The world became a cacophony of screeching metal, percussive blasts, and panicked shouts.
Epsilon Point, once a bastion of defiance, was rapidly devolving into a UGF kill box.
Bunker-buster rounds punched through reinforced plasteel with contemptuous ease, showering the Crows' hideout with debris and superheated air.
"Move! Move! Sector Charlie is compromised!" Kai's voice, amplified by his comm-link, cut through the din, a beacon of desperate authority.
Alex, Voss, and Lena were swept along in the controlled retreat. There was no time for formal training, only for survival.
Every instinct Alex possessed, from his scavenger days to the confused jumble of Echoes, screamed at him to run, to hide. But Kai's words resonated: minimize your signature.
"Alex, try to dampen it!" Lena yelled over the roar of a nearby explosion, her hand pressed to her Mind Core, face tight with concentration.
"Feel your power, then… pull it inward. Like you're holding your breath!"
Easier said than done. The plasma energy, the faint Static, the raw Strength—they all felt volatile, eager to erupt, especially under duress. But he tried.
He visualized a shield, not of energy, but of… nothingness, drawing the simmering power down, deep inside himself. It was like trying to wrestle an angry sun.
A UGF Enforcer squad rounded a corner, rifles spitting lethal energy bolts. Kai, a blur of motion thanks to his Stealth Core, intercepted them, his disruptor pistol barking, forcing them back.
"Ren! With me!" Kai snapped, gesturing Alex forward. "Cover our six! Use that… spark of yours. Controlled bursts. Don't bring the whole ceiling down this time!"
This was it. His first real taste of teamwork in a firefight.
He took a deep breath, focused. An Enforcer, trying to get a bead on Kai, exposed his flank.
Alex extended his hand, not with a punch, but with a pointed finger. He visualized the Static energy, not as an arc, but as a precise jolt, like Lena was trying to teach him with mental imagery.
A tiny blue spark, almost invisible in the chaos, leaped from his fingertip and struck the Enforcer's weapon. The rifle sputtered and died.
The Enforcer stared at it in confusion for a precious second before Kai's shot sent him reeling.
"Better!" Kai grunted, without looking back. "Lena, where's their entry point?"
"Breaching charge on sublevel two, ventilation shaft access!" Lena relayed, wincing as another tremor shook the tunnel. "They're trying to cut off our deepest escape routes!"
They were being herded. Alex could feel the Enforcer Lieutenant's tactical Echoes whispering possibilities, grim probabilities. Zane wasn't just attacking; he was executing a carefully planned annihilation.
As they fell back through a narrow service corridor, Voss suddenly grabbed Alex's arm.
"Here! This console!" She pointed to a damaged UGF field generator, clearly part of their breaching equipment, sparking erratically.
Its casing was cracked, exposing a pulsing, crystalline component – a standard UGF Kinetic Dampener Core, designed to absorb and redirect kinetic energy.
"Can you…?" Voss asked, her eyes wide with a mixture of scientific curiosity and desperate hope.
"A Kinetic Core. It could help us absorb some of these impacts. If you can get a stable imprint, even a temporary one…"
The UGF generator was spewing dangerous electrical discharge. Touching it directly seemed insane. But they were running out of options.
"Try to get a clear touch on the Core housing!" Voss urged. "Prolonged, if you can!"
Kai and a handful of Crows were providing covering fire at the corridor's entrance. Alex took a deep breath.
This was different from the Enforcer's punch or Kai's handshake. This was a deliberate attempt at absorption from an inanimate object.
He reached out, ignoring the stinging sparks that leaped from the damaged generator casing. His fingers brushed the crystalline housing of the Kinetic Dampener.
Instantly, a new sensation flooded him, cold and impersonal.
Not strength, not stealth, not fire. It was like becoming a… shock absorber. He felt an instinctual understanding of stress points, of impact dispersal, of resilience.
The Echo here wasn't an emotion, but pure, unadulterated physics – force vectors, tensile strengths, rebound quotients. It was dizzying, alien in its mechanical precision.
He held the contact for several agonizing seconds, the energy of the Core seeping into him like icy water, until a UGF energy bolt struck dangerously close, forcing him to jerk his hand back.
"Got it?" Voss asked anxiously.
Alex flexed his hand. He felt… different. Solid. More anchored. He didn't feel stronger, but somehow… more resistant. "I think so. It's… weird."
Just then, a massive explosion ripped through the corridor behind them. The entire section of tunnel buckled. Debris rained down. Alex, acting on pure, newfound instinct, threw himself in front of Voss and Lena.
A huge chunk of plasteel, dislodged from the ceiling, hurtled towards them.
He braced, expecting crushing pain. But as the debris struck him, instead of shattering his bones, he felt a bizarre thrumming sensation.
The impact was still powerful, knocking the wind out of him, but it was… blunted. Redirected. Like his body had momentarily become a living shield.
He stumbled, but remained standing. Voss and Lena were unharmed.
"Void above!" Lena breathed, staring at the dented plasteel at his feet. "You… you absorbed it! The impact!"
The Kinetic Dampener. It had worked. Fleetingly, perhaps, but it had worked.
Kai, having seen the near miss, swore. "That's enough sightseeing! Move, before Zane decides to drop a micro-nuke on our heads!"
They continued their chaotic retreat, Alex now acutely aware of this new, subtle resilience.
He wasn't invulnerable, but impacts seemed… less jarring. It was a strange, almost passive ability, yet incredibly useful.
Their escape route led them towards an old, supposedly sealed transit line, one of Rusthaven's long-forgotten veins. It was their last, desperate gamble.
As they reached the blast doors of the transit station, a UGF heavy weapons team, equipped with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, appeared at the far end of the corridor, blocking their path.
"Targets confirmed!" one of them barked. "Fire at will!"
Rockets shrieked towards them. There was no cover, no time to dodge.
"Scatter!" Kai yelled.
But Alex stood his ground, an idea sparking in his mind – a desperate fusion. Strength for power. Static for disruption. And now, Kinetic Dampening for… what? Redirection?
He raised his hands, focusing all three nascent energies. It was a monumental effort of will, drawing on reserves he didn't know he possessed.
The air around his palms seemed to shimmer, distorting. The Strength lent solidity, the Static crackled with contained energy, and the Kinetic imprint… it wanted to push back.
The first rocket was almost on them.