We left Tokyo on a private fishing trawler that smelled of salt, diesel, and revenge.
Oni (real name Kenji Sato, though he hated the surname now) stood at the bow for three straight days, letting the Pacific wind scour the last of the red pigment from his skin.
By the time we hit the equator he looked almost human again.
Almost.
The horns had retracted into thick bone ridges under his hairline, and his eyes still glowed faintly when he was angry, which was most of the time.
I spent the voyage teaching him everything I knew about living without a System HUD in your head.
How to feel pain again. How to sleep without nightmares instead of respawning. How to be mortal and still choose to be a monster.
He learned fast.
We made landfall in northern Brazil on a moonless night, thirty kilometers south of Recife.
A rust-red cigarette boat dropped us on a deserted beach with nothing but the clothes on our backs, two duffels of weapons we'd taken from the Mori Tower armory, and Dr. Sato's cracked tablet now running a brute-force hack against the Lazarus network.
The tablet pinged exactly once as our boots hit wet sand.
Location confirmed:
Subject Zero-Beta
Codename: "Rei" (King)
Current status: Ruler of Rocinha Favela, Rio de Janeiro
Threat level: God-tier
We looked at each other and grinned the same grin.
Three days later we were riding in the open bed of a stolen Volkswagen bus up the winding mountain roads into Rocinha, the largest favela in South America.
half a million souls stacked on top of one another in brick, tin, and pure will.
The air smelled of gunpowder, grilled meat, and marijuana.
Children with AKs waved us through checkpoints like it was normal.
Because here, it was.
At the very top of the hill stood a fortress that used to be a luxury hotel before the cartels took it.
Now it flew a black flag with a golden crown.
Rei's flag.
We walked straight up the main street at noon, no attempt at stealth.
Every rifle on every rooftop tracked us.
Halfway up, a kid no older than fourteen stepped into the road with a gold-plated Desert Eagle almost as big as he was.
"Gringo and the giant," he announced in Portuguese. "The King will see you. Leave the bags."
We left the bags.
They escorted us into the hotel lobby turned throne room.
And there he was.
Subject Zero-Beta.
Rei.
He sat on a throne made from melted-down police rifles, shirtless, skin the color of burnt bronze, crown tattoo covering his entire chest in solid gold ink.
Six-foot-six, maybe two-eighty, every ounce carved perfection.
Scars that glowed faintly like molten metal when he moved.
Around him: twenty lieutenants in soccer jerseys and gold chains, all packing military-grade hardware.
On the floor in front of the throne: three men in suits on their knees, faces already swollen.
Rei didn't even look at us at first.
He was busy.
He spoke in calm, Portuguese-flavored English.
"These gentlemen are from São Paulo. They came to tell me the Tokyo lab burned down. They came to tell me I should be afraid."
He stood up slowly.
Every gun in the room twitched.
Rei walked to the first man, grabbed him by the hair, and slammed his face into the marble until it stopped looking human.
Then the second.
Then the third.
When he finished he wiped his hands on a white towel an attendant handed him and finally turned to us.
"You're late," he said. "I've been expecting you for weeks."
His voice was mine, but deeper, rougher, like gravel soaked in cachaça.
I stepped forward.
"You knew we were coming?"
Rei smiled, and the scars on his chest flared bright gold.
"I dreamed it. Every night since the day they woke me up in a tank under this mountain. I dreamed of two brothers walking out of fire. One American and Japanese. Coming to set me free."
He spread his arms.
"Welcome home, irmãos."
Then he laughed, and the entire room laughed with him, because when the King laughs you laugh or you die.
That night he threw a party that shook the favela until sunrise.
Samba, funk carioca, cocaine, and blood.
Oni got drunk for the first time in his life and cried when he tasted real feijoada.
I sat on the edge of the rooftop pool with Rei, legs dangling over a 400-meter drop, city lights glittering below us like fallen stars.
He passed me a joint the size of a Sharpie.
"So," he said. "You killed the people who made us."
"Some of them."
"And now you want me to leave all this?" He gestured at the empire he'd built. "This is the first time in my life I've been free. They tried to make me a weapon. I made myself a god instead."
I took a hit, coughed, handed it back.
"They're still making more of us. Three labs left. Marrakesh. Moscow. Dubai. Maybe London. Every day they keep running, another brother wakes up in a tank."
