Chapter 12.
After the shots, events lurched into a gallop. Two sharp cracks — and I felt something whistle past my temple, missing the skin by a fraction. Simultaneously with the shots, two sharp metallic rings sounded behind me. I turned a beat too late and saw two black shuriken on the ground, their blades buried deep in the soil.
"Don't stand there like an idiot — get ready!" Sly barked, his pistol already leveled at the treeline.
*He wasn't shooting at me. He was shooting past me, at those shuriken.* The realization arrived late.
I broke into a run toward him, moving in a zigzag the way he'd drilled into me. Out of the corner of my eye I caught several dim, dark silhouettes in the forest in the direction he'd been firing — figures that merged with the tree shadows, moving with an unnatural fluidity and speed.
By the time I reached Sly he had already changed the magazine. The shooting had stopped, and the attackers had stopped throwing. A silence fell, broken only by my ragged breathing.
"What… what was that?" I exhaled, finding the Glock by feel in my jacket.
"The Hand," Sly answered briefly, without taking his eyes off the forest.
*The Hand.* Fragments of knowledge from the Marvel universe surfaced in my mind immediately. An international criminal organization, controlled by the Five Fingers. And their ninja — if I was remembering right — weren't entirely ordinary. Something about their own magic. Wait — this was the same cult Daredevil was at war with.
While the thoughts fired through my head in rapid sequence, four figures slipped out of the forest without a sound. All in black from head to foot, faces hidden behind masks. They moved in perfect synchrony, like parts of a single mechanism. I finally got the Glock out and pointed it at them, but Sly sharply pushed my arm down.
"Save the ammunition. There are four of them and two of us. Just stay ready and don't provoke them. Judging by this, they want you alive — so your life is probably not in immediate danger."
"And yours?" I asked on autopilot, already half-knowing the answer.
Sly's response was a short, silent, deeply unpleasant smile. He shifted his combat knife to a more comfortable grip.
"Watch carefully. And learn, kid."
And he launched himself forward. This was nothing like our sparring sessions. This was a death dance. Three of the ninja were clearly experienced fighters. Their movements were lightning-fast and precisely honed. They attacked from multiple angles simultaneously, deploying shuriken, kusarigama, and short blades. The fourth one — slightly shorter and a touch less certain — was apparently new to this. He hung back, trying to support the others, throwing shuriken.
And Sly — Sly was like a hurricane. He didn't fence, he didn't display elegant technique. He killed. His knife traced short, precise arcs that consistently found vulnerabilities. He used the pistol not as a primary weapon but as a tool — a point-blank shot to distract, to break someone's rhythm, to open a gap. He moved with a speed extraordinary for his age, using the attackers' own momentum against them.
I stood and watched, unable to look away. There was no fear in me, no revulsion. My Traits were helping me break the fight down into its elements. I could see how Sly anticipated every strike, how he read the ninja's body language. The blood spraying onto the ground and his clothing didn't produce a single tremor in me. After months of hunting and dressing carcasses, it had become — simply part of the landscape.
The whole thing resembled a scene from an action film, but I understood — this was brutal reality. One by one the three experienced ninja were eliminated. Sly gave them no openings. When only the novice remained, he didn't kill him. Instead he deflected the attack, stepped sharply inside the defense, and delivered one short precise blow with the pistol grip to the temple. The ninja folded silently to the ground.
It ended as quickly as it had begun. I was still standing there, the Glock clenched in my sweating hand, unable to say a word. The mastery I had just witnessed exceeded anything I had assumed. I knew Sly was a professional — but that he had handled four elite killers alone, and made it look almost effortless — that was bordering on the impossible.
Several seconds passed before the ninja came to.
Sly made no move to interrogate the prisoner. He didn't even bend down toward him — just stood watching as the young ninja, still dazed, slowly and uncertainly tried to get up.
"Stand," Sly said flatly. His voice was calm, but it held not a trace of leniency.
The masked ninja rose slowly. His hands curled into fists, and I could see the muscles in his arms tensing even through the black fabric.
"You." Sly nodded in my direction without looking away from the ninja. "With him. One on one. No weapons. If you win — you walk. If you lose… well, you understand."
*What the hell. Right now? I'm not — I'm not ready for this.*
The ninja gave a sharp nod of agreement. He had apparently sized me up as easy prey compared to Sly. Honestly, in his position I would have thought exactly the same.
Sly turned to me.
"Knife and pistol."
I handed both over without a word, aware that my palms were slightly damp. He took the weapons and stepped to one side, settling with his back against the bunker wall and his arms folded across his chest, transforming himself into a spectator — or a judge.
