Naomi's presence did not ask to be admired; it assumed awareness.
She wore an ensemble designed for motion and survival, yet perceived—through a woman's gaze—not as spectacle, but as intention made visible. The short crimson jacket sat open by design, not flirtation, its severe cut liberating her shoulders and arms, granting her the sovereignty of full movement. It framed her rather than displayed her, the fabric seeming to remember motion even at rest, as though it anticipated her next decision before she made it.
Beneath it, a dark tactical crop top adhered with purposeful intimacy, not to please, but to function. The composite fibres breathed with her body, regulating heat, syncing silently with biometric systems. It felt less like clothing and more like an extension of her—responsive, intelligent, complicit. Her exposed abdomen was not styled for consumption. It was claimed space.
The black utility trousers rode low on her hips, tailored for endurance rather than allure. Reinforced seams followed the architecture of her body, elastic where violence demanded flexibility, unyielding where resilience was required. Hidden pockets concealed instruments of survival—compact, efficient, invisible to anyone not trained to look properly. The balance was exacting: urban anonymity threaded with lethal adaptability.
She leaned lightly against the table, one hip resting there as if by coincidence, though nothing about Naomi was accidental. Her weight was balanced, economical, gravity seemingly deferred by agreement rather than force. Her fingers hovered near her sidearm—not as threat, not as tease, but as a habit. Muscle memory traced its own quiet geometry. She was relaxed, yes—but in the way a drawn bow is relaxed, tension stored rather than spent.
Her beauty was not ornamental. It was contained.
Sharp symmetry, disciplined expression. Her face held calm without softness, confidence without vanity. Her eyes did not seek attention; they accounted for it. Clear, incisive, quietly unkind to illusion. She did not stare people down—she assessed them, the way one evaluates terrain or measures a blade: angle, intent, liability.
She noticed the glances immediately. The man who looked once and corrected himself. The woman who frowned, sensing dissonance she could not name. Naomi registered them all with detached clarity. She always did.
Her abdomen, exposed and unapologetic, was neither decoration nor provocation. It was infrastructure.
Her core was honed to precision—musculature trained as the axis of balance, enabling abrupt pivots, aerial evasions, close-quarters combat without loss of control. Under certain lighting, faint lines could be discerned beneath the skin: neurolink relay filaments, subtle and deliberate. They were part of her disguise systems, stabilising neural feedback during prolonged identity shifts, anchoring her physiology when perception fractured under pressure.
Her navel was not vulnerability. It was a keystone.
A calibrated access point—residual, refined—left by experimental bio-adaptive procedures. It functioned as a convergence node, assisting her body in recalibration after trauma, after overload, after becoming someone else for too long. It was the centre she returned to when identity blurred, when names became tools instead of truths.
Control. Resilience. Continuity.
Across from her stood Nolan.
He wore a deep crimson suit jacket, sharply tailored—not for ceremony, but for movement. The colour was deliberate: vivid enough to command attention, subdued enough to dissolve into low-light urban environments. Beneath it lay a black tactical shirt, matte and reinforced, concealing equipment without disrupting the silhouette of a civilian operative.
A black-and-red tie hung neatly at his collar—formal at first glance, yet unmistakably emblematic of the Crimson Lotus. When the jacket shifted, a compact tactical harness revealed itself briefly: holstered gear and modular pouches integrated with surgical precision, capable of vanishing or emerging depending on the persona he chose to inhabit.
Nolan's face was disciplined and severe. Strong cheekbones, a firm jaw—features that suggested resolve carved by attrition rather than vanity. His dark hair was slightly tousled, intentionally imperfect, signalling adaptability over adornment. His eyes were cold and incisive, scanning the room with relentless calculation, always several moves ahead.
His expression betrayed no excess. No indulgence. No hesitation.
A server hesitated before approaching their table, instincts warning her away. Nolan noticed—but did not look at her. He did not need to.
There was an unsettling contrast between his composed face and the anonymity of the mask he could assume at will. It reinforced his defining trait: you never truly knew which version of Nolan Okamura stood before you.
Together, Naomi and Nolan embodied a singular duality— undercover sophistication paired with lethal readiness..
"My, my… Agent Ninety," Naomi drawled, one brow arching with playful suspicion as her gaze slid towards Wen-Li. "And what, pray, have we here?" A faint smile curved her lips—half amusement, half appraisal. "She's stunning. Don't tell me—your girlfriend?"
Wen-Li's eyes widened a fraction, surprise flickering across her features like a spark catching dry tinder. She straightened instinctively, chin lifting, composure snapping back into place.
Agent-90 exhaled once, measured. "Well—"
He glanced briefly at Wen-Li, then back to Naomi. "She's beyond girlfriend."
Naomi's smile froze. Nolan's head tilted slightly.
"Your wife?" Nolan asked flatly, tone unreadable.
"Excuse me," Wen-Li interjected, stepping forward, voice crisp and controlled. "I am neither his girlfriend nor his wife. My name is—"
"Alright," Agent-90 cut in smoothly, perhaps too smoothly. "Did you find any intel you wanted to share with us?"
Wen-Li shot him a look sharp enough to draw blood. Her lips pressed into a thin line.
"So," she murmured coolly, "you didn't require me to speak at all."
"There's no need," he replied, eyes forward, as though the words might explode if he turned to face her.
