Kira - 2736

Chapter 1 - Mission Failed

The building was already screaming when Melissa laughed.
Gunfire cracked through the comm—sharp, overlapping, close enough to rattle the mic. Something metallic hit the floor. Someone else screamed and stopped screaming halfway through.
“See?” Melissa said lightly. “This is why I worry about you. You always sound like you’re squatting in some abandoned metro tunnel, muttering to yourself.”
Kira stepped over a body and put two rounds into a man trying to crawl away. Her magenta eye flicked once, predatory, unblinking. Smoke rolled along the ceiling. Her hair had fallen loose again, long dark blue strands curtaining the right side of her face, hiding the empty socket beneath.
“Still there?” Melissa asked. “Because if you’re dead, you’re doing a really bad job of selling it.”
Kira didn’t answer. She never did unless it mattered.
The last target was behind reinforced glass, screaming into a wrist console, panic turning his voice thin and shrill. Kira moved toward him—
—and the shot took her high in the shoulder.
It wasn’t the pain that stopped her. It was the angle.
Her body compensated automatically, servos whining, metal limbs adjusting, but the second round hit her side and something important gave way. The floor tilted. Her boot slid in blood that wasn’t all hers.
“—Kira?” Melissa’s voice sharpened. “Kira, that didn’t sound good.”
Too many of them now. She’d underestimated the backup. That was on her.
Hands grabbed her. Shock-cuffs snapped shut around her wrists. Something bit into her neck, cold and precise. Her vision dimmed—not black, just distant.
“Melissa,” Kira said at last. One word. Flat.
Then the feed cut.
Melissa stared at the dead line for a second too long.
“…Shit.”
She didn’t pace. She didn’t scream. She sat very still, amber eyes unreadable, fingers drumming once against the arm of her chair before she opened a secure channel.
“Sébastien,” she said. “I lost her.”
There was a pause on the other end. Not surprise. Calculation.
“Alive?” he asked.
“Long enough to disconnect me,” Melissa said. “Which means they want her.”
Another pause.
“That complicates things,” Sébastien said mildly.
“She doesn’t belong to anyone else,” Melissa replied, smile gone now. “You know that.”
“I know what she is worth,” he corrected. “And what she costs.”
Silence stretched.
Finally: “I’ll send someone.”
Melissa leaned back, exhaling. “Make it someone fast.”
“I will,” Sébastien said. “And Melissa?”
“Yes?”
“Try not to dismantle the city while you wait.”
She smiled again, thin this time. “No promises.”
By the time Shiesty arrived, the building was empty.
Blood, shell casings, drag marks. A clean extraction—too clean. He stood in the wreckage, green lights humming softly along his joints as his sensors reconstructed the scene in seconds.
Van. Highway access. Medical restraints.
His head tilted slightly.
“…Yeah,” he muttered. “That tracks.”
He stepped back into the street just in time to see the van merge into traffic.
Shiesty didn’t sigh. Didn’t curse.
He stole a motorcycle.
The rider barely had time to yell before Shiesty vaulted onto the seat, electric servos screaming as the engine screamed louder. Traffic blurred. The van swerved as he came alongside it, green light flashing—
—and he slashed.
Rubber exploded. The van fishtailed, smashing into the divider. Cars screamed past. Alarms wailed.
Shiesty hit the side door at speed, tore it open like paper.
Inside, strapped to a hospital bed on wheels, lay a woman made of scars and metal.
One eye watched him. The other stayed closed.
No fear. No recognition.
Just assessment.
“Hey,” Shiesty said reflexively, then stopped himself.
She didn’t respond.
Good.
He cut the restraints, shoved the bed out into traffic, sparks flying as metal hit asphalt. Cars swerved violently. Horns blared.
Shiesty hopped onto the bed behind her, planted his heels, and leaned—
The bed moved.
They shot down the highway like a missile on wheels, Shiesty shifting servo pressure with theatrical precision, electric green light streaking beneath them.
Kira stared up at the sky, unmoving, unfazed, as if this were merely inconvenient.
When they finally peeled off the highway and disappeared into the city’s bones, no one followed.
Sébastien’s garage was quiet.
Melissa rushed forward the moment she saw Kira, relief flashing across her face before she masked it. “Wow,” she said. “You look like hell. Again.”
Kira sat up slowly. Her gaze flicked once—to Melissa. Then to Sébastien. Then, finally, to the Unit standing off to the side.
Green lights. Armor. Horned hat.
Her eye narrowed.
Recognition came—not like a wave, but like a file retrieved from deep storage.
“…Huh,” she said softly.
Shiesty didn’t move.
Eight years. At least.
She looked away first.
“Pointless,” Kira said.
Melissa blinked. “What?”
Kira didn’t elaborate.
Melissa glanced between them. “What, you don’t like him?”
Sébastien adjusted his cufflinks, already bored with the question. “If personal history exists,” he said calmly, “it is irrelevant.”
Shiesty inclined his head slightly. Professional. Distant.
Kira lay back against the bed, staring at the ceiling, indifferent as the world continued to turn.
Whatever they had been—
—it had died somewhere in Atlas custody.