Chapter 3: FIRST BLOOD
11:47 PM.
The hallway smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke. Four flights of stairs, cheap carpet worn thin in the middle, water stains on the ceiling from burst pipes nobody bothered to fix. The kind of building where people minded their own business. Where screams from apartment 4C could be mistaken for the television.
I stood outside Gerald Whitmore's door, listening.
Television on inside—some sports broadcast, crowd noise and commentary. Occasional clink of glass. No other voices. Anna was probably in the bedroom, staying out of his way until he either passed out or decided he wanted her.
Lock: standard deadbolt and knob lock. Old building, old hardware.
I reached with my mind.
Picking locks with telekinesis was harder than it looked. I couldn't feel the pins the way a real lockpick could. But I could apply pressure. Twist. Push. After thirty seconds of fumbling, the deadbolt clicked open.
[VEN: 91/100]
The doorknob was easier—just a matter of turning the interior mechanism. I eased the door open inch by inch, keeping my weight on the balls of my feet.
The apartment opened onto a short hallway. Kitchen to the left, living room straight ahead. The flickering glow of the television painted shifting shadows on the walls. Beer bottles lined the coffee table—four, five, six of them.
Gerald Whitmore sat in a recliner with his back to me.
Bald spot on his head. Thick neck. The blue glow of the TV reflected off his scalp. On the couch beside him, half-hidden by a cushion, I could just see the grip of his revolver.
There it is.
I focused. Reached. The gun trembled in its hiding spot.
Whitmore froze. His head turned slightly.
"Anna? That you?"
Silence.
I yanked.
The revolver flew from the cushion, spun across the room, and smacked into my waiting palm. It was heavier than I expected. Cold metal, worn grip. A working tool, used often.
[VEN: 82/100]
Whitmore lunged out of his chair, twisting to face me. His eyes went wide—then narrow. Calculating. A big man, running to fat but still solid underneath. The kind of guy who'd been in bar fights, who knew how to throw a punch.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Nobody important."
I pointed the gun at his chest. His eyes tracked to it, recognition flickering.
"That's my—how did you—"
"Sit down, Gerald."
He didn't sit. He stepped forward instead, testing. Watching for the flinch, the hesitation, the tells that would say I was bluffing.
I wasn't.
"I said sit."
Something in my voice made him stop. He lowered himself back into the recliner, slowly, his hands gripping the armrests.
"You a cop? Because I didn't do anything. Anna and me, we just—"
"I know what you did."
I moved closer. The knife was in my other hand—the chef's knife from the gym, cleaned and sharpened. His eyes fixed on it.
"I know about Susan Ramirez. Eight stitches, cracked orbital socket. You put her in that wheelchair."
His jaw tightened.
"I know about Maria Chen. Concussion, three broken ribs, internal bleeding. She almost died."
"That's—those bitches were lying—"
"And Anna." I nodded toward the bedroom door. "How many times this year? Ten? Twenty? The hospital trips she never makes because you convinced her she deserved it?"
"You don't know shit."
"I know you've been supplying girls to someone in Queens. Friends of yours. Business associates. Young girls. The kind that can't say no."
That hit different. His face went pale.
"How do you—"
"Doesn't matter."
I shot him in the right knee.
The revolver kicked, loud in the small apartment. Whitmore screamed—high and raw and genuine, nothing like the sound he'd drawn from his victims. He crumpled sideways, clutching his leg, blood seeping between his fingers.
[TARGET WOUNDED]
"You're going to tell me about the Queens operation," I said. "Names. Addresses. Where the girls go."
"Fuck you! I'll—I'll call the—"
I shot his other knee.
The scream was worse the second time. Neighbors would have heard by now. But this was Hell's Kitchen. This was a building where screams happened. People would turn up their televisions, lock their doors, pretend they hadn't noticed.
"Names, Gerald."
He was crying now. Snot and tears running down his face. The big man who terrorized women reduced to a blubbering wreck on his living room floor. There was no satisfaction in it. Just... completion.
"Tommy Vance," he gasped. "Tommy Vance runs it. Warehouse on 47th—the old fish processing place. He takes them in from the docks, sells them to—to—"
"To who?"
"I don't know names! I just—I just found him girls, okay? Girls who needed cash, who wouldn't be missed. I didn't—"
"You didn't care."
The bedroom door opened.
Anna Whitmore stood in the doorway, hand pressed over her mouth. Thin nightgown. Bruises visible on her arms, her throat, her face. She stared at her husband bleeding on the floor, then at me.
"Don't call the police," I said quietly. "In about two minutes, this will be over, and you can start a new life."
She didn't move. Didn't speak. But she didn't reach for a phone either.
I turned back to Gerald.