Naomi raised a hand. "Hold on." She stepped closer to Wen-Li, her earlier levity dissolving into something more intent, more instinctive. Her gaze traced Wen-Li's face with unsettling precision.
"I've seen you before," Naomi said slowly. "I'm certain of it."
Wen-Li stiffened, surprise flashing through her eyes before discipline reclaimed it.
Naomi inhaled sharply. "Oh." Her hand rose to her lips. "You're her. The woman from the news." A beat. "Chief Wen-Li."
The air thickened.
Agent-90's shoulders tensed, jaw tightening. Nolan's eyes narrowed, his posture shifting subtly—like a blade sliding half an inch from its sheath.
Naomi's expression collapsed into realisation. "I—" she winced. "I've said something I shouldn't have."
"Yes," Nolan replied curtly, disappointment etched into his voice. "You have."
Before the moment could settle, a raucous laugh cut through the bar's low hum.
A cluster of rough-looking men approached, their leader swaggering ahead, confidence reeking like cheap liquor. His gaze dragged over Wen-Li with open disdain.
"So you're her?" he sneered. "The famous SSCBF chief—Wen-Li."
His grin sharpened. "Funny. You don't look like much."
Wen-Li's eyes darkened. Her spine straightened, silence radiating from her like pressure before a storm.
Agent-90 stepped forward at once, placing himself half a pace ahead of her. His voice was low, lethal. "Back off."
"Well, well, well," the man chuckled. "Look at that. The dog comes running to guard his mistress."
He cracked his knuckles. "What do you say, boys? Shall we dance?"
Agent-90's lips curved—not a smile, but a promise. "I'm in."
Nolan sighed, rolling his shoulders as though loosening a stiff jacket. "Seems you'll need assistance."
He turned briefly to Naomi. "You and the Chief—step aside. We'll handle this… refuse."
Naomi nodded immediately, hand closing gently around Wen-Li's arm. "Chief—come with me."
Wen-Li hesitated only a heartbeat, eyes flicking once to Agent-90—an unspoken exchange, taut as a drawn wire—then nodded.
As they moved away, the bar seemed to hold its breath. Two storms were about to break— and the room, like a fragile harbour, would not survive them unscathed.
The bartender barely had time to blink before Naomi leaned across the counter, flashing a grin that was all charm and imminent disaster.
"Something with a beat," she said lightly. "Loud enough to drown regrets."
The bartender swallowed, jabbed a button.
Music detonated through the bar—driving synths and percussion, a pulse like a racing heart.
That was the cue.
The first thug lunged.
He never finished the thought.
Agent-90 moved.
A step—precise, economical—then his elbow snapped up and across.
FAAH!
The man folded mid-air, spinning like a poorly thrown coat and crashing into a table. Bottles erupted. Cheers and gasps tangled together.
Nolan exhaled through his nose. "Amateurs."
Two more rushed him from either side.
Nolan ducked low, coat flaring like a matador's cape. He seized one attacker's wrist, pivoted, and used the man's own momentum to introduce him to the bar counter.
FAAH!
Without pause, Nolan's heel came up—sharp, surgical.
FAAH!
The second man dropped, eyes spinning like loose change.
Wen-Li stood beside Naomi, arms folded, expression taut—half incredulity, half reluctant admiration.
"…They're ridiculous," she muttered.
Naomi smirked. "They always are at first."
Agent-90 caught a bottle hurled from across the room—caught it, glanced at it, then gently placed it back on a shelf.
The thrower froze.
Agent-90 tilted his head.
Then he moved.
A straight punch—no flourish.
FAAH!
Another—twisting, precise.
FAAH!
A knee to the ribs as the man doubled.
FAAH!
The attacker collapsed like a tent with its poles removed.
Nolan slid across the floor on one knee, snatching a chair mid-glide. He spun once and released.
The chair clipped three men in succession.
FAAH! FAAH! FAAH!
It disintegrated against the wall in a heroic sacrifice.
The music hit its chorus.
Timing—immaculate.
A large brute roared and charged Agent-90.
Wen-Li inhaled sharply. "That one's big."
Agent-90 didn't look concerned. He sidestepped at the last possible instant, placed a palm against the man's back, and guided him—politely—into a pillar.
FAAH!
The pillar cracked. The brute slid down it, unconscious, smiling faintly as though relieved.
Nolan vaulted onto a table, boots thudding in rhythm with the music. He kicked one man in the chest.
FAAH!
Used the recoil to spring backwards, elbowing another mid-jump.
FAAH!
He landed, straightened his tie with infuriating calm, and muttered, "Do try harder."
The remaining thugs hesitated.
Bad decision.
Agent-90 and Nolan moved together now—unspoken synchrony.
Agent-90 swept low.
FAAH!
Nolan followed with a spinning backfist.
FAAH!
Agent-90 finished with a controlled palm strike to the sternum.
FAAH!
Silence followed—broken only by the fading music and the groans of men reconsidering their life choices.
Wen-Li blinked.
Once.
Then, very slowly, she exhaled.
"…I told you this city breeds idiots," Naomi said.
Wen-Li laughed softly, impressed not shown. "Yes," she agreed. "But at least tonight, the idiots were entertaining."
Agent-90 adjusted his cuff, not a hair out of place.
Nolan stepped back beside him, surveying the wreckage like an art critic before a controversial exhibit.
"Drinks?" Nolan asked.
