One of the guards yelled, "WHAT THE FUC—"
He didn't finish the sentence. Cupid's elbow drove into the man's throat with surgical precision, crushing the windpipe and cutting off air immediately. The guard dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, hands clutching at his neck, making horrible choking sounds.
The second guard was already turning, weapon coming up, finger on the trigger—
Cupid executed a spinning roundhouse axe kick that looked like it belonged in a martial arts movie, his heel connecting with the side of the guard's head with devastating force. The impact sent the man sprawling sideways, his body hitting the concrete hard, unconscious before he even finished falling.
Two down in less than three seconds.
Cupid grinned, rotating Tòumíng's arm in a full circle to check flexibility and range of motion. The body responded beautifully, stronger than it used to be, more developed, the metabolic healing from all those injuries having optimized muscle density and joint mobility.
"Not the same skinny kid from the mine anymore," Cupid muttered, his voice carrying satisfaction. "Now I can actually use seventeen thousand years' worth of accumulated martial arts knowledge instead of being stuck in a body that couldn't execute half the techniques."
The third guard, the one who'd been pointing his weapon at Ghost Claw, had backed away during the chaos, his gun now trained on Cupid instead. His hands were shaking slightly, fear beginning to override training.
He fired.
The bullet caught Cupid in the thigh, punching through muscle and lodging itself near the femur.
Cupid didn't even flinch. Just grinned wider.
The guard's face went pale. "Why aren't you—how are you not—"
"Full control over the body," Cupid explained casually, taking a step forward despite the bullet wound. "Can stop pain signals from reaching the brain. Very convenient. You should try it sometime."
Since he had complete operational authority over Tòumíng's nervous system, something that wasn't possible when Tòumíng's consciousness was active and interfering, Cupid could simply block the neural pathways that transmitted pain. The body registered the damage, yes, but the sensation of agony never reached conscious awareness because conscious awareness was turned off.
The guard fired again, panic fully setting in now. This bullet hit Cupid in the shoulder, spinning him slightly but not stopping his advance.
Cupid kept walking forward, his grin never wavering, blood leaking from the fresh wounds but his movement showing no signs of being affected.
The bald guard, the one Tòumíng had shot in the foot earlier, who'd been lying on the ground clutching his wound—started scrambling backward in absolute terror, his injured foot making the movement clumsy and painful.
"No no no no no—" The bald guard's voice was high-pitched, breaking. "Stay back! STAY BACK!"
Cupid pivoted toward him, raised his foot, and brought it down in a brutal stomp directly onto the man's chest. The impact was precise, calculated, enough force to crack ribs and knock the wind completely out of the guard's lungs, rendering him unconscious from the shock and oxygen deprivation, but not enough to cause fatal internal bleeding.
Cupid's more ancient side. the part that had witnessed and participated in conflicts spanning millennia, would have preferred torture. Would have taken time to make these men suffer for their complicity in trafficking operations. Would have extracted every scrap of information through increasingly creative applications of pain.
But time was limited. Alarms were blaring. More security would arrive soon.
He turned to the last conscious guard, who was now completely backed against the wall, his weapon empty, his eyes wide with the kind of terror that came from watching reality break down.
Cupid walked toward him with measured steps, his bloody body moving with predatory grace.
The guard tried to speak, to beg, to offer something—
Cupid's hand shot out in a perfect karate chop, striking the pressure point where the neck met the shoulder with exactly enough force to disrupt the vagus nerve and cause immediate unconsciousness.
The guard crumpled.
Silence fell in the storage room, broken only by the continued blaring of the alarm and the labored breathing of the unconscious guards.
Cupid turned to Ghost Claw, who was still frozen in place, staring at him with an expression somewhere between shock, horror, and complete disbelief.
"Long story short," Cupid said, Tòumíng's voice carrying a different cadence than usual, more archaic, more formal. "I live in Tòumíng's heart. I can fight good. Not important right now. What's important is getting out of here before more security arrives."
Ghost Claw's mouth opened and closed wordlessly behind her gas mask. Finally, she managed: "The trafficked victims. We can't just leave them—"
Cupid considered this, his tactical mind running through scenarios. "The commotion—gunshots, alarms, unconscious guards—the operation managers will assume a raid. They'll evacuate the third floor, move the victims to secondary locations, shut down tonight's transactions. We won't be able to access them now. Best plan is to create a larger distraction, force a full evacuation of the building, prevent any purchases from being completed tonight."
"How?"
"Evacuate the theater. Sound an alarm there specifically. Panic the buyers. If they scatter, no transactions happen, the operation loses revenue, and we buy time for a proper extraction plan later."
Ghost Claw nodded slowly, her tactical training catching up with the shock. "The theater. Yes. We need to make everyone evacuate without causing a stampede that kills people..."
She started thinking out loud, running through options, analyzing crowd psychology and panic responses, clearly trying to find the optimal approach—
Cupid sighed. "You talk too much."
He grabbed her pistol from where the guards had confiscated it, checked the magazine, and started walking toward the door.
Ghost Claw followed, confused. "Wait, what are you—we need a plan, we can't just—"
They reached the theater level quickly, the underground corridors now familiar after their earlier navigation. The auction was still in progress—Cupid could hear the auctioneer's voice echoing through the partially open doors, describing some gemstone specimen in glowing terms while wealthy bidders competed.
Cupid pushed the doors open and walked directly into the theater, Ghost Claw scrambling behind him trying to figure out what he was doing.
He raised the pistol and fired three shots at the stage.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
All three bullets purposely missed, one hit the wall behind the auctioneer, another shattered a decorative vase, the third punched through the wooden podium—but the effect was immediate and devastating.
People screamed. Ducked under their seats. Started scrambling toward exits. The carefully curated atmosphere of wealthy sophistication dissolved instantly into pure survival panic.
The auctioneer dove behind the podium. Security guards started rushing toward the shooter's position. Wealthy attendees abandoned their companions and ran for the doors, self-preservation overriding social obligations.
Perfect chaos.
Cupid used the confusion to turn and sprint back toward the corridor, grabbing Ghost Claw's arm and pulling her along. They moved against the flow of panicking people, using the crowd as cover, becoming just two more terrified attendees fleeing a shooting.
They reached the stairs leading up to the ground floor. Pushed through the crowd. Emerged into the main entrance hall where more people were flooding out, alarms blaring, emergency lights flashing, the entire event collapsing into evacuation protocols.
Cupid and Ghost Claw made it to the front doors, spilled out into the night air along with dozens of other fleeing attendees, and kept running until they were several blocks away.
Only then did Cupid stop, allowing Tòumíng's body to collapse against a building wall, breathing hard, blood still leaking from the bullet wounds in his thigh and shoulder.
"We're out," he said simply.