15 Shadowstep

"How did he do it?" Nathan smacked his hand against the grassy ground. "It doesn't make any sense."

Nathan had been practising his special move for hours, and he still hadn't seen any progress. After the fight with the thugs, he'd realized that he still had a lot of room for improvement. Especially his Shadowstep—the one and only special move he'd personally discovered. But now, it seemed, he wasn't the only one using it.

However hard he tried, he just couldn't achieve the same result the thug had. Nathan had pored over hours of camera footage, studying his own performance of Shadowstep. No matter the camera angle, there was always a substantial afterimage. But as far as he could remember, the thug hadn't had one. What was he doing wrong?

Nathan walked to the corner of the grassy field, where his water and towel rested. He sat down and recalled how he had first discovered this move.

It was his first time training with three RTDs. They had him cornered in a pincer attack, a position he'd never won from before. But in that fight, he'd decided to try something new. He'd thrown caution to the wind, dashing directly at one of the approaching enemies.

To his surprise, the gap between him and the RTD had become a lot shorter in the blink of an eye. He'd lost that fight, but he'd discovered something amazing in the process. Something he named Shadowstep.

But now, he was stuck. How was he supposed to progress? Everything he had done with Shadowstep was mostly instinctual. It just happened naturally. And that hadn't been good enough in the last fight.

Nathan wiped his brow and walked towards the south wall. He tapped on the plain surface, waiting for a display to appear. He selected a fully repaired RTD and returned to the field, waiting for the RTD to follow.

Nathan stood ten meters away from the RTD, which was now in a battle stance. He took a deep breath and Shadowstepped to his opponent. In an instant, he appeared beside the RTD. It hadn't managed to react in time.

Still not good enough. They can't keep up. Nathan began to question the effectiveness of robots in assassin training. Were they really the best tools an assassin had? If so, what had the thug trained with? He'd have to ask his father when he returned.

For now, what the RTDs didn't have in strength, they had in numbers. Nathan selected all seventeen functional RTDs and ordered them to disperse around the grassy field. He strode to the middle and waited, pondering his next move.

"Commence Elimination Module!" he finally said.

Soon after, all hell broke loose. The seventeen humanoid figures all went into a battle stance immediately, charging Nathan one after another. The skirmish resembled a football field, and Nathan was the ball.

The RTDs shared a hive mind. Every robot was connected to a central server, where all input was grouped into one large chunk of data. Based on this data, the server determined what to do with each individual RTD. In this case, the decision was simple—kill the opponent.

In the middle of this mess, Nathan was dodging left and right, using only Shadowstep to avoid the fatal blows. If his other tests had failed, he reasoned, he might as well use the method that had prompted the discovery in the first place. Besides, long years of training had enhanced his senses, helping him to locate the incoming RTDs in time.

By varying the distance and frequency of his Shadowsteps, he hoped to upgrade the skill. A devastating kick from the right was dodged with a short Shadowstep, while a punch from the opposite direction was evaded with a longer one. It sounded a little stupid in theory. In reality, though, it was more than a little stupid.

Nathan continued dodging left and right, depleting his stamina without stopping the attacks.

After a while, he grew tired of it. No matter what he did, he wasn't able to go as fast as he wanted. He felt an urge to order the robots to stop, but an intense feeling of danger stopped him.

Before he knew what was happening, he sensed an attack from behind. He managed to twist just in time to see the fist that hit him in the face. He flew back and hit another RTD, who slammed him into the ground.

Something strange had happened. These RTDs were not the ones he'd been fighting up until now. They were stronger, faster, with a hive mind that had improved by leaps and bounds. This combination of attacks was something Nathan had never experienced before.

Time was not on his side, either. The robot that had slammed him to the ground was approaching, preparing to stomp on his head. Nathan rolled away just in time, kicking his way up.

"Terminate Elimination Module!" Nathan shouted. But nothing happened. "Well, looks like the dodging rule is off the table."

Nathan Shadowstepped his way to the nearest enemy, eliminating him from the deadly game of tag with a single punch. To his surprise, the RTD didn't fly through the room. It seemed to have grown much heavier.

Four more RTDs quickly encircled him, while two more were already cycling around to attack him at the first sign of distraction. Nathan Shadowstepped through a brief opening and tackled one of the circling RTDs. A second one approached, forcing him to Shadowstep out of the way.

He managed to take out the first two, but he was already sore and out of breath. This was bad. He racked his brain for a way to eliminate all fifteen of the remaining RTDs.

"Divide et impera it is," he whispered to himself.

The RTD nearest to him was met with an overwhelming kick, while the one on the other end was pummeled into the ground. Nathan continued Shadowstepping to the furthest enemy, doing as much damage as possible before the rest ganged up on him.

"Nine left," he panted. He was barely standing, but he couldn't afford to give up now.

With another Shadowstep, Nathan emerged in front of the next RTD. He was about to throw out a hook when his intuition of danger returned. Suddenly, the RTD vanished and reappeared in the blind spot to his right. He felt suffocating pressure. His reflexes kicked in with a flash, and everything turned white.

For a fraction of a second, Nathan panicked. But when he felt his feet touching the ground, he looked down to see the white wall of the training room. His panic turned to surprise.

The RTDs! Nathan twisted himself and took up a battle stance. But the robots were all frozen in place, staring in his direction.

Nathan was almost twenty meters away from the nearest RTD, and about twenty-five meters away from his original location. He hadn't been punched—he was certain of that. Had he. . .

"Yes," a deep voice echoed through the room. "You guessed right. You really are something else, Nathan."

A bespectacled man approached.

"Who are you?" Nathan shouted, backing away slowly. "How do you know my name?"

Whoever this man was, Nathan definitely didn't want to mess with him. He'd rather face seventeen RTDs. There was danger lurking around this man. An assassin, Nathan was sure.

"Oh, how rude of me." The man stopped, scratching his head innocently. "My name is Rafael, Rafael Ravilla. We spoke on the phone last week."