The Last Night
Marek glanced at his watch.
It had been quite a while since Sergei left.
There was no way it should have taken him this long to circle the area and come back.
The Sergei he knew was greedy for money, sure, but he wasn’t the kind of man who dragged his feet.
He couldn’t have gotten lost either. It was dark, but the road was a straight shot that took only two minutes.
There was only one conclusion.
Something had happened to Sergei.
The plan had gone sideways.
The instant Marek reached that judgment, he moved without the slightest hesitation.
Dragging out your worries in the middle of an operation was stupid.
Only quick decisions and quick action improved your odds of surviving.
If the situation changed, you adapted. That was all.
He picked up the metal case from the table.
The weight of it in his left hand sat heavily on his wrist.
There was nothing complicated about it. All he had to do was hand this over to Viktor, and the job was done.
“Let’s go.”
Tau set down his phone, swung the heavy duffel bag onto his shoulder, and nodded.
Still expressionless. You could never tell what an Asian was thinking just by looking at his face.
The two of them left the guesthouse and headed for the pier.
The shoreline in the pre-dawn dark was silent and still. The stink of seawater and oil mixed together and stung the nose.
At the end of the old pier, only one small vessel was tied up.
When they approached to check, the engine was off.
Marek checked the time again.
1:50 a.m. Ten minutes left.
“Make sure there’s no problem with departure.”
He turned to Tau and said it just as a sudden racket exploded from the pier entrance.
Footsteps hammered against concrete, metal pipes clanged against each other, and rough Cantonese rang out.
More than fifteen Chinese men were coming this way.
They carried all kinds of weapons: batons, steel pipes, knives.
The man at the front strolled forward slowly, gold necklace swaying around his neck.
He had a vicious face and a swaggering gait. In Cantonese, he started shouting something.
“······.”
Obviously, Marek didn’t understand a word.
But he didn’t need to. Whatever the reason, these bastards had come for them.
Then he glanced to the side and saw that Tau, who had been there just a moment ago, was gone.
Along with the duffel bag full of money.
“Hah···.”
An irritated sigh slipped out.
He wasn’t exactly surprised. He had never trusted the guy in the first place.
Marek set the case down at his feet.
Then he drew his pistol from the holster inside his jacket.
By the time he lazily took a suppressor from his pocket and screwed it onto the muzzle, the man with the gold necklace was already shouting an order.
The enemies began to advance.
Even with that many men in front of him, Marek didn’t feel much tension.
Instead, he felt a certain exhilaration as he calmly took hold of the pistol.
I’ve been in worse situations than this.
Compared to what he’d already lived through, this wasn’t even the worst of it.
It just looked like he’d have to finish the job a little more noisily than planned.
***
I pressed my body against the outer wall of the pier and peered inside.
Blood glistened across the pier floor in patches.
Men who looked like Yee Hing Tong thugs were strewn all over the place.
Some were dead or lying there with gunshot wounds, others with joints bent the wrong way, beaten senseless.
What kind of lunatics do this in the middle of the city?
Keeping low, I slipped farther into the pier.
Soon I spotted a white man standing at the far end.
There didn’t seem to be any other companions with him.
That’s Marek.
An ex-special forces mercenary leading the group that had stolen the goods.
He was pointing a pistol at a Chinese man sprawled on the floor.
Gold necklace. Gold ring.
A fierce face that didn’t suit all that flashy jewelry at all.
Exactly as Marcus had described. Lau Chi-sing of Yee Hing Tong.
Ha. So this is where all the names I’ve only heard about finally show up at once.
Honestly, whether that bastard lived or died was none of my business.
But I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip by.
I slipped my hand into my pocket.
Five coins I’d picked up from the safehouse. Mostly big, heavy five-Hong Kong-dollar pieces.
They were clumsy compared to the hexagonal darts the Tang Clan used, but if I poured inner force into them before firing, they’d do the job just fine.
“Hoo···.”
In my previous life, the thing I was best at wasn’t striking or footwork.
I had been a Tang Clan retainer, and a master-level warrior who had achieved the summit through the Tang Clan’s martial arts.
And what the Tang Clan was most famous for was poison and hidden weapons.
There were many ways to use hidden weapons in the Tang Clan.
Throwing, shooting, flicking, scattering, spinning, letting them flow, driving them in.
And what I was about to use now was a method that compressed inner force into my fingers and snapped the weapon out with it.
I hooked the heaviest coin onto the tip of my middle finger.
Then I anchored it by pressing my thumb hard against the first joint of my middle finger.
The muscles in my finger strained to their limit as inner force condensed into the fingertips.
It was the same principle as a striker hitting a primer cap.
