White noise seeped into Kaito's mind as his vision realigned. His body had acted before his brain could analyze danger - years of Aegis training having instilled muscle memory into him even as his new abilities fried his nervous system. He now crouched behind the overturned metal table, its top battered from energy weapon fire, his heart pounding against his chest like a trapped animal. The copper flavor filled his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue during the initial explosion.
From the blown safehouse, Seraphina's military-issued pistol emitted a shrill whine as it was charging up, its barrel scoring micro-adjustments as she tracked the gaunt intruder. The targetting laser painted a jiggling red dot across the man's chest, centred directly above where a human heart should reside.
"Dr. Elias Kael," she spat, her tactical boots crunching through broken glass. The purple energy field enveloping her unholstered hand pulsed in rhythm to her labored breathing. "You're supposed to be rotting in a black site prison."
The man in the faded lab jacket - Kael - half-smiled. The other half of his face remained a mask of stone, the skin as thin and dry as parchment where it creased into the glossy blue ocular implant. His biomechanic limb was reshaped in a progression of wracking wet snaps, from human fingers to a serrated monomolecular edge that fractured the dim light into prismatic shards.
"Amusing." The tone possessed an otherworldly harmony, as though numerous voices speaking from a single throat. "I was going to say the same thing regarding Subject Zero." The incompatible eyes - artificial blue and brown - locked onto Kaito with ruthless intensity. The pupil of the artificial eye dilated with a whirring sound. "Although I see the memory inhibitors of the stasis pod were kept. Interesting."
Lena gasped in horror beside Kaito, her hands digging into his forearm deep enough to cause bruising. "What in the devil is he rambling about, Swift?"
Kael operated with unnatural precision.
In one instant he was still silhouetted in the ruined doorway, the next his sword-arm had gone through where Kaito's head had been with a ripping noise like compressed air bursting. Only Seraphina's kinetic shove of power, a bludgeoning shock of violet energy, kept him - knocked Kael crashing through the sheet rock in a cloud of plaster dust.
Kaito rolled onto his feet, his body responding with unfamiliar ease as his heightened senses mapped the battlefield in the instant:
Exit routes: 3 (window broken, front door blocked, fire escape unobstructed)
Arms: 0 (his fight knife destroyed in the first explosion)
Chances of civilian fatalities: 62% (Lena's position)
Plaster rained down around Kael as he laughed, the sound like grinding gears. He tugged away from the wall, his lab coat ripped and dangling off his shoulders, his torso cross-hatched with wounds from operations and aching biotech nodes. "Still protecting him, Vexis?" He wiped blackish fluid from his split lip. "After what his DNA did to your father's research?"
Seraphina's grip on her weapon faltered for a vital half-second.
Kaito saw the gap and grabbed it - he shot out a hand and caught Lena's wrist, and they sprinted for the fire escape, his enhanced muscles propelling them at a pace that couldn't be humanly possible. Behind them, the room erupted into a whirlwind of broken furniture and energy weapons firing, but Kaito did not glance back.
The syllables spun in Kaito's head as they dropped out onto the city streets of District 9, blazing acid paths through his recollection. Night air hung heavy with humidity, and heavy with the scent of fried food from the street vendors and ozone screaming from power systems drained with the day's heat. Lena doubled over, spitting blood-speckled phlegm.
"We can't outrun that," she gagged, jerking her chin up.
Kaito followed her gaze. Three matte-black Shadowbirds fluttered like machines vultures, red targetting beams tracing reticules on their chests. Military spec - Mark VII Shadowbirds if his interpretation of the engine signatures was correct.
His flesh prickled with that now-familiar sensation - the precursor to adaptation. His veins pulsed silver just under the skin, visible even in the dim alleyway light.
Analyze. Adapt. Overcome.
The concept did not agree with him.
Kaito pinned Lena's shoulders, meeting her eyes - which he noted were faintly violet-tinted by her stunned expression. "The drones - they're connected to Kael's neural feed through quantum entanglement. Notice the pulse sequence within their guidance lights."
Lena blinked. "What pulse? They're just drifting and—
"Two-second gaps between scan bursts." Kaito's gaze honed to the level of seeing the real data streams connecting the drones with Kael's biomech arm - shimmering ribbons of quantum data visible only at this level of perception. "When I give the go, sprint left for the noodle stand. Don't hesitate at anything."
Afore she could protest, Kaito scooped up a discarded crushed soda can from the ground and hurled it with precise arc at a nearby power transformer. The explosion blanketed a shower of sparks—and the drones swarmed all at once towards the noise like sharks scenting blood.
"Go!"
They threaded through the night market chaos, Kaito's enhanced vision plotting out routes of escape in real-time:
Left onto alleyway of the spice merchant (clear)
Right through the back door of Madame Ling's brothel (guards are briable)
Straight down into subterranean maintenance tunnels (sewer access required)
Each step appeared predestined, executed with clockwork ease—as if he'd been through this city maze his whole life.
Lena looked at him through heaving breaths. "Since when do you know District 9's—"
A silhouette detached from the rooftops.
Kael descended in a crouch before them, his impact indenting the pavement. His arm had uncoiled into a cluster of squirming tendrils, each tipped by what looked like neural interface needles. "Amazing," he mused, his organic eye agape. "The adaptive recall is coming on-line ahead of projections. Your father would be. displeased, Vexis."
Kaito barely had a second to shove Lena out of the way behind a dumpster before Kael's tendrils lashed out. One scored against Kaito's cheek—and his world burned.
Other people's memories stormed into his mind in a torrent:
A chill blue LED-lit cleanroom. A six-year-old boy hanging suspended in a cylindrical stasis pod, his tiny body strung with intravenous lines. Seraphina's father—grayer, wiser-eyed than the photographs she'd showcased at Aegis—twiddling dials on a biometric terminal.
'Subject Zero shows perfect cellular mimicry,' the man panted to a younger Kael, standing with notebook and standard-issue tablet.
"But the moral cost of making this."
Then fire. Scream. Kael's younger but no less brutal face, firing something into the feed tubes of the tank—
Kaito tore himself away with a shudder that gnawed at his throat. His cheek throbbed where Kael had slapped him, the flesh knitting back together in threads of visible silver strands that drew back into skin when healing was complete.
Kael grinned more broadly, teeth bared to excess. "Ah. There's the real you."
A kinetic strike slammed him back through a fruit stall. Seraphina dropped next to Kaito in a three-point position, her uniform torn and bloodied, one eye swollen closed. "I said to run, you moron," she snarled, but the venom was missing its customary edge.
Kaito growled, baring his teeth, his canines unusually pointed. "You knew. All of it."
Seraphina's eyes flashed with some approximation of guilt—then set in military-grade resolve. "Not here." She tossed a photon grenade at Kael's boots. Not detonating, but blinding—a flash of white light burst forth, giving them twelve precious seconds by Kaito's freshly accurate inner clock.
As they sprinted away into the neon-drenched darkness of District 9, Kaito's stolen memories resolved into one horrific epiphany:
He wasn't born.
He was constructed.
And Kael meant to retrieve his most preferred weapon.