Agent-90 nodded once. "Earned."
Wen-Li shook her head, a reluctant smile ghosting her lips.
The rain outside kept falling.
Inside the bar, the storm had already passed.
Elsewhere — High Chaebol Tower
The air in Gavriel's office had thickened, as though the walls themselves had begun to listen.
He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, fingers laced behind his back, city lights trembling beneath the glass like a captive constellation. His reflection stared back at him—calm, immaculate, yet fissured by unease.
"…Something is amiss," he murmured, voice low and silken, threaded with a serpent's suspicion. "If Ferro has been taken red-handed by Ninety and Wen-Li… then the veil thins. And when veils thin, blood follows."
Behind him, Nahema tilted her head, the gesture almost human. Almost.
"Then allow me to resolve it," she said softly. "Alone."
Gavriel turned. For a fleeting instant, something ancient flickered in his eyes—calculation sharpened by trust that had survived epochs.
"Very well," he said at last. "Go. But remember—storms that move too soon reveal their lightning."
Nahema smiled, a smile worn like borrowed skin.
"I am the storm," she replied.
And she was gone.
The aftermath of violence always had a peculiar quiet to it.
Broken glass glittered like fallen stars across the floor. Groans rose and fell in irregular rhythms. Somewhere, the music still played—muted now, embarrassed by what it had witnessed.
Agent-90 and Nolan sat at the counter, posture composed, suits barely disturbed. Naomi leaned back against a stool, one boot hooked lazily around its rung. Wen-Li sat beside Agent-90, shoulders rigid, hands clasped as though holding something together inside her.
The bartender wordlessly set the bottles down: tequila, vodka. No questions. No commentary. Survival had taught him restraint.
Naomi lifted her glass. "Diskussiya," she said lightly, though her eyes were sharp. "The unpleasant kind."
She took a sip, then spoke.
"The SSCBF network has been compromised. Entirely. Personnel biometrics, encrypted comms, internal routing—everything." She paused, letting the words land. "The SCP did it."
Wen-Li's head snapped up. "That's impossible."
Naomi's gaze slid to Nolan. Then to Agent-90.
"Well," she said, "it would be. If it hadn't been done from the inside."
A beat.
"It was Zhai Linyu."
Wen-Li stiffened. Her eyes widened, disbelief flaring like struck flint.
"What? How is that even possible?"
Nolan answered, voice level, unadorned. "Naomi's right. Zhai Linyu was a sleeper—an SCP asset embedded through BAEPSA. He served under Captain Lingaong Xuemin's unit."
The name landed heavily, like a door slammed shut.
"Does Xuemi knows about this?" ask Agent-90 finally break as he ask
"No not really, says Nolan, "before Captain can find out more about Zhai Linyu was killed when he turned to monster" says Nolan
"As Captain already finds out his betrayal but this…." Noaomi says, "he didn't know yet!"
Wen-Li's fingers curled slowly into her palm. "So the SCP planted him as a navigational blade," she said, voice measured but trembling beneath, "to hollow out our organisation from within."
"Correct," Agent-90 replied.
She turned to him sharply. "And you knew."
He did not flinch. "Yes."
Silence stretched.
He continued, choosing each word with surgical care. "If we had told you earlier, Chief, you wouldn't have believed it. Nor would the SSCBF. And the real traitor—the one still breathing—would have been alerted. They would have moved. Faster. Cleaner."
"So this," Wen-Li said quietly, "is why we're here."
"Yes."
Her gaze hardened. "Then tell me—President Song Luoyang. Zhai Linyu killed him too, didn't he?"
"No," Nolan said. "That order came from higher up. High Chaebols."
"Then who?" she demanded.
Agent-90 lifted his head. The light caught his spectacles, masking his eyes in silver.
"Luciano Ferro," he said. "A professional eraser. He removes political inconveniences for the High Chaebol circle."
Wen-Li swallowed. "So that means—"
"Yes, Chief," he said. "Ferro executed President Song Luoyang. And his family."
Naomi inhaled sharply. "And there's more—"
Nolan nudged her side gently, a silent warning.
Wen-Li looked between them. "More?"
The bar seemed to shrink. Even the rain outside felt as though it had paused to listen.
Agent-90 spoke at last, voice subdued, stripped of its usual detachment.
"The year. The date."
He hesitated—just once.
"The car explosion that killed Chief Wen-Luo… and Lieutenant Ren-Li."
He could not look at her.
"It was Ferro," he finished. "He did it."
For a moment, Wen-Li said nothing.
Her head bowed. Long strands of hair slipped forward, obscuring her face. The air around her seemed to compress, as though gravity itself had leaned closer. The bar lights dimmed—perhaps only in perception—but Naomi's skin prickled all the same.
Something ancient and feral stirred.
When Wen-Li finally lifted her head, her expression had changed—not shattered, not hysterical—but terrifyingly still. Like a lake just before it freezes solid.
"Where is he?" she asked.
Her voice was soft.
Too soft.
Naomi felt it then—that pressure, that suffocating presence, as though invisible hands had closed around her lungs. In her mind, unbidden, a thought surfaced:
This woman doesn't rage like fire.
She rages like winter.
Her thoughts avalanched—facts interlocking with memories, grief soldered to strategy. The realisation struck with the chill precision of a guillotine.
