Chapter 3: The Echo of the Titan
The police sirens were distant, still lost in the lower rings of the vertical city. Kael used the precious minutes of grace, moving away from the body of Roric and toward the shattered security safe. If the assassin—the Titan—had left any trace beyond the atomic residue of power, it would be on the vault door.
The door, made of 15\times reinforced titanium, hadn't been picked or sliced; it had been melted, the metal slag pooled on the floor like hardened syrup.
Kael knelt, ignoring the burning heat radiating off the alloy, and pressed his ungloved hand into the still-molten pool.
Psychometry: The vision was immediate, overwhelming, and sickeningly clear.
First, the intent: A singular, focused mind, calculating mass, velocity, and energy transfer with impossible precision. It wasn't rage; it was engineering.
Then, the killer: Not a shadowy blur this time, but a figure of perfect physical form. The power reading Kael pulled was absolute—a steady 130.00 Multiplier, hitting the theoretical apex of human augmentation. The killer's face remained obscured by a field of pure kinetic energy, but Kael saw the movement: a simple, casual palm strike that disintegrated the lock.
Finally, the motive: Kael felt the target of the strike wasn't the safe's contents, but the data—a pulse of energy that wiped the safe's solid-state memory. The Titan wasn't stealing; it was erasing.
Kael recoiled violently, his mind reeling. A 130x is a myth. A weapon of last resort, monitored minute-by-minute by the Global Council. The power felt clean, professional, and utterly disconnected from human emotion.
"Jax," Kael commanded into his comm unit, his voice clipped. "We have maybe seven minutes before the GSI sends in the clean-up crew. I need external security neutralized."
Miles away, on the city's dense, smog-choked ground level, Jax smiled—a rare event that made his face, hardened by years of taking hits, look briefly human.
"Seven minutes? That's generous," Jax rumbled.
He was currently surrounded by four 5\times security enforcers from a rival gang who had arrived early, smelling blood in the water. They carried kinetic disruptors capable of shattering standard 1\times bone. Jax simply stood, his 30\times Defense Multiplier active, turning his skin into a dull, iron-colored sheen.
CRACK!
A disruptor bolt hit his shoulder. The air shimmered, the shockwave shattering a nearby concrete planter, but Jax merely took a slow step forward. The hit felt like a mild, irritating shove.
"Did that tickle, tough guy?" one enforcer screamed, reloading frantically.
Jax didn't reply. He was saving energy. When the four panicked and fired simultaneously, he activated a surge of his multiplier, planting his feet firmly. The combined impact slammed him back two feet, but when the smoke cleared, Jax was unharmed. He grabbed the nearest enforcer's rifle, effortlessly snapping it in half, then casually tossed the shattered pieces into the remaining three men.
"External security is minimal, Boss," Jax reported, walking away from the four stunned men. "You owe me a new jacket."
Meanwhile, Elara was perched in a data tower a kilometer away, her 12\times Multiplier dedicated to multi-threaded processing and complex systems analysis. She was Kael's remote brain.
"The Titan didn't care about the money, Kael," Elara announced over the comm. "Roric had a hidden, classified datalink to a former politician's treasury accounts. The GSI deleted the politician's entire existence three weeks ago."
"The dead politician was the real target," Kael realized. "Roric was just the access point. The Titan is removing history, not people."
"And the history goes deep," Elara warned. "I'm detecting heavy, low-orbit satellite activation. GSI response team is being mobilized by Commander [Iris Vale/Venn] herself. They are not sending in cops, Kael. They are sending in the clean-up crew—high-level GSI operatives. They know you're there, and they're coming to erase the evidence."
Kael looked down at his hand, still tingling with the impossible energy of the 130\times killer. He was caught between a ghost and the government.
"Status report on the Global Registry Vault," Kael snapped, grabbing his gear.
"Path secured. But Kael, the team coming for us—they'll be faster than Jax," Elara urged. "Why risk everything for a dead politician's memory?"
Kael started sprinting toward the hidden extraction point, his 10\times speed blurring the shattered office walls. "Because Elara, if the GSI controls the Multiplier Index, and the Titan is erasing the control... then the truth about the Multiplier isn't in Roric's safe. It's in the Vault. And I need to know why the world's most powerful killer is breaking the rules."