The dust in the adjacent commercial building had barely begun to settle before Sho made his move.
He stood shirtless amidst the splintered mahogany of the upper-left section of the structure, the stark white-pink explosion of his hair catching the ambient neon from the street below. He rolled his shoulders, the bold black X/57 tattooed across his pale, heavily defined back flexing as he dropped into a loose, street-brawler stance.
"Alright, big man," Sho grinned, his dark eyes locking onto the hulking, drug-swollen mass of Asad. "Looks like we're doing this the h—"
Asad didn't let him finish the sentence.
He moved with terrifying, unnatural speed for a man his size. He closed the gap instantly, leaping into the air and bringing both massive fists down in a devastating hammer-smash. Sho twisted violently to the left. The impact hit the floor where Sho had just been standing, cratering the reinforced concrete and sending shockwaves of dust through the room.
Using the momentum of his pivot, Sho planted his left foot and whipped his right leg up in a brutal, forward kick aimed dead-center at Asad's face. The kick landed with a sickening thud.
It did absolutely nothing.
It was like kicking a bridge pylon. Before he could retract his leg, Asad's massive, vein-roped hand clamped around his ankle like an industrial vise.
Sho's eyes went wide. "Oh, sh—"
Asad violently hurled Sho upward. The kinetic force drove the young brawler straight into the ceiling. Sho hit flat on his back, the plaster and wiring shattering around him. As he began to fall back down, Asad leapt up to meet him. The monster locked his hands together and delivered a mid-air sledgehammer blow directly to Sho's chest.
The impact was catastrophic. Sho was driven downward with the force of a meteor, smashing completely through the 24th-floor concrete deck and disappearing into the darkness of the 23th floor below in an avalanche of rebar and drywall.
---
Across the street, inside the top-left building of the Kinjo Financial complex, Davis heard the structural collapse echo through the glass. He let out a slow, tired sigh from inside the central glass cubicle he had vaulted into moments before.
He was completely surrounded.
Sixteen Kinjo security guards had fanned out in a wide, lethal perimeter around his glass enclosure, their assault rifles raised and laser sights painted firmly on the thin partition separating them from Davis. They kept their distance, wary of the man who had just shattered a solid steel pipe with a thought.
Near the lower-left entry point of the massive office floor, Snake Eyes was recovering, his gaze locking onto the matte-black briefcase resting on the floor near a standalone water cooler.
Davis tapped his earpiece. "Rose. I'm going to need some cover. And Rose?" He paused, his eyes tracking the shadows of the guards through the frosted glass. "Please no killing unless absolutely necessary."
Across the complex, perched on the top-left corner of the building on the far right, Rose received the order.
She was objectively beautiful, yet profoundly unapproachable. Her slim, athletic frame was clad in minimalistic, pitch-black tactical gear, fitted for stealth and chosen specifically to let her disappear into the shadows. The wind whipped her back-length, reddish-pink hair—pulled into a practical high ponytail—around her shoulders. But it was her eyes that demanded a wide berth: deep, vivid red, the color of old blood, carrying the quiet intimidation of someone who had survived too much. Her small, delicate features held a neutral, slightly downturned expression, completely devoid of emotion as she looked across the gap toward Davis's building.
She raised her right hand and pushed it into the empty air.
Space didn't tear; it yielded. A shimmering, non-Euclidean crack opened in reality. Inside the pocket dimension, there was no liquid, but it moved like a deep-sea current. Bioluminescent tendrils—blue, white, and black, resembling the tentacles of an ethereal jellyfish—drifted outward, softly wrapping around her wrists and fingers. She gripped the cold steel waiting inside and pulled hard.
The tendrils released their grip smoothly as Rose extracted a massive, customized anti-materiel sniper rifle equipped with a long, heavy bipod.
She dropped to a prone position, flipped the bipod down, and peered through the thermal scope. The heat signatures of the Kinjo office flared to life in neon hues. She had Snake Eyes, the sixteen guards, and Davis dead to rights.
"In position," Rose whispered into the comms, her soft voice carrying a faint, suppressed Eastern European undertone.
---
Inside the cubicle, Davis took a breath. Snake Eyes was taking a step toward the briefcase near the entrance.
"Wait for my signal," Davis murmured. He locked his focus on the water dispenser positioned just feet away from Snake Eyes and the payload.
The heavy plastic jug began to vibrate. The pressure inside spiked instantly.
KRACK-BOOM.
The dispenser detonated. Five gallons of filtered water exploded outward, but it never hit the ground. Mid-explosion, Davis flash-froze the liquid, shaping it into a massive, articulated hand of solid ice. The icy construct lunged, wrapping its thick fingers around the handle of the briefcase, and violently flung the heavy payload across the room toward the central cubicle.
Snake Eyes, caught directly in the concussive blast of the exploding dispenser, was launched horizontally across the bottom wall of the room. He skidded violently to the right, crashing through a line of guards and coming to a halt amidst a trail of debris and groaning bodies.
"Now!" Davis barked.
One of the Kinjo guards flinched, his finger tightening on the trigger to shred the cubicle.