"So," Wen-Li said at last, her voice trembling not with fear but with a fury tightly bridled, "it appears we shook hands with the devil—and mistook the warmth for trust."
Nolan inclined his head, grim assent etched into his features. "A pact written in invisible ink," he said. "It always fades when blood is required."
Wen-Li's gaze cut through the bar like a drawn blade. "Luciano Ferro. Where is he now?"
Naomi straightened, her earlier levity extinguished. "Shimmerpoint's rural belt," she replied. "Dense. Forgotten. The sort of place men go when they wish to disappear without dying."
Silence gathered, heavy as storm-clouds.
Wen-Li rose. The stool scraped softly against the floor—an unintentional drumroll. She tugged at her fingerless gloves, leather creaking as though answering her mood, and rolled her shoulders once, settling herself into purpose. Her eyes burned—not wild, not unfocused—but honed, like a lens tightened to its sharpest point.
"Then we find him," she said. "And we learn precisely what the High Chaebols believe themselves entitled to."
Agent-90 stood with her, wordless, already aligned. Nolan followed, jacket settling across his shoulders like a war standard reclaimed. Naomi cracked her knuckles, a faint, feral smile touching her lips.
They moved as one.
Behind them, the bar exhaled—relieved, perhaps, or fearful—while the rain outside continued its patient percussion.
Somewhere in Shimmerpoint's overgrown margins, a man named Ferro remained unaware that the hounds had been loosed.
And this time, the hunt would not be merciful.
Redlantern Hollow is the oldest rural-urban fringe of the Shimmerpoint Quarter—a place where the city's vertical ambition collapses into narrow alleys and low, aging structures. Despite being called "rural," it isn't pastoral; instead, it's pre-industrial stubbornness surviving inside a hyper-futuristic sprawl.
As rain falls, the alley transforms into a corridor of glowing reflections. Red neon signboards, written in worn characters, bleed their light into the wet pavement, turning puddles into liquid mirrors. The rain never pours violently here—it drizzles endlessly, a thin, cold sheet that smells of rust, oil, and old incense.
Buildings lean inward, stacked with decades of unauthorized extensions: metal balconies, patched awnings, exposed cables sagging under water weight. Shopfronts are narrow and deep—tea houses, black-market clinics, analog repair stalls—most shielded by dark fabric flaps that flutter softly in the rain.
People move quietly.
Residents walk with heads down, coats pulled tight, footsteps echoing softly on slick stone. Some carry paper-wrapped parcels; others vanish into side doors that don't appear on any map. A few silhouettes linger under awnings—brokers, watchers, informants—faces half-hidden by shadow and steam rising from sewer vents.
The atmosphere is oppressive but intimate. There's no sky visible, only mist and the distant outline of a megastructure tower looming like a ghost beyond the alley's end. Surveillance is minimal here—not because it's safe, but because power struggles make it inconvenient. The rain interferes with optics, and Redlantern Hollow thrives in that blur.
At night, the rain amplifies everything: the hum of failing generators, the buzz of neon struggling to stay lit, the faint murmur of conversations behind thin walls.
Redlantern Hollow feels like a place where secrets survive longer, where the city forgets to look too closely—and where those who don't belong in the upper tiers quietly disappear into the rain.
Then the four came at the abandoned factory, it was the dilapidated and ruined place of the Shimmerpoint Quarter, seeing this Wen-Li says, "The location is here, right?"
"Yes!" Naomi
"Let's get in there!" she order as they went inside"
Inside the abandoned factory, darkness clung to the rusted girders and fractured concrete like a funerary veil. Moisture beaded along corroded beams; the air tasted of damp iron, rot, and something sharper—an old metallic tang that whispered of violence long past and violence yet to come.
Wen-Li advanced first, each step measured, predatory. Her shoulders were relaxed, but her spine was taut with readiness, senses honed to a razored edge. Her gaze sliced through the shadows, cataloguing angles, exits, silences. Nothing escaped her notice—not the way the air felt heavier near the eastern wall, not the faint disturbance in dust where someone had passed too recently to be forgotten.
Naomi followed a pace behind, fluid as poured mercury. Her hand hovered near her sidearm, fingers loose yet poised, her breathing slow and disciplined. Nolan and Agent-90 brought up the rear, weapons raised just enough to promise consequence. The silence pressed in, oppressive and suffocating, broken only by the irregular drip of water echoing through the hollowed vastness.
"Eyes open," Wen-Li murmured, voice low, clipped. "Ferro isn't a fool. If he's here, he's either fortified… or baiting us."
Naomi swept her torch across a collapsed doorway, light skittering over rust and shadow. "This place has been dead for years," she said quietly. "Which makes it perfect for secrets that don't want witnesses."
A faint vibration trembled beneath their boots—subsonic, almost felt rather than heard. A generator, perhaps. Or something worse pretending to sleep.
Then Naomi halted, fist rising.
"Wait," she breathed. "There."
The beam dipped, illuminating boot prints impressed into damp earth—sharp-edged, recent, undeniable.
"Fresh," Naomi whispered, a thrill of danger tightening her tone.
Wen-Li's jaw set. "Then he hasn't gone far."
They pressed on, weaving through skeletal machinery and collapsed catwalks. Shadows loitered at the edge of vision, shifting like nervous thoughts. At last, a crude encampment emerged—abandoned, but warm with recent presence. A torn ration pack. A crushed cigarette. A small electronic device pulsing faintly, malignant in its patience.
