BLOODCAPE
Chapter 155 – Killbox Protocol

Chapter 155: Chapter 155 – Killbox Protocol

The tower had no name anymore.

Not even on the grid.

Just a shell — thirty-two stories of scorched concrete, shattered helix glass, and hollowed-out signal spines that once carried the digital pulse of the entire city quadrant. Before the Zodiac Re-org. Before the firelines carved every neighborhood into color-coded allegiances. Before the killbox net laced itself into the bones of the skyline.

Now it was a dead nerve in the system.

And Hernan stood on its crown, alone in the wind, watching the ghost walk into the trap.

The rooftop had been sheared open in the war — one half exposed to the air like a broken jawbone, the other still half-intact, windows warped and framing the clouds like the teeth of something starving. The cold bit deep here, high above District 10. Hernan didn’t flinch. The wind played with the edges of his coat, pulled against the straps on his back like invisible fingers searching for weakness.

The HUD on his wristplate pulsed a steady green every four seconds. Sync confirmed. Drone feed alive.

Nico’s voice crackled into his earpiece, low and crisp:"Subject has entered the killbox. Floor twelve. Movement pattern steady. No deviation. Nothing aggressive."

Hernan’s eyes narrowed."No hesitation?"

"None. Centered. Predictable. Like he’s done this before."

The recon drone tracked Renz’s heat signature from above — gliding across open slabs and debris piles like a hunting hawk. Below, Renz moved through the ruin like he belonged there. No tension in the spine. No wasted motion. Not the walk of a man on the edge of betrayal.

The walk of someone who knew.

"He knows we’re watching," Hernan murmured, jaw tightening.

He adjusted the view: zoomed in on the faint heat shimmer, eyes scanning the posture.

No twitch.

Not even now.

And that was the problem.

He’d seen traitors buckle before. People flinch under the weight of what they’d done. Men with fake names and borrowed courage, cracking when the masks fell off. Some confessed. Others ran. One bit down on a ceramic tooth capsule and dissolved halfway through his apology.

Renz didn’t flinch.

Which meant this wasn’t a collapse.

It was a performance.

He tapped comms."Nico. Confirm all fireteam units in position."

"Five squads. Perimeter sealed. Drones in passive lock. No external comm bleed."

"Engagement protocol?"

"Staged. Safezone density sixty percent. Civilian pathways cleared."

Hernan paused. Checked the timestamp. 03:17. Shift change in twenty-three minutes. Window shrinking.

He didn’t press the trigger.

Not yet.

Something buzzed in his peripheral vision — motion across the adjacent catwalk that bridged this rooftop to the next shell tower. Thin layer of mist traced her outline before the optics registered.

Aya.

Moving like smoke. Blade at her back. Hood drawn low.

Unscheduled. Unauthorized.

"Nico," he snapped quietly. "Asset breach. Confirm rogue ID crossing into perimeter."

A pause. Then:"It’s Aya. She slipped net. Wasn’t logged on movement scans. She’s inside your lock."

His stomach tightened.

Aya was too smart to make noise. Too stubborn to sit out when her gut said the puzzle wasn’t solved.

He toggled her angle on the drone overlay — watched her descend with surgical grace, a dancer slipping between shadows, boots never touching glass twice.

She wasn’t here to report.

She was here to see.

And now the box held two.

Hernan hovered his hand over the detonation trigger that would slam the exits shut and flood the twelfth floor with tear-light, stun nodes, and four squads of veterans who’d trained to drop ex-heroes in seven seconds flat.

He didn’t press it.

Instead, voice flat, he said:

"Hold until I say bleed."

Aya moved like the floor was rigged to scream.

The shaft had collapsed years ago, the old lift long gone — now just rusted teeth and silence that smelled of burned alloy and cold dust. She rappelled twenty meters on a black fiberline, then cut loose and dropped in a low crouch, catching herself just before her boots struck the cracked tile of Floor 12.

Dead zone.

But not empty.

The air felt prepped. Arranged. Filtered of chaos. Static tucked behind the walls. The kind of quiet you only heard in a place where too much had already happened.

She slipped between warped data racks, some still humming faint power from long-dead backfeeds, her micro-recorder blinking once in her visor — already logging, always logging.

And then — there he was.

Renz.

Standing under fractured skylight glass. Motionless. Hands open. Not armed.

Waiting.

Aya stepped into the open.

He didn’t flinch.

"You didn’t flinch in the tunnel either," she said, voice a razor wrapped in calm.

Renz turned slowly. No surprise. No tension. Just... acceptance.His goggles were off. Eyes sharp, cold. "You followed me."

"You spoke a phrase that doesn’t exist," she said. "That makes you a problem."

He stepped to the side. Not close, but careful."Or maybe I said it because someone wanted it said."

The light split across the floor, a blade of morning slicing ruin.

She stopped five paces from him. Close enough to kill. Far enough to choose not to.

"You blink-tagged before the breach. Signaled nothing to no one. But the timing was off. Too perfect."

"I knew what I was walking into," he replied. "Same as you. This whole floor is a death stage."

He glanced up — not at the broken skylight, but slightly left.Drone zone. Hernan’s preferred angle.

Aya stiffened.

"You knew he was watching?"

Renz nodded."Always is. That’s what he does, right? Watches people until they crack."

She didn’t move. But her hand hovered near the grip on her thigh.

"Why fake it this long?"

Renz tilted his head. "Why fake faking it?"

She didn’t blink.

"You used a coded phrase. Black-level. Zodiac sleeper tier. You didn’t make that up."

He smiled, small and bitter."And Hernan’s never invented a ghost to trap a better one?"

She ground her teeth.

Then, without warning, Renz dropped.

To his knees.

Hands behind his head. Calm. Still.

No resistance.

"If I was meant to die here," he said softly, "they wouldn’t have sent me in. They’d have sent you."

Silence roared.

"You want to kill me," he added. "You’ve got your chance. No tricks. No fight. But before you do... ask the question."

She didn’t speak.

"Why did Zodiac plant me next to Hernan?"

That caught in her chest like a knife made of frost.

She opened her comm.

Encrypted. Direct. Hernan’s feed blinked active — a heartbeat away from the floor above.

"We need to talk," she said. "Now."

The drone above flickered — caught the edge of Hernan’s reflection in the broken glass.

His face unreadable.

Just watching.

Like he’d planned for this, too.

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