The shot rippled – and the battlefield exploded.

Max didn't need warning. The air cracked like glass.

He moved.

Toward the pod.

"Chloe—Alyssa—PROTECT LIZ!"

No one needed more than that.

The twins moved as one. Chloe phased – flickering half-invisible. Alyssa slammed a hand to the ground – gravity inverted. The stasis pod locked into place with a deep thrum. Liz's eyes flickered, unfocused. Still comatose. Still a target.

The first puppet hit them like a corpse on strings.

Splice didn't speak. She didn't need to.

Her puppets moved like nightmares: bone-snapping angles, surgeon's precision, dead hands hungry for the living. One tackled Alyssa, claws scrabbling at her neck. Another flanked wide – arms outstretched toward Chloe.

Alyssa screamed – fist clenched – the puppet's body crumpled, spine snapping like it had never mattered.

But the second kept coming.

Victor hit it midair.

Half-chimera, plated fists and armoured forearms slamming the corpse into wreckage. They rolled in fire and steel. Victor's teeth were bared. His knuckles bled silver.

Then Crux arrived.

Dan had just turned when the pain hit.

Not a strike. Not a spell.

Just pain. Unfiltered. Inflicted.

Dan collapsed to one knee – golden aura sputtering like a candle in wind. His entire body spasmed without a single wound.

Crux walked toward him like a priest approaching the altar.

"You've got the healer's touch," he said gently.

"Let's see how much you can take before you beg to die."

He raised a hand. Another wave.

Dan screamed.

Max spun – Soulfire igniting across his arm. Gold. Not blue. Hot, but not right.

He lunged—

CRACK.

The ground split. Reverb blocked him – revolver raised. Calm. Perfect.

Soulfire met steel.

The revolver didn't move.

"Try again," Reverb said, and turned the weapon sideways.

Kinetic feedback detonated.

Max flew. Slammed into torn fuselage. Dropped hard. Soulfire flickered. His ribs screamed.

He tried again.

Hellfire. Come on. Burn.

Nothing.

Just pain.

Still too weak. Still broken from Mammon.

He thought of the motel. Of the night the world changed. Of the promise he whispered over Liz's sleeping body:

"I'll protect you. No matter what I become."

And now – his fire was going out.

His daughter was ten feet away.

And he couldn't stop them.

Max's throat clenched. He tasted blood and bile.

If I can't protect her now— What use was any of it?

Victor was trading blows – blocking attacks meant for Chloe. His body was coiled steel, focused and violent. A protector on instinct.

Chloe blinked – phased – dodged a strike.

Too late.

A puppet grabbed her mid-shift. Its hands dug into her arms like bone magnets.

"Let go—LET GO!"

Splice giggled, not out of glee, but precision.

"Twins. Always mirror symmetries. I've wanted a matched set."

Alyssa staggered up – gravity rippling around her again.

Splice twitched her fingers like she was fine-tuning a circuit.

"You break them," she mused. "I reassemble. Perfect efficiency. Like modular code… just wetter."

Chloe phased through Splice's third puppet and reformed behind her sister, arm wrapping protectively around Alyssa's waist.

"You okay?"

"Less talking, more wrecking!"

Alyssa's eyes locked on Splice.

"You want a matched set?" she spat. "Come break your teeth on us."

Chloe raised a bleeding hand, face pale but steady.

"Touch her again," she said quietly, "and I'll phase through your heart."

Not far away, Crux raised his hand again. Dan gasped, light pulsing from his palms but it wasn't enough.

"You're wasting your talent," Crux whispered.

"You'd be beautiful in chains."

Then Rewind joined the fray.

Victor barely saw the afterimage – until his knee buckled. Another Rewind cracked a baton across his shoulder. A third version slashed upward for his throat.

Victor blocked – just in time. The blade skidded off plating. Sparks flew. He grunted.

"Why are there three of this guy!?"

Max's Soulfire reignited.

Weaker.

Reverb walked toward him – unhurried. Calm. Like it was a training op.

"You should be on your knees."

"That's where all things end."

Max didn't answer.

He hurled a wave of Soulfire.

Square into Reverb's chest.

