As Amedeo's rover vanished over the ridge, kicking up a plume of wet soil in its wake, the killing began in earnest.
The two assassins, who had clearly not come for theatrics, moved like they'd done this a hundred times.
The man who had split, the one Kali's bullet had nearly found, flowed across the battlefield like living glass. His movements were unnaturally fluid, almost elastic, and as he fought, more copies split from him, each one shimmering faintly around the edges. Not illusions, refractions, perhaps.
A mirror-awakened by the look of things.
Beside him, a young woman, agile and deadly, moved with equal precision. She shared his sharp features and colorless eyes, twins, maybe, or cloned siblings with neural sync. Her face betrayed no emotion as she worked through the guards like a surgeon, each motion designed for maximum efficiency. The remaining guards didn't stand a chance.
Kali didn't wait to watch them die.
His shot had given him away. Any half-trained tracker would've noticed the origin of the round.
Kali packed up the longneedle with practiced speed, yanking its modular pieces apart and sliding them into his gear bag. He slung it across his back, grabbed his reflective coat, and scrambled down the reverse side of the hill. The descent was steep, and his boots slipped once in the slick grass, but he caught himself before he could fall.
At the bottom, breath tight in his chest, he found his jeep, camo-wrapped and half-sunk in wet earth from the morning's mist.
He threw the bag in the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and gunned the engine. Mud sprayed behind him as the vehicle lurched forward.
The jeep tore down the uneven road that cut through the wet plains like a scar. The wheels kicked up sludge and torn grass, the suspension groaning with every jolt. Amedeo's rover was still visible in the distance, a low silhouette bobbing between the dips in the terrain.
The plains gave way to ragged lowlands, wide, waterlogged stretches dotted with the occasional withered tree or industrial ruin half-swallowed by moss. Kali's jeep barreled through it all, bouncing hard over roots and rocks as he followed the faint trail left by Amedeo's rover.
Tire gouges in the wet dirt. A crumpled thermal wrap tossed from a window. Signs of haste.
Amedeo was running scared. Good.
Kali throttled up.
The jeep's suspension groaned under the terrain, but Kali held the wheel steady, eyes scanning the horizon for the next landmark. A few kilometers ahead, he spotted it, a defunct pumping station, metal bones still jutting from the earth like the ribs of a long-dead beast. And beyond that, cutting through a shallow ravine, a shimmer of movement.
The silver glint of Amedeo's rover flashed between trees. Still moving, but slower now. Maybe damaged.
Kali didn't hesitate. He killed the headlights and veered off the trail, taking a rougher path through the underbrush to flank the vehicle. The jeep roared, kicking up mud as it carved a wide arc through a grove of half-dead mangroves, then came out ahead of the rover just as it was crawling up a rocky incline.
Kali braked hard, twisted the wheel, and skidded sideways into a blocking position.
The rover slammed to a stop. For a second, nothing moved. Then the doors flew open.
Amedeo spilled out first, clutching a small pistol in one hand and the briefcase in the other. Blood streaked his temple, he must've hit his head during the earlier escape. Behind him, one last guard emerged, limping and clearly injured, rifle raised with shaky hands.
Kali was already out of the jeep, rifle in hand, but not the longneedle this time. He needed something more flexible. He pulled his compact scatter-gun from the undercarriage holster and advanced.
"Don't," Kali said flatly, voice cold and even.
The guard fired.
Kali dropped to one knee, aimed, and returned fire. The scatter-shot hit center mass, tearing through the man's chestplate. He crumpled without a sound.
Amedeo turned to run.
Kali moved fast.
He closed the distance in seconds, slamming the butt of the scatter-gun into the back of Amedeo's knee. The heir dropped, screaming as he collapsed onto the wet ground. The briefcase tumbled away.
Kali kicked the pistol from Amedeo's hand and leveled the barrel at his skull.
"Wait—" the man gasped, mud streaked across his face, hands splayed in surrender. "Wait, don't—listen! I'm not him!"
