#### **Chapter 5: The Hunt**
The Zurich Hauptbahnhof was a cathedral of controlled chaos. Thousands of people flowed like a river through its massive concourse, their voices echoing off the vaulted ceilings. Kyro moved among them, a ghost in the current. His black hoodie and pants made him anonymous, another face in the crowd.
He saw the target immediately. Klaus Richter, a man with nervous eyes and a cheap suit, clutching a briefcase. The four-man escort was just as Kuro predicted: bland, forgettable men positioned in a loose diamond formation. Amateurs.
Kyro tailed them from a distance, his pace matching the rhythm of the station. He was a patient predator, waiting for the precise moment to strike. It came as the team descended an escalator to a lower level, the crowd momentarily thinning.
This was the window.
Kyro's entire being shifted. The noise of the station faded to a dull roar. His breathing synced with his heartbeat. The world didn't slow down; his perception of it accelerated to an impossible speed.
*Intuitive Combat Clairvoyance.*
He saw it all before it happened. The guard on the right would turn in 0.7 seconds. The one behind would reach for his weapon in 0.9. Richter would stumble. The patterns were as clear as a blueprint.
*When Your Brother's Brain Stops Asking Permission,* Kuro's PowerPoint had once dryly explained.
He moved. His conscious mind was a passenger. His body was the pilot. He brushed past the first guard, his hand a blur as he drove a hardened knuckle into the man's carotid artery. The guard slumped, his collapse lost in the stream of people.
One down.
The second guard, the one at the rear, sensed the disturbance. His eyes widened. His hand darted inside his jacket. Kyro was already there. He used the man's own momentum, redirecting his arm and driving his head into the steel railing of the escalator. A sickening crack, unheard over the station's din.
Two down.
The remaining two guards drew their weapons, but they were reacting to a ghost. Kyro disarmed the third with a swift, brutal wrist lock and a disabling blow to the throat. He grabbed Richter, who was now frozen in terror. With his other hand, he caught the fourth guard's arm, twisting it and using the man as a human shield as he fired a single, silenced shot into his own panicked comrade.
Four.
It had taken less than five seconds. No one in the crowd had noticed anything more than a brief, clumsy scuffle.
Kyro held the terrified Richter by the throat. "The key," he rasped.
Richter, trembling, fumbled with a key from his pocket and unlocked the chain. Kyro took the briefcase. He looked into the courier's eyes and saw nothing worth remembering. A single, precise chop to the man's neck sent him crumpling to the floor, unconscious but alive. Kuro had said he was disposable, and Kyro was, on occasion, efficient rather than lethal.
He merged back into the river of people, just another anonymous man with a briefcase, leaving behind a small pocket of chaos that security would not unravel for several critical minutes. The shadow was gone. The hunt was over.