The warehouse floor didn't just shake; it groaned under the weight of the blast. As the front gate was turned into scrap metal, the air turned into a thick, gritty fog of drywall dust and cordite. The only thing cutting through the haze was the cold, rhythmic blue pulse from Chano's monitors.
"Pucha! My gear! Do you know how much that costs?" Philip yelled. He didn't sound scared; he sounded personally offended. His butterfly knives were already a silver blur in his hands. "Marco! Get Miss Gorgeous into the vault! Move it!"
Marco didn't hesitate. He practically hauled Bella off her feet toward a reinforced steel room at the back. "Ma'am, get down and stay down! Don't look out, no matter what it sounds like!"
Ten men in tactical gray surged through the smoke. These weren't the gym-rats from Laguna; these were Scorpion Strikers. They moved in a tight, professional formation, suppressed submachine guns sweeping the room with clinical intent.
"Chano, just focus!" Philip shouted, a manic grin splitting his face. "I'll handle the neighbors! It's showtime!"
Philip moved like he was made of liquid. He didn't just charge; he vanished into the shadows between the shipping crates. One second a striker was clearing a corner, the next, Philip was sliding under a workbench like a baseball player into home base, opening the man's Achilles tendon with a flick of his wrist. Before the guy could even hit the floor, Philip kicked a stack of old CPU towers over, burying a second attacker under ten years of heavy hardware.
Through it all, Chano was a statue. His fingers hammered at the keys with a speed that sounded like a hailstorm on a tin roof. He didn't even flinch when a bullet ricocheted off a nearby lathe.
"Chano! Two on your left!" Marco yelled, popping off two rounds from behind a concrete pillar.
"I see them," Chano muttered. He didn't reach for his gun. He slammed a specific macro on the board.
Above the strikers, an old industrial crane Philip used for pulling motorcycle engines suddenly groaned to life. It swung with violent, mechanical precision. The massive iron hook caught two strikers mid-stride, launching them into a brick wall with a sickening thud.
"Nice one, 'tol! Just like the arcade!" Philip cheered, burying a blade into a tactical vest. "But we need some background music for this!"
"Philip, shut up and fight!" Chano snapped. "I'm in."
Chano had finally cracked the strikers' encrypted comms. He tapped his headset, his voice dropping into a cold, authoritative rasp. "Team Bravo, status check."
"Moving on target, sir," a voice crackled back. They thought they were talking to their lead.
"New orders," Chano said, a dark smirk tugging at his lips. "Target has triggered an EMP. Drop your weapons and retreat to extraction in thirty seconds, or your gear will detonate."
"Wait, what?! What EMP—"
Chano didn't give them time to think. He executed a command that overcharged the electronic sights on their rifles.
Zzzzzzt!
The high-tech optics began to spark and smoke. To a pro, a malfunctioning weapon in a dark room is a death sentence. They panicked.
"Now, Philip! Marco!"
"Copy that!" Marco stepped out, picking off the disoriented men with surgical headshots.
Philip, meanwhile, was having way too much fun. He scrambled up a rack of tires, performed a backflip that would have made an acrobat jealous, and landed squarely on the lead striker's shoulders.
"Surprise, mother-pucker!" Philip teased, before a swift elbow to the temple sent the man into dreamland. "Scorpion Group? You look more like cockroaches to me!"
In minutes, the warehouse went silent, save for the groans of the dying and the rhythmic click-clack of Chano's keyboard. The blue 'X' on his screen had bled into a dark, angry crimson.
"I found them," Chano said, his voice trembling with a rage he could no longer hide. "They aren't just in Manila. The signal for the San Pedro hit is coming from a villa in Antipolo. 'L' is there."
Philip wiped a smear of blood off his blade onto his jersey. "Antipolo? 'Tol, that's a trek. The traffic on Marcos Highway is a nightmare."
Chano stood up and grabbed a heavy black riding jacket. "I'm not taking the highway."
He looked at Philip. "Is the Kuro-Hebi ready?"
Philip's eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas. He ran to the back and ripped a dusty tarp off a machine that looked like a stealth fighter on two wheels—a pitch-black, customized Kawasaki Ninja H2R.
"For you? Always," Philip said, tossing him the keys. "Nitro-injected and carrying a built-in signal jammer. Not even military radar will see you coming."
Chano looked at Bella as she stepped out of the vault, pale and shaking. "Stay with Philip. Marco, keep her safe. I'm going to San Pedro, and then I'm ending this in Antipolo."
"Chano, wait!" Bella called out. "It's a trap! That's exactly what he wants!"
Chano pulled on his carbon-fiber helmet, the visor clicking shut with a sharp snap.
"I know," Chano's voice echoed from behind the glass. "But he forgot one thing. I'm not the one in the cage. I'm the one hunting the lion."
The engine roared to life, a sound that shook the very foundation of the warehouse. With a scream of tires, Chano vanished into the Binondo night, a black ghost on a mission of fire.