The two officers had not stopped trying.
That was the thing about training — it kept running even after the situation had outgrown it.
"Dr. Voss." The lead officer kept his voice measured, one hand raised, baton lowered. "You will be taken into stabilisation. Seven days. When you come through it, everything you want to present — your research, your findings — it will all be heard. That is a promise."
Voss looked at him.
Not the wide, restless gaze of someone in Phase One. Just steady. Patient. The way a man looks when he already knows how the conversation ends.
"I appreciate that," he said.
"Then come with us."
"I mean I appreciate that you still think I need it." He tilted his head. "I knew, from the morning I woke up already through it, that I could remain silent. Stay ordinary. Let the scanners read whatever I allowed them to read and simply — wait. Work."
The second officer spoke quietly into his radio:
"Requesting combat clearance. Subject is non-compliant."
From the airship channel, a woman's voice came back — calm, direct:
"Negative on combat clearance. Continue dialogue. Your combined efficiency index is 27 and 29. He cannot handle that."
Voss turned his face slightly toward the ceiling. Toward the radio frequency.
He smiled.
"She believes 27 and 29 is a problem for me," he said, almost to himself. "That is genuinely touching."
The second officer froze.
"How are you—"
"Hearing you?" Voss finished. "Auditory processing at this efficiency level reaches approximately four times standard baseline range. Encrypted or not, the signal still produces sound. I simply hear it."
He looked at both of them.
"You do not understand what I have achieved. That is not an insult. It is just the truth."
From the radio, the woman again:
"Combat clearance granted. Bring him in. Alive."
· · ·
The Lamborghini was moving on autopilot, easing through the evacuation traffic in the Local Lane three blocks from the Consortium building.
On the console display, a news broadcast was running.
The anchor — a woman, composed, earpiece in — was speaking over aerial footage of the building:
"— sources confirming the situation has now entered its third hour. What is notable is that the subject, described as a research physician employed by the Consortium, appears to be stationary and non-aggressive while multiple units have been unable to achieve compliance. Critics are already pointing to the declining number of high-efficiency personnel entering public service — with many individuals who reach Phase Two and above being immediately absorbed into private industry, the agencies responsible for managing breakthrough incidents are operating at a fraction of their optimal staffing—"
Aryn reached over and lowered the volume. Not off. Just down.
"Marcus is a good man," she said.
Clover was watching the aerial footage even with the sound down.
"I know he is."
"He used to bring Nia books. Biology picture books, from before she could read properly. He said she had curious eyes."
A pause.
"This does not look like what I have seen Phase One do to people," Clover said.
"No," Aryn said. "It does not."
"Those officers who arrived — the ACU. They seem like they can handle it."
She did not answer that.
He looked at her.
"He brought this up with you specifically. The fellowship. The research credit. He has been carrying that for years while sitting across from you at meetings and coming to our house for dinner."
Aryn said nothing.
"We are already involved," Clover said. Not accusatory. Just naming it.
She kept her eyes on the road that was driving itself.
"Yes," she said finally. "We are."
On the display, the news drone feed cut to static.
The anchor paused. Touched her earpiece.
"We appear to have lost our aerial source. We are unable to determine whether this is a government-issued signal restriction or — we are receiving reports of a possible third party. We will continue to update as information becomes available."
Clover straightened.
"Someone shot the drone."
Aryn looked at the screen.
"That is not a government protocol," she said quietly.
They looked at each other.
Neither of them said what they were both thinking.
· · ·
In the airship above the building, the officer on comms lowered her headset.
"The drone just went dark," she said.
The pilot looked at the external cameras.
"Direction?"
"Can not locate the source. High-powered. Three kilometres minimum."
A pause.
"That kid was right," the pilot said. "The baseline one."
"Focus," the comms officer said.
Inside Laboratory Seven, Voss removed his white coat.
He folded it. Set it on the workstation. Underneath — a white shirt, tucked, suit trousers, clean shoes. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the two officers the way a person looks at something mildly inconvenient.
"This," he said, "will be a breeze."
The lead officer launched.
Not recklessly — angled, using the room's layout, momentum from the far wall. Standard elevated-subject engagement. The second officer moved simultaneously from the opposite angle, baton raised, the impact arc calculated to force Voss into a defence split.
