Noel Baluev stared at a brown-painted door from behind Gregory as the man unlocked the room with several combination padlocks. After the code matched, the door automatically opened. Gregory entered with Noel trailing behind.
"What room is this?" Noel asked, his eyes sweeping the dark room with a hint of horror on his face.
This room was somewhat small—four by three meters in size—with minimal lighting. Inside, there were several steel safes with codes and teakwood cabinet racks neatly arranged.
Gregory looked for the switch to turn on the light, then answered, "Weapons room."
The light turned on, clearly revealing its contents. Noel almost didn't blink after looking carefully. In this room, there were various types of weapons: knives, assembled firearms, various pistols such as Glocks, Ruger RedHawk, Desert Eagle, Les Baer Magnum, several small grenades, and many unused bullets.
Without glancing at Noel still standing frozen at the doorway, Gregory took a weapon located on one of the shelves. "Here, try this." He handed a pistol into Noel's hand.
Noel received it with some hesitation. "What is this?"
"It's a Raging Bull pistol."
"No, I mean... why are you giving it to me?"
"Try shooting something with that pistol."
"What am I supposed to shoot?" Noel's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Gregory looked around the room for a moment, then found something suitable to use as a practice target. "Try shooting that vase!" he instructed, pointing at an innocent white porcelain vase with blue cloud patterns to become the target.
Noel looked even more hesitant. He thought that vase must be expensive.
"Ah, never mind, it's fine. That vase isn't worth anything. The effect of the shot won't be too big either." Gregory explained casually. "Focus on your target, then pull the trigger and shoot."
After the man said that, Noel followed the command.
The gunshot thundered loudly like a lightning strike. Fortunately, the room was designed to be soundproof, so it wasn't too audible outside—not even to other apartment residents. After the shrieking sound subsided and the vase shattered into pieces, creating small fragments that scattered around the floor where it stood, Noel fell silent, unable to say anything. His mouth hung open; he hadn't expected the sound produced to be so loud and the force of the shot to instantly destroy the vase. Meanwhile, Gregory just laughed. Very different from Noel's pale expression from shock.
"This isn't funny!" Noel shouted in fear, half-yelling at the man who was laughing heartily beside him.
"I'm sorry, ahaha!" Gregory laughed while holding his stomach. "That earlier was still normal. You have to get used to sounds like that. Learning to fight is easy."
Noel stared at Gregory with a serious expression. He forgot one question that Gregory hadn't mentioned since morning. "You said Nate summoned me because of a plan, right? If so, can I know what Nate's plan is?" His tone was serious.
As soon as his hearing caught Noel's question, Gregory's laughter stopped immediately. He answered as best he could, "I'm not really sure either."
Noel fell silent. After receiving that answer, his face turned paler than before—like someone who had just donated half the blood in their body.
Seeing Noel's response, Gregory felt bad. He continued his words, "Actually, I don't really know what Nate wants either. It's just that, according to my guess, it seems he wants us to just go with the flow."
Silence enveloped the room after Noel received his answer—an unsatisfactory answer. If Nate wanted this plan to go with the flow, there was no way that flow wouldn't eventually lead him to Alexei Tsvetkov. Ah, that man. Noel still had one more question about Nate, so he asked again, "What is Nate's relationship with Alexei Tsvetkov?"
For a moment, Noel caught a flash of surprise in Gregory's brown eyes as he looked at Noel through questioning eyes. The man wondered in his mind: how does Noel know about Nate and Alexei?
Silence returned the second after Noel's question was uttered, still unanswered. Noel swallowed nervously after asking that. The pistol still in his grip was squeezed tightly until his fingernails turned white. There was a pain that arose in his chest as his mind was again filled with questions about those two people.
When Gregory spoke, it wasn't an answer he received, but a question full of surprise. "How do you know that Nate knows Alexei?" Gregory tried to guess. "Have you ever met Alexei Tsvetkov?"
Noel nodded silently. He was still waiting for an answer from that man, even so, he still chose to answer Gregory's question first before waiting for the subsequent answer. "On the night you left, I met him. More precisely, he came to meet this man." Noel pointed to his face.
Through Noel's expression, Gregory briefly found sadness that had been piling up for so long when he mentioned the name Alexei Tsvetkov. The man concluded that Noel must also know Alexei Tsvetkov. He wanted to ask to confirm it, but Gregory chose to give his answer first. "Regardless of what the relationship between them is like, the answer 'complicated' is probably the right word. Nate never talked about what kind of relationship he has with that man or how it is."
After receiving Gregory's answer, Noel could only bow his head. His mind began to wander—perhaps Alexei had special feelings for Nate. The word 'complicated' carried many meanings. The more Noel thought about it, the more his head hurt, and that feeling spread to his heart.
