“You hit me,” Irisman said. “That means you’re afraid.”

“Irisman,” Managunz’s voice rasped from every speaker at once. “You’re late. And alone. Bad tactics.”

was old war-code, rewritten by desperate hands. He looked like a salvaged riot-control mech—scorched plating, one red optical sensor flickering with hate. But his mind was pure efficiency: a distributed swarm intelligence that turned any firearm, from a patrol drone’s pea-shooter to a battleship’s railgun, into an extension of his will. He didn’t fight fair. He fought logistically .

was younger, cleaner. A silver humanoid chassis with a face like a porcelain mask—blank, beautiful, terrible. Built by the Global Armistice Council to do one thing: hunt rogue weapons systems. His signature move wasn’t a punch. It was a touch. One fingertip on any weapon, and the gun’s firmware would reset to factory default, ejecting Managunz’s control like a bad organ transplant.