John walked toward the tower. Its pointed top cut the skyline, rising above the residential blocks, darker against the pale afternoon. As he moved closer the shadows grew longer and denser. He turned a corner and saw it — the Cyntera building at the western-southern corner of the city, where the outer wall met the city's colossal ramparts.
It wasn't as tall as the main central tower. If the city walls reached forty-five to fifty metres, this tower was only about thirty. Ordinary apartment blocks ran at twenty-five. Its bulk wasn't impressive; the difference was the way it occupied the corner, protected by three-metre-high outer walls and templars posted all around the ground. The structure itself was a futuristic block of glass and angled metal, its facade sliced by windows and marked with a flipped-triangle logo.
As he straightened, John's eye caught movement at the main gate of the tower walls. The heavy doors groaned open, and a truck rolled slowly inside. He slipped back into the shadow of a nearby building, watching in silence.
Guards began unloading crates, stacking them with practiced ease. Bold letters marked the wood: C4. Others bore the words: Gunpowder.
John's jaw tightened. A so-called broadcast tower, dressed up for the public — but behind its walls it was nothing more than a weapons cache.
"Damn rats…" he muttered under his breath.
He studied the rest. The tower's outer wall bristled with defenses. Along the top ran the electric sensors — thin, needle-like chains laced with current, humming faintly in the air. Any contact would electrify the intruders. He needed to get inside. Step one: enter the building. Step two: figure out how to bring it down. First he had to get over or through the wall.
If he could cut the power in this area, the sensors would be dead. He pulled out his tablet and scanned the grid for any nearby electrical nodes: substations, stabilizers, junction boxes. A heatpoint blinked on his map between a residential block and the city wall to the west. He headed for it, eyes on the screen.
The place was a dark alley full of trash. At the back, a metal box hunched against the wall — an electricity station. Thick cables snaked from it into the ground. He opened the shell and found wires, switches, and a dozen labels about caution. One switch stood out. A metal lever with a warning plate: For extreme cases only — fire or flood. Radius affected: 10 yards. No children allowed.
Ten yards covered the tower wall and the sensor array. He had to be fast. If anyone restored the feed after he flipped the switch, the sensors would rearm. He turned it off.
His face went serious. He sprinted for the tower.
When he reached the outer wall he pulled out his hook blade from his elbow and climbed up the top of parts of the walls and looked at the ground. It was grassed, filled with thick bushes near the wall corners. Templars patrolled in regular watches.
John drew the hook blade, steel catching faint sunlight, and set it against the wall. With a sharp pull he let gravity take him, the hooked tip grinding along stone as he slid downward. He hit the ground hard, knees bending to absorb the fall.
Before any eyes could track him, John broke into a sprint and dove for cover. He slid into the thick brush, branches clawing at his arms as the shadows closed around him. The world outside blurred — boots clattering, voices carrying — but inside the bush he was nothing but breath and stillness, hidden from sight.
From the leafed shelter he watched the patrols — men in armor walking the entrance area while most of the yard stayed quieter. Then he saw the rear service door: two metres from where he crouched, metal and plain and almost unguarded.
His legs throbbed. He wanted to stand, to run for that door, but the fall had taken more out of him than he expected. A templar passed close to his hiding spot, careless and focused on the walkway. The man didn't see the bush move.
John felt the old promise flare inside him — the vow to cut the roots of the Templars. He slid the hidden blade from his elbow and struck.
The blade found the templar's skull. The man dropped. No sound, just a muffled thud. John dragged the body into the green and dragged it under the hedge until no part of it showed.
He counted his overall kills. "That makes four…". His voice carried no triumph; only the flat fact of it. He looked again at the rear door and let his pulse slow.
The plan was still simple: get inside through that door. Then improvise.
He checked the door. One look, two. No one stood near it. No citizens, either — this was just a side branch, a place that didn't expect visitors.
His legs had stopped throbbing. He crouched, sprinted, and in a flash reached the door. He pulled it open, slipped inside, and shut it behind him. His hand still gripped the handle.
"Phew… inside."
He turned.
The entrance hall yawned in front of him. Six Templars stared back, frozen mid-motion. One with a coffee cup. Another halfway through a sentence. All of them, mouths open.
Heat spread through John's chest. Damn it… I forgot. Of course they'd be inside too. I was delusional.
"The assassin! Catch him!"
Cups hit the floor. Batons hissed alive, electric arcs sparking. They charged.
John raised his longsword in both hands, the blade leveled toward them. He steadied his breath, slowing everything, dragging time to stillness.
I signed up for this. My promise was to kill them all. Maybe I die here. Maybe I carve my way through. Either way—I don't stop.
