The Supreme Commander leaned against the edge of the table, unaware that his fingers had been stroking his beard in the same motion for several minutes. Before him, the main screen displayed an exterior image of the tower, its glass façades gleaming beneath the emergency lights, while black tendrils of smoke rose from several floors and coiled around the building as though trying to strangle it.
"God..." he said in a low voice, sounding more as though he were speaking to himself than to the people in the command room. "That weapon has never missed. If she had pressed the button, everyone would have vaporized in a second."
Sarah stood before the vital-signs monitor. She was not watching the image of the tower, but the small green line representing the soldier's heart. Its rhythm had barely changed, despite everything that had happened on the upper floors.
"His pulse is between sixty and sixty-five beats per minute, sir," she said, leaning closer to the screen. "He is not merely calm. He is in a state of complete physiological relaxation."
The officer standing beside her turned toward her.
"Relaxation? After all this?"
"That is the part I don't understand. His body is not being controlled by adrenaline alone. Look at the thermal readings. Mercy is reading the heat radiating from beneath his mask, tracking the dilation of his pupils, and measuring the time it takes his muscles to contract before he moves. He does not wait for danger to appear. He predicts it."
The general continued to stare at the green line.
"Are you saying the machine decides for him?"
"No. And that is worse. The machine suggests the path to the kill, and he executes it before the thought has even fully formed in his opponent's mind."
The officer swallowed.
"That is not a soldier."
Sarah answered without taking her eyes from the screen.
"He is a soldier who knows his body as well as a computer knows its own route. And that difference is terrifying."
In the inner corridor, Shaheen advanced ahead of the hostages without looking back at them. His steps were not quick, but they were so steady that the people behind him unconsciously matched their breathing to his rhythm. Whenever they passed a corner, he raised his head slightly and let his red eye sweep the darkness before allowing them to cross.
There were seven of them.
A blonde woman in her late twenties, a shard having torn through her jacket and caught in a lock of her hair. She was squeezing the hand of an elderly woman, trying to support her without making her feel like a burden. The old woman walked with difficulty, dragging her left foot. Ash clung to her face, making her wrinkles seem deeper than usual.
Behind them came a man in his forties, his shirt torn across the chest. He held his wounded shoulder with one hand and kept the other on the back of a small boy no older than ten. The boy was barefoot, carrying his shoes in one hand, his eyes fixed on Shaheen's back as though they knew no other path to safety.
There was also a veiled woman, and beside her a young, blue-eyed man with a pale face. He carried a piece of metal he had torn from one of the doors. He was not looking at the blood so much as he was looking at Shaheen's armor. His eyes followed the connections between the plates, the minute cooling vents at the joints, and the faint light passing beneath the mask.
The blonde woman whispered to the elderly woman, "Not much farther. Just keep walking. Don't look back."
"I can't feel my foot," the old woman said in broken breaths.
The young woman lowered her voice even further. "Then lean on me. You don't have to be strong now. It is enough that you are still standing."
Shaheen heard her, but did not turn around. He merely slowed his pace by half a step, making the way easier for the old woman without her realizing that he had done it for her.
In the command room, Sarah noticed the slight change in his speed.
"He is shortening the distance between his steps," she said.
"So they do not stumble?" the officer asked.
"So they do not have to run. He is calculating their condition."
Shaheen's voice reached the command room through the communicator, clear and steady amid the interference.
"We are at the weakest point of the route. I have disabled the cameras in this corridor, but the enemy may appear from any direction. If an armed man emerges, scatter. Do not cluster around me. Random movement will give him more targets, but you will give him chaos he cannot read."
The veiled woman raised her eyes to him for the first time.
"Will we get out?"
His face remained hidden behind the mask.
"You will."
He said nothing more, but his tone made the sentence sound more like a promise than a possibility.
At the end of the corridor, a side door burst open with violence. The entire group flinched. The boy shrank behind the wounded man, while the blonde woman instinctively raised her arm in front of the old woman's face. Shaheen turned in an instant, and it seemed as though his entire body had become a barrier between them and the door.
No one appeared.
The door had been torn free from a broken hinge and had fallen because of the tower's vibrations.
The man in his forties exhaled audibly. Shaheen drew a spare pistol from his thigh and held it out to him.
"Have you served in the army?"
The man nodded nervously. Shaheen tossed the weapon toward him, and he caught it with trembling fingers.
He stared at the pistol, gripping it tightly with both hands so that it would not slip free.
"Shoot anyone you see. No special-forces soldier will enter except me. Walk behind the women."
"I... I will."
They continued until they reached the emergency-elevator lobby. Shaheen pointed toward the stairs, and the ten of them moved in that direction.
