The cut fence gaped like a wound in reality, molten edges still crackling orange-hot, dripping viscous slag that hissed when it hit the ground. Steam rose in acrid curls, mixing with something else—something copper and thick that made the air taste like pennies.

I stepped through, and my boot squelched.

Not mud. Not dew.

I looked down. My sole had landed in something that used to be inside a human body. Dark blood, almost black under the floodlights, mixed with chunks of tissue I couldn't identify and didn't want to.

The EGs had been thorough.

Fifty-five bodies littered the grounds, and calling them bodies was generous. An ex-Delta operator lay three feet from the fence.

I could tell he'd been Delta from the tactical vest—the one part of him still intact. His face was gone, completely caved inward like someone had taken a sledgehammer to a watermelon. Gray-pink brain matter oozed out through the shattered skull, mixing with bone fragments that caught the light.

One eye had popped free during the impact, now dangling, staring at nothing with a glassy, dead expression.

I stepped over him, moved deeper into the killing field.

A Spetsnaz mountain lay sprawled near the mansion's east wall.

His chest had imploded—sternum shattered into jagged spikes that had punched outward through his tactical gear and skin. The ribs spread like broken wings on either side of the massive wound. His heart was visible, or what was left of it—reduced to red jelly inside the cavity.

His intestines had uncoiled across the grass, glistening ropes of pink and purple that steamed slightly in the cool night air.

The EGs hadn't just killed them. They'd unmade them with surgical precision and overwhelming force.

Ava stopped beside me, and I heard her breathing quicken through the comms. Her visor was fogging.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she whispered. "They didn't just kill them. They—there's pieces everywhere. Arms over there, legs—is that a spine?"

"It's.. art, Ava. Art," I said quietly.

And then I let Eros stats fully detonate inside me.

Power surged through me in tidal waves—not just strength, but everything.

My senses exploded outward into hyperfocus. I could see individual droplets of blood arcing through the air in slow motion, track their trajectories, count them. I could hear heartbeats—dozens of them, rapid with fear and adrenaline, coming from inside the mansion.

I could smell fear-sweat mixing with cordite, could map the entire battlefield through scent alone.

I was ten times the god I'd been a moment ago.

And right on cue, someone inside noticed we were here.

The alarms shrieked to life—klaxons howling like mechanical banshees, the sound so loud it should've been painful but my enhanced hearing adjusted instantly. Floodlights erupted from the mansion's facade, blazing into existence and turning night into day.

Doors burst open.

Windows shattered outward as men dove through them. The building vomited Volkov's inner guard—fanatics in tactical black, faces hidden behind balaclavas, weapons already raised.

I counted them in the split-second before they opened fire. Thirty-seven. No, thirty-eight—one more coming through the side door.

Muzzle flashes strobed the night. I watched the bullets leave the barrels—could actually see them in my perception alone, copper jackets spinning, trajectories drawn in my mind like glowing lines before they'd traveled two feet.

They were aiming for center mass.

Professional.

Trained.

Useless. Hmmp!!

The bullets hit my shield and exploded into sparks, kinetic force rippling the air but not touching me. Tracers painted red lines through the darkness, beautiful and deadly and completely ineffective.

"Phase one," I said, and felt my lips pull into a smile. "Annihilation."

I exploded forward.

My first step cratered the ground—literally. The earth buckled under the force, concrete cracking in spiderweb patterns. My second step launched me into the air, covering twenty feet in a single bound.

By my third step, I was among them.

The first wave was eight men—suppressed ARs, professional spacing, overlapping fields of fire. They were good. Well-trained. Would've been impressive against any normal target.

I wasn't a normal target.

I raised my plasma rifle as I landed, finger already squeezing the trigger. The weapon discharged with a sound like ripping silk amplified a thousand times. A blue lance of superheated plasma hit the first merc center-mass.

His tactical vest disintegrated instantly—Kevlar and ceramic plates vaporizing. Then his flesh followed. I watched in microseconds as his skin bubble and boil, fat liquefying, muscle tissue flash-cooking and peeling away in sheets. His rib cage was visible for half a heartbeat before the plasma burned through bone.

He didn't even have time to scream—his lungs were already slag. His skeleton clattered to the ground, some bones still glowing orange-hot.

Second shot. Same result. Another man reduced to smoking bones before his nervous system could register pain.

I dropped the rifle, let it mag-lock to my back, and drew both vibro-knives.

They extended with a thought-command, blades growing from twelve inches to three feet, that distinctive ultrasonic whine making the air vibrate. The edges were invisible—monomolecular, sharp enough to split atoms.

The remaining six were turning toward me, trying to track, fingers tightening on triggers.

Too slow.

I moved.

Horizontal slash, left to right, at neck height. The blade passed through three throats simultaneously.

I felt no resistance—the monomolecular edge didn't cut so much as it simply separated matter at the molecular level. Three heads detached cleanly, still wearing their balaclavas, expressions frozen in surprise. They tumbled through the air in perfect arcs while blood jetted from the stumps—arterial pressure sending crimson geysers six feet high.

The bodies stood there for two full seconds, hearts still pumping, before physics caught up and they collapsed.

I reversed both blades in a spinning motion, brought them down in matching vertical strikes. They punched through the shoulders of the two men flanking me. I felt the blades hit collarbone, split it, continue down through shoulder socket. I twisted both hilts ninety degrees and pulled.

The arms came free with wet, tearing sounds—tendons stretching like rubber bands before snapping, rotator cuffs ripping out of sockets. Both men screamed, stumbling backward, looking down at the bloody stumps where their arms had been.

Blood pumped from severed arteries in rhythmic spurts, splashing on the ground.

The last man in the group tried to run.

I grabbed one of the severed arms—it was still warm, fingers twitching from residual nerve impulses—and threw it like a spear. It hit him in the back of the head hard enough to snap his neck forward. His balaclava tore off. His nose pulverized, cartilage and bone fragments driven backward into his brain.

He dropped like a sack of meat, teeth embedded where teeth definitely shouldn't be.

Behind me, Ava had already moved.

She sprinted at the next group—five men clustered near a marble pillar, trying to set up a crossfire. She went low, sliding on her knees across blood-slicked ground like a baseball player stealing home.

Her vibro-knives came up in matching uppercut slashes as she passed between two of them.

The blades entered at the groin. I watched them punch upward through pelvic bones—shattering them into fragments—then continue up through abdominal cavities.

One man's intestines came tumbling out as the blade exited near his sternum, pink and purple ropes of bowel uncoiling in a steaming cascade.

The other man's bladder ruptured, mixing urine with blood. Both collapsed, hands trying uselessly to push their organs back inside.

Ava rolled to her feet, came up inside the reach of the third man. She was too close for him to bring his rifle to bear. He tried anyway. She grabbed the barrel, yanked it sideways, and drove her other hand—claws extended from her widow's bite gauntlet—into his throat.

The claws punched through his larynx, through muscle, scraped against vertebrae. She triggered the taser.

A million volts discharged directly into his neck. His flesh went black instantly, skin splitting as the muscle beneath cooked and expanded. His eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting, turning the whites red. His tongue swelled, pushing out of his mouth like a grotesque purple balloon.

The scream tried to come out but only managed a gargled, wet sound before blood frothed over his lips.

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