I was alone with a killer from the Hand. We faced each other, and the air between us seemed to grow heavier. I watched his breathing — steady and deep, preparing for the lunge. I recognized that from Natasha.
*Get it together, Hard,* ran through my head. *You're not the green kid you were six months ago. You can do this. Breathe.*
I took a slow, deliberate breath and settled into the stance Sly had beaten into me: knees slightly bent, center of gravity shifted forward, hands covering the body.
He attacked first — sharp and explosive. His movement was like a spring releasing: he simply launched himself at me, throwing a kick at head height. I barely got out of the way, feeling the air part a centimeter from my temple.
*He's fast. Faster than me. Even faster than Sly in our sparring.*
My Traits spoke up immediately. I had caught how he'd slightly rotated his hip and shifted weight before the attack. My brain processed it instantly: high kick, high trajectory, which means the next will be low — probably a leg sweep.
It was. He drove forward trying to take my legs. I managed to leap back, but he didn't stop. A barrage of strikes came crashing down — hands, feet, everything interweaving. He was using some Eastern system I had no familiarity with. The movements were fluid and flowing, but every one of them concealed danger.
I defended as best I could: blocking, slipping, backing up. Every parried blow sent pain ringing through my hands and forearms. He was not just fast — he was, surprisingly for his build, very strong. Considerably stronger than me. My modest five in Strength and seven in Agility were clearly at a disadvantage against his demonstrably higher numbers. In this fight I was little more than a heavy bag — a well-trained, resilient one, but a heavy bag nonetheless.
One of his strikes finally got through my guard. A sharp fist drove into my solar plexus. The air wrenched out of my lungs with a rasp, and my vision darkened. I doubled over, barely keeping my feet under me. It would have been a clean knockout in any other circumstances.
But "Nerves of Steel" didn't let the pain paralyze me. Yes, the agony in my abdomen was overwhelming — but distant. And "Iron Discipline" Level 2 simply ignored the panicked scream from my body demanding surrender. My will, cold and merciless, commanded the muscles to contract. I didn't fall. Taking one step back, I straightened, dragging air painfully into empty lungs.
Something flickered in the ninja's eyes — surprise. He had clearly expected it to end there. And that second of hesitation was my window.
I drove forward. Not elegantly, not with any technique. Like a battering ram. The way Sly had once taught: head forward, shoulder forward, your entire bodyweight into the hit. Simple and unadorned, I slammed into him, and we both went down.
This was where his technique became less effective. Here, the deciding factors were dirt, fury, and the will to live. We rolled across the ground trying to choke each other, strike each other, break something. He tried to apply a lock, and I answered by torquing his arm; he clawed at my face trying to reach my eyes. It was no longer a fight — it was a brawl.
And then I remembered. Natasha's lesson. She had shown me a chokehold — not the kind that compresses the airway, but the kind that cuts the blood supply to the brain. Fast, effective, silent.
I caught my moment. He tried to roll over, inadvertently giving me his back. Perfect. I wrapped my arm around his neck from behind, locked my other arm in place, pressed my chin against the back of his skull to prevent a headbutt, and began to squeeze.
He understood what was happening. He thrashed and bucked, trying to hit me with his elbows and legs. One blow caught my right side and a sharp pain shot through it, but I only clamped down harder. Stars danced across my vision, but my hands did not open.
Gradually he began to weaken. His strikes turned desperate and feeble, his movements sluggish. A few more seconds — and his body went limp. He was unconscious.
I released him and rolled away, breathing hard. Everything was burning, my side was shooting with pain, and blood was running from my nose. But I was alive. And I had won.
I lay on my back, staring up at a gray sky, trying to get air back into my lungs. Deep and ragged. The victory brought no euphoria. Only a hollow, deafening exhaustion.
Then Sly appeared above me. He stood looking down at me with his unruffled gaze. Then his hand extended toward me, offering my hunting knife. Handle first.
"Finish it," he said. Short and clear. No malice in his voice, no approval. Simply a statement of fact. The next step.
Time seemed to slow. I got up automatically, not registering the pain, and found myself looking back and forth between the knife and the insensate body of the ninja. There was no panic in my head, no fear — only silence. The kind that settles after a storm.
I remembered Natasha's words. Our conversation about the first killing. She had talked about the emptiness — about how the important thing wasn't the act itself, but what followed it. Whether you could live with it.
And then I thought about who was lying in front of me. This was not an innocent animal taken for food. This was a killer, a member of a criminal organization that dealt in people, weapons, and narcotics. He had come here to abduct or to kill me. The odds were strong that a great deal of blood was on his hands. And if I killed him, the world would not be worse. It might even be fractionally better.
