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"Don't say his name."
Vera freezes mid-breath. Her mouth's still open. My hand's over it before she can finish.
The apartment door explodes inward.
Three guys in tactical gear flood the kitchen. No warning. No knock. Just the crack of the lock breaking and boots on tile. Vera screams against my palm. I shove her behind me. Alpha's already flooding my veins—ice-cold, surgical, combat-ready.
**THREAT DETECTED. HOSTILES: THREE. ARMED. RETRIEVAL SQUAD CONFIGURATION.**
I know that gear. Black polymer plating. Modular weapon mounts. That's MCA hardware.
Dad's hardware.
"Iris Chen." The lead guy's voice comes through a modulator. Flat. Professional. "Stay where you are. We're authorized to extract you for medical evaluation."
Medical evaluation. Right. That's what they called it when they carved the other sixteen open.
"Get out." My voice doesn't shake. Alpha won't let it. "You're not touching her."
"We're not here for her." He raises one hand. The other two fan out, cutting off the hallway. "We're here for X-07. Company property. You can come quietly or we sedate you. Your choice."
Vera's breathing goes ragged behind me. "Iris, what is he—"
"Don't." I don't look at her. Can't. If I take my eyes off these guys for one second they'll move. "Stay behind me."
Alpha's running threat assessments so fast my vision splits. Weapon load: small arms, non-lethal preferred but lethals on backup. Distance to primary: four meters. Vera: two meters behind, elevated heart rate, zero combat capability.
**RECOMMENDATION: DISABLE HOSTILES. ZERO WITNESSES.**
No.
**CLARIFICATION: VERA CHEN KNOWS YOUR IDENTITY. OPERATIONAL SECURITY COMPROMISED.**
I said no.
Lead Guy takes one step forward.
My body moves before I decide to. My arm snaps up—still flesh, still mine—and I catch his wrist mid-signal. I twist. He grunts. His modulator crackles.
"Don't make this hard," he says.
"You broke into my apartment." I squeeze until something in his wrist pops. He doesn't scream but his breath hisses. "You don't get to tell me what's hard."
The other two move.
One goes for a tranq gun. The other pulls a baton—fuck, that's a shock baton, the charge coil's already glowing blue.
Alpha surges. My metal ribs ignite. The combat arm tries to deploy and I crush it back down because Vera's right there. She can't see. She can't know what I am when I actually fight.
So I do it the human way.
I drop Lead Guy and lunge at Tranq Gun. He's fast but I'm faster. I slam his arm into the counter and the gun goes flying. Shock Baton swings at my spine. I twist. The baton clips my shoulder and the voltage hits like a sledgehammer.
My teeth clench. My nerves scream.
But Alpha reroutes the current through the metal lattice under my skin and I don't go down.
Shock Baton freezes. "What the hell—"
I grab his weapon hand and yank him forward. Headbutt him. His helmet cracks. He staggers back into the fridge and Vera's wedding magnets scatter everywhere.
"Iris!" Vera's voice cracks. "Stop, just stop, they'll kill you—"
"They're gonna try." I kick Tranq Gun in the knee. He drops. Lead Guy's back up, pulling a pistol from his hip.
Not a tranq gun.
A real one.
Alpha screams in my head.
**LETHAL THREAT. DEPLOY FULL COUNTERMEASURES. NOW.**
I can't. Vera will see. She'll see the metal split through my skin and she'll know I'm not her sister anymore.
I'm the thing Dad built.
The weapon he wanted her to be.
Lead Guy levels the pistol at my chest. "Last chance. Stand down or we put you down."
"You can't have her."
Vera steps out from behind me.
No. No no no—
"She's my sister." Vera's shaking but she moves between me and the gun. "You want her, you go through me first."
"Vera, get back—"
"Miss Chen." Lead Guy's modulator flattens his tone but I hear the irritation underneath. "You're a civilian. This is a corporate recovery action. Move or you'll be charged with obstruction."
"Charged by who?" Vera's voice steadies. "MCA doesn't have arrest authority. You're not police. You're just thugs in fancy gear."
Lead Guy's finger shifts on the trigger.
Alpha doesn't ask permission this time.
My combat arm deploys.
