Blood hit Ethan's eye before his mind could catch up.
The world flashed crimson.
Then time slowed.
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally.
Actually slowed.
The instant the mantis blades tore through the black-coated officer's chest, Ethan's Martial Arts Chip activated on its own. Sound warped. Movement dragged. Panic stretched into sharp, frozen fragments.
And in that stretched-out second, Ethan saw the attacker clearly.
It was Ryan Lee from the next class.
The same quiet, forgettable guy who had once gone onstage to receive a gold medal for the 3000-meter race. Back then, Ethan's only impression of him had been that he looked dull, shy, and too ordinary to ever draw attention.
But the person standing there now looked nothing like that.
Ryan's eyes were bloodshot.
His face was twisted with savage fury.
The muscles in his neck were taut, his breathing ragged, and there was a long, torn gash across his shoulder that was still leaking blood.
He had already been attacked.
The conclusion hit Ethan instantly.
The General Affairs Department must have discovered Ryan's identity as a player during the exam and tried to capture him first.
Ryan hadn't gone berserk for no reason.
He was fighting for his life.
By the time Ethan pieced that together, the rest of the students had only just processed the blood spraying into the corridor.
Then the screaming started.
A dozen voices at once.
Girls shrieking. Boys shouting. Shoes scraping. Bodies crashing into each other as everyone tried to run without knowing where to run.
And then the situation turned even uglier.
The officer who had been stabbed did not fall.
He moved.
Fast.
His arm swung sideways with the force of a wrecking ball and smashed into Ryan's chest.
Bang!
Ryan coughed up blood instantly and flew backward like he'd been hit by a truck, his body slamming through four or five students before crashing to the ground. A string of cracking sounds followed—horrible, wet, unmistakable.
Bones.
Broken bones.
Only then did Ethan understand what had happened.
Ryan's mantis blades hadn't pierced through the officer's chest at all. They had been stopped by the internal steel skeleton. The attack had cut flesh, spilled blood, and nothing more.
A desperate ambush.
A near-perfect opening.
And still not enough.
The difference in cyberware between the two sides was brutal.
Ryan might have had lethal hardware.
But the black-coated man was built like a walking armored vehicle.
After swatting Ryan away, the officer didn't hesitate for even a breath. He planted one foot into the floor so hard the entire corridor shook, then launched himself into the air.
Hundreds of kilograms of reinforced body mass turned into a living cannonball.
He came down directly toward Ryan with the kind of force meant to erase a human being on impact.
He didn't care who else was nearby.
Didn't care who was screaming.
Didn't care who was in the way.
His first instinct was not restraint.
It was extermination.
Boom!
The floor near the outer wall collapsed under the impact.
Concrete exploded. Dust erupted. Chunks of stone and steel reinforcement tore free and fell outward into open air.
At the last possible moment, Ryan jammed his mantis blades into the ground and threw himself aside, barely escaping the center of the strike.
But the students who had already been knocked down beside him had no such chance.
They disappeared with the collapsing edge of the fifth floor.
Ethan saw them fall.
Saw their arms flailing.
Saw their mouths open in screams the wind tore away.
And then they vanished from sight.
The sickening thuds from below arrived a heartbeat later.
For one terrible second, Ethan felt like the entire school had fallen straight into hell.
"What the hell…" Tyler's voice shook beside him. "Is this a movie?"
Tyler was still stunned, half-lifted on his elbows, his brain refusing to accept what his eyes were seeing.
Ethan didn't answer.
He slammed Tyler's head back down to the floor just as several bullets shrieked overhead.
Swish—swish—swish!
Hair clipped from Tyler's scalp and floated away.
Inside the examination room, two more black-coated officers charged out. Their arm-mounted barrels extended with mechanical clicks, and without a word, they opened fire in Ryan's direction.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Their firing line was merciless.
Students between them and Ryan were torn apart like paper. Blood burst from chests, stomachs, necks. Several collapsed instantly, spraying the corridor red.
In the span of seconds, seven or eight students were down.
Some twitching.
Some still.
Some already gone.
Ryan turned his head, eyes nearly splitting with rage.
"You animals!"
