The night was quiet when Kin left.
He did not walk. He did not climb out the window. He did not dress himself. His body simply rose from the bed as if pulled by invisible strings, his eyes open but seeing nothing, his face empty of thought or feeling. The System had taken full control, and Kin, deep in the dreamless sleep that the System had forced upon him, was unaware of any of it.
His feet touched the floor without a sound. He stepped over the shoes he had left by the bed, ignored the jacket hanging on the chair, and walked toward the window in nothing but the sweatpants he had borrowed from Lina. The katana materialized in his right hand, its blade gleaming faintly in the darkness. A second weapon—the Thermal Blade, still unnamed, its edge glowing a dull red—appeared at his hip.
He opened the window and stepped out into the night air.
The drop from the third floor should have broken his legs. Instead, the System slowed his descent, cushioning his landing with a burst of kinetic energy that made no sound. His bare feet touched the ground. He did not flinch at the cold concrete. He simply started running.
***
The world blurred around him.
The System pushed his body beyond human limits, threading him through alleys and over walls, across highways and through fields. The blue line painted itself across his vision, guiding him south toward the highlands. He did not feel the wind on his skin. He did not notice the stars overhead. His body was a vessel, and the System was the hand that held it.
Forty-seven minutes later, he arrived at Nhamo.
The village was burning.
Smoke rose from the church, the school, the rows of small houses that had stood for generations. The air was thick with the smell of death. Bodies lay in the streets—some still, some writhing, some calling out for help that would not come. The System's other assets were already there: the Speed Demon, a blur of motion in the distance; the Bomb Technician, on her knees beside a live shell; the Strongman, pulling rubble off a trapped family.
Kin's body did not stop to help. It ran straight through the village, past the burning buildings and the crying children, toward the convoy of black SUVs speeding away on the main road.
And then it launched itself into the air.
The System calculated the trajectory with precision. Kin's body rose like a missile, arcing over the tree line, and came down with a heavy thud on the roof of the middle SUV. The impact dented the metal and shattered the sunroof. Glass rained down on the guards inside.
Before anyone could react, Kin's body dropped through the opening.
He landed in the back seat. The fat man in the suit—Solomon Vhara—screamed and pressed himself against the far door. Two guards reached for their weapons. Kin's body moved faster. The katana took the first guard's hand off at the wrist, then reversed and drove through the second guard's chest. Both men fell before they could fire a single shot.
The car swerved. The driver looked back, panicked, and Kin's body grabbed him by the collar and threw him out the window. The SUV coasted to a stop.
Solomon Vhara was alone.
He tried to open the door. It was locked. He tried to crawl over the seat. Kin's body grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back.
"Please," Solomon whispered. "Please, I have money—"
The katana swung.
The head came off clean. The body slumped sideways. Blood sprayed across the leather seats and the shattered glass and Kin's bare chest. The head landed in his open palm, held by the hair, the eyes still blinking for a moment before they went still.
Kin's body did not pause. It climbed out of the SUV, the head still in its grip, and walked toward the village.
***
The attackers were gathered at the edge of the tree line.
They were not soldiers. They were hired men—gang members, mercenaries, the ones Solomon had armed to terrorize the villagers before the air strike. They had guns and machetes and the kind of cruelty that came from being paid to hurt people who could not fight back.
They saw the young man walking toward them, barefoot, shirtless, covered in blood, and they raised their weapons.
Kin's body stopped twenty feet away. It raised Solomon Vhara's head by the hair and held it up like a lantern.
"Back off," it said. The voice was flat empty and definitely not a request.
The attackers looked at the head. They recognized the face. Their employer. The man who had promised them money and protection. Dead. Beheaded. Held aloft by a stranger who did not seem to be fully awake.
One of them laughed. Nervous. Desperate. "There's only one of him."
They raised their guns.
Kin's body dropped the head and moved.
The katana sang. The Thermal Blade hissed. The System painted bullet trajectories in blue, and Kin's body flowed around them like smoke around a flame. He did not dodge so much as he ceased to be where the bullets were going. The first man lost his arm at the elbow. The second lost his head—not because the System required it, but because the blade was already there. The third tried to run and took a Thermal Blade slash across the back that cauterized as it cut. He fell and did not get up.
In less than thirty seconds, all of them were dead.
Kin's body stood among the bodies, breathing steadily, the katana dripping, the Thermal Blade smoking. It did not look at the corpses. It looked at the sky.
***
A plane was coming.
