The void-entity lunged, a shifting mass of liquid darkness surging toward Billy with terrifying speed. It moved like a predator, like it had purpose.

  Billy reacted on instinct. His enhanced reflexes kicked in as he dodged sideways, narrowly avoiding a tendril of black sludge that lashed out, melting through the steel plating where he’d stood a second earlier.

  The Cerberus agent wasn’t idle either. She fired another burst from her disruptor pistol, each shot destabilizing the entity’s form, causing it to ripple and distort. The shriek it emitted wasn’t just sound—it was felt in their bones, vibrating through the air with a wrongness that made Billy’s stomach churn.

  Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t just chaos energy.

  Billy knew chaos energy. He could sense it. But this? This was something corrupted, something incomplete—as if it wasn’t fully formed yet.

  And then he noticed something even worse.

  It was learning.

  The creature’s first movements had been wild, erratic, like a newborn lashing out. But now? It was adapting, dodging shots it hadn’t dodged before, shifting its form to absorb incoming fire more efficiently.

  Billy gritted his teeth. Great.

  “This thing’s getting smarter,” he muttered.

  The Cerberus agent fired another shot. This time, the entity twisted its form mid-air, avoiding the impact entirely.

  “I noticed,” she said.

  Billy scanned the area. The corridor was a dead end—no way back, and the only way forward was through this thing.

  But then he saw something else.

  The vault it had broken out of was still open.

  And inside?

  A terminal.

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  Billy’s mind raced. If Kane Industries had contained this thing here, they had to have had some kind of fail-safe. Some way to shut it down.

  Or at least slow it down.

  “Cover me!” Billy shouted, sprinting toward the vault.

  The Cerberus agent hesitated for only a split second before she followed his lead. She fired in quick succession, forcing the entity back, her disruptor rounds momentarily stunning it long enough for Billy to dive into the vault.

  The inside was a disaster zone. Broken equipment, shattered glass, and the remnants of a summoning circle—an actual summoning circle—burned into the steel floor, its runes still glowing faintly with residual energy.

  Billy cursed.

  Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

  This wasn’t just a security breach.

  Someone had tried to summon something—and failed.

  Or maybe… they had succeeded.

  Billy reached the terminal and brought it to life with a quick override from his cybernetic interface. Screens flickered, data scrolling fast.

  Then he saw it.

  A containment protocol—labeled "Project Vanta: Emergency Termination".

  Billy’s eyes narrowed.

  Kane, what the hell were you people messing with?

  He didn’t have time to dig further. The entity screeched, and the Cerberus agent was suddenly thrown back into the vault, crashing against the wall.

  Billy spun around.

  The thing was at the threshold, tendrils reaching forward, its mass expanding, filling the space.

  It was going to consume the whole vault.

  Billy didn’t hesitate. He slammed his palm onto the "Emergency Termination" command.

  The room shook.

  High-frequency resonant waves blasted from concealed emitters along the vault’s walls. The entity froze, its form convulsing, flickering like a broken hologram.

  Billy watched as its face reappeared, flickering in and out—not one face, but many, shifting, distorted, their mouths opening in silent screams.

  Then, with a final, shrieking pulse, the void-entity imploded.

  The sound that followed wasn’t an explosion—it was a vacuum, a crushing silence as the entity’s form collapsed inward, sucked into a point of nothingness before vanishing completely.

  The room went still.

  Billy exhaled, stepping back from the terminal. “Well… that was a thing.”

  The Cerberus agent groaned, pushing herself up. She glanced at the now-empty space where the creature had been. “Next time, warn me before you pull something like that.”

  Billy smirked. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  She shot him a glare but didn’t argue.

  Instead, she turned her gaze to the summoning circle. Her fingers traced the scorched runes. “This wasn’t just a security experiment. This was occult-level shit.”

  Billy crossed his arms. “Kane Industries was summoning something.”

  The agent nodded. “And whatever that thing was…” She hesitated, her voice lower. “It wasn’t from this world.”

  Billy’s smirk faded.

  Because he knew she was right.

  And that meant Kane Industries had access to something even more dangerous than chaos energy.