Chapter 0: The One Who Was Forgotten
The chain sliced past Shree's face by the narrowest margin, the wind of it brushing his skin before it crashed violently into a ventilation pipe behind him. The metallic impact rang across the rooftop, sharp and hollow, sending sparks into the air. But the attack had never been about the chain itself. Doppels was already inside his range.
His foot slid low across the rooftop, cutting through dust and debris before slamming into Shree's ribs. Shree reacted instantly, dropping his elbow to absorb the impact, but even then, the force pushed him back a step. Before that movement could settle, Doppels grabbed his sleeve and yanked, just enough to disturb his balance, and drove his forehead forward. The headbutt landed cleanly.
The sound was dull but solid. Shree staggered slightly, a thin line of blood forming near his brow, and for the first time, his expression sharpened. The chip pulsed in his mind, recalculating, adjusting, refining. Doppels, on the other hand, looked almost delighted.
"There," he said, his voice trembling with something close to excitement. "You react."
Shree wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, his breathing steadying almost immediately. "You're annoying," he muttered, though there was a faint shift in his posture now—subtle, but real.
Doppels laughed, and, without warning reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol. The weapon looked heavy in his hand, solid and unforgiving, but the way he held it was loose, almost careless.
"I'm not aiming at you," he said.
BOOM
The first shot shattered the concrete near Shree's feet, sending fragments upward in a violent spray. The second tore through a water tank behind him, releasing a burst of pressurized water that instantly met the flames and turned into thick steam. The third slammed into a steel pipe, the ricochet screaming across the rooftop in a wild arc.
Within seconds, the battlefield changed. Fire, water, steam, and dust merged into a dense, shifting haze that swallowed the rooftop whole. Visibility dropped until shapes became shadows, and shadows became guesses.
Shree didn't panic. He didn't rush. But his eyes moved constantly, tracking, calculating, adjusting to every distortion in the air. The chip worked overtime, feeding him fragments of prediction through chaos. And yet, something felt off.
BOOM
Another shot rang out.
The bullet struck exactly where he had stepped a fraction of a second earlier.
Shree stilled for a brief moment, understanding dawning. Doppels wasn't firing wildly. He was forcing movement, reading reactions, and mapping space through pressure and response.
"I'm not trying to hit you," Doppels' voice echoed faintly through the fog. "I'm mapping you."
Shree exhaled slowly, then moved.
His foot slammed into the ground with controlled force, cracking the already damaged rooftop and sending another wave of cement dust into the air. The fog thickened instantly, turning the entire space into a blind zone.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then the gun fired again.
BOOM
The sound tore through the silence, and Shree twisted just in time, the bullet grazing past him. Another shot followed, closer this time, forcing him to adjust again. The rhythm was deliberate, controlled, almost surgical in its chaos.
Then Doppels emerged.
He burst through the fog low to the ground, sliding across the surface as his leg swept toward Shree's ankles. Shree lifted just enough to avoid it, but Doppels transitioned instantly, spinning upward into an elbow strike that crashed toward his jaw. Shree blocked, the impact reverberating through his arm, but before he could counter, Doppels fired again—this time directly into the ground between them.
The explosion of dust and debris swallowed them both.
Inside that chaos, the fight turned primal. Hands collided, strikes were thrown and redirected, bodies clashed and separated, all without clear sight. Every movement relied on instinct, prediction, and raw reaction. Neither gained a clear advantage, but neither yielded ground either.
Eventually, they broke apart.
The fog began to thin, drifting slowly across the rooftop as the fire continued to burn in the background. Shree's breathing remained controlled, but his eyes narrowed slightly as he noticed something strange.
There were no sirens.
No distant noise.
No sign that anyone had noticed the explosion.
Just wind, fire, and silence.
"You noticed," Doppels said softly.
Shree looked up, and through the thinning smoke, small red lights blinked in the sky above them. Drones hovered there, quiet and steady, their presence almost invisible against the night.
"No interruptions," Doppels continued, a faint smile forming. "Just us."
The rooftop groaned beneath them, cracks spreading slowly through the structure as the damage accumulated. Then, without warning, Doppels shifted his hand slightly.
The ground beneath Shree's foot collapsed.
Concrete gave way instantly, the ledge breaking apart as gravity pulled him downward. His body reacted faster than thought, his hand shooting out to grab a protruding steel rod. For a fraction of a second, he hung suspended over the void.
Then the drones opened fire.
The rod sparked violently under the impact, metal fracturing under the barrage. Shree's grip failed, and he dropped.
The wind roared past him as he fell, the building wall rushing alongside him in a blur. Bullets chased him downward, cutting through the air with deadly precision. In that instant, his mind processed everything at once—angles, speed, distance, survival probability.
Then he saw it.
A reflective surface.
A maintenance panel.
His hand moved.
The knife appeared, flashing in the dim light as he twisted mid-air. One bullet struck the blade and deflected away. Another passed close enough to tear the fabric. Shree adjusted again, his body rotating just enough to align with the panel.
The blade struck metal with a sharp clang.
The force jolted through his arm, but it held for a fraction of a second—long enough. He used that moment to push off, launching himself upward. His fingers caught the edge of the rooftop, and with a single fluid motion, he pulled himself back up.
When he landed, it was clean.
Controlled.
As if the fall had meant nothing.
Doppels had already turned away.
"Goodbye, Perfect Human," he said, his voice carrying lightly across the rooftop.
"Hey."
Doppels stopped.
Slowly, he turned back.
Shree stood there, brushing dust from his sleeve, his expression as calm as ever.
"You almost had me."
And in that moment, something inside Doppels shifted again.
Because the gap between them…
was still there.