The only sound in the room was the rain hammering against the glass of the Minato high-rise. When the digital display flickered to 06:00, Jin sat on the edge of the bed. There was no headache, only the copper tang of morning lingering in his mouth. He stood up. His soles met the cold marble, but he didn't shiver.
He moved to the bathroom. He didn't linger on his reflection in the mirror; he simply shaved and washed his face. The movements were mechanical—muscle memory taking over, a habit forged over years.
The walk-in closet was silent. From among the dozens of suits hanging in rows, he selected a dark grey turtleneck and a black overcoat. No tie today. Ties made it hard to breathe.
He opened the velvet box on the nightstand.
Resting inside were two matte grey metal cylinders, roughly four centimeters long. Their surfaces were flawless. They were devoid of barrels, triggers, or sharp edges. There was only a faint, barely perceptible indentation where the thumb would rest.
Jin took the cylinders into his palm. The metal was cold against his skin.
They were neither heavy nor light; they possessed the exact weight they were meant to have, fitting as if they were extensions of his own anatomy. He dropped one into his right pocket, the other into his left. Wallet. Phone. He cut the lights and left.
When he reached the garage, the engine's growl ushered in the hum of the outside world.
The café behind the university was packed, defiant against the rain. The air inside was heavy with the scent of roasted beans and damp wool. As Jin entered, a familiar voice rose from a corner table.
"Look, I'm telling you, that professor has it out for me. He deducted points for a doodle in the margins of the last exam!"
As Jin approached the table, Kaito was gesturing wildly with his fork. Shinji, without lifting his head from his laptop, replied in a monotone, "Maybe it's because you drew an anime character on your anatomy final, Kaito."
Yumi was the first to notice him. She set down her mug. "Welcome."
Jin pulled out a chair and sat. He signaled the waiter for a black coffee. "What is he complaining about now?"
"I've been wronged, Jin!" Kaito interjected. "You tell them. Isn't limiting an artist's soul with grades a form of fascism?"
Jin offered a faint, dry smile. "You're in medical school, Kaito. If you draw the spleen in the wrong place, it's not art. It's manslaughter."
Shinji chuckled without pausing his typing. Yumi laughed, shaking her head.
"Fine, fine... You've all become slaves to the system," Kaito muttered, shoving a large piece of cookie into his mouth. Then, his expression turned serious as he faced Jin. "My dad called. The Kurosawa Group has started scholarship interviews. Can you pull some strings, or do we have to crawl through the formal channels?"
"Formal channels," Jin said as his coffee arrived. "But you can list me as a reference on your CV. When HR sees the surname, they won't toss your file in the trash, at least."
"Now that is true friendship!" Kaito slapped the table.
The conversation drifted to campus gossip and the absurdities of a new code Shinji was writing. Jin sipped his coffee, listening. He offered short, precise comments where necessary. He laughed at Kaito's exaggerated stories and offered logical solutions to Yumi's anxieties about her notes. There was nothing extraordinary about it. Just four friends drinking coffee on a rainy morning. Time seemed to drag its feet here, in defiance of the grey world outside.
After a while, Jin checked the watch on his wrist. 08:15.
"I have to move," he said, taking the last sip. "I have a meeting in thirty minutes."
"Tonight?" Yumi asked.
"I'll be in touch," Jin replied. He stopped Kaito, who was attempting to pay, scanned his card, and grabbed his coat, exiting before any protests could be lodged.
The square in front of Shibuya Station was a shifting sea of umbrellas. The rain had intensified. Jin turned up the collar of his coat and dissolved into the crowd.
The scents hitting him as he wove through the masses were the city's natural musk: wet concrete, exhaust, cheap tobacco, sweat, and the commingled breath of thousands. It was a singular, grey noise of smells.
His steps were rhythmic, synchronized with the flow of the bodies.
Just as he reached the center of the crosswalk, the scent hit him.
Jin didn't stop, but the cadence of his breathing shifted instantly.
Sharp. Sugary. Acrid.
Rotting lilacs.
