Torn Seams

Mika shuts her eyes as the assassin's blade plunges toward Mika's heart. This is gonna hurt.

But instead of the sound of piercing flesh, she hears the sound of metal clashing against metal.

Ray’s shortsword deflects the attack.

“Quite the party you're throwing,” Ray quips with a slight smug tone.

Mika exhales in relief as Ray shoves the attacker back with a powerful thrust of his shortsword. He spins the blade in his hand, dropping into a low guard stance, his sharp eyes fixed on the masked combatant in the dim red emergency lighting.

The attacker lunges forward with the knife, swinging with wild arcs. Ray sidesteps with fluid grace, parrying with precision. counterstrike lands cleanly on the combatant's shoulder. The attacker swings again, but Ray blocks it with his arm guard sparks fly as the sword scrapes against the metallic slash-resistant layers. Ray attempts another slash, but it misses as the attacker retreats, giving them crucial spacing.

“You're late,” Mika growls, clutching her bleeding thigh as she struggles to her feet.

“Fashionably, it seems,” Ray replies without missing a beat. “Can you walk?”

“I can fight.” Mika winces as she shifts her weight. “Help me get to the armory.”

Within moments, more of Singer’s men in dark tactical gear flood from both ends of the corridor, each wielding their own blade of choice.

Ray glances over his shoulder at Mika. “I’ll take the left. You take the right.”

“Deal.”

The duo moves in tandem. Mika dodges a launched kunai and retaliates with a brutal jab to the throat of one assailant, following it up with a knee to the groin. Ray ducks a second kunai, its trajectory slicing the air mere inches from his head. His shortsword flashes light as it swings, dispatching another attacker to the ground.

With their path momentarily clear, Mika pushes forward, limping toward the armory. Her fingers instinctively punch the memorized code into the keypad, only to realize it’s been torn open. The handle on the reinforced steel door has been cleanly severed.

Ray signals to Mika and presses a finger to his lips. He eases the door open, revealing rows of vandalized weapon lockers. He hears voices echo inside, altered with modulated tones.

“You’re deviating from the objective.”

“I want that katana. What kind of officer uses a katana, anyway?”

The hiss of a laser cutter fills the room. Sparks begin flying as it concentrated laser contacts the cold steel of the locker.

“Singer isn't gonna be happy if she catches us slacking off.”

“This will only take a second.” The metal glows red hot as it gives way, boring a hole into the mechanical lock.

Soon, the locker door swings open with a creek.

“Got it.”

Ray steps in right behind the two. “Open sesame.”

The henchmen whirl around, startled. They barely have time to react before catching Ray’s blade with their bodies, crumpling to the floor with dull thuds.

Ray retrieves the katana and tosses it a short distance to Mika. She catches it with ease.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Anytime.”

They step back into the corridor just as a distant scream freezes them in place.

Mika’s eyes widen. “Tomomi,” she whispers.

More of Singer's men round the corner, with multitudes of footsteps approaching rapidly.

“Go. I’ll cover you,” Ray’s eyes narrow.

“But—”

“Don’t worry. Backup’s coming,” Ray insists, stepping forward to block the advancing reinforcements. “Go!”

Mika hesitates, her heart twisting, but Ray gives an resolute expression. She pushes past him, leaving him to hold the line.

She limps up the stairs to the department’s second floor. As she approaches the lab, Mika sees the door ajar and caved in. She hears Singer's voice drift out of the room, somehow both calm and menacing.

“I ask you one more time,” Singer says, her tone mockingly patient. “Where. Is. The. Chip?”

Mika peers through the doorframe and sees Singer crouched over Tomomi, who is bound and trembling on the floor. Purple threads coil around her arms and legs.

Tomomi’s voice quivers. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Singer laughs coldly. “Wrong answer.”

Singer pulls one wire taut, drawing it closer to Tomomi's exposed neck.

Mika's mind races through her options. Her thigh burns with every heartbeat, her breathing ragged, but she tightens her grip on her katana.

Without hesitation, Mika bursts into the room for an ambush, her katana cutting through the air toward Singer’s back.

The masked leader pivots with inhuman speed, deflecting the strike with a needle-like weapon in her hand. Singer shifts to face Mika, and the dot-matrix expression animates from a half-smile to a simple frown.