Voss stepped inside the first kick.
Not dodged. Stepped inside — absorbing the angle, redirecting the force, letting the officer's momentum carry them past rather than blocking and taking the energy. The baton came in and he moved a shoulder and it caught wall instead of chest, and the impact tore through the composite panel behind him, leaving a hole the width of two fists.
Both officers reset.
The lead officer raised his firearm.
"Last warning."
Voss looked at the gun with academic curiosity.
"You have permission to shoot me now?"
"Bring you in alive. Yes."
He fired.
The energy round — compressed electromagnetic discharge, standard Phase Three response armament — covered four metres in under a millisecond.
Voss was not there when it arrived.
The round punched through the door behind him, through the corridor wall beyond that, and blew a hole in the stairwell casing before its charge dissipated.
"Oh," Voss said, looking at the corridor. "I see. You actually want to kill me."
"We want to bring you in—"
Voss moved.
He crossed the distance in two steps and hit the lead officer with a single controlled strike — open palm, centre mass, structured force — and the officer left the ground and landed across the hood of the closest military vehicle parked at the building's base, the impact audible from three floors up.
One officer left standing.
The second raised his baton and fired twice — both rounds deflected, not with a weapon, with his forearm, absorbing and redirecting the discharge through a movement so small it looked like he had simply adjusted his sleeve.
Voss looked at him.
"Retreat," the comms channel said in the officer's ear. "Abort engagement. Reinforcements en route."
The officer did not move.
Voss watched him.
"Go," he said. Not a threat. An instruction.
The officer stepped back.
Then from above — from the building across the street, three kilometres out, a direction no one had successfully identified — a single shot came in at window height.
Voss did not look up.
He raised his hand.
His palm caught the round — a sniper-grade penetration slug — without looking at it. The impact turned his wrist back half a centimetre. He looked at the round sitting in his palm.
Then looked up.
Past the building. Past the grid. Three kilometres of city between him and the shooter.
He found the window.
He bent his knees.
· · ·
What happened next was not in any training manual.
He went up.
Not off the roof — through the gap in the wall he had made earlier, using the building's face as the launch point, legs generating kinetic output that should have required a vehicle, not a human body. The airship pilot saw him clear the roofline and lose him in the building corridor of the city grid.
The comms channel went quiet for three seconds.
Then:
"Where did he—"
"Gone."
· · ·
The AI gave its final reading six minutes after Voss left the building:
Subject cognitive efficiency index — final confirmed reading prior to departure: 43.2%. Elevated from initial reading of 41.0% over the course of the engagement. Classification: unresolved. This does not correspond to any recorded Breakthrough profile.
The lead officer sat on the hood of the vehicle he had landed on. His ribs were intact — barely. The medic running the scan told him this twice, as though saying it once was not convincing.
The comms officer came down from the airship.
She stood in front of the building and looked at the hole in Level Two.
"43%," she said.
"Started at 41," the lead officer said from the vehicle hood.
"His efficiency increased during the engagement."
"Yes."
She looked at the sniper report on her display. No confirmed location. No trajectory trace. A three-kilometre shot, a single round, and the shooter had not been found despite two aerial sweeps.
"Someone was watching this," she said.
"Someone was helping him," the pilot said from behind her.
She filed the report from where she stood. Sent it up the chain with the full notation:
Subject: Dr. Marcus Voss, age 37. Efficiency reading at engagement peak: 43.2%. Engagement result: personnel neutralised, subject escaped. Classification recommendation: this was not a first Breakthrough. Not a standard irregularity. Recommend reclassification as second or third Breakthrough event. Third-party involvement confirmed. Drone elimination suggests coordinated external operation. Case referred to Helix Vanguard Command.
She sent it.
Then looked at the building one more time.
The hole in Level Two. The scorch mark on the corridor wall from the deflected energy round. The dent in the military vehicle. A sniper no one had seen. A man who caught a bullet with his hand and then left by jumping over the city.
"What are we actually dealing with?" the pilot said behind her.
She did not answer.
Because the honest answer was that she did not know.
And that was the part that kept running in her head on the way back up to the ship.
Not the fight. Not the jump.
The fact that his percentage had gone up.
During the fight.
It had gone up.
— END OF CHAPTER 5 —