Wheels rolled over the dilapidated highway, where dried leaves and gravel were embedded in the cracks of the asphalt. The moment the tires crushed them, they made a monotonous and dull creaking sound.
The morning mist had not yet dispersed, carrying the damp, cold breath unique to the Hudson River, enveloping the body of the Dodge Viper.
Alice held the steering wheel with one hand.
Her other hand rested by the lowered window, her fingertips tapping out the beat to the lazy jazz playing from the car stereo.
Her gaze swept across the rearview mirror; the towering smoke from Textile Mill No. 17 had already shrunk into a tiny black dot.
That building, which had occupied the New York suburbs for centuries, was once a sacred place that thousands of assassins held as inviolable. It was the birthplace of Fate, an altar where countless people had offered their lives.
Now, it was nothing more than an industrial ruin in the suburbs waiting for the fire department to finish up, turning slowly to ash in the fire along with Sloan's lies, The Fraternity's sins, and centuries of killing and martyrdom.
Inside the heavy truck behind the Viper, the atmosphere was far from being so carefree.
Cross sat in the driver's seat holding the steering wheel. Those eyes, which hid twenty years of wind, frost, and slaughter, constantly scanned back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror, alert for any possible tracking or ambush.
Although The Fraternity had disbanded, Sloan had operated it for decades and might have left some backup plans behind.
It was only because they had cut through the mess quickly and Sloan had died so fast that things had gone so smoothly.
Wesley, in the passenger seat, was curled up in his chair, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing a deformed shell casing in his pocket.
That was the casing from the first bullet he had ever fired during his first mission. He had picked it up as if possessed and kept it in his pocket ever since, like he was carrying his own absurd and bloody assassin career.
He stared at the roadside trees retreating rapidly outside the window. Their sprawling branches bared fangs and claws in the morning mist, much like his currently chaotic heart; his expression was filled with a lingering sense of bewilderment.
The silence in the cabin lasted for a full forty minutes until Wesley finally couldn't help but break the suffocating stillness.
"Are we really going to be saviors?"
His voice carried a hint of self-mockery that even he didn't notice. His gaze shifted from the window, swept over his father in the driver's seat, looked at Fox with her eyes closed in the back, and finally fell back onto the car communicator.
From that small black device came the light tune of Alice occasionally humming along to the music, sounding completely out of place with the heaviness in the truck.
"I mean, look at this group of ours." Wesley twitched the corner of his mouth, his smile looking worse than a sob. "A professional killer who's spent half his life killing, a hardliner who betrayed the organization and was hunted for over a decade, and another... a violent maniac who was just pulled back from the barrel of a suicide gun and hasn't even recovered yet."
He paused, his throat tightening. "We can't even figure out how to save our own lives, so what are we going to use to save others?"
Fox, in the back seat, slowly opened her eyes.
The lingering effects of the potent sedative were still flowing through her veins, leaving her limbs with a persistent soreness and her face with a sickly pallor.
Yet in those deep blue eyes, there still hid a sharpness tempered with ice, like two daggers kept in their sheaths; even if their edge was temporarily restrained, they still carried a lethal chill.
Her fingertips lightly brushed the wound on her left cheek that was still throbbing with pain. It was the mark left by the fragments of Alice's bullet, the brand that had interrupted her final curtain call.
"We are not saviors."
Fox's voice was very soft, carrying an indifference carved into her bones, as if she were speaking about something that had nothing to do with her.
Her gaze fell on the car window, looking at her blurred reflection, which was so strange it made her feel ridiculous.
"We are just looking for a way to die that isn't quite so filthy."
These words were like a stone thrown into the already stagnant air of the cabin. Wesley immediately shut his mouth, his throat feeling as if it were blocked by a wad of cotton, unable to say another word.
He understood this feeling all too well.
From the moment he learned of Sloan's lies and realized that the people he had killed were all innocent, he felt that his life was left with nothing but filth and sin.
He thought killing Sloan would bring release, but only when he actually saw Sloan's corpse fall before him did he realize that the blood on his hands could never be washed away in this lifetime.
"Don't be so pessimistic, dear."
Alice's voice, with its signature lightheartedness, rang out through the car communicator.
"Sloan wore you down into cold tools that only know how to pull a trigger, but I value your potential as human beings more."
The wheels rolled over a piece of gravel, and the car body swayed slightly.
"Before, you could only search for the meaning of life on the scraps of cloth from the loom, relying on the lies Sloan gave you to find excuses for your killings. But now, we are going to use our own hands to write our own scripts."
At this point, she chuckled, her tone carrying a bold sense of freedom.
"Since we've survived the disaster and can still live so beautifully, shouldn't we find a place to properly celebrate that we are completely free?"
"Free?"
Fox chewed on this unfamiliar word repeatedly between her teeth, her tongue pressing against her teeth as if tasting some bitter medicine.
The word 'freedom' was something she had only ever seen in books in her life.
From the day she joined The Fraternity, her life belonged to the loom, to Fate, and to Sloan.
Every breath she took, every time she pulled the trigger, every kill she made, was to fulfill the so-called Fate.
She had no choice, no self, no freedom.
Like a single thread on the loom, she could only follow the rhythm of the machine, woven into a destiny that had already been written.
Now, Sloan was dead, and the loom had been moved onto the truck by them. The cage that had bound her for a lifetime was shattered.
But she still didn't know what freedom actually was.
"For a shadow who has only learned how to terminate life, the word'script' sounds even more ethereal than Sloan's loom."
Fox slowly turned her head, looking at the wilderness retreating rapidly outside the window.
The withered yellow grass swayed in the morning breeze, stretching as far as the eye could see, much like her endless future.
People who are used to following the orders of fate often fall because they don't know which foot to step with the first second they gain freedom.
She had seen too many such people.
Those assassins who left The Fraternity eventually either went mad, ended their own lives, or died at the hands of enemies because they lost their faith and their goals.
She thought she would be one of them.
"Then first learn to stand firm, and then try to run."
Alice's certain voice came through the communicator again, carrying a power that could soothe one's heart.
"No one is asking you to learn to be a savior on the first day, nor is anyone asking you to immediately put down your gun and forget the past. You can take it slow; you can first learn to live for yourselves for once."
"As for the art of terminating life, believe me, in my script, your exquisite marksmanship will have a more advanced and valuable way of expression than just killing."
The voice from the communicator faded, and the cabin fell into silence once more.
Only this time, there was something different within that dead silence.
Wesley's hand clutching the shell casing relaxed slightly.
Cross's fingertips on the steering wheel also moved slightly.
Fox leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes again, but this time, her shoulders, which had been tense for half her life, finally relaxed a fraction.
Under Cross's steady control, the truck followed the Dodge Viper ahead, turning off the road and into an industrial wasteland filled with rusted metal and scrapped cars.
This was the old car dismantling yard at the border of the Flushing industrial area and Willets Point, a notorious lawless zone in New York.
Looking out, there were piles of scrapped car shells stacked like mountains everywhere.
It was desolate, dilapidated, and lifeless; even if ten murders happened here, no one would notice.
Wesley looked at the scene outside the window, becoming increasingly confused.
What did Alice bring them to a place like this for?
It wasn't until the car drove to the deepest part of the dismantling yard that his eyes suddenly widened.
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