The tunnel stretched before Hikari like the throat of some ancient beast, each step pulling her deeper into a reality that refused to follow the rules she understood.

  **CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.**

  Her sandals against concrete. The sound bounced wrong, echoing in patterns that shouldn't exist, returning from distances that made no geometric sense. The tunnel ahead of her twisted, walls breathing in rhythm with something she couldn't see but could feel pressing against every nerve in her body.

  The supernatural pressure had weight now. Physical mass that compressed the air in her lungs.

  She ran anyway.

  Years of martial arts training kicked in without conscious thought. Her body knew how to move efficiently, how to push through resistance, how to keep her breathing steady even when panic clawed at the edges of her mind. The suppressor behind her ear pulsed with that constant, maddening rhythm, dulling her senses while the world around her screamed for her to pay attention.

  The walls began to weep.

  Not water. Something darker. Something that moved against gravity, crawling upward in thin rivulets that caught the dim light and reflected it wrong. Hikari's eyes tracked the movement instinctively, and for just a moment—

  She saw faces.

  Children's faces, pressed against the concrete from the inside, mouths open in silent screams. They rippled across the surface like reflections in disturbed water, there and gone before she could focus on them.

  "Keep moving," she whispered to herself. "Just keep moving."

  The tunnel opened into a junction. Five passages branching off like fingers. Hikari didn't slow down. Her instincts, honed through countless hours in the dojo, read the space in milliseconds. Left passage: too narrow, claustrophobic. Center: sloping upward, wrong direction. Right passages: one curving back, one continuing straight.

  She chose straight.

  **BOOM.**

  Her foot hit the ground with force that would've shattered a normal person's ankle. The impact propelled her forward in a burst of speed that blurred the edges of her vision. Twenty feet covered in a heartbeat. Then thirty. Then fifty.

  She was fast.

  Faster than she had any right to be without channeling her abilities. The countless hours of speed drills, agility training, explosive movements practiced until they became muscle memory—all of it crystallized into pure kinetic efficiency. Her body moved like a weapon, each motion precise, each breath timed perfectly to maximize her momentum.

  The tunnel began to warp.

  Subtle at first. The walls tilted at angles that made her inner ear protest. The floor beneath her feet rippled, solid concrete becoming momentarily liquid before solidifying again. Reality itself was losing coherence the deeper she went.

  And then she heard them.

  **"Help us."**

  A child's voice. Faint. Echoing from everywhere and nowhere.

  **"Please don't leave us."**

  Another voice joined the first. Then another. Then dozens, hundreds, a chorus of young voices begging, pleading, screaming for help that never came.

  Hikari's pace faltered for half a step.

  The screaming intensified. Not just children now. Adults. Older voices filled with raw terror and something worse—desperation so profound it had stripped away every pretense of humanity.

  **"The children! Leave the children!"**

  **"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have to—"**

  **"My baby, my baby, please—"**

  The voices overlapped, creating a cacophony that threatened to drown out her thoughts. But underneath the chaos, she heard something else. Footsteps. Running footsteps. Echoing from the walls themselves, as if the tunnel was replaying moments from the past.

  Vision flickered at the edge of her perception.

  The tunnel wall to her right shimmered. Through the concrete, as if looking through murky water, Hikari saw movement.

  Adults running. Their faces twisted with fear and something darker—the terrible calculus of survival that demanded sacrifice. Behind them, small figures. Children. Reaching out with desperate hands. Mouths open in screams that had no sound.

  The vision shifted, multiplied. Different moments, different people, all playing out simultaneously across the tunnel's surface. A woman shoving a child aside to reach a door. A man pulling free from small hands that clutched at his jacket. Groups of adults forming walls with their bodies, blocking children from following as they fled toward safety that existed only in their panicked minds.

  Every single one of them leaving the children behind.

  Abandoning them to whatever horror had descended on this place.

  Hikari's hands clenched into fists. Her pace increased, driven by something more than tactical need. Anger burned in her chest, hot and sharp. These weren't just visions. They were memories. Imprints left behind by trauma so profound it had scarred reality itself.

  Amanda had seen this. Felt this. Been left behind by people who should have protected her.

  No wonder this place was a nightmare.

  The tunnel ahead split again, but this time there was no choice to make. The passages converged, funneling into a single corridor that descended at a steep angle. The walls here were different—smoother, darker, almost organic in their appearance. Like walking through an exposed vein.

