September 25. Raccoon City. 10:15 p.m.
The dim light from the pharmacy cast long, distorted shadows on the metal staircase. John Wick, his impeccable suit made even darker by the dried bloodstains of his fallen enemies, moved with the silent grace of a cat.
He climbed the first flight of stairs, his dress shoes making hardly any noise. The voices of the men on the second floor, louder and more nervous than those of their comrades on the ground floor, revealed their state of panic.
"Why isn't he coming up? What is he waiting for?" said a high-pitched voice.
"I don't know, but he's killed everyone downstairs! There's no one left!" replied another, clearly trembling.
John reached the top step. He stopped moving, becoming one with the darkness that enveloped the hallway. He knew the guards' eyes were fixed on the entrance, their hands trembling on the handles of their guns.
Like an animal approaching its prey, John peeked out just enough for his silhouette to be visible. The fear he felt was not for himself, but for the men waiting for him. They were just scared soldiers.
And as if in response to his thoughts, the room filled with the sound of bullets, a chorus of frantic gunfire. The sound of cartridges falling to the floor echoed.
The bullets tore through the air right where his head should have been, hitting the wall with impotent fury. John, safe in his hiding place, remained motionless.
He waited for the storm of bullets to end. He peeked out and saw the two guards, their arms shaking, their hands searching their vests for spare magazines. They had rushed in.
It was an execution, not a fight. With deadly fluidity, John drew his P30L. He aimed with methodical precision. One shot, one man. The other, a few seconds later.
Both fell to the ground with a muffled thud. Their bodies twitched a couple of times, then lay motionless in a pool of their own blood.
John moved forward. He ignored the bodies, his eyes already focused on his next target: an armored door with a small security keypad. A surveillance camera, a small red glass eye, was to one side.
With the same calm with which he had waited on the stairs, he raised his pistol and aimed it at the camera. His index finger settled on the trigger, but he did not fire. Instead, his gaze fixed directly on the lens. His voice, a deep whisper, colder than ice, filled the silence.
"I know you're there," he said, looking directly at the camera. "If you don't open the door, I swear I'll burn the whole place down with you inside."
There was a pause, a moment when the silence was so heavy you could almost feel it.
"We'll see if you're brave enough to die in silence."
The man in the cap, his face pale and his hands shaking, recoiled from the console as if he had been burned. The man with the mustache, standing next to him, was equally petrified. John's voice, filtered through the speakers, continued to echo in the air.
"Damn it, I knew it!" shouted the man in the cap, putting his hands to his head. "He found us. Now he's coming for us!"
The man with the mustache, his eyes fixed on the black screen, shook his head, his face a reflection of pure terror.
"No, no... it can't be. I cut off communications a while ago, remember? And we've closed the door. He doesn't know anything about us... he's just lying to us."
"What if he's not? What if it's not a lie?" The man in the cap approached the reinforced door, his hand trembling as he swiped his fingerprint reader. "He's going to burn us. Like rats. In a minute, it'll be a torch. We have to get out of here. We have to get out now!"
"Are you crazy? It's a trap. The moment you open the door, he'll come in and kill us both. Haven't you seen what he did to the others? He wants us here, locked up and scared, so we'll open the door for him. Let him have the building! We can live another day!" replied the man with the mustache, pushing him away from the door control panel.
The argument was heated. Their voices trembled, their words stumbled. Each of them, looking into the other's face, saw fear in their eyes. One sought to escape, the other tried to survive by hiding.
"I'm not asking for your permission! I'm telling you I'm scared to death! I'm not staying here to die," shouted the man in the cap, pushing harder and throwing the man with the mustache against the console table.
But on the screens, they were surprised. John's figure, clearly visible on the camera screen, turned around. He was walking away from the door. He moved with the same coldness and determination with which he had arrived.
"See? He's leaving. He's tired. Now we can..." the man with the mustache began with a sigh of relief, but his voice suddenly trailed off.
John stopped in the middle of the hallway and raised his P30L. A flash. A crackle of static. The camera monitor in the main hallway on the second floor went blank, showing only a black screen.
