Gunshots came from the end of the corridor, scattered and uneven, drowned out by the screaming. The Hand Cannon still hadn't been fired, but that wasn't good news. Deathstroke had no idea what Shiller was using to kill people—he couldn't still be wielding that chunk of panel he ripped off, could he?
The thought made Deathstroke's neck ache again. Wounds like that couldn't actually kill him, but the problem was that Shiller's movement pattern was impossible to predict. For a Tactical Master, that was lethal.
There was no way to understand why he'd snapped off part of the panel and jammed it into the driver's neck at that moment. It made no sense at all, and it didn't even look like he'd really been trying to kill him. And the subsequent string of violent actions didn't seem aimed at any goal that actually required violence either. The two were completely disconnected.
Deathstroke admitted he was curious about Shiller, like he'd picked up an interesting storybook. Cause and effect, logical connections—those were the necessary elements of the book, and then suddenly everything was scrambled. He knew it was still the same letters, but once they were shaken up and rearranged, nothing made sense anymore.
Everything was happening too fast for Deathstroke to sit and hypothesize. He drew both swords as he moved quickly toward the source of the gunfire. Then, the instant he stepped into the wide dining room, he froze.
Because the figure standing opposite Shiller was actually his employer. Deathstroke's face instantly darkened.
Deathstroke was a very seasoned Mercenary. He understood one principle: if someone paid a lot of money to hire him for a job, it was because that person had a reason they absolutely could not appear anywhere near the incident. For reputation, for their family, for keeping their hands clean. It was precisely because people like that existed that Mercenaries had business.
They would always stay far, far away. Even sending someone to meet in their place required layer after layer of precautions and outsourcing, never letting anyone see their true face. Deathstroke did get preferential treatment here, because his reputation had always been excellent. To be able to discuss more details, many employers were willing to meet him. But even then they'd avoid facing him directly if they could, just make a call or talk from another room.
Deathstroke didn't think this was cowardice; in fact he appreciated their caution. In this line of work, there was no shortage of cases where the hired killer turned on the one who hired him. Same old line: you can't expect someone who takes money to kill to really have a bottom line.
And if, like now, the person who'd hired him suddenly appeared at the scene, that almost certainly proved one thing—the commission was a complete scam.
The man in front of him was absolutely not his employer, not even the employer's agent, not even some errand boy. Anyone connected to the employer would never appear at the crime scene. Because that would inevitably arouse suspicion and become evidence that they tried to meddle in the matter. Once the money's spent, there's no reason to leave yourself that kind of handle.
Deathstroke started thinking about where it had gone wrong.
The one who'd hired him was a rich man from Eastern Europe. In fact, that place was Heaven for killers and Mercenaries. People there loved spending money to hire others to do their dirty work. Deathstroke had taken quite a few jobs there and had never had a mishap. The Middleman he'd used this time was very reliable as well. Only someone truly experienced would dare touch the mess that was the Middle East.
So the only possibility was that this time, the Middleman had slipped up too. That surprised Deathstroke. The guy was an old hand in the business. What had blinded him?
Deathstroke began carefully recalling the details of this assignment. It was actually simple. This arms dealer from Eastern Europe had very stupidly ignored the warnings about warring factions and insisted on running his cargo through the Red sea. Sure enough, it got hijacked.
The origin of the shipment was dirty too; it still bore army markings that hadn't been "laundered" yet. If it showed up in this armed conflict, it could easily be taken as a sign that certain major powers had personally stepped into the game. And once things blew open, this arms tycoon might face the Thunderous wrath of his suzerain. So Deathstroke had to figure out a way to get the goods back, or simply destroy all traces.
Deathstroke's response was straightforward. He could have just killed his way in and taken out everyone who stood against him. But his employer clearly didn't want that much noise; he wanted it done as quietly and quickly as possible. So Deathstroke came up with a plan: he provoked a whole bunch of international police and European law enforcement agencies and led them here.
That would successfully throw the situation into chaos, and more importantly, neither side in the armed conflict wanted the European bigwigs to get involved. They didn't want attention on this place. So they'd hate Deathstroke's guts for bringing trouble down on them and would try everything to kill him.
If both sides came after him, he wouldn't have to go looking for them. The chase across the Red sea had proven his plan was working. But from this point on, the whole thing fell apart. The contract had been a scam from the very beginning. The arms tycoon could not possibly be here.
Deathstroke stared at the short, fat man, trying to guess what role he played in this con. While he was thinking, a rifle barrel punched straight through the man's chest.
Deathstroke opened his mouth, unsure how to comment on the scene. Shiller had a gun in his hands—probably an AWM—and the biggest advantage of this exceptionally high-performance sniper rifle in his hands was that its barrel was long enough to skewer a person straight through.
Guns could absolutely be used as Cold Weapons; in fact, smacking someone with a stock worked great. Deathstroke did it often. But that fell within "conventional" usage. There was even a specialized course, "pistol combatives," teaching people how to fight in close quarters while armed.