A heavy-caliber sniper round shattered the reinforced exterior window. It took the guard squarely in the head. The impact instantly vaporized his skull, painting the cubicle glass in front of him in a gruesome, abstract splash of crimson.
Davis bolted. He shattered the glass of his own cubicle, snatching the airborne briefcase mid-stride.
As he broke for the far side of the tower, the remaining guards opened fire, unleashing a hail of automatic gunfire. Davis didn't slow down. He snapped his fingers. The ambient moisture from the ruptured steam pipes flash-froze into dozens of tiny, aerodynamic ice slugs. They shot forward, ricocheting and colliding with the incoming bullets in mid-air, creating a deafening, strobing shower of lead and frost.
He slid under a sprinting guard's line of sight, sweeping the man's legs out from under him.
"I said no killing," Davis said into the comms, ducking a spray of bullets.
"He was in the way," Rose replied flatly as she reloaded for another shot.
A stray bullet from a panicking guard's sidearm clipped Davis's shoulder. The mid-caliber round tore through the fabric of his expensive suit, but as it struck his flesh, it simply flattened and sparked, completely failing to pierce his skin.
However, the kinetic shockwave disrupted his holographic disguise. The projection of "Director Davis" flickered wildly across his features, glitching into static around the edges and briefly revealing the sharper, colder jawline underneath before fighting to stabilize.
---
Across the room, Snake Eyes slowly pushed himself up from where he had been blasted. His expensive coat was in tatters. The clinical white bandages wrapped tightly around his head were shredded, peeling away in wet strips.
As the fabric fell away, his true face was revealed.
There was no human skin. His entire head was a grotesque, pulsating cluster of multifaceted, bug-like eyes. Thick, creeping dark veins pulsed violently beneath the translucent, compound lenses.
"Get the case!" Snake Eyes shrieked, his voice a distorted, overlapping buzz. "Nothing else matters!"
He scrambled forward, but then froze. The cluster of eyes twitched, sensing a sudden thermal spike in the air.
'She's aiming.' Moving with blinding speed, Snake Eyes reached out and violently yanked one of the surviving Kinjo guards in front of him just as Rose pulled the trigger. The heavy sniper round cored straight through the human shield's chest, dropping the guard instantly.
Snake Eyes shoved the corpse aside and locked his horrifying gaze directly onto the building to the far right. He didn't need a scope; his mutated vision pinpointed Rose's exact location.
The veins in his head bulged. The cluster of bug-eyes began to combust, glowing from within with a blinding, terrifying orange heat.
Through her scope, Rose saw the glow. "Shit."
A massive, concentrated beam of thermal energy erupted from Snake Eyes. It roared across the urban gap like a localized solar flare. It slammed into Rose's building, instantly melting a massive chunk of the rooftop parapet where she lay. Concrete flashed into bubbling lava.
Rose abandoned the heavy sniper rifle, diving backward into the stairwell as the roof dissolved into molten slag behind her.
Mid-stride on the 25th floor, Davis caught the blinding flash of the thermal beam striking the distant rooftop.
"Rose? Status," Davis barked into the comms, his voice tight as he ducked under a spray of covering fire.
"I'm clear," Rose coughed over the comms, brushing concrete dust from her hair in the dark stairwell. "But the rifle is slag and my position is compromised. You're on your own, King."
---
Snake Eyes snapped his gaze back into the ruined office.
He tore after Davis, moving with a horrifying, skittering speed. As he whipped his grotesque head around to lock onto his target, his burning gaze dragged recklessly across the room. He didn't even blink as the sweeping thermal beam inadvertently sliced through a cluster of scrambling Kinjo guards and instantly vaporized one of his own surviving couriers in a horrific shower of molten gore and ash.
Davis was already sprinting for the exterior curtain wall. He threw his left hand forward, sending a barrage of dense ice shards ahead of him. The ice shattered the remaining glass partitions in his way, clearing a path to the edge.
Snake Eyes hit a patch of wet, blood-slicked tile and went into a controlled, upright slide, his tattered coat billowing around him as he kept pace with Davis. As he glided seamlessly across the floor, Snake Eyes tilted his monstrous head sharply backward, the cluster of bug-eyes flaring to a blinding, critical mass.
Then, he whipped his head violently forward and unleashed hell.
The laser roared from his eyes in a massive, sweeping horizontal arc. The destruction was apocalyptic. The heat was so intense that the floor-to-ceiling exterior windows twenty feet away turned into dripping, molten liquid before the beam even physically touched them. The laser sliced through structural steel, desks, and concrete like butter, carving away nearly a quarter of the 25th floor and leaving the tower groaning under the threat of total structural collapse.
Davis didn't hesitate. He hit the edge where the window used to be and launched himself out into the freezing slipstream of the New Kong night.
The beam sliced out into the night sky, carving an arc just inches above him as he plummeted in freefall. The ambient heat singed his ruined coat, the air around him instantly stripped of oxygen.
Down in the Financial Quarter, the apathy of the late-night crowds finally broke. The sight of a cherry-red laser melting the top of a skyscraper and a shower of molten glass raining down on the streets ignited sheer, unadulterated panic.
The quiet mission was officially dead.
---
To Be Continued