SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The raid was, objectively speaking, going way too smoothly.

That was the part that worried him the most.

Miles moved very fast through the metallic corridors of the Cross-Continental Logistics hub.

The professional guards, the ex-military mercs, were exactly as disciplined as the system had predicted.

They walked their routes with the precise, predictable rhythm.

A rhythm that Miles could now dance around effortlessly.

[Phantom Drift.]

He was very fast, flowing past the camera's sweeping gaze.

[Echo Step.]

He blinked through a laser grid, the red beams passing through the space where he had been a microsecond before.

"This is almost boring," he thought, his internal voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm only a teenager on a life-or-death black-ops mission could truly muster.

"I was promised professional soldiers."

"I was expecting at least one of them to be playing games on his phone."

The system, as usual, had no appreciation for his humor.

[TARGET ACQUIRED: CENTRAL SERVER ROOM. 30 METERS AHEAD.]

He flattened himself against the cold wall, peering around the corner.

The server room door was a built of reinforced steel that looked like it had been ripped off a battleship.

In front of it stood a single man.

He wasn't wearing the standard guard uniform.

He was dressed in simple black fatigues, his arms crossed over his chest.

He had a shaved head, a jagged scar slashed through one eyebrow, and the cold eyes of a man who killed without hesitation.

Kaelen Vance.

The man who could throw fire.

"Well, this is going to be fun," Miles muttered under his breath.

"I hope this shield has some kind of fire-retardant warranty."

Vance's head tilted slightly, as if he had heard him.

"You can stop hiding in the shadows," the man called out, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.

"The air gets a little… warmer when your kind is around."

"I can feel the static you give off."

Miles felt a chill that had nothing to do with the building's air conditioning.

He was caught.

There was no point in hiding anymore.

He stepped out from behind the corner, pulling his hood low, keeping his hands in his pockets to feign a casualness he absolutely did not feel.

Vance looked him up and down, a flicker of something—amusement? disappointment?—in his dead eyes.

"That's it?" Vance asked with his lips looking like he was smiling.

"I was expecting a rival corporation, a government spook."

"Instead, they send a teenager in a hoodie."

"The budget for corporate espionage really has gone down the toilet."

Miles said nothing.

He was letting the system do its work.

[ANALYZING HOSTILE SYSTEM SIGNATURE…]

[CONFIRMED: TIER-3 THERMAL MANIPULATION CORE.]

[POWER OUTPUT: 7/10.]

[USER CONTROL: 9/10.]

[THREAT LEVEL: HIGH.]

"Thanks for the scouting report, Captain Obvious," Miles thought.

"Any chance you can tell me if he has a secret weakness too?"

Vance cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing in the silent corridor.

"Alright, kid, here's how this is going to go," he said, his voice taking on the tone of a teacher explaining a simple math problem to a particularly dumb student.

"You're going to tell me who sent you."

"Then, I'm going to burn your face off."

"And then, if I'm in a good mood, I might leave enough of you to identify."

He took a step forward, and the air around him began to get really hot.

"So, let's start with the easy part," Vance growled.

"Who are you?"

Miles finally looked up, letting the man see his eyes.

He gave him a single, cold, two-word answer.

"Your replacement."

Vance's smile faded into a frown.

He didn't say another word.

He just thrust his hand forward.

A burst orange flame erupted from his palm, the liquid fire racing down the hallway with the speed and force of a fire hose.

Miles reacted on pure instinct.

[ACTIVATING: AEGIS SHIELD.]

A barrier of golden, hexagonal energy materialized in the air in front of him.

The fire slammed into the shield with a deafening roar.

The impact was staggering.

It was like trying to hold back a wave.

The shield held, but cracks of golden light spiderwebbed across its surface.

[WARNING: KINETIC SHIELD IS UNDER EXTREME THERMAL STRESS.]

[STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AT 60%.]

"No kidding!" Miles grunted, bracing himself against the concussive force.

The flames washed around the shield, scorching the walls and ceiling of the corridor, turning the metal black.

Vance stopped the attack, his eyes wide with genuine surprise.

"A kinetic shield," he said, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across his face.

"A high-tier one, too."

"Okay, kid."

"You've got my attention."

He then raised both hands, and the air around him seemed to ignite.

He wasn't just throwing fire anymore.

He was becoming it.

He launched himself forward, propelled by jets of flame from his feet, leaving scorched footprints on the floor.

He was a human rocket.

He threw a punch, his fist wreathed in a corona of white-hot plasma.

Miles had no time to think.

[ACTIVATING: BLINK SHIELD.]

He used [Echo Step] to blink backward, teleporting ten feet down the hall.

Just as he reappeared, the golden Aegis Shield flared into existence in front of him.

Vance's fiery fist smashed into the shield.

BOOM.

The sound was like a bomb going off in the confined space.

The shield shattered into a million pieces of golden light, but it had absorbed the worst of the blow.

Miles was thrown backward by the shockwave, tumbling to the floor.

Alarms started blaring throughout the facility, the panicked wails adding to the chaos.

Vance stood there, shaking his slightly smoking hand, a look of furious disbelief on his face.

"Teleportation and a regenerating shield," he hissed.

"What are you, some kind of rich kid who bought all the best toys?"

Miles scrambled back to his feet, his heart was beating faster.

This was bad.

His opponent was faster, stronger, and clearly had more combat experience than he did.

He was on the defensive, and he was losing.

