Xlomoph – Simultaneous, Two Hours Earlier

The sky above Xlomoph was the color of a bruise, the hue born from the constant discharge of energy that bled from the facility’s cooling towers. Great arcs of blue-white electricity jumped between transmission lines, and the air tasted of ozone and burnt rubber.

Emma crouched behind a collapsed billboard, her red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was grinning.

"Fey. Tell me you’ve got a way through that fence without turning us into charcoal."

Fey lay flat on her stomach beside her, a pair of modified goggles over her eyes. She looked bored. She always looked bored. Her blue hair was messy, her clothes rumpled, but her hands never stopped moving, calibrating a small device that hummed with contained energy.

"Three options," Fey said, not looking away from her work. "One, I melt the fence. That triggers every alarm they have. Two, I melt the ground underneath the fence. That also triggers alarms, but we get a ten-second head start. Three, we wait for the patrol shift change and walk through the gate like civilized people."

Emma’s grin widened. "Civilized is boring."

"I know." Fey finally looked up. "That’s why I already started digging."

She tapped the device. A low rumble came from beneath their feet. Twenty meters to their left, a section of earth collapsed inward, creating a shallow trench that ran under the electrified fence. The dirt fell into a tunnel just wide enough for a person to crawl through.

"Ten-second head start," Fey said. "Starting now."

Emma didn’t hesitate. She scrambled across the broken ground, dropped into the trench, and crawled. The dirt was cold and damp. Above her, the fence crackled with barely contained lightning. She emerged on the other side just as alarms began to howl.

Fey rolled out beside her a moment later, already standing, already moving.

"Control room is in the central tower," Fey said, pointing to a spire of steel and glass at the heart of the facility. "That’s where they regulate the energy flow. I take that, I control Xlomoph."

Emma flexed her fingers. Fire flickered between her knuckles. "And me?"

"You’re the distraction."

"Finally." Emma stepped forward, raising her hands. "Something I’m good at."

The first wave of defenders came from the eastern barracks. Ten men and women in insulated suits, their weapons modified with conductive coils. They fired arcs of electricity.

Emma laughed.

Fire erupted from her palms, a wall of orange and white that swallowed the lightning. The electricity grounded itself in her flames, dissipating into steam. Then she pushed, and the fire became a wave.

The defenders scattered. Two weren’t fast enough. They fell, their suits smoking, their screams brief.

"Sorry!" Emma called out, not sounding sorry at all. "Nothing personal!"

More defenders came. A woman with arms of living metal charged, swinging a hammer that crackled with stored energy. Emma ducked, rolled, and pressed her palm against the woman’s chest. A focused burst of heat enough to melt the circuits in her armor. The woman collapsed, twitching.

Fey, meanwhile, had already reached the base of the central tower. She pressed her hand against the steel door.

[Liquid].

The metal softened, loosening instead of melting, its molecular structure becoming fluid. She pushed through like a diver entering water, and the door reformed behind her.

Inside, the control room was a masterpiece of organized chaos. Screens lined every wall, showing energy flows, mineral consumption, security feeds. A dozen technicians sat at consoles, their hands frozen over keyboards.

A man in a crisp white coat, clearly the supervisor, pointed at Fey. "Kill her!"

The technicians didn’t have combat skills. But the two guards flanking the door did. One raised his arm. His skin sloughed away, revealing a bone blade that glowed with blue energy. The other simply dissolved into a cloud of corrosive gas.

Fey sighed.

She raised her hand. From the pipes overhead, from the cooling tanks in the corner, from the very humidity in the air, liquid responded. Water, coolant, hydraulic fluid, all of it flowed toward her, swirling into a single mass.

She flicked her wrist.

The liquid shot forward, solidifying into ice mid-flight. The bone-blade guard was impaled through the shoulder, pinned to the wall. The gas-creature was enveloped in a sphere of water, then frozen solid, trapping him in a block of clear ice.

Fey walked past them to the main console. She placed her palm on the central monitor.

"You’re going to transfer control to me," she said to the supervisor. "Or I’ll flood this room with liquid nitrogen. Your choice."

The supervisor’s face went pale. "Darwin will kill us either way."

