The impact was catastrophic.
The hulking monster that used to be Asad drove the disguised security officer straight backward. They shattered the twenty-fifth-floor curtain wall, a tangled mass of muscle and broken glass launching into the slipstream of the New Kong night.
They plummeted across the gap toward the commercial structure across the street. The heavy, matte-black briefcase broke free from Asad's wrist, its steel security chain snapped from the sheer force of his drug-fueled expansion. The case hit the wet tiles of the corridor with a heavy thud, abandoned.
As the boiling steam in the hallway began to thin, the remaining four couriers recovered from the pipe explosion. Their submachine guns snapped up, laser sights cutting through the vapor, all converging on the bald, unremarkable Director Davis.
Davis dropped to his knees, his hands flying up to cover his head. He trembled violently, his voice cracking in absolute terror.
"Please! Please, don't shoot!" the middle-manager begged, shrinking back against the wall. "I had no choice! They have my family! They forced me to set up the ambush, I swear to God!"
The man with the bandaged head stared down at the cowering corporate drone. He didn't even flinch.
"Get the case," Snake Eyes ordered, his voice a cold, mechanical rasp. "Take him alive. He talks, then he dies."
The short Asian brawler and one of the armed guards stepped forward to grab him.
They didn't see the vapor around Davis's hands shifting. The superheated steam from the ruptured pipes rapidly condensed, molecules locking into a dense, crystalline lattice in a fraction of a second.
Davis didn't stand up. He lunged from his knees, his hands suddenly gripping twin, long-handled nail hammers forged from solid, high-pressure ice.
*CRACK.*
The first hammer swung in a brutal upward arc, connecting directly with the Asian brawler's temple. The courier's eyes rolled back, and he dropped to the floor like a sack of wet cement.
Without breaking his momentum, Davis planted a hand on the tiles, sweeping his legs in a vicious twist-kick that shattered the kneecap of the closest armed guard. As the guard went down screaming, the disguised Director hurled his left-hand hammer.
It spun through the mist and slammed into the skull of the massive Afro-headed enforcer. The big man staggered backward, blood instantly pouring down his forehead, but his sheer mass kept him from going unconscious.
The second armed guard didn't hesitate. He leveled his SMG and squeezed the trigger, unleashing a torrent of 9mm rounds down the corridor.
Davis didn't dive for cover. He raised his empty hand and snapped his fingers.
The ambient moisture in the hallway froze into dozens of tiny, aerodynamic ice slugs. They shot forward like a shotgun blast, meeting the 9mm rounds in the space between them. Lead and ice obliterated each other in a deafening, mid-air staccato of sparks and frost.
Before the guard could comprehend that his bullets had been shot out of the air, Davis closed the distance, a fresh ice hammer materializing in his grip, aimed straight for the shooter's chest.
"Move!" Snake Eyes hissed.
The leader reached up and tore his thick, dark glasses away. Beneath them, his eyes were a terrifying mutation—long, vertical reptilian slits, burning a vivid, blood-red. A pulsing, unnatural orange aura of thermal buildup ignited around his pupils as he locked onto the disguised Director.
"Shit," Davis muttered.
He aborted the strike, throwing his entire body to the left, diving blindly through the shattered glass partition of an adjacent office cubicle.
Twin beams of concentrated thermal energy erupted from Snake Eyes. They roared past where Davis had just been, but the SMG guard wasn't as fast. The lasers cored straight through the guard's chest, instantly vaporizing flesh and bone before carving through the building's exterior wall.
Outside, the red beams sliced through the smog, burning a bright line into the night sky. Down in the Financial Quarter, a few pedestrians crossing Exchange Square flinched, pointing up at the sparking architecture of the Kinjo Tower. Most simply quickened their pace, keeping their heads down. Just another Tuesday in New Kong.
Inside the ruined cubicle, Davis crouched behind a heavy mahogany desk. The air smelled of ozone and seared meat. He pressed two fingers to the comms unit hidden beneath his fake ear.
"Change of plans," the man playing Davis said, his voice dropping its panicked pitch, returning to its usual cold, calculating baseline. "The quiet method is no longer an option."
Across the street, inside the adjacent commercial building, the dust was slowly settling over a crater of splintered desks and shattered monitors.
"No shit, Sherlock," Sho's strained voice crackled back over the comms.
"Capture Asad," Davis ordered, peeking over the desk as the remaining couriers regrouped in the hall. "I've got the case. The rest of you get ready, things might be getting chaotic."
Deep within the bowels of the Kinjo Financial Tower, klaxons began to howl. On the 23rd-floor security hub, the real guards weren't running. They were calmly strapping into heavy, ballistic SWAT armor and racking specialized shotguns. You didn't guard the Syndicate's blind drops without preparing for a war.
Back in the ruined office across the street, a massive silhouette stepped through the hole in the window. Asad landed heavily, his shredded suit pants dripping with rain, his chest heaving as the cocaine and combat stims drove his heart rate to lethal levels.
Sho groaned, pushing himself up from the rubble. The holographic illusion projecting the bald, generic face of the security officer was glitching wildly.
"Damn i hate this shit," Sho spat.
He grabbed the flickering edge of the hologram at his neck and pulled. It didn't fade smoothly; it peeled away like shattered safety glass stuck to window tint, the digital shards dissolving into static as they hit the floor.
The disguise fell away, leaving him in the restrictive, cheap physical suit they had used for the infiltration. Sho gripped the collar of the tight white dress shirt and ripped it straight down the middle, shedding the fabric and tossing the shredded rags into the debris.
"Much better."
He stood tall, completely shirtless, revealing lean, heavily defined muscle and the bold black X/57 tattooed across his back. His pale skin starkly contrasted with the wild, explosive crown of spiky white-pink hair and the thick bushy eyebrows.
---
To Be Continued