The nitrogen fog was a living thing—thick, blinding, and biting into Shino’s skin with a frost that felt like thousands of tiny needles. In this grounded world, there were no thermal-vision eyes or sci-fi sensors; there was only the raw, suffocating cold. The sudden drop in temperature turned the room into a white void, blurring the lines between predator and prey.
Shino moved like a wraith. She knew the layout from her brief scan before the pipes blew. Three steps left. Duck behind the fermentation tank.
A spray of bullets hissed through the fog where her head had been a second ago. The suppressed thuds of the gunfire were swallowed by the roar of the escaping gas.
"The girl is a ghost!" one of the hitmen shouted, his voice muffled by his breathing mask.
"She’s a corpse," a second voice replied, closer than the first. "Flush her out! Use the strobes!"
High-intensity tactical lights cut through the mist, creating a disorienting wall of white. Shino didn't look for the shooters. She looked for the "glitch." She saw it through a gap in the swirling vapor: a pair of bare feet standing perfectly still near the ventilation shaft.
Ai Hitomi hadn't moved. She wasn't running. She wasn't terrified. She was waiting.
Shino’s blood ran colder than the nitrogen. She realized then that the laser dot earlier hadn't been aimed at her—it had been aimed at the wall next to her. A warning shot. A choreographed move.
"Ai! Get to the vent!" Shino yelled, a tactical gamble to see how the hitmen would react.
They didn't flinch. They didn't even turn their weapons toward the shaft where the "helpless" widow stood.
The fog began to settle, pulled down by the heavy cold. As the air cleared, the two hitmen stood in the center of the room, their suppressed rifles lowered. Between them stood Ai Hitomi.
The widow didn't look like a victim anymore. She stood tall, her posture regal despite the dirt on her skin and the torn hem of her dress. She reached into the folds of her black silk and pulled out a small, encrypted remote.
"You really are as good as they say, Shino," Ai said. The coldness in her voice was sharper than any chemical toxin. "You found the cellar. You found the Protocol. You even found the residue on the glass."
Shino kept her gun leveled at the lead hitman’s chest, but her eyes were locked on Ai. "The hitmen... they aren't here to kill you. They’re your private security detail. This isn't a home invasion; it’s an extraction."
"Private contractors," Ai corrected smoothly. "Roland was a brilliant man, but he was a coward. He wanted to destroy Project Lethe because he feared the 'moral implications.' He didn't understand that in this city, power isn't a moral choice. It’s a requirement for survival."
"You poisoned him," Shino said, the realization settling in her gut like lead. "You didn't need to be in the room. You put the neuro-paralytic in the bottle days ago, knowing he’d pour a drink to celebrate finishing the new will. But the will wasn't signed, was it?"
Ai’s smile was beautiful and terrifying. "He died three paragraphs short of disinheriting me. Legally, the company, the research, and the Protocol... they all belong to me."
"And the sniper shot? The window?" Shino asked.
"A performance," Ai shrugged. "I needed a witness—a decorated detective—to verify that 'unknown assassins' attacked the manor. Who better than the legendary Shino Fragile? If you had died, you would have been a hero who fell protecting a grieving widow. If you lived... well, I was hoping you’d be smart enough to take a bribe."
The lead hitman stepped forward, the red laser of his rifle settling on Shino's forehead.
"I don't take bribes from people who use chemical weapons on their husbands," Shino said, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"A pity," Ai sighed. She pressed a button on the remote.
A heavy steel security shutter slammed down over the ventilation shaft, cutting off the only exit. At the same time, the laboratory's emergency locks hissed shut.
"Kill her," Ai commanded, turning her back to the violence. "And make sure you recover the last vial. It’s the only stable sample we have left."
Shino didn't wait for them to fire. She dove behind the heavy refrigeration unit, but she didn't fire at the men. She aimed her gun at the high-pressure nitrogen tanks she had cracked earlier.
"If I'm going down, Ai," Shino yelled over the roar of the gas, "I'm taking your 'Masterpiece' with me!"
ns216.73.216.141da2
and then Add to home screen.