Shiller's use wasn't like that at all. He was like some primitive man suddenly dropped into modern society, not knowing guns could fire, so he just used the thing as a spear. It was as bizarre as it gets.
After killing the short, fat arms dealer, Shiller suddenly looked over. Meeting those grey eyes, Deathstroke felt a completely different kind of chill. If Deathstroke regretted opening this Pandora's Box himself, he didn't show it. He just asked, "Are you okay?"
Shiller said nothing. He suddenly raised that revolver. Just as Deathstroke thought Shiller was going to shoot him and lifted his swords to block, Shiller abruptly swung the barrel away and fired straight at the ceiling.
"BOOM!!!!"
The whole room turned into a blood rain lit by fire. The ceiling was blasted apart, and what fell wasn't just broken stone and rubble, but fragments of corpses—more than one person's.
Deathstroke's first reaction was that he'd underestimated that gun. If he wasn't mistaken, Shiller had just fired six rounds in a single burst. How the hell was that possible?
He didn't figure it out before he had to start ranting at the building's fragility. This was reinforced concrete; it shouldn't crumble like it'd taken a hit from a Tank's main gun, right? To be precise, it had taken six hits, but still, it shattered a bit too dramatically.
The floor slab shattered, and the people above naturally didn't stand a chance. Deathstroke sighed, wondering what the hell Shiller was pulling this time, and then he saw the leader of one side of the armed conflict—the same face that had appeared on television just a few hours ago—roll to a stop at his feet.
The fully exploited regions of Deathstroke's brain began to boil.
But Shiller had already jumped out the window. A sudden commotion erupted in the corridor. A large crowd burst in. Among them were the security personnel brought by the other side of the armed conflict—their uniform colors were different, so it was easy to tell. They saw Deathstroke and the severed head at his feet.
"He's dead, he's dead!" someone shouted. "That Demon is dead, we're about to win! Fuck the negotiations! Kill them all!!!"
Wonderful. The Law Enforcers from sixteen countries probably wouldn't be enough now. Deathstroke wondered, how many countries and regions were there in the world again?
There was no doubt this war was crucial. Just like how later generations would look back on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, as the fuse that changed the global political landscape. And he and that photo of him—Deathstroke noticed the reporters following behind those people—would definitely go down in history.
As Deathstroke fell from the upper floor, he could clearly see the clear sea surface and the horizon. He didn't even have time to wonder how they could have arranged such an important negotiation in Hurgada. He had to find Shiller now and figure out what was really going on.
If his own commission had been a complete scam, maybe even orchestrated by one side of the conflict, then what about Shiller's? That so-called artifact recovery trip—was it really just about retrieving artifacts?
Although Deathstroke was basically certain Shiller's employer was Wonder Woman, and he didn't think Wonder Woman would get involved in this war, that didn't mean she couldn't be misled. Who was really stirring all this up behind the scenes?
Following Shiller's trail, Deathstroke found his way to the beach. It wasn't far from his safe house; it seemed to be a launching point for snorkeling tours. Shiller was standing on the pier where small boats were moored, One Hand resting on a nearby lamppost.
"You okay?" Even Deathstroke thought he sounded a bit ridiculous. Right now, the one person in all of Egypt who was most okay was Shiller. Because of that leader's death, the whole of Egypt had gone under martial law.
Shiller took a deep breath, rinsed his hands with the mineral water left in the bottle, then looked up at him and said, "All right."
"Do you know what's going on?"
"What the hell is going on?"
The two of them spoke almost in unison, then both froze.
"You don't know either?"
"How can you not know?"
The chances of two violence machines jamming at the same time were low, but not zero. And now they were looking at exactly that kind of absurd situation. They both claimed to know nothing about the current situation, and both could be sure the other wasn't lying. That made things far more confusing.
Deathstroke still felt his own position made a bit more sense. He said, "If you don't know what's going on, why were you at that hotel?"
"I was tracking down the killer," Shiller said. "The guy I killed caused the hijacking, which got me thrown from tens of thousands of meters up into the Red sea. I was just there for revenge."
"How did you find him?"
"I didn't need to find him. I can see," Shiller said.
"See how?"
"You helped me see," Shiller said, looking at Deathstroke. "Your driving is absolute shit. I've never been that nauseous in my life. In that instant, I practically saw the entire Arab World. The killer wasn't exactly conspicuous in it, but I still locked onto him."
"Then why did you shoot upstairs?"
"That was the killer," Shiller coughed twice, then said, "I wasn't trying to frame you. He really did die by your hand."
"You mean if I hadn't shaken you sick…"
"I mean, you'd rather come hassle me than go carry out your mission, which caused a few changes in the situation and forced them to come here to negotiate. If they'd stayed on the other side of the Red sea, I wouldn't have had a chance to kill them."
Deathstroke felt his head buzzing.