Then he moved into the side hallway. He aimed again. The next screen went dark.
He moved with purpose, destroying the eyes that saw him. He did it so calmly, without a trace of hesitation, that it was almost unreal. One monitor after another went dark, until the room was filled with a mosaic of black screens. The monitoring room was plunged into darkness.
The man with the mustache and the man with the cap stood frozen, their breathing the only sounds in the air.
"Damn it!" whispered the man with the mustache, his voice a thread that could barely be heard. "What has he done?"
"He's blinded us," replied the man with the cap, his voice a hollow echo. "He knows where we are, but we don't know where he is!"
A metallic thud echoed on the door. Both men tensed.
"Wait, wait," said the man with the mustache, his eyes wide. "It has to be... a mistake. Maybe the cameras... broke."
"Don't be an idiot! He shot every single one of them," the man in the cap shouted, his panic turning to rage. "And now he's out there, at the door, waiting for us to open it! What do we do? We can't stay here forever!"
"We can't go anywhere," the man with the mustache whispered, his voice more confident than before. "We've locked the door. We'll be fine. We just... we just have to wait for him to leave or for backup to arrive."
"Reinforcements?! What damn reinforcements? That's it! All we can do is try to get out. Now!" shouted the man in the cap. He tried to run to the control panel, but the man with the mustache grabbed him by the arm.
"I told you to stop! It's a trap! He wants us out, can't you see?"
"Let me go! I'm not going to stay here and die!"
The argument turned into a chaotic scene of shouting and shoving. Anger and fear, like a virus, consumed them.
The man in the cap pushed the other man with brutal force, sending him crashing into a table full of papers and creating a mess. The man with the mustache got up and threw a punch that hit the man in the cap in the face, who in turn responded with a blow to the jaw.
The air was filled with the sounds of the fight: the blows, the gasps, the sounds of skin colliding.
Then a new smell slipped under the reinforced door. It was a pungent, slightly sweet smell, the smell of burning paper. The two men froze. They looked at each other. Their fists dropped, their rage transformed into primal terror.
"Do you smell that?" whispered the man in the cap, his voice trembling.
"Yes... no... it can't be..."
"There's a fire coming!" the man in the cap shouted, his eyes wide with pure terror. "He's burning the building! I knew it! I knew it!"
They rushed to the door's control panel, desperation written all over their faces.
"Open the door! Now! We have to get out of here!" shouted the man with the mustache. "He told us he would do it, and he did!"
With trembling hands, the man in the cap swiped the access card through the fingerprint reader. The lock clicked. The door opened a centimeter. A column of thick gray smoke seeped through the crack.
The two men looked at each other, their faces masks of terror. The man with the mustache threw the door open, intending to run out.
But there was no fire on the floor of the hallway. There was only a small piece of paper, folded and smoking. A simple lighter and a piece of paper. Nothing else.
The man with the mustache stopped, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. His brain, consumed by terror, had refused to think clearly, causing him to fall into the trap. It was a distraction, a psychological game.
"Damn it!" he whispered. "He tricked us. There's no... there's no..."
John Wick's voice filled the small room. His tone was calm, almost a whisper, with a trace of dark humor that chilled the blood of both men.
"Knock, knock," John said.
The man with the mustache spun around suddenly, but he didn't see him. He only felt a knee slam into his stomach. The blow knocked the wind out of him and doubled him over, throwing him to the ground with a cry of pain.
At the same time, the man in the cap felt a sharp blow to his groin. Unbearable pain shot through his body, and he fell to his knees, hands clutching his groin, moaning.
John stopped. The two men writhed on the ground, suffocated by pain and shame. John looked at them. His expressionless face was illuminated by the dim reflection of the turned-off monitors. John leaned over, pulled out his P30L pistol, aimed, and stared at them.
The man with the mustache, still writhing in pain on the floor, raised his head and looked at the man in the cap. "It's your fault!" he spat, his voice full of resentment. "We should have stayed!"
