"What?!" Priene barked, her voice sharp enough to cut steel. Her eyes went wide with disbelief, flashing from Kali to Darius like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. "That's impossible. This has to be some kind of twisted joke."
Darius took another step forward, hands tucked casually in his jacket pockets. The smirk on his face was small, practiced, and unbearably smug. "I'm afraid not, sweetheart," he said, his tone light and lazy. Then he turned his gaze back to Kali, eyes sharpening. "But now I'm curious, how did you figure it out? I thought I was pretty damn clever about the whole thing."
Kali's expression remained unreadable, almost cold. "You were," he admitted. "I didn't have a clue for the longest time. But then… pieces started to fit."
Darius raised a brow. "Go on."
Kali took a slow breath, recounting the puzzle aloud. "I never found out who hired the outpost commander at Fort Harlow. He was tight-lipped until the end, but I started thinking, maybe you knew. You were close to him, unusually so for someone in your position. Close enough to find out who funded the attack."
Darius said nothing, but a ghost of amusement flickered at the corner of his mouth.
"You planned the heist," Kali continued. "Then you had us go back to the Fort, after the relic was already gone so you could clean up the evidence, tie up loose ends. Very clever."
"And?" Darius asked. "Why did I have you stay behind, then?"
"You didn't," Kali replied, and his voice lowered. "That was standard procedure. But you were going to have me killed, weren't you? I disappeared before you could."
Darius chuckled, short and unrepentant. "Can't lie. That was the plan."
Priene took a half-step forward, her grip tightening on her machete again, her knuckles white.
"But I didn't die," Kali said. "Neither did Priene. We came back, broken but alive. And once you confirmed we didn't know anything, you lost interest. You didn't even try to finish the job."
Darius tilted his head. "Yet I still called you, didn't I?"
Kali nodded. "That's where you fucked up."
Darius blinked. "How so?"
Kali took a slow step forward now, voice gaining an edge. "You asked me to infiltrate the Syndicate. No details, no targets, just 'Keep climbing the ranks.' You thought I wouldn't question it, that I'd be chasing your approval like a loyal little mutt."
"Weren't you?"
"Not for long. I've only been in the Syndicate for eight months, Darius. Eight. And somehow, I'm already in the inner circle." His tone darkened. "That kind of rise doesn't just happen. Not without someone pulling strings. That made me suspicious."
Darius's smile was thin, faintly strained now.
"And then there was the CIB appointment," Kali went on. "On paper, it looked clean, instated by the Deputy Chief himself. But anyone who understands the hierarchy knows that kind of appointment goes through a lot of red tape at the ministry."
He gave Darius a look cold enough to freeze a sun. "That's when I knew. It wasn't loyalty you wanted, it was control. You wanted an awakened you could aim like a gun. You wanted me on a leash."
In truth, all these deductions were more Rizen's than his.
Silence fell in the room. Even the broken Reaper groaned faintly, as if sensing the gravity between the three of them.
Priene broke it first. "So all this time," she said slowly, voice trembling with fury, "you weren't hunting Willow Teeth. You were Willow Teeth."
"It is as they say," Darius murmured with a crooked grin, eyes gleaming. "The cat's out of the bag."
He took a slow step forward, hands still relaxed at his sides, though the air around him seemed to subtly shift, thicken, like the pause before a detonation. "And now it seems you both have a choice to make. Kali… hand Ryu over. Trust me, killing him bodes ill for all of us. Then join me. You've already seen the rot. The Ministry's house is made of glass, and every day someone throws another stone."
He paused, voice softening. "You're not like them, Kali. You're awakened. Born of grief. You know the weight of this world. So, either step into something greater… or die here, in the dust, forgotten."
The warehouse hummed with silence. Then—
"No," Priene said.
Her blade moved in a single, elegant arc, clean, swift, final. One blink he was alive. The next, Ryu's head hit the concrete floor with a wet thud, his body slumping lifelessly a moment later.
Kali didn't even flinch. He had known it would happen the moment Priene stepped forward.
Darius didn't move at first. His expression froze, then cracked into something feral. "You fucking bitch!" he roared, voice distorting with fury.
The temperature in the room skyrocketed.
Kali exhaled, slowly, his heart steadying as he loaded another round. "So much for the peaceful option."
Then came the eruption. The depot's atmosphere ignited with a sudden, violent flare. Fire danced from Darius's skin like a second, living body. His jacket incinerated in an instant, flesh glowing with molten seams, his eyes now pits of incandescent wrath.
Steel supports groaned and warped. The floor beneath him blistered. Priene leapt back, eyes narrowing in shock.
"Gamma class," Kali muttered grimly.
That changed everything. Delta mutants were threats, but Gamma? Gamma was akin to a king in a fringe world like Theraxis.
Darius stood at the heart of the inferno like a burning god, his body radiating waves of destructive heat. "You had your chance," he growled, voice distorted by the flame. "Now burn like the rest."
The depot had become a kiln.
Flames roared outward in hungry spirals as Darius advanced, every step carving molten craters into the concrete. The heat distorted vision, turned shadows into dancing monsters. Steel racks twisted, walls blistered, and crates exploded like kindling.
Kali fired the first shot, grief-infused.
The bullet howled through the air, a whisper of sorrow trapped in steel. It struck Darius square in the chest, exploding not with fire but with memory. A silent scream of every life lost at Fort Harlow, every scream Kali had never forgotten. For a moment, Darius faltered, eyes flickering with images that weren't his.
But he roared through it, tearing forward with a molten punch that shattered the ground between them.
"MOVE!" Kali shouted.
Priene obeyed, darting left with uncanny agility, flames licking at her boots. She took a wall in two strides, leapt, flipped, and landed near the rear scaffolding. Her machete spun in her grip, blackened steel glowing orange from proximity to the heat.
Darius hurled fire with both hands, a twin blast like solar flares. Kali rolled behind a toppled shipping crate as the beams melted through the wall where he'd stood a heartbeat ago.
"His heat radius is expanding!" Priene called over comms.
"We have to leave," Kali gasped as he crawled behind cover, blood leaking from his temple. "We can't kill him."
"We killed Ryu," Priene panted through gritted teeth. "That was the prize."
Kali tapped his comms, syncing to the depot's layout. "South corridor. Underground tram tunnel. It'll take us past the rim."
Priene ran toward him, dodging a fireball that blasted through the ceiling above. They ducked into the maintenance hallway as Darius stormed after them, turning every wall to molten slag behind him.
"I'LL BURN YOU OUT!" he screamed. "YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE?!"
Kali glanced behind and tossed a fragment charge. One of Colt's custom rigs into the corridor. It beeped twice, then detonated in a concussive blast of kinetic pressure, collapsing the hall in a storm of dust and rubble.
The path behind them vanished.
"Won't stop him long," Kali muttered.
They ran through the bowels of the depot, rusted tunnels and old trams, power flickering from age. Priene limped slightly, her coat half-burned, eyes wild and furious.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I've been worse," she replied.
They reached the exit tunnel, a sealed blast door rusted from disuse.
Kali placed a charge against it and detonated. The door hissed, cracked, and wept open. Fresh night air spilled in, cold and starlit. Kirel's strata stretched beyond, a scarred landscape of dust, neon, and scrapyards.
As they sprinted into the dark, a rumble echoed behind them, Darius, bursting through concrete and flame, screaming their names.
But they were already gone.