KAISER POV
The liquid metal blade was heavy, vibrating with a high-frequency hum that shot straight up my arm, threatening to numb my grip on the katana. I pushed back, the black flames flaring as I gritted my teeth.
"You're sloppy, Irene," I taunted, sidestepping a brutal thrust aimed at my chest and bringing the hilt of my sword down hard on her wrist.
She hissed, but didn't drop the blade. Instead, she spun, using the momentum to sweep my legs. I jumped, flipping over the liquid metal, but a Wraith materialized out of the temporal glitch right where I was supposed to land.
I didn't even have time to blink.
Shhhk.
The hooked blade tore straight through my right side, slipping between my ribs and bursting out my back.
I hit the ground hard, gasping as the air was violently expelled from my lungs. The Wraith stood over me, twisting the blade, the porcelain mask a blank, unfeeling void.
"Oh, come on!" Morgana's voice, distorted but clear, screamed from behind the heavy vault door. "Quit playing, Kaiser! Irene won't fall for your charms like I did!"
I coughed up a splatter of blood, the copper taste hot on my tongue. I looked up at Irene, who was stalking toward me, her liquid blades elongating for the kill.
I let out a wet, rattling laugh, the sound echoing manically in the freezing corridor.
"Yeah, yeah," I rasped, gripping the Wraith's hooked blade with my bare, flaming hand. "I thought so."
Convergence didn't just burn; it devoured. The black fire surged up the Wraith's weapon, melting the metal instantly and engulfing the assassin's arm. The creature let out a soundless shriek before the flames consumed it entirely, leaving nothing but ash.
I yanked the molten remains of the blade out of my side. The wound screamed, but the Dragon Vein trait inside me immediately began coiling the agony, transmuting it into raw, explosive velocity.
I didn't stand up. I launched myself from the floor directly at Irene, my katana moving in a blur so fast it created a vacuum.
"My turn," I snarled.
HAWK POV
Rex the 3rd backed up until his impeccably tailored suit hit the reinforced elevator doors. He looked like a cornered rat, clutching his silver briefcase like a shield.
"Kill her!" he shrieked again, his voice cracking.
His four remaining guards were massive, augmented brutes, but they were panicking. The alarms were blaring, the facility was shaking from the artillery fire, and I was standing between them and their only exit, twirling a pulse-blade that was already dripping with their friends' blood.
They charged me simultaneously, hoping sheer mass would overwhelm my Overdrive-enhanced reflexes.
It was a bad strategy.
I dropped low, letting the first guard swing his heavy plasma baton right over my head. I drove my blade up into his armpit, severing the brachial artery, and kicked his knee out before he even realized he was dead.
The second guard lunged with a vibro-knife. I activated my Razor Pulse, bone-blades erupting from my free hand. I caught his knife with my pulse-blade, locked the weapons together, and drove the bone-blades straight through the visor of his helmet.
Two down.
The third and fourth guards hesitated, exchanging a panicked look. That was all the time I needed.
I pushed off the wall, flipping over them in a tight, aerodynamic arc. As I passed over their heads, I brought my blades down in an 'X' pattern, severing both of their spinal cords at the neck. They dropped like heavy sacks of meat, their bodies twitching as the neural connections severed.
I landed softly on the metal grating, slowly standing up and turning to face Rex. He was pressed flat against the elevator doors, his face drained of all color, trembling uncontrollably.
"Just you and me now, Rex," I purred, stalking slowly toward him, the pulse-blade humming a deadly tune. "Let's see what a Kingpin bleeds."
KARIN POV
The mutated, massive hound-thing shook its head, black blood and bone fragments spraying across the tunnel. The armor-piercing round had blown a hole the size of a fist in its skull, but the wound was already knitting closed with sickening speed.
It let out a metallic screech and charged me again, its four white eyes locked onto my position.
"Persistent," I muttered, my heart rate steady.
I didn't have time to chamber another high-density round. I dropped the sniper rifle and drew my twin, custom-built hand cannons from my thigh holsters.
The monster lunged, its massive jaw unhinging to swallow me.
I triggered my temporal-slide augment, slipping just outside the normal flow of time for a fraction of a second. The beast's jaws snapped shut on empty air.
I reappeared directly beneath its chin. I jammed both hand cannons upward, pressing the barrels directly against the soft, pulsing flesh of its throat, and unloaded.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
I emptied both clips directly into the creature's neck, the heavy-caliber rounds tearing through muscle, cartilage, and bone, blowing the back of its head completely off in a fountain of gore.
The monster collapsed, its massive bulk pinning me to the floor. I shoved the twitching, regenerating corpse off me, my chest heaving, ribs aching from the earlier hit.
