SWAT officers arrive and swarm the cellblock as Zero escapes. Upon arriving, Zero finds the prison staff massacred and his target already dead. Zero's fourth target is Fa Yuan, a prison inmate. Zero infiltrates his nightclub and can either kill Electrohead or listen to him confess to using Chronos before he is shot dead by V, who again flees. Next, Zero is sent to kill DJ Electrohead, a disc jockey involved in the drug trade, and is explicitly warned not to speak to him. On his way home, Zero befriends a young girl living next door to his apartment in the Third District. Zero fights his way to Rose, who commits suicide. His mission failed, Zero visits his psychiatrist to receive his daily Chronos injection and a dossier on his next target, Josh Rose. The scientist is found but immediately killed by V, a Russian mobster, who escapes. The game begins as Zero is rescuing a kidnapped scientist from a warehouse. Zero is also repeatedly visited by Comedy and Tragedy, two men wearing lab coats and theater masks, who taunt him about impending disaster in his future. The child is heavily implied to be a young Zero. Throughout the game, Zero experiences recurring nightmares of a child in a primitive hut a man wearing a labcoat bursts into the hut and warns the child to hide moments before being shot dead by the menacing silhouette of a soldier. The player controls a katana-wielding assassin called Subject Zero, nicknamed “The Dragon”, as he completes various assassinations given to him by his psychiatrist, who also supplies him with ‘Chronos’, a drug that allows him to slow down time and predict the future. New Mecca's faction is implied to have lost the ensuing conflict. The game's plot is heavily affected by an invasion of an unnamed Asiatic nation, referred to as the "Cromag War," launched by either New Mecca or whatever controlling government rules it. Katana Zero takes place in the dystopic, neo-noir metropolis of New Mecca. The game also features a real-time conversation system that the player can interrupt. The player character can deflect bullets with his slash, slow time with a meter that slowly refills, and dodge attacks using rolls. The player character navigates sidescrolling levels, attempting to kill all enemies in that level using his blade or environmental traps. Katana Zero includes no health bar and being hit will result in instant death, similar to Hotline Miami. Katana Zero is a 2D action platform video game developed by Askiisoft and published by Devolver Digital for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Nintendo Switch in 2019.