But not like fresh flowers; it was a sickly sweetness, like meat left out to spoil for days, underlaid by the copper tang of rusted iron. Blood.
He didn't turn his head. He scanned the source of the smell through his periphery.
To his right, a middle-aged man was exiting the revolving doors of a large business center. His grey suit was impeccable. He was handing a file to his assistant. People stepped aside for him, bowing in respect.
Jin didn't focus on the man's face, but on his scent. Even with the wind blowing against him, the odor was so dense that the rain couldn't wash it away. The air around the man seemed to blur.
In the back of his mind, the familiar, cold text materialized. No voice, just data.
< Type: Mimic / Origin: Germany > < Class: Zwitter (Hybrid) >
The man paused just as he was about to step into a black vehicle. He tilted his head slightly, sniffing the air. Amidst the noise of the crowd, he had sensed something—perhaps a focus directed solely at him. For a split second, his pupils narrowed into vertical slits before snapping back to normal.
Jin had already looked away, feigning interest in his phone as he blended back into the herd. No need to spook the prey.
The vehicle moved. Exhaust smoke momentarily masked the scent of rotten lilacs, but couldn't erase it. The smell clung to the wet asphalt like a stain.
As Jin slid his phone back into his pocket, his hand brushed the metal cylinder. His fingertips grazed the smooth surface for a fleeting second. The coldness radiated from his fingers up his arm.
He withdrew his hand and continued walking.
Jin slid into his matte black sports car. The engine's roar harmonized with the thunder overhead. His eyes didn't track the limousine visually. As the wipers slashed frantically across the windshield, his senses were locked onto one thing: that scent, hanging in the air, adhering to the wet road.
Jin cut the wheel. Other cars blurred into streaks of light as he passed.
The black limousine veered into the shadows of the rusted hangars in the dock district. Jin killed the engine a hundred meters back, tucked in the blind spot between two massive fuel tanks. With the wipers still, the rain hammering the windshield turned the world into a blurred, grey painting.
Jin didn't exit immediately. He reached under the passenger seat, fingers finding the hidden seam in the upholstery. He touched a cold latch. With a slight pressure, a mechanical click echoed, and the stash opened with a hydraulic hiss. Resting in a bed of black velvet was Jin's other face.
The mask was crafted from a hardened polymer, matte enough to swallow the light. The mouth was sealed, with only ventilation grilles at the jawline. The only thing breaking the smooth darkness of the surface was a vertical, glowing crimson line running down the center.
Jin secured the mask. The locking mechanism snapped at the nape of his neck, and the world shifted into a crimson hue.
He opened the door. Wind and rain whipped his black coat like a cape. His boots moved silently through the oily puddles.
The door of the limousine parked in front of the hangar opened.
The man in the grey suit stepped out. He didn't open an umbrella. He tilted his head back slowly—at an angle defying human anatomy—toward the darkness where Jin approached.
"The Red Line..." The man's voice rasped, sounding as if his throat were filled with broken glass. "So, that smell is coming from you."
Jin didn't answer. He just kept walking.
The man's face convulsed. Something was moving beneath his skin.
CRUNCH!
The sound wasn't like dry twigs snapping, but the wet, sickening noise of bone tearing free from meat. The man's spine shredded his jacket. Shoulder blades burst outward, expanding and fusing into grey, jagged bone plates. His legs elongated, muscle fibers snapping his trousers as they pulled taut like thick cables. His shoes burst apart, replaced by hooked hooves that crushed the concrete.
The three-meter monstrosity dug its claws into a concrete pillar. It gripped the one-ton block as if it were Styrofoam. Its biceps swelled, and it hurled the block at Jin.
Jin pulled his right hand from his pocket. His thumb pressed the metal cylinder.
VOOSH!
A sphere of obsidian flame erupted in his palm, froze instantly, and solidified into the shape of a barrel-less Pistol.
BOOM!
