With a strong enough current from his Zapper Arm, he put the sculptor to sleep.

Trapped and with security closing in, Ray remained calm. His trap was already set. This outcome had been taken into his calculations.

He sent the command. The dormant logic bomb he had planted in the floor's core systems awakened. A cascading system failure ripped through the facility. The lights flickered and died, replaced by the strobing, disorienting flash of emergency beacons. Security doors opened and closed randomly. The fire suppression system activated, filling the corridors with thick, choking smoke. He had turned the perfect, sterile fortress into a chaotic deathtrap.

When he emerged from the lab, a group of elite security was rushing toward him.

Engage.

He moved through the confused, smoke-blinded guards like a phantom. Using his Zapper Arm on a low setting, he sent a quick jolt to a guard's neural interface, causing a momentary system crash. He used his Quickstep Kinetic Enhancers to slam another guard into a wall with enough force to stun him but not to kill. His movements were precise and efficient. He chose non-lethal options. Fewer bodies, fewer reasons for them to escalate the hunt.

Ray took a sharp turn and stopped.

A woman stood in the center of the corridor, untouched by the smoke and chaos that churned around her. The firelight flickered across her figure but never seemed to reach her. It was as if the pandemonium itself recoiled from her presence.

She had delicate, unmistakably Asian features, but they carried an otherworldly refinement, cheekbones like sculpted porcelain, a narrow jaw, and lips drawn in a soft, unreadable line. Her skin was flawless, pale as moonlight on still water.

She wore floor-length robes of immaculate white, traditional in cut but impossibly pristine, flowing around her as if untouched by gravity. A single, thick braid of raven-black hair fell over her chest, woven with such precision it seemed sculpted rather than grown. The braid shimmered faintly, catching light where none should have reached, like it held secrets in every twist.

She was beautiful, but not in any earthly sense. Hers was the kind of beauty that silenced a room. Serene. Inviolable. The kind of beauty that made even fear take a step back.

Everything around her—the alarms, the shouting, the flickering hazard lights—seemed like background noise, irrelevant in the orbit of her calm.

Ray was ready to move past her, as just another obstacle to be bypassed. But as he approached, she turned her head slightly, and he saw her eyes. They were pools of molten gold that seemed to glow with a faint, internal light, her irises a stark, demonic contrast to the pure, unnerving white of her sclera.

He perceived a flicker of movement, something too fast for his sensors to track. His Combat Decision Assist screamed a warning. He dodged, a violent, instinctual twist of his body.

He felt it down his outstretched hand as his connection with the nanites forming his limb was severed. He looked down. Half of his right arm was simply gone, dissolving into a fine, grey dust before it could even hit the floor.

Ray rolled away, scrambling to his feet. He looked back. The woman… she just stood there, her golden eyes fixed on him, a faint, almost pitying smile on her lips. She giggled, a soft, musical sound that was more terrifying than any scream.

Then she turned and walked calmly away, disappearing into the smoke and strobing lights as if she were a ghost.

Ray didn't hesitate. He didn't try to understand. He ran.

He reached the main lobby, a massive, armored window his only way out. The nanites in his remaining arm shifted, the internal structure morphing.

For now, it was better to keep his arm damaged. Should anyone discover what that woman did to him, his pursuers would be much more eager to track him if they found out their target could regenerate missing limbs.

He channeled the raw power of his nanite-frame into a single, thunderous punch, and the reinforced glass, designed to stop a sniper round, spiderwebbed and then exploded outwards in a shower of crystalline shards.

He leaped through the shattered window, a dark silhouette against the chaotic, screaming lights of the facility.

For a single, heart-stopping moment, Ray was in freefall. The city's roar rushed up to meet him, a cacophony of distant sirens, humming engines, and the endless, ambient noise of a metropolis that never slept. The wind tore at him, a physical, violent force. Below him, Virelia sprawled out, a vast, vertical ocean of neon and shadow.

From the 23rd floor, he saw the city as a living, breathing machine. He saw the flashing blue and red lights of the VPD cruisers forming a tight perimeter around the base of the medical facility. He saw the upturned faces of the crowd on the street below, their mouths open in a silent, collective gasp. He saw a heavy, black sky casket begin its slow, menacing descent.

This is it, the logical part of his mind calculated. Impact in 4.7 seconds.

Fly.