He launched himself through the nearest broken window, plunged both mantis blades into the outer wall, and slid downward in a shower of sparks. The moment he hit the ground, he rolled and sprinted toward the school gate.
One of the officers pursuing him pulled a grappling gun from his waist, anchored it to the fifth-floor wall, and dropped down the rope at terrifying speed. The others followed.
From beginning to end, their attention never shifted from Ryan.
Ordinary students didn't matter.
Dead or alive, they didn't matter.
In the eyes of the General Affairs Department, everyone uninvolved was nothing more than debris.
"Oh my God… Ethan, let's run! They're killing people!"
Tyler's face had gone completely white. Blood had crept across the ground until it was only inches from his eyes. His whole body was shaking. He wanted to stand, wanted to flee, but fear had already stolen control from his muscles.
Ethan kept one hand on Tyler's shoulder, pressing him down.
"Don't move," he said, voice low and steady. "If you move now, you die."
Tyler went rigid.
Ethan's gaze remained fixed on the chaos ahead.
The officers had already descended after Ryan. Their target had always been him. For the moment, Ethan and Tyler were only alive because they weren't worth looking at.
That realization did not comfort him.
It chilled him.
The General Affairs Department.
He carved the name into his mind.
He would remember it.
Then, through the screams and crashing footsteps, a female voice cut through the noise.
"Zara, don't be afraid! I've got you—hold on!"
Ethan looked up.
At the broken edge of the corridor knelt Selena Vaughn.
Her slender body was stretched dangerously forward over empty space, both hands gripping the arm of a girl hanging off the collapsed section. Her knees were torn open, blood soaking through the fabric, but she refused to let go.
For the first time, Ethan saw her face clearly.
And for a brief, unwanted instant, even in the middle of disaster, he understood why the entire campus was obsessed with her.
Her beauty had an almost unreal quality to it.
A soft Eastern elegance in the eyes.
Sharp, sculpted features like something carved by hand.
Skin so pale it seemed translucent beneath the harsh winter light.
Even panic couldn't ruin it.
At that moment, Selena bit her lower lip, cheeks tense with effort as she tried to haul the dangling girl up.
"Hold on! I can pull you—"
She couldn't.
Her posture was wrong. Her center of gravity leaned too far forward. Her arms trembled violently under the strain.
The next second, her body lurched.
The weight below dragged her off balance.
Selena cried out as she was pulled over the broken edge.
Her free hand clawed for support and found nothing but air.
Then another hand shot out and seized her arm.
Ethan.
He braced, locked his weight, and pulled.
To him, lifting Selena back up felt absurdly easy—as though he were dragging a startled cat rather than a full-grown person.
She stumbled against him, almost collapsing into his chest.
"Th-thank you…" she breathed.
Her legs had gone weak. For a moment, her entire weight rested on him, and she felt the hard lines of muscle under his clothes. A flush rose involuntarily across her pale face.
"He's… so strong…"
Ethan barely noticed.
His eyes had already dropped to the space below.
Because in the instant she had fallen, Selena had let go of the other girl's hand.
"Zara!"
Selena twisted to look down.
What she saw made all color vanish from her face.
Her eyes rolled back.
And she fainted on the spot.
Ethan caught her before her head hit the ground, then laid her down with a flat expression.
He had no sympathy for reckless heroics.
Trying to save people without the strength or judgment to do it was just another way of creating more victims.
He disliked that kind of person the most.
Still… one thing was now clear.
Selena probably wasn't a player.
If she had been, she wouldn't have been this helpless.
Ethan looked toward the school gate.
The chase was over.
Ryan's white shirt was soaked red. He was no longer resisting. The black-coated officers had dragged him into a vehicle like a captured animal and sealed the doors behind him.
They hadn't killed him.
Not yet.
Which meant they wanted something from him.
That thought sat heavy in Ethan's chest.
Around him, the corridor looked like the aftermath of a bombing.
Injured students moaned across the floor. Some bled in silence. Some were already still forever.
Ethan pulled out his phone and called emergency services.
---
The rest of the day became a nightmare stretched across hours.
Ambulances flooded the campus.
