Part 1: The First Name
The train station had long since been condemned.
New Mexico sun bleached the concrete to bone. Steel rails were buried beneath sand and time. But twenty meters below the wreckage, behind layered biometric locks and seven inches of ballistics rated armor,
Lia Keren lived.
Or tried to.
She'd changed her name to Eliya Grieves. She had even married, for a while. There were photos in the hallway. A child's drawing on the fridge. A broken swing outside, half buried in dust.
But no visitors.
No traceable networks.
No real mirrors.
Because Keren knew what she'd done.
She knew what she'd made.
Kairo stood outside the compound at 02:11 pm local time. The sky above him was pale with stars. He wore no armor. No mask. Just a threadbare coat, and blood still drying beneath his fingernails from the scout patrol he'd disassembled two towns back.
The perimeter defense system hadn't even noticed him.
He didn't hack it. He didn't disable it.
He just walked right through it.
The first two guards, mercenaries with ex-Army patches and old world implants never saw him coming.
He stepped into the tunnel's edge and flicked his wrist. The air rippled.
Both men fell instantly.
But they didn't die fast.
The first bled from the eyes, mouth, and ears—neural overload. His helmet melted inward, fusing bone to kevlar.
The second had time to scream. Kairo tore his weapon from him, used the magnetic brace to pin his own hands to the wall, then pressed one finger to the man's sternum and pushed.
The finger slid into the ribcage like a scalpel, Heat surged.
When Kairo removed his hand, the man's heart was gone.
Inside the main corridor, cameras spun wildly—looped by a virus Kairo had grown in his own bloodstream. Surveillance blind, sensors cold.
He entered the compound like a ghost made of heat and memory.
The facility had been dressed up like a home, color-coded rugs, Family portraits, a child's boot by the door.
Kairo walked past it all.
He knew she would be in the bunker nursery.
It was the safest room, also the most isolated. A relic from a life she'd tried to build once she'd run from Black Ridge.
He found it locked behind a biometric failover gate.
He didn't touch the scanner.
He waited.
And then whispered her name.
"Keren."
Silence.
Then movement.
Inside, she was panicking. She recognized the voice. She always would. She was the one who had it installed years ago, into Kairo's tactical response memory. The perfect trigger phrase, now used against her.
The door unlocked.
Not by choice.
By submission.
Kairo stepped inside.
The room was white, small, shelves lined with fake books, stuffed animals, and a crib, unused.
Keren stood in the corner, shaking, one hand holding a pistol she didn't know how to use anymore.
"You're not supposed to be here," she whispered while trembling. "They said you were gone. Erased! I signed the kill order!" she said now screaming at the top of her voice "I watched the protocol execute—"
He didn't speak.
He simply raised one hand and showed her his palm.
The veins beneath it pulsed blue. Light crawled across his forearm like it was alive.
"You don't have to do this," she said, stumbling backward into the crib. "I—I didn't know she was your sister, i swear! I didn't—I didn't even remember you had a name!"
He tilted his head.
Then stepped forward.
She fired the pistol with her eyes shut in fear. Once. Twice.
Both rounds struck him center mass.
Both sizzled. Flattened. Fell to the floor, hissing.
He stepped closer.
"No," she breathed. "Please, Kairo, please, I'm not—I'm not one of them anymore—"
He was in front of her now.
She slowly raised her hand to touch his chest.
He took her hand.
And closed his fingers around it, slowly crushing her hand,
eyes still fiated on her, like he was crushing clay.
The bones inside popped like soft wood.
She screamed with veins on her neck and tears in her eyes, falling to her knees, clutching her ruined wrist.
He lowered himself to her level.
Leaned in close.
And whispered:
"You're still on the list."
Then he placed two fingers on the side of her head.
And began to heat them.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
She screamed.
Again. And again. And again.
Until her voice was hoarse and there was no sound left to make.
Then she stopped.
No movement and no sound at all.
The room stank of burned hair, Melted jawbone and Neural collapse.
Then Kairo stood, stepped over her body, and approached the wall.
He dipped two fingers in her blood, still steaming from being used to cook her flesh alive.
And wrote two words on the wall of the nursery,
"ONE DOWN"
Then he left her there.
Door open.
Letting the heat out.
Letting the message out.
By the time the satellite pings from Obsidian Vault 9 traced the death spike in Keren's vitals, he was already thirty miles east.
No camera. No entry log. No escape path.
Just a corpse with holes in her head and the words one down written above her child's crib.