[WARNING: HOSTILE'S THERMAL OUTPUT IS CAUSING MINOR SYSTEM STRAIN.]

[RECOMMEND SWIFT NEUTRALIZATION.]

"Swift neutralization," Miles repeated in his head.

"Great idea."

"Why didn't I think of that?"

"Any suggestions on how I do that without getting burnt?"

Vance didn't give him time to come up with a plan.

He unleashed a barrage of fireballs, small, concentrated blasts of plasma that shot down the hall like meteors.

Miles was forced to use [Blink Shield] again and again, teleporting from one spot to another, the golden shield appearing just in time to block each explosive impact.

He was a ghost in a hurricane of fire.

The corridor was a ruin of scorched metal and shattered lights.

He was fast, but it was costing him.

He could feel the drain on his system, a deep, pulling exhaustion.

He needed to end this.

He needed an opening.

Vance, seeing that his ranged attacks weren't working, changed tactics.

He stopped throwing fireballs and instead focused the heat inward.

The air around his body began to glow, and a shimmering aura of pure, white heat enveloped him like an armor of fire.

"Let's see you teleport your way out of this," Vance snarled.

He charged, no longer a missile, but a walking inferno.

Miles blinked away, but Vance was right on top of him, his heat shield scorching the air where he reappeared.

There was no room to maneuver.

No time to attack.

Miles was trapped in a deadly dance, always one step away from being incinerated.

He blinked behind Vance, summoning the [Phantom Edge], the blade of pure darkness forming in his hand.

He swung at the man's back.

The blade passed through the heat shield, and for a second, Miles thought it had worked.

But the blade hissed and steamed, the dark energy that formed it visibly degrading as it touched the intense heat.

It was like trying to cut through the sun with a sword made of ice.

Vance spun around, a backhand strike wreathed in flame.

Miles brought the flat of his weakened blade up to block.

The impact sent a shock up his arm, and the [Phantom Edge] dissolved into a puff of black smoke.

His best weapon was useless.

He was disarmed.

And he was cornered.

Vance grinned, a horrible, triumphant expression.

"It's over, kid."

He raised his hand for the final blow, a concentrated blast of plasma aimed directly at Miles's chest.

It was in that moment of absolute desperation that an idea, a terrible, stupid, and probably suicidal idea, sparked in Miles's mind.

The shield blocked kinetic energy.

His own attack, the [Pulse Break], was a blast of pure kinetic energy.

What would happen if he used it on himself?

He didn't have time to ask the system for the odds.

He just had to trust his gut.

Just as Vance unleashed his final, overwhelming torrent of fire, Miles did the unthinkable.

He turned his back to the attack, raised his own fist, and punched himself in the chest.

[ACTIVATING: PULSE BREAK.]

THUMP.

The kinetic blast erupted from his own body, not as an attack, but as a propellant.

He was launched forward, away from the fireball, rocketing down the corridor like a human cannonball.

He flew past the surprised Kaelen Vance, a blur of motion.

Vance, caught completely off guard, tried to turn, to track his impossibly fast-moving target.

He was too slow.

Miles crashed into the reinforced steel door of the server room behind Vance with the force.

The door bent inward with a deafening groan of tortured metal.

He had made his opening.

He didn't wait.

He spun around, ignoring the screaming pain in his own bruised chest, and lunged at the still-recovering security chief.

He had no blade.

He had no shield.

He just had his rage, and a single, desperate plan.

He slammed his body into Vance's, wrapping his arms around the man in a desperate tackle.

The heat from Vance's thermal armor was excruciating, searing his skin through his hoodie.

He could smell his own clothes burning.

[CRITICAL WARNING: HOST IS SUFFERING SEVERE THERMAL DAMAGE.]

Miles ignored it.

He drove Vance backward, using his own momentum, pushing the man into the server room.

He shoved him hard against a rack of humming, blinking servers.

"What are you doing?" Vance roared, struggling to break free.

Miles didn't answer.

He looked at the fire suppression system on the ceiling.

A network of pipes filled with Halon gas and fire-retardant foam.

He just needed to trigger it.

He reached up, grabbing a handful of Vance's fatigues with one hand.

With the other, he slammed his fist, not at Vance, but at the server rack next to his head.

Sparks flew.

The system shorted out.

And the sprinklers kicked on.

A thick, white, chemical foam rained down from the ceiling, instantly filling the small room.

It was designed to kill fire by robbing it of oxygen.

Vance's thermal armor sputtered and died, the white foam neutralizing his greatest weapon.

He was just a man now.

A strong man, but just a man.

He looked at Miles, his eyes wide with a mixture of rage and dawning horror.

He had been outsmarted.

"You little…" Vance started to say.

Miles didn't let him finish.

He drove his fist into the man's jaw, a clean, brutal, and deeply satisfying crunch.

Vance's eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Miles stood there, panting, his body screaming in protest, the chemical foam dripping from his hair and his smoldering hoodie.

He had won.

But just as a wave of relief washed over him, he looked down at his arm.

The flame from the fight had caught his arm.

The sleeve of his hoodie was gone, and his skin underneath was badly injured.

It was a significant wound.

A wound that would be hard to explain.

He heard the sound of heavy, running footsteps approaching in the corridor outside.

Reinforcements.

He had to go.

Now.

He grabbed an encrypted drive from his pocket, slammed it into the main server's USB port, and gave the system a single, desperate command.

"Get the data."

"And get me out of here."