7:55pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

The first warning that something wasn’t right came when, despite the absence of a fire, the fire alarm began to ring. The alarm was a high pitched, loud, repeating bleep that, for nearly five minutes, progressed more and more to an electronic scream. It ended as suddenly as it began, by which point at least half of the hospital’s population had left to form a gawping crowd in the parking bays and roads that surrounded the building.

Many patients, and many of the hospital staff, were still inside. The corridors and waiting areas were now blocked with sick patients and beds that the staff were trying to get outside who, in their rush, had also caused a congestion of traffic that brought the hospital to a standstill. It was chaos, and there were still those still too ill – or too dangerous – to be moved.

Aiden had been slightly surprised no-one had come to his room or attempted to move him when the fire alarms began. There had been commotion in the hall outside, and he could hear the mumbles of his guards debating what to do, but in the end they never even opened the door to check if he was awake. He could not see this with his eyes closed of course, but there had been no sound to suggest it.

About 30 seconds after the fire alarm ended, the hospital was suddenly engulfed by a state of near complete darkness. The main lights, and all non-essential equipment, suddenly ceased working – and even when the reserve generators kicked in only the dim emanations of computer screens and medical equipment provided light.

Aiden’s heart was racing now, and a few moments later he heard what sounded like a distant explosion – and then screaming – and then repeated pops of gunfire in another part of the building that led to silence.

“What the hell is going on out there?”

The voice came from outside Aiden’s room, and though it was muffled by walls and doors he could now hear what they were saying. There were multiple voices, more than two, but the exact amount he could not quantify.

“I don’t know. We need to get back-up here though.”

There was silence for a moment, then some mumbling that Aiden couldn’t make out.

“I can’t get through.”

“Shit. Something is not right here. Do you think it has something to do with the suspect?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Why would it?”

“It’s terrorism. It has to be.”

“Maybe it’s stopped? I can’t hear anyth- Shhh. What’s that sound?”

There was a deathly silence then, as though even a breath would give them away, and Aiden could almost picture them in his mind silently switching their weapon safety’s off in preparation for some hostile encounter. They were listening for something, but what was it? He could no longer make anything out through the walls, and suddenly he began to fear for his life. He wanted to shout out to the people he could hear, to ask them what was happening, but an overwhelming sense of self-preservation prevented him. He lay there motionless, and nearly breathless, and trying so hard to hear the slightest pin falling that he began to imagine the sound of them.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door being kicked open, and weapons were fired in short bursts. Almost immediately reaction shots came, single and repeated, and they hit walls and metal and glass, and all of these things shattered and broke. Almost instantly the firing started again, except this time it was accompanied by screaming that was cut short, and the smell of fear. The shooting continued for a few seconds, followed by another yell and a loud bang that shook Aiden’s entire room like a bomb had gone off outside it. Then he heard a body hit the floor, or the wall, or perhaps both, and there was silence again.

When they opened his room door, Aiden only heard it at first because there was the slightest splattering sound – like a boot stepping in water – and even then it took him a moment to realize it was a real sound. After that he became accustomed to it, and he could hear more sounds now – more of those almost indiscernible wet footsteps, and breathing through a metallic filter that was so quiet that was almost as silent as his own. The entire time, Aiden had kept as still as one of the bodies that now lay outside.

“We have him,” a quiet, humming voice said, as though careful not to wake him. “He’s in some sort of unconscious state.”

As Aiden focused on the voice, he could just about triangulate it to the far side of the room near the door.

“Yes sir,” the voice hummed again, speaking to someone that Aiden could not hear. “Securing now.”

It was not until a slow, metallic shing reached his ears that Aiden realized that there was at least one more them, and that this second individual was standing right beside his head. The metallic shing belonged to a knife, and as it passed close to his ear he could hear the song of it cutting the air itself – a song that no-one else could perceive. It made his ear tingle, almost tickle, and then he heard the knife cut into fabric. Suddenly his head was no longer held down by a strap, and though he dared not move it he felt a great relief.

“All these straps are overkill, don’t you think?” The second voice hummed quietly.

“There aren’t enough,” replied the first.