The target was the inside of Marek’s right wrist. If I hit the ulnar nerve there cleanly, his hand would go numb for an instant.
Clang!
The coin shot out like a bullet and slammed squarely into the inside of Marek’s wrist.
At the same time, his arm jerked outward as if it had been snapped aside.
The pistol flew from his hand and skidded far away.
“······!”
Marek rolled on the ground at once.
His movement was so fast it was hard to believe he’d already been in one fight.
Clutching his wrist, he looked back and forth between the direction the gun had gone and me.
Then he sprinted straight for the pistol.
Like hell you will.
Second coin.
This time I pinched it between my index and middle fingers and flicked it horizontally.
Using the snap of my wrist, the coin flew in a spiraling arc and struck the pistol dead-on.
Clack!
The gun bounced twice on the concrete and vanished beneath the pier.
Plunk, the sound of it hitting the water came faintly from far below.
“······.”
Seeing that, Marek stopped moving.
Instead, I could feel his gaze snap over and check me out in a flash.
My hands, my pockets, my stance, whether I had allies behind me.
Then his eyes changed. In just a few seconds, he’d sorted out the situation.
That what I’d fired wasn’t a gun, that I didn’t appear to have any other visible weapons.
And that I was the only enemy.
“······tch.”
Marek spat on the ground and slowly got to his feet.
Then he began walking toward me.
I flicked my eyes toward the black case behind him.
It matched the one Marcus had described, the one the HSM was supposedly stored in.
“Found it at last.”
I started forward too.
***
Swoosh.
As Marek came closer, he reached behind his waist and pulled something out.
It was a tactical knife—short, but with a thick, heavy blade.
What a bastard, no sense of manners at all.
Fine. Then I’d use something else too.
At once I took a coin from my pocket and flicked it out.
The first target was his collarbone.
Clang!
His reflexes were quick.
He raised the left arm holding the knife and shielded the area in front of his collarbone with it.
The coin struck the outside of his forearm and bounced away.
…He blocked that?
I’d noticed it before, but his reflexes were incredible.
In that brief instant, he’d read my hand and my eyes and predicted the trajectory, then covered the vital point.
He flinched for a moment, like it hurt more than expected, but he didn’t stop moving.
The second coin went for his knee.
Marek slid a step to the side and lowered his body. The coin skimmed past the outside of his thigh.
His speed had dropped a little, but he was still advancing.
I was about to fire again when I pulled my hand out of my pocket.
Too late. Marek had already moved in fast, and he was right in front of me.
He’s not as big as I thought.
Compared to the Russian brute I’d knocked out earlier, this one was manageable.
Up close, I could see that his right sleeve was soaked with blood. It was a long slash wound from a blade.
His right wrist, the one I’d hit with the coin earlier, was swelling badly too.
And the knife in his left hand—he held it in a reverse grip.
But the position of his index finger felt just slightly off.
He’s right-handed.
That was lucky for me.
Still, anyone with a knife in hand had the advantage over an unarmed man. That didn’t change.
That was when Marek, having found his opening, moved first.
Whoosh!
He charged in with the short blade in his left hand.
He kept his shoulder and elbow up to shield his vital points as he lowered his body and drove in.
The knife led. His body followed.
Sassh—
On reflex, I pulled my head back and lifted my chin.
I could feel the tip of the blade skim past the side of my face.
Damn it.
The sound of air being split hit my ear.
Feeling a shiver of gooseflesh, I stepped back. I had no choice.
Swish!
Marek pressed in after me and slashed horizontally.
He was faster than I’d expected. My retreat came half a beat too late.
Riiip-
The sound of cloth tearing rang out from the front of my shirt.
It didn’t hurt. He hadn’t reached the skin.
Marek immediately reversed his grip and switched to a thrust.
Thrusting was even faster than slashing.
Thud!
I twisted my body sideways and knocked the outside of his wrist away with my forearm.
The knife tip scraped past my side. This time it left only a shallow cut.
The searing pain made me grit my teeth.
“Hoo···.”
I couldn’t keep giving ground.
In a fight like this, the important thing was to chew away at each other’s space and create an opening.
As expected, he didn’t give me a second to breathe and came back in.
This time I didn’t retreat. Instead, I stepped half a pace deeper to his right.
Whack.
My left hand shoved the knife-wielding wrist outward.
At the same time, I dropped my elbow into the outside of his right forearm.
Exactly on the spot where the blade had already cut him.
“Kuh, hrrk···.”
The reaction was immediate. A short cry burst from Marek’s mouth.
But he wasn’t going to take it lying down.
Almost at the same time, his left knee came up.
Thump!