"He was here," Nolan muttered.
"Or someone wearing his name," Wen-Li countered coolly.
Naomi crouched, brushing the device with two fingers. "Transponder," she said. "Or a snare."
A sudden metallic clang rang out above them—too deliberate, too precise.
All four froze.
"That wasn't the building," Naomi said softly.
Wen-Li drew her weapon in one seamless motion. "We're not alone."
A reinforced door loomed ahead, light bleeding beneath its seam like a held breath.
"Open it," Wen-Li ordered. "Now."
Nolan complied, tools flashing, sparks hissing. The lock surrendered with a reluctant whine.
Inside: servers humming like captive insects, crates stacked with methodical intent—and at the centre, a man hunched over a console.
"Luciano Ferro," Wen-Li said.
He turned slowly, a smile unfurling—thin, knowing, predatory.
"You took your time," he murmured.
"End of the road," Wen-Li replied. "You're coming with us."
Ferro tilted his head. "I don't think so."
He triggered the device.
The world went black.
Gear died. Light vanished. Silence shattered.
A gunshot cracked the darkness—FAAH!
Agent-90 fired without hesitation, muzzle flash tearing through the gloom like divine wrath.
"Shut up," he snapped, voice iron-hard. "You're done."
Ferro moved.
Not ran—slid. Twisted. Evaded. The bullet grazed his shoulder, but he was already elsewhere.
In a blink he struck Nolan—FAAH!
A fist, precise and venomous, slammed into Nolan's jaw, sending him staggering back, teeth clenched, vision exploding into white.
Ferro pivoted and launched at Naomi—FAAH!
His punch drove into her abdomen like a piledriver. She flew back, spine cracking against concrete, breath ripped from her lungs.
"Naomi!" Wen-Li surged forward—
Too late.
FAAH!
Ferro's fist smashed into her face. Her head snapped back, body folding as she hit the ground, stars detonating behind her eyes.
The remote slipped from Ferro's grasp, tumbling through the air.
Time slowed.
Agent-90 saw it.
FAAH!
His shot shattered Ferro's grip, bullet tearing through fingers. The remote clattered across the floor, inert—but ominous.
Ferro snarled, rage peeling away his composure.
The factory groaned, bones trembling.
He lunged again, fists hammering—FAAH! FAAH!—a storm of calculated brutality.
Nolan hauled himself upright, blood at his lip, eyes blazing. Naomi forced herself to her feet, pain screaming through her core.
"Not today," she rasped.
Wen-Li rose last.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Her eyes were glacial now—cold, absolute.
She was no longer reacting.
She was deciding.
The battle erupted into a maelstrom—bodies colliding like thunder, movements impossibly sharp, every strike punctuated by that brutal, resonant FAAH!
Steel met flesh. Resolve met fury. Fate held its breath.
The remote lay just beyond reach.
And whoever claimed it would decide who walked out of the dark.
Agent-90 advanced through the debris, boots crunching over fractured concrete and sparking cables. Ferro staggered backwards, clutching his injured hand, breath ragged, eyes blazing with feral defiance.
"It's finished," Agent-90 said coldly, raising his weapon. His voice was steady, but his jaw was locked tight, rage coiled beneath restraint. "All your games end here."
Ferro laughed—a hoarse, broken sound. "You really think I'd come this far without contingencies?" His smile widened, unnatural. "Kill me if you wish. You'll still lose."
Agent-90 fired.
The shot struck true—FAAH!—but instead of blood, there was a hollow metallic rupture. Ferro's body convulsed, skin tearing away like a discarded costume. Agent-90 froze as something tore loose from the figure's neck—a fibre-optic shroud, synthetic sinew unraveling.
The body collapsed with a mechanical whine.
Not flesh.
A construct.
A decoy.
"A robot…?" Nolan breathed, eyes wide, disbelief sharpening his tone.
Naomi swore under her breath, staggering closer despite the pain. "That wasn't Ferro."
Wen-Li's eyes narrowed, dread blooming behind her composure. "Then he was never here."
The realisation barely had time to settle.
The world screamed.
A malevolent explosion tore through Shimmerpoint Quarter—not a blast, but a rupture, as if reality itself had been flayed open. Buildings buckled like paper effigies. Towers sheared in half, cascading into streets below. Light vanished. Sound became a roar without shape.
People died in an instant—lives extinguished like sparks in a storm.
Wen-Li was thrown across the ruins, her body slamming into collapsed steel. She coughed violently, blood staining her lips as she forced herself upright.
Silence followed.
Not peace—absence.
Shimmerpoint was gone.
She stared, eyes hollow, chest rising in shallow gasps. Where neon once glimmered, there was only ruin. No movement. No voices. No life.
Naomi staggered into view, shield flickering weakly around her forearm. Nolan emerged from the dust moments later, suit torn, face bloodied—but alive.
"Where's Ninety?" Naomi asked, panic cracking her voice.
Wen-Li's breath hitched. She scanned the devastation, heart hammering. "Agent-90?" she called.
A groan answered from the rubble.
Her head snapped towards the sound. Relief flashed—then vanished.
"WATCH OUT!" Wen-Li screamed.
Another explosion detonated above them, spiralling downward like a judgement. Naomi reacted instantly, slamming her palms together. A translucent barrier erupted outward, absorbing the blast in a violent shimmer. The impact drove them to their knees, but the shield held.
