The first shot wiped the smile off the room.
A mask near the left wall split where the red light kissed it. The figure under it folded. The other smiles did not move. Then they did.
Knives rose.
Not steel - Luminite. Blades the color of bruised violet, each one pulsing faintly as if a small storm lived inside the edge. They lifted from sleeves and wrists and the black table itself, hung for a heartbeat, then slid into motion. No strings. No wires. The Moirai stood still with open palms while the knives moved for them like trained birds.
A purple blade flew past Takeshi's temple. Another curved midair and came back along the same line from behind. A third drove straight for his heart. Marcus's pistol spoke twice. One body dropped. The other shot rang off a knife that turned in the air and met the bullet - not luck, control. The round pinged aside and shaved a red spark from the wall.
Heat answered in the wrist. The red gem pushed a pulse up through the plates of the arm, glow threading through black metal. Servos caught and locked. The first knife to test that palm hit hard, bit, and stayed. Fingers closed. Violet light cracked like ice. Shards slid across the glossy floor.
Another blade scraped the shoulder plates and left a bright line. A third dived for the thigh. The forearm turned, caught it on the ridge along the radius, and drove the tip into the table. The slab swallowed the blade up to the hilt and kept it.
At the head of the room, the tall figure lifted both hands. A ring of knives rose and spread, points aimed outward - a crown turned into teeth. The circle tightened. Knives darted in patterns that never crossed twice.
Takeshi moved through them.
Not all the way. Never all the way. The gem did not slow time. It simply delivered decisions sooner. The pistol worked in rude syllables - one, two, three - and masks tipped back. A violet arc streaked at waist height. Heat licked under the ribs, followed by a thin, creeping cold. Filed for later.
Four blades drew toward the spine from blind angles. The arm went quiet for a half breath, then alive again. Plates flared. Edges struck and skittered. A sweep knocked two from the air and drove a third into the floor so hard the handle snapped.
The room murmured - not words, the sound of agreement.
Boots climbed the slab. Higher ground, slick but honest. Better sightlines. The gem surged. Heat climbed through bone as if the arm wanted to be the only thing in the body. Teeth ground once. The burn settled into something he could carry.
Two quick steps took him into the crown's mouth. Knives tried to cinch. The arm tore through the net and flung a captured blade back hard enough to punch through a mask and thud into the wall. The pistol barked. Another body folded. Red strips along the floor flickered, as if the room itself had flinched.
At the end of the table, two fingers closed. Six knives changed angle without passing through a middle. They spilled toward his chest. Drop, roll, turn. Edges hissed overhead, spun, learned his cadence, came back smarter. The wrist twisted and the arm rang like a bell as three struck in the same instant. A shot found the soft under a jaw and broke the rhythm.
Too many reflections. The glass threw extra lines into the fight. A chair smashed into a panel. Spiderweb-like fractures bloomed. Red data-veins flashed and died. The room darkened a shade. Fewer mirrors. Fewer easy lanes.
Both hands at the far end rose high. Every blade in the room jumped - whole, broken, even splinters - edges turning toward one point like teeth in a new mouth.
No running. Not this far.
With a small dash, like Kori's - infinitely slower, but still strangely fast, Takeshi was behind them . His boot met someone's back. The tall figure tilted forward. His hand found a throat under a mask and spoke.
A breath. No more.
Three shots emptied into the nearest smiles. Two dropped. A third took a round in the chest and fell without learning how. Click. Spent. The pistol left his hand and struck a face. The arm followed - a weight like a falling door. Vertebrae learned a new angle and stayed with it.
More footsteps poured from the corridor. A dozen black suits, then more. Knives rose, purple storms forming their own weather.
No counting now. His revenge blinded him.
Catch. Crush. Rip. The arm turned blades into scrap and wrists into lies. A mask made a shield for three heartbeats, then shredded when Takeshi's hand gave it a not-so-friendly nudge. A suit went through the red-lit glass and sketched sparks across the far wall. A body hit the floor so hard the black surface crazed and mapped a spiderweb beneath a spine.
The knives hummed when they moved fast enough - a thin sound like a string drawn tight. Violet streaks wrote lines in the air. Some met metal and died. A cut licked the thigh. Another scored the back. Neither felt like losing. Both felt like paying the bridge.
The technique showed its teeth. Three knives spread, took the angles of a triangle, and boxed ten bullets into a useless spin. Rounds pinged off and buried themselves in the wall. Answering that, two blades were caught mid-flight and crushed until they exploded. Shards tore into a mask that had been shaping another volley. The deflection failed and a stray round completed the lesson.
Deadly fragments swarmed again - tighter, smarter - but their chorus had thinned. The arm's plates flared brighter. Each block threw violet sparks into the dark. A spinning blade tilted a fraction, changing a kill into a deep line along the waist. Fire ripped through muscle. The palm pressed in and held. Not yet.
The broken table became a path, as the last ones standing circled it. Two masks shattered under the heel of a hand. One knife ended in a red palm. For a flicker, gem answered gem - red and violet - then the Luminite in his grip shattered like an old cup.
Silence arrived by pieces. The hum of the generators returned to the ear. Red floor lines steadied. Knives still moved, but fewer, and not like a choir anymore.
Three remained.
Hands lifted. Ten violet points rose and hung, bright and mean.
The arm raised, palm open, red lines chasing to the fingertips. The first blade darted. A catch on the ridge, a twist - snap. The second came straight for an eye. Two fingers pinched and pushed until the edge screamed and went slack. The third took a clever arc for the kidney. A step, a turn, an elbow like a hammer. The face behind that knife met the floor and stayed.
No more smiles.
Black walls. Red lines. Purple shards everywhere like fallen flowers in a nightmare. The table lay in two halves, one against ruined glass, one on its side. Air tasted like hot metal.
Silence finished arriving.
The slide on the pistol locked back. Plates along the arm eased. The gem dimmed to a steady ember.
Fingers went to the slash at the waist. It felt a warm bloom. When the hand came away, the smear looked wrong - red too dark, with a faint violet note that clung to the skin instead of running.
Poison.
No curse. No magic. Just the ominous promise that your time is near. Takeshi leaned on the wall, and then slid down. Purple glitter lay thick underfoot. White fragments of masks winked in the dim light.
His revenge was finished. The room had run out of enemies. What remained belonged to another kind of work.
The hand pressed back to the wound. The other opened and closed once, testing the fingers. The gem gave one sharp pulse and settled, as if keeping its life.
Somewhere above, a city breathed. Somewhere else, a letter stood against a wall where morning and evening could find it.
He looked once at the empty room, then at the dark stain spreading under his palm - and at the faint, stubborn violet that would not let go.