“Let her go,” Mika demands, ignoring the fire in her leg.

Singer tilts her head. “And who are you? Another rat who’s come to die?”

“Try me,” Mika snarls, readying into a fighting stance.

Singer launches two kunai in quick succession. Mika deflects both with her blade, but Singer pulls on the threads and recalls them back to her hands.

She launches her kunai again, this time coming in low. Mika tries to dodge, but her wounds flare, causing her to falter. In that split second, Singer’s threads snap around her wrist, binding her katana and yanking her closer.

She seizes Mika by the chest and lifts her effortlessly. The masked woman leans in, examining her captured specimen. Singer's visor displays a scanning animation before showing delighted digital eyes.

“A diligent puppet, I see. Your master must be proud of you.”

With a violent toss, Singer hurls Mika out of the lab. Her katana clatters to the floor several feet away.

Singer emerges from the lab, carrying a bound Tomomi under her arm.

“M-Mika!” Tomomi cries out.

Mika scrambles for her weapon, but Singer shoots another kunai out, wrapping around Mika’s ankle, yanking her legs out from under her and tumbling back to the floor.

Singer tosses Tomomi aside and advances on Mika, the clicks of her high heels more devious with each step forward. She grinds one stiletto into Mika’s chestwound, resulting in a blood-curdling scream as fresh pain explodes through Mika's torso.

“How does it feel to be under the boot now, pig?” Singer's voice drips with sadistic pleasure.

Mika's scream of pain morphs into a cry of rage as she claws at Singer's leg, but its results in Singer driving her heel deeper into the wound.

A flash of steel catches Singer's attention. She readjusts just as Ray's blade comes whistling in. Singer catches the steel with her bare hand, seemingly unbothered by the blood dripping down her palm.

In that instant, Mika attacks with her katana, striking Singer’s mask. It rebounds the strike, resonating with a high-pitched clink, but not before chiseling away a piece of the tinted glass.

Mika stumbles backward, shocked by the apparent failure to cause meaningful damage.

But the mask's damage spreads like a spiderweb. The impacted half then shatters, exposing the left side of Singer’s real face. Her porcelain skin and amber eye seems to glow in the dim light.

A moment passes, before her pupil contracts with extreme terror.

Singer screams with a ear-piercing shrill. She frantically covers her exposed face with trembling hands.

“Don't look at me!” she shrieks, retreating back into the corridor, vanishing out of sight.

Without a moment to process what just happened, Ray moves to Tomomi and begins sawing at her bonds with his shortsword, having a lot of trouble with the purple threads.

“Jeez, what is this made out of?”

Mika tries using her katana across the bonds. The superior steel slices the vanadium threads like butter.

Tomomi collapses into Mika's arms, sobbing.

“We have to go. Now.” Ray urges.

Tomomi pulls weakly at Mika's sleeve as she is helped on her feet. “Wait. Have to... get... my...”

The faint whistle of a kunai pierces the air between them. Singer has returned, now in a berserk frenzy. She hurls her weapons in every direction, destroying everything in her path in a temper tantrum. The dot-matrix display on her remaining mask half flickers with violent expressions.

Ray drags Tomomi toward the stairs while Singer shrieks with rage.

A needle-like kunai severs a thick electrical cable feeding one of the server racks. Massive sparks shower the area, separating Mika from the two as lethal current arcs through the air.

Mika ducks behind a desk as needles thunks into the wood before retracting on its thread.

“The box!” Tomomi cries out desperately. “Mika, get my box!”

Singer's tantrum reaches new heights as she demonstrates inhuman strength by hurling large equipment in all directions. Soon the exploding debris ignites wooden paneling, and the flames begin to spread.

The entire upper floor is soon engulfed. Mika navigates her way through the inferno back to the lab, stepping over the mangled sliding door. She frantically unplugs cables from Tomomi's personal gaming compute box, cradling it in her arms.

A fireball roars through the doorway, cutting off her exit. With no other way out, Mika rushes to the taped curtains and rips them down. Thick smoke quickly fills the room, threatening to suffocate her.

Without time to second-guess, she clutches Tomomi's compute box to her chest and hurls herself through the window.

CRASH! The night air rushes past as glass shards glimmer in the radiance of flames. Mika plummets toward the pavement below, praying something will break her fall.