Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, Kenzii had barely taken a few steps before he was confronted by two armed guards.
They carried high-caliber rifles, but before they could even raise their weapons, Kenzii put them down with two bullets in their heads.
He stepped closer to pat them down for anything useful, but found nothing.
His approach was clinical: one bullet per target, aimed exclusively at lethal points to guarantee instant kill.
Navigating down a dim corridor, Kenzii spotted another guard standing against the wall, entirely unaware of his presence. He closed the distance silently from behind, grabbing the man's head and snapping his neck with a quick, practiced twist.
The guard's companion turned, shocked by Kenzii's sudden appearance, but before his brain could register the threat, Kenzii put the tip of the gun in his forehead, shooting him dead.
Proceeding with calculated caution, Kenzii reached a heavy metal door and eased it open.
Right as it swung inward, he came face-to-face with another of Garza's operatives, whose eyes widened in realization.
"Who the—" Before the man could finish, Kenzii jammed the muzzle of his suppressor under the man's chin and pulled the trigger, sending the bullet straight through the crown of his skull.
"Hey!"
Kenzii turned just as the dead man's partner opened fire.
Moving with terrifying reflex, Kenzii grabbed the dead operative by the tactical vest, hauling the corpse up to serve as a human shield against the incoming hail of bullets.
Using his foot, Kenzii hooked an office chair beside him, launching it upward with a heavy kick straight toward the shooter.
As the gunman flinched to dodge the flying chair, Kenzii dropped into a low lateral slide across the smooth floor, firing two shots from the ground that struck the man directly in the throat and eye.
Before Kenzii could even stand, more gunfire erupted from further inside the room. He rolled instantly, flipping behind a heavy wooden desk to calculate his next move.
He had broken into what appeared to be the facility's central operations hub—a vast command room lined with server racks, glowing monitors, and high-end surveillance setups.
Through the gap under the desk, he saw another operative advancing toward his position, weapon drawn.
Kenzii kicked the heavy desk backward, using the momentum to propel himself out into the open while flat on his back, placing a bullet square between the advancing operative's eyes. Without breaking rhythm, he snapped his aim sideways and eliminated a second shooter taking cover behind a row of equipment shelves.
"Cuz, stay sharp. More of Garza's men are heading your way." Sota's voice crackled through the earpiece.
Kenzii stood, moving toward the far exit to check if the path was clear.
"I've severed the telecom lines and main server links to Garza's private quarter, so no one can alert him from what's happening outside his office." Sota added. "As long as no one reaches him in person, he's completely in the dark."
"Got it."
Finding the hallway clear, Kenzii pushed through the doorway. But as he rounded the corner, a sudden high kick struck his wrist, sending his gun with suppressor skittering across the concrete.
"Watch out!" Alas's voice echoed through the line, having taken over the comms feed. Sota looked in his direction and slapped his head from shock!
"What the hell is wrong with you! You scared me!" Sota complained, throwing a middle finger at Alas.
Kenzii reacted instantly, ducking beneath a heavy follow-up hook. He gripped the attacker's outstretched arm and using his unnatural physical force, he lifted the guard directly into two other operatives rushing down the hall.
Drawing his secondary handgun, Kenzii opened fire, filling the narrow passage with the noise of the gun sounds.
Four more men rounded the far end. Kenzii sprinted forward, planting his boot onto the stacked bodies of the fallen guards against the wall. Using the momentum to wall-run, he drove a brutal kick straight into the chest of the lead guard. Before his feet even touched the ground, he delivered a rising reverse kick beneath the chin of a long haired operative, sending the man airborne.
Landing squarely atop the chest of the long haired guard he had brought down, Kenzii raised his sidearm and put a bullet into the remaining two operatives who's still standing stiff from shock.
"Who... who the hell are you?" gasped the long-haired man pinned beneath Kenzii's boot.
"Me? I am the last thing you will ever see." Kenzii unsheathed the combat knife from his tactical thigh rig and drove it straight through the man's throat and ripped it out.