The knife was moving lower now, down by his side. First the strap around his upper arms were cut, then his elbows. “A patrol’s here,” said one of the voices; somewhere there was more gunfire, and more screaming, and then silence again except for commotion on the other floors that Aiden came increasingly to hear. It was the sound of murder, and violence, and as he heard it the smell of blood began to permeate through the hospital’s air circulation system.

“E.S ready. Once his hands are free make sure to grab him.”

His heart began to beat faster, and though he was utterly still he was terrified that they would hear it, or even feel the sheer beating of it, he forced himself to be as unconscious as he could be. He took his mind to each of his muscles, forcing them in some paradoxical manner to relax, and when he finally convinced himself he was finished he felt some other part of him tense against his will.

The knife was by his wrists now, and it cut through the strap with a gentle sawing motion of the figure who held it. When Aiden finally felt the pressure on his wrists release, he sprang his attack without warning despite being unable to move his legs. He opened his eyes, and grabbed the knife wrist of a man he now saw wore black armour, and whose face was obscured with a black, pointed visor, and launched his body weight so that the he drove the blade up into the base of his throat.

“Shit! Target hostile!” The second man at the end of the bed yelled, firing several automatic rounds from an illegal, modified submachine gun as the first man reeled back and collapsed into the wall.

The rounds punched through Aiden and into the bed, and though he felt them hit him with some force it took several seconds for the pain to start. It was a burning pain, like specific points of his body were growing uncomfortably hot, and Aiden had no idea what to do except get away from them. He dragged himself over the side of his bed despite his wounds, and his upper body fell backwards over the side as his legs were still caught in their straps. The man aimed his gun and fired again, and again Aiden’s body twisted and contorted in strange ways as the bullets hit him.

He went still. He was not dead like he appeared to be, but rather exhausted and scared, and he did not know what to do. One leg slid free but the other remained trapped, and the smell of thick gun smoke and the burning of the barrel filled the room. “Are you dead yet, fucker?” The man asked.

Aiden raised his head slightly, and the gun was fired again, and his trapped leg came completely free and fell next to him. “Shit,” the man’s voice came again. “Are you alright?" He addressed his colleague, "or did you die on me?”

He could tell the question wasn’t meant for him. It was meant for the man whose body now lay partly against the wall, whose blood was now forming a pool on the floor that Aiden lay in. It was wet, and warm, and sickly. Aiden groaned, and though he burned all over, he began to push himself up with his hands.

“What the fuck?”

The voice was filled with fear, and though Aiden heard and felt yet more bullets tearing through his flesh, that fear was growing into something else - something strong. He wasn’t sure how, or why, but despite the injuries given to him his flesh did not fail, and his heart did not give in, and as he realized this his mind ceased being filled with panic and anxiety. As the masked man’s fear grew, so did Aiden’s belief that he was somehow immortal.

Aiden was standing fully now, and though stained with the blood of the dead man, and though his clothes were full of tears and holes that revealed sealing flesh beneath them, he turned to face his foe with a new, predatory aura.

The man began backing away until he reached the wall, and then pulled the trigger of his gun until his magazine was empty, and until Aiden’s standing form stopped bucking and jolting from the force of the rounds that hit him. When sound of the gunfire died Aiden took a step closer, and the mercenary let his gun fall against his chest and drew from his front-pack a standard issue combat knife.

“What do you want with me?” Aiden asked him, but there was no answer. The mercenary charged and thrust his knife towards Aiden’s heart, but Aiden caught the wrist before it reached him and, twisting it strangely, caused it to snap like a stick. The man yelled, the filter of his visor making his scream seem almost autotuned, and then a second later fell silent as Aiden took the knife and jammed it through the top of his helmet and down into his brain.

For a moment there was silence, and in that silence, Aiden felt fear. How many people had he now killed? He did not want to count a true number, and the fact his memory failed him meant that he couldn’t. All he knew was that he had, and that the woman who had tried to help him was probably one of them.

Yet there was something else that bothered him. It wasn’t just that he had killed, it was the ease in which he had done so. Two trained warriors now lay in his hospital room, each of a veteran of his own battles, and yet Aiden had dispatched them as though all that they were was nothing, and with movements so perfected it felt like he had done them a thousand times before.

