The message wasn't just text on a screen. It was a psychic assault. The jagged, blood-red words pulsed with a malevolent energy that vibrated in Leo's teeth, a raw, predatory intent that felt like a physical violation of his private reality.
[Found you, little architect. The hunt begins. Run.]
Before the final word had even faded from his vision, his every instinct, honed by the near-death experience at the tower and sharpened by his new, terrifying senses, screamed a single, primal command: Threat. Immediate. Hostile.
"JULIAN, DEFENSIVE PROTOCOL! NOW!" Leo roared, not in his mind, but out loud, the command ripping from his throat.
He threw himself backwards with a desperate surge of adrenaline, away from the massive panoramic window that had suddenly transformed from a luxury feature into a glaring tactical vulnerability. He shoved the heavy marble table, sending Evelyn's neatly organized reports scattering across the floor. Her voice, a sharp, questioning "Leo?!" from his phone, was cut off as the device skittered away.
He was too late.
The "hunt" hadn't begun. The hunt was already over. This was the kill.
The floor-to-ceiling window, a marvel of reinforced, triple-paned glass designed to withstand hurricane-force winds, did not shatter. It did not explode. It simply ceased to exist. One moment it was a solid barrier of silica and steel; the next, it was gone, imploding into a silent, shimmering cascade of molecular dust that scattered on the wind without a sound.
A figure stood in the empty frame, silhouetted against the bright morning sky, forty stories up.
It was a man, broad-shouldered and coiled with a predatory stillness that made the air in the room feel thick and heavy. He wore practical, dark cargo pants and a tight, black tactical shirt that strained against a physique built for nothing but explosive violence. His face was sharp, angular, with eyes that burned with a wild, feral intensity. This was not an agent. This was not a soldier. This was a force of nature.
And he was grinning.
The Hunter didn't step into the room. He launched himself, a controlled explosion of muscle, clearing the twenty-foot distance from the window ledge to the center of the room in a movement so fast it seemed to break the laws of inertia.
This was not a Cleaner, a tool of a distant board. This was a rival System user.
[System Alert: Predator System User has initiated combat.]
[Analyzing hostile abilities...]
[Primary Concept Detected: [Apex Evolution]. The user can temporarily grant himself the peak evolutionary traits of any animal predator.]
The Hunter was halfway across the room, his grin widening as he activated his first ability, the world seeming to warp around his accelerated form.
[Hostile Skill Activated: [Cheetah's Acceleration].]
He moved from a blur to a near-teleportation. He was aiming not for Leo, but for the weakest point in the room, the one variable the Hunter's own system would have identified as a critical liability: the human connection.
His target was the phone on the floor. Evelyn. It was a symbolic attack, a way to prove he could touch anyone, anywhere, that Leo cared about.
Leo's mind screamed. He couldn't let him get to her, even her connection to this room.
"Julian, intercept!"
Julian moved, a silent, efficient ghost, flowing from his position in the corner to intercept the Hunter's trajectory. But the Hunter was prepared for a direct confrontation. Just as Julian moved to block him, the Hunter's form seemed to shift, to gain a conceptual weight.
[Hostile Skill Activated: [Rhino's Momentum].]
His body became an unstoppable force, imbued with an impossible, conceptual mass. He didn't try to dodge Julian; he simply slammed into him.
The impact was not a loud crash, but a sickening, silent thud, a collision of two impossible forces. Julian, the entity that could deconstruct matter, was sent sliding back several feet across the plush carpet, the kinetic force of the impact absorbed and nullified by his strange physics, but his defensive posture was broken for a critical instant.
The Hunter, his momentum barely blunted, brought his boot down, aiming to crush the phone and sever Leo's link to his CEO.
And this is where he made his first, fatal miscalculation. He assumed the architect's only asset was the bodyguard. He underestimated the mind that saw the entire room as a weapon.
Leo wasn't thinking about protecting himself. He was analyzing the battlefield. The room. The assets. The liabilities. The floor.
The carpet.
"Julian, now!" Leo commanded, his mind laser-focused. [System Command: Edit Object [Persian Rug]. Apply Concept: [Zero-Friction Surface].]
It was a ridiculous, almost insulting use of god-like power. It cost him a tiny sliver of energy, a pinprick compared to his previous expenditures, a flare of pain behind the eyes he barely registered.
As the Hunter's boot descended with enough force to splinter concrete, the intricate weave of the priceless Persian rug beneath his feet suddenly lost all its texture. Its coefficient of friction dropped to a value so close to zero it might as well have been a patch of freshly greased ice on a frictionless plane.
The Hunter's powerful stomp, intended to be a display of overwhelming force, became a comical, undignified slip. His leg shot out from under him, his balance vanished completely, and the 220 pounds of supernaturally enhanced muscle went down hard. He landed on his back with a loud, very human oof of pure surprise.