"Kenzii, head straight down the main hallway," Sota instructed over the feed. "There's a staircase leading down to a set of reinforced double doors. The main lab is right behind them."
Kenzii acted without hesitation. He holstered his sidearm and knife, scooped up two dropped assault rifles, and hung them over his shoulders. He stripped several spare magazines from the vest of the guard beneath him, stuffing them into his tactical pockets.
Retrieving his original suppressed pistol from where it had been kicked away, he secured it back into its holster.
"There are only two guards posted at those doors," Sota warned. "Take them out silently before breaching. Garza's office is on the same level nearby—he'll hear unsuppressed gunfire."
Kenzii moved down the final stairwell like a specter. As he reached the turn in the lower corridor, he drew both combat knives. Slipping into view of the two guards standing next to the double doors. Kenzii threw both blades in a single fluid motion before the guards could even raise their rifles. Powered by supernatural force, the steel drove straight through the skulls of both men, causing them to collapse lifelessly onto the floor.
He walked over to the reinforced double doors, his gaze resting on the two corpses. His eyes were completely hollow, as if looking at discarded garbage. He placed his boot on one man's face, grabbed the hilt of the knife, and pulled it free with cold leverage, repeating the process with the second before re-sheathing both.
Back at the condo, Sota and Alas watched every movement on the live cam feed in Kenzii's chest. A chill ran down their spines. Kenzii looked like a weapon engineered solely for execution—an apex assassin. His presence exuded the absolute stillness of Death itself.
It was an aura neither of them ever wanted to face. Never in this lifetime.
Standing tall before the double doors, Kenzii's eyes narrowed, his glare piercing straight through the heavy steel.
He unslung both assault rifles, tucking one under each arm, his fingers locked around the triggers.
With a single, devastating kick, he blasted the doors inward.
Inside, lab technicians dressed in full hazmat containment suits froze in sheer terror. Seeing Kenzii standing in the doorway holding twin automatic rifles, several raised their hands frantically while others threw themselves onto the floor.
Kenzii's eyes swept over the massive subterranean facility, filled with industrial glass vats, distillation columns, and precursor chemicals glowing under harsh fluorescent lights.
"P-Please... mercy! We're just workers!" a lead chemist near the entrance sobbed, dropping to his knees. His entire body trembling violently at the sight of the two dead guards just beyond the threshold.
Kenzii looked at him without a shred of emotion and opened fire, taking his head off with a single shot.
Hysterical screams echoed across the sprawling laboratory as panic erupted.
Kenzii remained entirely unaffected by the terror around him. He felt nothing—no hesitation, no mercy, not even the faint prickle of guilt that used to haunt him before.
There's none. Nothing at all.
He held down the triggers of both rifles, sweeping the room in a relentless storm of automatic fire. Bullets shattered glass assume-vats and chemical pressurized lines, mixing pools of toxic compounds with deep crimson blood streams across the tiled floor. The roar of destruction only ceased when both rifles clicked empty on spent chambers.
Kenzii discarded one empty rifle onto the floor and slapped a fresh magazine into the other. He stepped fully into the ruined lab, scanning the wreckage for any signs of movement.
His eyes caught a figure in the far corner—an older female chemist huddled against an overturned table. Her face shield was gone, tears tracking through the soot on her face, her white containment suit splattered with the blood of her colleagues.
"Please... I-I have grandchildren—"
Before she could finish her plea, Kenzii raised the rifle and fired a short burst, leaving her motionless on the concrete floor.
Watching the live feed through the chest-cam, Alas jumped back from his chair, slamming a hand over his mouth at the sight.
His lips trembled as he stared at this terrifying, unfeeling version of his cousin. Yet, despite the horror unfolding on the screen, he couldn't bring himself to hate or fear him. Because no matter how cold Kenzii became, the man standing in that pool of blood was still his family—and always would be.