using a rusted circular saw to hack through the hydraulic strut of a decommissioned mech. He was a man who looked ready to collapse into a heap of scrap, his left eye replaced by a cheap camera lens that produced a sickening click-click as it focused.
"The cat is dead," Evan said.
Saw stopped. He turned, the camera lens zooming frantically before locking onto Evan's crystallized arm.
"That... 'sickness'... I can't cure it." Saw set the saw down, his voice like sandpaper on sheet metal. "You've brought me a corpse and a sack of supernatural waste capable of leveling half of District 3."
White Owl leaned weakly against the doorframe, her stump still seeping blood. She stared at Saw with hollow intensity. "You owed her a life. Repay it now."
Saw remained silent for a long time, then walked over and roughly grabbed Evan's right arm to inspect it.
"It's 'Source Over-Saturation Sediment'." Saw tapped the crystal with a scalpel, producing a clear metallic ring. "You've killed too many. Erased too many conflicting rules. Your body became a filter that couldn't be filled, and now the filter has shattered. The dregs are back-crystallizing. If you don't amputate this arm, you'll be a purple stone statue in three days."
"No," Evan said, pulling his arm back flatly. "I need the hand."
"Then you're here seeking suicide." Saw let out a cold snort, pointing toward an oil-stained iron chest in the corner. "The only thing that can suppress the crystallization is 'Neutralizer-Type 9'. It was a Hephaestus lab internal prototype. After the blast three years ago, the only samples left are in the abandoned 'Hub' facility."
"Go fetch it," Saw added. "If you die there, at least my clinic won't get blown up by your corpse."
Evan glanced at White Owl. She had slipped into a semi-coma, her lips turning a bruised blue.
"Save her." Evan tossed the metal canister he'd taken from the cleaners onto the operating table.
"That's the deposit."
Saw caught the canister, scanned the serial code, and the camera lens in his eye froze. His expression turned more somber than Evan had ever seen.
"Do you actually know what this represents?" Saw lowered his voice. "They aren't just researching you. They're... looking for the 'Source-Node'. Evan, a 'Zero' isn't a natural error. It's a deliberately manufactured 'Purge Protocol'."
Evan's breathing hitched for a fraction of a second.
The thousand broken radios in his head suddenly erupted into a high-pitched, piercing shriek.
"Meaning?"
"White Owl was talking in her sleep on the way here." Saw glanced at the unconscious woman. "She said that 'five meters' isn't your limit. It's your... safety latch. If the latch breaks, you aren't just erasing abilities anymore. You're erasing everything."
Evan didn't press him. He knew that in this city, knowing too much was a terminal condition.
He turned toward the exit.
"Wait." Saw called out, tossing him a roll of heavy black tactical tape. "Wrap it around the arm. It'll temporarily block the crystals from absorbing ambient Source Energy. But the price... the price is double the pain. The kind of pain where every inch of your nerves is being slowly ground to dust."
Evan took the tape and began wrapping his right arm with mechanical precision.
With every tug, his face grew a shade paler. Cold sweat rolled down his temples, but his brow didn't so much as twitch.
"Does it hurt?" Saw asked, curious.
"I'm used to it."
Evan pushed open the basement door and re-entered the downpour.
He was heading for the abandoned lab—the place they called "The Heart of Hell." Not to save his life, but so he could keep holding the blade.
Behind him, White Owl let out a blurred mumble from the table.
"Five meters... isn't a circle..."
"It's... the mouth of the abyss."
Evan didn't hear her. His silhouette vanished into the heavy fog, the crystals beneath the black tape letting out a silent, hungry roar.