Thick, grayish-black smoke billowed heavily across the deserted streets of the Northern District. Beneath a city sky smothered by a pitch-black purple vortex, concrete ruins and shattered vehicles littered the road. Here, Captain Danu led a small guerrilla strike squad on a grueling mission: sweeping through the anomaly zone to evacuate dozens of civilians trapped inside an old apartment building before corporate forces could sweep the sector clean.

"Move, push that iron door open! Leave no one behind!" Captain Danu bellowed in his commanding baritone, directing three guerrilla fighters to pry open the ground-floor emergency doors of the apartment complex.

Several civilians—comprising children, women, and the elderly with chalk-white faces—poured out of the building with stifled sobs. They locked arms, struggling to survive under the tight escort of the resistance squad.

A middle-aged woman rushed up to Captain Danu, gripping the hand of her terrified grandchild. "Mister soldier... thank you, you saved us. But up on the top floor, there are still a few of our neighbors trapped because one of them has a wounded leg!"

Danu stared at the woman with a gaze full of empathy. He knelt for a moment, bringing himself eye-level with the young child standing beside her before offering a reassuring, thin smile. "Don't worry, Ma'am. We won't leave anyone behind here. Private Roni, escort this evacuation group through the side tunnel path to the sector west safe zone. Move fast!"

"Understood, Captain!" Private Roni answered sharply, leading the line of civilians as they broke into a sprint toward the underground shelter corridor.

Yet barely had the first wave of civilians cleared to safety when the atmosphere across the streets of the Northern District instantly plunged into a chilling, suffocating freeze. Captain Danu’s hair stood on end. The sound of marching military boots blended with the humming frequency of anomalous energy drawing near from the street corner intersection.

"Everyone take defensive positions! Secure the evacuation point!" Danu roared, racking his hybrid rifle and diving for cover behind the carcass of a burned-out armored transport.

Bzzzt—Whoosh!

Without warning, a volley of high-velocity plasma fire rained down the street from out of the purple fog. Two guerrilla fighters stationed near the apartment wall pitched forward onto the pavement, felled by precision long-range sniper fire.

"Damn it! We're ambushed!" Captain Danu snarled, unleashing blind covering fire toward the enemy shadows lurking in the mist. "Where the hell did they come from so fast?!"

From within the swirling smoke at the end of the street, horrific figures began materializing. They were no longer ordinary humans or standard armored mercenaries. These were the corporation's elite mutant troopers—dimensional experimental entities boasting semi-mechanized frames, razor-sharp crystal claws, and eyes burning with a bright purple glow. Their movements were blindingly fast, scrambling agilely along building walls like hunting spiders.

"Focus fire on their chests! Don't let them close the distance!" Captain Danu commanded authoritatively, orchestrating asymmetric urban defense tactics right in the heart of the city.

A brutal street battle erupted in seconds. Captain Danu fully leveraged the chaotic urban environment, ordering his remaining troops to draw the mutants into a narrow storefront alley where their massive lunging momentum would be choked by concrete walls.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Bang!

The resistance squad's hybrid rifles spat Aethel-Tech-powered hot lead, blasting one elite mutant apart into a shower of crystalline dust.

"Captain! Mutants on the left flank just breached our barricade!" a guerrilla fighter panicked, firing on two mutants leaping down from the shop roof.

"Fall back in order! Use stun grenades at the alley corner!" Danu barked back without a shred of panic, radiating the cool-headed poise of a seasoned war veteran.

He broke into a zig-zag sprint himself, drawing three elite mutants away from the evacuating civilians. Danu dashed into an abandoned movie theater, utilizing the pitch-black tiered auditorium seating as a deadly kill zone.

The moment the three mutants surged into the theater with feral snarls, Danu hurled an electromagnetic grenade onto the lower floor, throwing himself flat behind a concrete seat row.

BARRR-GH!

The electromagnetic blast unleashed a blue shockwave that fried the mechanical systems wired into the mutants' bodies. All three creatures pitched forward, twitching violently across the floor, utterly helpless against the high-voltage electrical surge.

Captain Danu rose to his feet, wiping sweat from his brow as he regulated his heaving breath. He leveled his rifle at the last mutant crawling across the floor. "Game over for you freaks."

Click—bang!

Yet right before Danu's bullet could pierce the mutant's skull, an anomaly abruptly froze him in his tracks.

Every ambient sound inside the movie theater vanished instantly. The flames licking at the corner of the room suddenly locked in mid-air, and the dust motes drifting around Danu stopped dead, as though time itself had been forcibly halted by an overwhelmingly massive force.

Captain Danu blew his eyes wide, realizing his own body couldn't move a single millimeter. His muscles locked rigid, as though he had been trapped inside an invisible block of ice.

What the hell is this...? Danu shuddered inwardly, fighting with every ounce of strength he possessed, to no avail.

From out of the gloom of the empty theater stage, a human figure slowly stepped down the platform stairs.

This wasn't a standard mutant soldier. The man wore a crisp, dust-free corporate executive suit, yet swirling all around his body were wild rings of purple cosmic energy warping the laws of physics around him.

It was a mutant-human enemy commander—one of the master puppeteer's most trusted right-hand men.

The mutated commander walked calmly toward the helpless Captain Danu. He smiled coldly, fixing Danu with a hollow, emotionless gaze.

"Captain Danu... quite the troublesome guerrilla leader in the Northern district," the commander spoke with a heavy, echoing voice that resonated directly inside Danu's mind. "Did you really think a petty street resistance would alter this city's destiny? You're merely insects trying to hold back a hurricane."

Danu could only glare with burning fury, unable to utter a single syllable as a psychokinetic gravitational grip choked off his breath.

Without so much as touching Danu's physical frame, the commander raised his right hand into the air. Instantly, a lethal wave of psychokinetic force crashed squarely into Captain Danu's body, blasting him straight through the theater's concrete wall and hurling him out into the middle of the Northern District's main street, where he crumpled unconscious.