The thick, charged dust in the shipping container seemed to recoil from McNamara's rasping voice. Ethan spun, bracing himself against the obsidian relic's unnerving chill, every muscle taut. The battered Russian Makarov pistol materialized in his hand with surprising fluidity – looted from Malone's squalid apartment and nestled in his jacket pocket since. He leveled it at the silhouette in the container's jagged doorway.
"Stop right there." Ethan's voice was flint on ice. The Stardust core within him pulsed, not with fear, but with wary hostility. Its cold energy snaked towards his injured side, reinforcing cracked ribs against the sharp inhale forced by McNamara's sudden appearance. Core Status: Stable. Resonance Detected - Origin: McNamara? Error. The conflicting feedback added another layer of tension.
McNamara stood framed by the weak moonlight bleeding around the ruined docks outside. He didn't flinch at the gun. He simply raised a gloved hand, palm out, cigarette glowing like a malevolent ember in the shadows obscuring most of his face. Smoke wreathed his head. "Easy, kid. Pointing steel at a guide's considered bad manners, even in your old neighborhood." His voice was dry, conversational, but Ethan sensed an undercurrent – a quiet testing of the turbulent waters he'd stirred.
"You led me to a corpse," Ethan countered, finger firm on the trigger. "Higgins. Clean kill. Professional. Not Tsang's style. What game are you playing, McNamara?" His gaze flickered towards the obsidian artifact between them. "And what the hell is this?" The words 'Subspace Relic – Origin Unknown' seemed to vibrate silently in the charged air.
McNamara's shoulders shifted in what might have been a shrug. "Game? I run a bar, Chen. I observe currents. Saw a drowned rat surface breathing starlight instead of river sludge." He took a slow, deliberate step inside the container, moving towards the center of the floor space. The swirling dust motes seemed to part for him. "Higgins? Poor Larry knew enough to spill his guts if someone pushed hard enough. Someone decided he was safer spilling his blood instead. Cleaning house." He paused a few feet from Ethan, his sharp gaze finally lifting fully from the gun to Ethan's face, then dropping meaningfully to the Stardust core in Ethan's grasp. "Figured if anyone could follow the trail… it might be the source of the static."
He gestured towards the obsidian artifact with his cigarette. "That, kid? That's trouble wrapped in bad news and tied with an ancient curse. Stardust Shard. Leastwise, that's what the fools seeking it call it." His gaze, sharp as obsidian shards, locked onto Ethan's. "Tsang? He thought it was diamonds. Or maybe weapons grade cocaine. Blind dogs digging for truffles in a minefield."
A Stardust Shard. The term resonated deep within Ethan's fragmented soul. Memories flickered – scrolls in the Astral Peak Pavilion archives, whispers of cosmic fragments falling through dimensional rifts, reservoirs of raw, primal Star energy… and immense danger. "What does it do?" Ethan demanded, his voice tight. The artifact's presence hummed against his senses, an alien song competing with his own nascent core's cold hum.
"Depends on who touches it," McNamara stated flatly. He took another slow drag, the cigarette ember flaring like a dying star. "For mortals? Bad luck. Cancer. Mind snapping like a dry twig if they get too close for too long. The residue alone… it's what drew the rats, made Tsang obsessed. Made Higgins a loose end." His eyes narrowed. "For someone like you? Someone already carrying a spark…" He gestured vaguely towards Ethan's chest where the core pulsed. "Could be fuel. Powerful fuel. Or…" He paused, letting the implication hang. "Could be the match that ignites the powder keg already inside you."
Ethan's knuckles whitened on the pistol grip. The lure was primal. His core ached for power, a desiccated sponge sensing an ocean. To leap from 0.1% to something meaningful… anything… was a siren song loud enough to drown out reason. Images flickered: Bo Chen's bloody head, Tsang's sneer, Benny's whimpering terror. Power. Vengeance demanded it. But McNamara's warning resonated too. Match to a powder keg. His ruined spirit, the fractured pathways… what would raw, unfiltered Stardust do to that fragile architecture?
"Why not take it yourself?" Ethan challenged, shifting the pistol's aim slightly away from McNamara's head towards his shoulder. A less lethal, but very persuasive, target. "If you know what it is?"
McNamara chuckled, a low rasp like stones tumbling. "Me? Got enough ghosts haunting my barstools, kid. Don't need cosmic ones rattlin' the good crystal." He tapped his temple with his free hand. "Besides, Dusty Star doesn't need trinkets to navigate the shadows." The name hung there, a deliberate confirmation. "My business is… observation. Navigation. Occasionally, pointin' wayward sparks before they burn the whole damn city block down." He nodded at the Shard. "That spark's yours to decide on now. Touch it. Or leave it for the real jackals sniffing around." He stepped back slightly, gesturing with his cigarette towards the artifact. "Choice is yours. Clock's ticking. Smell that?"
Ethan realized he could smell it. Faint, beneath the rust and brine and old dust: ozone, and something else… a sharp, sterile, chemical scent. Alien and threatening. McNamara wasn't lying. Others were coming.
Indecision warred within him – the desperate hunger for power against the chilling premonition of disaster. His gaze locked on the obsidian surface. His nascent core screamed its need.