Metal splits through the skin of my right forearm in three telescoping segments. Razor edges. Cutting surfaces that glow with contained heat. It looks like a mantis blade made of surgical steel and spite.
Vera sees it.
Her eyes go wide.
"Iris—"
Lead Guy fires.
I shove Vera sideways and the bullet hits me in the chest. Dead center. Right over the metal heart.
It doesn't go through.
The impact knocks me back into the counter. My sternum rings like a bell. Alpha floods my system with enough adrenaline to kill a normal person. My vision goes white-edged and crystalline.
**ARMOR INTEGRITY: 94%. BULLET STOPPED. HEART CASING UNDAMAGED.**
**DEPLOYING COMBAT PROTOCOL ZETA.**
The pain's an afterthought.
I look down. There's a hole in my shirt. The skin underneath is split open. And underneath that is brushed titanium plating curved around my sternum. The bullet's flattened against it like a crushed coin.
Vera makes a sound I've never heard her make.
Not a scream.
Worse.
Like something breaking that can't be fixed.
"Vera—" I start.
Shock Baton rushes me. I don't think. I just move. My combat arm swings in a tight arc and the blade goes through his weapon hand.
Clean.
Surgical.
His fingers hit the floor still gripping the baton.
He screams. Blood sprays the cabinets.
Tranq Gun tries to run. I grab him by the vest and throw him into Lead Guy. They go down in a tangle of limbs and polymer armor.
My arm's still out. Still glowing. I can't retract it. Alpha won't let me. Not until the threats are neutralized.
**TARGETS DISABLED BUT MOBILE. RECOMMEND TERMINATION.**
I'm not killing them.
**THEY HAVE VISUAL CONFIRMATION OF YOUR AUGMENTATION. OPERATIONAL SECURITY REQUIRES—**
I don't care.
Lead Guy shoves Tranq Gun off him and scrambles for his gun. I step on his wrist. Grind down until he lets go.
"You tell Dad," I say quietly, "that if he wants X-07, he comes himself. No more goons. No more guns. Just him."
I let him up. He cradles his wrist. Behind his helmet I can see his eyes.
Calculating.
Recording.
"You're making a mistake," he says.
"Get out."
They leave. Shock Baton's still whimpering, clutching the stump of his hand. Tranq Guy has to half-carry him. Lead Guy backs toward the broken door, gun still in his off-hand, aimed at me the whole way.
"This isn't over," he says.
"I know."
They're gone.
The apartment's trashed. Blood on the floor. My arm's still deployed, blade edges dripping coolant.
I turn to Vera.
She's pressed against the fridge. Staring at me. At the metal arm. At the hole in my chest where she can see the plating underneath.
"Vera—"
"Don't." Her voice is barely a whisper. "Don't say my name with that thing."
"It's still me."
"Is it?" She's crying now. Tears cutting tracks down her face. "Is it really you, Iris? Or are you just—just what he made? Another experiment?"
The words hit harder than the bullet.
Alpha chimes in my head. Cold. Informative.
**INCOMING TRANSMISSION. ENCRYPTED CORPORATE CHANNEL.**
**SOURCE: MCA COMMAND.**
**DECRYPTING.**
The message scrolls across my vision.
**REVISED MISSION PARAMETERS:**
**PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: RECOVER X-07 UNIT. ALIVE.**
**SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: VERA CHEN. TERMINATE IF INTERFERENCE CONTINUES.**
**AUTHORIZATION: RICHARD CHEN. CEO.**
I stare at the words.
At Dad's name on the kill order.
Vera sees my face change. "What? What is it?"
I want to tell her. Want to warn her. But my throat's closed up and Alpha's running combat scenarios where I have to choose between her life and mine.
"Iris." She takes one shaking step toward me. "What did they just send you?"
I open my mouth.
The apartment door opens again.
Not the broken one.
The bedroom door. Down the hall.
Someone else was in the apartment the whole time.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.
Vera goes rigid. "Who—"
Richard Chen steps into the kitchen.
He's in a suit. Pressed. Perfect. Like he's here for a business meeting. He looks at the blood on the floor. At Shock Baton's fingers still twitching near the sink. At my deployed combat arm.
Then he looks at me.
And he smiles.
"Hello, Seventeen," he says.