The artificial aberrant holding him was the S-rank prototype.
The same one that had consumed the core he'd tried to acquire. The same one that had been specifically designed to counter his abilities. It had been waiting inside the walls — hidden in the same dimensional space Raze had used to approach.
"You didn't think we'd learn from our previous encounter?" Morrow sat up, completely calm despite the violence erupting in his bedroom. "Your dimensional abilities are remarkable. So we designed dimensional countermeasures."
The prototype's grip tightened. Suppression effects flooded through the contact — not external fields, but direct mana interference that disrupted Raze's abilities at their source.
"The Ancient One sold you," Morrow continued. "Your approach route, your timing, your dimensional signature. All of it provided to us in exchange for considerations we were happy to offer."
Betrayal. The Ancient One had used Raze as a testing ground — providing intelligence that would let the Association prepare specific countermeasures. Whether Raze succeeded or failed, the Ancient One would learn something valuable about current capabilities.
"You expected this," the prototype said, its mechanical voice carrying satisfaction. "The mission was designed to fail."
Raze's mind raced, evaluating options. The prototype's grip prevented dimensional escape. The suppression interfered with his enhanced strength. The beast instinct roared for release, but the unity integration couldn't function through direct mana interference.
*We are being held*, the beast observed. *Standard options are not available.*
"Find alternatives."
*The suppression targets consumption abilities. Other abilities are less affected.*
The fragments of consumed consciousness stirred. The Crystal Stalker's perspective, the partial awareness Raze had taken without full integration. It offered something unexpected — a way of experiencing reality that didn't depend on conventional mana processing.
Partial consciousness. Fractured awareness. A perspective that existed between dimensions rather than within them.
Raze stopped fighting the grip and started expanding.
---
The sensation was unlike anything he'd experienced.
His consciousness fragmented, spreading through the dimensional spaces the Stalker had taught him to perceive. He was still physically held by the prototype, but his awareness wasn't limited to physical form anymore.
He could see the building's structure from multiple angles simultaneously. He could feel the suppression field's boundaries and gaps. He could identify the points where the prototype's designed countermeasures didn't quite cover all possibilities.
*Interesting*, the Stalker fragments communicated. *You're learning to exist as we did. Multiple perspectives. Simultaneous awareness.*
"Can I use this to escape?"
*You can use this to be everywhere the suppression isn't. The prototype is holding your body. Your consciousness is harder to contain.*
Raze pushed the expansion further. His awareness slipped through gaps in the suppression, finding areas where his abilities still functioned. The bedroom's corners. The spaces between walls. The dimensional planes adjacent to physical reality.
The prototype's grip was designed for physical containment. It couldn't hold something that was becoming less physical by the second.
He began reconstituting himself in a corner of the room that the suppression didn't reach.
The prototype noticed immediately. "What are you—"
Raze's body dissolved into dimensional fragments. The grip closed on nothing. And across the room, he reformed — different now, changed by the experience of existing as pure consciousness.
Morrow's calm finally cracked. "That shouldn't be possible."
"A lot of things shouldn't be possible." Raze's voice carried harmonics that weren't there before. "I'm learning to be all of them."
---
The fight that followed broke the bedroom.
The prototype attacked with S-rank power, shattering walls and furniture as it tried to recapture something that could fragment and reform at will. Raze didn't try to match its strength — he didn't need to. Every time it landed a strike, he dispersed, reconstituted somewhere else, and kept moving toward his objective.
Morrow.
The Director had fled into the apartment's safe room — a reinforced space designed to withstand aberrant assault. Its defenses were comprehensive, probably impenetrable to conventional attack.
Raze wasn't attacking conventionally anymore.
He spread through the walls surrounding the safe room, his consciousness existing in the spaces the defenses couldn't protect. The room was shielded from the front. It wasn't shielded from existing within its own structure.
He materialized inside the safe room.
Morrow turned, weapon raised — some kind of suppression device that should have neutralized aberrant abilities. It did nothing to someone who'd become something between physical and dimensional.
"You're a monster," Morrow said. "Everything we feared about aberrant evolution. You're proof that our program is necessary."
"Your program created the conditions that made me. If you wanted to prevent monsters, you shouldn't have built a machine that manufactures them."
"We build tools to control threats. You're a threat that needs to be controlled."
"I'm a person who wanted to be left alone. You decided I was a threat. You hunted me, trapped me, forced me to become what I am." Raze stepped closer. "This is the result of your decisions, not mine."
The prototype crashed through the safe room wall, but it was too late.
Raze's hand found Morrow's throat. Not consumption — just pressure. Enough to end the life of someone who'd ended so many others.
"For everyone you processed," he said quietly. "For everyone you planned to process. For the community that had to hide because you decided we didn't deserve to exist."
Director Morrow died looking at exactly what his program had created.
---
Extraction was chaos.
The prototype pursued through multiple dimensional states, but Raze's new capabilities let him stay ahead. He fled through walls, through spaces, through the city's infrastructure until he reached the safe house.
The elderly woman who'd provided shelter was dead.
Association response teams had found her — traced the connection somehow, arrived before Raze could return. The safe house was burned, compromised, another casualty of the mission he'd just completed.
He stood in the ruined apartment, surrounded by destruction, and felt the weight of what he'd done.
Morrow was dead. The replication program would be disrupted. The community was safer.
But the price kept accumulating. The host who'd helped him. The abilities he'd developed by fragmenting his consciousness. The changes in how he existed that he didn't fully understand yet.
*We are different now*, the beast instinct observed. *The fragmentation changed us.*
"I know."
*We should consume the prototype. It would make us stronger.*
"The prototype isn't here."
*It will be. It's still hunting us. Eventually, we will face it again.*
The hunger was right. The S-rank artificial would continue pursuing him. Director Morrow's death wouldn't stop the replication program permanently — it would just create a leadership vacuum that someone else would fill.
The war wasn't over. The mission was complete, but nothing was actually finished.
Raze found a way out of the city and headed for the rendezvous point the Ancient One had specified.
It was time for the meeting he'd been promised.
Time to learn what he was becoming.
