For three days, the city held its breath.
On the surface, Duskfall was unchanged. The rain fell, the neon lights bled onto the wet streets, and people hurried from one place to another with their gazes fixed firmly on the ground. But underneath, the system was churning.
Ayla's evidence package, now known on the darknet as the "Kenji Files," had spread like a virus. It was a cocktail of encrypted financials, audio recordings, and damning internal memos that tied Councilman Takeda directly to the Pale Hand. More importantly, it hinted at the massive, unexplained power consumption in Sector Zero—the Oracle's nest. The organization was working furiously to scrub the data, but for every link they shut down, two more appeared. The Whisper Network, the loose collective of activists Ayla had sent the files to, was proving to be a hydra.
This quiet, digital war served as the perfect cover. While the Pale Hand's attention was on the net, its greatest threat was living quietly in its forgotten bowels.
The abandoned maintenance hub had become a makeshift command center. Using a discarded but still functional maintenance terminal, Ayla worked her magic. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, the clicking sounds echoing in the silence. She was no longer the terrified girl who ran from hell. She was a weapon being sharpened. Vengeance had given her fear a new name: purpose.
"I'm in," she announced, her face illuminated by the green glow of the terminal screen. "I've bypassed the primary security layer of Kasai Tower's corporate network. Their public-facing systems are a joke."
Ravi, who had been sitting motionless in a corner for the better part of a day in a state that seemed like meditation, opened his eyes. "And the sublevels?"
"That's harder," Ayla admitted, chewing on her lip. "Silas's command center is on a closed circuit, air-gapped from the main net. But they have to get power and environmental data from somewhere." She pointed to a complex schematic on the screen. "Here. A single, heavily encrypted data conduit. If I can piggyback on it, I can get you a live map and disable internal sensors for… maybe three minutes. Max. After that, the system will self-correct and lock you in."
"Three minutes is enough," Ravi stated, standing up. He stretched, the motion fluid and seamless, like a predator waking from a nap.
"The place is a fortress, Ravi," Ayla warned, her voice tight with concern. "It's not just tech. My brother's notes said the Five Fingers maintain personal guards. Elites. People who have been… 'enhanced' by the Oracle."
"Enhanced," Ravi repeated the word, a flicker of interest in his eyes. "Show me."
Ayla pulled up a different set of files—rumors, eyewitness accounts pieced together from the darknet. They described Silas's guards, known as the "Echoes." Men and women who had undergone brutal cybernetic and biological augmentation. They were faster, stronger, and could reportedly regenerate from all but the most devastating wounds. One was said to move so fast he seemed to teleport. Another could harden his skin to the consistency of diamond.
Ravi studied the information, his expression as neutral as if he were reading a restaurant menu.
"Their enhancements all draw power from an internal source," he observed, pointing to a footnote in the data. "They're tethered to the command center's local generator. If the power source is disrupted…"
"They become normal again," Ayla finished, her eyes widening. "But the generator is in the heart of the facility, right next to Silas's throne room."
"Good," Ravi said. He turned and began walking towards the dark tunnel leading out of the hub. "Let's go."
"Wait, now?!" Ayla exclaimed, shocked. "We don't have a plan! What about the guards on the surface? How are you even going to get in?"
Ravi paused at the edge of the darkness and looked back at her. "The plan is simple. I walk in. They try to stop me. I remove them." He offered a look that was the closest thing to reassurance she had ever seen from him. "Stay here. Guide me when I'm inside. Don't get caught."
Before she could argue further, he stepped into the tunnel and was swallowed by the black.
The Kasai Tower was a spear of black glass and steel that stabbed into Duskfall's perpetually gray sky. It was a monument to corporate power, but its deepest roots were rotten with the influence of the Pale Hand.
Ravi emerged from a subway ventilation grate two blocks away, melting into the throng of afternoon crowds. His plain black uniform made him invisible, just another student lost in the city. No one saw the god walking among them.
He didn't use a secret entrance. He walked straight through the front doors.
The lobby was an opulent cathedral of marble and chrome. Security guards in crisp suits stood at attention, their eyes sweeping the area. An advanced scanner was built into the entryway, designed to detect weapons, explosives, and unauthorized biological signatures.
As Ravi walked through, a guard watching the scanner feed frowned. For a split second, the human-shaped silhouette on his screen had flared with an energy reading so impossibly high, so off the charts, that he dismissed it as a glitch. He blinked, and the reading was gone. The boy was just a boy.
Ravi walked to the main elevator bank and pressed the button for the sublevels. It didn't light up. Access was restricted.
An armed guard approached him, his hand resting on the holstered weapon at his side. "Help you, kid? This area is for employees only."
"I have a meeting," Ravi said calmly, "with Silas."
The guard's professional demeanor froze. The name was not one to be spoken aloud. His eyes narrowed. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
"No," Ravi replied, not unkindly. "You're going to open the elevator."
The guard scoffed and reached for his radio. "We have a situation in the main—"
Ravi's hand moved, a blur too fast to follow. He plucked the radio from the guard's hand and crushed it into a ball of plastic and wires with a single, sharp squeeze. He then gently tapped the guard's forehead with two fingers.
The guard's eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious but unharmed.
The other guards in the lobby shouted, drawing their weapons. Civilians screamed and scattered.
Ravi ignored them. He turned to the elevator panel, placed his palm over the keycard reader, and sent a tiny, precise pulse of energy into it. The circuits overloaded. With a ding, the elevator doors slid open.
He stepped inside and turned. The remaining guards stood there, weapons raised, unsure whether to shoot in the crowded lobby.
"Tell your master," Ravi said, his voice calm and clear over the panic, "that I've come to collect a debt."
The elevator doors slid shut.
Down in the command center, Silas watched on a monitor as Ravi descended. The initial breach had already been reported.
"Cocky little bastard," Silas sneered, rising from his chair. He was a tall, imposing man in an impeccably tailored suit. "He thinks because he can handle street thugs and a single Eraser squad, he can challenge me in my own fortress?"
He turned to the four figures standing silently in the shadows of his "throne room." They were the Echoes.
"He's on his way down," Silas said, a cruel smile playing on his lips. "This isn't a fight. This is an execution. The first one to bring me his head gets a bonus."
The Echoes said nothing. They simply blurred, vanishing from the room to take their positions. This was the first rung of the slaughtered ladder. And Ravi Kuro had just started to climb.