December 14, 2069
At a seaside villa near Fukuoka Bay
The muffled crack of a silenced pistol faded into the darkness of the room. Thunder rolled overhead, shaking the air above the old man. A bullet shattered the glass without leaving a trace of blood. Dr. Takiya stood motionless, eyes closed, convinced the shot had already pierced his heart. But the machine dropped the weapon to the floor and knelt before its creator.
"I couldn't… That's not why I came here. Eve and Xu Wen sent me for another reason," Rose confessed.
"Eve… that woman is a psychopath, Rose. She's endured cruelty beyond measure, and that cruelty has become part of her very being." The doctor bent down, lifting the machine to its feet, then opened a black‑and‑white file. Rose stared at the image of Eva in a sleek black suit.
"All my years of study, I've made countless mistakes. But she, she corrected them. She helped me build you. And she's lived for more than a century. Eva Maier, World War 2, She believed in the resurrection theory, something nearly impossible, even with ARCI knowledge. Yet she managed the absurd: draining the power grid of a city, storing human memory as data."
"After her own husband took thousands of lives. Eva denounced her supreme leader, murdered and burned every soldier in that camp, erased any trace of her existence, and fled to the Middle East. There she hired mercenaries known as the SIZ[1] to look for supplies and oil. Over time, the desert broke her mind completely. She abandoned humanity itself. Eventually, she found me many years ago… and proposed a project: the creation of a perfect lifeform. Xu Wen may be a businessman, but Eva, she wants you more than anyone."
"And the result?" Rose pressed.
"You are what she expected to be, Rose." Takiya smiled. But at that moment, a fist smashed through the villa's window, shards scattering as death lunged for the doctor. Rose reacted instantly, kicking the old man aside to save him.
"Run. I'll handle this," the machine said, eyes fixed on the shattered window.
From the rooftop edge, a woman's silhouette appeared, long black hair cascading, crimson eyes glowing in the storm's flash.
Rose recognized her instantly. "You've come."
"You dare defy orders, Rose? That old man should've been dead ten minutes ago. Father commanded it—you were meant to obey."
"Xu Wen is no father of mine. He never was, and never will be. And there's something else I need to know…"
Eva smirked, dropping down onto the broken glass. "Oh? Speak."
"You shouldn't have come alone…" Rose's words trailed off as he drew the Hitodama blade from his artificial spine. Steel clashed, sparks flying as he struck Eva, hurling them both outside. She slammed into the grassy slope, while Rose advanced, sword raised beneath the moonlight. "You've lied to me all along, Eve."
Eva chuckled darkly. "You're right… But you're wrong thinkin' i am here all alone." Gunfire erupted nearby. Rose sensed assassins closing in and slipped into the shadows. Footsteps pounded the earth—swift, relentless. He sprinted from the villa as bullets tore through the night. To him, they seemed to crawl through the air. Drawing his sidearm, he fired back at their origin. Eva strode across the sand, unfazed by the storm of lead.
"Not so rough, boys," she called.
Clouds swallowed the moon. Rose used the darkness to vanish into the brush, moving toward the fishing pier. Behind him, Eva's hunters gave chase—five figures clad in black, faces masked, movements unnaturally fluid. They leapt like machines, not men. Rose halted, scanning their bodies with mechanical eyes.
"They're not human…" He tapped his ankle. A blade snapped free from his heel. One of the hunters lunged, wrist blades gleaming. Rose spun, his kick driving steel into the creature's synthetic skull, shattering its memory core and silencing its motion.
[1] From After Our Decade Vol. 1