The crater was still smoking.
Absolute 7 knelt in the center of it, her dark grey mask cracked, her uniform torn, blood dripping from a dozen wounds. Her left arm hung at an unnatural angle. Her breathing was ragged. But she was alive.
Selene Kane stood across from her, untouched. The icy wind caught her white hair, lifted it like a banner, and carried it across the frozen wasteland she had created. The volcano behind her was sealed in ice. The facility beside it was rubble. The sky above was black.
"Give up," Selene said. Her voice was calm, almost kind. "I don't kill. But force me, and I will."
Absolute 7 pushed herself to her feet.
Her legs shook. Her vision blurred. Blood dripped from her chin. She stood anyway.
"I'm not done yet."
Selene's head tilted. The single visible eye—the other hidden behind the cracked mask—studied the woman before her. Blood. Broken bones. Refusing to fall.
"What's your reason?" Selene asked. "For fighting? You don't look like the rest of them."
Absolute 7 didn't answer.
She fixed her stance. Adjusted her balance. Raised her fists.
She charged.
The speed was insane—a blur of grey and black, crossing the distance between them in less than a heartbeat. The power behind the strike should have leveled a building. The agility was beyond anything Selene had seen from an Architect.
Selene raised one hand.
She caught the punch.
The shockwave that followed was catastrophic. Trees kilometers away uprooted, flew through the air, splintered against the mountainside. The facility behind them collapsed, steel and concrete crumpling like paper. The ground beneath their feet shattered, a crater forming beneath them, spreading, deepening, widening.
When the dust settled, they stood at the bottom of a hole hundreds of meters across.
Absolute 7 was on her knees again. Her arm was broken—the one Selene had caught—the bones visible through the skin. Her mask had cracked further, exposing her eye, wide and desperate.
Selene looked down at her.
"You're not strong enough," she said. Not cruel. Just factual.
She hit her once.
The impact sent Absolute 7 flying—across the crater, across the wasteland, across the horizon. She disappeared into the distance, a speck against the grey sky, eventually crashing somewhere far beyond where Selene could see.
Selene stood alone in the crater.
The wind howled. The ice creaked. The sky churned.
What was that?
She felt something moving through her—a current, a flow, energy she hadn't known she possessed. It was like ice, cold and sharp, running through her veins, her muscles, her self.
She reached for it.
"Dominance Sphere."
Ice erupted from her.
Not the slow creep of frost—an explosion, a detonation of cold that expanded outward in every direction. The sphere was enormous, dwarfing anything she'd seen or heard of. The walls were thick, shimmering, alive. The temperature inside dropped to levels that should have killed anything living.
Selene stared at her hands.
"Wow," she muttered. "That's... cool."
She experimented. Pushed the sphere further. Pulled it back. Made it twist, compress, expand. The ice obeyed her. The cold was hers.
What if I—
She stopped.
The sphere vanished.
She stood in the empty crater, the wind the only sound, the ice the only witness.
"I'm going to work on that," she said to no one.
She glanced at the distant speck where Absolute 7 had landed—still alive, probably, she hadn't hit her that hard—and turned away.
Time to go.
Where?
She had no idea. North, maybe. Somewhere cold. Somewhere she could think.
She walked.
Behind her, the crater froze over. The clouds began to clear. The volcano was silent.
Selene Kane was free.
And the world had no idea what was coming