Before he could continue, a black leather boot slammed into his mouth. The blow knocked him to the floor, and a small trickle of blood ran down his lip. John paid no attention, his icy gaze fixed on both men.
"You can only speak when I tell you to," his voice was an authoritative whisper, more terrifying than any shout. "Understood? One wrong answer, and you die."
No one moved. John raised the gun and aimed right next to the man in the cap's head. Bang. The shot broke the silence, leaving a sharp ringing in the man in the cap's ear.
John lowered the gun and pointed it back at the two men. The man with the mustache, his mouth bloody, spat on the floor, a mixture of resignation and fury in his eyes. John ignored him.
"Answer me. Who's your boss?" John asked, his voice calm.
Silence. Neither of them spoke. John's patience ran out. He pulled a knife from his jacket. The metal, stained with the dried blood of the guards below, glinted ominously in the dim light.
"If you don't answer, you'll start losing body parts," he said, with eerie calm.
Goosebumps ran down the man in the cap's body. Fear overcame his loyalty, which didn't really exist.
"Dr. William Birkin," he stammered, his voice barely audible. "He's in charge of this pharmacy."
John nodded, his gaze darkening. "What other Umbrella institutions are under this doctor's direction?"
The man in the cap, trembling, lowered his voice. "The... the Raccoon City school... and a nursing home."
John's expression hardened. His face became a mask of ice. "The elderly and children?" he asked, his voice an icy tomb. "Umbrella experiments on them?"
The man with the mustache, blood dripping from his mouth, laughed mockingly. "So you think you're a hero, huh? Like the ones in those stories with happy endings."
John Wick stood motionless. The coldness in his gaze was palpable. "No, I'm not a hero," he said in a low, deadly voice. "But in this world, there are lines that cannot be crossed, and by the way... wrong answer."
Before the man with the mustache could say anything, John raised his P30L and shot him directly in the head. The bullet pierced his skull, and the body fell to the ground with a thud.
The man in the cap, his eyes wide, went blank. His mouth hung open in shock, unable to comprehend what had happened. John bent down and put the barrel of the gun to his head.
The man in the cap, sweat running down his forehead, froze. "Wait... wait! I know more. I'll tell you more. Please don't kill me!"
"You have one minute," John said, his voice a cold whisper. "Say something useful. Something I don't know, something that isn't a stupid lie. Otherwise, I'll kill you."
The man in the cap, panicking, stammered, his words jumbled in his throat. "Umbrella has a... a... a secret base on the moon! They have a biological weapon that can revive dinosaurs! It's real, I swear!"
John's expression didn't change. The desperation and lies were so clear in the man's eyes. The absurd statement confirmed that the man was just trying to buy time, to say anything to escape the inevitable.
Without a second's hesitation, John fired.
The echo of the shot reverberated in the silence of the room. The man collapsed, his head hitting the floor. The body lay motionless, a pool of blood spreading across the floor of the monitoring room.
John Wick stood, his gaze sweeping across the room. Two motionless bodies on the floor, two souls lost in Umbrella's game. The pharmacy had been one more step, but his journey was much longer.
As he inspected the monitoring room, John quickly realized there was nothing else of value. The computers were locked, the paper files were just useless medical records.
He already had the information he needed. There was nothing left to do there, and with methodical precision, he moved around the room.
He took several bottles of medical spray and alcohol-based disinfectants from a nearby shelf.
e emptied the contents onto the papers scattered on the floor and sprayed the flammable liquids onto the bodies and computer equipment. With the acrid smell of alcohol filling the air, he approached the armored door panel.
He opened the door, crouched down in the hallway, and used the last cartridge in his P30L. A single shot, aimed at the alcohol-soaked floor, caused a flash and then an explosion of flames that spread with terrifying speed.
The flames caught instantly, consuming the papers and licking the walls. The heat of the fire was intense and quickly spread down the hallway.
John didn't stop to watch. He moved away from the fire, the siren of a police car sounding in the distance, a distant echo of the justice he was about to unleash.
