The hallway outside the lounge exploded into motion the moment the door shut behind them.
The alarms were louder out here, unfiltered and raw, echoing through the narrow corridor in waves of red light and metal vibration, sirens screaming from somewhere deeper in the barge, overlapping with shouted commands and the pounding rhythm of boots closing in from both directions.
Sho didn't slow. He moved first, driving forward into the corridor with Kanesaki and Yasuko right behind him as the first line of guards rounded the corner ahead, and there was no hesitation from either side.
Muzzle flashes lit the hall, the air snapping alive with gunfire.
Sho's hand moved in a blur. From somewhere around his liver, just beneath the ribs where flesh and tension seemed to fold inward, the air split, the same unnatural distortion rippling outward like heat over steel. The weapon formed as he pulled it from inside himself, a long, single-edged rapier-like blade, sleek and narrow, too refined for something born from violence, yet at its hilt, half-hidden within the grip, sat a compact mechanical trigger assembly, fused into the guard like elegance disguising something far more dangerous.
He drew it in one clean motion, no flourish, no delay.
The first shot came from the guards, and Sho twisted his wrist–
CLANG
The bullet deflected off the flat of his blade, spinning into the wall and bursting into sparks.
'Move,' he said, already advancing.
Kanesaki surged forward beside him, drawing his curved blood-red blade from beneath his collarbone, the weapon sliding into existence as if carved from him, its edge catching the flashing red lights as he raised it to intercept another burst of fire. Yasuko followed a step behind, lighter, faster, the air fracturing at her right elbow as her sickle formed in a sharp crescent of pale metal that settled naturally into her grip.
The guards opened fire again, but Sho didn't stop moving, running directly into the line of fire as another shot came, his blade angling–
CLANG
A second bullet ricocheted, striking a ceiling light and sending shards of glass raining down in a glittering spray.
'Don't stay still,' Sho said flatly, 'they're locking angles.'
Kanesaki answered by moving, pushing into the corridor's center and using his own body as bait, the guards adjusting instantly, shifting their aim, and Yasuko moved with him. She cut in from the side, her sickle snapping out in a low arc, not at flesh but at the gun barrels themselves, hooking one weapon down mid-shot and forcing it off target, the bullet discharging into the floor instead of their bodies.
Sho used the opening immediately. He threw his weapon, the rapier-like blade spinning end over end far faster than its length should have allowed, clipping a guard's wrist and forcing his aim upward just as Kanesaki closed the distance.
Kanesaki struck, clean, and one guard dropped, blood spilling profusely from the open wound in his chest.
Sho was already moving to retrieve his weapon, stepping over debris as another burst of fire came in from the opposite end of the hall. Yasuko reacted first, flinging her sickle forward, the blade hooking into the railing along the corridor wall and allowing her to swing sideways across the line of fire in a sharp, controlled arc, bullets tearing through the space she had occupied a second earlier. She landed hard, already pulling the weapon free mid-motion.
'Left side,' she called.
Sho didn't look. 'I see them.'
He sprinted toward his blade, embedded in the wall after the throw, another guard trying to track him, but Kanesaki intercepted, his curved blade sweeping upward and deflecting the shot just enough to miss Sho by inches, punching into the ceiling instead.
Sho reached his weapon, yanked it free, and turned immediately as another group of guards pushed in from behind, the three of them being boxed in.
He exhaled once. 'We split them.'
'No,' Kanesaki answered immediately, 'we collapse them.'
There was a brief pause before Sho nodded once. 'Then move.'
They broke formation, not apart but layered. Kanesaki pushed forward again, forcing the front line back step by step, Yasuko staying just off his flank, controlling angles and disrupting aim with precise sickle hooks that redirected fire rather than blocking it outright, while Sho moved between them, never lingering long enough to be targeted, his blade snapping up only when needed, deflecting shots, cutting lines of fire, forcing space open where there had been none.
Gunfire continued to erupt down the corridor, but now it wasn't clean, it was broken, confused, every shot needing correction mid-flight because of movement, interference, blades forcing constant readjustment.
A shot came in at an awkward angle, too fast and too close to cleanly redirect.
Kanesaki adjusted anyway, bringing his blade up to meet it, but the impact landed wrong. The bullet struck near the weakened edge where repeated deflections had already stressed the metal, and instead of glancing away it tore through with a sharp, splintering crack. The curved blade fractured along its length, a jagged line splitting through it as a section near the midpoint sheared off and spun away across the floor.
He didn't hesitate or even look at the damage. Stepping forward into the opening as if the break had been intentional, he used his body to force space before the guards could react, the shortened blade still moving just enough to disrupt their aim and keep them from closing in.
His free hand dropped to his belt in the same motion, pulling loose a small, dark pouch. He bit it open without slowing, and the scent hit immediately, thick and metallic.
Blood.
He crushed the bag against what remained of the blade, and it burst across the fractured steel in a dark red spread that should have dripped uselessly to the floor. Instead, it clung, then began to move, pulling inward along the cracks, threading through the damage like veins filling and reconnecting.
The blade drank it.
The jagged split sealed in seconds as the liquid was drawn into the metal, the missing section reforming from the spreading mass, length restoring, curvature correcting, the surface smoothing back into its original shape. The deep red returned with it, richer now, as if the weapon had been fed rather than repaired.