"Darwin isn’t here." Fey’s eyes were cold. "I am."

Outside, Emma was having the time of her life.

She stood in the middle of a courtyard, surrounded by at least thirty defenders. Fire danced around her like a living cloak. Every few seconds, she threw a fireball, a stream of flame, or simply raised a wall of heat that forced her enemies back.

"Come on!" she shouted, laughing. "I thought Xlomoph had teeth!"

A spear of lightning struck her from behind. She stumbled, her flames flickering. A woman with crackling fingertips, a high-voltage skill user, stepped out of the crowd.

"That’s enough," the woman said.

Emma turned, her smile gone. She touched the burn mark on her shoulder.

"You’re good," Emma said. "But I’m better."

She raised both hands. Above her, a miniature sun began to form. It started as a pinprick of blinding white light, then grew, expanding to the size of a basketball, then a beach ball. The heat was intense, even for Emma. Sweat evaporated from her skin before it could form droplets.

The lightning woman’s eyes widened. "You’ll kill us all!"

"That’s the idea."

Emma didn’t throw the sun. She let it pulse, once, releasing a wave of heat that wasn’t fire, but pure thermal radiation. The defenders screamed, dropping their weapons, scrambling for cover. The lightning woman’s hair caught fire, and she fled.

Emma let the sun dissipate, panting. Her arms trembled. Her vision blurred at the edges. But she was still standing.

"Fey," she said into her communicator. "I’m done playing. You got that tower?"

"Control transferred," Fey’s voice came back, calm as ever. "Xlomoph is ours. The energy flow is being redirected to our mobile base as we speak."

Emma slumped against a broken wall, her legs finally giving out. She sat in the dirt, surrounded by smoke and groaning bodies, and laughed until her ribs ached.

"Told you," she whispered to no one. "Show-off."

Greenday Headquarters (Two hours later – Vex’s territory)

The Greenday compound had changed since Mike’s death. The decayed plants had been cleared, replaced by practical vegetable gardens. The guards no longer wore Eclipse’s insignia. Instead, they bore a crude emblem: a broken chain.

Vex stood at the main gate, her arms crossed.

The transport arrived first – Julian stepped out, followed by Zoe and Dori.

Vex didn’t smile. She nodded once. "Ghost."

"Vex." Julian approached. "The others?"

"Inside. Your fire-starter and the water witch arrived ten minutes ago. They’ve been eating my rations." A thin smile crossed her lips. "I like them."

Julian walked past her into the compound.

Inside the main building, Emma was indeed eating. A bowl of stew, some bread, a piece of dried meat. She waved with a spoon when Julian entered.

"Boss! You look like shit."

"I fought a centipede."

"Cool." Emma grinned.

Fey sat in the corner, her blue hair still damp from washing off Xlomoph’s coolant. She had a data-slate in her hands, scrolling through files. She didn’t look up.

"Sit," Fey said. "I need to show you something."

Julian sat. Zoe stood behind him, alert. Dori found a chair and collapsed into it, exhausted.

Vex closed the door and leaned against the wall. "This is my territory now. Eclipse doesn’t come here. You’re safe to talk."

Fey projected the data-slate onto the wall. A holographic map appeared, centered on Eclipse’s central stronghold. But beneath it, deep underground, a new marker pulsed red.

"The Cradle," Fey said. "That’s what they call it. I pulled this from Xlomoph’s partitioned servers. Darwin didn’t even tell his own energy supervisors about it. I had to crack three encryption layers."

Emma stopped chewing. "That’s... not normal."

"No." Fey zoomed in. "The files mention something called ’Project ECHO’ and ’the original seed.’ The language is old. Pre-Blight. Scientific. I think..." She looked up at Julian. "I think this is where the Blight started."

The room went silent.

Zoe’s blue eyes narrowed. "The virus?"

"Not the virus itself." Fey pulled up a fragment of text. "Listen. ’Subject zero was not infected. Subject zero was designed. ECHO is the template. The Cradle is the womb. All mutations trace back to this origin point.’"

Vex pushed off the wall. Her face was pale. "My daughter. They took her for experiments. If this Cradle is where they create..."

"It might be where they keep the original," Fey said. "The source. If Darwin unleashes it..."