He arrived at the Krause-Veld Precision Range at seven.
The facility was on the western edge of the city — a low, long building set back from the road behind a controlled perimeter and a gate that required credentials to open. He had his credentials. He had requested them the previous evening along with the range officer personnel files, which had arrived at eleven-forty pm and which he had read before sleeping and again at five-thirty am.
The range officers were what the files said they were. Certified. Experienced. On-site staff, not event contractors. He had noted the distinction in the briefing and he confirmed it now, moving through the facility with one of the senior officers — a man named Ito, twelve years on-site, who walked the perimeter with the easy familiarity of someone who had done it several thousand times and did not find a security survey at seven in the morning unusual.
Kai noted that. He filed it favorably.
Bay One: long and narrow, good depth, reinforced observation glass — rating confirmed adequate. He noted the camera positions. Three fixed units covering the firing line, one above the bay entrance. A video crew had already set up in the observation area — equipment cases open, two operators running cable checks. He noted their credentials on the lanyard. Media access, pre-approved.
He noted the logo on the camera housing.
He had seen it before. He filed it without assigning immediate relevance.
The terrace: covered, east side, exposed perimeter. He walked the eastern fence line. Sight lines from outside the perimeter were limited by the fence height and the natural grade of the ground. Manageable. He noted two positions he would want covered during the exterior sequence and flagged them with Ito, who confirmed they could station range personnel at both.
He completed the survey at eight-forty-one.
He sent the confirmation at eight-fifty, as promised.
* * *
Vex Laine arrived at nine with three NovaCorp staff and no visible acknowledgment that she had spent the previous evening thinking about anything at all.
She was in the General Mara cosplay.
High-collar military coat, deep charcoal, structured at the shoulder. Silver epaulettes, the rank insignia accurate to the show's third-season design. The coat moved correctly for the weight — he noted the lining, the way the hem tracked, the deliberate severity of the silhouette. The KV-7 holster was on her right hip, empty. The sidearm would be provided by Krause-Veld at the firing line.
She looked at him when she entered the bay.
"Eight-fifty," she said.
"As confirmed," he said.
She moved to the firing line without further comment. He took his position — two metres off her left shoulder, clear angle to the bay entrance, not crossing her line of fire. She noted his position without looking at it directly. He noted that she noted it.
The shoot began.
The photographer worked quickly — Vex knew how to hold a position and she knew how to move between them without being directed twice. The General Mara reference was in her body before the photographer called for it. The KV-7 was provided, loaded for the live sequence, and she took it from the range officer with the easy familiarity of someone who had held this specific model before.
Chantal had said the file undersold her.
The file had not adequately prepared him for watching her fire.
Three rounds, live sequence, camera rolling. The grip was correct. The stance was correct. The grouping, at fifteen meters, was tight enough that the photographer stopped to look at it and said something to his assistant that Kai did not catch but did not need to.
He noted the grouping.
He noted that Vex Laine had not competed in three years and this was what not competing in three years looked like.
He filed it.
* * *
Felix Krause-Veld arrived at ten-fifteen.
He was younger than the file suggested — mid-twenties, tall, built with the specific confidence of someone who had grown up being told the room belonged to him and had never been given sufficient reason to question it. He had two bodyguards and a Krause-Veld representative trailing behind him and he moved through the facility the way people moved through spaces they considered an extension of themselves.
Kai noted him at the bay entrance.
He noted the way Felix's eyes went to Vex immediately and stayed there.
He noted the way Felix's eyes moved to the KV-7 grouping on the target, and then to Vex, and then something in his expression settled into the particular shape of a man who had found his opening.
He updated the file.
Felix crossed to Vex with the ease of someone who had never been told to wait. He said something to the photographer that functioned as a dismissal and the photographer, to his credit, looked at Vex instead of moving. Vex gave him a fractional nod. The photographer stepped back.
"Vex-san," Felix said. His Japanese was accented but deliberate. "That grouping is impressive."
"Thank you," she said. The public register was present — cool, contained, not warm.
"I shoot competitively," Felix said. "Have for years. Krause-Veld sponsorship, regional circuit." He said it the way people said things they considered credentials. "I'd be interested to see how you do against a real benchmark."
