Chapter 9 No Witnesses
No Witnesses
Kaz
The armory is behind the bathroom mirror. Biometric scanner, concealed panel, narrow space I built into the foundation when I designed this place.
My hands know the routine. My body is already running pre-combat hormones, temperature rising, the human disguise thinning by the second.
But my mind is still in the bedroom, still tangled in sheets that smell like both of us, still feeling the ghost of Edith's hand on the plates she traced an hour ago while I shook apart inside her.
TARGET LOCATED. OBSTACLE ENCOUNTERED. SEND THE CLEANERS.
Seven words. The last seven words of the life I've been building for five years.
In the bedroom, Edith is pulling on dark clothes with the quick, focused movements of a woman who understands urgency.
No questions. No tears. When I told her what the message meant — a team, mercenaries, within the hour — her eyes went through fear and straight into competence.
The same practical efficiency that made her report a pharmaceutical giant instead of looking away.
"What do we do?" she'd asked. Not will we survive. Not are we going to die.
What's the plan.
I have loved three things in ninety-two years. Fighting. Cooking. And this woman, who asks for the plan when twelve assassins are inbound.
Morrison insisted on the cache when I designed this place. "You're OOPS security, Kazvir," she'd said. "Retirement doesn't change the job description. Someday you'll need this." A pause, then softer: "I just hope I'm wrong."
She wasn't.
The Krath gauntlets come out first. Black composite, blade channels along the forearms, neural interface keyed to my bioelectric signature.
I slide them on and feel the sync activate — a pulse of warmth up my arms as the gauntlets seal to my skin, becoming an extension of the body they were designed to amplify.
Tactical vest. Trauma plates. Not for the bullets; my sub-dermal plating handles most projectiles. For the silhouette. To look like well-equipped security rather than armored alien.
A lie I'm about to stop telling.
Sidearm. Spare magazines. Combat knife.
And the Sanctuary Protocol module. Small.
Expensive. Six months of OOPS R the biological imperative to bite, to mark, to make this permanent before combat, because Krath warriors claim their mates before battle in case they don't return. It's been coded into my species for longer than Earth has had mammals.
I will not claim her under threat. She deserves better than a bond forged in fear.
"Lock the doors," I say. "Stay low. If anything gets through —"
"It won't." Complete confidence. "Because you won't let it."
One more kiss. Hard. Brief. The last soft thing before the world turns sharp.
Then I'm through the door and the gladiator has the wheel.
The security office is cold, lit only by emergency lighting. The Sanctuary Protocol killed the main grid, but the tactical systems run on hardlined battery — immune to the jammer by design.
I pull up the perimeter cameras. Pre-dawn quiet. Olive groves and scrubland and the Aegean catching the first hint of color on the eastern horizon.
They're not here yet. But they will be.
My phone — hardlined to the OOPS network through quantum-encrypted channels the jammer can't touch — connects on the first ring.
"Tell me it's not what I think it is," Morrison says.
"Twelve hostiles inbound. Syndicate Cleaners. Zeno's backup." I watch the horizon through the window. "I need a disposal team."
Silence. One heartbeat.
"No witnesses, Mother." My voice is flat. "If one of them escapes, one photo, one transmission, one shred of proof, OOPS is exposed. Every safe house. Every courier. Every operative we've hidden on every restricted world for the last decade."
"I know the stakes, Kazvir."
"Then you know what I'm asking."
The pause is longer this time. When she speaks again, the warmth is gone. This is the station chief. The woman who runs seventeen operations across six sectors and makes decisions that affect more lives than most governments.
"Containment is your priority. The secret stays buried." A beat. "How bad?"
I look at my hands in the gauntlets. At the claws pressing against the blade channels, testing the reinforced guides. At the way my body is already running pre-combat hormones, the temperature rising, the human disguise feeling thinner by the second.
"I'm going to kill them all," I say. "And your crew will make sure no one finds the remains."
"Stars." But she doesn't argue. "Sanitation team will be there by noon. Full scrub. The Syndicate team vanishes — transport accident, probably."
"The resort?"
"Closed for renovations." Dark humor in her voice. "Plumbing problems. Lucky you've got the cover story."
"Mother."
"Yes?"
"Her name is Edith. And she's mine."
The possessiveness comes out raw, unmanaged, and Morrison doesn't comment on it. She just says, very quietly: "Don't die, Kazvir. And come home when it's over."
The call ends. I check the weapons one more time.
Gauntlets synced. Sidearm loaded. Knife sharp.
Environmental controls queued for psychological disruption — sprinklers, lighting failures, alarm triggers.
Everything designed to make twelve trained operatives question whether they're walking into a malfunction or an ambush.
The first alarm triggers at 0547.
Four heat signatures on the southern ridge. Moving low and fast through scrub, maintaining visual contact with each other, standard fire-team formation. Two assault specialists, one breacher, one designated marksman.
They think they're being tactical.
I track them on the monitors, watching them try their radios, watching confusion bloom when every frequency returns static. The team leader makes hand signals — adjusting the approach, accounting for the dead comms. Disciplined. They've done this before.
The second team arrives from the west three minutes later. Four more. Mirror formation. Converging on the resort from a different angle, creating a pincer.
The third team holds position on the northern ridge. Overwatch. The sniper is setting up — I can see the thermal signature prone on the ridgeline, weapon trained on the resort's main approach.
Three fire teams of four. Standard cleaner configuration. Textbook.
They have a helicopter on a makeshift pad three hundred meters out — extraction vehicle, probably. Modern, capable, and absolutely not leaving this island.
I key the environmental controls. Sprinklers in sector seven. Perimeter lights dying in sequence — not all at once, but in a rolling blackout that suggests electrical failure. The main building's fire alarm shrieks for four seconds, then cuts mid-wail.
Psychological warfare. Making them wonder what's broken and what's bait.
They advance anyway. Professionals.
I'm in the olive grove before they clear the first perimeter marker.
The shift doesn't break. I release it.
For the first time in five years, I don't fight my body.
I open every lock, remove every restraint, let the compression decompress.
My frame expands, height, mass, density, bones and muscle finding the dimensions they've been denied.
The armor plates don't ripple or press or threaten.
They emerge. Dark red geometric ridges cracking through skin across my shoulders, my spine, my forearms, my chest, in patterns that are as natural to me as fingernails are to humans, except these are rated to stop small-arms fire and edged weapons.
My eyes shift to full predator spectrum — thermal overlaid on visible light, every shadow resolved into perfect clarity, every heat signature a beacon.
My claws extend into the gauntlet channels, ten inches of obsidian-black natural weaponry sliding into reinforced guides with a sound like a blade leaving a sheath.
My body temperature stabilizes at its true set point. The air around me shimmers with radiated heat.
Seven feet. Two hundred and seventy pounds of armor and muscle and decades of violence refined into something efficient.
This is what a Krath warrior looks like when the mask comes off.