Sirens screamed.
Teachers cried.
Police lines appeared.
But even with more than a dozen ambulances, the dead stayed dead.
Including Zara, most of the students who had fallen from the fifth floor didn't survive. From that height onto concrete, the impact was no different from being crushed by a truck.
Several of the students hit by bullets were taken away in critical condition, including Ethan's class monitor.
His counselor didn't make it.
When the shooting started, the young man had thrown himself in front of several female students and taken three bullets for them.
Ethan had never known him well. He was only a few years older than them, a fresh graduate from a top university who had barely begun his working life.
Now that life was over.
By evening, the dean had taken over control of the class. Phones were confiscated. Everyone was ordered not to speak about what happened. No photos. No messages. No social media.
A command, not a request.
Ethan handed over his phone without resistance and wasn't allowed to leave school until nearly nine that night.
When he finally returned home, exhausted and cold, the first thing he did was search online.
Nothing.
No reports.
No leaks.
No videos.
No witnesses.
A massacre had taken place in broad daylight, and yet the internet was calm, smooth, silent—as if a giant hand had pressed down over every screen in the country.
Ethan sat in the dark, jaw tight.
The General Affairs Department.
In one day, he had learned enough to understand the shape of this organization.
They had military-grade authority.
Terrifying control.
Advanced cyberware far beyond ordinary players.
And they were willing to treat civilian casualties like acceptable collateral.
Even worse, they could erase the screams after the fact.
The officer Ryan had ambushed earlier was probably just low-level enforcement. And even then, Ryan's mantis blades had only managed to cut flesh.
If Ethan entered Berserk mode and attacked with everything he had, he might be able to kill one.
Maybe.
But the moment he did, the others would swarm him from every angle. They weren't brainless game enemies. They had tactics, hardware, coordination, ranged firepower, and no hesitation.
His body still wasn't stronger than steel.
Bullets could still tear him apart.
He leaned back slowly.
I absolutely cannot be exposed.
Ryan had become a warning written in blood.
But there were still unanswered questions.
Why erase all evidence of players?
Why secretly hunt them instead of declaring them public threats?
To maintain order? Maybe.
But Ethan didn't think that was the whole truth.
He searched again, deeper this time, changing keywords, testing dead angles, looking for anything that had slipped through.
That was when he found a post.
A simple social media upload.
A street photo with the caption:
"Saw an insanely cool cosplay today!"
The image showed a monk in a brown robe walking through a city street. His hands were clasped, his posture serene.
But above his cheeks, where normal eyes should have been, were seven raised optical lenses arranged in a grotesque mechanical cluster.
To anyone else, it looked bizarre.
To Ethan, it looked familiar.
Too familiar.
That wasn't cosplay.
That was cyberware from Night City.
The monk was a player.
Ethan saved the image immediately.
He refreshed the page.
The post was gone.
The account was banned.
Fast. Crude. Efficient.
General Affairs Department again.
Ethan's expression hardened.
They were deleting online traces of players and using those traces to hunt them down in secret.
Why?
What secret were they protecting?
A realization slowly settled into place.
The General Affairs Department was afraid of players learning something.
That was why they severed communication between them.
That was why they collected them quietly.
That was why they erased every trace from the public eye.
Night City.
The players.
The government.
All of it was tied together by something hidden in the dark.
And whatever that secret was—
it was big enough to kill for.
Ethan stared at the saved image of the cyber-monk.
The photo had been taken in Seabrook City.
Which meant the General Affairs Department had probably already seen it.
Which meant the monk was likely already being hunted.
For a brief moment, Ethan considered trying to contact him first.
A fellow player.
A possible source of information.
A possible ally.
Then he crushed the thought.
Too dangerous.
Right now, survival came first.
The hidden "shadow" in his apartment building. The General Affairs Department. Night City's expanding influence. All of it would have to be investigated slowly, carefully, from the dark.
He sat in silence for a long time until his breathing finally steadied.
Then he reached into a drawer, took out his old phone, and dialed a number he knew by heart.
The mental hospital picked up after three rings.
Ethan lowered his voice.
"I want to speak with my sister."
--------------------------------
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