It didn't burn.

It bounced.

Reverb twisted. Returned the force through a fist – into Max's ribs.

Max choked on air. The world rang. Gold. Bright. Insufficient. Hellfire's gone. Not dead. Dormant. And Liz is still in the crossfire.

He clenched his fists.

If I can't protect her now – what use was any of it?

He staggered to his feet. The field was tilting.

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Dan—writhing. Chloe—screaming. Alyssa—cracking under pressure. Victor—cornered. The pod—exposed. And Reverb—still walking.

"We don't want you dead," Reverb said.

"Just… finished."

Max bared his teeth. Summoned the last of his Soulfire.

And ran.

Behind him – Splice's puppets rose again.

From the tree line— Far above— A sniper exhaled.

…………………

Agent 714 lay still.

Wind hissed across the ridge in dry gusts, but her breath did not stir it.

Her sniper barrel rested silent against the shale. Her body was flush with the earth. Her mind was hollowed down to its target parameters.

She had counted twenty-seven exhalations since Chamber Theta breached Chinese airspace.

Twenty-eight now.

Her finger brushed the trigger.

The CIA team – six confirmed operatives – was engaging the anomaly's group. Visual confirmation: Max Jaeger, Elizabeth Jaeger's containment pod, four additional unidentified empowered civilians. No insignia. No military registration. Not Chinese.

Not American either.

But they were bleeding. Screaming. Falling apart.

The US team – designated Chamber Theta moved like a perfected kill team.

One target was convulsing from non-lethal neuroshock. Another had been disarmed twice.

One hostile flickered in and out like corrupted video feed – tactical stealth, or bleeding-edge tech.

The woman with the corpse-drones had deployed three assets. Their biomechanics were… wrong.

It didn't look like power.

It looked like control.

That was worse.

Agent 714's eye twitched.

No.

Agent 714's neural command relay blinked silently:

❖ DO NOT ENGAGE ❖ Observe only. ❖ Await General Wang's override. ❖ Chamber Theta is a diplomatic operation. Do not interfere.

She blinked once. The message vanished.

She let out a breath.

Then she pulled the trigger.

CRACK.

The first puppet's head exploded in a mist of synthetic rot and scalp thread.

Alyssa didn't even see the bullet. She just gasped – and lived.

Splice flinched.

Another shot. CRACK.

A second puppet dropped. Leg severed at the knee. The body still twitched.

Third shot – missed on purpose – slammed into the dirt inches from Reverb's foot as he raised his revolver again.

He stopped walking.

So did Crux.

Rewind froze mid-flicker.

Max, still on his knees, turned toward the tree line.

Chloe gasped, arm bleeding, eyes wide.

Dan, barely conscious, whispered:

"Someone's shooting them…"

Agent 714 chambered another round.

No one saw her. Her body was still prone. Still invisible in the thermoptic folds of her reactive armour. But she was there.

Watching.

Judging.

Breaking orders.

The visor flickered with network status:

SATCOM DISRUPTED. ENCRYPTION DISABLED. VISOR FEED OFFLINE.

She shut it all off.

No transmission.

No surveillance.

Just her eyes.

She marked the next target – Splice.

Her mouth moved, though no one heard it.

"This is Chinese soil."

The rifle purred against her shoulder.

"You were not invited."

Her finger flexed again.

"And you won't leave."

…………………

The vault was cold.

Steel walls. Slit lights. No windows. The air smelled of dry circuits and sanitized ambition.

General Wang stood at the head of a curved table, arms behind his back, boots still dusty from the inspection yard. His uniform was immaculate. His medals were old.

On the main display: satellite feed. Frozen frame. A jagged streak of flame scarring the hills outside Shanghai. A wrecked plane. Six unidentified hostiles converging. One stasis pod glowing in the smoke.

He didn't blink.

A junior officer – barely thirty – cleared his throat too loudly.

"Sir. Visual confirmation. A foreign aircraft crossed Chinese airspace. Crashed 18 minutes ago. We believe the Americans have deployed an unsanctioned strike team."

Wang's eyes didn't leave the screen.

"Designation?"