This was not a justification — it was a merciless calculation. At least, that was how I framed it to myself. The war I had been pulled into left no room for sentiment: either you or them. Fury had used me as bait, and Sly had been forging me into a weapon. This ninja was simply the next lesson — possibly the last before I was sent out into open water.
I looked at his mask. I found I had no interest in what face was underneath it. Young? Old? It didn't matter. He was a function, a threat that needed to be neutralized.
My choice was made. Not from hatred, and not from any thirst for blood. From a cold, rational understanding of necessity — and from the desire to survive in this brutal world and protect the small number of people who had come to matter to me over these months.
I took the knife from Sly's hand. My hand did not tremble. I raised the blade.
One quick, precise strike at the base of the skull — exactly as Sly had taught. Clean. Professional. No unnecessary suffering.
And at that same instant, a notification sounded from the system.
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*[Will Points: 6]*
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Two. Two WP at once. The system had evidently judged this step as worth considerably more than simple survival. It was a kind of initiation. A crossing to a new level, after which there was no road back.
I crouched there, looking back and forth from the bloodied knife in my hand to the body of the ninja. A heavy understanding had settled inside me. My life had finally and definitively divided into "before" and "after." Before this moment there had been training, overcoming myself, even the hunting. Now — now a war had begun. A real one, without rules. And I had just chosen my side in it, crossing the last internal threshold.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sly. He stood without moving, neither approaching nor speaking. Simply watching. He was waiting to see how I would respond. Whether I would break, drown in guilt — or accept this as simply what it was.
I took a slow breath, stood up, and wiped the blade on my trousers. The movements were mechanical, but steady. Then I turned to him.
"What did I do to them, Sly? To the… Hand?" My voice came out rough, but without trembling.
Sly shrugged, his face unchanged.
"Don't know exactly. But if they're hunting you, someone paid. And paid a lot. The Hand don't come cheap. Most likely the same people who sent those two clowns in suits. HYDRA. They have the money and the connections to contract the Hand."
"So this is serious now," I said, without any particular inflection.
"As serious as it gets," Sly nodded. "The Hand is a global network. Their operatives are everywhere. And because of their tricks, a normal hiding place — even a classified Fury bunker — is no obstacle to them. We need to think. But first — we move. Pack up, quickly."
We went down into the bunker without speaking. Sly finally unlocked the storeroom. I stuffed my pack with rations and water, took the spare magazines for the Glock. My body was working on its own, while one thought cycled through my head, persistent and bitter.
*Again. For God's sake, again. Everything repeating. Yesterday's suited agents are just now replaced by Eastern ninja in pajamas. Damn Marvel. Why can't it just give me time? Even a couple of years — to build up properly, to get strong, skilled, difficult to kill — and then throw every piece of garbage it has at me. But no. It all has to be now, when I'm still raw, when I've only just started, when any serious threat can smear me across a wall without much effort.*
I yanked the pack's zipper shut, feeling a surge of helpless anger rising inside me. Not at Sly, not at Fury, not even at the ninja. It was directed at the universe itself, which seemed to be specifically dropping trials on me at the precise moment I was least prepared for them.
Coming back to the dining room, I found Sly talking on the familiar satellite phone. He stood with his back to me, but I caught fragments.
"…yes, the Hand. Four of them. One survived briefly… No, didn't bother finding out." A pause. "Listen, Nik, the job just got geometrically more complicated. My rate does too. Multiply it by three. Minimum."
I went still in the doorway, listening. From the short, nod-like movements of Sly's head it was clear — Fury on the other end of the line had agreed.
"Coordinates?" Sly gave a short laugh. "You think I'm a complete idiot? Any coordinates you give me could be compromised by now. No. I'll decide where to keep him. That is — if you want your valuable asset to live long enough to meet you again. Until contact."
He ended the call abruptly and turned around. His gaze landed on me.
"Ready?"
"Ready," I nodded.
"Then let's go."
We went back up to the surface. Sly led me deeper into the forest, but not by the trail I used for hunting — in the opposite direction.
"Where are we going?" I asked, pushing through thorny undergrowth.
"There's a highway about two days' walking from here. Motel nearby. We can rest a couple of hours there, clean up. And during our little forest excursion I'll figure out somewhere to put you where even that Eastern organization can't reach."
I simply nodded. Trust in Sly was my only currency at that moment. If he said he would hide me — that was how it would be. And in the meantime — in the meantime I just had to walk. One step at a time.