He focused and his nanites responded. From his back, just below his shoulder blades, two streams of black liquid metal erupted from beneath his armor. He felt the nanites reconfiguring his own endoskeleton, creating new, temporary joints with a series of soft, internal clicks. The streams flowed upwards and outwards, forming elegant membranes, like the wings of some prehistoric, predatory bat. They caught the wind with a silent, graceful unfurling that instantly killed his downward momentum, turning his uncontrolled fall into a smooth, silent glide.

He was a silent, black specter soaring through the artificial canyons of Virelia. He banked hard, using the thermal updrafts from the massive ventilation shafts to guide his descent. His OptiRange optics scanned the city below.

He was spotted instantly. The first wave, a swarm of standard VPD Patrol Drones, rose up to meet him, their searchlights cutting sharp cones through the smog. A burst of high-caliber rounds shrieked past him, tearing through the nanite membrane of his left wing. He felt the wing shudder, the flight path becoming unstable. He fought for control, his mind racing, as he dove sharply.

Forced to change his route, he dove into the more chaotic part of the sector, a maze of towering fans and rust-colored pipelines. It was here that the second wave hit him. Two elite hunter drones ambushed him from behind a massive pipe. They were sleeker, built like predatory insects, each roughly the size of a large dog, measuring approximately one meter long and half a meter tall. Their chassis were a matte-black alloy, all sharp, aggressive angles, with multiple, glowing red optical sensors that tracked his every movement with cold, analytical precision. They moved with an unnatural, jerky silence, their vectored thrusters allowing them to change direction instantly, making them impossible to out-maneuver. From beneath their frames, sophisticated weapon pods unfolded, revealing the menacing glint of small railgun accelerators and EMP micro-missile launchers.

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The two drones moved to flank him, their movements a synchronized, deadly ballet. Ray knew a direct firefight was a losing battle. The AI controlling them would calculate hundreds of dodge paths before he could shoot a single bullet. He needed a different tactic.

He angled his glide, putting himself on a direct course with the lead hunter. The drone's railgun began to whine, charging for a kill shot. Ray didn't dodge. Instead, he raised his left forearm. The nanite armor on his arm rippled and parted, revealing a series of small, sleek apertures from his wrist to his elbow. The simple Dart Finger Ejector he had absorbed from Ethan had been completely redesigned, its mechanism now housed throughout his entire forearm, loaded with larger, heavier darts.

With a single, silent command, he unleashed a volley.

A dozen hyper-velocity darts shot from his arm, too small and too fast for the drone's primary defenses to track. Even with their increased size, all they could do was scratch the armor of the drone, so instead, he made sure to target its more sensitive parts. Several of the darts slammed into the drone's primary optical sensor array, shattering the glowing red lenses. Others embedded themselves in the delicate fins of its maneuvering thrusters.

The Hunter drone, now blind and unable to maintain stable flight, spiraled out of control, its railgun discharging a useless blast into the side of a building before it crashed.

With the immediate air threat halved, Ray decided to get personal. He dove after the remaining Hunter drone, his wings folding back to increase his speed. The drone, surprised by his aggressive maneuver, tried to dodge, its railgun struggling to get a lock. Ray was on it in an instant. He slammed into it feet-first, his armored boots finding purchase on its chassis. He latched on, his clawed gauntlet digging into the alloy frame.

The drone thrashed violently, trying to shake him off, but Ray held on.

Let's see what you know.

His nanites surged. He felt a jolt as his consciousness bypassed the drone's firewalls and plunged directly into its command system. He saw a live, three-dimensional tactical map. He saw the locations of three more Hunter drones, hidden in standby mode on nearby rooftops, waiting to ambush him. He saw the rapid approach of a sky casket, their flight paths a clear vector to his current location. He had seconds.

With the information he needed, his objective changed. Still connected to the drone, he used it as a mount. He felt the powerful thrum of its vectored thrusters through his own body, the violent lurch as he forced it to change direction, guiding it with his will toward a cleaner, more secluded location.

Once there, clear of the immediate pursuit, the connection shifted from interface to consumption. The drone's systems flickered and died as Ray's nanites devoured its core programming and its schematics.

Then he let himself fall, its body tumbling into the darkness below.

He now had a perfect blueprint of the Hunter drone in his memory. But that was a tool for later. Now, it was time to escape.

