The corridor stretched ahead, sterile white interrupted by red emergency flashes. My strings were already deployed—twenty-seven thin lines anchored to walls, ceiling, floor. A tripwire grid. Invisible. Waiting.
Footsteps. Four sets. Heavy boots. Standard tactical formation.
I pressed against the wall, slowing my breathing. Heartbeat steady at sixty-two BPM. Optimal.
The first guard rounded the corner.
My index finger twitched. The string sliced through his rifle barrel, then his throat. Clean. Efficient. He dropped before his brain registered the wound.
The second guard raised his weapon. I pulled two strings taut across the corridor at neck height, then yanked. Physics did the rest. His momentum carried him forward into the razor wire. Arterial spray painted the white walls red.
Guards three and four opened fire.
I was already moving. Strings retracted, redeployed. One wrapped around a ceiling tile, pulling me up and over the gunfire. Another caught guard three's ankle mid-step. I pulled hard. His knee bent backward with a wet crack. He screamed.
Guard four spun toward the sound.
Mistake.
Three strings punched through his kevlar vest like needles through fabric. Heart, lungs, spine. He collapsed, twitching.
Guard three was still screaming. I dropped beside him, one string already formed into a garrote. Quick pressure to the carotid. Ten seconds. Silence.
Four bodies. Eleven seconds total.
I kept moving.
The causal strings showed me the facility's layout now—a web of cause and effect. Every guard deployment, every security checkpoint, every locked door.
I severed all the east wing cameras. Now the security team would reroute personnel. Creating exploitable gaps.
I turned left at the next junction, following the path of least resistance toward the armory. Not for weapons—I was the weapon. For the security override codes stored in the terminal there.
More footsteps. Six this time. Coming fast.
I didn't slow down.
My strings shot forward, anchoring to the walls twenty feet ahead. I pulled myself up, horizontal to the ground, suspended by the tension. The tactical team rounded the corner below me.
They never looked up.
I dropped into the center of their formation. Strings already cutting.
One through the back of a skull. Two severing hamstrings. Three wrapping around a weapon, redirecting it into four's chest. Five tried to turn. My elbow caught his temple. He went down hard. Six raised his sidearm.
Too slow.
String through his wrist. The gun clattered free. Another string around his neck. I pulled him close, using him as a shield as I felt bullets impact his body armor from the hallway behind us.
Reinforcements. Early.
I adjusted my calculations. Dropped the corpse. Sent fifteen strings in a wide arc pattern down the corridor. They caught two shooters, binding their arms to their sides. A third managed to dive aside.
Good instincts. Wouldn't save him.
I pulled the two caught guards toward me like fish on a line. Let them collide in the middle. Used the impact to snap both their necks with a sharp twist of my strings.
The third guard scrambled backward, firing wildly. Nine millimeter rounds sparked off the walls. None came close.
I walked toward him. Steady. Unhurried.
His magazine emptied. Click. Click. Click.
"Please—"
A string punched through his eye socket. He slumped.
I stepped over him and kept walking.
The armory terminal took forty-seven seconds to access. My fingers moved across the keyboard with mechanical precision. Security overrides downloaded. Lockdown protocols disabled. Escape routes unlocked.
The facility was eating itself. Containment breaches in sectors C and D. Fire suppression offline. Multiple casualties reported. Everyone was scrambling, trying to understand what was happening.
They'd created the chaos themselves. I was just taking advantage.
A new alert flashed across the screen. OMEGA RED DEPLOYING TO SECTOR B.
My sector.
My heart beat rose.
Was it fear? No.
This was always going to happen. The moment I stepped out of my cell, this confrontation became inevitable. Every choice I'd made had been leading to this outcome.
No alternate paths. No other options.
Only one way forward.
I logged out of the terminal and turned toward the door.
Time to cut ties.
He was waiting in the main corridor intersection.
Arkady Rossovich. Omega Red. My handler for fifteen years.
Seven feet tall. Massive frame barely contained by the tactical suit. The distinctive implants visible at his forearms—the housings for the carbonadium coils. Death Factor already leaking from his pores, a faint shimmer in the strobing emergency lights.
"Zero." His voice was gravel mixed with broken glass. Heavy Russian accent. "You disappoint me."
I said nothing.
The distance between us was forty-two feet. His reach with the coils: approximately thirty feet. My string range: functionally unlimited, but effectiveness decreased with distance. Optimal engagement range: fifteen to twenty feet.
I assessed the environment, confined space, limited maneuverability. Rossovich had the advantage. His durability and strength favored close quarters.
My advantages: speed, precision, tactical flexibility.
Probability of survival? I didn't have enough data to accurately determine the outcome.
"Fifteen years," Rossovich continued, taking one step forward. The floor cracked under his weight. "We made you into something perfect. And you throw it away for what? Freedom?" He spat the word like a curse. "There is no freedom, boy. Only different cages."
Twenty strings deployed. Anchored to every surface within thirty feet. Grid pattern. Waiting.
"You taught me to recognize patterns," I said. Flat. Factual. "Yours is predictable."
His face twisted. Rage. Good. Angry opponents made mistakes.
The carbonadium coils exploded from his forearms.
I moved.
Four strings pulled me sideways as the coils smashed through the space where I'd been standing. The wall exploded into concrete dust and rebar. I used the momentum to swing up to the ceiling, more strings deploying to catch my weight.
The coils retracted and struck again. Faster than should be possible for something that massive.
I released two anchor points, dropped five feet, let the coils pass overhead. They carved through the ceiling tiles, showering debris. My own strings were already moving—eight of them wrapping around the carbonadium, trying to arrest their momentum.
Wrong choice.
The coils were stronger. Rossovich yanked hard, and I came with them. My strings held, which meant I was suddenly flying toward a seven foot murderous Russian.
I cut the strings. Tucked into a roll. Hit the floor hard but controlled and slid backward.
The coils came down where I'd landed. The concrete cratered.
"You cannot cut carbonadium, Zero!" Rossovich laughed. Dark. Cruel. "Your little threads are useless!"
He was wrong, but I didn't correct him. Let him believe it.
The coils lashed out again—both of them this time, coming from different angles. A pincer attack. Leaving no safe zone.
I sent thirty strings into the walls and pulled myself backward, horizontal, skidding across the floor faster than running. The coils crashed together where I'd been, the impact sending shockwaves through the corridor.
A momentary reset. Forty feet between us.
But now I was breathing harder. The death spores were in the air. I could stitch wounds back together but couldn't heal cellular damage. Every breath was weakening me.
Time limit: approximately four minutes before cognitive impairment. Six minutes before loss of consciousness.
Rossovich knew it too. His smile widened.