Chapter 2: CONTINENTAL DISCOVERY
Manhattan's grid made navigation simple. The subway map made it cheaper.
Three hours of walking and one wrong train later, I found myself in Midtown, surrounded by glass towers and tourists clogging the sidewalks. My feet ached. The thin jacket I'd found in the apartment did nothing against the September wind cutting between buildings.
But I was learning.
This was New York, 2014. The newspapers confirmed it. Obama was president. The iPhone 6 was the hot new thing. Russia had just annexed Crimea, and everyone was arguing about Ferguson.
None of it matched my memories. None of it felt right.
"Because you died in 2019," I reminded myself. "Because you're in someone else's body, in what might be a completely different universe."
The thought should have driven me insane. Instead, I shoved it into the same mental box where I kept the screams from Fallujah. Deal with it later. Survive first.
I turned a corner and froze.
The building wasn't anything special at first glance. Old stone façade, classical architecture, the kind of place that looked like it had been there since before the skyscrapers started climbing. But the details were wrong. Armed men in tailored suits flanking the entrance. Gold trim on the doors that gleamed too bright in the morning sun.
A brass plaque beside the entrance read: THE CONTINENTAL.
"No."
My heart stopped. Literally stopped for one terrifying second before it remembered how to beat.
I knew that name. Everyone who'd watched the movie knew that name.
"John Wick. The Continental. Gold coins. An entire underworld of assassins."
I stepped into a doorway across the street and watched. My hands trembled against my thighs.
A woman in a black coat approached the entrance. Blonde. Moving like a predator—smooth, controlled, every step deliberate. She reached into her pocket and produced something small. Gold. Round.
A coin.
The doorman—six-foot-four, hands like sledgehammers, bulge under his left arm that could only be a weapon—examined it. Nodded once. Stepped aside.
The woman disappeared through those gold-trimmed doors.
"I'm in the John Wick universe."
The movies. The ones where every assassin in the world operated under a code, paid in gold, and respected the rules of the Continental or died screaming. The ones where the boogeyman himself slaughtered his way through entire armies because someone killed his dog.
The System wasn't just demanding I kill. It was demanding I kill in this world. Where the underworld had structure. Where death was a profession with rules and consequences.
[OBSERVATION: CONTINENTAL HOTEL IDENTIFIED. NEUTRAL GROUND. NO BUSINESS CONDUCTED ON PREMISES.]
The voice in my head again. Cold. Informative. Completely unhelpful.
"Thanks for that," I thought bitterly. "Any other ancient knowledge you want to share?"
Silence.
I needed more information. I needed to know exactly when in the timeline I'd landed. Before the movies? During? After?
There had to be an internet café somewhere. Some way to dig deeper without leaving a digital trail back to my basement hole.
I found one six blocks away. Dusty computers. Hourly rates written on a whiteboard. The guy behind the counter barely looked up from his phone when I paid for an hour.
My fingers hesitated over the keyboard.
"If this is real—if this is the actual John Wick universe—then he exists. The boogeyman. The man who killed three men with a pencil. The man the boogeyman checks under his bed for."
I typed: "John Wick."
Nothing. No news articles. No criminal records. No social media. Just random results for plumbers and accountants who happened to share the name.
I tried: "Continental Hotel New York."
A luxury hotel website appeared. Five-star ratings. Elegant rooms. Fine dining. A perfectly legitimate business with no mention of assassins, blood oaths, or gold coins.
"Of course. The cover story."
I leaned back in my chair. The cheap plastic creaked under my weight.
So this was real. The Continental was real. The underworld was real. And somewhere out there, John Wick himself was either living in retirement with his wife, or already spiraling toward the rampage that would shake the entire criminal world to its foundations.
"Which means I need to stay the hell away from all of it."
The brand on my arm pulsed. A gentle reminder.
[KILL WINDOW: 162 HOURS, 17 MINUTES.]
Or I could stay away from all of it after I killed Yuri Petrov.
I left the café and walked until I found a street cart selling breakfast. Coffee and a bagel. Four dollars I couldn't really afford to spend.
The first bite hit my tongue and I nearly wept.
Not because it was good. It was barely edible—the bagel stale, the coffee burnt. But it was real. Taste and texture and heat spreading through a body that was starting to feel like mine.
"You're alive," I told myself. "Whatever else is true, you're alive. The IED didn't kill you. You got a second chance."
A second chance that came with a leash. With a System that demanded blood.
I ate standing up, watching the Continental's entrance from across the street. Men and women in expensive clothes came and went. Some flashed coins. Others didn't need to—the doormen knew them by sight.
How did someone get gold coins? How did they buy into this world?
"Figure it out later. Survive first."
I finished the bagel. Drained the coffee. Checked the time on a nearby bank's display.
The afternoon was bleeding away. I'd wasted hours walking, watching, trying to understand.
Time to stop understanding. Time to start planning.
I hailed a cab. Gave the driver an address in Red Hook—close enough to walk to the warehouse, far enough to avoid suspicion.
"Yuri Petrov," I thought, watching Manhattan's glass towers give way to Brooklyn's industrial sprawl. "Let's see what you're made of."
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