The broadcast cut to gray fuzz, leaving the med-bay dead quiet beneath Vance's lingering threat. Renshu remained motionless, a faint vibration thrumming in his meridians that Sova could not register. Then the ground shook, rattling data slates against steel trays and setting the auto-docs into an electronic whine. A distant roar, like a tearing sheet of steel, reverberated through the subterranean networks. Dust rained from the ceiling vents. Shrieks erupted from the alleyways beyond the reinforced walls, riding a violent backdraft of displaced air. Then the ceiling above the Chronos-Den ripped open. Not a collapse, but an explosion of concrete and twisted rebar, revealing a sliver of the choked, neon-streaked sky of Xin-Luo. Through the gaping maw, dark, conical shapes descended, hundreds of them, streaking down like vengeful meteorites into the densely packed alleys and crumbling hab-blocks of the Undercroft district. Screams became a chorus of despair as the drop-pods slammed into the ground, rupturing metal and concrete, disgorging their grotesque cargo. The first bio-beast, an eight-legged horror of obsidian chitin and dripping bile, scuttled from its shattered module, forelegs shearing through a noodle stall. Its shrill chitter answered another impact two blocks down, then three more, hulls crumpling as pods pulverized the lower terraces. Renshu moved, not with haste, but with a predatory grace. His malice toward Vipera hardened into absolute focus. He stepped over Doctor Zhos, who cowered beneath a diagnostic console. “Remain here,” Renshu ordered flatly. “Protect them.” He gestured toward the children huddled stiffly under the sterile lights. Sova snatched her slate. “No, Renshu, wait! This is a massacre! I need to—” “Go,” Renshu cut her off, his eyes already scanning the chaos outside. “Find a vantage. Disrupt their nets. Create a path.” His gaze fixed on a discarded high-frequency vibro-sword, resting beside a sparking Enforcer chassis. The blade hummed faintly against the cracked tile. He scooped it up. The hilt sat balanced across his calloused palm. The sharpened edge shimmered, cycling microscopic oscillations designed to sever reinforced plating. His thumb tested the grip; the synthetic polymer felt slick compared to wrapped cord, but the balance was true. This was no metal scrap. It was steel worthy of a strike. The nearest bio-construct spat caustic fluid that hissed against a tenement bulkhead, catching Renshu's eye. He moved, a flicker in the neon haze, his form dissolving and reforming in the wake of the screaming populace. People scattered like dust motes before him, their terror-stricken faces a blur. He ignored the fleeing scavengers, his sword will sharpening into a needle along the metal. A smoking capsule hissed open nearby, exposing twitching limbs in the vapor. Renshu did not hesitate. He didn’t run around it; he ran *through* it. The blade traced an exact arc through the smoke. He channeled past-life qi directly into the metal lattice, overriding its battery circuits with raw spiritual force. With a sharp crack, the steel hull split in two alongside the monstrosity thrashing inside. A clean, clinical cut that ran from its apex to its base. The cleaved husk collapsed in twinned halves, black viscera sizzling against the pavement. Renshu recovered his stance without a drop of bile touching his coat. He was a whirlwind, a phantom made real, a counter-current against the tide of terror. Each thrust, each parry, each impossible cleave, was executed with the same cold, calculating grace. The weapon hummed smoothly, turning corporate alloy into a conduit for forgotten martial forms. He cut down two more crawlers, sliced an Enforcer drone down its sensor cluster, and cleared a ten-pace perimeter through the alley. Above, on a precarious perch overlooking the devastation, Sova worked with a furious intensity. Her comm-slate glowed, a maelstrom of data streams and encrypted protocols. Her fingers, a blur across the holo-keyboard, danced over the interface, redirecting bandwidth, overriding security sweeps. Her goal: the Vipera drop-ships, still hovering, still deploying their horrific cargo. If she could seize control, even for a moment, she could turn their own systems against them. “Come on, you corporate scum,” she muttered, a bead of sweat trickling down her temple. “Open up.” She plunged a backdoor through a hastily patched firewall. Access granted. She gritted her teeth and hammered the execute key. With three rapid commands, she severed power from the drop-craft ramps and inverted their forcefields into domes over fleeing scavengers. The bright, pulsating blue domes offered a brief, fragile sanctuary from the chaos. More, she needed more. A sharp crack cut through the subterranean roar. A blinding flash of light exploded against her shoulder. A burning slug punched clean through the meat of her left shoulder. She cried out, stumbling, her slate clattering to the ground. A dark, rapidly expanding wetness bloomed on her shirt, just above her comm-link. She hit the concrete platform, blinking against gray static in her vision. A corporate sniper. On the adjacent rooftop, barely visible through the smoke and neon haze. A hundred meters down, Renshu drove his point through a bio-fiend's skull, nailing it to a terminal rack. His peripheral vision, honed over centuries of combat, caught the glint of light, the puff of smoke, and Sova’s sudden fall. His pulse quickened with irritation. He moved to pivot, to confront this new threat, but then his attention was snatched by another, more immediate danger. An alpha ravager, double the size of the others, was charging straight for the Chronos-Den entry. Towards the orphans. Towards Zhos. Green venom welled between its serrated mandibles. It lunged at the entrance, claws scraping deep furrows into the blast door. Renshu saw Sova, slumped and bleeding, and the stalker, ready to breach the clinic, and for the first time in this spiritual illusion, he hesitated. His calculations fractured. Protect the innocent lives he’d reluctantly embraced as real, or save the only ally who understood the mechanics of this strange, new world? There was no time to reach either. Not both. He tightened his grip on the high-frequency katana, its hum a frantic pulse against his palm. With a harsh exhale, Renshu threw the sword with the full weight of his qi. The steel spun in a silver ring, spearing through the beast's brain stem and pinning it writhing to the doorway. Then, without a moment’s pause, bare-handed, he turned and sprinted towards Sova.

A Real Sword