The hum of the Enforcer Drone's four energy blades filled the confined space, a sound that vibrated in the bones and promised a swift, painful end. Its multiple red eyes focused on Leo, identifying him as the primary target, the renegade. Yuki was a secondary objective, the prisoner to be recovered or eliminated as collateral damage. The machine's cold, unfeeling logic was a palpable presence in the air.
Leo didn't have time to think. He reacted.
"Hold on!" he yelled to Yuki.
He fired his ion cannons. Two pale blue beams of energy slammed into the drone's carapace. The effect was disappointingly negligible. The ionic discharges dissipated against the black alloy with little more than a fizzle of sparks, like raindrops hitting armored glass. The drone didn't even flinch, its internal diagnostics likely flagging the attack as nothing more than ambient static.
Ineffective, Leo thought, panic tightening its grip on his chest. He had spent a fortune on weapons that were like water pistols against a tank.
The drone retaliated. It moved with a speed that shouldn't be possible for something its size, a blur of black metal gliding through the air towards them. Its blades sliced the air, leaving trails of red light, a beautiful and deadly calligraphy of destruction.
Leo activated his last defensive resort, the ace up his sleeve from Griz. "EMP!"
A pulse of invisible energy emanated from the 'Phantom'. The effect was more noticeable than the ion cannons. The drone's lights flickered for a fraction of a second. One of its energy blades wavered, its form becoming unstable. But the Alpha-tier shielding held. The pulse had stunned it, but it hadn't disabled it. It was like trying to take down an elephant with a taser.
But a second was all Yuki needed.
The instant the drone faltered, she moved. She didn't jump back to safety. She launched herself forward, off the scooter, directly into the danger. In her hand was what she had pulled from under her coat: her chef's knife. The same long, black blade Leo had seen her polishing so many times.
But it was no ordinary knife. In the dim light of the warehouse ceiling, the blade didn't reflect the light. It seemed to absorb it, its edge a sliver of pure darkness, a void given form.
The drone, its combat logic rebooting from the EMP, refocused on Leo, the priority target. It ignored Yuki, classifying her as a lesser, biological threat. It was its first and last mistake.
As the drone raised its four arms for a devastating scissor attack, designed to slice the scooter and its rider in half, Yuki slid beneath its assault. Her movements were not those of a warrior. They were those of a master chef deboning a complex carcass. Precise. Economical. Not a single wasted motion.
She didn't attack the armor plating. With her black knife, she made three swift, precise cuts, not at the metal panels, but at the flexible joints that connected the drone's arms to its torso. They were cuts that targeted the "tendons" of the machine, the bundled power conduits that fed its deadly blades.
There was a hissing sound, and the smell of burnt insulation filled the air. Two of the drone's energy blades sputtered and died instantly, their corresponding arms going limp. Its scissor attack failed, one blade passing harmlessly over Leo's head while the other hung uselessly.
The drone stopped, its logic trying to process the unexpected damage from a non-priority target. Its red eyes swiveled to Yuki, finally recognizing her as the primary threat. It emitted a screech of furious static and lunged at her with its two remaining blades.
Yuki didn't retreat. She danced with the machine, her black knife a blur of darkness against the red light of the energy blades. She didn't block. She parried, she redirected, her feet moving with a grace Leo never would have imagined. It was a terrifyingly beautiful spectacle. She used the drone's own momentum against it, turning its powerful lunges into clumsy overextensions, creating openings where none should exist.
"Leo!" she shouted, her voice still calm, even in the midst of the deadly dance. "The central eye! It's the main processor!"
Leo snapped out of his stupor. While Yuki kept the drone occupied, a whirlwind of deadly grace, he saw his opportunity. The drone's central eye, the largest of its red sensors, was focused entirely on Yuki. It was exposed.
He aimed his ion cannons. This time, he didn't fire at the carapace. He fired directly at the eye.
The blue energy beam hit the red lens. There was no grand explosion, but the effect was devastating. The lens cracked and went dark, and the drone emitted a high-pitched shriek of electronic pain, its head recoiling. Its movements became erratic, its attacks wild and uncoordinated.
It was the final opening. Yuki seized the drone's momentary blindness. With a fluid motion, she ducked under a wild swing and plunged her black knife up to the hilt into the joint connecting the drone's head to its body.
There was a final hiss of escaping energy, a flicker from its remaining lights, and then, silence.
The Alpha-tier Enforcer Drone crashed to the floor with a heavy thud of dead metal, its red eyes fading one by one until they were all dark.
Yuki stood over its carcass, breathing just a little harder than normal. She pulled her knife free. It was pristine, without a single scratch or scorch mark.
Leo stared, utterly dumbfounded. He had just witnessed his calm, quiet mentor dismantle one of the Syndicate's elite killing machines with what looked like a kitchen utensil.
"What... what is that knife?" he stammered.
Yuki looked at the black blade, which seemed to drink the little light around them. "It's a chef's knife," she said simply. "It cuts the bonds that hold things together. Sometimes, those bonds are muscle fiber. Sometimes, they're Syndicate power conduits."
She sheathed the knife and jumped back onto the scooter. "Let's go. The sound of that fight will draw the others."
Leo, his mind reeling with the revelation that his chef mentor was one of the most dangerous people he had ever met, nodded dumbly and accelerated through the ventilation duct, leaving the silent wreckage of the Syndicate's elite hunter behind in the shadows. They were free, but Leo knew things had changed forever. He wasn't the only one with secrets.