Then he turned toward the elevator control panel. He took out a small device and fixed it into a barely visible opening. Mechanical fingers began pressing the buttons automatically.
"What is he doing?" the officer asked from the command room.
The blue-eyed young man answered before Sarah could. His eyes were fixed on the open panel.
"It is not merely a mechanical hand. He is not opening the elevator—he is stealing its memory. He is imitating an old maintenance signature, then planting a false route in its system. The car will descend on its own and stop at the floors where the guards are stationed, making them think the hostages are inside."
Sarah and the officer exchanged a quick glance. There was no frightened improvisation in the young man's words, but precise knowledge—knowledge that made them look at him for the first time as though he had escaped from somewhere other than this tower alone.
Shaheen closed the elevator panel. The car began to descend slowly, then stopped on the thirteenth floor.
The young man said nothing more. Shaheen pointed toward the stairs.
"To the roof."
He kicked open the final door, and the sky opened above them. Three black helicopters hovered over the tower, driving the wind across the roof until dust and ash whirled through the air in dense spirals. Special-forces soldiers descended one after another, spreading out around the hostages, shouting instructions and pointing toward the evacuation zones.
The hostages did not rush toward the helicopters as they did in the movies. They stumbled out, clinging to one another, fear having turned their feet heavy.
The elderly woman suddenly bent over. The blonde woman knelt beside her and lifted her face from the ground. The boy did not understand which helicopter he was supposed to approach, and kept turning in circles until the wounded man seized him by the shoulder and pulled him along. Every few steps, the veiled woman looked back at the door—not in search of an enemy, but as though she feared Shaheen would disappear before she could see him one last time.
A violent tremor struck beneath their feet.
The roof split with a deep, echoing crack, and several metal crates slammed into the barriers. The veiled woman fell with her child. Even one of the soldiers lowered his body to keep his balance, his hand tightening around his weapon. But when he heard the elderly woman's cry, he immediately turned toward her and helped her to her feet.
The evacuation commander shouted, "Get the hostages inside now! Those lunatics are blowing the building's concrete foundations!"
Amid all the panic, Shaheen stood in an eerie silence.
One of the soldiers approached him. He was slightly younger than Shaheen. He gripped his arm gently, then released it at once when he felt the armor's hardness and the cold blood gathered along Shaheen's forearm.
"Come up with us. The lower floors are burning. You have done something worthy of praise."
Shaheen continued to watch the hostages.
He saw the old woman being helped aboard by two soldiers.
He saw the blonde woman enter the helicopter, still holding the old woman's hand. He saw the wounded man place the pistol on the ground before boarding, then gently push the boy ahead of him.
He saw the two veiled women—one of them the boy's mother—turn toward the window. She raised a hand to her chest in a silent gesture of thanks.
The same soldier followed the hostages toward the helicopter without taking his eyes off Shaheen.
"Get on!" he shouted.
Shaheen stepped back twice, then returned to the doorway leading into the heart of the tower.
"What are you doing? The evacuation is complete."
Shaheen took a small tube from his belt.
"There is no one left in there worth staying for," the soldier said.
"There are twenty-five."
"We can send another team."
"There would be no point."
He sprayed the substance over the hinges and lock. The metal flared with a glow almost blue from the intensity of the heat. Shaheen closed the door from the inside. The soldier stared through the narrow opening until the edges of the door fused with the concrete frame.
Shaheen's voice reached the command room.
"The hostages have been evacuated. I am continuing the mission."
The general approached the desk for the first time, took the earpiece from Sarah's ear, and spoke in a rough voice.
"Shaheen, wait for support. That is an order."
The reply came after a brief pause.
"Support for what? My mission is to eliminate them all. That is what I was created for. As long as the hostages are alive, you have no authority over me that I am required to obey."
"That is a direct order from me. Are you disobeying me?"
"The tower is worth approximately one billion dollars. Will you let the state treasury lose that amount in a single day?"
The connection cut out for a moment. The general remained stunned. This was the last thing he had expected to hear.
Shaheen moved through the dark stairwell. Emergency lights flickered at intervals, and with each flash a portion of his armor appeared, then vanished again. Behind a door on the thirty-sixth floor, a panicked gunman fired an entire burst at chest and head level.
Shaheen dropped below the line of fire and crawled for a moment, then shattered the bottom of the door with a single kick. When the gunman was forced to reload, Shaheen's rifle rose from beneath the opening.
One shot rang out.
In the panoramic corridor, a massive man blocked the way. He stood more than two meters tall, his muscles filling a torn tactical vest.
For no apparent reason, he threw his rifle aside. It struck the floor with a thunderous crash, like a declaration of defiance, while his smile widened with arrogant amusement.
