The Power Vacuum

"Take him alive," the voice in Diablo Gato's head said. Diablo Gato obeyed without question.

With that, his eyes turned blue as he grabbed the shaken Ivan and threw him onto his shoulders like he weighed nothing. DG then sprinted toward the still-airborne, hovering helicopter. He got to the edge of the building and stopped for a split second to judge the distance to the chopper. The entire wall had been shot out by armor-piercing bullets.

DG then leaped right off the edge, missing the spinning rotor blades by inches. He went right through the open door, landing on all fours like a cat on the floor of the chopper.

The helicopter swayed a little as Ivan's weight crashed into the opposite end, unsettling the aircraft's balance. The pilot expertly took back control of the giant machine, then took off toward the mountains, picking up pace and altitude as he went.

Moments later, the big, loud helicopter was nothing more than a dot in the sky, leaving behind a loud silence amid a cloud of destruction.

The remaining members of Ivan's residence were left with their mouths open, unsure what to make of the events. Their Capo was gone. So what next? There was a power vacuum, and vacuums do not last long—especially not in the corridors of power.

SATOSHI

Satoshi did not know what to make of the reports he was receiving from his men. He was convinced they had started smoking the meth they were supposed to be distributing. But no. His men were too disciplined to be getting high on their own supply. And even if they did, there was no way all of them would hallucinate the same thing—a very specific vision of Diablo Gato transforming into an actual devil cat, down to the finer details.

All angles pointed to the unlikely fact that this was true. Romeo had transformed into something subhuman. Something posthuman.

Satoshi then took a lone drive to the outskirts of Ivan's residence just to bear witness to the destruction himself. The scene was straight out of a warzone. He had paid Mobutu to do damage, but not this level of destruction. This was something else, something bigger than even Satoshi himself.

He even feared that he may have inadvertently messed with the system. And everybody knows—you do not mess with the system, because the system always messes back.

The place was swarming with cops, investigators from all security agencies… and nosey journalists. So Satoshi quietly drove away, careful not to attract any attention to himself.

A plan began falling into place in his mind as the road ahead of him snaked its way to his villa. In disaster, he saw opportunity. In a vacuum, he saw... power.

Little did he know he was about to come face-to-face with an enemy who knew him like the palm of his own hand. Little did he know, as the clock ticked and tocked time away, life away. His life—or at least, his life as he knew it.