Despite his fear he found that he was calm, and he knew there was a terrifyingly true mastery in that fact; to be so proficient at killing that he was not only able to do it with ease, but for it to also be a normal experience. Where had he learned to take life in such a manner? What had happened to him during those missing years?

Another loud bang brought him back to attention, and Aiden decided that he had to leave. There was no-one that he could trust, and simply surrendering to the police after what he had done would not fix his crimes, nor would it explain to him what was happening. He took a deep breath, and with the bloody knife still in his hands he slid open the hospital door and stepped outside.

The corridor beyond was lit only by a buzzing blue light coming from a more open area beyond, and in it he saw the corpses of the police officers who had been guarding him. Their blood was dark and stained the floor and walls, their weapons and spent casings on the floor discarded by their murderers. The first thing he noticed was that there was no other door in that corridor, and no way for his previous visitors to have reached him other than walking right past the officers who would have prevented it.

He walked towards the far door bare-footed and trying not to step in viscera, and one of the officers had a still-broadcasting ear-piece, decades old, hanging down from a bloodied ear. "Soko ni imasu ka?! Nani ga okotte iru?!" He heard from the piece, the voice on the other end breaking into electronic static.

He pressed on, becoming more and more aware that the sound of some battle taking place was coming from below him. He stepped out into an abandoned area that had been a nursing station, a desk with an old flat-screen computer the centrepiece. He walked around to check the screen but found that the display was broken, and even the tap-screen desk where the nurses would type didn't respond when he pressed them. He looked south to where several private rooms were locked shut or open and empty, and there was a window there that showed the neon lights of the nightscape outside; blue, purple and green on the neighbouring buildings. He was on a high floor, but could not tell how high.

Next he looked north, and saw there an elevator door blinking in a blue error message that he couldn't understand. Next to the elevator was a plain white door that led to a stairwell, and so he went to it and opened it as quietly as he could. Inside the stairs went both up and down in a half-pace fashion, and Aiden went down until he saw a sign displaying the second floor.

In most large megapolis buildings the ground floor was not the only point of entry. There were often walkways and bridges leading to other buildings every two or so floors, and Aiden hoped that he could find one and escape before the police had them locked down.

When he opened the door Aiden was greeted by a scene of carnage and horror - blood and bodies filled the hall, dozens of them multilated and shot, and signs of an explosion had torn electronics, steel and stone from a large chunk of a wall that separated the lobby from a patient ward. The smell of blood was immediately overhwelming, and it was sickly in that Aiden could not tell if he was starving for it or repulsed by it.

He covered his nose with an arm, and pressed on through the gore until, only a few seconds after leaving the stairwell, he was felt a hand weakly grasp at his leg. He looked down to see a man there, wounded in ways difficult to describe, clearly begging for Aiden's help and yet too weak to make a sound. Not knowing what to do he pulled himself away, and the man fell still.

"So the scans were right. You actually managed to get them," said a voice from down the hall, and suddenly Aiden realized that there were more of those black-armoured mercenaries. There were eight of them, and they were kitted out in steel of such dark onyx that they were almost darker than black itself, and like the others they had no noticeable markings of allegiance or rank.

Aiden turned towards them, his initial instinct to run now dampened by the knowledge that no matter what they tried, they did not have the means to kill him. "Who are you?" Aiden asked, his tone unsure of itself.

"Surrender now, lad," said the lead one. "Or we'll have to hurt you."

"I don't think you can," Aiden replied.

Suddenly the lead man raised his rifle, and a bullet tore through below Aiden's knee, knocking his leg out from under him and sending him toppling into the mess of blood and death. He let out a momentary groan of pain, and tried to push himself up with his arms.

"Stay down," the mercenary repeated. Behind him the other seven began to fan out, stepping around the bodies until they had Aiden partially surrounded. One of them then approached him, and Aiden looked up to see the figure holding out a hand that began to unfold into metal plates that turned back on themselves until two rails pointed at him from the wrist, each coiling with blue electricity.

Aiden looked up at it, the pain in his leg subsiding as the electricity began to charge and glow with enough light to illuminate a wide circle around them. Then it fired, and the overwhelming force of the shock knocked Aiden down to the ground again, shaking and surging and unable to move.

