The latch finished its slow confession. The steel door eased inward two inches, then six, then all the way—quiet, almost courteous.
HUNK stepped in like a punctuation mark. Black webbing.
He did not smell like the typical sweat or fear in a zombie-infected city. He smelled like clean oil and winter.
"Hands where I can see." His voice came filtered and calm through the gas mask. "Comply and nobody has to—"
Leon fired first—a warning snap into the upper jamb that screamed off steel and sparked the air.
"—be stupid," HUNK finished, unfazed.
What happened next almost looked like gravity changing its mind. HUNK's shoulder dipped, arm swept, and the point man's smoke puck rolled in a lazy arc. A gray curtain bloomed silent and fast, swallowing the door and the nearest crates. Shapes blurred.
Jill's "Hold!" became "Down!" as the point man ghosted left, baton cracking Kevin's wrist hard enough to drop his Shotgun, then turning the same motion into a sweep that took David's knee. Leon charged; HUNK let him, moved a half-step to the wrong place on purpose, and the rookie's grab closed on nothing. A thumb to the nerve cluster under Leon's ear, a shove, a mercy trip—down. Tyrell came in tight with a knife; HUNK met him blade-on-blade, rolled the lock, and put him into the wall so gently it was almost an insult.
"Non-lethal," Alyssa muttered, watching through watering smoke-stung eyes. "How considerate."
"Efficient," Carlos corrected, already coughing. "Move!"
Claire flattened over Ruiz as George hauled the med drip behind a column. Alyssa dived for the generator switch—if the lights cut, smoke was king—but HUNK had already mapped that line; a canister kissed the floor beside the cabling with a tiny pop, painting the rubber in adhesive foam. Alyssa's fingers stuck fast.
"Cute," she gritted.
"Don't," Jill snapped at HUNK, stepping up, muzzle steady.
HUNK glanced at the pistol, then at Jill, calculating and slow. "Stars." Not a question. He moved before she could. A heel to the crate, the top edge becoming a springboard; he rose, then vanished over the smoke like a shark cutting current. Jill pivoted, sighted center mass through gray. HUNK's glove nudged her barrel aside with professional courtesy and politely removed the gun. It was almost tender.
Kevin—bless him, reckless—came on with a two-by-four like a medieval peasant storming a tank. HUNK slid under the swing, levered the plank away, and in the same breath put the boy on his back with the baton across his throat. Kevin gagged, fingers scratching at composite.
Everything funneled down to that sound. Azizah heard it and moved.
"Stop!" she called, clear over the room. "Stop." She lifted both hands, palms out, Widow's Bite bracers dim. "You want your objective. You'll get it faster if you don't waste time killing my people."
HUNK didn't look up. The baton pressed a fraction deeper. "not my problem."
"Then don't make them your problem." Azizah's voice went steel-quiet. "Duel. Me and you—"
"I refuse," HUNK said, as if commenting on weather. "Stand down, surrender the Birkins, and none of you die. That's the offer."
The tiny click in his ear was almost nothing—but the room's smoke held sound like a bowl. A third voice slid into his channel, calm and cultured and faintly amused, as if smiling in a mirror.
"Accept."
"Sir?." HUNK replied, without turning his head.
"Grant the combatant her test, Mr. HUNK," the voice purred, crisp vowels skimming consonants. "A variable presents itself. You know how I value data. Besides…" A beat of silk. "Promised terms have their uses."
HUNK's chin tipped a degree. "Understood, Sir."
Azizah doesn't hear the voice, but if she did, she might have found it familiar.
HUNK lifted the baton off Kevin's throat and stood in one fluid breath, as if rising were a single, respectful word. Kevin rolled aside and hacked in smoke, eyes wild, hands to his neck.
"Terms," HUNK said.
"If I win," Azizah said, not giving herself time to be afraid, "you walk away. No bodies on the floor. No trophies. You leave the fence and you don't come back tonight."
"And if I win," HUNK replied.
"You take what you came for." Azizah's jaw flexed once. "
"Accepted." The word was a stamp.
Jill hissed. "Azizah—"
"Trust me," Azizah said softly, never taking her eyes off the mask.
Her system hummed in the back of her skull, the way a bowstring feels before sound.
System Prompt: New Quest recognized: Duel Protocol (one-on-one). Environmental interference: limited. Recording telemetry. Do not die.
Rewards: 500 points, + 3 gacha spin
They squared off in the open ribbon of concrete between the generator column and the loading bay stairs. Smoke thinned to a low veil. The drone overhead widened its figure-eight, then froze at the perimeter, light dim, watching like a patient moon.
HUNK didn't posture. He settled into a stance that was somehow no stance at all—every avenue closed, every limb relaxed and ready. Azizah bounced once on the balls of her feet, rolled her shoulders, and slid into a tight, low guard. Knees inward, hips ready to snap.