He opened his eyes. Cold. Clear.
"Six templars. I'll kill them all."
The first swung. John caught the strike, steel against crackling baton. Another strike—he blocked again, sparks stinging his cheek. Too slow. If he just held the line, he'd lose.
He shifted. Stepped back. Drew his dagger.
The next attack came down. Sword caught it. The dagger ripped across a stomach. The templar dropped without a sound.
John lunged for the next man. He came in striking his baton at John's face. Crossed his blades in an X and caught the baton—ready to kick the templar down—but another strike came from the side. It whistled past his face.
Now two were on him at once. Batons flashing from both sides. He barely kept up, sword clanging, dagger stabbing air.
Not good. Need to separate them…
John saw their hands — no crossguards, fingers exposed. A chance.
When a templar struck, John met the blow and slid his sword down the man's forearm. The blade caught fingers; blood ran and the templar reeled back, clutching his hand. John looked at the others like a predator measuring prey.
Two clean strikes ended the next man. The first blow glanced off; the second drove the blade into his chest. The man folded. John turned back to the wounded templar, still gripping his severed fingers. He jumped, both blades moving in a single arc, and cut the man's back clean. He hit the ground and didn't move.
Half the room was down. Three remained.
While John had tangled blades and steel with three batons, the rest broke formation. Hands tore at holsters and rifle slings, the clatter of magazines and metal underscoring the fight. Capturing John be damned — they wanted the killing power of bullets now. They shot.
John ducked for cover and ran. He found a narrow hallway and plunged down it, boots slapping the floor. A templar burst through a door and collided with him. They hit the ground in a roll; the man cursed, blinking in surprise.
"Watch where you're—" He froze, eyes locking on the assassin's hood. The word died in a scream.
John didn't think. He drove his hidden blade from his elbow and stabbed it into the man's neck. The man gurgled and folded. John dragged the body into a shadow, then slammed the door and locked it behind him.
The room was small — an office with a single desk and a humming computer. John leaned against the wall, chest heaving. His hands trembled. He swallowed and forced his thoughts straight.
"Guns," he said to himself. "I need to do something with the guns before the whole building goes on full alert."
He pressed his palm to his face, tasted iron. Outside, muffled shouts and gunfire echoed down the corridor. Time wasn't on his side.
He mouthed the problem: I can't get close — long range kills me. But if their guns are out of ammo, I can move.
He eased the door a crack and watched the hall. Three silhouettes moved down the corridor toward him. He scanned the office
John's eyes fell to the bloodied templar sprawled on the floor. The corpse was still warm, limbs slack, eyes glassed over. The thought that crept into his mind was savage, unworthy—yet it might save him. He clenched his jaw. Faith. Just have faith.
He grabbed the body by its vest, the weight dragging against his arms, and hauled it toward the door. His heart thundered. He cracked the door open, every nerve screaming that bullets would rip through at any second, and with a grunt he heaved the corpse into the hallway.
The body landed with a sickening thud.
Templar thought that it was John jumping out from the room…
Gunfire erupted instantly—an earsplitting roar as the templars opened up with everything they had. Bullets shredded into the fallen man, jerking the limbs like a grotesque puppet. Muzzle flashes stuttered in the smoke; the air filled with the stink of cordite and blood.
John slammed the door shut and pressed his back against the wall, counting the bursts as the magazines emptied. He forced himself to breathe. Not me. Not yet.
Only when the gunfire faltered did he hear the confusion seep in.
"…wait—"
"God, it's—"
The templars' voices cracked, horrified. They'd spent half their ammo tearing apart their own comrade.
"Wait — is that…Jake?"
"Looks like it. Check the door."
"I— I wasted all my ammo."
"What? You had plenty!"
"I used it on the assassin earlier!"
Footsteps moved in. John stayed flat behind the desk and listened. A rifle muzzle inched into the room as a templar tried to look through the opening.
John waited until the muzzle showed, then slammed the door shut and drove his hidden blade up and in. He stabbed until the man went limp. The corridor filled with screams and the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire as two templars outside reacted.
The door stayed closed. The screams stopped. For a breath there was only the thump of boots and a low, testing silence — John kicked it free and then the door was ripped off its hinges and thrown at the two templars standing outside. He burst out with the blade.
His target was the gunman. He drove forward, dagger first. The man fired. John dove low and the shot chewed the air over his head. The other templar swung a baton down; John met it with the dagger in a reverse grip, metal squealing on metal. The gunman backed up and ran for cover, firing as he retreated. John caught a clean line and slipped behind the templar whose baton he just blocked. The bullets tore through the man instead, killing him instantly. He saw a pistol on his pocket. He yanked it free and took three shots.
