Nino's room was empty.
No Nino.
The window had been shattered. Glass scattered across the floor like broken teeth. Moonlight poured in through the gap, cold and indifferent, filling the room with pale silence.
Could she have been taken?
The thought hadn't finished forming before my phone rang.
I answered.
"You saw the message," the voice said. "Why didn't you respond? Go to the nearest train station from your home. Now. Or you'll find Nino's head delivered to your door."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone slowly.
Then I crushed it in my hand.
I drove to the hospital. Took the elevator down to the basement. Moved through the familiar dark without turning on the lights.
I strapped on a protective vest. Two suppressed pistols. Two blades.
Then I headed for the station.
— Earlier —
Before I had left Nino's room, I noticed a box tucked in the corner.
I opened it.
Photographs. Of me.
What—
Not recent ones. These were old. Taken when I was young — a child moving through alleyways, unaware, unguarded. Someone had been watching me since before I could have known to look back.
The Organization had its eyes on me before I even had a name worth knowing.
I set the photos aside.
Then something else caught my eye. A videotape. Written across the label in neat handwriting:
Happy Birthday.
I stared at it for a moment.
It wasn't mine. It was Nino's.
I left it where it was.
I found "0" waiting at the station.
I walked straight to him. Grabbed him by the collar. Dragged him into the men's restroom without a word, and wrapped my hand around his throat.
"Nino," I said quietly. "Where is she?"
He laughed.
"Nino's being held," he wheezed. "She's with our leader."
I drove him into the corner of that cold tiled room. White walls. Fluorescent light buzzing overhead. His sweat and blood streaked the porcelain behind him, and I could feel his pulse stuttering beneath my fingers.
I pressed harder.
His breath was beginning to leave him — thin, unraveling, like thread pulled from a wound.
Then —
Cold metal against the side of my head.
The barrel of a suppressed pistol. Another man. Standing behind me, silent as a shadow.
I released the first man slowly. My jaw tightened. I turned.
Same face. Same eyes. Same flat, predatory stillness.
A twin.
Two reflections of the same rot.
He smiled — a low, ugly thing — and said softly:
"Your last mistake."
My heart kicked once.
My hands didn't hesitate.
I threw my weight sideways and slammed my foot into the wall, pivoting hard. The shot fired. The bullet screamed past my ear and cracked into the tile behind me.
I drew one of the suppressors. Fired low, twice. The bullet caught his leg. He staggered back with a grunt — but didn't fall.
The first one lunged.
We hit the wall together. His fist caught my face. I felt the skin above my brow split open, warm blood sheeting down into my eye. But my hand was already moving — I drew the blade and drove it into his thigh. His blood came hot across my knuckles, and his scream rang off every hard surface in that narrow room.
The second raised his pistol again. I fired from my other hand — a suppressed shot through the shoulder. It took him off his feet, but he hit the floor and stayed conscious. Eyes still burning. Still reaching.
They were tougher than they had any right to be. As though pain only sharpened them.
I stood between them, breathing hard. Both pistols raised. Sweat and blood dripping from my chin.
I threw one gun down.
They came at me together.
One limping, one with a shattered shoulder — and neither of them stopping.
The tile was red now. Every movement sent fresh fire through my ribs. I blocked, absorbed, struck. Elbows, knees, the butt of the blade. I threw myself against the wall when I had to and used it to push off. We crashed into each other again and again in that cramped, blood-soaked space.
The first smiled through a mouthful of red.
"We'll put you down," he said, "even if it burns us both."
Something locked into place behind my ribs.
I looked at my hand.
My fingers trembled once —
— then stilled.
I exhaled.
"Enough."
The wire came out from between my fingers.
Thin. Silver-bright. Razor-edged. It caught the light like something alive — like the fang of something that had been waiting, patient and cold, in the dark.
Their eyes went wide.
The first lunged — fast, desperate — but the wire split the air before he crossed half the distance. It caught his wrist. Passed through. His hand hit the floor before he did, and the sound that came out of him wasn't human.
The second raised his pistol.
The wire wrapped his wrist in an instant. I pulled.
His own hand turned against him. The gun went off directly beneath his chin.
A choked sound. Then the floor.
I stood in the center of the room, breathing like something wounded and ancient, the wire coiling slowly around me.
The first was crawling. Blood pouring from the stump of his wrist, soaking into the grout between tiles. He looked up at me with eyes full of nothing but hatred. Tried to rise.
A wire found his chest.
I pressed.
The metal passed through him. He stopped moving.
The second — half his jaw gone, one eye swollen shut — stretched a trembling hand toward me. Reaching for something. Life, maybe. Mercy, maybe.
I sent the last wire across the room.
It found his neck. I pulled slowly, steadily, until the sound of him ended and his body folded to the floor.
I drew the wire back in.
Stood alone in the wreckage of that white room — white that was no longer white.
Despite everything, I felt the corner of my mouth lift.
"Even two of you," I said quietly, to no one, "wasn't enough."
You still prefer the wire, said the voice from somewhere beneath my ribs. You tried to leave it behind. But whoever you are now — he carries it.
I didn't argue.
My legs gave out. I sat down against the wall, back to the cold tile, and stared up at the ceiling while my lungs slowly remembered how to work.
I limped out of the restroom.
Breathing was difficult. Moving was worse. Every step announced itself in my ribs like a struck bell.
Then a phone rang — one of theirs, lying on the ground near the door.
I picked it up.
Answered.
A voice, calm and unhurried:
"Excellent work, Tai. You haven't disappointed me."
I closed my eyes for one breath.
Then I said:
"Prepare yourself. Whatever you're expecting from what comes next — let it go. You won't need expectations where you're going."
A pause.
"Because you're the next one to fall."
End of Chapter 32