Smoke cleared.
She stood there.
Nahema Dysion.
She did not arrive so much as assert herself.
Her presence bent the air, warped perspective. Her attire was no mere clothing—it was ritualised containment given form. A high-collared mantle draped from her shoulders like a fallen wing, sigil-threading faintly aglow as it regulated the monstrous energies within. Black-and-gold restraints crossed her torso with deliberate asymmetry, anchoring volatile nodes along her ribcage. Chains, talismans, and trophies of consumed entities clinked softly at her waist.
Not decoration.
Evidence.
Her clawed gloves gleamed dully, instruments of precision rather than brutality.
Her expression was still—terrifyingly so. Amber-gold eyes burned with inhuman luminosity, unfocused in any mortal sense, as though she were observing outcomes, not actions.
Wen-Li felt it immediately.
Pressure.
Her breath grew shallow. Her thoughts blurred at the edges.
Nahema's exposed abdomen glowed—living sigils pulsing like a second heart. Her navel, the Abyssal Aperture, drank in the air itself—fear, despair, grief—not by pull, but by resonance. The devastation fed her. The dead fed her.
Naomi swallowed hard. "She's… feeding on this."
Nolan clenched his fists, Adaptive Combat Logic already firing—patterns forming, collapsing, reforming. "She's not just powerful. She's inevitable."
Nahema smiled faintly.
"How touching," she said softly, voice layered, echoing against itself. "You survived."
The ground cracked as she raised one hand.
Malevolent Destruction bloomed—not fire, not light, but a distortion, a collapsing sphere where gravity, heat, and will fused into annihilation.
Wen-Li roared and answered.
Crimson Shackles erupted from her wrists—chains of scarlet energy carving sigils into the air, her mark blazing across her hands. They snapped outward like living serpents, colliding with Nahema's assault in a shockwave that shattered what remained of the street.
Nolan moved—fast, calculated—adjusting angles, predicting vectors. Naomi followed, pain overridden, body screaming but obeying.
Then—
Nahema vanished.
She reappeared behind Agent-90.
Before he could react, her clawed hand seized his ankle.
"NO—!" Wen-Li screamed.
Nahema hurled him.
Agent-90 became a missile of flesh and steel, smashing through one building—FAAH!—then another—FAAH!—then a third, disappearing in a thunderous cascade of debris.
Wen-Li's scream tore free, raw and unrestrained.
Her aura exploded outward, Crimson Shackles tightening, rage eclipsing reason.
Nahema turned calmly to face them.
"Now," she said, almost kindly, "let us see how much defiance survives despair."
The battle was far from over.
And the city—what little remained of it—held its breath.
The air thickened, as though the ruins themselves were holding their breath.
Nahema regarded Wen-Li with mild curiosity, her head tilting a fraction, amber eyes burning steadily. "You feel it now, don't you?" she said, voice low and layered, like sound travelling through deep water. "That ache behind your sternum. That tightening in your veins. Grief ripening into something useful."
Wen-Li's shoulders trembled. Not with fear—never that—but with containment. Her fists clenched, Crimson Shackles rattling softly as if impatient. The sigils along her wrists began to migrate, crawling up her forearms like living calligraphy, glowing deeper, darker, no longer merely red but veined with obsidian shadows.
"Stop talking," Wen-Li growled, her voice roughened, stripped of rank and restraint. "You don't get to speak their names through me."
Nahema smiled—thin, precise. "I already am."
The Abyssal Aperture pulsed.
For a heartbeat, Wen-Li staggered. Memories surged—fire, twisted steel, the echo of a car alarm dying mid-scream. Her breath hitched, blood welling again at the corner of her mouth.
Naomi reacted instantly, stepping in close, one arm bracing Wen-Li's back. Her own body screamed in protest, muscles torn and overstretched, but her eyes burned with defiance. "Stay with us," she hissed. "Don't let her rewrite you."
Nolan moved in tandem, positioning himself between Nahema and Wen-Li, Adaptive Combat Logic recalibrating at violent speed. He studied Nahema's micro-movements—the infinitesimal shifts in posture, the way the air bent half a second before her power manifested.
"She provokes to destabilise," he said sharply. "She feeds on fracture. Wen-Li—anchor."
Wen-Li inhaled.
Deep.
Measured.
The Crimson Shackles responded—not lashing outward, but drawing inward, coiling around her arms, her shoulders, her spine. The glow intensified, then steadied, like molten metal cooling into a blade.
Her eyes lifted.
They were no longer merely furious.
They were lucid.
"I am not your harvest," Wen-Li said quietly.
She stepped forward.
The ground beneath her boots cracked, not from force, but from assertion—as if the world acknowledged her decision to stand. The sigils flared, forming a vast circular crest behind her, spectral chains unfurling like wings forged of bloodlight.
Nahema's expression shifted at last—interest sharpening into something closer to caution.
"So," she murmured. "You choose awakening."
Wen-Li moved.
She vanished from where she stood, reappearing mid-strike, Crimson Shackles snapping forward, not wild but disciplined, each chain moving with purpose, geometry, intent. Nahema countered, Malevolent Destruction blooming in overlapping fields, reality folding and collapsing in her wake.
