The corporate lounge was a cathedral of black marble and cold, dead silence.

It was the kind of room that was designed to make you feel small.

Insignificant.

And very, very poor.

Miles lay on the floor, the polished, freezing stone a welcome, solid thing against his aching back.

He felt like he had just been personally, and very thoroughly, beaten up by a hurricane.

Every muscle in his body was screaming a tiny, high-pitched song of pure, unadulterated agony.

"Okay, so, new life goal," his internal monologue whispered, a dry, exhausted voice that was barely able to form a sarcastic thought.

"No more climbing skyscrapers."

"In a thunderstorm."

"While being shot at by an army of killer robots."

"It's just not for me."

"I'm more of a 'stay on the ground floor and complain about the stairs' kind of guy."

Clara knelt beside him, her hand a small, warm pressure on his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice a low, worried murmur in the quiet room.

"I'm fantastic," he grunted, the words a painful, breathless wheeze.

"I think I dislocated a lung, but other than that, I'm in peak physical condition."

He pushed himself up, his movements the slow, creaking protest of a body that had been pushed far, far beyond its limits.

He looked around the opulent, ridiculously large room.

It was deserted.

Empty glasses sat on low, modern tables.

"This feels… wrong," he whispered, his senses, his ghost-like intuition, screaming at him.

"This is too quiet."

"This is the part of the horror movie where the audience is yelling at the screen, 'Don't go in there, you idiot!'"

"And I'm the idiot."

"I'm always the idiot."

And then, just as the last of his sarcastic thought faded away, the room was plunged into a sudden, jarring darkness.

The emergency lights, which had been providing a dim, ambient glow, went out.

For a single, heavy beat, there was nothing.

Just the sound of his own ragged breathing and the frantic, hammering beat of his own heart.

Then, the darkness was replaced by a cold, sterile, and deeply angry red.

A new set of lights, a web of thin, laser-like beams, snapped to life, bathing the entire room in a bloody, oppressive glow.

And they were no longer alone.

They stood at the far end of the room, near a set of large, ornate, obsidian doors.

Two of them.

They were identical.

Perfect, mirror images of each other.

They were tall, slender, and moved with a strange, unsettling, and perfectly synchronized grace.

They were dressed in simple, elegant, black suits that seemed to absorb the red light.

They were twins.

And they were smiling.

It was the same smile.

A cold, detached, and deeply unsettling expression of pure, professional amusement.

"Well, this is just great," Miles thought, a new, fresh wave of adrenaline momentarily pushing back the exhaustion.

"The creepy, silent twins from every horror movie ever made."

"All that's missing is a tricycle and a really long hallway."

The system in his head, which had been in a low-power, sputtering state, flared to life with a new, urgent warning.

[WARNING: TWO HIGH-TIER SYSTEM USERS DETECTED.]

[SIGNATURES ARE IDENTICAL. AND… LINKED.]

[SYSTEM TYPE: UNKNOWN. SPATIAL MANIPULATION.]

[THREAT LEVEL: SEVERE.]

The twins took a single, perfectly synchronized step forward.

They didn't speak.

They just moved.

The fight began without a word.

One of the twins, the one on the left, simply raised his hand, his palm open.

And Miles's world became very, very heavy.

He felt a sudden, crushing, and deeply personal increase in the force of gravity.

It was like a giant, invisible hand had just slammed down on him, trying to press him through the marble floor.

His knees buckled.

He let out a grunt of pure, surprised agony.

[WARNING: HOST IS CAUGHT IN A LOCALIZED GRAVITY WELL,] the system reported, its text a frantic, glitching mess in his vision.

[MOBILITY REDUCED BY 80%.]

"No kidding!" he gasped, struggling just to stay on his feet.

He was pinned.

A fly caught in a web of physics.

And then, the other twin moved.

He didn't attack Miles directly.

He gestured to a large, heavy, and ridiculously expensive-looking marble coffee table.

The table lifted into the air, a silent, floating block of polished stone.

It spun, slowly, gracefully.

And then, it shot across the room, a two-ton, marble missile aimed directly at his head.

[WARNING: INCOMING PROJECTILE. KINETIC REVERSAL DETECTED.]

Clara screamed his name.

He didn't have time to dodge.

He didn't have the strength to move.

