"I can't anymore."
The tech slumped against the wall, breath coming in ragged gasps. he was Ascension 1, and adept in maintenance, and clearly not for this.
The wound in his side had reopened. Fresh blood soaked through his uniform, dark and spreading.
Zelaine glanced back. Her expression was hard but not unkind.
"Just a little further."
The tech managed a weak and incredulous laugh that dissolved into a cough. "Huh? But our destination is on the bottom floor."
Zelaine didn't explain. A few steps later she stopped in front of a maintenance closet, barely marked and wedged between two support beams.
She swiped her card.
The panel beeped green and the door hissed open.
"Get inside and hide. I'll cast a barrier."
Atiya watched her work. Quick, efficient, no hesitation anywhere in it.
'I never took her for someone responsible,' he thought. 'It's refreshing once in a while.'
The tech stumbled inside and leaned heavily against a stack of supply crates. He looked up at them from there, with pale face slick with sweat.
"It's been a pleasure meeting you. What are your names?"
"I'm Zelaine," she said. "He's Atiya. Bye."
She shut the door and pressed her palm flat against the metal. Crystalline lattice spread outward from her hand, thin and shimmering, sealing the entire frame.
It glowed faintly violet then faded to nothing.
Zelaine exhaled through her nose.
"We should have left him in your room earlier."
Atiya shrugged and kept moving.
"Anyway," Zelaine said, falling into step beside him, her voice dropping low and serious, "stick close to me. Of everyone in this facility right now, you are not permitted to run, die, or hide."
Atiya nodded once. He understood exactly what those words were carrying.
He was the son of the facility commander. If word reached anyone that Inteja's son had fled while others fought, or worse, been captured or killed on her watch in her own branch, it would not stop at Ansep.
It would reach the Pharsa name, the family reputation, the entire chain of command underneath her. And if something actually happened to him, Inteja would not grieve quietly.
She might burn the facility to ash and investigate evrything and razed evrything down to ground be it royals or seven great families.
'I really hope this doesn't escalate,' he thought.
They rounded the final corner toward the restricted lift.
The doors were sealed and power was cut off.
Zelaine stopped short.
A single black butterfly sat on the control panel, wings opening and closing slowly, its compound eyes reflecting their silhouettes back in fractured red.
Zelaine cracked her knuckles. "Round two, bugs."
The butterfly's wings flared violet once.
Then it split, two becoming four becoming sixteen, multiplying in clean geometric progression until the corridor filled with a swirling cloud of identical copies and the air went thick with the buzz of wings.
Zelaine grinned, feral and genuinely delighted. "Guess we're doing this the fun way."
Atiya stepped up beside her and snapped three small portals into existence at his fingertips, each one five centimeters across, positioned and ready. "Let's make it quick. I am going home."
The butterflies surged forward.
The corridor lit up with explosions and redirected projectiles, the sharp crack of Yai-enhanced crystal striking iridescent wings.
Dozens burned down completely, wings curling into ash mid-air. But there were too many and they were too fast for even Tyrant Cube's blast radius to catch in a single sweep.
The survivors poured forward like black oil and slammed against the barrier.
The shell held, the impacts rattling it like hail on glass. Violet cracks spiderwebbed across the surface before the runes flared and sealed them.
Bodies piled against the barrier until it looked like they were submerged in living shadow.
"I have a plan," he said. "Let's roll the barrier and run instead."
Zelaine's head snapped toward him. "Roll the barrier. Like a ball."
She blinked once.
'Like a cannonball from Ben 10?'
When she had first coded the protective shell skill she had built it as a stationary dome, with main focus on pure defense.
The idea of converting it into a rolling sphere had genuinely never occurred to her in all the time since.
'Useful,' she admitted to herself. 'I can modify this later. But first I need to do my job.'
"Fine," she said. "Hold on."
She pushed an adjustment through her Yai circuits. The barrier shimmered and shifted, edges softening until it rounded into a perfect sphere, the two of them suspended inside like insects caught in amber.
Atiya braced against the inner wall.
"Let's go."
The sphere lurched forward, awkward at first, then finding momentum as they shifted their weight and leaned into it.
It rolled down the emergency stairwell like an oversized bowling ball, bouncing off railings, scraping walls, ricocheting around corners with metallic clangs that rang through the entire shaft.
Inside, the world spun in continuous ridiculous loops.
Butterflies hammered the outer surface without stopping, bodies smearing violet ichor across the crystal in long streaks that blurred their vision further.
Their bodies tumbled with no dignity whatsoever, arms flailing, legs tangling, heads connecting with the inner wall at irregular intervals.
"Ughhh," Atiya groaned, face pressed flat against the crystal. "It's the fastest way, dammit!"
Zelaine, somehow managing to look annoyed while spinning, yelled back over the roar of impacts. "Silly me, thinking you could actually be useful!"
Without the Yai coating stabilizing their inner ears and stomachs they would have been sick three floors ago.
The sphere careened downward, bouncing off a landing, scraping a support beam, ricocheting off the opposite wall and picking up speed with each floor. Then with one final bone-rattling impact it slammed into the sealed doors of the lowest restricted level.
The violet-veined metal cracked wide open.
The sphere rolled through the gap, skidded across the floor trailing sparks, slowed in a wide unsteady arc, and stopped.
The crystal shell flickered once and dissolved in a harmless cascade of sparks.
Atiya and Zelaine spilled out onto the cold floor in a graceless tangle of limbs and lay there for a moment, breathing hard, staring up at the ceiling.
Zelaine spoke first.
"Never again."
Atiya pushed himself up on one elbow, hair pointing in several directions at once. "Yeah. We are not telling Mom about this part."
They looked around slowly.