  She picked up speed. Her legs burned with the effort, muscles screaming for rest that she refused to give them. The martial arts training that had seemed so removed from actual combat now proved its worth. Every sensei who'd drilled her on footwork, on maintaining form under exhaustion, on pushing past the point where her body begged to stop—they'd been preparing her for exactly this.

  The corridor curved sharply. Hikari leaned into the turn, her center of gravity shifting with practiced ease. Her hand brushed the wall for balance.

  **Mistake.**

  The moment her skin made contact, the wall **pulsed**.

  Reality fractured.

  The corridor multiplied, splitting into dozens of overlapping versions of itself. Each one showed a different moment, a different angle, a different possibility. Hikari saw herself running forward. Saw herself stumbling. Saw herself turning back. Saw herself—

  **"WAAAAAAHHHHH!"**

  The wail of an infant exploded through the space, so loud and so close it felt like someone had pressed the sound directly into her brain. The crying mixed with adult screams, with begging, with the wet sounds of something terrible happening just out of sight.

  Hikari yanked her hand away from the wall. The visions collapsed back into a single corridor. But the screaming continued, building in intensity until it felt like the walls themselves were crying out.

  The tunnel opened ahead.

  She burst into a massive chamber.

  No—not a chamber. A gymnasium. The Forsaken Academy's heart. Bleachers stretched into darkness, occupied by shadow figures with no faces. A scoreboard flickered with unreadable symbols. And in the center of the basketball court, sitting on a rusted swing set that had no business being there, was a small figure with white hair.

  Amanda.

  Hikari's breath caught.

  But before she could take a single step forward, something shifted in the air. A presence. Vast and terrible and focused entirely on her.

  **"Oh?"**

  The voice came from everywhere at once, smooth as silk and cold as winter. A woman's voice, layered with harmonics that bypassed conscious thought to speak directly to fear.

  **"An intruder. How... delightful."**

  The space behind Amanda rippled. Reality bent, twisted, and disgorged something that should not exist.

  A figure emerged from the shadows. Tall. Draped in robes woven from darkness itself. Raven-black hair that moved like liquid ink. And eyes—dull silver eyes that held depths of sorrow capable of drowning worlds.

  Lirael.

  Even through the suppressor's dampening effect, Hikari felt the weight of the Witch of Despair's attention settle on her like a physical force. Her legs locked. Her breath froze in her chest. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to hide, to do anything except stand under that terrible gaze.

  Lirael smiled.

  "Amanda, dear child," she said softly, her hand resting on the girl's small shoulder. "It seems we have company. Why don't I go greet our guest?"

  Amanda didn't respond. Didn't even look up. She sat motionless on the swing, her silver eyes staring at nothing.

  "Don't worry," Lirael continued, her form beginning to shimmer and split. "I'll be gentle."

  The air in front of her distorted. Shadows coalesced, taking shape. A second Lirael stepped forward, identical to the first in every detail except for something intangible—a slight dimness in the eyes, a fractional loss of presence.

  A clone.

  Even at one-tenth her creator's power, the clone radiated enough supernatural pressure to make Hikari's suppressor pulse painfully against her skull.

  "Go play," Lirael said, her voice carrying a hint of amusement. "Show her what despair truly means."

  The clone turned toward Hikari.

  **And vanished.**

  No—not vanished. **Moved**. Faster than Hikari's eyes could track. One moment standing in the gymnasium's center, the next already in the corridor behind her, the distance between them collapsing in an instant.

  Hikari spun, her body moving on pure instinct.

  The clone raised one hand.

  **Black and purple lightning erupted from her palm.**

  The dark matter lightning blast tore through the air like a wound in reality itself. Purple-black energy that didn't just burn—it **consumed**. The tunnel walls where the lightning passed began to decay, concrete crumbling to ash, metal twisting into impossible shapes.

  Hikari's arms shot up.

  No thought. No plan. Pure survival instinct.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  **CRACK.**

  Cyan light exploded from her palms. The suppressor behind her ear shrieked, its systems overloading as raw psychic energy bypassed every dampening protocol. The shield that materialized was crude, unstable, barely formed—but it was **there**.

  The dark matter lightning hit the barrier.

  **BOOM!**

  The impact sent shockwaves rippling through the corridor. The force of the collision drove Hikari backward, her feet skidding across concrete as she fought to maintain her footing. The psychic shield rippled, cracked, threatened to shatter completely.

  She gritted her teeth.

  Her arms trembled with the effort of holding the construct together. Every lesson Lila had drilled into her about visualization and control meant nothing in this moment. This was raw, desperate, unfocused power channeled through nothing but will.

  The lightning pushed harder.

  The shield cracked further.

