Vye was transfixed. With her thermal sense, she could feel blood oozing out of Clown Mask’s headless torso. Had she not been gripping the grappling hooks so tightly, she would have plunged down to the depth below.

Death was no stranger to Vye’s eyes, but the death of Clown Mask somehow hit harder than expected. Was it due to his resemblance to her brother? Or because of his young age?

Perhaps it was because Vye saw both her helpless past and her grim future reflected in Clown Mask’s brief life. The saddest part of his death was that he would forever be branded as a criminal, as an enemy against society. His death would draw no sympathy, no funeral, nothing except the silent tears of his family shed in solitude.

Another shotgun blast right out the window. A taunt. An invitation.

The three of them clung to the wall around the windows. Bear Mask pointed his submachine gun at the window, ready to shoot the moment Theo Xeta popped his head out. Vye could not sense Theo Xeta’s body heat, but she could imagine he was fixing his shotgun at the window as well.

They stood in stalemate for a few seconds.

Bear Mask tried to locate Xeta’s heat signature on his thermal display, but after a few seconds of fumbling, he shook his head.

“Damn it,” said Skull Mask. He pulled a pin off a cyro grenade and lobbed it into the window.

Two seconds of silence and a blast. A frigid wave struck Vye, sending a chill down her spine. But worst of all, she felt all her energy drained away instantly. It was as if the ground she stood upon suddenly disintegrated, leaving her in a free fall with neither support nor balance.

Any Fraxian — or any living creature — in that room should die instantly from hypothermia. However, after seeing how Xeta swiftly and ruthlessly executed their comrade, they knew better than to underestimate him.

“Now!” shouted Skull Mask.

Bear Mask shot his grappling hook into the room. Vye and Skull Mask slipped in from the sides of the windows.

Then everything happened in slow motion.

From the cyro grenade blast, the entire room was covered in a thick layer of frost. However, the silhouette of Theo Xeta stood unmoving. Vye could faintly make out the array of weapons and gadgets attached to his body, making him look like a Stormrunner from the future.

Bear Mask, with one hand on the grappling cable and the other on his submachine gun, swung across the room. Although he was flying in midair, he fired with perfect precision, shooting controlled bursts of bullets at Theo Xeta’s head.

As if already seeing this coming, Xeta held out his arm. A flood of energy gushed out of his bracer, stacking and weaving on top of each other until it formed a gigantic shield covering his entire torso.

Vye had seen Stormrunners protect themselves from debris with these shields before. However, this one seemed much larger and thicker. Most prominently, unlike the calm blue energy shields wielded by Stormrunners, this one was glowing a fiery blaze of orange.

All the bullets instantly vaporized upon contact with the shield. Despite the mask covering his face, Bear Mask’s terror was palpable. Frozen in fear, he kept swinging forward and pulling the trigger, even though it was clearly futile.

Xeta did not have the patience to wait for the gun to empty. Instead of firing at Bear Mask, he aimed at the anchor point of his grappling hook. With one shotgun blast, the cable snapped apart, and the hook was knocked off the wall.

Immediately, Bear Mask lost control. He slammed loudly into the wall and slid down unconscious, leaving a streak of crimson.

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Vye was terrified. Stormrunners, or ex-Stormrunners in this case, were worshipped in the underworld with their seeming invincibility. It was not unusual for a single ex-Stormrunner to take down a group of armed men. In all her time in the underworld, she had never seen someone without Stormrunning training hold their own against an ex-Stormrunner, let alone take one down in under five seconds.

Skull Mask was terrified as well. Vye could feel the sweat drench down his back with her thermal sense. However, he chose to engage as well.

Skull Mask fired his grappling hook directly at Xeta’s chest. The dense alloy easily penetrated the energy shield. Xeta raised his shotgun to fire at the hook right before it reached him. The blast knocked the hook away, but the residue momentum and recoil also knocked the gun out of his hands.

Seeing an opening, Skull Mask dashed forward at a speed disproportionate to his bulky size. With a knife in his hand, he lunged forward and went straight for Xeta’s throat.

