Prologue I

Their eye focused more, past the apartment building and its row of rooms and people to glimpse a hot pink building with windows facing the street. The crosshairs landed on the center window of the top floor, it was the deluxe suit with a pink bed and a woman handcuffed to the center. She was face down with her ass to the window wearing a latex bunny suit.

A figure of a man steps into view with a cattle prod in hand, the woman flinches at his shadow's reach. The man was balding and a little on the heavier side, looking to be in his mid to early forties wearing boxers and high socks, while the woman cuffed to the bed seemed no older than eighteen.

*Zzzt*

*Zzzt*

She shook in anticipation as he flicked the prod off and on close to her back, she clenched her eyes and hands shut as the sound of an electrical arc formed closer to her. Then there was a sudden sound, a sound that only could be described as an egg popping in a microwave. She was drenched head to toe in a thick white liquid-esque slime, the cattle prod fell from the limp wristed headless cadaver's hand. As it slowly slumped to the floor stopping on its knees as she found the voice to scream.

Earlier

"Eighty percent chance of success." Zero frowned at the analysis Delta gave, frowned harder than normal, maybe because it sounded more like judgment than analyzing.

"Why I factored in everything. High velocity so the bullet doesn't drop as much, the high impact for piercing through many layers of building, what could I have missed?" Zero retorted patience thinning in every word. Delta leaned against the desk in the room in frustration.

"Not my job to tell you where you messed up." Zero growled at his words pulling the trigger.

"Personal evaluation ninety-eight percent chance of success." Zero looks daggers over at Delta.

The bullet slid through the first wall leaving a clean circular hole in its wake. Glided through the cup of coffee fast enough to leave a clean stream for the purple-haired woman to clean. Meeting her neighbor's wall and then through his holotop projection of a woman unexpectedly receiving a visit from a pizza delivery man. Over the heads of Full Dive junkies slumped on the floor of barren apartments. Finally silently gliding through the first window it's seen since entering the building, then another of the love hotel, racing to meet its intended target in the back of his head.

Zero sits up from the stool and thrust the rifle out the window it folds in on itself and a flame from the barrel propels it off into the city. Zero unholstered two pistols from the waste and turned them on a pod in the room they were in. The pod had a younger male, with thick black hair and perfect features, the outside of the tank read K. Lang with a blinking indicator with the word pending in red.

"It's not gonna send."

"It'll send."

"Your shot was too low."

"It wasn't it'll send."

A few more moments pass as the blinking pending sign starts to take its toll...

"It's not gonna send this is what eighty percent looks-" The pending light flicks green and lights up with the word received.

"Sent. Ninety-eight percent!" Zero cocks the two guns against each other and aims at the pod, a hiss of pressure released by the pod fills the room followed by plumes of smoke. Soon the room is thick with a constricting smog, Zeros hood changed as it tightened into a shape more resembling a helmeted gas mask.

"Delta thermal!" Zeros eyes lit up, the smoke became more translucent over time, the pod now read security alert, and nothing in the room seemed to be moving or carrying a heat signature. The room seemingly vacant was filled with the hissing noise of the gas seeping in until the sound of feet pounding stairs assaulted Zero's ears.

"Where are you?" Zero scanned the room perplexed, no heat readings to pick up, cant smell the target because of the cloak's immediate reaction to the smoke. Two heartbeats which leave them the only two Delta and Zero.

Zero tensed at the realization, Delta is an AI only a hologram with no heart to make sounds with.

"Sonar now!" Zeros eyes light up blue as an outline of a naked man crouched by the door. Zero lifts the pistols and fired two shots, one grazed his ear as he contorted, dodging the second shot he leaped from the floor through the threshold to the wall and bounded down the corridor on all fours.

The rooms reinforced sliding doors shut as the five-man security team piled in on the other side, two on each side of the door and one in the center, guns cocked and trained waiting for their partner to punch in the release code for the door.

Zero closed their eyes and stepped back against the wall, shaking their arms and legs and stretching before bending down to assume the runner's position against the wall.

"Initiate Ox and Rabbit protocol for Bull Hare mode an - Initiation of Bull Hare after 100 or so days of sitting would be Ill-advised without warm up, it'll only lead to mishaps and mess ups." Delta intercedes huffing as if scolding a child.

"You're not here to tell me my mess ups... And add Wolf for the new protocol Horned Fanged Hare." The cloak began weaving around Zero's body, the legs and feet consumed by red fabric changing the feet to have more of a hand shape and the thighs to grow in size. Two tail-like features had formed with rabbit-like puffs at the ends, Delta looked on in shock. This form was new to him, he knew Red could mix two protocols, but three without stalling out was impressive...

"The rebound" Delta mumbled to himself.

"Max echolocation, access the power grid for this sector and cause a thirty... Maybe thirty-five-minute blackout on my mark." Delta snapped out of his thoughts at the orders he just received.

*beep*

*beep*

*beep*

They had set up opening the door the code was partly put in to shut off the smoke and for the exhaust fans to clear what was left. The smoke had nearly been cleared from the room as Zero looked over at Delta.

*beep*

"Well, I guess this is the fun part..."

*beep*

"Pop Rocks!"

*beep*