With the information he had stolen, he now had a perfect escape plan. He angled his descent, moving with a new, calculated purpose. He knew the sky caskets' approach vectors. He knew the blind spots in their sensor grids. He used this knowledge to guide his fall, a dark specter slipping through the gaps in their closing net. He landed in a narrow alleyway.

The moment his feet touched the ground, the black combat armor melted away, replaced by the simple, unassuming clothes he had worn before. He stood for a moment in the darkness, the only sounds were the drip of polluted water from a rusted pipe and the distant, ever-present wail of a city siren.

The office was a cramped, dimly lit box in the heart of a downtown VPD precinct, smelling of stale synth-coffee and overflowing ashtrays.

Stacks of old data-shards and flimsy, printed reports teetered precariously on the edge of a scarred metal desk.

Detective Orton leaned forward in his chair, the cheap synth-leather groaning in protest. He was a man worn down to the studs by the city, his face a roadmap of sleepless nights and bitter disappointments. His hair was a thinning, iron-gray mess, and his eyes, a startlingly sharp, intelligent blue, were bloodshot and weary. A single, older-model cybernetic eye, its chrome casing scuffed and its lens slightly misaligned, whirred softly as it focused, a relic from a time when mods were built for function, not fashion. He wore a rumpled, trench coat over a plain, button-down shirt, a silent rebellion against the sleek, armored uniforms of the younger officers.

He stared at the large, high-definition screen before him, his world reduced to the chaotic collage of the tech fair massacre.

The images flickered in a grim, repeating loop. The mangled, smoking wreckage of the armored loader. A close-up of the pilot, Bartolomeu Thomson, what was left of him, a red ruin in the shattered cockpit.

One line caught his eye again: 'Analysis of the impact site shows no discernible shrapnel or debris from the suspect's chassis, even after sustaining a direct hit from the loader's kinetic cannon.'

And at the center of it all, the star of this brutal, bloody show: Red Death.

Grainy, looped videos from a dozen different angles played simultaneously. Orton watched it rise from the rubble, watched it tear the loader apart, watched it heal itself. He watched it vanish into the Lower Bastion's labyrinthine veins. He glanced at the old, framed photo on the corner of his desk—a smiling young cop, gone too soon, a victim of another corporate 'asset' that had gone 'rogue.'

With a tired sigh, he initiated a video call. A moment later, the smug, impeccably dressed face of a NovaForge Dynamics representative appeared on the screen, his background a pristine, white corporate office.

"Detective Orton," the representative said, his voice smooth as polished chrome. "To what do I owe the pleasure of another one of your... inquiries?"

"Your experimental weapons division is located less than five kilometers from the incident," Orton said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "You're telling me you have no knowledge of a thirteen-foot, four-armed combat mech going on a rampage in your backyard?"

The representative's smile didn't waver. "As I've stated, Detective, our internal audits show all assets are accounted for. This was likely the work of a rival corporation using stolen technology, or perhaps an advanced terrorist cell. Perhaps you should be investigating the security protocols of the Lower Bastion."

Orton's expression hardened, a cynical, humorless smirk twisting his lips. He'd spent thirty years listening to corporate suits lie, and he knew the tells. The careful, legalistic phrasing. The subtle shift in tone from cooperative to condescending. His personal and professional experience had taught him one thing: never, ever trust a corpo's words.

"Right," Orton said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "A terrorist cell with a self-regenerating, thirteen-foot robot that leaves no trace. Sounds plausible." He ended the call, the representative's smarmy, dishonest face vanishing from the screen.

He leaned back, the old chair groaning, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "A cloaking field? A self-destruct that leaves no debris? It just… vanished."

He pulled up another folder on his screen, its title blinking in stark, red letters: "Anti-Tech Extremists." He scrolled through the files until he found the face of Bartolomeu Thomson, the loader pilot. The report was clear. Thomson's own anti-tech group, a collection of disillusioned factory workers and NeoLuddite fanatics, had no knowledge of the four-armed robot.

Every lead was a dead end. Every witness account was contradictory. Every piece of evidence led to an impossible conclusion.

He leaned his head back, staring at the cracked, water-stained ceiling of his small office. He was chasing a ghost. A ghost that could tear an armored loader mech apart, heal itself from a cannon blast, and then vanish into thin air.

He was a good detective. Maybe one of the best left in a city that preferred to solve its problems with brute force and corporate payoffs. But this… this was something else entirely. This was a puzzle with no logical solution. And it was starting to eat him alive.

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