Obscure Protocols

Chapter 4: The Descent

Pavel nodded and sat across from her. Around them, the bar continued its slow metamorphosis—a temple of technological transcendence where the remnants of humanity celebrated their reinvention.

The atmosphere inside Zur Letzten Hoffnung shifted almost imperceptibly. Conversations stopped, data streams froze. Even the post-human entities raised their heads, sensors swiveling toward the door like synchronized antennae.

She entered.

Yukio clashed with this chrome mausoleum like a colorful anomaly. Eleven years old—perhaps younger. Her candy-pink frilly dress clashed violently with the dominant metallic palette. Striped tights, patent leather shoes reflecting the neon like pools of ink.

Her jet-black bob framed a face of manufactured innocence, features calibrated by precision genetics. A blood-red bow adorned her temple—the only warm hue in her childlike geometry.

She carried a Hello Kitty bag—an authentic 21st-century artifact, a kawaii talisman in this cathedral of decay. So incongruous it became obscene—a fragment of innocence transplanted into the putrid guts of civilization.

Yukio walked in without hesitation, her footsteps silent on the damp floor. Her gaze swept the crowd with clinical indifference, betraying intelligence far beyond her apparent age. She wasn't looking—she was scanning, analyzing, cataloging each distorted face, every blinking implant.

Pavel felt that quantum déjà vu. As if their reunion was written in the source code of reality, preprogrammed by a superior intelligence.

Metallmutter turned her titanium head toward the little girl, scanners probing this kawaii apparition. A mechanical smile stretched her synthetic lips, revealing surgical steel teeth.

"Little Tokyo..." she murmured in Franco-Germanic dialect. "The Algorithm Keeper sends his finest toys."

Yukio stopped at their table, her large black eyes fixed on Pavel. In that gaze, Pavel recognized the familiar void—that absence of emotion marking the creations of the Silent Architect. Yet something else pulsed beneath—a flicker that resembled recognition. For they were both instruments of the same score, notes in a symphony composed by an intelligence that never revealed itself.

She said nothing. She never had. Her vocal cords had been severed at her creation—the Invisible Creator viewed speech as weakness. Instead, she communicated through micro-expressions, lace-gloved hand gestures, tilts of her head.

Pavel understood instantly. Their brains connected on a private frequency, a telepathic link made possible by the Code Weaver's science. Brainwaves synchronized, forming a neural network transcending the barriers of language. Two puppets whose strings rose to an invisible hand, orchestrating their moves from the silent towers piercing the toxic sky.

Mission. Target. Elimination.

The words materialized in Pavel's cortex, carried by bioelectrical impulses drifting like digital ghosts. Yukio tilted her head—algorithmic satisfaction of a machine rediscovering its function.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a holographic cube. The object, disturbingly beautiful, reflected the bar's lights like liquid mirrors. Activated, it projected pixelated specters into the humid air.

The man with the briefcase appeared in three dimensions—a perfect reconstruction. Forty-three years old, 1.78 meters, 82 kilos. A former engineer turned data trafficker. Codename: White Rabbit. He didn't yet know he was already condemned.

Pavel memorized every detail, every tic. Yukio stood still, her kawaii eyes fixed on him with unsettling intensity. Inside this colorful child hid a perfect predator—death's algorithm disguised as manufactured innocence.