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A remote backroad, thirty miles north of Quantico Town.
Hawk had studied the satellite maps. He knew the general layout of the area and the route he was supposed to take from the airport.
So, the moment the young driver had veered off the main road, Hawk knew something was wrong.
His memory was already sharp, but after awakening his Cosmo, it had become flawless.
Hawk got out of the car and scanned his surroundings.
Remote.
Muddy.
A perfect place to rob, murder, and bury a body. No wonder the kid had driven him out here.
Behind him, still in the car, the young driver was bruised and bloodied, but alive. He was still screaming.
Hawk hadn't killed him.
Not yet.
After a moment, Hawk turned, opened the car door, and with a single, effortless motion, dragged the whimpering driver out of the car. He tossed him onto the muddy dirt road.
"Splat."
The driver, dizzy and disoriented, scrambled to his feet, driven by pure survival instinct. He fell to his knees in front of Hawk, his voice trembling. "Please, don't kill me. Please. I'm sorry. I was wrong."
Hawk looked down at him—the man who had been so arrogant just minutes ago, now so pathetic.
His voice was cold.
"You're not sorry you were wrong. You're just sorry you're about to die."
"..."
The driver's body went rigid, his pleas becoming even more desperate.
Hawk's eyes narrowed. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you."
The driver's mind raced.
He looked up at Hawk, his face a swollen mess, and babbled, "You can have the car. My money. I have money. You can have all my money."
"Not good enough. If I kill you, the car and the money are mine anyway."
Hawk shook his head, his expression unchanged.
"Try again."
"...You can't kill me. If you do, you'll be a wanted man. If you let me go, I swear, I won't tell anyone. I won't say a word. Please, don't kill me."
The driver's words tumbled out, his eyes wide with a desperate will to live.
Hawk glanced at him, then looked down, as if considering it.
He seemed to be weighing the odds of the man keeping his word.
"..." The driver, seeing Hawk's gaze shift, felt a flicker of hope.
He kept begging, his voice cracking, while his right hand slowly, carefully, crept toward the small of his back.
The next second.
"Hyaaaaah!!"
He whipped a folding knife from his waistband and, with a guttural cry, lunged at Hawk, his face twisted in a snarl. "DIE!"
Hawk looked up. His eyes were like ice. He didn't even flinch. He just slapped him.
Whump-whump-whump!
The driver's head began to spin, as if it were a top that had just been wound.
Faster and faster.
Tighter and tighter.
Until—
SQUELCH!
His neck, twisted into an impossible shape, tore loose from his shoulders.
Splat.
Thump.
Hawk looked down at the head that had just rolled to a stop at his feet, the snarl still frozen on its face. A contemptuous smile touched his lips.
"I was actually going to let you go..."
"A pity."
"I gave you the one and only chance I might ever have for weakness in this life, and you thought it was fear."
Hawk's gaze shifted to the headless body, which was now gushing blood onto the muddy ground.
He hadn't been lying. He had actually considered letting the man live.
It wasn't just because he had business to attend to and didn't want any complications.
There was another, more important reason.
The line.
Just as he had thought, once that line was crossed, he had no idea what he would become.
Killing is like a valve.
Once it's opened, the sanctity of life is gone.
This was especially true for a transmigrator, someone who already had a flexible moral compass.
The Chitauri had been different.
Hawk had seen them without their helmets. They were insects.
A human doesn't feel guilt for killing a bug. And Hawk wasn't about to apply his moral code to a race of overgrown cockroaches.
But this man was different.
And yet—
Just as Hawk had suspected.
Even though this was the first time he had truly killed a human, as he looked at the headless corpse, he felt nothing. No revulsion, no guilt. Not even a flicker of emotion.
No, wait.
He did feel something.
This feels no different from killing a Chitauri.
Hawk closed his eyes for a moment.
He had no intention of trying to close the valve again.
Some things, once done, can't be undone.
The floodgates were open. Whether he liked it or not, from this day forward, killing would no longer be something he shied away from.
...
With that final thought, Hawk turned away from the head in the mud and the bleeding corpse. He got into the taxi, glanced up at the clear blue sky, then started the engine and drove away.
He didn't bother to bury the body.
The valve was open, and it wasn't closing. Whether the body was found or not was no longer his problem.
Killing one is still killing.
Killing another, or another hundred, was just a matter of numbers now.
However—
"I can kill."
"But I must not revel in it."
"A true warrior always maintains a humble heart."
Hawk thought to himself, steering the taxi back onto the main road. He glanced around, got his bearings, and headed toward Quantico Town.
He might not have a driver's license in this life, but that didn't mean he didn't know how to drive.
As the taxi disappeared down the road, the backroad returned to its usual quiet, desolate state.
About half an hour later.
A footstep broke the silence.
Then a second, and a third.
Soon.
Three men in dark sunglasses walked onto the scene. Their eyes fell on the head in the mud and the headless corpse, its bleeding finally stopped.
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