The underground corridors of Sector 8 were the iron intestines of a dying monster. The air in the Boiler Room was not for breathing, but for swallowing—a foul mixture of hissing steam, peeling rust, and the sharp tang of engine coolant.
Elian Laurent stumbled in, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his lungs burning. The commotion from the bar above had been muffled by the thick steel flooring, leaving only the echo of heavy footsteps relentlessly pursuing him. His brain throbbed painfully. Every time he tried to summon the Null Perspective, his vision was flooded with white flashes that made his nose bleed once more.
He was system-blind. No rows of code. No probability percentages. Only brutal, dusty, physical reality.
"Where are you going to run, Scrap-Rat?"
The raspy voice echoed as a massive figure stepped through the boiler entrance. He was an elite Rust Raven thug. His body was draped in a filthy black fur cloak, but the true terror lay in his arms. Thick steel plates covered him from elbow to fist, coursing with a dense, crackling yellow Kinetic Axiom that hissed like static electricity.
The thug smirked, slamming his iron fists together. The impact was deafening, creating a small shockwave that blew dust off the floor. He underestimated Elian. In his eyes, the youth in the grey cloak, coughing and clutching his ribs, was nothing more than prey with a broken leg.
Elian wiped the blood from his lips. He couldn't hack that yellow energy. He couldn't see the "decimal errors" in those steel plates. But Elian was a street kid from Sector 9. If quantum physics failed him, he would resort to the law of the jungle.
The thug lunged, swinging a right hook powerful enough to shatter concrete.
Elian ducked clumsily. The punch missed, denting the steam pipe on the wall. Without hesitation, Elian scooped a handful of wet rust and grease from the floor and hurled it directly into his enemy's eyes.
"Argh! You bastard!" The thug growled, instinctively raising his hands to wipe his eyes.
It was a dirty, inelegant opening. Elian didn't waste time finding a stance. He kicked with all his might, driving the hard tip of his boot into the thug's left kneecap. A muffled crack echoed. The thug stumbled. Capitalizing on the momentum, Elian leapt and drove his right elbow brutally into the man's Adam's apple.
Thud! The enemy choked, staggering back while clutching his throat. Real street fighting is never beautiful; it's only about who is still breathing at the end.
However, Elian forgot to account for the Kinetic Axiom enveloping the man's body. The yellow energy acted as a shock absorber. The thug recovered far faster than a normal human. With eyes bloodshot and bulging, he let out a roar of fury and swung a blind backhand.
Elian was too slow to dodge. The yellow-armored fist grazed his left shoulder.
CRACK!
Blinding pain exploded. Elian was hurled through the air like a ragdoll, flying past rows of machinery before his back slammed hard against a cluster of massive gas tanks in the corner. The tanks clanged loudly. Elian slumped to the floor, coughing up fresh blood that stained his grey cloak.
His left shoulder went numb, likely fractured. The world spun. His vision began to dim.
The thug laughed softly, approaching while cracking his neck. "Is that all? I thought you had some magic tricks, Rat. Turns out you're just a lucky gutter-brat."
Gasping for oxygen, Elian's blurred vision accidentally caught a detail above his head. The massive gas tank he had just hit had a layer of frost on its surface. At the neck of the tank sat a barometer—an ancient pressure gauge encased in thick glass.
The barometer's needle vibrated violently, pointing exactly to the red maximum limit. Extreme Pressure. This tank contained liquid nitrogen coolant for the gear reactor, and the pressure was highly unstable following the impact.
Elian's mechanical brain reacted long before his body. His eyes rapidly calculated the diameter of the brass locking valve at the top of the tank. He envisioned the Boyle-Gay Lussac Law in his mind.
The Rust Raven thug jumped, raising both iron fists high to deliver a lethal blow to Elian's head.
In a split second that felt like it had slowed to a crawl, Elian didn't roll away. He grabbed a heavy steel wrench from his belt with his functioning right hand. Gritting his teeth, he used every ounce of remaining strength and momentum to hurl the wrench.
Not at the enemy. But straight up.
CLANG!
