#### **Chapter 9: The Achilles' Heel**
Renji was cleaning his weapon when the message arrived. It didn't come through Kuro's secure channel. It appeared on the small tablet he used for innocuous, everyday browsing. A simple, unsecured email. The sender was anonymous.
He opened it.
There was no text. No threat. Just an image. It was a live video feed, beamed from a hidden micro-camera. The perspective was low to the ground, aimed at the sofa in his own apartment.
Sleeping peacefully on a cushion was Midnight.
For a moment, Renji felt only confusion. Then he saw it. A tiny, brilliant point of red light, dancing on the black cat's fur, right over its peacefully beating heart. A laser sight.
His blood turned to ice. He was across the room in a second, grabbing the burner phone to call Kuro, his mind racing. It was impossible. His apartment was a fortress. No one could have gotten in. No one… except W.A.O.
Before he could dial, a second email arrived. This one had a subject line.
*"Subject: Come home, Kyro-3755."*
The message was clear. It wasn't a threat of violence. It was a threat of sacrilege. They had bypassed his defenses, violated his sanctuary, and put a target on the one pure, innocent thing in his entire brutal existence. They had found his Achilles' heel.
And it was purring, completely unaware of the danger, in the next room. The rage that filled Renji was cold, absolute, and utterly silent. It was a fury that promised not just to defeat his enemy, but to erase them from the face of the earth.