"Okay," I gasped, reloading my cannons. "Who's next?"
KANE POV
My diamond-plate armor was cracked in a dozen places, my chest was bruised black and blue beneath the plating, and my left eye was swollen shut from a stray kinetic hammer blow.
But the Bloodhounds were losing.
There were only ten of them left out of the original thirty, and they were backing away from me, their green-glowing eyes wide with terror.
"Come on!" I roared, the nuclear aura flaring white-hot around me, melting the floor tiles beneath my boots. "Is that all Rex has? You're supposed to be the best!"
I stepped forward, swinging the plasma axe in a massive, horizontal arc. The superheated blade sheared through the heavy combat suits of two Bloodhounds, cutting them clean in half, cauterizing the wounds instantly.
Another Bloodhound lunged with a vibro-spear, aiming for a crack in my chest plate. I didn't even try to dodge. I caught the vibrating shaft of the spear with my bare, left hand. The friction burned my palm, but I didn't care.
I yanked the spear forward, pulling the assassin off balance, and drove my knee up into his armored face. The helmet shattered, along with his jaw.
"You want to play rough?" I growled, tossing the broken spear aside and hefting the axe. "Let's play rough."
The remaining seven Bloodhounds broke and ran.
RAMBO POV
I stood in the dusty wasteland outside Tartarus, the deafening roar of Scourge's artillery vibrating in my chest. Tara was safe, standing slightly behind me, her golden eye fixed on the burning prison.
Clara's command echoed in my earpiece, cold and absolute.
"Tear the prison down."
I looked at the heavy plasma cannon resting on my shoulder. I looked at the bandoliers of high-explosive ordinance strapped across my chest. I thought about the seven years I had spent inside those walls, maintaining a professional distance, treating human beings like inventory.
I thought about the conversation I had with Tara in the holding cell. About First Blood. About what it meant to matter.
I turned to the eight-year-old girl.
"I'm going back in, Tara," I rumbled, my voice gravelly and low.
Tara looked up at me, her eyes widening. "Why? Kaiser told you to stay with me!"
I racked the charging handle on my plasma cannon, the weapon whining as it powered up to maximum output. A grim, satisfied smile touched the corner of my mouth.
"I have to give out a retirement party".
The heavy blast doors of Tartarus's main entrance had been completely blown off their hinges, leaving a gaping, scorched maw that smelled of melted adamantium and nuclear heat. It was an invitation I couldn't pass up.
I stepped over the crushed bodies of the outer guard detail, my heavy boots crunching on broken glass and pulverized concrete. The primary reception hall looked like a war zone. Smoke billowed from shattered pillars, and the emergency sprinklers were raining down a pathetic drizzle over the carnage.
In the center of the room, shining like a miniature sun in the dim amber light, was Kane.
He was breathing hard, his diamond-plate armor cracked and leaking an intense, localized radiation. Seven of Rex's elite Bloodhound assassins were circling him, trying to find an opening, while a dozen more lay in broken, cauterized pieces across the floor.
I racked the bolt of my heavy plasma cannon, the sharp clack-clack echoing loudly enough to make two of the Bloodhounds flinch and look over their shoulders at me.
I rested the massive weapon casually against my hip and walked forward.
"You and I never fought each other, huh?" I called out, my gravelly voice cutting through the hiss of Kane's nuclear aura. "We both never lost a fight, or so the people say."
Kane didn't even look at me. A Bloodhound lunged at his blind spot with a kinetic hammer. Kane simply caught the hammer's haft in his bare, glowing hand, yanked the assassin forward, and ripped the man's armored arm clean out of its socket with a sickening crunch. He casually tossed the screaming assassin into a burning pile of debris.
"Yeah, well," Kane rumbled, rolling his massive shoulders as he finally turned his glowing visor toward me. "I got defeated by Kaiser in a spectacular way a while back, so that title is officially gone now."
I paused, leaning on my cannon, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"I lost by talking to an eight-year-old," I replied, shaking my head. "So who am I to judge."
For a second, the remaining Bloodhounds just stood there, completely confused by the two giants having a casual chat in the middle of a slaughterhouse. Then, a deep, booming laugh erupted from Kane's chest modulator. I couldn't help it; a low, rusty chuckle rumbled up from my own throat, mixing with his.
I hoisted the plasma cannon back onto my shoulder, targeting systems painting the remaining assassins in bright, lethal red.
"You need a hand?" I asked.
Kane hefted his superheated plasma axe, the blue-hot edge flaring aggressively as he stepped up right beside me. We were a mountain range of muscle, heavy ordnance, and pure stopping power.
"Yeah, why not," Kane growled, his aura expanding to envelop us both in a terrifying, white-hot glow. "Let's level this floor."
