The aftermath of Alex's internal cataclysm left him weak but strangely… lucid. The screaming Echoes had receded into a background murmur, distinct but no longer overwhelming.
It was as if the violent discharge and Lena's mental anchoring, combined with that strange, resonant alien frequency, had somehow helped him delineate the boundaries of his own consciousness from the psychic imprints he carried.
Voss, after ensuring he was stable, immediately turned her attention to the new information. "A key to symbiotic bio-technology…" she murmured, pacing the dusty interchange hub floor.
"When UGF Central Command shut down Project Echo-Five, they seized all our primary research, classified it at levels I couldn't even imagine. But I managed to squirrel away a few encrypted data fragments. Obscure sensor readings from a deep space probe, anomalies in Zeta Reticuli that UGF officially denied ever investigating."
She pulled out her datapad, fingers flying across its surface. "I always suspected they found something tangible, Alex. More than just 'traces.' An actual artifact, maybe even a dormant vessel."
She brought up a star chart, highlighting a distant, unremarkable system. "The energy signatures from my fragmented data… they bore a faint resemblance to the unique resonance your body emits when you use the Absorber Gene, especially during high-energy events."
"Zeta Reticuli?" Alex asked, the name stirring a vague sense of familiarity, like a half-forgotten dream.
"A binary star system. Officially uninhabited, unremarkable dust belt. Unofficially…" Voss zoomed in on a specific sector within the system, revealing a blurry, low-resolution image of… something. A vast, dark object, partially obscured by cosmic dust, with angles that were too perfect, too deliberate to be natural. "…UGF established a black site there decades ago. Codename: Outpost Alaris."
Kai, who had been overseeing the Crows' meager defenses, joined them. "Alaris? I've heard whispers of that name in the deepest black market data streams. A ghost story. A place UGF ships go in, but rarely come out looking the same. Some say it's a weapons development facility, others a xeno-containment zone."
"It could be both," Voss said grimly. "If they found an alien artifact, they'd try to weaponize it. And if that artifact is linked to the Absorber Gene… then Alaris might hold answers. About your origin, Alex. About what they're so desperate to control."
The alien vision, the chime, the glyph, now felt more urgent than ever. Was this Alaris the source? Or a UGF prison for something related to it?
"How do we even get to Zeta Reticuli?" Lena asked, pragmatic as ever. "Rusthaven is under lockdown. Leaving the system will be next to impossible."
"There's one chance," Kai said slowly, a calculating look in his eyes. "The Crimson Syndicate. They're the biggest criminal power in this sector. They have ships, untraceable routes… and they hate the UGF almost as much as we do. If we could offer them something valuable enough…"
"Like what?" Alex asked. "We have nothing they'd want."
Kai's gaze flickered to Alex. "Don't be so sure. A man who can absorb and fuse Gene Core powers, who can go toe-to-toe with UGF special ops and their mechs… you're not nothing, Ren. You're either a priceless asset or a terrifying threat. The Syndicate deals in both."
Alex felt a chill. Dealing with a ruthless criminal organization like the Crimson Syndicate was a desperate, dangerous gamble. But Alaris… the name resonated with that alien frequency in his mind, a siren song of potential answers.
Before they could debate further, his alien vision surged, clearer and more potent than ever before.
He wasn't just seeing the crystalline city; he was in it. The tall, robed figures moved with graceful, deliberate motions. One of them, slightly taller than the others, its features still indistinct within its cloak of light, turned directly towards him. The resonant chime filled his senses, and the glyph burned brightly in the air before the figure.
This time, he understood. Not with words, but with a sudden, intuitive flash of comprehension. The glyph wasn't just a symbol; it was a schematic, a diagram of energy flow. And the chime wasn't a call; it was a tuning fork, a guide to achieving a specific energetic resonance.
The vision showed him the flow: how energy could be drawn, focused, and then… folded. Not dampened in a nullifying way, but its signature somehow inverted, made to mimic the background radiation of space, or the hum of a planet's magnetosphere. A stealth far more profound than mere invisibility.
He gasped, the vision receding, leaving him breathless but exhilarated. He looked at his hands, a new understanding dawning.
"The stealth field…" he said, his voice filled with newfound confidence. "I think… I think I know how to do it. Not by nullifying energy, but by… harmonizing it. Masking our signature by making it resonate with the background noise."
Voss, Kai, and Lena stared at him.
"That alien input again?" Voss asked, her eyes wide.
Alex nodded. "It's… teaching me." He took a deep, calming breath, trying to replicate the serene focus from the vision, to find that specific resonant frequency. He reached out with his senses, not for power, but for the subtle energy hum of Rusthaven itself – the thrum of its aging reactors, the static of its comms systems, the faint gravitic distortions of its spin.
Then, he began to draw upon the faint, lingering energies within himself – the stable remnants of the Strength and Static Cores, even the last dregs of the wild electricity, now surprisingly more quiescent after his recent 'balancing' act. He didn't try to fuse them for attack, but to weave them, guiding their frequencies, coaxing them to match the resonant hum he'd perceived in his vision.
It was incredibly complex, like tuning a vast, invisible orchestra by feel alone.
Slowly, painstakingly, a subtle shimmer began to envelop him. It wasn't invisibility, but the air around him seemed to… waver. His own energy signature, which Lena had described as 'loud,' began to diminish on the Crows' scavenged sensors, which Lena was monitoring intently.
"His readings… they're dropping," Lena breathed, astonished. "Not gone, but… blending. It's like he's becoming background noise."
The shimmer expanded, tentatively reaching out to Voss, then Kai and Lena who stood close. Their own energy signatures began to fade from the local sensors as well, masked within Alex's field.
"It's… it's working," Alex said, sweat beading on his brow from the intense concentration. The field was small, fragile, and required his constant focus, but it was there. "It won't make us invisible to visual scanners, but it should dramatically reduce our energy footprint. Enough, maybe, to slip past those UGF sensor drones."
Kai looked at the sensor display, then at Alex, a rare flicker of genuine amazement in his eyes. "Ren… you might just be the craziest, most useful bastard I've ever met." He then sobered.
"Okay. If you can maintain that, we might have a chance to reach the deeper levels. And from there… maybe we start thinking about how to introduce ourselves to the Crimson Syndicate. Because Alaris… that sounds like a place we need to see."
The UGF was closing in. The Crimson Syndicate was a dangerous gamble. And a mysterious alien black site held potential answers, or unimaginable horrors.
Alex Ren, the boy from Rusthaven's slums, the accidental hero, the 'Chimera', was about to take his first tentative step onto a galactic stage far stranger and more perilous than he could ever have conceived. And the echoes of Alaris were calling.