"Subject acquired. Let's bag him and get out of here," said the lead one, Aiden unable to control his muscles.

He had thought it wouldn't harm him, that he would shake it off as he had done everything else; now he was not only unable to move, but barely able to think. The electricity surged through him, coursing through his blood, and behind his eyes, and in his brain, and continued to do so again and again as though his own body was a complete circuit. He only just found the strength to look up and see one of the others preparing what was unmistakably a net-launcher, and for that figure to be hit square in the chest by an armour-piercing round as he raised it to fire.

The shooting began immediately, the mercenaries taking a knee or seeking cover behind small objects as a storm of bullets were unleashed upon them. Small arms rounds ricocheted off their armour, or glanced off the angular nature of it, and filled the walls with holes and broken debris. The mercenaries returned fire, but at what he could not see, and as Aiden shook uncontrollably he saw another armour-piercing round hit a second man, and for him to die as immediately as the first.

After what seemed like an entire minute, the mercenaries began to pull back, each covering the last as they changed their magazines and retreated down a hall away from the lobby. Finally the electricity surging through Aiden began to cease, and he found enough strength to look around and see that heavily armoured officers were firing through windows and into the hospital from adjacent buildings and from ropes that they had used to rappel down the outside walls. For a moment his eyes caught the individual who fired those killing rounds - a feminine form looking down into the scope of a sniper rifle. She had him in her sights, but paused, and because Aiden could finally move he pushed himself to his feet and began to sprint out of the line of fire.

His only course of escape led him directly into the mercenaries, and when they saw him approaching they began to fire at him again. Aiden ducked and weaved, and zig-zagged, and shot from one side of the hall to the other with such quick athleticism one could be forgiven for believing he was dodging the bullets aimed at him. He wasn't - they tore his clothes and shot through his flesh until he was half-naked, and a surprisingly small amount of red splattered out from his exit wounds as he moved.

He suddenly had no choice but to be the aggressor, and they were so surprised and off-balanced when he reached them that they posed little challenge against the mysterious martial arts that he somehow knew. He disarmed one of them, spinning with the rifle in his hand to crack the butt into one man's face. Another dropped his primary weapon and drew a pistol, and Aiden clasped his palm over the barrel and moved it just as the bullet was fired through his hand. He pulled the pistol away, and moved in again, and drew the mercenary's own knife with his free hand that he stabbed down into a space beneath the helmet.

"Shit!" One of them cried, and fired at Aiden with a submachine gun. Aiden slid and hid behind a desk to avoid it, and found another of the mercenaries had done the same thing. They faced each other, crouched for a moment, until Aiden launched himself at the soldier - who now stood up, let his gun fall against his chest and drew a combat knife in each hand. When Aiden reached him the mercenary slashed at him twice, one cutting his forearm where he tried to block, and the other just barely missing from where he leaned out of the way. He turned into that lean, and it became a spin that ended with a thrusting kick; Aiden's bare foot hitting the mercenary so hard and so squarely in the chest that he was thrown backwards off his feet and into the nearby wall.

The mercenaries were in full retreat now, each fleeing towards a pair of transparent doors that led out onto a walkway bridge. The doors opened for them automatically, and as the few remaining stepped out onto it they were shot down by officers waiting in the building at the far end. Aiden, knowing it was his best chance to escape, followed them out into the night rain just in time to see the final standing mercenary get shot squarely in the head in front of him. The back of the helmet opened up in a mess of metal and blood, and the body slumped back into Aiden, who pushed it away from him.

"Hold right there!" Shouted a scruffy looking Japanese detective, a large handgun held in both hands. His dark leather trenchcoat was blowing in the sudden wind, and behind him there was a bright spotlight shining directly into Aiden's eyes. Aiden tried to cover them, but even through the light he could see the armed officers waiting behind it.

"Just let me go," Aiden pleaded. "I didn't want any of this!"

"Didn't want what?" Kato asked, not lowering his gun.

Aiden didn't answer. Instead he ran at the detective, who fired and missed, and pushed past him and the spotlight and through the officers who cried out and tried to stop him. When he broke through to their rear, wearing nothing but tattered hospital trousers and drenched in blood that wasn't his own, he fled into the maze of buildings around the hospital and lost himself in the night.