Kai gave it a minute, and already he could hear and feel the chaos ensuing, the very ground beneath his feet shaking. As such, he rushed forward, using Blood Pumping, he jumped over the gate with ease, and ran straight for the main entrance of the AMC.
Sothing felt wrong.
But there was no room for hesitation.
The others had done their part - now it was his turn.
The building ahead was a brutal fortress - five interlocking trapezoidal wedges forming a symtrical titan of war.
It was deceptively calm.
No drones, no automated defences, no sensor arrays tracking every foreign molecule.
Just gates that any capable mutants can scale.
Kai obviously felt that, and so did the others.
'This has to be a trap.'
It was hard not to conclude otherwise, but also backing away wasn't an option, and Kai didn't have much to lose. He stuck to his guns and, like always, if there was a trap, he would simply have to break out of it and get what he ca here for.
'They're buying ti,' he thought. 'So I'd better make it count.'
He slowed his sprint as he reached the door, tilting his head slightly.
Blood Vision.
The world shifted into pulsing circulatory maps - arterial lines glowing like red constellations overlaying architecture. Heartbeats were stars. Bloodflow was wind. Warm bodies were bonfires.
Yet there was nothing.
He literally walked right in through the front door of the AMC.
The door groaned faintly, hinges protesting under the weight of armoured steel.
But it was empty!?
With his Blood Vision, he was certain of it - there was no one hiding, no fluid signatures, no breathing traps, no microcirculations beyond rats or insects.
He crouched slightly, palm hovering near the floor. "No pulses. No breath. No blood."
'A trap with no trap?' he wondered. 'Or a trap that wants to walk in?'
He smirked, a single breath of amusent. 'Either way, I'm in.'
His coat fluttered behind him as he strode deeper. His fingers flexed once. Blood Pumping still thrumd faintly, a simring engine ready to overclock at will. If this was a cage, it was at least a cage he'd walked into voluntarily. That already made him harder to kill than most.
'There's no turning back now.'
The corridor ahead stretched into five directions, like spokes radiating from a hub. Each path led into one of the AMC's five blocks. Sealed sectors, each a fortress of war bureaucracy and military horrors.
'With Lenny, myself and Nadya, unless they send out elite-tier mutants, we'll be fine. They only have a couple of those in the Association, and even then, we should still be able to fight them off.'
His heartbeat thudded a little louder.
As if in answer, the stadium speakers crackled, coming alive like a monster clearing its throat.
An order rang out.
"All AMC personnel, retreat to the barracks imdiately."
General Thomas Caldwell's hoarse voice bood through the Pentagon's speakers. His tone was brittle like old stone, yet hard like a man who had never stopped lifting weights out of spite for ti.
Every word seed bitten off by clenched teeth - the man didn't sound afraid or tired, but almost resigned.
Kai's breath hitched.
His heart literally skipped a beat.
Not taphorically. Literally. A glitch in his pulse like soone had flicked the wiring of his spinal cord.
"That voice…" he whispered.
It sounded familiar.
A lifeti of pain lived in his blood, but this voice felt like it lived before the pain. A mory he couldn't place because Nyx had stolen them all like a kleptomaniac librarian.
The corridor seed to tighten around him.
His mind raced: 'Why would a general personally broadcast a retreat order? Why now? Why with that tone? Why does it sound like soone I used to know?'
Imdiately, the operatives obeyed.
The rifle squad that had been unloading rounds at Lenny backed away in perfect sync. Nadya, mid-air, explosive orb charged and fizzing like a sun about to sneeze, paused just as she was about to attack.
She and Lenny were just as confused as Kai was.
"Retreat?" Nadya hissed, hovering lower now. "They didn't even finish the job! They didn't even get a hit on ! Since when does the AMC retreat from their targets?"
Lenny blinked, or whatever the lizard equivalent of blinking was. "Maybe they realised they couldn't do anything"
But Kai was sure that wasn't the case.
Because he already felt the bigger thorn approaching.
A thorn with a deranged smile and a doctorate in despair.
"Hello, my lovelies. It's been a while."
Nyx's voice slithered from every speaker, smooth and self-satisfied like a man reclining on velvet while the world burned for his entertainnt.
"I enjoyed our last ga, so I thought we could play another."
At the ntion of the last ga, Nadya's heart spiked, and her orange irises dilated. She rembered the destruction of her hotown. The survivors you could count on your fingers. The aftermath that still haunted her.
The fact that Nyx had probably enjoyed every second of it while sipping sothing terrible from a fancy glass made her blood boil.
"You psychopathic fucker," she snarled. "I'm gonna blow your head off."
Nyx laughed through the speakers, but just ignored her and continued. "Since then, you've been all around the world. From New York to Japan and even Romania. Causing a ruckus wherever you go. But that's what makes you outlaws, right? You do what you want."
Lenny was confused, but could feel the change in atmosphere that was sohow more tense than when they were being gunned down by the AMC.
Amina poked her head out from behind cover, stealing a worried glance at Nadya, who gave her a nod almost as if to reassure her she was fine.
"Ga two is simple."
Nyx cleared his throat, then ca the rules, booming through the speakers like scripture written by a sadist.
"The archive you want is in one of the five blocks. You will fetch it yourself, Subject 357. Alone. If you abandon the objective to aid your companions, the archive vanishes. If you attempt retreat, the do reactivates, sealing you all inside while I summon the Association's finest mutants. Or…" a pause, dramatic but sickening, "maybe I'll just blow up the Pentagon instead. Your choice. Choose well. I don't repeat rules."
Kai's jaw clenched - it was frustrating how much Nyx seed to know, as if he were omniscient.
He didn't need rules repeated.
He already hated the rule-maker.
anwhile, aboard his airship, Nyx lounged like an omnipotent drama critic. Unlike with the London group, he had a personal interest vested in this one.
Subject 357 was unpredictable, but his companions? He could handle them and had a gift in store for them, just like he had for the other group.
He practically took control of the Pentagon from General Caldwell, issuing one final order to the old man:
"Protect the operating room with your forces, and you must remain within it - you are the archive after all."
Then he severed Caldwell's view entirely. Caras down. Feeds disabled. The courtyard chaos disappeared from Caldwell's monitors like soone had hit 'delete' on his awareness.
The general's attention had been focused on the chaos in the courtyard when he spotted a hazy figure with red eyes enter the building on another of the monitors.
But he had no way of confirming who that was now.
'We can't ruin the surprise so soon, can we?' Nyx laughed to himself.
He was also impressed by one of Kai's companions.
A mutant who hadn't been on his radar until recently.
Lenny.
Scales tanking explosive rounds like rain pinging off a cathedral bell. Concrete splintering under his claws. Raw durability that scoffed at alloys, tallurgy, and common sense alike.
He couldn't help but want to dissect the giant humanoid lizard.
'Those scales,' Nyx thought, leaning forward, grin cutting into fascination. 'Biological plating more durable than my best alloys? His body also endured the impact without even remote structural failure. His physical output might be one of the closest to Hyperion, the epito of human evolution.'
He licked his teeth like a man salivating at a science fair that doubled as a funeral.
'This,' Nyx mused, breath fogging his lenses slightly, 'is going to be interesting.'
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