She went first.
A probing kick at shin height, foot turned in to test his weight—he caught it with a small, almost affectionate scoop and sent it back to her with a tap that said, I see you. She didn't blush; she blurred. Two quick low kicks—inside, outside—then a feinting knee and a heel whip toward the mask. HUNK's hands moved like doors on oiled hinges. One palm met her heel and pushed her spin along instead of stopping it; she landed facing empty air while his baton's rubberized head kissed her ribs and said hello.
Pain flashed white and honest. Azizah's laugh came out a little too bright. "Rude."
"Efficient," he said again.
She reset, breath thin. Don't chase. Angle him. Her eyes flicked past his shoulders to the room—three anchor points, one dangling chain hoist, a low stack of pallets, the fixed beam Ada had been using as a catwalk. Lara's Skill took the cue.
Azizah drove in—front kick to body, punching him back two steps into her angle. He gave ground with the kind of respect you grant to momentum. She followed with a fast stepping knee, used the contact as a vault, and went up—two steps on the shelving, a hand to a beam, twist, and she was above him, coming down like a falling comma. Her heel scythed for the collar. HUNK turned under her in a controlled pivot that should not have been possible in that much gear. Her heel met plate, skittered, and she landed hard enough to rattle teeth.
Micro-diagnostic: Kinetic weave integrity 61%. Lung capacity down 6%.
"Azizah," Jill warned, voice pitched low. "He's reading you."
"Let him," Azizah said, and ignited the Bite.
Blue-white licks of electricity crawled up the Widow bracers; her gauntlets hummed a sound that made fillings sing. HUNK's head cocked. Interest? Appreciation? Hard to tell behind red glass.
She flicked her wrist and sent one coil's charge down a loose chain; the metal danced and sparked, popped like a string of firecrackers, and the sudden thunder of it made the whole room flinch—including HUNK. It wasn't much. But it was the half-breath she needed.
She dove into that breath.
Short, brutal: palm-heel to the diaphragm; elbow up under the plate seam; a chain-wrapped fist across the mask; brake, pivot, low sweep. HUNK hopped the sweep, baton snapping down at her collarbone—she took it on the bracer, teeth buzzing, and hammered a Bite into the exposed side seam of his armor. The charge bled through the gap and his left hand stuttered—only for a blink—but she felt it.
"Noted," she said.
He answered with violence measured in centimeters. A palm crash took her sternum. The baton rose, flipped, and the non-lethal tip became a hook. It caught the edge of her bracer, twisted, and her whole body followed the torque like it belonged to him. The floor hit her back without ceremony. His boot pinned her shoulder.
"Yield," HUNK said, not gloating. A simple administrative request.
"Can't," Azizah wheezed. "I'm terrible at paperwork."
She punched the floor.
The Bite discharged through concrete, up rebar, and into the plate on HUNK's boot. It wasn't elegant. It was desperate and a little stupid. But electricity hates rules. It crawled wherever it could, and for once, physics chose a side.
HUNK recoiled enough to free her shoulder. She rolled, coughed, and came up in a rising cyclone of kicks—the kind that would look like showing off if it wasn't so functional. Snap to the thigh to deaden, turn-kick to the ribs to test plates, axe down to the shoulder seam. He ate the first two, blocked the third, and tried to step inside on her spin.
That's where she wanted him.
She collapsed the spin into a clinch, knee riding up the line of his armor until it found soft under the edge of the vest. A grunt—quiet, surprised—breathed through the filters. She locked both Bite bracers to either side of his helmet ring and arced them—not a full blast, a cruel drip. Enough to set the world inside his mask to snow.
HUNK chose the clean option: he headbutted her.
The mask hit her brow like a verdict. Stars burst. She tasted metal and memory. She let go because her fingers forgot they were fingers.
"Zee!" Leon barked.
"Stay!" Jill snapped, eyes never leaving the duel. "Trust her."
HUNK recalibrated in half a heartbeat—literal. Her system read it in the pulse of his presence.
Telemetry: Subject HR drop → 58 BPM. Breathing shallow. Neural artifact scanning? Unknown.
"Sir," HUNK reported, almost too low to hear. "Target demonstrates anomalous capability."
The voice in his comm warmed. "Noted. Continue."
Azizah spat pink, grinned mean, and went back in.
No pretty kicks now. Just muscle memory and the small, ugly solutions you learn when nothing else works. She attacked his joints: elbow hyperextension feints; heel stamps aimed for boot laces; fingers snaking for the one buckle that looked newer than the others. He denied her with insultingly small movements, answering with baton kisses that would write novels in bruises tomorrow. He was better. He was. And he knew it.
So she cheated.