Nolan darted in from the flank, movements precise, almost elegant. He struck where Wen-Li's chains forced Nahema to redirect—attacking the infinitesimal gaps between inevitabilities. His blows were not about strength, but interruption.
Naomi followed, Reflex Override burning through pain, her body moving past its natural limits. She vaulted over a collapsed beam, striking downward, shield manifesting mid-air, slamming into Nahema's guard with brutal momentum.
Nahema slid back a step.
Just one.
The ruins shuddered.
Her eyes narrowed, the glow intensifying. "How quaint," she said coolly. "You mistake synchrony for supremacy."
She raised both hands.
The sigils across her abdomen ignited fully, the Abyssal Aperture widening—not physically, but conceptually. The air screamed as despair and residual terror were ripped from the ruins, flooding into her.
Wen-Li screamed back.
Not in pain.
In refusal.
The Crimson Shackles erupted outward, no longer bound to her wrists alone. They tore free as constructs of will, looping around Nahema's Malevolent field, biting into distortion itself. Where they touched, Nahema's power hesitated.
Wen-Li's aura expanded, no longer suffocating but incandescent—a storm constrained by intention. Her posture straightened, bloodied but unbowed, eyes blazing with something ancient and fiercely human.
"You don't get to decide how this ends," Wen-Li said, voice resonant, layered with the echo of every oath she had ever sworn.
Nahema regarded her in silence.
Then, slowly, she laughed.
Low.
Delighted.
"Oh, Wen-Li," she said softly. "Now you're worth killing properly."
The battlefield ignited once more—chains, sigils, shattered concrete and bent reality colliding in a violent ballet. Nolan and Naomi closed ranks beside Wen-Li, battered but resolute, three wills braced against something that should not have been stoppable.
Above them, the broken skyline flickered.
And somewhere beneath the rubble, Agent-90 stirred.
The storm had not yet reached its apex.
Furthermore, radiation began to coil where Agent-90 lay half-buried beneath wreckage, not spilling outward but spinning inward, collapsing upon itself in paradoxical obedience. Light thickened. Particles sparked and recombined, atoms behaving as though uncertain which laws they still served. Electrons skittered along his nerves like startled fireflies, synapses igniting one after another in a cascading resonance.
Then— his eyes opened.
They were no longer human.
An ethereal white brilliance poured from his pupils, near-blinding in its intensity, while the sclera surrounding them had turned abyssal black, a void framing celestial fire. It was as if a star had learned to look back. The air around him vibrated, humming with a frequency that made rubble tremble and reality wince.
Across the battlefield, the struggle had reached a fever pitch.
Wen-Li fought like a crimson tempest incarnate. Her Shackles lashed and looped, carving sigils through the air, binding fragments of warped reality itself. Nahema answered with her Abyssal Aperture, dread energies blooming and folding space like scorched parchment. Each clash sent shockwaves rippling through the ruins, pulverising what little remained of Shimmerpoint's skeleton.
Nolan struck from the left—precise, adaptive, exploiting milliseconds of imbalance. Naomi surged from the right, Reflex Override burning her past pain, her movements sharp, feral, unrelenting. The three of them attacked in grim synchrony, like a trident driving into the hide of a god.
For a fleeting moment— Nahema yielded ground.
Then her expression hardened.
"So predictable," she intoned.
Malevolent Destruction unfurled.
It was not merely an attack but a sentence. A collapsing sphere of annihilative force erupted from her core and struck Wen-Li head-on before warning could even form.
"No—!" Naomi shouted, reaching out too late.
Nolan's breath caught, his calculations shattering into useless fragments.
The explosion tore the world apart.
Light roared. Stone liquefied. The air screamed. The shockwave erased sound itself as devastation blossomed outward, reducing the battlefield to a churning inferno of ultraviolet fire and debris.
Silence followed.
Wen-Li stirred.
Her eyelids fluttered open, vision swimming—and she realised she was no longer falling.
She was being carried.
Cradled with impossible steadiness, like something precious rescued from a collapsing world. She looked up.
"Agent…90?" she whispered, voice fragile, disbelief bleeding into awe.
What she saw beyond him made her breath seize.
The air bent away from his body. Light curved. The ruins behind him seemed distant, irrelevant—small. His face was calm, almost remote, eyes burning with that unearthly white fire.
He did not answer.
He set her down gently, reverently, as though gravity itself deferred to his intent. Then he turned.
Nahema stiffened.
Naomi felt her skin prickle, instincts screaming. Nolan's eyes widened, his mind racing and failing to categorise what now stood before them.
"This isn't—" Nolan thought. "—human."
Nahema narrowed her glowing eyes, a flicker of something rare crossing her features.
"Interesting," she said slowly. "So you possess the discourtesy to survive. You resonate beyond probability… beyond death. Tell me—what are you now?"
Agent-90's head tilted.
When he spoke, it was not entirely his voice.
It carried depth, resonance, as though another presence spoke through him—ancient, cold, and contemptuously lucid.
"I am what answers," he said evenly. "And you—Nahema—are a parasite mistaking entropy for divinity."
The insult landed like a blade.
Nahema's composure cracked. Rage flared, her aura erupting violently as she screamed, "INSOLENT ABERRATION!"
She hurled another Malevolent fireball—dense, screaming, tearing through space itself.
Agent-90 stepped back.
Not hurried.
Not panicked.
He moved like light slipping off a mirror—gliding backward in a smooth, almost surreal motion, feet tracing the ground in a rhythm that defied physics.
