I didn’t immediately close the feed. I couldn't.My hand rested heavily on the computer mouse, the cheap plastic warm against my palm, but my index finger refused to click the red 'X' in the corner of the window. The harsh glare of the monitor cut through the pitch-black darkness of my room, casting a pale, sickening light across my face. My eyes burned, dry and stinging from staring too long, but I didn't blink.The screen in front of me still showed the chaos completely unfolding inside Nathan Carter’s building.The security cameras were high-definition, offering a mercilessly clear view of the violence. Armed men were moving through the ground-floor lobby in total silence. I watched the heavy, black boots step over the shattered glass of the front entrance. Their flashlights swept left and right, cutting stark white cones through the dim, red glow of the building's emergency lights. The intruders moved with a terrifying fluidity, their long, distorted shadows stretching violently ac

The harsh, artificial white light of the system interface burned into my retinas, leaving dark, floating afterimages every time I blinked. My apartment felt heavy, the air thick with the metallic smell of overworked processor fans and my own stale, cold sweat.Leon Kuroda’s message still hovered in the dead center of the glass.I exhaled slowly. My breath hitched slightly in my chest, a quiet, ragged sound in the empty room."So this is the kind of player you are," I whispered. My voice sounded rough, scraped completely dry by adrenaline.Most hunters chased. They relied on panic. They wanted their prey exhausted, careless, and constantly looking over their shoulder. But Leon Kuroda? He planted his feet. He waited for the prey to bare its teeth and fight back. Which meant one terrifying thing.Leon wasn’t just confident. He was entertained.I leaned forward, the old springs in my chair whining in sharp protest, and dragged my fingers across the touch-sensitive edge of the desk. I expan

My index finger hovered a fraction of an inch from the brushed steel of the elevator call button. I could feel the faint, mechanical vibration of the shaft humming through the metal panel, but I didn't press it.I turned my back on the heavy doors and looked over the array of glowing monitors.The black sedan had stopped perfectly at the curb directly below my building. It didn't screech to a halt; it glided into place like a shark sliding through dark water. And the figure standing beside the open door—Leon Kuroda—looked entirely untouchable. Through the high-resolution feed, I saw the rain sliding off the shoulders of his dark suit. I saw that faint, razor-thin smile. It wasn't a smile of greeting. It was the physical promise of chaos.I let out a slow, jagged breath. The air in the penthouse tasted like stale copper.I dragged my focus back to the center screen. The City Surveillance Network blinked insistently, casting a harsh, pale red glow across my face. Hundreds of tiny red dot

Standing on the edge of the opposite balcony, separated by a deadly drop into the screaming traffic below, Leon Kuroda looked completely untouched. He wasn't bracing against the gale. His dark suit barely seemed to ripple. He stood there with his hands resting easily at his sides, looking out over the sprawling grid of the city like a man admiring a quiet painting, not a player standing on the edge of a warzone.I tasted stale copper in the back of my throat. I hated that kind of absolute, quiet confidence.It wasn’t a bluff. You can always spot a bluff in the shoulders, in the micro-tensions of the jaw. Leon had none. That loose-limbed relaxation meant he already believed, with absolute certainty, that he held every single card.The city lights stretched out endlessly beneath us, glowing like burning veins of gold in the dark. The rhythmic, steady flow of headlights and taillights pulsed through the concrete arteries. Normally, looking down at this grid gave me a rush of pure adrenali

Leon Kuroda jumped.For a split second, my brain flat-out refused to process the physics of what I was looking at. The gap of empty air separating our two buildings wasn’t small. It was easily fifteen meters wide, a sheer drop of dozens of floors into the concrete grid below. Even with maximum momentum, even with a flawless running start, a jump like that should have been physically impossible. Gravity should have dragged him down like a stone.But Leon didn’t hesitate.The moment the sole of his polished shoe pushed off the freezing iron railing, his body cut through the night air like a fired bullet.The wind exploded between the buildings, a physical shockwave of displaced pressure that whipped my hair across my eyes.And suddenly—He was right in front of me.My survival instincts kicked in before my conscious thought did. I stepped backward, the heavy rubber heels of my boots scraping harshly against the wet concrete of my balcony. My right hand was already swiping frantically acr