Three hundred wealthy guests watched a maid stop Vanessa’s attack with one hand, never realizing the woman in the gray uniform had once been trained to dismantle dangerous threats.

The figure beside Vanessa stepped over the railing, dropping twenty feet down to the reinforced concrete floor without bending his knees. The impact cracked the stone, yet he absorbed the force effortlessly, his breathing slow, mechanical, and silent.

"Generation Ten," Naomi whispered, shifting her stance into a balanced, defensive crouch. She discarded the empty sidearm; bullets wouldn't penetrate the layered ceramic weave encasing his chest.

"You were Julian's masterpiece, Naomi," Vanessa said, leaning over the rail with a cruel, vindictive smile. "He loved your human instinct, your adaptability. But human elements have flaws. Empathy. Fatigue. Pride. Unit Prime has no brain chemistry to exploit. His limbic system was burned away at fourteen. He doesn't feel pain, Naomi. And he doesn't stop."

Ethan stepped out from behind the pillar, pointing a discarded rifle at Vanessa on the gantry. "Call him off, Vanessa! The facility is rigged to blow!"

Vanessa didn't even flinch. "Kill the maid, Prime. Tear her hands off."

Unit Prime vanished in a blur of terrifying acceleration.

Naomi barely had time to raise her arms before a kinetic strike like a moving freight train hit her forearms, launching her backward through a bank of server racks. The metal crumpled around her, knocking the breath from her lungs.

She rolled instantly, dodging a downward stomp that obliterated the concrete floor where her skull had rested a fraction of a second before.

Prime was faster than any operative she had ever faced—faster than the instructors in the Philadelphia facility, faster than Julian’s elite guards. His movements were mathematically optimized, devoid of the micro-tells that humans gave away through muscle tension.

Naomi blocked a vicious horizontal elbow, feeling the shockwave reverberate down her spine. Her left arm went temporarily numb from the sheer force. She countered with a palm strike directly to his sternum, but it was like hitting solid armor plating; Prime didn't even shift his balance.