I squeezed the trigger. The plasma cannon roared, vaporizing two Bloodhounds instantly, while Kane charged forward like a nuclear locomotive. The reception hall of Tartarus didn't just get cleared. It got erased.
KARIN POV
The problem with Apex-mutations isn't that they are strong. It's that they are stupidly persistent.
The massive hound I had just blown the head off of was still twitching, but the scent of its blood had drawn the rest of the pack from the lower breeding vats. I stood in the center of the maintenance tunnel, my tactical specs whirring as they highlighted six more thermal signatures dropping from the ceiling grates and crawling out of the ventilation shafts.
They were all variations of the same nightmare—too many teeth, too many eyes, and spiked appendages that dripped with paralytic venom.
"Target-rich environment," I muttered, my heart rate holding at a frosty 65 BPM.
I holstered my empty hand cannons and drew the high-density sniper rifle from my back, flicking the selector switch from single-fire to full-auto. It was a custom modification that threatened to melt the barrel, but I didn't plan on needing the rifle after today anyway.
The pack charged, a chaotic blur of scales, claws, and screeching maws.
I didn't back up. I stepped into their rhythm.
My analytical brain processed their trajectories like lines of code. The first monster leaped, aiming to pin me. I slid perfectly under its arc, jamming the barrel of the rifle into its exposed belly, and held the trigger down. The high-caliber rounds shredded its internal organs, dropping it to the floor in a dead heap.
Two more flanked me from the sides. I triggered my temporal-slide, stepping out of sync with reality just as their jaws snapped shut on the empty space where I had been standing. They collided with each other, skulls cracking under the impact. I reappeared on top of them, driving the butt of my rifle down to crush one's skull, before drawing a combat knife and burying it to the hilt in the other's remaining eye.
The last three hesitated, their primitive instincts finally registering that the prey was actually the predator.
"Too late for second thoughts," I said coldly.
I drew a pair of explosive shrapnel-grenades from my belt, primed them, and tossed them like perfectly pitched fastballs straight into the open jaws of the two largest beasts.
BOOM.
The tunnel was painted in a fresh coat of black blood and bone fragments. The final monster whimpered, turned to run, and I calmly put a single, armor-piercing round through the base of its spine.
I stood amidst the carnage, the barrel of my rifle glowing cherry-red and smoking heavily. I calmly wiped a splatter of monster blood from my cheek, adjusted my glasses, and tapped my comms.
"Sector is clear. Moving to next objective."
HAWK POV
Rex the 3rd was trembling against the elevator doors, completely out of guards, out of time, and out of options. I was spinning my blood-soaked pulse-blade, savoring the pure, unadulterated fear in the Kingpin's eyes.
But then, the trembling stopped.
Rex lowered the silver briefcase he had been using as a shield. The panic vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, calculating sneer that made my Oracle-Eye instantly flash a bright, warning red.
"You really think a man who built Tartarus relies solely on meat-shields, you stupid peasant?" Rex said, his voice dropping an octave into something smooth and venomous.
He didn't hit a button. He didn't issue a command. He just snapped his fingers.
The walls of the command spire literally folded away. Optical camouflage panels rippled and deactivated all around me.
From the ceiling, four automated rotary-cannons dropped down, their laser sights immediately painting my chest and forehead. From the hidden alcoves in the walls, a dozen of Rex's elite Wardens stepped out. These weren't standard guards; they were heavily augmented techs wired directly into the facility's mainframe, armed with gravity-tethers and neural-shock rifles.
And from the shadows behind them, three more Wraiths—the same porcelain-masked killers Kaiser was dealing with—materialized, their hooked blades drawn.
I was completely, utterly surrounded. Every single exit was blocked. The targeting lasers from the turrets were locked onto my vitals, and the Wardens were already powering up their gravity-tethers to lock me in place.
Rex adjusted his bespoke cuffs, a smug, arrogant smile stretching across his face. "I am Rex the 3rd. Fool. Kill her, and make it hurt."
The weapons hummed. The Wraiths tensed to strike.
I looked around the impossible odds. My Overdrive trait roared to life, flooding my veins with liquid adrenaline, while my Hellskin hummed, anticipating the pain and transmuting it into raw, euphoric power.
Instead of panic, a dark, bubbling laughter climbed up my throat. I couldn't hold it back. It spilled out of me, echoing in the confined space of the command spire.
I lowered my stance, my Razor Pulse blades sliding out of my forearms with a wet shhhk, my mismatched eyes locking dead onto Rex's smug face.
I let out a feral, bloodthirsty grin.
"I never killed a kingpin till now, you know ," I said, the thrill of the slaughter vibrating in every word.
"Guess you will have to do."
END OF CHAPTER