He just reacted.

He threw up his hands.

[ACTIVATING: AEGIS SHIELD.]

A barrier of shimmering, golden, hexagonal energy materialized in the air in front of him, a foot from his face.

The marble table slammed into the shield with a deafening, echoing BOOM that shook the entire room.

The shield held.

But just barely.

Cracks of golden light spiderwebbed across its surface, and the entire construct flickered, threatening to collapse.

The impact threw him backward, his feet sliding on the polished floor, the gravity well still holding him, crushing him.

He was on the defensive.

He was trapped.

This was a perfect, coordinated, and deeply unfair attack.

They were a unit.

One to hold.

One to hit.

He was a sitting duck.

He looked at Clara, who had taken cover behind the shattered remains of the bar.

Her face was a mask of pale, furious concentration.

She wasn't looking at him.

She was looking at them.

At the twins.

Her mind, her brilliant, analytical, and deeply strategic mind, was dissecting them, breaking them down, looking for a weakness.

Another projectile, this one a large, plush, and surprisingly aerodynamic sofa, came flying across the room.

He reinforced the Aegis Shield, pouring more of his dwindling energy into it.

The sofa hit the shield and simply… bounced off, tumbling through the air to crash into a wall.

"Okay, this is just getting silly," he thought, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. "I'm being attacked by angry furniture."

"This is not how I pictured my epic, final battle."

"I was hoping for more lasers."

"And maybe a cool monologue."

He was being worn down.

The strain of maintaining the shield while fighting the gravity well was immense.

He could feel his system sputtering, his energy reserves hitting critical levels.

He needed an opening.

He needed a miracle.

And then, he heard it.

Clara's voice, a sharp, clear, and deeply brilliant command in his ear.

"They have to see each other, Miles!" she yelled over the comms.

"Their systems are linked! They need a direct line of sight to synchronize their attacks!"

"Break their line of sight!"

He looked at the twins.

They stood on opposite sides of the room, a perfect, symmetrical picture of deadly coordination.

He looked at the space between them.

The empty, deadly space.

He had a plan.

A stupid plan.

A reckless plan.

A perfect plan.

He dropped the Aegis Shield.

For a split second, he was completely exposed.

The twin on the right, the one who apparently had a deep-seated and very personal grudge against interior decorating, gestured to a massive, ornate, and probably priceless grandfather clock.

It lifted into the air, a pendulum of doom swinging back for a final, crushing blow.

But Miles wasn't looking at the clock.

He was looking at the empty space between the two brothers.

He poured every last, desperate ounce of his energy, every last flicker of his power, into a single, desperate, and deeply hopeful act.

[ACTIVATING: BLINK SHIELD.]

He didn't teleport himself.

He teleported the shield.

A brilliant, golden, and deeply inconvenient wall of shimmering, hexagonal energy materialized in the air, directly between the two twins.

The one on the left, who was maintaining the gravity well, blinked, his concentration broken for a fraction of a second.

The one on the right, who was about to launch the grandfather clock, faltered, his connection to his brother, to their shared power, suddenly, jarringly severed.

The gravity well collapsed.

The grandfather clock clattered to the floor with a sad, expensive-sounding crunch.

The twins were separated.

They were vulnerable.

And that split second was all he needed.

He moved.

He was a ghost.

A blur of motion.

He didn't use a blade.

He didn't use a blast.

He used his training.

Gideon's training.

Control over power.

He flowed forward, a whisper in the red, angry light.

He reached the first twin.

A single, precise, and deeply satisfying chop to the back of the neck.

The man crumpled to the floor without a sound.

He reached the second twin.

An elbow to the temple.

A sweep of the leg.

The man went down in a boneless, unconscious heap.

Silence.

The fight was over.

Miles stood in the center of the ruined, silent room, his chest heaving, his body a single, screaming nerve of pure, unadulterated exhaustion.

He had won.

He looked over at Clara, who was peeking out from behind the remains of the bar, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe.

He gave her a weak, tired, but triumphant grin.

He was about to say something.

Something clever.

Something witty.

Something heroic.

But then, the large, ornate, obsidian doors at the far end of the room, the ones that led to Silas Cross's office, hissed open.

And a new sound filled the silent, ruined room.

A low, slow, and deeply ironic round of applause.

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