4
The city was a corpse.
Skyscrapers leaned like broken bones, their skeletal frames jagged against a sky swollen with ash and crimson light. Smoke coiled from shattered streets, carrying the stench of rot, burned flesh, and chemicals. Somewhere in the distance, a warning siren wailed—a dying echo of the old world.
He moved silently through the wreckage, boots scuffing cracked concrete only when necessary. The number branded into his neck, 24, burned against his skin like a curse. Names were meaningless. Memories were irrelevant. He had no past. He had no future. Only the hunt.
The Elite Government Intelligence (EGI) had created him. Engineered him. Trained him to be the perfect weapon: short-distance teleportation, predatory instincts, and a mind unclouded by fear. The Black Division had been their experiment, their ghost army, and he was the last survivor.
Two blades were strapped to his back. One long, precise, lethal; the other half the size, designed for speed and fluidity. Together, they were an extension of him—a symphony of steel and shadow.
From the corner of his eye, movement. An EGI patrol advanced through the debris-strewn streets, armored suits reflecting the ashen light. They had been sent to terminate him. The order was clear: kill, no exceptions.
A breath. A heartbeat.
24 vanished.
When he reappeared, he was behind the lead enforcer. The long blade arced in a swift, brutal motion. Metal screamed as armor shredded. Blood sprayed, sizzling as it hit the debris-choked ground. The half-length blade was already in motion, stabbing and slashing with lightning speed at anyone daring to turn. Screams were short-lived. Quick. Sharp. Precise.
The patrol never saw him move. One second, they were in formation; the next, their bodies were broken, scattered, limbs twisted at impossible angles. The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and burnt ozone from their weapons' energy cores.
24 felt the void stir beneath his skin, a pulse of power urging him onward, hungry for more. But alongside it came the whispers—the fractured echoes of the Black Division, the ghosts of those who had died by his hands: Elias… Elias… Elias…
He blinked again, disappearing into the shadows, leaving a scene of carnage behind him: broken bodies, shattered armor, and the unmistakable mark of the last operative of the Black Division.
The city trembled in silence. The name 24 was whispered in fear. The hunt had only begun.