Shaheen stopped.
It was a customary signal among mercenaries, one that meant a physical duel—or edged weapons.
Unexpectedly, Shaheen obeyed the gesture.
He let his weapon hang across his back.
In the command room, Sarah struck the table with the palm of her hand.
"I'm going to lose my mind! What is wrong with him? This is an obvious trap. Even a blind man could see it. He can finish him now!"
The general spoke under his breath.
"The man will not retreat... He is from a brainwashed battalion, fiercely arrogant and proud. They respect gestures and military signals with blind obedience. Perhaps if he ever rebels against me, I could kill him this easily. Strange—this world is truly strange."
In the empty corridor, beside a bulletproof window, the giant spoke in a hoarse voice.
"You are not like the other soldiers. You do not look as though you are from this country. What is your nationality? You have no name in our records."
Shaheen answered, "Do you believe in the Angel of Death?"
"Yes."
"I am his messenger to you."
Shaheen lunged at him like a projectile. It was not a random blow, but a calculated collision with the center of his opponent's balance. The giant slammed into the glass façade, and a web of cracks spread around his back.
The huge man spat blood. The blow had struck like a bullet; jagged shards of glass had driven into his back, freezing him with pain and numbing his limbs.
He tried to break free, but Shaheen attacked him again. The soldier crossed his arms, and another sonic impact thundered through the corridor. The force of the blow made the man squeeze his eyes shut in agony as the glass behind him continued to splinter. Then he understood the nightmare he was trapped in.
If he uncrossed his arms to escape, Shaheen would kill him.
If he remained on the defensive, the glass behind him would give way, and he would fall from a height of more than 130 floors.
It was a deadly equation with neither victor nor vanquished.
Shaheen used the frame as a fulcrum, then drove a single kick into him, twisting around his torso. The powerful current of air created by the collapsing façade swept the giant away, and the black void swallowed his body.
He disappeared into the storm between the towers.
Below, special-forces units surrounded the tower's perimeter behind the barricades.
The body struck the roof of a green armored military vehicle. No one saw the entire scene, but the sound was enough to freeze the street for a second.
Then chaos erupted. Some soldiers stepped back, while others raised their heads toward the sky.
"Command," one of them said over the radio, "a person has fallen from the top!"
The field commander's voice answered, "Hold your positions. No one goes up until you receive orders!"
The communications officer's voice returned to the command room.
"Shaheen, the remaining elements—twenty-five armed men—have withdrawn to the grand conference hall. The place is booby-trapped, and they have heavy weapons."
Shaheen did not answer. He continued climbing until he stood before the double doors.
Mercy's voice came through his earpiece:
"{Direct-success probability is low this time. Use of toxic nerve gas is recommended, followed by breaching charges, then close engagement.}"
Shaheen took out a breaching charge. He did not release the gas.
In the command room, Sarah's eyes widened as the figures on the screen changed.
"Sir... his heart is accelerating."
The reading leapt from seventy beats per minute to one hundred, then to one hundred and fifty. It passed two hundred and, in less than eight seconds, settled at three hundred beats per minute.
Sarah gasped and collapsed into her chair. She was watching Shaheen with her own eyes, but her gaze had lost its balance. He was standing still; there was no physical exertion that could drive a human heart into such hysteria.
"This is impossible... A human heart muscle cannot withstand this! If the reading is real, the cardiac lining should rupture. He is not human."
On the screen, veins stood out along Shaheen's neck and temples. The pupil of his red eye contracted, and for the first time he began to breathe slightly harder.
But he did not move. He remained motionless until the door exploded.
The visual feed was severed by interference. Only the audio remained.
Ten seconds of silence.
Then auditory hell began.
Twenty-five men screamed at once, their voices powerful enough to shake even the hardest of beasts.
"What is wrong with you, you bastards? Shoot him!"
"He won't die! Get away from me! Get away!"
"You son of a whore!"
The voices swung between vile, obscene curses and screams that ended in bloody gurgles.
The sound of flesh tearing, bones breaking, and blood spilling filled the channel.
The general closed his eyes.
Sarah covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide with pure terror as she listened to ragged breathing, followed by the sound of a body being dragged across the floor.
Three minutes after the catastrophe began, the image returned.
The hall was covered in smoke, with several small fires burning along the sides.
The luxurious furniture had been shattered and reduced to kindling.
Broken weapons lay scattered among the bodies. Shaheen stood in the center.
Blood dripped from his armor—blood that was not his own.
One gunman remained kneeling before him, breathing heavily. Unlike the others, he was not mutilated or destroyed like his companions.
