What should have been a brightly lit, heavily guarded restricted area had become a bloody slaughterhouse.
The dazzling Searchlights swept back and forth in vain, only illuminating the flying blood and shattered limbs more clearly.
The expensive perfume that had once scented the air had long since given way to the thick stench of blood, leaking machine oil, and the acrid smell of burning electrical sparks.
Panic spread through the bodyguards like a plague.
"Where is he?! I can't see him! I can't see him!" one bodyguard screamed hysterically. His optical implants spun frantically, scanning every shadowed corner, but all they fed into his brain was a jumble of heat signatures and fast-moving afterimages.
His terror was so overwhelming that he could no longer control his weapon properly.
"Left! No! Right! He's too fast! Damn it, above us!"
Another voice tried to direct them, but the words had barely left his mouth before a series of thunderous metallic rips and his comrades' abruptly silenced screams erupted from the direction he had indicated.
The dark figure seemed able to appear in several places at once.
"The automatic tracking system is down! Unable to lock onto the target! Repeat, unable to lock!" the fortress defense system operator cried desperately over the comms.
The automatic turrets and sentry guns deployed throughout the courtyard swiveled uselessly. Faced with a target whose speed, reflexes, and movement patterns far exceeded their design limits, their sensors and targeting algorithms had become utterly blind.
Occasionally, a turret would spray a wild barrage through sheer luck, but it usually struck their own men or expensive ornamental structures, setting off a chaotic burst of explosions and flames.
Screams, roars, clashing metal, explosions, shattering bones...
The sounds wove together into a symphony of destruction.
The towering dark figure leaped and flickered