كانت سماء سانت بطرسبرغ بلون الرصاص المنصهر، تهطل أمطار متجمدة تلسع الوجوه كالإبر. في الطابق الخمسين من ناطحة السحاب الزجاجية، بدا العالم صغيرًا وغير ذي شأن، لكن بالنسبة لأليكسي كوزنيتسوف، كان هذا البرج حصنه المنيع. أليكسي، الابن "الشرعي" لسيرجي ولاريسا - الصبي الذي وُلد وفي فمه ملعقة من ذهب - كان يجلس في ردهة شقته الفاخرة، محاطًا بأفخر أنواع الخمور وأربعة من أضخم حراس القوات الخاصة السابقين الذين يمكن شراؤهم بالمال.
على بُعد أميال، في قلعة سوكولوف، جلس جينهو أمام شاشاته الثلاث، وأصابعه تتحرك بسرعة على لوحة المفاتيح على إيقاع موسيقي. لم يكن ينظر إلى سطور من التعليمات البرمجية فحسب؛ بل كان يُدير "إعصارًا" بشريًا.
همس جينهو عبر سماعة الأذن المشفرة: "أليكسي بالداخل يا جين. يعتمد نظام أمن البرج على أجهزة استشعار الوزن والتعرف على الوجوه. لقد عطلت كاميرات الممر الشرقي لمدة 45 ثانية بالضبط... بدءًا من الآن."
في عتمة الممر المظلم، انزلق خيال رشيق كما لو كان جزءًا من الظلام نفسه. كان جين.
كانت حركات جين مختلفة عن حركات المقاتل العادي؛ فقد كانت حركات جسدية بحتة. كان يعرف تمامًا أين يضع قدمه ليتجنب صرير ألواح الأرضية، وكيف يوزع وزن جسده ليخدع أجهزة الاستشعار فتسجل مرور قطة. كان يرتدي بدلة تكتيكية سوداء ضيقة، ووجهه مخفي بقناع لا يكشف إلا عن عينيه - عينان تشبهان عيني جينهو، لكنهما تفتقران إلى برودتهما التحليلية، وتفيضان بدلًا من ذلك بنوع من الغضب المكبوت الهادئ.
"لقد وصلت إلى الباب الخلفي"، همس جين وهو يسحب سلكاً رفيعاً من ألياف الكربون.
"الباب مُؤمَّن بقفل مغناطيسي بقوة 1200 نيوتن،" ردد صوت جينهو الهادئ. "لا تحاولوا فتحه بالقوة. سأرسل نبضة كهرومغناطيسية قصيرة عبر وحدة التحكم في الطابق السفلي. استعدوا... الآن."
سمع جين طقطقة خفيفة. دفع الباب برفق شديد ودخل متسللاً. كان يعلم أن لديه أربعة أهداف. لم يكن أليكسي مقاتلاً، لكن حراسه كانوا وحوشاً.
استخدم جين ما أسماه جينهو "الذكاء الجسدي التطبيقي". فبدلاً من الهجوم المباشر، تسلّق جين قنوات التهوية العلوية بصمتٍ مرعب. ومن الأعلى، راقب الحراس. كان أحدهم يقف بجوار المطبخ، واثنان عند المدخل الرئيسي، والرابع خلف أليكسي مباشرةً.
قال جينهو في أذنه: "جين، تذكر. الحارس الموجود بجوار المطبخ يعاني من إصابة قديمة في ركبته اليسرى؛ ينقل وزنه إلى اليمين كل 10 ثوانٍ لتخفيف الضغط. الحارس الذي خلف أليكسي هو الأخطر - زمن رد فعله 0.4 ثانية. ابدأ بالأضعف."
Jin dropped from the vent like a spider, hanging only by his feet. In one lightning-fast motion, the carbon-fiber wire wrapped around the first guard's neck. The man made no sound; his airway and the oxygen supply to his brain were severed in milliseconds. Jin hauled him up into the ceiling cavity before a single drop of blood could hit the floor.
One down.
Jin moved through the peripheral shadows of the lounge. Alexei was laughing on the phone, blissfully unaware that death stood just behind the velvet curtains.
"Sergei will kill Jinho soon, Mother," Alexei boasted. "And then I will be the sole heir. Those bastard twins are nothing but wreckage from the past."
Jin's eyes flared. Bastards? he muttered to himself.