Alyssa's sniffer sat six feet away on a crate, still blinking a patient green from the trackers in a tin. Azizah pivoted on a missed baton and heel-flicked the device so it skittered under HUNK's boot. The little screen synced with her bracers for a flicker—one angry beep—and she slammed the Bite down into the crate's rebar skeleton.
The pulse was ugly and local, a temper tantrum blasted into steel. Every hidden tracker in their Faraday lunchbox squealed then died; HUNK's headset popped with a spike of interference; the mask's red lenses ghosted with static for a single, perfect second.
Azizah filled that second with everything she had left.
She went high to draw his guard, then vanished low, shoulder-exploding into his hips. He started to sprawl her—textbook—so she crushed the move wrong on purpose, turning her collapse into a dive between his legs; the world flipped; she tangled an ankle and rolled, wrenching, twisting, dragging. He refused the fall, planted, resisted—and that was what she wanted: commitment. She kicked the back of his knee with a shout that sounded like a word she didn't have time to think about. Something in the joint complained. The big man dropped—half, but enough—and she was already moving, already climbing his back, already locking her forearm under his chin.
A rear naked choke on a man in a gas mask is a stupid idea unless you know exactly where the seals sit. Lara skill had taught her what leather smells like when it's old. Chun-Li skill had taught her what balance feels like when it's perfect.
She cinched, elbow under the ring. The Bite crackled—not a blast, a whisper right where rubber met metal. There was a delicate sound, almost a sigh—the sound of a seal losing faith.
HUNK's hand found her forearm. He could have picked her off like lint. He didn't. He paused, as if considering the data point she'd become.
"Enough," she rasped into the filters. "Yield. On terms."
He didn't answer her. "Sir."
The voice in his ear—came smooth as ever, faint static catching on the edges like glass in light.
"Data sufficient," The Voice said pleasantly. "Withdraw, Grim reaper."
"Copy."
The weight beneath her shifted. Not a buck—he would have crushed her. Not a throw—he would have ended her. He simply changed geometry. One hand found the choke point and—politely, inexorably—unwound her arms. She landed on her knees, bracers humming, breath scraping. HUNK rose, knee a little off, mask lenses still with snow on the edges.
"You won," he said. It sounded like a diagnosis he was not unhappy to write.
Azizah got to her feet because pride is a kind of brace. "On terms," she said. "You walk. No bodies. No trophies."
HUNK nodded once. "As promised."
He pivoted to the door. The point man ghosted from smoke to his shoulder like a parentheses closing. As he stepped out, HUNK paused, head tilting—listening. Or recording. Or both.
He did not look back. He didn't have to.
The smoke thinned in the door's wake. Space rushed back into lungs that didn't realize they'd been holding it.
"Kevin," Jill said, already kneeling, fingers gentle on the angry bruise across his throat. "You okay?"
Kevin touched the mark, coughed, and wheezed a laugh he definitely hadn't earned. "Think I saw Jesus," he croaked. "He said learn to duck."
"Learn to shut up," Leon said, relieved.
George's hands were already on Azizah's brow, checking for concussion. Cindy's palms were warm against her wrist. Leon retrieved Jill's pistol and put it back in her hand without a word. Tyrell rolled his shoulder and eyed the door like it had said something rude about his mother.
Up on the beam, Ada crossed her legs at the ankle and smiled to herself, small and private, like a cat who'd watched a very interesting songbird survive a storm. "Well," she murmured, "that was entertaining."
Alyssa peeled her fingers free of the foam with a string of profanity that could pickle cucumbers. "Someone get me a solvent and a medal."
Azizah's system exhaled in her head.
Contract Complete: Duel Protocol honored. Opponent retreating.
Rewards: 500 Points, + 3 Ghaca Spin
Azizah swallowed. The bite of copper had gone; the ache behind her eyes stayed.
"Report," Jill said to the room, voice not quite steady, not quite shaking. "Count hands. Count heads. Move the kid." She looked to Azizah and let something like a smile show up for one breath. "Nice work."
"Felt like falling down stairs with better lighting," Azizah admitted, then glanced at the door and lowered her voice. "He's not gone."
Carlos followed her gaze. "You saw him set a tail?"
"No." She touched a finger to her temple. "I felt one."
A mile of alley away, under a collapsed awning the color of old bruises, HUNK stood in the soft hiss of his own breath. The point man kept watch. HUNK listened.
The Mastermind voice returned, softer now it had what it wanted, conversational like a quiet piano. "Fascinating," he said. "A mere police officer, yet she gathered allies, outsmarted chaos… and defeated an infected William Birkin, She's far more intriguing than the virus itself."
"Proceed to observe?" HUNK asked.
"Mm." The smile was audible. "From the shadows, Mr. HUNK. As promised. No more theatrics tonight. The city will provide us with plenty of those tomorrow."
The line went clean.
To Be Continued . . .