His suit, impeccable despite the blood and chaos, moved in the darkness, a silhouette fading into the night. The fire spread, devouring the Umbrella pharmacy, a symbol of the terror it had instilled in the place.
John moved through the streets of Raccoon City with the silent grace of a ghost. The police sirens were a distant moan, a sound that dissolved into the stench in the air. He felt like an extension of the city, a predator gliding through the shadows, invisible to the eyes of the frightened citizens.
There was no remorse in his heart, only cold, brutal determination. He was no hero, he was a force of nature, a killing machine that had been activated.
Every step was precise, every movement calculated. John Wick's gaze remained fixed, unblinking. The sound of his footsteps, a silent rhythm against the pavement, was an echo of his heart beating with coldness and steady speed.
The hotel stood like a fortress of tranquility amid the turmoil of the night. John Wick crossed the threshold, leaving behind the distant clamor of sirens and the smell of smoke. The lobby, with its warm lighting and deathly silence, was a sanctuary.
Behind the counter, the receptionist, a man with the same stony expression as always, looked up. His gaze lingered on John's suit, on the dark stains and the fatigue reflected in his eyes. For a moment, the man's mask of indifference cracked, revealing a fleeting expression of alarm.
John Wick entered the hotel, his dark silhouette framed by the revolving door. The receptionist, a man with a serious face and tired eyes, barely blinked when he saw him. John's gaze did not waver, but his eyes locked with his.
In an imperceptible movement, he slid a wad of bills across the counter. The top bill, crumpled and stained, was a silent witness to the day he had had.
"Silence," whispered John, his voice a grave and cold reminder. At the same time, he slid his hand over the P30L pistol hidden in his belt.
The fabric of his jacket shifted, revealing the outline of the weapon. The threat was silent, clear, and unmistakable. The receptionist's gaze shifted from the money to the gun. He nodded, his voice a faint thread.
"Understood, Mr. Wick."
The receptionist, still watching John, slid the wad under the counter, his long, thin fingers counting the bills. John nodded and headed for his room.
When he reached the door, he didn't go in right away. Instead, he took a small hook out of his pocket and placed it on top of the door. Then, with the dexterity of a surgeon, he took another gun from his belt.
Using fishing line, he tied the gun to the door. If anyone dared to force their way in, the door would open, and the gun would automatically fire, aiming right at the center of the door. A safety measure that was never too much.
When the trap was ready, he went inside. He took off his suit and discarded all his weapons, his knives, his guns. Looking at himself in the mirror, he was neither a businessman nor a ghost. He was just a man, his hands stained with blood, his body tired, and his eyes empty.
He thought about what he had found in the Umbrella pharmacy: the nursing home and the school. The idea that such a despicable company would dare to experiment on the elderly and children turned his stomach. The anger he had felt before intensified, a cold fire burning inside him.
Then he headed to the bathroom. As he sank into the tub, the warm water offered him temporary relief, soothing his tense muscles and the pain in his back. He closed his eyes and thought. He needed information. Umbrella controlled parts of this city, but he didn't know everything. He needed to know the extent of their resources.
Despite his exhaustion, his mind focused on one name: Jill Valentine. He knew from the news that she was under surveillance, that she had become a problem for Umbrella.
He realized that the only way to find Jill was to look for her in her apartment, but he would need to be more stealthy than ever. The Raccoon City police would have surveillance agents nearby, as she was under police investigation.
Exhaustion overtook him. He had been on constant alert for two days, his mind had not given him a break. He knew he couldn't go on like this, that he needed sleep to regain his agility and lucidity. For the first time in a long time, he surrendered to his body. He dried himself off, lay down on the bed, and closed his eyes.
The last thing he saw, through his bedroom window, was a column of gray and orange smoke rising in the distance. The echo of a siren faded into the darkness.
The fire at the Umbrella pharmacy spread, a beacon of his vengeance. And as the fire burned, John Wick fell asleep, his dream a sigh of relief, the promise of destruction to come.
Author's note: As always, thank you for your support. We've reached 14k views! Please continue donating power stones and sharing the story so that it reaches many more people.