Westchester Rehabilitation Center
External Security Station - 21:47
Guard Thomas Henley watched the perimeter monitors with practiced indifference. Eight months at this posting, zero incidents. The mutants were locked down tight—spatial anchors, psychic dampeners, power suppressors. Twelve Sentinels standing ready.
Nothing ever happened here.
His radio crackled. "Perimeter Alert. Southwest approach. Single heat signature."
Thomas pulled up the external cameras.
A woman stood at the clearing's edge, illuminated by floodlights. Dark hair, tactical gear shimmering with energy patterns. She wasn't hiding.
She was presenting herself.
The woman raised her hands.
Light erupted.
The shockwave crumpled guard towers like aluminum cans, sent Sentinels tumbling backward. Alarms shrieked. Emergency lights bathed everything in red.
Thomas grabbed the radio. "CONTACT! SOUTHWEST PERIMETER! ALL UNITS ENGAGE!"
Three Sentinels roared to life, charging. The woman smiled—cold, sharp—and sidestepped the first, placing a palm against its chest. The explosion sent it careening into the second.
"All units to southwest perimeter!" Captain Rodriguez commanded. "Contain the mutant!"
Every defense system pivoted toward the woman wreaking havoc at their gates.
No one noticed the service entrance opening on the east side.
No one saw the guard who walked inside, ID scanning cleanly.
No one realized Private Marcus Reeves had been dead in the woods for three minutes, throat crushed by wooden tendrils.
The figure wearing Reeves' face walked calmly through corridors, nodding to guards rushing toward the breach. Just another soldier responding to crisis.
Tessa's voice whispered through his earpiece: "Second checkpoint ahead. Two guards."
"Reeves!" Guard Johnston looked up. "Password?"
"Crimson Sentinel," Seraph replied in the dead man's voice, perfect down to the southern drawl.
Johnston waved him through.
Behind him, a wooden tendril deposited something into the ventilation grate.
"Biomonitor deployed," Tessa said. "Control room is three corridors ahead. Sixteen personnel inside."
Seraph's hands moved beneath his coat. Three wood clones materialized in shadows—shifting immediately into Dr. Sarah Chen, Captain America, and another Marcus Reeves.
The Chen-clone intercepted panicked scientists. "Emergency protocols! Follow me!"
She led them into a storage room. The door locked. Wooden tendrils erupted, wrapping around throats, pulling bodies into organic tombs. The screams lasted ninety seconds.
Then silence.
---
Control Room - 21:52
Captain Martinez stared at tactical displays. "How is she still standing?!"
"Sir, she's adaptive! Every pattern we use, she counters—"
Martinez didn't hear the door open behind him.
Seraph's web-shooters fired. Organic webbing yanked the first guard into the wall, snapping his wrist. A kunai took the second through the throat before she could draw her weapon.
A third guard fired. Spider-sense had warned Seraph three seconds earlier—he'd already moved. The bullet passed through empty space. His hand closed around the guard's wrist, twisting. Wooden spikes erupted from his palm, punching through the man's chest.
Martinez spun, eyes widening at the figure in bronze-and-bone armor—
Web caught him across the face, slamming him into his terminal. Wooden tendrils wrapped around his limbs, spreading him against the wall.
The remaining twelve operators scrambled. An operator lunged for emergency broadcast—shuriken pinned his hand to the console. Another tried to run—wooden spikes erupted from the floor, impaling her through both legs.
Forty-five seconds.
When it ended, Martinez was the only one breathing.
Seraph pulled out a tablet. On screen: a teenage girl tied to a chair, Tessa behind her holding a gun.
Martinez made strangled sounds.
Seraph removed his gag. "Your daughter. Emily. You're going to send an all-clear message."
"Please—"
"Or she dies."
Martinez sobbed as he typed, voice cracking: "Command, this is Captain Martinez. Perimeter breach neutralized. Mutant threat eliminated. No additional support required. Facility secure."
The message sent.
"My daughter—you'll let her go?"
"I will." Seraph's hands closed around his neck. "Because she was never in danger."
The snap echoed.
Seraph pulled up the tablet—poor photoshop, but effective. Emily Martinez sat safe in her bedroom, completely unaware.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu."
Five chakra-based duplicates materialized at terminals, taking control of every system. Doors. Lights. Cameras. Weapons. Communications.
Everything.
Seraph looked at the main monitor displaying the facility layout.
His lips curved.
"Time to start the play."
He pressed a button.
Music filled the speakers throughout the facility—synthesized, rhythmic, with a driving piano melody over electronic bass. Beautiful and predatory.
"Kuroko."
---
The Play
(A/N: play yoshikage kira theme)
---
Guard Stevens ran through the eastern corridor when the music started. Wrong music. Alien.
"Command? Do you copy?"
Static.
The lights flickered. Went dark. Snapped back on.
Captain America stood at the corridor's end.
Stevens blinked. "Cap?"
Captain America charged.
Stevens fired. Bullets hit but the figure didn't stop, shield raised—
The form rippled. Captain America's face melted away. Red hair. Bronze armor. Cold eyes.