  And then Hikari did something her body knew how to do even when her mind couldn't keep up.

  She **moved**.

  Years of martial arts training crystallized into motion. Her stance shifted. Weight transferred. She didn't try to hold the shield in place—she redirected it, used the lightning's own force to push herself sideways.

  The blast screamed past her shoulder.

  **BOOM!**

  The tunnel wall behind her exploded, vaporized by dark matter energy. But Hikari was already in motion, her legs pumping, driving her forward through the gap between the clone and the corridor's edge.

  "Fast," the clone observed, her voice carrying the same layered harmonics as the original. "But not fast enough."

  Hikari didn't respond. Didn't waste breath on words. She ran.

  The corridor ahead twisted back toward the gymnasium, but branching passages appeared—reality restructuring itself to either help or hinder her escape. She chose left, then right, then straight, her martial arts training guiding her through the maze with the same instinctive precision she'd use in a sparring match.

  Behind her, footsteps.

  Not running. Walking. Casual. Confident.

  The clone wasn't chasing.

  She was **hunting**.

  Hikari rounded a corner and—

  The clone stood directly in front of her.

  Impossible. She'd been behind, Hikari had been running full speed, there was no way—

  "Confused?" the clone asked, tilting her head. "Space is... flexible here. Amanda's grief has made everything so wonderfully malleable."

  Hikari's fist was already moving.

  The punch came fast, clean, perfect form. A straight right aimed at the clone's solar plexus, delivered with all the force her body could generate. In any normal fight, against any normal opponent, it would have landed with devastating effect.

  The clone caught her fist without looking.

  "Oh," she said softly. "You have some training. How adorable."

  **Then she squeezed.**

  Pain exploded through Hikari's hand. Bones ground together. She heard something crack—felt it—and the sound that escaped her throat was half gasp, half scream.

  The clone yanked her forward.

  Hikari's face met the tunnel wall with brutal force. The impact sent stars exploding across her vision. Before she could recover, she was airborne.

  **CRASH.**

  Her body slammed into the opposite wall. Concrete cracked under the impact. The air left her lungs in a rush that left her gasping.

  She tried to stand.

  The clone was already there.

  A hand grabbed her by the throat, lifted her effortlessly off the ground. Hikari's feet kicked uselessly at empty air. Her hands clawed at the fingers around her neck, but they might as well have been steel for all the effect her struggling had.

  "Lirael-sama told me to be gentle," the clone mused, holding Hikari up to examine her like an interesting specimen. "But she didn't specify how gentle. And honestly..."

  The clone's silver eyes gleamed with something cold and hungry.

  "I'm curious how much an Apostle can take."

  She threw Hikari down the corridor.

  The world became a blur of motion and pain. Hikari's body tumbled through space, bouncing off walls, floor, ceiling in a chaotic rotation that left her completely disoriented. She tried to right herself, tried to use her momentum, tried to do **anything**, but the force behind the throw was too great.

  **CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.**

  Each impact sent fresh waves of agony through her body. She felt ribs crack. Felt her shoulder dislocate. Felt the passive healing factor kick in immediately, that agonizing process of cellular reconstruction happening in real-time even as new damage was inflicted.

  She hit the ground and rolled, finally coming to a stop in a crumpled heap.

  The tunnel spun. Her vision doubled, tripled. Blood filled her mouth—she'd bitten through her tongue. Every breath sent knives of pain through her chest.

  Get up.

  Her body screamed in protest.

  **Get up.**

  Her hands found purchase on the concrete. Pushed. Her legs trembled, threatened to give out, but held.

  She stood.

  The clone watched from twenty feet away, head tilted in what might have been respect or might have been amusement.

  "Impressive," she said. "Most humans would have stayed down. But then, you're not quite human anymore, are you?"

  Hikari spat blood. "Fuck you."

  "Charming."

  The clone moved.

  This time Hikari was ready. Or thought she was.

  The clone's fist came in fast—Hikari slipped it, barely, using a defensive technique that had been drilled into her bones. Counter with a palm strike to the solar plexus, pivot, create distance—

  The clone caught her wrist mid-strike.

  Twisted.

  Hikari felt her arm bend in directions it wasn't meant to go. She gasped, tried to pull free—

  The clone yanked her forward and drove a knee into her stomach.

  The air exploded from Hikari's lungs. She doubled over, and the clone brought both hands down on her back in a hammer blow that sent her crashing face-first into the concrete.

  The floor cracked under the impact.

  Hikari's nose broke. She felt it happen, felt the healing factor immediately start to fix it even as blood poured down her face.