The room did not change temperature. Vex's expression did not change.
"A contest," she said.
"Friendly," Felix said. "Ten rounds, standard target, fifteen meters. Just to see."
He was smiling. He had the smile of a man who considered the outcome already settled.
Vex was quiet for a moment.
"I'd accept," she said, "but my competitive license expired three years ago. I haven't renewed it. Krause-Veld's facility rules require a current license for contest shooting." She paused. "I can't represent myself."
Felix absorbed this. He was already recalibrating — looking for the exit from the situation that still left him with what he had come for — when Vex turned.
She looked at Kai.
Not a question. Not a request. Just a look, precise and deliberate, the look of someone who had already run the calculation and was presenting him with the conclusion.
"No," he said.
"You're obligated," she said.
"This is not in my contract."
"My interests are in your contract," she said. "This is my interest."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
He picked up a KV-7 from the equipment table.
Felix's smile did not waver. If anything, it deepened — the smile of a man who had just watched the opposition select its representative and found the selection reassuring. Security personnel. Competent, presumably, but the regional competitive circuit was a different discipline. He had been doing this since he was fourteen. He had trophies.
"Ten rounds," Kai said. "Standard target. Your call on distance."
"Fifteen meters," Felix said.
"Twenty-five," Kai said.
Felix looked at him.
"Twenty-five," he agreed. The smile was still present. The smile was doing a great deal of work.
* * *
Felix shot first.
He was good. Kai noted this without revision — the stance was practiced, the grip was correct, the breathing was controlled. Regional competitive circuit. Krause-Veld sponsorship. The grouping at twenty-five meters was tight. Not exceptional, but tight. Eight of ten inside the central ring. The other two are fractional.
Felix stepped back from the line with the ease of someone who had just made his argument.
Kai stepped up.
He did not adjust his stance. He did not check the sights. He raised the KV-7, and he fired ten rounds, and he stepped back from the line.
The room was quiet.
Ito walked to the target. He looked at it for a moment. He looked back at Kai. He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
Ten rounds. One hole.
Not ten holes with significant overlap. One hole, the diameter of a single round, expanded by nine subsequent rounds passing through the same point, because Kai had not been trying to group them. He had been trying to put them in the same place.
Felix looked at the target.
He looked at it for a long time.
The video crew in the observation area had stopped moving. One of the operators had a hand resting on his equipment and had not moved it for thirty seconds.
"That's," Felix said. He stopped. He started again. "That's not — you're security personnel."
"Yes," Kai said.
"You're not a competitive shooter!"
"No, I'm not." Kai said.
Felix's expression moved through several configurations in rapid succession, none of them the one he had arrived with. The smile was gone. What replaced it was something rawer — the specific expression of a man who had organized the afternoon around a particular outcome and was now standing in front of evidence that the outcome had not consulted him.
"Again," Felix said.
"The contest was ten rounds," Kai said.
"Again." The word came out differently the second time. Harder. Less request, more demand.
"Felix-san." It was the Krause-Veld representative, a step behind him, voice careful. "Perhaps we should —"
"I said again!"
Kai set the KV-7 down on the equipment table.
He did this calmly, with the particular economy of movement of someone who has decided what the next thirty seconds look like and has no unresolved questions about them.
Felix watched him set the firearm down. Something in the watching went wrong — some wire crossed between the humiliation and the rage and the fact that he was standing in his family's facility and none of this was supposed to have happened — and he reached for the KV-7 on his own hip.
He raised it.
He pointed it at Kai.
The room stopped.
Kai's expression did not change. The pleasant face was present, installed, running. He looked at the firearm. He looked at Felix. He noted the grip — tight, both hands, the specific tension of someone who had not planned this action and was now committed to it without an exit strategy.
He stepped forward.
One step. Inside the distance. His left hand came up and redirected the barrel, two fingers, clean and unhurried, as if correcting the angle of something left carelessly on a shelf. His right hand found the slide. His left moved to the frame. The magazine dropped. The slide came back. The chambered round cleared. The recoil spring followed. The barrel. The frame. Each with clinical precision.