"We believe it's Chamber Theta. Six-man cell. Off-record."

A pause. No one spoke. Then the officer added:

"Max Jaeger is alive. The anomaly. His daughter's stasis pod was recovered intact. Engagement ongoing."

Wang finally turned.

"And Agent 714?"

"Sir…" The officer hesitated. "No response. She acknowledged the drop – but cut her feed. Satellite uplink dead. Visor comms shut. No response to protocol override."

Wang exhaled through his nose.

The table waited.

"She is… assessing," he said at last. "She was always built for precision."

Silence followed.

Someone shifted. It was Colonel Shu, his deputy – a long-faced man with the discipline of an executioner.

"Sir," Shu said carefully. "If the Americans are here for the Contractor – this is not coincidence. Not rogue. This is retrieval. Weaponization."

Wang nodded once.

"They want him. Alive. Not for interrogation. For absorption."

Shu tilted his head. "You believe the Americans know how the Contract system functions?"

"I believe," Wang said, "that they want to skip the learning curve."

He stepped away from the table.

"They want power. The awakening. The method. They want to burn their gods and build new ones."

He said it too easily.

A few of the younger officers glanced at each other – unsettled.

Colonel Shu narrowed his eyes.

"And the daughter?" he asked.

Wang stopped.

"They don't understand what she is."

He did not elaborate.

No one asked.

The overhead lights flickered. Just once. As if the bunker itself was listening.

Wang placed both hands on the table and leaned in, voice low but clear.

"Deploy the 14th Mobile Regiment. Local command."

He looked directly at Shu.

"Do not let the Americans leave Chinese soil alive."

"And bring me the girl."

…………………

Dr. Grimm stood alone in the North Tower, one hand resting lightly on the reinforced glass as the mountain storm rolled in.

The skies above Site B were always grey. But today, they seemed darker. Like the world had begun to bruise.

The encrypted alert pinged once, then again.

Grimm didn't turn from the window.

A third ping.

He finally blinked.

"Accept transmission," he said quietly.

The AI core obeyed. The message unfolded across the curved holo-wall like a surgical incision.

PRIORITY-BLACK TRANSMISSION From: FERRON Status: Secure Relay Uplink

—Plane down. Shanghai outskirts. —CIA black ops on site. —Chamber Theta confirmed. —Max alive. Not yet compromised. —Liz's pod targeted. —Contractor-class violence escalating.

"They're here to take him."

Grimm exhaled once through his nose. Not frustration. Not fear. Just recalibration.

He turned, the steel plates of the observation deck humming under his heels.

"They didn't waste time."

Across the room, Dr. Adisa looked up from her workstation. Her brow was furrowed, one hand still hovering over a tray of spectral node samples.

"They sent Theta?" she asked, tone sharp. "To intercept Max? In China?"

Grimm nodded once.

"No insignia. No accountability. They're not there to kill him, Adisa."

She straightened. "They want his awakening ability."

"They want everything. Max. The girl. The flames. The breach."

Adisa folded her arms, jaw tightening.

"And General Wang?"

Grimm's eye twitched. "He will have people there."

"He's watching."

"Of course he is."

There was a pause – quiet except for the low hum of soulfield generators humming behind the walls.

Finally, Adisa stepped forward.

"You need to activate Alpha and Omega."

Grimm didn't respond.

"Helmut," she said, voice low. "This is not salvageable. If Theta captures Max, they'll dissect him. If China recovers Liz, she disappears into a vault. And if either one of them figures out what's inside her—"

"They won't."

"They might."

He turned, slowly.

"She's not just a host," Grimm said.

"She's a gate. Aamon's fragment lives inside her."

"They can't open it."

He paused.

"But they have torches."

Adisa was quiet. Then:

"So, we leave her to the wolves – or we torch the world first?"

Grimm looked away.

The weather outside was shifting – faster now. Lightning crawled silently across the horizon like something trying to escape a cage.

He lifted a hand to the comm panel.

"Prepare Vault Z for potential breach. Initiate containment fallback protocol."

"If Max fails, we burn the gate."

Dr. Adisa didn't speak.

