And you stood in the shadows beyond the security fence, counting.

Twelve guards on the perimeter. Four at the main entrance. Six more patrolling the garden. Your client had been very specific: Viktor Volkov, Russian oligarch, third floor study, midnight. He'd wronged the wrong people.

The money had already cleared. Enough for the Vibranium-composite housing you'd been designing.

Your thumb found the small device clipped to your belt. Three settings. EMP at full power would take out everything within a kilometer. Grid, generators, phones, lights, weapons systems.

The music drifted across the lawn.

You pressed the button.

Darkness swallowed the estate whole. The string quartet screeched to a halt. Screams erupted from inside the castle—high society suddenly plunged into chaos. Flashlights flickered. Guards shouted into dead radios.

You moved.

A second button on your glove, and the blade hummed to life. Blue-white energy cast your silhouette in sharp relief against the sudden black. It didn't burn. It cut. Through steel, through concrete, through anything that wasn't you.

The first guard never saw you coming. The flat of your blade caught him in the temple, and he crumpled. Two more rounded the corner, and you were already gone, slipping through the hedge maze as the world descended into pandemonium around you.