He set the components on the equipment table in a neat row.
Four seconds.
Felix stood with his hands still in the shape of holding a firearm that was no longer there.
Then he stumbled back.
Not a step — a stumble, full and graceless, the backward motion of someone whose legs had made a decision without consulting the rest of him. His bodyguards caught him, both of them, one at each arm, and the sight of Felix Krause-Veld being held upright by his own security in his own family's facility while he stared at the neat row of components on the table was the kind of image that did not require a caption.
The video crew was still rolling.
Ito was already on his radio.
The range's on-site security personnel entered bay one in under ninety seconds. They were professional and unhurried and they moved to Felix with the specific body language of people who had a protocol for this situation and were following it. Felix said something. One of them responded. Felix said something else. The response was the same.
His bodyguards helped him toward the exit.
He did not look at the target again.
He did not look at Kai.
* * *
The room settled.
Law enforcement arrived seven minutes later. Kai gave his account in four sentences. He had the components on the table in the order he had set them. The range officer confirmed the sequence of events. The account was accepted.
While law enforcement processed the scene, Vex Laine appeared at his left shoulder.
He had noted her position throughout — she had not moved from the edge of the shooting area, had watched the entire sequence without visible reaction, had answered the responding officers' questions in two sentences and been cleared.
She looked at the row of components on the table.
She looked at him.
"Is there anything else you can't do?" she asked.
He processed the question.
"What do you mean?" he said.
She looked at him for a moment longer.
Then, at the precise edge of her controlled expression, in the space between the public register and whatever was underneath it, something moved. Small. Private. Not performed.
She looked back at the components.
"Nothing," she said.
She walked back toward the photographer, who had been waiting with the particular patience of someone who understood that the shoot had generated significantly more content than originally planned and was not going to rush what came next.
Kai noted the smile.
He noted that it had not been for the room.
He did not have a category for it.
He filed it anyway.
* * *
His phone produced its first notification at eleven-oh-three.
By eleven-seventeen, when law enforcement had cleared him and he was standing outside the facility in the pale morning sun with the cold brew he had retrieved from the equipment table, there were twenty-two.
All from the same contact.
He noted the number. He noted the time elapsed — fourteen minutes since the footage would have first been transmittable. He noted the media logo he had seen on the camera housing in the observation area, and he noted now why it had registered as familiar.
He called her.
She answered before the first ring completed.
"KAI NII-CHAN!"
"Mika."
"I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THIS CLIP FOR FOURTEEN MINUTES!"
"I know."
"— MY CREW WAS IN THAT ROOM, KAI, MY CREW!"
"I know."
"— AND YOU DIDN'T THINK TO TELL ME!"
"I was going to."
"WHEN?"
"After law enforcement cleared the scene."
A sound came through the phone that was not quite a word. It covered several registers.
"The chat," she said, slightly lower, "has already identified you. It took them four minutes. FOUR. Someone did a frame-by-frame —"
"I know."
"Stop saying you know —"
"I know."
"KAI!"
He drank his cold brew. It was at room temperature. He had accepted this as an operational cost.
"You took a gun apart," Mika said. Her voice had shifted — still loud, but the register underneath it had changed. Something that was not quite anger and not quite something else. "In someone's hands. While they were pointing it at you. And your face didn't —" She stopped. "Your face didn't do anything, Kai."
"No," he said.
"That's —" She stopped again. Started again. "I'm coming to the next one."
"No."
"I'm your sister —"
"Which is why the answer is no."
"KAI REUBEN!"
"Mika."
"You can't just — you can't keep doing things like this and not tell me, I'm not — I'm not one of your principals, I'm not someone you file and manage, I'm —"
"I know," he said. And this time it was different. Not deflection. Not a placeholder.
She was quiet for a moment.
"Then stop acting like it," she said.
He did not have an answer for that.
He filed the absence.
"You're not getting away from me that easily, onii-chan!"
"I've been getting away from you for the last few years," he said. "Deal with it."
The sound she made on the other end of the line was the sound of someone who was furious and not finished and was going to be neither of those things for a very long time.
He noted it.
He finished his cold brew.
— End of Chapter 6 —