Jin burst from behind the curtain like a thunderbolt. The two guards at the door spun around, but Jin was faster. Using his momentum, he vaulted over the marble table, delivering a precise, crushing kick to the injured guard's knee—just as Jinho had instructed. The bone shattered with a sickening crunch. Before the man could scream, Jin buried a small dagger into the base of his skull, right where the spinal cord ends. Instant paralysis. Silent death.
Two down.
The third guard drew his pistol, but Jin gave him no chance to aim. He hurled a heavy liquor bottle with pinpoint accuracy at the guard's hand, snapping his wrist on impact. Jin then lunged forward, driving his elbow into the man's ribcage with enough sheer force to rupture his lungs.
Three down.
Only the fourth guard remained—the "monster." The hulking man tried to grapple Jin, but Jin weaponized his physical intelligence against him. Instead of meeting force with force, he allowed the guard to pull him in, then used the giant's own momentum to execute an advanced Aikido throw, shattering the man's arm by using his massive body weight against the joint. The guard crashed to the floor, and Jin ended him with a surgical strike to the carotid artery.
Four down.
All of this unfolded in under 60 seconds. A deafening silence fell over the penthouse, broken only by the sound of rain lashing against the glass.
Alexei stopped talking. The phone slipped from his hand and shattered, as if announcing the end of his voice. He looked around in absolute terror; the bodies of his elite guards were strewn about the room like broken dolls. When he raised his eyes, the blood froze in his veins. Jin stood there in terrifying calm, wiping a long blade with a piece of silk torn from the blood-soaked shirt of one of the guards.
"Jin?" The word rattled from Alexei's throat as he backed away until his shoulders hit the cold glass window. "You... you're supposed to be dead! Father said the basement became your grave... I stabbed you myself, I saw the blade go into your side!"
Jin stopped wiping his blade. He looked coldly at the site of the old stab wound on his flank, then shifted his gaze back to Alexei. In a voice as low as a snake's hiss, he said, "Your thrust was hesitant, Alexei... just like the one wielding it. You left a mark, but you didn't leave a corpse." He took a slow step forward. "Your father sees us as 'bastards' that need to be put down, but he forgot that bastards learn to survive in conditions where pampered dogs like you die."
"Please! Listen to me!" Alexei screamed, trembling violently, his tears mixing with the cold sweat coating his face. "I'll give you everything! Money... Larissa's Swiss accounts, millions, it's all yours! Just let me go!"
Jin let out a dry, mirthless laugh—a sound dredged from a dark abyss. "Money? Do you think oxygen can be bought and sold when I decide to choke you? Jinho told me not to rush... He says your quick death would be a mercy you don't deserve. He wants you to taste every second of the terror we lived through under Sergei's whip while you stood by and laughed."
In Sokolov Castle, Jinho watched the scene unfold through a hacked hidden camera. His expression was stone-cold, but his eyes blazed with the bitterness of years of oppression.
Jinho pressed the comms button and said with cutting ice, "Enough talking, Jin. Begin. Make him understand that the shadows they tried to bury underground have returned to shred their false light."
Alexei collapsed onto the lavish Persian rug, crawling backward like an insect trying to escape a crushing boot. His breaths came in ragged gasps, and the stench of expensive liquor radiating from him now mingled with the cold sweat and urine of primal terror. Before him stood Jin, terrifyingly still, wielding a serrated hunting knife designed to tear tissue, not just slice it.
"Jin... please... we're brothers!" Alexei shrieked, his voice cracking. "Sergei ordered it! He ordered Jinho's torture in the basement! I didn't know anything!"
"An interesting lie," Jinho's chilling voice drifted through the apartment's smart speakers, having breached the audio system. "Alexei, your phone's digital logs show you telling the guards to 'increase the dose' during the torture. You were watching it on the cameras while having dinner with Elena, weren't you?"
Alexei froze. The voice echoing from the walls sounded like a judge handing down a death sentence from another realm.
"Jinho?" Alexei whispered in panic. "You're watching him? Stop him! Please, stop him!"
"I'm not just watching, Alexei," Jinho said, sitting in his darkened room, his eyes reflecting the biometric data scrolling across his screen: Alexei's heart rate, his blood pressure, even his adrenaline spikes. "I am setting the 'rhythm' of your death. Jin, start with the left carotid... but don't sever it. Just 'graze' it."
Jin moved in a blur. His physical intelligence transcended mere strength; he understood the distribution of nerves and joints like a 3D topographic map. With a simple, pinning press of his knee to Alexei's chest, he immobilized him, drawing the blade across his neck as lightly as a feather.
Alexei let out a muffled scream, feeling the icy bite of the metal pierce his skin.
