Vikram pulled Mr. Desai's heavy body onto the metal platform, dragging him away from the glowing black core.
But before he could stand, a heavy fist of solid shadow hit his chest, throwing him back against the steel casing of the transmitter. **Javed** stood over him, his body encased in thick, dark-matter armor that absorbed the light of the room.
"You have your father's strength, Vikram," Javed said, his voice deep and echoing. "But you don't have his mind. He knew when to submit."
"He never submitted," Vikram spat, struggling to stand.
He threw a hard right hook, his fist glowing with blue electricity. The punch connected with Javed's chest, but the dark-matter armor hummed, absorbing the electrical charge and converting it into a cold wave that numbed Vikram's hand.
Javed laughed, raising his hand to form a solid shadow sword. "Your Prana is just fuel for my armor, kid. The stronger your current, the denser my shadow."
Vikram looked at the central core. The inverted pyramid was pulsing with a black light, the hum vibrating through his boots.
*If my Prana fuels the shadow, then I need to feed it too much,* Vikram realized. *An overload.*
He willed the last of his bio-electricity to rise, not to his fists, but to his entire body. The blue arcs flared from his chest, his eyes glowing white-hot.
"Rohan, take Desai!" Vikram yelled.
He turned and lunged—not at Javed, but directly at the glowing black core of the transmitter.
He drove both of his hands into the center of the inverted pyramid, his fingers grabbing the hot, copper cables of the energy feed.
"No!" Javed screamed, lunging to stop him.
A massive charge of high-voltage Prana electricity surged from Vikram's hands directly into the dark-matter core. The black light inside the cylinders turned a violent, unstable purple.
The hum of the transmitter turned into a deafening, metallic shriek. The stone vault of the cistern began to crack, water dripping from the ceiling as the electromagnetic field overloaded.