The moment it smashed into the inside of my thigh, I felt the strength drain out of my leg.
Before one knee even touched the ground, Marek was already bringing the knife down from above.
I rolled away by a hair’s breadth.
Scrreee!
The knife raked across concrete, a sound that stabbed at my ears.
I hurriedly got back up and widened the distance between us. A curse leapt out of my mouth on its own.
“Shit.”
Marek had also stopped and was staring at me.
He’d tucked his right arm tight against his body and taken his stance with the knife in his left hand.
His shoulder was hunching inward without him realizing it, as if instinctively guarding the spot I’d struck earlier.
This is the chance.
The longer you trade blows with someone holding a knife, the worse it gets for you.
There was only one way to change the flow.
I had to go first.
Swoosh—
This time, I took the first half-step forward.
And I drew up the last of my inner force.
I can see it.
Everything slowed, and the arc of his knife tip became crystal clear.
I could have dodged easily enough, but I didn’t bother. Instead, I went in even farther.
Then, at the very moment the blade passed by my chest by a hair—
Clack!
My right hand snatched up his left wrist from below.
At the same time, my left hand seized the outside of his elbow joint and twisted it in the opposite direction.
I could feel the strength draining from his left hand.
Clang—
The knife dropped to the floor.
I turned my body and grabbed his swollen right wrist.
With both hands, I twisted it fully outward.
Crack!
Marek let out a low, short scream. It was the kind you made with your teeth clenched shut.
Even then, he whipped his right leg out in a low kick.
I let go of his wrist without a trace of regret and jumped back.
“Kh, hhh···.”
For a moment, the distance between us opened.
Marek backed away with his right arm, the one whose wrist had been completely broken, pressed against his body.
His left arm probably wasn’t intact either, with the joint twisted like that.
“······.”
Marek looked at me.
For the first time, expression appeared on his face.
Not rage. Not fear. Something strange. Something closer to excitement.
“A nasty bastard.”
He muttered that, and then charged again.
With his broken right arm pinned to his body, he came at me using only his left elbow and knees.
Fast, concise, with no wasted motion.
Perfect real-world martial arts, trained properly and hammered into the body.
When I dodged his knee and let his elbow slide past, there was a fleeting opening.
My left hand went into my pocket.
The last coin. A slightly thinner, smaller, lighter one.
I drove into his body and flicked the coin out at close range.
Clack.
It struck Marek’s eyelid dead-on.
For a second, his movement stopped. I could feel him reel from the sudden pain in his eye.
Of course I didn’t miss the opening.
Wham!
Stepping in half a pace farther, I snapped my right fist up under his chin.
His head flew back, but it still wasn’t over.
Thud!
I drove forward and poured all my weight into his solar plexus.
His torso folded a little. But he still held on, teeth clenched.
One more. Same spot, dead-on.
Crack!!
At last, I saw his eyes roll back.
His knees gave way, and he slowly toppled forward.
“Haa··· haa···.”
I sank to the ground too.
Blood was seeping from my chest. It was the cut from earlier.
I pressed it with my hand. Thankfully, it wasn’t deep.
“Hah··· do I really have to go this far···?”
As I gasped for breath and turned my head, I saw the black case.
The source of all this trouble. That goddamn thing that had made me suffer like this.
“Nngh···.”
I crawled over to it and checked the lock.
It was exactly what Marcus had described.
I was just reaching into my back pocket to pull out the radio when I heard a dull thud from behind me, followed by a sharp intake of breath.
“Khk.”
When I turned, I saw Lau Chi-sing.
More precisely, I saw him plunging a knife into Marek’s throat.
Behind him, a long dark-red trail of blood stretched across the floor.
Even after taking a bullet and bleeding all this time, he had still crawled his way here.
“Ghh, krrk.”
Marek’s eyes bulged as he gurgled in shock and pain.
He flailed as if trying to stop the blood pouring from the wound, but little by little, the movement faded.
That was the end of it.
“Hkrrr.”
Lau Chi-sing, who had been driving the knife in with ferocious stubbornness, collapsed sideways too.
His eyes turned to the night sky. I could hear him muttering a few short words in Cantonese.
And then the light in his eyes went out as well.
I stood there and watched for a long time.
In the now-silent pier, only the smell of blood lingered.
Mixed with the pier’s usual fishy stench, it was even more disgusting.
“Haa···.”
I shook my head and picked up the radio again.
“...Marcus. I’ve recovered the item. Heading back.”
For a moment, there was silence.
- Confirmed. Come back safely.
Marcus didn’t ask anything.
I trudged out of the pier, carrying the heavy case.
“I feel like I’m going to die, seriously.”
The words came out on their own.
Now it was really over.
Really.