"Also," Grimm added, more quietly. "Begin ghost-tracking Ethan Campbell."

Adisa's eyes narrowed. "He's still out there?"

Grimm nodded.

"And he's getting closer."

…………………

The gunfire had slowed.

Not because the fight was over.

But because the battlefield had changed.

Max knelt beside the stasis pod, chest heaving, Soulfire clinging to his skin in shallow flickers. The air stank of sulphur, cordite, and burnt cloth. Somewhere behind him, Chloe was coughing, Alyssa was screaming – and Victor was swearing between punches.

And then came the sound.

The shot.

Clean. Distant. Surgical.

The puppet lunging for Alyssa's throat collapsed, skull cored mid-lunge. Splice hissed.

Another puppet dropped – leg severed at the knee. Chloe blinked, stumbled away. Reverb turned sharply, his revolver lowering just an inch.

"Who's firing?" Crux snapped.

No answer.

Dan gasped on the ground, coughing gold. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth, but still upright. Still shielding.

Max pressed a hand to the pod, felt its pulse, and stood. Slowly.

They were still alive.

Because of someone else.

A ghost in the tree line.

He didn't know who was helping but they had a window.

"Victor!" Max shouted. "Chloe! With me! Push them back!"

Victor roared – a sound halfway between man and monster – and drove a plated fist into Rewind's afterimage. It flickered, skipped but Victor followed, body slamming into the real one mid-step. They tumbled across the grass in a blur of steel and fury.

Chloe phased through Splice's third puppet and reformed behind her sister, arm wrapping protectively around Alyssa's waist.

"You okay?"

"Less talking, more wrecking!"

Dan raised both hands – his aura expanded again, thicker, brighter – a golden pressure wave that pushed Crux back a full step. Crux smiled, blood on his lips.

"That's it, healer. Hurt me."

Max moved.

Not fast.

Not powerful.

But on purpose.

He ran straight at Reverb.

Reverb raised the revolver, grinned, and pulled the trigger—

Max ducked.

Not with power. Not with fire. Just timing.

The bullet cracked past his ear. Max closed the distance and swung Soulfire in a wide arc.

Reverb blocked it – barely.

The kinetic rebound flared across the clearing, blasting debris sideways. But Max stayed upright.

He pivoted, dropped low, and kicked Reverb's leg out from under him.

Reverb staggered.

Not much. But it was the first time he moved.

Max stood, chest heaving.

"You're not the first weapon I've faced," he said through grit teeth. "And you won't be the last."

Reverb's smile faltered.

Splice hissed. "Something's wrong – where's my second line!?"

Crux looked skyward.

More gunfire cracked in the distance. The rhythm had changed.

Max turned – just in time to see Chinese helicopters breaking over the ridge. Shadows dropped from cables – armoured boots hitting earth with precision.

Chinese infantry. Dozens of them.

Laser sights snapped through the trees.

"Hold position!" someone barked in Mandarin. "On your knees!"

The CIA Contractors didn't budge.

Reverb clicked his comm once.

"Director. We have company."

Max stepped in front of the pod, raising his Soulfire again.

Not as a weapon.

As a wall.

Victor joined him, panting. "Uh… Max?"

"Yeah?"

Victor nodded toward the treeline. "We're in the middle of a three-way standoff."

Alyssa coughed beside him. "And we're the only ones who look like civilians."

Max didn't lower his hand.

Chloe stood beside her sister.

Dan's golden shield shimmered.

Six Americans. Dozens of Chinese. One sniper still watching.

And a girl in a pod who could end the world if she opened her eyes.

If this was where he died – so be it. But no one would touch her. Not this time.

Not again.

Max gritted his teeth.

"No one touches her."

Reverb raised his revolver again— Crux took a step forward— The Chinese commander barked something unintelligible— And then—

Liz's pod pulsed.

Not loud.

Not bright.

Just… there.

A ripple of pressure spread from its surface – barely perceptible. But every Contractor stopped. Every soldier looked. Max felt it in his bones.

Victor whispered, "What was that?"

Dan exhaled. "She's dreaming again."

Splice's smile returned.

"And dreaming things don't stay asleep for long."

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