He stared around him with petrified tears in his eyes, gazing at the bodies of men who had been alive, laughing, and mocking one another only minutes before.
The reversal struck his heart with crushing force. He had never believed he would cry again.
He stared into the red eye, having lost the ability to speak. He opened his mouth, but only trembling air came out.
Then he placed a hand over his chest and bent forward. His eyes lifted toward the ceiling before he collapsed unconscious at Shaheen's feet.
Sarah shouted as she checked the readings.
"He never touched him... What happened?"
The officer answered, "His heart stopped... from fear?"
The general remained silent. On the screen, he no longer saw merely a weapon, but a man standing inside a hall filled with death, unable to find a way out while wearing his former face.
Shaheen wiped his claws with a torn piece of cloth, then returned them to his glove. He walked toward the shattered window and stood on the edge of the tower.
He spoke into the communicator, one hand pressed to his ear.
"Command, the mission is complete. All hostile elements have been eliminated."
The general hesitated before answering.
"There are no further orders. Wait for extraction. You have done your duty."
Minutes later, Shaheen descended to the street. Rifles rose toward him, and red laser sights danced across his blood-stained armor.
Then the field commander shouted, "Lower your weapons! He is an ally."
The rifles slowly lowered.
Inside the ambulance, the sole survivor was strapped to a seat. The moment he saw Shaheen, he began smashing his head against the wall and screaming.
"Aaaargh! He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me! It's him! It's him! He's a monster! A monster! A monster!"
The medic was forced to inject him with a sedative in the neck. His legs continued trembling until he lost consciousness.
When Shaheen approached the soldiers, they immediately made way for him.
One of them took a clean white towel from the supply crate and held it out.
Shaheen took it without a word.
He began wiping the blood from his forearm, his left hand, and as much of his chest as he could reach.
The soldiers watched him in silence, unsure where to rest their eyes.
Some looked at the ground.
Others looked at the tower.
The rest watched the man standing among them as though he had returned from a place they could not imagine.
Suddenly, Shaheen spoke while looking toward the ambulance.
"He got away."
The nearest soldier did not understand.
"Who?"
Shaheen nodded toward the ambulance.
"The survivor."
"But he is alive."
"The mission was for everyone to be finished."
"But you... you saved the hostages. You did something extraordinary."
Shaheen stopped wiping for a moment. His tone was cold, but carried no arrogance.
That was part of the mission. There is no cause for pride. We are merely soldiers, and the stronger one is given the harder missions."
Silence settled over them—heavy, yet strangely comforting at the same time.
Then, from the cloud-covered sky, the first scattered drops fell onto the asphalt.
A moment later, the clouds opened all at once, and rain poured down, washing the smoke from the air.
It extinguished the remnants of the fire around the base of the tower.
It fell over Shaheen's silver hair.
It streamed across his black mask.
Then it carried the blood gathered in the folds of his armor and along his fingers down to the ground in pale, delicate red threads.
He continued wiping his forearm with the towel for several seconds.
Then he stopped.
There was nothing readable in his face, but his hand slowly lowered.
He raised his head toward the sky and let the water cleanse the blood from his body.
The helicopters circled above him as they headed elsewhere, their lights cutting through the rain and making him look as though he were standing beneath threads of broken light.
He continued to stare silently at the sky.
As though something in the rain had reminded him that he was still human—or as though the sky alone knew his true name.
The breaching officer raised his hand and saluted before he had time to think. Perhaps he did it because he could find no suitable words.
Or perhaps his body had moved before his mind. His hand remained at his brow as the soldiers around him stood in brief confusion, watching their comrade.
"Sir."
Shaheen did not turn.
The officer kept his hand raised.
A moment later, another soldier joined him.
Then a third.
Then the twenty soldiers standing in the evacuation line began raising their hands one after another, until they formed a complete row of drenched soldiers saluting a man whose name they did not know.
A man whose face they had never seen.
But they had seen what he had done to bring the others out alive.
Shaheen did not return the salute.
He merely nodded, his eyes closed beneath the rain.
In the command room, the general continued staring at the final image.
His men, who were accustomed to facing death without hesitation, stood before Shaheen as children might stand before something beyond their ability to understand.
The general closed his eyes for longer this time and silently removed his military cap.
He had never seen his men like this before. He had never seen them salute a weapon, a commander, or a victory. They were saluting someone who had returned from hell, then stood beneath the rain, unable to understand what to do with his survival.
He opened his eyes and said calmly, "Record the mission under the unit's name, not the weapon's."
The communications officer asked, "And what should we write about Shaheen?"
The general looked at the image. Shaheen was still standing, the towel hanging from his hand, the rain washing the last trace of blood from his armor.
The general said
Write that he...
From Disker