#### **Chapter 19: The Devil's Footprints**
The Siberian wind was a physical thing, a blade that cut through even the most advanced thermal gear. The abandoned W.A.O. facility was a concrete skeleton half-buried in the snow, a monument to forgotten sins.
The infiltration was silent and seamless. Kyro moved through the derelict structure with preternatural grace, a ghost in a graveyard. Kuro, patched in from a remote drone circling high above, guided him through the decaying corridors, bypassing ancient security systems. Hikari, monitoring Kyro's biometrics and the ambient audio, was their emotional early-warning system.
"There's a sub-level," Kuro's voice directed. "The schematics show it was a private study, shielded from the facility's main network. Lead-lined walls. Bio-sealed door."
Kyro found the entrance hidden behind a collapsed section of wall. The door was locked with a complex mechanical system that no amount of hacking could open.
"Let me," Hikari said softly over the comms. "Describe the lock."
Kyro detailed the sequence of dials and pressure plates. It wasn't a standard lock. It was a puzzle.
"It's a genetic sequence," Hikari realized. "A simplified one. They were geneticists. It's their signature." She guided him through the complex combination, not through calculation, but through an empathic understanding of how her parents' minds would have worked. The heavy door hissed open.
The study was frozen in time. Research notes were neatly stacked on a desk. A layer of frost covered everything. On the wall was a single photograph, protected under glass: a younger, happier version of their parents, holding three small children. Renji, a toddler with a defiant look. Kuro, a baby with wide, curious eyes. And Hikari, a newborn, wrapped in a pink blanket.
For a long moment, Kyro simply stood there, the deadliest assassin in the world staring at a picture of a life he barely remembered. This history was not just data or a mission file. It was real. It was his.
On the desk was a heavily shielded external hard drive, its status light blinking a slow, steady pulse, waiting for someone to find it.