The rain had returned with a vengeance, hammering down on the city in sheets so thick the skyline blurred into a smear of lights and steel. The scent of rust rose from every surface railings, fire escapes, corroded signage until it seemed the entire city was dissolving beneath the weight of water and time.
Akito moved like a ghost through the alleyways near the freight district, weaving through rust-stained corridors and forgotten courtyards with an assassin's rhythm. His hood hung low over his eyes, soaked and heavy. Beneath it, a mask of anonymity, unremarkable clothes, neutral gait, body language tailored for invisibility.
He had no invitation.
He didn't need one.
The auction was held in the sub-basement of an old customs warehouse, abandoned after the trade war had gutted half the city's shipping economy. The freight elevators no longer worked, and only one stairwell led down guarded by a silent man in a charcoal suit and an earpiece, who wordlessly waved Akito through after scanning a falsified credential.
Inside, the air was warm and thick with electricity.
Bare bulbs hung from twisted wires overhead, casting the room in a jaundiced glow. People clustered in groups, speaking low and fast, their faces half-hidden by masks or scarves. These weren't petty thieves or street hustlers these were brokers, data mercenaries, clean-handed vultures who made their fortunes not in violence but in secrets. Every eye gleamed with hunger.
A long table displayed tonight's offerings. Most were ordinary at first glance flash drives, laptops, encrypted servers but each was tagged with descriptors that spoke volumes: Military Logs, BioData Tranches, Surveillance Blacklist, Omega-Class Intel, Unlisted Neural Sync Experiments.
Akito walked the perimeter, memorizing every route to the exit, every angle of entry. He didn't care about the rest. One item mattered.
It appeared without announcement, wheeled out under a case of thick glass: a weathered hard drive, black with chrome etching. The tag on it read:
Project R – Legacy Archive [Cleared: Requiem Classification]
A hush rippled through the crowd. Bidders shifted forward.
The auctioneer, faceless behind a digital mask, initiated the opening bid in a burst of static-laced audio. The numbers climbed quickly. Akito didn't join. He wasn't here to compete.
He was here to end it.
His pulse was steady. His breath, measured. From beneath his coat, his fingers found the grip of a compact weapon, modified for close quarters. He waited until the bid hit seven figures.. until the room was electric with anticipation.
Then he moved.
A flash of motion. A sharp pop.. suppressed, but deadly. The auctioneer dropped first, mask shattering as blood sprayed the projector behind him. Screams surged, and panic exploded outward. Akito was already in the center, pivoting between targets with surgical efficiency.
No wasted movement. No hesitation.
A knee shattered. A throat crushed. A round driven clean through a buyer's shoulder before he could reach for his own weapon. In twenty-three seconds, half the room was either down or running. The rest scattered in blind chaos.
Akito reached the table, grabbed the case containing the drive, and disabled its lock with a small pulse jammer. He didn't linger.
He vanished into the stairwell as another shot rang out behind him, dodging return fire and leaping down the final flights, landing hard and rolling with practiced grace. The guards were already calling reinforcements, but none would arrive in time.
By the time he emerged into the back alley, the rain had become a wall. Perfect cover.
He disappeared into it.
An hour later, the city stretched out below him from the rooftop of an old telecommunications building, long since decommissioned. The wind clawed at his coat. The glow of distant billboards shimmered in the puddles near his boots.
He knelt beside a terminal, the case cracked open to reveal a makeshift workstation, secure, air-gapped, encrypted. The hard drive from the auction clicked once as it connected.
The screen lit up in sterile blue. A command prompt flickered, then gave way to an archive interface. No passwords. No firewalls. Just the assumption that no one outside the circle would ever get this far.
Akito began the upload.
It wasn't immediate.. nothing ever was.. but it came in pieces, like memory returning in fragments.
First, folders.
Then subfolders.
Then names.
Ishida_Hana/
REQUIEM_Alpha_Logs/
Neural_Maps_GEN_VI/
SUBJECT_ZERO/
That last one appeared again. And again. In dozens of entries. File after file referenced the same designation: Subject Zero.
Akito's expression didn't change, but something in his posture sharpened, his shoulders locked, his spine lengthened slightly. He clicked open the first video.
Grainy footage.
Two boys in a white room. One was Akito. The other was identical.
Every movement mirrored. Every reflex the same.
The metadata confirmed it... same blood markers, same neural ID profiles. Not twins. Duplicates. Clones, maybe. Genetic splits. The distinction no longer mattered. What mattered was that there was another.
And his face was the one in the photograph Akito kept hidden in the floorboards.
The boy in the video was slightly older. Quieter. He showed less resistance during tests. Responded more quickly. But there was something in his eyes, detachment, an uncanny calm. A version of Akito without the human fragments that had survived.
The video cut to black.
Another file. This time, a list.
SUBJECT ZERO – Active Monitoring / Status: UNKNOWN
Last Known Location: Eastern Compound, Date Redacted
Doctor Assigned: Hana Ishida
Parental DNA Match: Suppressed
Trigger Phrase: [DATA CORRUPTED]
The names blurred past his eyes... researchers, handlers, board members, politicians who'd bought access to the project like it was a stock portfolio. Some were familiar. Others were ghosts. But all were culpable.
Every line of data pressed against the inside of Akito's skull. This wasn't just about conditioning. It wasn't even about control. It was about replication. About harnessing something that should never have been created.
Project Requiem wasn't a weapon. It was a factory.
Akito closed the files one by one, methodical even in this. His hand hovered briefly over the final image... Subject Zero's ID photo. The resemblance was impossible to ignore. Not just in bone structure or coloring, but in the shape of the scar above the right brow.
A scar he had.
Or thought he had.
The room didn't tilt. The sky didn't fall. But something inside him, a belief so long buried he hadn't realized it existed, shifted.
He wasn't unique.
He wasn't the original.
He wasn't alone.
The wind howled across the rooftop, tugging at cables and loose debris. The storm above churned in thick spirals, thunder blooming in the distance. Somewhere far below, sirens wailed. The city went on. It always did.
But up here, Akito sat in silence.
He ejected the drive. Slid it into a hidden compartment in the lining of his jacket.
Closed the laptop.
His breathing, slow and steady, was the only sound left.