The dawn sky above Rome was suddenly split apart by a streak of black fire stretching across the horizon, as if the heavens themselves had just been torn open by the hand of an invisible giant.It wasn't a meteor.It wasn't a ballistic missile.It was Eduardo.Or at least, what remained of the man once known as Eduardo.BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!The impact shook the foundations of the ancient city.Piazza della Mafia, the heavily fortified plaza standing before The Commission's headquarters and guarded more fiercely than any location in Europe, exploded outward. Thirty centimeters of asphalt shattered instantly, turning into fine dust and razor-sharp debris that blasted through the air in every direction.A crater three meters deep formed in an instant, releasing thick black steam that reeked of sulfur and chlorine.At the center of the boiling smoke, Eduardo slowly stood.His black tactical suit had completely vaporized, leaving behind skin that resembled cracked porcelain with pulsing black l

Thick concrete dust danced through the air of the twentieth-floor corridor, illuminated by the glow of shattered neon lights and the sparks bursting from dangling electrical cables. The stench of ozone and purple chemical fluid leaking from broken containment tubes burned at the nostrils, creating an atmosphere that felt more like a laboratory of madness than a mafia headquarters.Eduardo stood slightly hunched.The cracked skin on his face released increasingly dense streams of corrosive black vapor. Across from him, Project Titan stood motionless, unfazed despite the fact that its colossal war hammer had just been crushed by Eduardo's left hand.GROOOOAAAARRRR!The Titan roared. Machine components and modified vocal cords merged into a frequency that rattled bone itself. The red lens embedded in its armored face rotated, locking onto Eduardo's position."Target... unstable."Eduardo's metallic voice echoed from deep within his chest without his lips moving.[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COM

The white marble floor of The Commission's penthouse headquarters was now stained with pools of thick crimson liquid.Not corrosive black sludge. Not deadly vapor.Human blood.Eduardo's blood, hidden for so long behind the walls of an unshakable system.Excruciating pain stabbed through every inch of his nervous system, a sensation he had almost forgotten. It felt as though thousands of fire wasps were stinging his internal organs as they slowly liquefied without the protection of Reaper Mode.Eduardo gasped for breath, his chest rising and falling erratically.The Chairman's short sword remained buried in his solar plexus, sending lethal pulses throughout his body."You feel that, Ed?" The Chairman leaned down, staring into Eduardo's pale face with triumphant eyes.The old man was no longer sitting in a wheelchair. He stood upright, twisting the hilt of the sword still lodged in Eduardo's chest."That's called pain. Reality. The thing you've been trading away all this time for your

The Chairman staggered backward until his spine slammed against the cold glass of the balcony.His breathing was ragged. Cold sweat soaked the collar of his silk shirt worth thousands of euros.In front of him, the man he had just stabbed straight through the solar plexus, the man who should have been a corpse by now, stood calmly.There was no eruption of black aura. No gravitational pressure crushing the floor.Only a human body drenched in blood, with blank white eyes staring emptily at him."Impossible... What the fuck are you?!" the Chairman screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. "I shut your system down! That device burned out your nerves! You should be dead, Eduardo!"Eduardo took a step forward.One step.Two steps.Every footfall across the marble left behind a thick trail of blood.He wasn't running.He wasn't charging.He walked like death itself, with no need to hurry."Eduardo?"The voice that emerged from Eduardo's blood-filled throat sounded like rusty chains scrap

The Roman sky before dawn looked like an unhealed wound, bruised crimson beneath a blanket of thick smoke. Across the courtyard of The Commission's headquarters, now reduced to rubble, the suffocating silence was shattered by the roar of a Boeing Business Jet that had once belonged to the late Chairman and had now changed hands.Hundreds of surviving Iron Guard soldiers stood in perfect formation, creating a corridor of death that stretched from the ruins of the lobby to the aircraft's boarding stairs. None of them carried weapons anymore. Their arms hung stiffly at their sides, their heads bowed low. Not a single one dared look toward the emergency stretcher carried by four elite soldiers.Lying on the stretcher was a man with dull white hair, his body drenched in both crimson and black blood. His suit had been torn into meaningless scraps."Easy, damn it! If you jolt his body even a little, I'll blow your head off myself!" Freya roared, her Glock resting against her hip, ready to ba