Stevens had one second to realize the trick before a wooden spike erupted from the floor, punching through his chest from behind.
The music continued.
---
Dr. Helen Ramirez burst into her lab with three colleagues. Dr. Chen, Dr. Morrison, and Lieutenant Graves stood inside.
"Thank god," Ramirez gasped. "We need to—"
Chen smiled. Too wide.
Her form rippled—red hair, bronze armor—and wooden tendrils erupted like spider legs. One punched through Morrison's skull. Another wrapped around Graves' ankle, yanking him down. His neck snapped.
Ramirez whispered, "Please—"
A kunai buried itself in her eye socket.
The figure dispersed into wooden debris.
---
Sentinel Pilot Graham's display lit up. Doctor Doom stood at the bay's far end, energy crackling between fingers.
Graham fired. Plasma hit dead-center.
Doom exploded into wooden chunks.
Five more Dooms appeared. They shifted—all revealing the same face. Red hair. Bronze armor.
Decoys.
Webbing shot through Graham's viewport, sealing his air supply. Wooden vines snaked through cables, ripping apart machinery. The Sentinel collapsed, crushing him.
The music played on.
---
Eight guards barricaded in the cafeteria. Lights flickering. On. Off. On. Off.
"Stay together!" Sergeant Michaels ordered.
The door opened. Private Reeves walked in.
"Reeves! What's the—"
His face rippled.
Eight rifles fired.
The figure burst into splinters—a clone, bait—and real Seraph dropped from the ceiling vent, landing center-formation.
Web-shooters fired three-sixty. Guards yanked together, weapons torn away, bodies slamming. Wooden spikes erupted, punching through torsos, skulls, spines.
Seraph stood in the carnage, listening to the music.
He walked out, leaving bloody footprints.
---
Control Room - Shadow Clone #3
The shadow clone watched through dozens of cameras. The original moved like a ghost—appearing, killing, disappearing. Wood clones transformed into trusted faces, lured victims into traps.
Was that Dr. Morrison? Or already dead, his face stolen?
No one knew. Everyone died.
The clone's fingers danced across keyboards, manipulating systems like conducting an orchestra. Doors opened when guards needed them closed. Weapons jammed at crucial moments. Lights went dark just as someone rounded corners.
Twenty-three minutes since infiltration.
On the tactical map, red dots—living personnel—blinked out one by one.
Like stars dying.
---
Nurse Patterson pressed against the wall, watching through a door window as something wearing Dr. Yates' face killed everyone in the operating room.
The face changed. Red hair. Bronze armor.
It looked directly at her and smiled.
Then walked away.
She waited. Five minutes. Ten.
Slowly, she opened the door—
A hand grabbed her throat, slammed her against the wall. Seraph stood before her, covered in blood not his own.
"Wait—I'm just a nurse—"
Spider-sense whispered: *No threat. Civilian.*
"Where are the prison wards?"
"S-Sub-level three. East wing—"
"Run. Five minutes, or you die with everyone else."
She ran.
The light's go off.
---
22:17
The facility was silent except for the music.
In the control room, Shadow Clone #3 watched the display. Red dots had dwindled from two hundred sixty-three to zero.
Almost zero.
One remained: Director Carmichael, locked in his secure office, too terrified to emerge.
The clone checked prison ward cameras. Fifty-eight cells. Fifty-eight prisoners, all alive. All traumatized. All waiting.
The clone triggered the main entrance. Massive steel doors ground open.
Arclight limped inside, breathing hard, armor scorched from ten minutes against Sentinels.
The music cut off.
The silence was deafening.
---
Original Seraph - Corridor 7-B
Seraph walked through blood-stained halls. Bodies everywhere—frozen in terror, mouths open in silent screams.
His wood clones stood at intersections like grotesque statues, blood-spattered and still. Every transformed clone had been dismissed. Every fake face melted away.
There had only ever been one person here.
One killer.
He passed a guard with kunai in his eye socket. A scientist pinned to the ceiling by wooden spikes. Bodies webbed together, crushed beneath their own weight.
He felt nothing.
This was mathematics. Variables eliminated. Survival.
His spider-sense hummed—potential threat ahead, but you're in control.
He was always in control.
Seraph descended toward Sub-Level Three.
Toward the prison wards.
Toward Clarice Ferguson.
---
Control Room - Final Report
The shadow clone compiled data as Seraph descended:
Operation Kuroko - Status: Complete
Duration: 29 minutes, 43 seconds
Enemy Casualties: 263 confirmed kills
Friendly Casualties:0
Prisoners Located: 58 mutants
Facility Status: Fully compromised
Survivor Count:0
The clone noted Arclight entering, moving through carnage with weapon drawn.
Noted Tessa's elevated heart rate, but stable.
The play was over. The curtain fallen.
And below, fifty-eight broken people waited—unaware their nightmare had ended, unaware that the person who'd killed two hundred sixty-three people was coming to save them.
Kuroko.
The stagehands who manipulate unseen.
The show had been perfect.
***
To Be Continued in Chapter 23...