The lowest level corridor stretched ahead under dim emergency strip lighting, walls crawling with faint violet veins that pulsed slowly. The air felt thick and wrong.
From somewhere deeper in the restricted zone, a low resonant hum had begun to build, barely audible but growing steadily.
Zelaine stood and brushed ash from her clothes. "Correl's in there somewhere. Let's move." She pressed two fingers to her temple briefly. "Ugh. My head."
Atiya got to his feet beside her, steadying himself with one hand against the wall while the dizziness settled.
He looked at the intersection ahead, two identical corridors branching off into dim red light.
"Left or right?"
"Right," Zelaine said without hesitation.
"Right right, or left-right right?"
Zelaine rolled her eyes. "Left-right."
She cut off his doubt with a flat look and took off running. Atiya followed close behind, their footsteps echoing in the unnaturally quiet hallway.
They rounded the corner and immediately caught movement ahead.
A redheaded man was sprinting down the corridor, a trail of black butterflies swarming after him, the horde gaining steadily.
"Duck!" Zelaine shouted.
She crushed another marble crystal in her palm.
Twin cubes materialized mid-air, smaller than the Tyrant Cube, sleek and crimson-edged.
Zelaine's fingers moved and shaped the blast radius into a tight cone that would catch the swarm without touching the man.
The cubes detonated with a sharp crack, violet-white fire blooming around the trailing butterflies. They vaporized in a burst of ash.
The redheaded man stumbled, ducking as embers rained down behind him.
He spun around, wide-eyed and breathless. "What! Ah. Thanks."
Zelaine closed the distance without slowing. "What are you doing here?"
The man straightened and brushed ash from his coat. He looked exhausted, pale skin and dark circles, red hair disheveled like he had been running since before they arrived. "I was on sick leave for half a month," he said, still catching his breath. "But I heard there was a joint research session going on and I couldn't stay away. Only when I got here there were no guards, no people anywhere. What's happening?"
Atiya tilted his head, something clicking into place. "On sick leave. Are you Novaria? Professor Correl's lab partner?"
The man blinked. "I'm his lab partner, yes, but who the hell is Novaria. I'm Nongban."
Atiya rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay. I'll go with Noah. Let's get to the lab, we're under attack."
Nongban's eyes went wide. "Attack? What kind of—"
Zelaine cut in before he could finish. "Butterflies. Thousands of them. They are eating everything in sight, the alarms are dead, comms are down, and we just rolled down the emergency stairwell in a giant crystal ball to get here. Long story. Move."
Nongban stared at her for half a second, processed all of that, and nodded once. "Right. The lab is this way. I know a shortcut through the maintenance tunnels, less open space and fewer places for the bugs to swarm." He turned and started jogging, glancing back over his shoulder. "And thanks again for the save."
Zelaine smirked faintly. "Save the gratitude. Survive first."
Atiya fell into step beside her, keeping his voice low. "He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Sick leave, you said."
Zelaine's eyes stayed on Nongban's back, narrow and steady. "Yeah. Convenient timing."
They followed him through the maintenance tunnels.
They reached the octagonal gate soon enough.
A swarm of Yai-beasts and black butterflies battered the sealed doors, claws scraping metal, wings buzzing in furious overlapping waves, bodies pressing against the barrier in a mindless frenzy.
Zelaine crushed two marble crystals at once.
Four crimson-edged cubes materialized above her shoulders and launched forward in tight formation. She clenched her fist. The cubes detonated in a chained sequence, each blast timed to shred the swarm while leaving the gate untouched.
When the smoke cleared, the gate stood completely unharmed. Faint scorch marks and piles of glittering ash were all that remained.
Atiya stared at her. "How much Yai do you actually have in your reservoir. You have been going absolutely crazy."
Zelaine shot him a look that was half annoyed and half smug. "I have a skill that triples my Yai recovery rate on top of an already top-class baseline. How do you keep forgetting that."
"Right," Atiya said. "Forgot about that one."
Nongban had already moved to the side panel. The screen was shattered, and the display was dark.
"Fortunately," he muttered, fingers finding the edges of the panel casing, "we have alternatives for situations like this."
Nongban pulled a slim access card from his coat pocket and slotted it into the narrow panel at the side of the gate.
Atiya leaned in to read the name embossed on the surface of the card.
Cornelius Correl.
He raised an eyebrow. "Did you steal that. Never mind."
The locking mechanisms recognised Correl's card. The violet veins crawling across the gate's surface flickered once and faded.
With a low pneumatic groan the octagonal panels parted.
They stepped through and moved to the railing above the metallic stairs.
The situation below unfolded all at once.
Blood painted the floor in wide sticky arcs.
Organs lay scattered across the ground like discarded parts.
Corpses slumped against consoles and walls and railings.
A handful of people remained alive, huddled behind overturned equipment, faces pale, eyes fixed on the center of the room.
At the center of it all stood the source.
A figure in a white and silver mechanical suit, intricate black patterns etched across the torso and legs like circuits. In one hand a long ornate staff topped with a glowing red crescent blade.
In one hand it held a long ornate staff topped with a glowing red crescent blade. Behind it a vibrant portal hung open in the air, and from that portal numerous tendrils had extended outward into the room.
Impaled on the ends of those tendrils were the bodies of researchers, dangling limply, blood running down in slow thin rivulets that dripped from their feet to the floor below.
The figure turned slowly toward the open gate.
Its face was half-human and half something else, silver hair falling across features that didn't resolve into anything familiar. Two glowing violet eyes burned through the dim and found them immediately.
Atiya's stomach churned at the sight.
"What the fuck happened here."
Zelaine's hand had already moved to her pocket, fingers resting against the next crystal, still and ready.
The tendrils flexed slowly.