Rei stared out over Rio for a long time.
Then he said, very quietly, "I wasn't always this."
He rolled up his sleeve.
Burn scars in perfect grid patterns. Surgical lines. Numbers tattooed inside his forearm: 0-BETA-001.
"They woke me up speaking only Portuguese and orders. Told me I was nothing. I killed the first ten men who said that. Took their guns. Took their drugs. Took their hill. Kept taking until the city bent the knee."
He looked at me.
"I don't know how to be anything else anymore."
I met his eyes.
"You're not coming to save the others, are you?"
He shook his head slowly.
"I'm coming to make sure no one ever puts another one of us in a cage again. Even if I have to burn every city on the list."
Rei smiled like sunrise over a battlefield.
"Then we understand each other."
He stood up.
"Tomorrow the paulistas think they can take my hill. They hired an entire BOPE death squad. They're coming at dawn with helicopters and tanks."
He offered me his hand.
"Fight with me one time, irmão. See what freedom looks like when it has teeth."
I took it.
Dawn came red.
The favela woke to war.
BOPE came in waves: black uniforms, skull masks, HK416s, sniper teams on the surrounding hills, two Super Puma helicopters circling like vultures.
Rei met them at the front gate barefoot, wearing only board shorts and that golden crown tattoo.
Oni and I flanked him.
The first helicopter lowered a rappelling team.
Rei looked up, raised one hand, and the helicopter exploded mid-air.
No missile. No RPG.
Just his will.
The fireball rained burning men into the street.
The second helicopter tried to climb.
Oni jumped thirty feet straight up, caught the skid, ripped the pilot out through the windshield, and rode the wreck down into a courtyard like a meteor.
I just walked forward into gunfire.
Bullets pinged off my skin. I felt them, but they didn't drop me anymore.
I reached the first BOPE stack, took their rifles away, used them as clubs.
Twenty minutes later the street was silent except for burning.
Rei stood in the middle of the carnage, chest glowing like the sun, blood dripping from his hands.
Every favela resident who could walk came out to see.
They dropped to their knees.
Not in fear.
In worship.
Rei turned to me.
"This is what they made us for," he said. "Not to serve. To rule."
I looked at the bodies.
Then at him.
"That's not freedom, Rei. That's just a bigger cage you built yourself."
His smile faded.
For the first time something like doubt crossed his face.
That night he called a meeting in the hotel basement: an old wine cellar turned war room.
Maps of the remaining labs. Satellite photos. Guard rotations.
He laid it all out like a general.
"We hit Marrakesh next. Sandstorm season starts in nine days. Perfect cover. I have contacts in the Moroccan underworld who owe me favors."
Oni spoke for the first time in hours.
"And after we free the others?"
Rei's eyes hardened.
"Then we come back here. We finish what we started. We make this world safe for our kind."
I stood up.
"No."
The room went still.
Rei's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow filled the entire basement.
"Say that again."
"I came to end the program. Not replace the old masters with new ones."
Rei studied me for a long moment.
Then he drew a gold-plated pistol and laid it on the table between us.
"One bullet," he said. "We settle it the old way. Winner decides the future of every Zero left alive."
Oni stepped forward, but I raised a hand. He stopped.
I looked at the gun.
Then at Rei.
I picked it up, spun the cylinder, put it to my own temple, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Empty.
I slid it back across the table.
"I already died forty-nine times so you wouldn't have to grow up in chains. I'm not starting a new empire. I'm ending the idea of empires."
Rei stared at the gun.
Then he laughed: deep, real, almost human.
He pushed the gun away.
"You win, irmão."
He looked around the room at his lieutenants.
"Pack everything. We leave for Africa in 72 hours. The hill runs itself now."
One of them protested.
Rei silenced him with a look.
"I was a slave once. I won't become the master."
He turned back to me.
"We do it your way. We free them all. Then we disappear. Let the world forget monsters exist."
He offered his hand again.
This time I took it without hesitation.
Three days later the three of us walked out of Rocinha at sunset.
Behind us the favela burned the black flag and
raised a new one: plain white, blood-red, no symbol.
A clean slate.
Ahead of us: the desert.
Behind us: a king who chose to abdicate so his people could be free.
And somewhere in the dunes of Marrakesh, another brother waited in a cage, praying for footsteps in the sand.
We were coming.