"KK."
The Arasaka assault team members exchanged glances—and without hesitation, raised their Masamune kinetic assault rifles, aiming directly at Karl behind the operative.
A wall of bullets erupted in a split second, shredding the Arasaka agent's body in a storm of kinetic force. Flesh and armor burst apart under the barrage.
But Karl had already stepped away, drawing the kinetic pistol from his waist.
Gunfire from his Nightshifter echoed through the corridor.
But the team had come prepared—they knew Karl rarely carried anything heavier when heading out. They were ready.
Their synaptic accelerators flared at the first sign of danger. Ten operatives moved with reflexive precision, dodging the incoming rounds. In one motion, they dropped their rifles and drew melee weapons—surrounding Karl from both sides.
For a threat like Karl, the only strategy that made sense was to hit from multiple angles.
Karl's eyes scanned both flanks. He instantly recognized the synchronization—two flanking groups advancing at matching speed, denying him the chance to isolate and eliminate one side before the other closed in.
The lead on the right had bulging muscles and a flushed face—a clear sign of activated Berserk cyberware.
Pain wouldn't register. Adrenaline would override everything. Combined with subdermal armor, it made him a walking tank.
No time to let them close in.
Even if he couldn't wipe out one group before turning on the next, he needed a target—now.
He picked the five to his left.
And with a flick of his wrist, he sent a small blade flying to the right.
A knife?
The lead tank on the right barely registered the incoming blade. Under the Berserk effect, his mind didn't flag it as a threat. The slight curiosity faded instantly.
He stood nearly two meters tall, muscles dense and reinforced beneath the skin. A ten-centimeter knife? No big deal—unless it pierced perfectly through everything and hit something vital.
And as expected, it didn't.
The blade sank deep into his right chest, but synthetic muscle and armor stopped it cold. It sliced through half a synthetic lung—and nothing more.
Exactly as Karl intended.
He'd held back on the throw. If he'd used full force, the blade would've punched through the tank and into the chests of whoever stood behind him.
Range: five meters.
He didn't even glance back. Karl moved.
A gleaming thread of light whipped out between his hands—a monowire.
VMMM—
The wire looped around the nearest attacker's throat. With a shift of his grip, Karl yanked—and the head came clean off.
In the same breath, he caught the still-helmeted head in midair with his right hand. A blade thrust came from the front—he blocked it with his free left hand and hurled the severed helmet forward.
Blood sprayed from the decapitated head, spattering the faces of the remaining attackers.
They all had cybereyes, sure. But like car windshields in the rain, liquid still forced a blink. In that automatic reflex—
—the knife behind Karl activated.
A sharp EMP pulse detonated.
The five enemies behind him—all heavily augmented—froze for a split second as their systems stuttered.
And that blink? It perfectly synced with the others' momentary visual interruption.
In that heartbeat, Karl alone could see. Karl alone could move.
For someone like him, that sliver of time was a damned eternity.
Time bent to Karl's will.
He let go of the blade in his left hand, calmly stepped back—and drew a grenade from his waist.
Not a standard model.
This was a custom job, modified by the weaponsmith to arm immediately on activation.
Its name:
Razorburst.
Upon deployment, it would emit a radial blast of cutting lasers. Expensive, overkill even—but against Arasaka?
Totally justified.
ZZZVMMM—
Crimson beams scattered outward like a spray of light, rotating in a brutal dance of precision. The beams sliced cleanly through everything within a four-meter radius.
The four enemies on Karl's left were diced into charred chunks and sparking limbs before their remains even hit the ground.
Karl was already turning.
Ahead stood the remaining five—still disrupted from the EMP.
But then—
One of them looked at him.
Not all systems were back online, but the man's cybereyes had recovered—and were locked on Karl in silent terror.
Karl raised an eyebrow.
That fast?
He'd heard about experimental tech—like hovercars with EMP resistance systems. Kang-Tao had even demoed one, showing how it could bypass an EMP strike by cutting off non-essential functions and rebooting flight stabilization.
But that was for machines.
And now, here it was—
In a person.
Hybrid muscle? Biotech organs? A body fused from flesh and chrome?
He didn't know.
But Karl was curious.
And when Karl got curious?
He acted.
In the eyes of the squad leader—frozen with fear, panic, and regret—the monowire flashed again.
A head soared into the air.
Karl caught the small knife he'd embedded in the tank's chest earlier. He ran his thumb along the blood-slick blade.
Just as I thought.
A new breed of biotech. Flesh and steel, fused together.
I always figured only the immortality-chasing corpos messed with tech like this…
.
..
.
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