Viscous black energy fired from the weapon, impacting the center of the airborne concrete block. The concrete detonated. But the mass was too great; fragments that weren't pulverized sprayed outward like shrapnel. A fist-sized, jagged chunk of concrete buried itself in Jin's shoulder. His coat punctured; flesh tore. Hot blood mixed with the cold rain.
The Zwitter burst through the cloud of concrete dust. Despite its bulk, it moved with terrifying speed.
Jin used the pistol to shield his chest, but the force of the impact swept his feet off the ground. He was thrown ten meters back, slamming into the corrugated metal wall of the hangar like a ragdoll.
His back hit the metal. The air left his lungs.
But Jin didn't fall.
His boot soles found purchase on the wall. He bent his knees. The metal siding groaned under the strain.
The Zwitter was charging again. Its claws gouged the concrete.
Using the wall as a springboard, Jin launched himself forward like a bullet. He pressed the cylinder in his left hand. Black flame flowed, elongated, and materialized into the Void Katana.
They met in mid-air.
Seeing Jin incoming, the Zwitter shifted the bone plates from its back to its chest. The bones knit together tight, the grey deepening.
CLANG!
Sword met bone. There were no sparks; only black smoke rose. Jin felt the blade fail to bite. The bone was too dense. Carrying his momentum, Jin vaulted over the creature, landing behind it.
The Zwitter didn't turn clumsily. It plunged its right hand into its own chest cavity.
SQUELCH!
It ripped out one of its own ribs, tearing through meat and sinew. It now held a half-meter, jagged bone dagger, dripping with gore.
"Die!"
The Zwitter swung the bone dagger.
Jin ducked. The dagger sliced the air next to his mask. The wind of the swing cut his face. Jin swung the katana upward, aiming for the creature's leg.
SHHHK!
The black steel found muscle, not bone. The creature's calf split open. Blood didn't spray; instead, a pitch-black, tar-like smoke rose from the wound. The Void Metal was rotting the cells on contact.
The creature howled in pain. But it didn't stop.
It slammed its clawed hand into its own wounded leg. It grabbed the rotting, blackening flesh and, without hesitation, ripped it away.
RIP!
It tore off its own meat and cast it aside. Blood flowed freely, but the necrosis had stopped.
Jin's eyes narrowed. This thing wasn't just strong; it possessed a maniacal instinct for survival.
The Zwitter accelerated, despite the leg. It shifted the bone plates down its legs, encasing its shins like sledgehammers.
It spun, delivering a bone-clad kick toward Jin.
Jin blocked with the sword, but the blow was heavy. The blade vibrated violently. Jin's wrists screamed. As he slid backward, his footing slipped on the wet pavement, and he dropped to one knee.
The Zwitter saw the opening. It leaped into the air. The bone dagger was descending, aimed straight for Jin's skull.
Jin couldn't dodge. The distance was too close.
He pressed the barrel of the pistol in his left hand against the blade of the katana in his right. The metal surfaces of the Ignis-Void locked together.
He pulled the trigger.
Black, liquid energy flooded into the body of the sword. The blade instantly flared, the flames turning feral, doubling in size.
Jin gripped the sword with both hands and swung it upward, into the descending death.
VROOOOM!
The supercharged black blade sheared through the Zwitter's bone dagger, then its arm, and finally, its torso.
The bone resisted. For a second.
CRACK!
It sounded like a wet log being split by a heavy axe. The sword shattered the spine, the internal organs, and the hardened bone armor.
The bisected halves of the Zwitter crashed onto the wet asphalt on either side of Jin.
Hot blood and entrails splattered across Jin. His black coat was coated in the creature's filth.
The area fell into a deadly silence. The only sounds were the rain and the hissing of the black smoke rising from the creature's ruined carcass.
Jin lowered the weapons. The flames died, and the metals retracted back into those harmless cylinders.
He collapsed to his knees. He clutched his ribs. He spat the blood filling his mouth onto the ground. His ribs stabbed his lungs with every breath. Blood from the shoulder wound trickled down his arm.
His eyes remained on the pile of meat, still twitching with reflex.
"You should have stayed in Berlin," Jin said, his voice worn and rasping.