Nolan stared, stunned.
"He's… walking like a moonwalk," Nolan thought incredulously.
Agent-90 stopped.
"That's enough," he said softly.
Then—after a pause, almost courteous— "No. It's my turn."
He raised one hand.
Electrons gathered, spiralling in elegant, terrifying patterns. Waves of energy interlocked, circulation accelerating, humming rising to a pitch that set teeth on edge. He inhaled—slow, profound, as though drawing the world into his lungs.
"Atomic Explosion."
He released it.
The attack detonated not outward but everywhere at once—a sphere of high-ultraviolet annihilation that melted steel, glass, and stone into incandescent slurry. Nahema crossed her arms, sigils flaring as she attempted to shield herself, but the force drove her backward, gouging a crater through what remained of the Quarter.
Wen-Li reacted instantly.
She pulled Nolan and Naomi close, Crimson Shackles flaring into a vast protective lattice. The shield formed just as the blast wave hit, dust and molten debris screaming past them, heat pressing like the breath of a dying sun.
The world vanished into ash and glare.
When the light finally dimmed, the air was thick with dust, the ruins reduced to a glowing wasteland, everything in its path warped, melted, or erased.
Wen-Li's shield held—barely.
She exhaled shakily, eyes fixed forward.
Because through the settling haze—
Wen-Li emerged first from the ruin, her boots sinking into what had once been concrete and steel, now reduced to a barren admixture of sand, mud, and vitrified ash. The world around her looked as though a titan's hand had dragged across it—flattened, scoured, erased. Naomi and Nolan followed close behind, silhouettes against the drifting dust, their movements cautious, shoulders tense, eyes searching for threats that might yet crawl out of the devastation.
There was nothing.
No buildings.
No sound.
Only the low hiss of settling heat and the mournful whisper of debris collapsing under its own fatigue.
Then—
A figure approached through the haze.
Wen-Li stiffened instantly, Crimson Shackles twitching at her wrists like alert serpents. Her breath caught—half fear, half instinct—until the dust thinned and recognition struck her like a delayed heartbeat.
"Agent-90…"
He stumbled into view.
His attire was ruined—torn, scorched, hanging from him like the remnants of a flag after a lost war. Blood streaked his temple. His steps were uneven, dragging, as though gravity had suddenly grown crueler. His eyes struggled to focus, pupils unfixed, vision swimming in a fog of exhaustion. Each step looked negotiated, bargained for.
Then his knees buckled.
Before he could hit the ground, Wen-Li surged forward and caught him.
His weight fell into her with unceremonious honesty. She sank to her knees with him, arms bracing his shoulders just in time as his head slipped forward and came to rest upon her thighs. His breath was shallow, uneven; the once-terrifying radiance in his eyes had dimmed to embers.
Wen-Li froze.
Her cheeks warmed—just slightly, traitorously—colour blooming beneath the grime and blood. One hand hovered for a second, uncertain, before resting against his hair with unspoken tenderness. Her expression softened, a rare fracture in her steel composure, as relief and something far more intimate crossed her features.
"You reckless idiot…" she murmured, voice trembling despite herself.
Behind them, Nolan surveyed the wasteland, jaw tight, shoulders finally loosening.
"Well," he said dryly, though awe threaded his tone, "it seems the demoness is dead."
Naomi exhaled, a breath she hadn't realised she was holding, hands resting on her knees. "It seems like it," she agreed, though her eyes remained wary, distrustful of silence.
Then—
THUD.
The sound was wet. Heavy. Wrong.
All three snapped their attention forward.
From the crater's heart, Nahema rose.
Her body was half-destroyed—charred, skeletal in places—yet impossibly alive. Flesh crept back over bone like ivy reclaiming a ruin. Muscles knitted. Skin reformed in slow, obscene deliberation. Each regeneration pulse made the air ripple, a visual affront to mortality itself.
Wen-Li's fingers tightened instinctively around Agent-90.
Nahema straightened, her form stabilising, eyes burning with malignant amusement. She looked at Wen-Li as one might regard an unfinished equation.
"It's not over yet, Wen-Li," Nahema said, her voice smooth despite the carnage clinging to her form. "We will meet again."
From her back, wings unfurled—vast, dark, veined with eldritch light. With a single beat, she lifted into the air, the wind of her departure scattering ash like funereal confetti.
Nolan stepped forward, rage flaring. "She's not getting away—"
"Don't," Wen-Li said sharply.
Her voice stopped him mid-stride.
He turned. She was still kneeling, Agent-90 unconscious against her, her gaze unwavering yet heavy with calculation and restraint.
"She wants pursuit," Wen-Li continued, her tone low, controlled. "That's how she hunts—provocation, not confrontation. We live today. That's enough."
Nolan clenched his fists, then slowly relaxed them. Naomi nodded silently, understanding written across her face.
The battlefield fell quiet once more.
What remained of Shimmerpoint was a grave without names.
Together, they rose. Wen-Li carefully shifted Agent-90 onto Nolan's shoulder, her movements gentle despite her own fatigue. Naomi took one last look at the devastation—a city erased like chalk beneath rain—before turning away.
They left the ruins behind.
And returned, wordless and burdened, to the Shin-Zhang Corporation—carrying not victory, but survival, and the unspoken certainty that the war had only begun.