"Please," he whispered. "Please, I can pay you. I have money. I can—"
"You had chances. Eight years of chances. Susan gave you a chance when she didn't press charges. Maria gave you a chance when she left town instead of testifying. Anna gave you hundreds of chances, every single night."
I crouched beside him. Let him see my face. Let him see there was nothing personal in my eyes—no rage, no hatred, just purpose.
"You used them all up."
The knife went into his throat.
It wasn't clean. It wasn't pretty. Gerald Whitmore thrashed, gurgled, grabbed at my arm with weakening fingers. Blood spread across the carpet in an expanding pool. The smell hit me—copper and fear and the particular stench of death.
I held the blade in place until he stopped moving.
[TARGET ELIMINATED: GERALD WHITMORE]
[CRIME VERIFIED: DOMESTIC ABUSE (8 YEARS), HUMAN TRAFFICKING (FACILITATION)]
[EXP +500]
[VP +100]
[LEVEL UP! 1 → 2]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: BASIC COMBAT (PASSIVE)]
[EFFECT: +10% DAMAGE DEALT, IMPROVED REACTION TIME]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE DISCOVERED: INTELLIGENCE RECOVERED]
[REWARD: +50 VP]
I stood. Wiped the knife on Whitmore's shirt. Looked down at the corpse that had been a man.
I should feel something. Guilt. Horror. Triumph.
Nothing. Just the job done.
Anna was still in the doorway. Tears streamed down her face, but she wasn't looking at her husband. She was looking at me.
"Thank you," she whispered.
The words hit harder than the kill.
"He had a laptop. Where?"
"Office. Down the hall."
I found it. Password-protected, but the password was taped to the bottom—ANNA123, how romantic. The emails confirmed everything Whitmore had said and more. Names, dates, locations. The Queens operation was bigger than I'd guessed. Thirty girls in the past year, funneled through Tommy Vance's warehouse to buyers across the East Coast.
I photographed everything with Whitmore's phone, then wiped the device.
Back in the living room, Anna hadn't moved.
"Listen carefully," I said. "You came home, found him like this. Robbery gone wrong. You don't know anything. You never saw anyone."
She nodded, mechanical.
"The money in his wallet—take it. Start over somewhere else. Far from here."
"Who are you?"
I didn't answer. I crossed to the window, opened it, climbed onto the fire escape. The cold night air hit my face like absolution.
Behind me, Anna Whitmore began to sob—not grief, I thought. Release. Eight years of terror ending in sixty seconds of violence.
Maybe I should feel guilty. For playing judge, jury, executioner. For deciding who lives and dies.
I climbed down the fire escape, dropped into the alley, and vanished into the Hell's Kitchen night.
My hands weren't shaking. My heartbeat was steady. The blood on my clothes was already drying.
Three blocks away, I ducked behind a dumpster and pulled up the System interface.
[MISSION COMPLETE: GRADE B]
[TIME: EFFICIENT | COLLATERAL: MINIMAL | EVIDENCE: MANAGED]
[TOTAL REWARDS: 550 EXP, 150 VP]
[CURRENT STATUS: LEVEL 2 | EXP: 550/1,000 | VP: 150]
[BONUS OBJECTIVE FLAGGED: TRAFFICKING NETWORK — POTENTIAL CHAIN MISSION]
Chain mission. More targets. More people who needed to answer for their crimes.
Tommy Vance. The warehouse on 47th. The buyers across the East Coast.
The web stretched out before me, complex and ugly and full of monsters. And I had the power to tear it apart, one thread at a time.
I stripped off my bloody hoodie, stuffed it in a bodega bag, and changed into a spare shirt I'd stashed earlier. The knife went into my waistband. The gun—empty now—into my jacket pocket. Evidence to dispose of.
Walking back toward my basement hideout, I passed normal people living normal lives. A couple arguing outside a bar. A homeless man talking to himself. A mother dragging a tired kid home from somewhere.
None of them looked at me twice.
That's the trick. Be nobody. Be invisible. Let them walk past without ever knowing that death just passed them on the sidewalk.
The System notification pulsed again.
[NEW MISSIONS AVAILABLE]
[CHAIN MISSION UNLOCKED: QUEENS TRAFFICKING NETWORK]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO REVIEW AVAILABLE ASSIGNMENTS?]
I smiled in the dark.
"Tomorrow. Tonight, I rest."
The notification dimmed. The street swallowed me up. And somewhere in Queens, Tommy Vance went about his business, never knowing that his name had just been added to a very short list.
Marcus Cole walked home through Hell's Kitchen, the taste of blood still faintly metallic on his lips, and found that he was hungry.
There was a 24-hour diner on the next block. Coffee, eggs, bacon. The simple pleasures of a body that needed fuel. He'd eat. He'd sleep. And tomorrow, he'd hunt again.
The city never stopped. Neither would he.
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