APEX ASSASSIN

The Cyber Face-Slap

Pfft.

Vane’s body collapsed onto the steel catwalk before he could even register the shadow behind him. Julian caught the corpse by the tactical harness, stripping the central master keycard from his vest, and eased the weight down without making a sound.

On the dirt floor thirty feet below, Roderick stood surrounded by muzzle flashes, dust, and the dying echoes of automated gunfire. The sentry turrets clicked empty one by one, their feed belts expended. Smoke hung thick in the air, illuminated only by the pulsing red emergency lights along the perimeter pillars.

Roderick looked around at the bodies of his elite guards littering the arena floor. His teeth gritted into a snarl.

"Vane!" Roderick bellowed into his radio, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls. "Report! Where is he?!"

The static crackled. Then, a cool, composure-shattering voice cut through the speaker:

"Vane isn't on the comms anymore, Roderick."

Roderick froze. He slowly turned toward the central observation platform. Standing on the high edge of the metal catwalk, framed by the rain pouring through the shattered skylight, stood Julian. His coat drifted slightly in the damp draft. His suppressed sidearm was held at a low, relaxed ready.

Roderick let out a loud, booming laugh that rattled the rusted girders, though his eyes burned with rage.

"Look at you," Roderick sneered, stepping into the center of the arena and opening his arms wide. "The great Ghost Operative. Coming in through the ceiling like a rat. You think taking down a few hired guns makes you a threat? You’re fifty-two years old, Julian! You’ve been spending your life holding a tape measure while I’ve been breaking bones across four continents!"

Julian didn't answer. He didn't drop into a defensive stance. He simply looked down at Roderick with cold, quiet detachment.

"You think you can face-slap the Brotherhood?" Roderick taunted, picking up a five-foot steel I-beam section from the scrap pile with one hand and casually resting it over his massive shoulder. "You relied on Quentin’s tech to find me, and now you’re relying on your little satellite trick. But when it comes down to steel and bone, you're just an old man out of his prime."

"I didn't come here to measure strength with you, Roderick," Julian said softly.

"Then why are you here?" Roderick roared, slamming the I-beam onto the concrete base of a central pillar, shattering the stone into dust. "Come down here and fight me like a man!"

"I came to show you how useless you really are," Julian replied.

Roderick’s jaw clenched. He reached into his tactical belt, pulling out a heavy blast-door detonator. "You think you trapped me in here? I installed a hydraulic blast-wall grid in this foundry three months ago! The moment I press this button, three-ton steel plates drop over every door and air vent. You’ll be sealed in this vault with me—and no light, no air, and no escape until I rip your head off!"

Roderick slammed his thumb onto the red button on the detonator.

Nothing happened.

He stared at the device, his brow furrowing. He pressed it again. And again. Rapidly mashing the button with his massive thumb.

"Having connection issues?" a clear, young female voice chimed through the foundry’s overhead public address speakers.

Roderick spun around, staring up at the loudspeaker system in disbelief. "What... who the hell is that?!"

"That would be my tactical handler," Julian said from the catwalk above.

In Zurich, Beatrix’s fingers flew across her keyboard, executing a total system hijack of the foundry's internal pneumatic infrastructure.

"Blast-wall override complete," Beatrix said into Julian's ear, a cold, satisfied smile touching her lips as her code flooded Roderick's local network. "He relied on a legacy wireless receiver module for his emergency locks. It took me less than forty seconds to map the frequency, clone the handshake key, and reverse the directional valves."

On the arena floor, a deafening mechanical hiss echoed through the structure.

The heavy hydraulic blast doors didn't lock Julian in. Instead, the heavy steel plates crashed down over the small private exit bunker behind Roderick, sealing his personal escape route and locking his armory vaults behind six inches of solid iron.

Roderick’s face flushed red with humiliation. The arrogant composure he had held for twenty-seven years shattered in an instant.

"You..." Roderick snarled, dropping the dead detonator and glaring up at Julian with pure, unadulterated fury. "You bring a kid to fight my war?!"

"She isn't just fighting your war, Roderick," Julian said, stepping off the catwalk railing and dropping twenty feet down onto the top of an industrial transformer, landing without making a sound. "She just stripped you of every advantage you thought you owned."

Julian unclipped his suppressed sidearm, re-holstered it, and pulled off his tactical gloves, tossing them onto the concrete floor.

"No tech. No guns. No squad," Julian said, his gray eyes locking onto Roderick's rage-twisted face. "Just an old man and the brute who thought he couldn't be broken."

Roderick let out a guttural roar, raising the heavy steel I-beam over his head, and charged forward like a runaway locomotive.