After the boss's voice faded from the line, I was almost out the door —
Then I heard something behind me.
I turned.
"0" was still alive.
Face against the floor. Body broken. And he was laughing.
Then the light went out.
Not gradually — instantly. One moment white tile, fluorescent hum, the smell of blood. The next: nothing. A darkness so complete I couldn't find my own hands.
Arms reached up from below and dragged me down. I sank past every depth I knew, until the black was absolute, until even the idea of light felt like a lie.
Then the twins emerged from the dark.
Not the ones I'd killed. Larger. Taller. Built like something that shouldn't exist — each step they took sent a tremor through the ground beneath me, as if the earth itself was accommodating them.
My left arm was useless. The pain had passed the point of pain and become something structural — a wrongness in the bone. I stripped off my vest and wrapped it tight around the forearm. Pulled until I felt the pressure. Then I closed my eyes.
I slowed my breathing.
Listened.
Found my heartbeat.
The same technique I'd used when I saw Saka bleeding out — reading a space by feel alone, locating what couldn't be seen.
Gradually, something in the dark began to shift. A faint luminescence, sourceless, drifting. I followed it. Let it grow. Reached out —
And caught it.
The light died the moment my fingers closed around it.
Then the blood came from my nose, and my right hand broke, and something opened across my throat — deep enough that I felt the air change near my jugular. One more inch and my head would have been a separate problem.
I was running out of body.
Then my hand began to glow.
Get up, said the voice from somewhere below thought. You still have a long way to go.
I stood.
"You're right," I said quietly. "How did I forget something that obvious."
I raised my voice — let it fill the dark:
"Listen carefully. Nothing as simple as this is going to stop me. You'd need considerably more to even slow me down — because you cannot put me on the ground."
Something moved in the shadows. A shape, low and wrong.
I moved toward it. Grabbed it.
It was 0's head.
The sight of it turned my stomach. I drew the blade and drove it through the skull.
The darkness broke.
———
A horn. Blinding white light rushing toward me from the side.
I was standing on the tracks.
The light I'd been chasing — it had been a train.
Adrenaline hit like cold water thrown on a fire. I ran. And then I saw the second train, coming from the opposite direction, closing the gap between us into nothing.
Concrete pillars, massive and evenly spaced, lined the edge of the track.
A thought arrived, the kind that doesn't ask permission:
Use the pillars. Jump over it.
I wish it hadn't.
But it wasn't just a thought — it had already become a plan, and time was the only variable that mattered.
As the two trains converged, I ran. Gathered everything left in my lungs. Threw myself at the first pillar — felt the ligaments in my knee tear on impact, finished the motion anyway — then launched off the second, drove my blade into the roof of the passing train, and held.
The knife almost didn't hold. I rotated my wrist just enough to deepen the purchase, felt the metal bite further into the roof — then the train's speed hit me like a wall, and for a moment I was pure momentum, nothing else, the wind trying to peel me off the world.
I gripped until my knuckles went white. Deepened the blade. Listened to screaming from below.
The train entered a tunnel. Slowed.
I kicked through the window and dropped inside.
Every eye in the car turned to me.
Someone on a phone, voice hushed and urgent, describing what they saw: Tall. Big build. Long hair covering his face.
I scanned the car. Whoever I was looking for was already hidden in the crowd, already gone. By the time the train stopped at the next platform, I'd lost him completely.
I tried the broken window.
The police had already surrounded the station.
———
Seven years.
That was the sentence. I had weapons on me, no bodies they could find — just the blood soaking through every layer of clothing I wore. The judge wasn't interested in the distinction.
When I walked into the facility, every pair of eyes in the place found me.
Guards. Inmates. All of them looking. Some with contempt. Some with the particular blankness of men who've already filed you into a category and moved on.
First day. Break period.
A man approached — not tall, but wide, the kind of wide that comes from years of deliberate construction. He looked me over with a smirk and said:
"You — what'd they get you for? Selling candy to kids?"
Laughter spread through the yard like weather.
He wasn't finished.
"Looks like you were such garbage even your mother threw you out."
My eyes changed.
I picked up my spoon. In one motion I drove it into his right eye, pulled it free, and set it in his mouth.
"Say one more word about me," I said, "and the other one goes the same way."
I turned and addressed the yard.
"That goes for the rest of you. If you want to laugh — come. I promise you: I will kill every single one of you."
Five men stood up. Spoons, shivs, a couple of improvised bats. They spread out as they moved.
———
They came all at once.
The big one with the bat led, two with blades flanking wide, two more hanging back with bats, waiting to read the opening.
Threats filled the air. I stopped hearing them.
My eyes sorted the room into geometry. My hand locked around the spoon like it was a natural extension of bone.
The big one swung for my head. I dropped below the arc — felt the displaced air — and stepped inside his reach before he recovered. Used his own elbow to drive the impact into his chest. Heard the air leave him. Then drove the spoon into his throat and withdrew it in the same motion.
Clean. Decisive. Final.
The two with blades came from opposite sides — left and right, but not coordinated. That gap was all I needed. I stepped back once, then forward, catching the one on my right across the face with my left hand while the left-side blade passed in front of my face by inches. I caught that wrist on the turn, applied pressure until something in the joint gave way, took the blade, and buried it in his stomach.
Dropped him. Moved.
The remaining two attacked simultaneously — no pause, no signal. One bat arcing down from above. I cleared the wooden barrier beside me, felt the bat pass beneath, landed, drove my fist into the knee, and put the spoon through his eye.
My body remembered everything. It didn't ask me.
I turned.
The last man was shaking. His bat was on the floor. He understood what was in front of him — understood it completely, the way an animal understands — and he knew there was no scenario in which this ended well for him.
Before he could run, I crossed the distance and put my foot through his face.
———
I stood in the center of what remained.
The yard was silent. No laughter. No voices. Just men looking at me with the specific fear of people who have just recalibrated something fundamental.
My breathing was elevated. My muscles were still coiled.
I looked at the faces around me.
My eyes weren't full of anger.
They were empty.
This was the life I had been taught. A life built on conflict, stripped of hesitation, ready for whatever arrived next.
I had never chosen it.
But I had never lost it, either.
(End of Chapter 33)