Just as Skull Mask was about to hit him, Xeta pressed a button on his bracer, and a burst of flames shot out from his arm. Skull Mask dived down at the last second to dodge the flame, but he lost his balance.

Seizing that moment, Xeta pulled out his own knife and slid it across Skull Mask’s shoulder, lacerating all the tendons and ligaments. Instantly, Skull Mask’s arm went limp, and the knife filled out of his hands. In one swift motion, Xeta plunged his knife into Skull Mask’s stomach. It was not immediately fatal, but it completely immobilized him.

Vye was frozen in place like a deer in the headlights. She knew fighting was the only way she could survive this, but she was facing a man who just effortlessly dropped two Stormrunners.

Xeta finally caught sight of her in the shadows and came straight dashing toward her. His knife went straight for her throat.

Frame by frame, Vye watched the blade inching closer and closer, and she could not move a muscle. Finally, her fear reached past a breaking point, and the Fraxian instincts overrode all her conscious effort of suppression.

Instantly, the air around her went cold. It was the Fraxian fight-or-flight instinct to absorb as much thermal energy as possible for one last attempt to survive. The temperature around her dropped by multiple degrees.

Theo Xeta sensed it too.

“You’re a Fraxian,” he said, alarmed. His eyes suddenly opened wide.

He instantly tilted the blade away from Vye’s throat, but it was too late to stop the momentum. His elbow still slammed right into Vye’s face with superhuman strength, sending her flying backward into a pile of boxes.

The world was spinning out of focus. Blood oozed from her nose. Her entire body screamed in pain from the impact. If it wasn’t for the pile of boxes catching her fall, she could have been paralyzed.

But at least she was alive.

Theo Xeta stared coldly at Vye.

“I’ll deal with you later,” he muttered.

Theo Xeta approached Bear Mask, who regained consciousness but still lay immobilized on the ground. With one swift motion, he pulled the mask off his face.

Behind the mask lay the face of a thirty-something-year-old man, weathered and beaten but still determined.

“Please, I have a family. I have a three-year-old boy.” The man pleaded.

“You should have considered that before you came after me.” Xeta raised his pistol to the man’s temple.

“Wait, wait! The boy’s Fraxian. He is adopted.”

Theo Xeta hesitated. Gun still pointed, he looked at a display on his arm.

“You are telling the truth. But why did you adopt him?”

“My wife is infertile.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Bear Mask sighed and looked away.

“We all atone for our sins in different ways.”

Theo Xeta nodded slowly, a look of understanding in his eyes.

“We all do,” he muttered.

He lowered the pistol back into the holster. Instead, he slowly unsheathed the knife he used earlier against Skull Mask. Except this time, a fiery glow of orange light surrounded the blade.

“If I let you go,” said Xeta. “Will you come for me again?”

This time, Bear Mask did not avert his gaze. He stared right into Xeta’s eyes, not with anger, but with a sorrowful helplessness.

“If I don’t serve the nation, the nation will take everything from me.”

A tint of sorrow also crept up Xeta’s eyes.

“I understand,” said Xeta. “I understand.”

He slowly rolled Bear Mask’s to the side. Bear Mask did not resist.

A clean slash from the blade. No blood. No punctured organs. The blade made a clean cauterized cut across his L2 vertebrae. His legs instantly went limp. He would be paralyzed in his lower body for life, but at least he was still alive.

Theo Xeta lifted Bear Mask above his head effortlessly. He approached the window. Under it was a pile of trash bags, more than enough to break the fall.

“Stay with your family from now on,”

Xeta gazed at the full moon far away, who looked back nonchalantly at the violence unfolding in this room and a thousand others. Xeta’s eyes were filled with reminiscence, or was it regret? But once he turned his face away from the ghastly moonlight, the look had disappeared.

“No Fraxian child deserves to grow up without a father,” he whispered.

With a light nudge, Bear Mask fell onto the pile of trash bags with a soft thud. Theo Xeta stared out for a few more seconds.

Then he turned and approached Vye.