By the time the guards understood what they were seeing, the sword was whole again, as if it had never been broken.
Kanesaki rolled his wrist once, testing the weight, then stepped forward without breaking rhythm and struck.
Sho advanced through the chaos, retrieving his weapon in motion, deflecting another shot before stepping in close enough to strike, the guard dropping before he could recover his aim. Yasuko pulled Kanesaki sideways just as another burst tore through where he had been standing.
'Too many,' she said sharply.
Sho didn't slow. 'Then we don't let them regroup.'
Another guard rounded the corner ahead, Sho's weapon coming up instantly to deflect the first shot, but this time he didn't throw it. Instead, he fired.
A hidden mechanism within the hilt clicked, and a bullet of condensed force, formed from absorbed blood, unseen in origin, burst forward from the weapon's internal muzzle with a sharp, compressed crack, the guard dropping instantly.
Sho didn't look at him. 'Keep moving.'
And they did, pushing forward through the flashing red corridor, through choking alarms and gunfire, never standing still long enough to be pinned, never separating long enough to be isolated, turning the hallway itself into a moving front line as they fought to keep the lounge sealed behind them.
The corridor had stopped feeling like a passage and started feeling like a kill zone. Red emergency lights strobed across the metal walls in uneven pulses, turning everything into fractured motion, half-real, half-shadow, while the alarms screamed directly into the space, vibrating through bone and steel until sound blurred into pain.
The guards kept coming, and the hallway kept filling with bodies.
Sho stepped over the first fallen soldier without slowing, blood pooling beneath the man's helmet and seeping into the seams of the floor plating, his blade held low, catching the light in dull, wet reflections, his expression unchanged since the fight began.
Another burst of gunfire tore down the corridor, and he didn't dodge, he moved through it. The shot came fast, too fast for most, but Sho angled his weapon slightly–
CLANG
The bullet ricocheted, this time striking a guard's visor instead of vanishing into the wall, cracking it open in a spiderweb fracture of glass and blood, the man staggering back and collapsing against the corridor wall.
Sho didn't look twice.
Kanesaki was already there, moving like something that had stopped pretending to be human, his curved blade rising from beneath the collarbone line and carving through the next guard's rifle instead of the man, metal snapping apart with a sharp tear before he drove forward shoulder-first, slamming the guard into the wall hard enough to dent the plating.
A second strike followed immediately, and the man dropped without a sound.
Yasuko moved beside them, lighter but no less brutal when the opening came, her sickle hooking around a guard's arm mid-fire and yanking the weapon off-line so violently the shot tore through the ceiling, before she stepped in and dragged the blade across his side in a tight, controlled arc, not a killing blow but one meant to end resistance.
He collapsed seconds later.
Sho exhaled once, low. 'Don't let them group up.'
Another burst of gunfire answered him as three guards pushed in from the far end, weapons raised, shouting over each other as they tried to stabilize formation, but they didn't get the chance.
Sho moved first, running directly into the line of fire, the first shot exploding against his blade in sparks, the second missing as he twisted through it, the third about to land clean–
Kanesaki stepped in and deflected it without hesitation.
The bullet clipped his blade and spun into the wall, leaving a glowing scar, but he didn't flinch, he kept moving, hitting the nearest guard like a collision rather than a strike, driving his shoulder into the man's chest and following with a brutal upward cut that broke through armor and resistance alike.
Yasuko moved immediately to cover him as another guard fired point-blank, but she twisted sideways, letting the shot pass within inches, heat scorching fabric and skin, her sickle snapping out to catch his wrist and drag him off balance.
Sho was already there.
His blade came up clean through the gap, deflecting a second shot from behind while forcing space open through sheer forward pressure, the guard dropping backward, helmet striking the floor with a hollow crack.
Blood coated everything now, walls, floor, Sho's sleeve where a grazing shot had torn fabric and left a shallow red line across his forearm, but he didn't acknowledge it, only tightening his grip and continuing forward.
Behind them, the corridor had become a trail of bodies, guards broken in uneven clusters, slumped against walls, sprawled mid-reload, or twitching faintly where death hadn't come cleanly.
'Left side pushing in again,' Yasuko called, voice tight but steady.
Sho turned his head slightly. 'I see it.'
He moved before the next volley could stabilize, deflecting another shot that would have taken Kanesaki in the neck, the bullet ricocheting into the ceiling in sparks and debris, while Kanesaki drove forward without breaking stride, his blade flashing once, twice, each strike landing with brutal precision.
The second guard dropped.
Yasuko followed immediately, cutting off the angle from the right, hooking a rifle barrel and forcing its shot into the floor before stepping in to finish the opening with a tight, efficient cut.
Sho reached his weapon where it had embedded in the wall, pulling it free in one motion, blood already dripping from the edge.
Another group rounded the corner ahead.
Sho didn't hesitate. 'More.'
The corridor answered with gunfire, and the three of them moved into it anyway, not as defenders anymore, but as the force pushing the front line forward, steel, blood, and motion tearing through the hallway until nothing remained but silence waiting to catch up behind them.
Chapter 72 – end