The tip of the steel wrench struck the brass valve of the gas tank with lethal precision. The valve snapped instantly.
The laws of physics took over with terrifying ferocity.
A deafening hiss filled the boiler room. Liquid gas at -100°C sprayed out like the breath of a white dragon, slamming directly into the chest of the thug still mid-air.
The effect was instantaneous. The super-frozen fluid devoured the yellow Kinetic energy on the thug's armor, turning it into brittle ice in the blink of an eye. The thrust of the gas at thousands of PSI hit the giant's body like a cannonball.
The thug didn't even have time to scream. The blast blew him across the room until he slammed into the steel wall of the boiler room with a horrific thud. His body slumped to the floor, half-frozen and unconscious, his armored plates now cracked and covered in frost.
Cold white mist filled the room. Elian fell to his knees, gasping like a drowning man reaching the surface. His hands shook violently. He had survived. Once again.
Creak...
The entrance to the boiler room opened casually. The white mist was parted by steady footsteps. Caelus walked in, his silver cloak pristine. He looked at the frozen thug at the end of the room, then at the bleeding Elian on the floor, chewing the rest of his apple as if he had just watched a moderately entertaining circus act.
"A very dramatic use of gas expansion," Caelus remarked cheerfully. "I give it an eight out of ten. Two points deducted because you nearly died."
Elian's patience snapped. Adrenaline and pain turned him into a wild animal. With his last burst of energy, he lunged forward, ignoring his throbbing shoulder. He grabbed the collar of Caelus's silver cloak and slammed him against a nearby steam pipe.
"Explain everything, damn it!" Elian barked, his voice hoarse and trembling with rage. "We're being hunted by monsters, nearly incinerated by Inquisitors, and my head feels like it's going to explode! Why are we risking our lives for a girl we don't even know?!"
Caelus didn't resist. He didn't push Elian away. For the first time since they met, the mocking grin on Caelus's face vanished completely. His eyes stared straight into Elian's with a cold seriousness.
"Because the Refraction Girl isn't just a fugitive ghost, Elian," Caelus answered, his voice low, sharp like a whisper. "She stole something before fleeing to the lower sectors. A Grand Cipher. It is the highest-level military logistics bypass code from the Upper Sector. The only ticket to get past the Inquisitor blockade at the Central Lift without being burned to ash."
Elian's grip on Caelus's collar slowly loosened.
"You want to get to Sector 4? You want to save Miya from the clutches of The Architect?" Caelus tilted his head slightly. "Without that Grand Cipher, your journey ends in Sector 8. That girl... is the key to tearing down your sky."
Elian released his grip entirely. He stepped back, his breath still heavy as his brain processed that absolute truth. Caelus was right. He couldn't hack the military Central Lift guarded by dozens of Inquisitors and systems like General Orion with just a wrench and a damaged brain. He needed that ticket.
As Elian looked down, trying to steady his heart, his eyes caught a visual anomaly.
At the end of the narrow, dark corridor directly behind the boiler room, the air didn't look normal. There was a slight curvature that made the shadows of the pipes look distorted, like looking at the bottom of a pool through rippling water.
Elian walked slowly toward the corridor, ignoring Caelus's gaze. At the mouth of the alley, snagged on the sharp edge of a cut steam pipe, was a fragment.
A scrap of thin white cloth.
The cloth didn't look like an ordinary material. Viewed from certain angles, the edges seemed transparent, refracting the dim light of the boiler room, trying to hide its existence from reality. Elian reached out and touched it. The texture was incredibly fine—a luxury that could never have originated from Sector 8.
But that wasn't what caught Elian's breath. At the torn edge of the cloth were several drops of liquid. It wasn't oil. It wasn't water. It was drops of fresh blood. And it wasn't deep red.
The blood glowed with an eerie silver hue, reflecting the dim light like liquid mercury.
Elian gripped the cloth tightly in his trembling hand. His gaze pierced into the darkness of the cold, narrow corridor ahead.
"She's wounded," Elian whispered, more to himself than to Caelus. His eyes narrowed, his hunter's instinct now locked onto a definitive target. "And she's at the end of this hallway."