  Fingers tangled in her hair.

  She was lifted, dragged, and **thrown** again.

  But this time the tunnel itself seemed to participate in her torment. The walls bent inward as she flew past, narrowing the space to a claustrophobic tube that her body slammed against repeatedly. The ceiling dropped lower, forcing her into a tumbling roll that left her scraping against rough concrete. The floor rippled, became almost liquid, then solidified again just in time for her to crash into it at full force.

  The tunnel **expanded**.

  Suddenly she was falling through a space that felt enormous, cathedral-like in its vastness. The walls stretched away into darkness. The ceiling disappeared entirely. She tumbled through empty air for what felt like miles but could only have been seconds.

  **BOOM.**

  She hit the ground. Hard.

  The impact should have killed her. Would have killed a normal person. But her healing factor was working overtime now, repairing damage faster than it could accumulate, keeping her conscious when unconsciousness would have been a mercy.

  The tunnel **contracted**.

  The vast space collapsed back into a narrow corridor, walls pressing in so close Hikari could touch both sides without extending her arms fully. The clone stood at the far end, her form barely visible in the darkness.

  "You keep getting back up," the clone observed. "Why?"

  Hikari pushed herself to her knees. Her entire body was a map of pain. Broken ribs healing and re-breaking. Dislocated joints snapping back into place. Skin knitting over deep lacerations. The process was agony.

  "Because," she gasped, forcing herself to her feet. "Someone needs to help that kid."

  The clone stared at her for a long moment.

  Then she smiled.

  "Wrong answer."

  **[CUT TO:]**

  The Mourning Behemoth's fist came down like a meteor.

  Lila wasn't there.

  She'd moved before the creature's muscles had even finished contracting, her tactical mind reading the attack three steps ahead. The fist cratered concrete where she'd been standing, sending shockwaves through the tunnel that would have pulverized a normal human.

  Lila stood twenty feet away, perfectly balanced, watching.

  "Interesting," she murmured.

  Without Hikari to protect, without the need to hold back or coordinate attacks, she could finally fight the way she'd been trained. The way her abilities were meant to be used.

  Azure light blazed around her hands.

  **Psychic Constructs.**

  The energy solidified, taking shape with practiced ease. Two daggers formed from pure psionic force, their blades shimmering with that characteristic pink-tinged glow. Each one was perfectly balanced, extensions of her will given physical form.

  The Behemoth turned toward her, its massive head swiveling with terrible purpose. The faces embedded in its flesh screamed in chorus. It charged.

  Lila's eyes narrowed.

  She'd been watching this thing fight for the past ten minutes. Watching how it moved, how it attacked, how it responded to threats. And she'd reached a conclusion that would have seemed absurd if it wasn't so obvious.

  This creature had no skill whatsoever.

  It was pure, mindless supernatural physical prowess. Overwhelming force without technique. Power without precision. The kind of opponent that relied entirely on its supernatural nature to overwhelm anything in its path.

  Against someone like Hikari, who fought largely on instinct and raw ability, it was a terrible threat.

  Against someone like Lila, who had spent years honing tactical combat to an art form, it was a target.

  The Behemoth's fist came in fast.

  Lila sidestepped with minimal movement. The fist passed so close it stirred her hair. Before the creature could recover, she was already moving.

  Three steps forward. Legs driving. The psychic daggers in her hands blazed brighter.

  She **struck**.

  The first dagger plunged into the Behemoth's extended arm, driving through the writhing flesh with surgical precision. The blade didn't just cut—it disrupted. Severed the supernatural connections holding the construct together at a fundamental level.

  The Behemoth roared.

  Lila was already gone, using its arm as a springboard to launch herself higher. She twisted mid-air, both daggers flashing. Cuts appeared across the creature's chest, each one precise, each one targeting the nexus points where Amanda's grief held the construct together.

  She landed lightly, already analyzing her next move.

  The Behemoth swung wildly, its other arm sweeping in a horizontal arc meant to catch her.

  Too slow.

  Lila ducked under the attack, dropped to one knee, and drove both daggers into the creature's leg. The psychic energy erupted outward, and the entire limb buckled. The Behemoth stumbled, its massive weight working against it.

  "No technique," Lila observed clinically, already moving to capitalize. "No strategy. Just force."

  She could work with that.

  The Behemoth tried to grab her. She rolled between its legs. Tried to stomp her. She was twenty feet away before the foot came down. Tried to overwhelm her with pure aggression. She simply wasn't where its attacks landed.

  And all the while, she cut.