"This pain you're feeling right now," Jin murmured hoarsely, his eyes locked onto Alexei's terrified gaze, "is one percent of what Jinho felt while you laughed at his screams. Jinho analyzed equations so he wouldn't lose his mind. Me... I was memorizing the contours of your face so I'd know exactly where to bury my blade when I got out."
Ivan stood behind Jinho, watching the monitors in absolute silence. He watched Jin dismantle Alexei both psychologically and physically, and saw Jinho conducting him like a maestro leading a symphony. A chill crept down Ivan's spine; these twins weren't just victims anymore. They were a "two-headed weapon."
"You feel no remorse?" Ivan asked in a deep baritone, resting a hand on Jinho's neck, his fingers grazing the scars left behind.
Jinho didn't look back; his fingers continued to dance across the keyboard. "Remorse is a system error, Ivan. Alexei represents the 'excess' in the Kuznetsov family. He is the pampered byproduct of Larissa's betrayals and Sergei's madness. By terminating his existence, we are restoring balance to the family's physics."
"Your brother is brutal," Ivan observed, watching Jin on the screen as he slowly, methodically snapped one of Alexei's fingers.
"Jin is the physical 'reaction' to their actions," Jinho replied coolly. "I am the mind that maps the path, and he is the body that carves it. Ivan, do you know why I told Jin to let him speak?"
"Why?"
"Because Larissa is watching right now." Jinho smiled a dark, twisted smile. "I opened an encrypted livestream straight to her personal tablet. She's watching her beloved son beg for death, and she can't do a damn thing about it. That is true vengeance... dying with the realization that your 'protector' is nothing but a helpless spectator."
Alexei had lost the ability to scream; his voice had devolved into a death rattle born of visceral terror. Jin had "disabled" his major joints with surgical strikes, reducing him to a helpless mass of flesh that was still agonizingly aware.
قال جين، وهو يقف شامخًا فوقه ممسكًا بعبوة طلاء فسفوري كان قد أحضرها معه: "أتعلم يا أليكسي؟ أخبرني جينهو أن اللون الأحمر هو اللون المفضل لسيرجي. لكن لدي شعور بأن اللون الأحمر المستخلص من دم ابنه سيكون له نكهة مختلفة تمامًا."
"أرجوك... جين... اقتلني بسرعة..." توسل أليكسي، والدماء تسيل من شفتيه.
أجاب جين: "السرعة ليست ضمن خوارزمية جينهو الليلة".
بدأ جين في "إعداد" المشهد. سحب جثة أليكسي المحطمة نحو النافذة الضخمة الممتدة من الأرض إلى السقف والمطلة على الكرملين. وباستخدام دمه والطلاء، بدأ في تلطيخ الزجاج برسالة ضخمة - رسالة سيراها جميع سكان سانت بطرسبرغ عند شروق الشمس.
"جين، انتهى الوقت،" دوى صوت جينهو في سماعة الأذن. "بدأت الشرطة بتتبع نبضات نظام تحديد المواقع العالمي (GPS) التي بثثتها عمداً. أمامك 120 ثانية للانسحاب."
قال جين: "مفهوم".
نظر جين إلى أليكسي نظرة أخيرة. لم يكن في عينيه أي كراهية، بل فراغ مرعب أجوف. بالنسبة لجين، لم يكن أليكسي سوى "مهمة" مكتملة. أمسك جين برأس أليكسي، وبحركة سريعة ودقيقة أظهرت تفوقه البدني المطلق، كسر فقرات عنقه، منهيًا بذلك معاناته.
انهار جسد أليكسي الهامد بجوار الرسالة الملطخة بالدماء على الزجاج.
تسلل جين إلى الشرفة، وأخرج معدات القفز المظلي. وقبل أن يتمكن الحراس والشرطة المتبقون من اقتحام الباب، قفز جين من الطابق الخمسين، واختفى في ضباب سانت بطرسبرغ المتجمد. ترك وراءه جثة ورسالة كفيلة بأن تجعل قلب سيرجي كوزنيتسوف يتوقف من شدة الرعب.
عند عودته إلى القلعة، أغلق جينهو الشاشة ببطء وأطلق زفيراً عميقاً.
قال جينهو وهو ينظر إلى إيفان: "لقد اكتملت المرحلة الأولى من المطاردة. الآن، دعونا نرى كيف سيكون رد فعل "الوحش" عندما يكتشف أن صغاره قد ذُبحوا."
يتبع...