Kali froze, finger just shy of the trigger.
"What?"
The man reached up slowly, deliberately, and tore at the skin around his jawline. A near-invisible seam peeled free, followed by a subtle hiss as a fine mesh of synthetic skin came loose. It folded away like damp paper, revealing a rugged, angular face beneath, older, scarred, and utterly unlike the clean-cut Rossi heir.
Kali's eyes narrowed. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm a fake," the man said between ragged breaths. "A decoy. Meant to throw off any hits." He spat in the dirt.
Kali's rifle didn't waver. "Where's the real one?"
"Back in the Rossi manor. He never left," the man growled. "All this? A puppet show. An excuse to move against his siblings."
Before he could press the decoy further, a tremor prickled at the back of his neck.
Then a shimmer of movement from the treeline behind.
Kali spun just in time to see the mirror-twin step from between two gnarled trees, his body refracting like light on broken glass. For a moment there was only one, and then he split again, another version of himself blooming outward from his form like a ghost being born.
"Found you," the original said softly.
To his left, the girl emerged from the mist-drenched grass, boots soaked with moss and grit. Her twin pistols gleamed in the overcast light, both leveled at Kali with mechanical precision.
Her brother's reflections continued to shift in the periphery, silent ghosts circling like wolves.
Three sharp pings sliced through the tense air, stark and unmistakable, one from Kali's guild card, two more from the twins' devices.
Kali blinked. He holstered his weapon slowly, cautiously, and pulled the card from his coat. The notification pulsed in blood-red letters:
CONTRACT RESCINDED.
— Origin: Confidential. Reason: Withheld. —
The air felt thicker suddenly. Like the storm that had been building finally broke, but inward, not outward.
He didn't need the reason spelled out. The timing was too perfect. He glanced up, and from the twins' stony expressions, he could tell they were reading the same thing. The girl's arm wavered just slightly; her brother's clones stilled in place, no longer aggressive, merely observing.
Of course. It all fit now. Amedeo had placed the bounty on himself. Hired killers from multiple factions. Staged an assassination in a remote area. Lured the syndicate's enemies, and perhaps his siblings, into a single theater of chaos.
And when the pieces were in motion, when someone had taken the shot…
He canceled the contract. Nullifying the legal trail. Framing the attack on his siblings. Justifying a purge.
"He's cleaning house," Kali muttered, more to himself than anyone. "Crafty bastard.
The girl didn't speak. She just lowered her pistols by a fraction.
Kali let out a slow breath, his mind already leaping systems ahead. Valshier, the Rossi seat of power, if he had to guess, it was already drowning in flames and betrayal.
Amedeo had outplayed them all.
He looked at the decoy still wheezing by the wrecked vehicle, then at the twins, and gave a dry, humorless laugh. "Guess we all got played."
With a breath through his teeth, Kali lowered his weapon and turned away. The contract was gone, null and void. No point wasting ammunition or lives on a job that had been erased like a bad deal from a ledger. There were no bounties left here, only grudges.
Behind him, the girl moved. A single shot rang out, sharp and final. The decoy's head snapped back, a crimson arc painting the moss-slick earth. He crumpled in a heap of twitching limbs and cooling blood.
"He's gonna pay," she said flatly.
Kali paused mid-step, half-turning. He didn't say anything at first. He didn't need to.
Ever since his Second Order awakening, he could feel trauma like gravity, pulling, suffocating, always present. Emotional pain came to him like texture in the air. Sharpness. Bitterness. The rotten tang of betrayal. And in moments of heightened stress, like now, he could skim the surface of thought itself, catch flickers, impressions. Not full clarity, but enough to see shadows.
He didn't need to reach too deeply to read the siblings now.
Kali chuckled under his breath, the sound dry and sour. There was no joy in it, only the satisfaction of understanding.
He hated being used, more than he hated failure, more than he hated losing credits. And Amedeo had used them all like pieces on a board, just to settle a family score and tighten his grip on power.
He hoped, no. He expected that these two wouldn't let it end here.