The grin was gone from his face, replaced by a look of baffled fury.
He had been taken down by interior decorating.
The lull lasted only a second. This was the opening Leo needed.
"Julian, contain!"
Julian, already recovered, flowed forward. He didn't try to punch or kick; violence was inefficient. He moved to the Hunter's limbs, his hands glowing with a soft golden light. [System Command: Edit Object [Hunter's Tactical Shirt/Pants]. Apply Concept: [Absolute Rigidity].]
The Hunter's practical, flexible combat gear instantly became as hard and unyielding as cast iron. The fabric locked in place, turning his clothes into a form-fitting prison. He was pinned to the floor by his own tactical apparel, unable to bend his knees or elbows.
"What is this?!" the Hunter roared, straining against his now-petrified clothes. The fabric creaked and groaned under the strain of his immense strength, but it didn't tear.
[Hostile Skill Activated: [Grizzly's Strength].]
A wave of raw, primal power radiated from him. With a deafening tearing sound, he ripped his shirt apart at the seams, shredding the conceptually hardened material through sheer, brute force. He was getting up.
"He's adapting," Leo muttered, his mind racing. This wasn't a drone following orders. This was a creative, intelligent opponent. Brute force solutions wouldn't work twice. He needed a cage.
Leo scanned the room, his architect's eye seeing not furniture, but tactical assets. A heavy marble table. A tall, metal floor lamp. A ridiculously expensive-looking abstract sculpture made of twisted bronze. Conductors and armatures, his mind supplied. A simple circuit.
The Hunter was on one knee, preparing to launch himself again, his eyes burning with renewed fury.
Leo's eyes locked onto the floor lamp. Not a weapon, he thought. A tool. A conduit.
[System Command: Edit Object [Brass Floor Lamp]. Apply Concept: [Superconductivity].]
[System Command: Edit Object [Bronze Sculpture]. Apply Concept: [Electromagnetic Charge - Positive].]
[System Command: Edit Object [Marble Table Frame]. Apply Concept: [Electromagnetic Charge - Negative].]
It was a complex, multi-layered edit. Leo felt a sharp spike of pain behind his eyes as his [Energy Debt] reminded him he was still on a razor's edge, but he pushed through it, feeding his will into the System. The smell of ozone filled the air.
The Hunter lunged, this time directly at Leo, activating [Cheetah's Acceleration] again.
"Now," Leo whispered.
The air in the room crackled and warped. The newly superconducting floor lamp became the conduit for a massive, invisible magnetic field that erupted between the positively charged sculpture and the negatively charged table. It wasn't a cage of bars; it was a cage of pure physics.
The Hunter, mid-lunge, slammed into this invisible wall of magnetic force as if he'd hit solid rock. Every piece of metal on his body—the zipper on his pants, the steel eyelets on his boots, the buckles on his belt, even the iron in his own blood—was violently repelled or attracted by the opposing fields. His body was twisted in mid-air, contorted into an unnatural, agonizing position as unseen forces tore at him. He screamed, a sound of pure fury and pain, as he was thrown sideways, slamming hard into the concrete wall of the suite.
He slumped to the floor, dazed, his body twitching from the neurological shock of the intense magnetic fields.
Leo was breathing heavily, leaning against the far wall, sweat beading on his forehead. The room was a wreck. The sculpture was humming with a dangerous energy. The table was vibrating.
He had won the engagement. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that this was just the opening move. This was a test.
He walked over and picked up the phone. He could hear Evelyn's frantic, questioning voice on the other end.
"Evelyn," he said, his voice surprisingly calm. "Change of plans. The philanthropic approach is too slow. We're accelerating the timeline."
"Leo, what's happening? I heard a crash! Are you alright?!"
Leo looked at the groaning, defeated form of the Predator System user on the floor. He looked at the wreckage of the hotel suite. He looked at the open space where a window used to be, the wind whipping into the room, a cold, harsh reminder of his vulnerability.
"We just received a competitive offer from a rival firm," Leo said, the dark, cynical humor a welcome relief. "It seems the market is more aggressive than we anticipated."
He looked at the Hunter, whose feral eyes were now locking onto his, filled with a look of pure, murderous promise. This thing wouldn't be stopped by clever tricks forever. He needed to end this. Permanently.
"It's time," Leo said to Evelyn, his voice dropping to a low, cold whisper. "To liquidate the competition."
The Hunter, still twitching on the floor, spat a mouthful of blood onto the ruined carpet and gave Leo a wide, chilling grin. "You can't liquidate me, architect," he rasped. "You're the prey. I'm just the first one they sent. There are more of us. And we're so, so hungry."