  Precise. Methodical. Each strike targeting the construct's structural weak points. Each dagger thrust disrupting the supernatural energy holding it together. She was dissecting it in real-time, using her knowledge of how psychic constructs functioned to systematically dismantle Amanda's creation.

  The Behemoth's movements became sluggish. Uncoordinated. The screaming faces on its body flickered, some fading entirely.

  Lila stood back, both daggers ready, and made her final assessment.

  The creature was mindless. That meant it could only focus on one target at a time. And right now, with Hikari somewhere else in the tunnel system, **she** was that sole focus.

  Which meant she could be as aggressive as she wanted without worrying about protecting anyone.

  Perfect.

  **[CUT TO:]**

  Jecka lit her cigarette, the flame illuminating her face in the safe house's dim interior.

  "Well," she muttered, exhaling smoke. "So much for being discreet."

  The monitors around her desk blazed with alerts. Every sensor she'd planted around Long Island City was screaming. The supernatural pressure spikes from the tunnel system had blown past every threshold, and now her drones were picking up movement.

  VPD movement.

  Cruisers. Lots of them. Mobilizing toward the district border.

  "Shit." She pulled up the encrypted messaging app, fingers flying across the keyboard.

  **JECKA:** Lila. You've got company incoming. VPD is mobilizing. I'm pulling out of this location—too hot. Moving to Decoy Base Sigma, still close enough to maintain surveillance. Your comms will automatically reconnect once you're out of the tunnel system's interference. Get Amanda and get out. Fast.

  She hit send, then immediately began shutting down her equipment. The monitors went dark one by one. Hard drives were yanked and stuffed into a reinforced backpack. The more sensitive equipment was smashed—no time for a clean wipe, so physical destruction would have to do.

  Jecka took one last drag on her cigarette, then crushed it under her boot.

  The safe house had served its purpose. Time to disappear.

  She moved to the back wall, pressed a specific panel in a specific pattern. A hidden door slid open, revealing a maintenance tunnel that connected to the city's old subway system. Her escape route.

  Within five minutes, she was gone.

  The safe house stood empty, its secrets evacuated, nothing left but the faint smell of cigarette smoke.

  **[CUT TO:]**

  The VPD strike team pulled up to Long Island City's border in a convoy of black cruisers, their lights dimmed to avoid drawing attention. Twelve vehicles. Forty officers. All of them equipped with supernatural containment gear and grim expressions.

  The team leader, a grizzled veteran named Morrison, checked his equipment one last time.

  "Orders are observe and report," he said to his squad. "Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Whatever's going on in there, it's above our pay grade."

  The officers nodded, though none of them looked happy about it.

  Morrison stared at the darkened streets ahead, at the buildings that seemed to lean at wrong angles, at the air that shimmered with something that definitely wasn't heat distortion.

  "Stay sharp," he said. "Stay alive."

  The strike team moved forward.

  **[CUT TO:]**

  High above Night City, the air itself began to crackle.

  Electricity arced through the smog, dancing in patterns too precise to be natural. The discharge coalesced, took shape, became solid.

  Vox's decoy body materialized, standing on nothing, suspended three hundred feet above the ground by electromagnetic fields that bent physics to his will.

  His heterochromic eyes—one electric blue, one glowing crimson—focused on the distant border of Long Island City. From this height, he could see everything. The VPD strike team. The tunnel entrance. The supernatural distortion hanging over the entire district like a shroud.

  "Fascinating," he murmured.

  His consciousness split between the decoy body and the massive shark form swimming in its tank back at VoxTech Tower. Through the cables connecting him to the city's infrastructure, he felt every electromagnetic pulse, every data stream, every flow of information.

  Two targets. Both Apostles, if his sensors were correct. Both trying very hard to remain unnoticed. Both failing spectacularly at the moment.

  "We'll wait," he said to the empty sky. "Let them finish their little rescue mission. Let them think they've succeeded."

  He raised one hand. Technopathy rippled outward, invisible waves of control touching every electronic device within range.

  Six drones detached from various perches across the city. Military-grade surveillance units, VoxTech's finest. They rose into the air silently, positioning themselves in a perfect hexagonal pattern above Long Island City.

  Through their cameras, Vox watched.

  Through their sensors, he monitored.

  Through his connection to the city's network, he prepared.

  "And when they emerge..." His smile was sharp, predatory. "We'll have a conversation about operating in my territory without permission."

  The drones began their silent vigil.

  Vox waited, patient as electricity, ready to move at the speed of lightning whenever the moment came.

  To be continued...