Ruki pressed her fingers to the earpiece, her voice sharp but steady.
"Alia. Multiple guards — left corridor, five… no, six approaching fast."
Alia turned her head, jaw clenched. They didn't have time.
The boy — Kai — was still seated on the bed, unmoving, staring at her like she was a painting on a wall. Unreachable. Still not understanding what was happening, or why.
Then Ruki's hand clamped onto Alia's shoulder.
"I'll stay."
Alia blinked. "What?"
Ruki's eye, the only one not hidden by her hair, was hard and calm.
"I'll hold them off. I can slow them down with my Ice Wall."
She turned toward the hallway, already stepping back.
"You're the only one who can use long-range teleport. You have to get him out. You can come back for me later."
Alia hesitated. Her fingers curled into fists. Her power was unstable — long-range jumps were risky. But Ruki had never doubted her. Not once. Not when they were trainees. Not now.
"Ruki…"
"Don't worry about me." Ruki gave her a crooked smile. "This isn't goodbye. Just don't mess up the coordinates."
The walls trembled again — distant fighting, gunfire and shouts echoing closer.
Ruki turned at the doorway, her boots crackling with frost. She held one hand out, palm down.
A gust of white mist swirled from her fingers and the metal doorway sealed shut with growing ice — thick, impenetrable, locking them inside.
"You've got ten seconds," Ruki called back.
Alia took a breath. She turned to the boy. He was still watching, unfazed by the chaos, by the sounds of violence.
"Kai," she said, kneeling down and placing a hand on his chest, where his heart should be beating faster.
"We're going home now."
She opened her other palm, the air pulsing with violet light — glowing rings forming in a circle beneath them. Sparks rose like motes of fireflies.
"I don't know if you remember me. Or if you ever will."
She looked at his blank face, her voice softening.
"But I'll help you remember. I promise."
The light swelled — wrapping them in violet.
And in a flash, they vanished.
Behind them, the ice wall cracked under the pressure of gunfire. Ruki stood in front of it, eyes narrowed, raising her hands again as mist curled around her shoulders like a cloak.
"Come on then," she muttered, voice cold as the frost creeping up the walls.
"Let's dance."
The blinding light of the teleport had long faded.
In its place — silence.
Ruki exhaled a long, trembling breath, her chest slowly rising and falling.
"I hope you don't regret using your power, Ruki…"
Her voice was quiet. Too quiet.
The air around her shimmered. Frost crawled along the walls like veins of ice reaching for the sky. Her boots cracked frozen puddles with every step. The once sterile hallway of the illegal facility was now a graveyard.
She heard the footsteps before she saw them — a thunder of black boots pounding the ground, weapons raised, commands shouted.
But they didn't make it far.
The temperature plummeted.
With a flick of her wrist, the entire hallway became a frozen tomb.
Men turned into statues mid-run, mouths open in silent screams. Some shattered on impact as their momentum carried them forward.
One collapsed inches from Ruki.
She looked down at the glossy ice-encased figure — once alive, warm, human. Now a fragile sculpture of flesh and death.
Without expression, she reached out and touched his chest with a single finger.
Crack.
The body splintered, fractured like glass — and broke into dozens of pieces. Inside: red frozen organs, shattered bones, crimson ice.
Her breath misted in the frigid air.
"All this for one boy," she muttered. "Worth it."
Her eye, once brown, now glowed pure white — unnatural, brilliant like the heart of a blizzard. The corridor was silent again. Only the hum of her own freezing aura remained.
And then, a voice in her earpiece burst into her thoughts like a hammer:
"RUKI! Can you stop fucking using your power like that?! We're all gonna die of frostbite over here!"
The angry male voice cut through the chill like fire.
She blinked once, as if waking up.
"Turn it off. Now. That's an order!"
She closed her eyes.
"Tch… fine."
The ice mist swirled in reverse — the glow in her eye dimming. Her pulse slowed. The walls creaked as temperatures stabilized. The suffocating chill loosened its grip.
She turned from the frozen hall, stepping carefully between what remained of the guards — jagged limbs, pieces of skulls, twisted silhouettes turned ice sculpture.
Then she muttered to herself, with more tiredness than remorse:
"Let's go find Alia."
She walked on, skipping the puddles of frozen blood and limbs. Behind her, the hallway gleamed like a slaughterhouse in a snowstorm.