The silence hanging over the Main Colosseum lasted only a heartbeat before Marcus snapped out of his shock.
"You damned baseline freak!" Marcus screamed, his amber aura flaring erratically as he ignored his captain's fallen body and aimed a point-blank kinetic lance directly at Caine's back.
Caine was panting heavily, his right arm trembling from the chemical burns inside his glove, unable to raise his guard in time.
"Not while I'm breathing!" Jax roared.
With his thermal shield ruined and his left arm bruised, Jax physically threw his own body into the path of the lance. The kinetic force slammed into Jax's arm guard, sending him skidding across the quartz, but he refused to drop, locking his feet into the stone to keep Marcus from advancing.
At the same time, Lyra pushed past her exhaustion. She threw her ruined focus rod like a baton, striking Marcus's wrist mid-cast. The physical distraction broke his concentration, allowing her to sweep Marcus's footing with a sharp leg sweep, pinning his arm to the floor.
Caine turned slowly, stepping up to Marcus. He didn't strike again. He simply stood over him, raising his gloved right fist—the same unlit, terrifying hand that had just dismantled a Level 28 barrier in a single blow.
Marcus stared up at the dark leather, sweating profusely, his chest heaving as he slowly raised his hands off the floor in total surrender.
"Match concluded!" the automated announcer's voice echoed through the stadium, breaking the spell over the crowd. "Winner of Primary Bracket Match 1: Auxiliary Squad 4!"
A delayed, wild roar erupted across the amphitheater. Spectators scrambled to re-examine their digital slates, unable to comprehend how an Auxiliary team with a broken shield, a burned focus rod, and a CHPower 12 baseline had just fought through Section 1's Vanguard and won.
High in the executive box, Director Thorne stood up slowly. His face was cold, his jaw set tight as he stared down at Caine. On the primary telemetry monitor beside him, the wave-pattern graphs remained completely flat, stubbornly registering no abnormal energy spikes beyond the baseline limit—despite the shattered quartz and broken armor below.
Down on the arena floor, Jax collapsed onto one knee, letting out a ragged, triumphant laugh as he held his bruised ribs. "We... we actually took down Section 1..."
Lyra knelt beside Jax, checking his arm while catching her own breath, a faint, exhausted smile breaking across her face. "We survived. But look at Thorne... he knows something impossible just happened."
Caine slowly unbuckled the wrist strap of his glove, letting the cool air hit the blistering skin of his palm. The heat was subsiding into a deep throb. He looked up toward the executive box, meeting Director Thorne's piercing gaze without backing down.
Auxiliary Squad 4 had bled for this victory, but Caine knew the Directorate wouldn't let an anomaly like him walk away unchecked.