Time didn't slow down. It didn't do that cinematic crawl where you can see every individual drop of sweat.
For Masaru, it just stopped.
He was mid-air, a two-bit hunter with a pair of empty guns and a shattered leash.
The demon's mouth was a vertical canyon of red meat, closing in on him with a speed that defied physics.
He could smell the stagnant water and the rot.
He could feel the pressure of the air being displaced by the creature's mass.
He knew he was dead. It wasn't a profound realization.
It was just a fact, as simple as a math equation.
Speed plus distance equals Masaru's head in a toothless throat. He closed his eyes.
Then the world exploded into sound.
It wasn't a roar or a bang.
It was the sound of a thousand iron gates slamming shut at once.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.
Masaru felt something cold and violent punch through his chest.
Then another through his thigh.
The force of it didn't just stop his momentum; it pinned him against the air itself.
He opened his eyes and saw a forest of iron.
Countless chains—hundreds of them—had erupted from the shadows beneath the platform.
They weren't moving like snakes anymore. They were like spears, fired with the velocity of a railgun.
They moved so fast they were nothing but black blurs, crisscrossing the subway tunnel in a chaotic, jagged web.
The demon was caught in the middle.
The creature didn't even have time to scream.
The chains didn't just hit it; they vibrated with a high-frequency hum that acted like a serrated edge.
In a single, sickening second, the twenty-meter-long demon was sliced into neat, red cubes.
Chunks of scabby flesh the size of watermelons hit the tracks like heavy rain.
The vertical jaw was split down the middle, the tongue severed into a dozen twitching ribbons.
The "Jin" voice died in a spray of black ichor.
Silence returned to the station, heavy and suffocating.
Yuki, who had been curled in a ball on the floor, looked up through her fingers.
Her face was splattered with red demon blood, her eyes wide and glassy.
Alex stood frozen, his grenade launcher hanging limp in his hand.
His blonde hair was matted with gore, his mouth hanging open in a silent "O" of horror.
"Sakura..." Alex whispered.
Masaru tried to breathe, but his lungs felt like they were full of broken glass.
He looked down. Two thick, rusted chains were buried in his body.
One had gone clean through his left shoulder; the other had pierced his right side, just above the hip.
They weren't holding him up—they were anchoring him to the floor.
But he was the lucky one.
Ten meters away, Sakura Watanabe was still standing, but she looked like a pincushion.
At least six chains had punched through her torso. They had come from her own shadow, turning on their master with indiscriminate cruelty.
One had gone through her stomach, another through her thigh, and three more had clustered around her ribcage.
Blood wasn't just dripping from the scratch on her face anymore.
It was pouring from her body, soaking her grey hoodie until it was a heavy, black weight.
It pooled around her sneakers, staining the white concrete of the platform.
Sakura raised a trembling hand.
Her fingers were stained crimson. With a sharp, jerky motion, she snapped her fingers.
The chains vanished.
Masaru felt the weight disappear, and his body gave out. He hit the concrete hard, the air wheezing out of his throat.
He looked at the ceiling, the flickering lights dancing in his vision.
The pain started then—a searing, white-hot agony that made the world go grey at the edges.
Sakura didn't fall. She swayed, her eyes glassy and distant, but she stayed on her feet.
She looked down at the holes in her clothes, her expression strangely vacant, as if she were looking at a broken dish rather than her own mangled body.
The sound of heavy boots suddenly echoed from the stairs.
"DHC! Clear the line! Weapons down!"
A dozen guards in full tactical gear rushed onto the platform, their high-powered flashlights cutting through the gloom.
They stopped dead when they saw the mess. The demon was nothing but a pile of butcher-shop scraps.
The platform was a lake of blood.
The lead guard, a man with a scarred helmet, stepped toward Sakura. He checked his wrist-mounted energy reader. It was flatlining. The 6th Deviation signal was gone.
"Sector clear," the guard shouted into his radio. "Target neutralized. We have... we have casualties. High-spec casualties."
He looked at Masaru, who was twitching on the floor, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth.
Sakura turned her head toward the guards. Her voice was a rasp, barely audible over the hum of the station's ventilation.
"Take him," she said, nodding toward Masaru.
"Ma'am, we need to get you to a trauma center," the guard said, reaching for her arm.
"No," Sakura hissed, a spark of the old authority returning to her violet eyes. "Take the 2nd Deviation. Take him to Ren. Now."
The guard hesitated, but the look in Sakura's eyes wasn't one you argued with. He signaled to two of his men.
They holstered their rifles, pulled a folding stretcher from their kits, and began to hoist Masaru up.
Every movement felt like a hot iron being pressed into Masaru's wounds.
He tried to speak, to ask who the hell Ren was, but all that came out was a wet, gargling sound.
He saw the ceiling move past him, then the stairs, then the blurred faces of the DHC units.
Alex watched them carry Masaru away. Something inside the blonde boy finally snapped.
He stomped over to Sakura, ignoring the DHC guards who tried to hold him back. He grabbed the front of her blood-soaked hoodie, bunching the fabric in his fists.
"What the hell was that?" Alex yelled, his voice cracking. "You almost killed him! You almost killed all of us! You said the chains were for protection, you lying bitch!"
The guards moved in, their batons drawn, but Sakura raised a bloody hand to stop them.
She looked at Alex. She didn't look angry. She didn't even look defensive. She looked bored.
"He left the circle," Sakura said quietly.
"He's a 2nd Deviation!" Alex screamed in her face. "He didn't know! You used him as bait, and then you shredded him because he moved two inches too far! Look at him! Look at what you did!"
Alex was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. He looked like he wanted to hit her, but he was too terrified of the shadows at her feet to move his hands.
Sakura leaned in, her face inches from his. The blood from the scratch on her cheek dripped onto Alex's knuckles.
"Remove your hand, Alex," she said. Her voice wasn't a threat. It was a statement of fact.
Alex stared at her for a long, agonizing beat. He saw the void in her violet eyes, the cold, mechanical indifference that lay beneath the beauty.
He realized then that Sakura Watanabe didn't see them as teammates. She didn't even see them as employees.
They were just parts. And parts were replaceable.
Alex's grip loosened. His hands fell to his sides, trembling. He took a step back, his face pale and wet with tears he didn't realize he was shedding.
"Right," he whispered, his voice hollow. "Right. I get it."
Nearby, Yuki was still on the floor. She hadn't moved.
She was hugging her knees, rocking back and forth in the puddle of demon ichor and Sakura's blood.
Her eyes were fixed on the spot where the demon's jaw had been severed.
"I'm going to die," she whispered. The sound was tiny, lost in the cavernous station.
"Yuki, get up," Alex said, but he didn't move to help her. He couldn't even help himself.
"I'm going to die," Yuki repeated, her voice rising in a frantic, rhythmic chant. "We're all going to die. Sato died. Daiki died. Masaru is gone. It's just a matter of time. The chains... the chains will find us too. Everybody's going to die. Everybody's going to die."