Ryo Tanaka was a ghost haunting his own life. He sat in the sterile safe house, his shoulders slumped, the impeccable suit hanging loosely on his frame. The formidable director, the master of Japan's most secret project, had been hollowed out, replaced by a man haunted by a single, repeating image, his daughter Yuko's face, pale against a hospital pillow. Sarah Mitchell's offer, delivered with cold precision, echoed in his mind, a siren's call he no longer had the will to resist. The greater good of humanity, the strategic advantage of the nation, it was all meaningless noise. The only signal that remained was the desperate, selfish frequency of a father's love, a weakness that now eclipsed all else. He would save his daughter. Let the world burn.
The silence of the facility was shattered not by an alarm, but by the wet, choked gurgle of a Russian sentry as a ceramic blade opened his throat. General Zhang Wei's intervention was not a declaration of war, but a surgical excision. His team, clad in black, fluid armor, moved through the corridors like phantoms, their suppression rifles emitting soft puffs of sound. Their intelligence was flawless, their target clear, the girl.
Dimitri Orlov, drinking cheap vodka in a monitoring room, felt the shift in the air before the first silent alarm flashed on his screen. He smiled, a predator welcoming the hunt. He had expected the Americans, but the Chinese, this was a interesting twist. He racked the slide of his heavy pistol. "The mice are in the walls," he growled to his remaining men, who readied their own brutal, unsuppressed weapons. The shadow war was over. The corridor war had begun.
In the crossfire, Professor Kenji Sato found his moment. The gunfire and shouts were a symphony of his failure, but they also provided cover. He slipped into Elyra's cell, his face ashen but his eyes resolute. "We do not have much time," he whispered, his voice tight. "I cannot undo what I have done, but I can get you out." He guided her into a ventilation shaft, the metal groaning under their weight. They emerged into a dimly lit service corridor, freedom a fire exit away.
But Orlov was thorough. Cutting off a retreat, he and two of his men appeared at the corridor's end. "A brave but stupid attempt, Professor," Orlov said, raising his pistol. There was no grand standoff. Sato shoved Elyra behind a heavy electrical conduit as Orlov fired twice. The bullets tore into Sato's chest, slamming him against the wall. He slid to the floor, a dark red stain blooming across his white lab coat, his eyes meeting Elyra's for a final, apologetic moment before going still.
Elyra ran, a scream trapped in her throat. A stray round grazed her bicep, the burn a jolt of adrenaline. She burst through the fire exit into a rainy alley, stumbling into the path of a startled Japanese police patrol. "He killed him!" she gasped in Japanese, clutching her bleeding arm, her words tumbling out, a mixture of truth and frantic pleas. "Orlov, the Russian, he killed Professor Sato!"
While the firefight between Chinese operatives and Orlov's Spetsnaz raged, Tanaka moved with a ghost's knowledge of his own facility. He entered Naira's cell. The girl was curled in a corner, her eyes vacant, lost in a catatonic state born of unimaginable trauma. He felt a pang of something, regret perhaps, but it was swiftly buried. He wrapped her in a thick blanket, lifting her slight form. "It is over now," he murmured, though the words were for himself. Using a private elevator, he descended to an underground garage where a black SUV with diplomatic plates sat idling. Sarah Mitchell stood beside it, her expression one of cool satisfaction as he placed the bundled child in the back seat.
"You have chosen progress over pride, Ryo," she said. He did not reply, simply climbing in beside his comatose bargaining chip. The SUV pulled away, leaving the battle, his country, and his shattered honor behind, bound for a military airfield and a flight to the United States.
As the vehicle merged onto the highway, a sound unlike any other tore through the dawn, a deep, ripping screech from the heavens. It was not the silent arrival of Azar, but a violent, announcing entry. A meteorite, burning with furious green light, screamed out of the sky and impacted with devastating force into the very heart of the Saitama woods, the hallowed ground of Azar's first steps on Earth.
The explosion was not nuclear, but it was cataclysmic on a local scale. A fireball incinerated the ancient cedar trees. The shockwave radiated outwards, shattering windows in a five-kilometer radius, and the earth itself trembled. For the Japanese people, watching the news in horror, this was no random act of space. This was a targeted strike on a place already whispered about in conspiracy. The government's lies were laid bare. The cosmic was not coming, it was here, and it was angry. The panic was immediate and absolute, a national descent into chaos, as the public realized they were not just spectators in a global crisis, but the primary target.