The symbol haunted me.
A lightning bolt inside a skull.
It showed up again two days later—burned into the side of an abandoned tram car near the east perimeter. No message this time. Just the mark.
And the smell of ozone.
Whoever left it wanted us to know they'd been close.
Closer than we thought.
Echo didn't speak much after she saw it.
She stared at the image like it was a ghost.
I waited for her to explain.
She didn't.
Not right away.
The next night, while the others slept, she found me alone in the generator room.
I was testing my power—trying to create shapes from the energy in my palms. I'd made a disk. A small blade. Now I was trying for a shield.
She watched in silence for a while.
Then said, "You're improving."
"Still can't get the edges to hold," I muttered.
"You will."
She sat beside me, back against the wall.
For a minute, we just listened to the hum of the generator.
Then she said it.
"They're called the Hollow."
I looked at her. "What?"
"The ones using that symbol. They call themselves the Hollow."
"Never heard of them."
"No one has. That's the point."
I waited.
She didn't look at me when she spoke.
"They're not after power. Not control. Not even chaos. They want collapse. They think society is rotten to the bone and needs to be burned to ash."
"Sounds like the Rogues."
"No," she said. "The Rogues want freedom. The Hollow want ruin."
She told me what she knew.
Barely anything.
Whispers from back when she was still on the surface. Rumors from dead zones. Whole neighborhoods wiped clean—no signs of a fight, just silence.
Some said they had a leader.
A powered one.
A seer.
Others said they had no leader at all—just a message passed down through cells like rot in wood.
They didn't recruit.
They infected.
"They don't build," Echo said. "They hollow things out."
"Why now?" I asked.
She looked at me then.
And her answer chilled me more than anything else had.
"Because they see what you're doing."
The next day, we gathered the new arrivals in the depot tunnel.
Thirty-three powered people.
Some trained.
Most raw.
None of them knew who the Hollow were.
We told them everything we could.
They listened.
No one left.
That scared me more than if they had.
Delryn returned that night.
She looked worn. Jaw tight. Eyes sharp.
She didn't knock.
Just walked in and dropped a file on the table.
Printed. Burnt at the edges.
"Where'd you get this?" Echo asked.
"Internal cleanup logs," Delryn said. "They're trying to bury it already."
I opened it.
Photos. Reports. Drones destroyed.
A location: Zone 7B. Near the water treatment plant.
Forty-three bodies.
No survivors.
All powered.
No footage of attackers.
Only the symbol.
Burned onto the ceiling above the bodies.
My stomach turned.
"This was a message."
Delryn nodded. "And it's not the last one."
"Why there?" I asked. "Why now?"
She hesitated.
Then handed me a second page.
A list.
Familiar names.
Some we knew. Some we'd only heard whispered.
Every one of them had one thing in common.
They'd reached out to us.
Nulls.
Recruits.
All dead.
The room fell into silence.
Echo stepped back from the table, pacing.
"They're not warning us," she said. "They're hunting us."
"For what?"
Delryn looked straight at me.
"For you."
I sat down.
Hard.
My heart beat faster, but not from fear.
From pressure.
The kind that builds before something breaks.
"They're scared of what we're doing," I said.
Delryn nodded. "Or they want to stop it before it starts."
Echo leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Doesn't matter why. They've made their move."
Reese, who'd returned from scouting, frowned. "What's our play?"
I looked around the room.
At the eyes watching me.
Some cautious.
Some hopeful.
All waiting.
It wasn't enough to hide anymore.
Wasn't enough to build slow.
We needed to make our presence known.
Public.
Loud.
And undeniable.
"They're trying to erase us," I said. "Let's make that impossible."
The next morning, we hacked a League tower.
Not the servers. We weren't stupid.
Just the billboard screen near Central Hub.
The biggest digital panel in the city.
Normally used to show League victories, news, and polished propaganda.
At 8:00 a.m. sharp, it went black.
Then the screen lit up.
With us.
The footage was simple.
A split-screen feed.
On the left: edited clips of League enforcement dragging powered teens into armored vans. Drones aiming at civilians. Field agents using stun rounds on non-combatants.
On the right: our broadcast.
A message from me.
Unmasked.
Standing in front of the Nulls' symbol—not the League's. Not the Rogues'.
Our own.
"If you're watching this, then you know something is wrong.
You've seen the footage.
Heard the excuses.
Felt the fear.
The world changed.
And we weren't given a choice.
Now we're taking one.
We are not villains.
We are not weapons.
We are the Divide.
We don't want chaos.
We want the truth.
And if you stand with us, we'll stand for you."
The city lit up.
Phones buzzed.
Channels were hijacked.
Our message looped for ninety full seconds before League engineers took it down.
But that was enough.
Enough to shake the system.
Enough to rattle the Hollow.
Enough to tell everyone: We're here.
We're not running.
Later that night, another message arrived.
This time, not a warning.
A challenge.
Burned into the side of a League van, found abandoned in Sector C.
"Come find us. If you dare."
They weren't hiding anymore, either.