He yanked the pistol free and fired wild. One shot caught the man's shoulder, another his gut. The third finished him as he staggered back.
John breathed out, a thin whisper. "Finally…they're dead. Need a plan to bring the whole place down before more come." He didn't give himself a second to think. He ran for the main hall.
A monitor hung above a reception desk; a schematic of the building pulsed green across the screen. Rooms, floors, staff lists; the bottom room showed a space labeled Power Generator — restricted. That was it.
He found the basement door and ran down. The room was a narrow concrete box, hot and smelling of oil. A large generator hummed in the middle, red status lights winked, pipes steamed. Wires ran from it like veins.
In the center, a round wheel sat on a control post — left to lower output, right to raise. The dial sat in the middle.
John took a breath and spun it hard to the right.
The machine answered. The hum climbed to a keening. Wires vibrated. Sparks flickered along bundled cables. A thin smell of ozone turned to a smell of burning insulation.
Upstairs someone shouted. Then a small noise — a pop — and after that a much bigger sound: an explosion cracked through the building like a fist. Fire roared somewhere above. The generator coughed and spat a shower of sparks. The wiring flamed.
Explosives from earlier!, John thought, quick and flat. They had explosives stored — weapons, munitions — not just masks or batons. The fire must have hit something volatile, something hazardous.
He ran.
Flames climbed the stairwell. Smoke punched at his face and hid his vision. He pushed out into the yard, coughing. The gate was open; templars who could run had already fled. He kept going.
Then the building blew.
The shock hit him like a thrown body. It threw him off his feet and sent him tumbling across hard ground. He landed on his face. Pain flared. For a long second he lay there, lungs burning.
When he forced his eyes open the tower was a ruin: the upper section had snapped and fallen away. Orange and black vomited from the break, and steam and smoke rolled out like a dark tide. The night sky was choked with ash.
John didn't shout. He just stared, mouth open and empty.
He staggered through the smoke, the ground still hot under his boots. Rubble was everywhere — jagged stone, twisted pipes, blackened beams. And bodies. Some were torn apart, some still burning, some reduced to brittle ash.
John's eyes caught on something small, absurdly out of place: a toy train, half-buried beneath a chunk of rock. His breath hitched, and a chill ran down his spine.
No… it can't be… The words tumbled out, low and trembling. Not after Edward… not another innocent… not by my hands.
Then a voice shattered the silence — a scream that seemed to claw at his very bones. From a high window, a woman clutched her mouth, gasping between sobs.
"My son was there!!!" she wailed.
It wasn't just a scream. It was real, raw — a mother's scream. Something John had never gotten enough of in his own life, and now it broke him open from the inside.
His eyes quivered, locked on the toy, lips moving uselessly before sound came.
"No… no… no-no-no," he whispered, the words crawling out like a confession. "Not this again…"
The mother's scream lingered in the air, weaving with the crackle of fire until it was all John could hear. And then — through the haze, through the smoke and flames — a figure took shape.
A silhouette. Someone he knew.
Edward.
He stood among the rubble, half-shrouded in firelight, his face carved with sorrow, his eyes heavy and worn as if they had carried grief for centuries. He didn't move, didn't speak — only stared down at John, gaze brimming with exhaustion and pity.
John's chest seized. His heart pounded so violently it hurt. He blinked hard, rubbed at his eyes, desperate to clear the vision, but Edward was still there. Watching him.
His breath came ragged. His trembling hands clawed at his own face, as if he could scrape the image away, but it only made his eyes sting worse. Water spilled down his cheeks. His whole body shook as he whispered, breaking apart:
"Edward…"
Suddenly, a cluster of boys ran in from a side street, staring wide-eyed at the devastation John had wrought. One of them screamed outright, the other froze in mute terror, too shaken to even run.
A third boy pointed with a trembling hand. "Did you… did you leave your toy there?"
"Ye… yeah…" the smallest one answered, voice breaking.
From above, the mother's voice rang out again, desperate and shrill: "James!!!"
The boy jerked his head up. "What, Mom?!"
"Are you okay?!"
"Yeahhh!!!" he shouted back.
Relief crashed through John, his knees almost buckling. He exhaled, a small, broken smile tugging at his lips.
"Thank God… no innocents dead this time…"
His relief didn't last long though.
Sirens began to sing in the distance. He wiped his face, pulled his hood up, and slipped into the alleys. As he ran, the thought went through him like a statement: There must have been explosives inside. Fire set them off.
He had destroyed his first tower.