Not a commercial jet. A military aircraft, dark and sleek, moving fast and low. It had been part of the air strike—one of the planes that had dropped the missiles on Nhamo. It was turning around for a second pass.
[Target: Aircraft. Pilot: Hostile. Ordnance: Two remaining missiles. Recommendation: Disable before it reaches the village.]
Kin's body looked at the Strongman, who had just finished pulling a family from the rubble.
"Throw me," Kin's body said.
The Strongman did not question the order. He had been alive for over alot of lifetimes cultivating his strength. He knew when to talk and when to act. He grabbed Kin's body by the waist, spun once for momentum, and launched him into the air like a javelin.
Kin's body rose. Higher and higher, past the treetops, past the smoke, until the plane was no longer a speck but a growing shape filling his vision. The wind screamed in his ears. The cold bit his skin. He did not blink.
He landed on the plane's fuselage.
The impact drove the breath from his lungs, but the System kept his body moving. He grabbed onto the edge of the wing with one hand and pulled himself forward, crawling against the wind, the katana still in his grip. The plane was moving at Mach speeds—faster than any human had ever traveled without a cockpit—but Kin's body held on.
He reached the cockpit. The glass was thick, reinforced, designed to withstand bird strikes and small arms fire. Kin's body raised the katana and began to strike.
Thud. A crack formed.
Thud. The crack spread.
Thud. The glass spiderwebbed.
On the fourth strike, the glass shattered.
The pilot inside screamed. He had been reaching for his sidearm, but the sight of a blood-soaked man clinging to the outside of his plane at Mach speeds broke something in his mind. He grabbed the eject handle and pulled.
The canopy blew. The pilot's seat rocketed upward.
Kin's body was ready. The katana swung as the pilot passed, cutting through the cords of the parachute before it could deploy. The pilot screamed again—a long, falling scream—as he tumbled toward the ground. He did not stop screaming until he hit.
Kin's body did not watch him fall. It turned its attention to the plane, which was now flying without a pilot. The nose dipped. The engines whined. The ground rushed up.
[Altitude: 2,000 feet. Recommend immediate egress.]
Kin's body waited.
[Altitude: 1,500 feet.]
It waited.
[Altitude: 800 feet.]
It jumped.
The fall was brutal. He hit the ground at an angle, rolling, tumbling, his left leg snapping beneath him, his right knee dislocating, his shoulder cracking against a rock. The System suppressed the pain, but it could not suppress the physics. Both his legs broke. The bones did not pierce the skin, but they bent in ways that legs were not meant to bend.
Behind him, the plane crashed into the hillside and exploded. The fireball lit up the night sky.
Kin's body did not stop. It dragged itself forward with its hands, fingernails digging into the dirt, claws scraping through gravel and grass. The broken legs trailed behind like dead weight. The System was already healing the fractures, knitting the bones, but it would take minutes, not seconds.
He crawled fifty feet before the second plane appeared.
***
It was smaller than the first. Faster. Turning away from the village, changing course, trying to escape.
The Strongman saw it. He picked up a boulder the size of a small car, spun once, and threw. The boulder rose in a high arc, trailing dust, and met the plane mid-flight. The explosion was brief and bright. Shrapnel rained down on the empty fields.
The village was safe.
Kin's body stopped crawling. It lay in the dirt, legs still healing, chest heaving, and looked up at the stars.
[Mission Complete. All hostiles neutralized. Civilian casualties: 47. Without intervention: 2,000+.]
[Rewards deposited. Legacy transfer updated. New weapon added to armory.]
[Decapitator: Returning to safe house.]
The System took control again. It lifted Kin's body from the ground—broken legs and all—and began the long run back to the city. The bones set as he ran. The dislocated knee popped back into place. By the time he reached the apartment building, he was limping but whole.
He climbed the fire escape. Slid through the window then the System laid him down on the bed, next to Lina, and pulled the blanket over his chest.
His eyes closed.
His breathing slowed.
When Lina stirred a few hours later, she saw only a tired young man sleeping beside her. She did not see the dirt under his nails. She did not see the fresh scars on his legs. She did not see the blood on his back.
She just saw Kin.
And Kin, deep in a dreamless sleep, saw nothing at all.
***
[System Notification – Suppressed]
[Mission: Nhamo Village – Complete. Decapitator status: Unconscious during operation. Physical recovery: 94%. Mental recovery: Pending.]
[Next mission: TBD.]
The notification blinked once and disappeared.