**> STABILITY COMPROMISED! SPECTRAL RESONANCE DETECTED!**
The sudden feedback roared through his internal interface. The obsidian surface seemed to ripple, like dark water disturbed. Within its reflection, Ethan didn't see his own battered face. He saw distorted fragments of memory: the celestial peaks of Star Peak Pavilion… but scarred by streaks of obsidian darkness like virulent ink spreading through liquid light. A flash of a snarling face – not Tsang, not Benny – belonging to a disciple whose eyes burned with the same invasive, swallowing darkness. A voice echoed, laced with triumph: "The Star-Eclipse consumes all, One-Earth! Your light ends here!"
He gasped, stumbling back a step, pistol dipping. The vision vanished as quickly as it came, leaving cold sweat pricking his brow and his core sputtering erratically. The artifact hadn't moved, yet something inside it had… reacted to the nearness of his unstable spirit. That stain…
McNamara's eyes narrowed fractionally. He'd seen the flinch, the momentary terror. "Like looking into a shattered mirror, ain't it?" he rasped quietly. "Sees the cracks the clearest."
Ethan gritted his teeth, forcing the Stardust core back under tenuous control. The fear-fueled vision seared his mind. Star-Eclipse. What was that? A memory? A warning? His hand hovered over the Shard. The hunger was still there, ravenous, but now tainted by the chilling glimpse of the stain within his own spirit's reflection. Touching this Shard… could it awaken that thing? Could it give the darkness he'd glimpsed fuel?
The sterile, alien scent grew stronger. Time was up.
Gathering the scattered fragments of his will, Ethan made his choice. Not dominance. Integration. He focused not on grabbing, but on connecting with the Shard's latent energy field, probing cautiously, seeking an understanding, a controlled resonance his fractured pathways might sustain. He directed a miniscule tendril of his own nascent Stardust core towards the artifact's surface.
**>> ERROR! ACCESS INTERFERENCE DETECTED! ALERT: SPECTRAL SIGNATURE MATCH: 'DARK STAR'!**
Before he could react, the ambient dust motes exploded into frenzied motion, swirling like a miniature galaxy directly above the Shard. Simultaneously, a blinding lance of concentrated moonlight pierced through a sudden tear in the container roof above McNamara, illuminating a swirling sigil coalescing on the floor around his feet – a complex web of pure, silver light, geometric and impossibly sharp. Energy Signature: Identified as 'Sanctified Channeling' - Origin: Purity Protocols. McNamara stiffened, trapped within the rapidly forming sigil, unable to move, smoke momentarily vaporized in the intense light.
Ethan whirled, pistol snapping up again, but not towards McNamara now. Three figures stood silhouetted in the newly torn gap above. They wore dark, close-fitting uniforms of severe black material accented with silver circuitry threads that pulsed with an inner, cold light. Featureless silver visors covered their faces, reflecting only the chaos below. Towering over them was a fourth figure – imposing, encased in gleaming chrome-like plate armor etched with intricate glyphs that radiated containment force. A visored helm obscured any features, but palpable contempt radiated from the chromed giant. He held no visible weapon, only a raised fist, knuckles pulsing with the same silver light binding McNamara.
"Contain the breach!" The giant's voice boomed, processed and inhuman. "Secure the Celestial Fragment! Purge the corrupt vessel! Execute the dark conduit!"
Lances of focused silver energy crackled to life on the arms of the smaller soldiers, aimed unerringly at Ethan and the flickering containment sigil holding McNamara. McNamara, pinned within the blinding light, met Ethan's gaze. In that fractured moment, no words were needed. The cryptic bartender was the "dark conduit." The shattered disciple? He was the "corrupt vessel." And the Stardust Shard? That was the "Celestial Fragment" drawing holy fire.
McNamara managed a tight smile, strained against the sigil's force. "Told ya," he rasped, the words barely audible over the sudden charge in the air. "Lanterns attract worse than rats. Meet the Celestial Knights. Star Chamber's cleaning crew." He raised a single finger inside the sigil. "Plan B."
A tiny prism suspended on a leather cord around McNamara's neck glinted impossibly bright. The silver light binding him refracted, bending violently. It shot towards one of the chrome giant's subordinates in a dazzling, splintered beam. The Knight screamed, a sound modulated by his helmet into a horrific electronic shriek, as his own armor buckled violently from the redirected force, silver energy lancing back into his body.
The container plunged into sudden, disorienting darkness as the sigil shattered and the moonlight vanished. Smoke bombs erupted near the ceiling entrance, billowing thick grey clouds that stung Ethan's eyes and choked his lungs. The remaining Silver Knights stumbled, their targeting disrupted.
In the chaos, McNamara vanished. One second he was there, the next – gone. Only a wisp of lingering smoke remained where he'd stood.
Ethan didn't hesitate. He grabbed the Stardust Shard. Not gently. Desperately. Its surface burned cold through the cloth of his jacket pocket as he jammed it away.
Three lances of silver energy burned through the smoke, aimed where he had been standing. He threw himself sideways, shards of rusty metal showering around him. He scrambled towards the container entrance, firing wildly upwards into the smoke with Malone's pistol. The bullets sparked uselessly off the chrome giant's armor, but it bought a microsecond. Diving through the door into the stinking dock night, he hit the cracked concrete rolling.
Gunfire and the eerie hum of their energy weapons ripped through the air above. He fled into the deeper darkness of the decaying docks, the cold weight of the Shard a dangerous promise burning against his hip, McNamara's cryptic clues now terrifying prologue to a war he hadn't known he was fighting. The corrupted echo within him pulsed in eerie sympathy with the stolen artifact. The Celestial Knights weren't hunting rats. They were hunting him.