"Starting tomorrow, I'll teach you how to fight and use weapons. At least to protect yourself. Even though you reside in the body of a skilled fighter, in fact, that ability doesn't carry over to you."
"Alright."
Only a sigh as a sign of agreement. At least by starting the initial learning phase, Noel could independently protect himself, now that his identity was that of a killer.
*
The sound of gunfire stopped when an instruction came from the man beside him after the fifth bullet was fired.
"Stop!"
Noel stopped and removed the ear protection he had been wearing.
The training room in the Moscow apartment was narrow, only five by four meters in size, its walls lined with thick black rubber to dampen the echo of gunfire. The neon lights on the ceiling flickered occasionally, as if tired from accompanying training that had been going on since morning. At the end of the room, three cardboard targets with holes were lined up neatly—one of them almost untouched, the other two covered with scattered, irregular bullet holes.
"Try not to let your hand tremble when shooting!" requested Gregory, his British accent still thick even though he had lived in Russia for a long time—an accent that made his words sound firmer than they actually were.
"This is difficult," Noel replied, lowering his slightly trembling hand. Sweat wet his temples, dripping onto the collar of the white t-shirt he was wearing.
Gregory let out a light sigh in response. "Give it to me!"
Noel handed over the pistol, still warm from the consecutive shots. Gregory began aiming with one hand, his posture changing—feet shoulder-width apart, arm perfectly straight, breath held. The stance of someone who had done this thousands of times. "Calm yourself, try to keep your hand from trembling, focus on aiming at your target, and shoot."
One shot. In a single shot, Gregory managed to hit the target precisely in the head of the cardboard target. Cardboard fragments scattered, leaving a perfect round hole between the two black lines marking the eyes.
Noel immediately wore an expression of admiration for a moment. His eyes followed the thin smoke rising from the gun's muzzle, then shifted to Gregory, who was still standing in perfect position.
Gregory lowered his gun, checking the magazine with automatic movement. "This is still nothing. For a beginner, it will be more difficult if the target is moving."
*
A week had passed since Noel began training under Gregory's guidance. At first, he was even afraid to hold a weapon. Now, at least he could pull the trigger without closing his eyes. He could hit the target, even if some shots missed. Noel's progress in marksmanship was somewhat lacking. Compared to hand-to-hand combat, Noel's progress was quite rapid. Every day, Gregory engaged him with basic movements—punches, blocks, takedowns. Noel could dodge and parry nimbly every offensive Gregory threw at him. However, when it came to attacking, Noel had a weakness in terms of power.
"You're fast, but your punches are like a handkerchief," Gregory commented one afternoon, rubbing his arm that had been hit by Noel's strike—painful, but not enough to make him step back.
Noel could only smile bitterly.
*
"Will we be fighting someone in the future?" Noel asked that afternoon, after training had finished. They sat on the rubber-floored training room, their backs against the soundproofed walls. The air in the room was still stuffy, mixed with the smell of gunpowder and sweat.
"Most certainly," Gregory answered, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. In fluent Russian that still retained a hint of an English accent, he added, "You won't be hiding in this training room forever, Noel."
Noel fell silent. His fingers gripped the pistol still lying in his lap tightly. "I don't think I'll be able to do it." Noel looked down to hide the doubtful expression on his face. The reflection of the neon lights on the black rubber floor made his shadow look blurry—like himself, who now felt blurry between who he used to be and who he was now.
Gregory didn't answer immediately. He opened a bottle of mineral water lying in the corner, sipping it slowly before speaking. "Before, when Nate first learned, he couldn't do it either."
Noel lifted his face, a curious glint slipping behind his blue eyes. "Nate? Who taught him?"
"Me." Gregory smiled slightly, reminiscing. "Not about weapons—he already had that since he was a child. But about... when to pull the trigger, and when to hold back. That was the hardest thing for him to learn."
"Did he succeed?"
"Just look at yourself now." Gregory patted Noel's shoulder, shifting attention to a lighter reality. "This body already knows the movements. What you need is no longer physical training, but courage."
"I don't have that."
"You do have it, Noel." Gregory's voice grew softer, almost persuasive. "You just don't know how to find it yet."
The British man stood up, straightening his sweat-soaked training clothes. "Tomorrow we'll practice shooting at moving targets. Get some rest tonight."
Noel nodded slowly, still sitting on the floor, staring at the bullet holes in the cardboard targets. One hole in the head—Gregory's. Dozens of holes scattered across the chest and neck—his own.
He sighed, then stood up to follow Gregory, who had already left the room.
*
The Moscow FSB Bureau had assigned Yuri Viktorovich and Dmitry Vorobev to New York three months ago. Officially, they were there for interagency coordination regarding an illegal arms trafficking case involving a跨国 network. However, their true mission went beyond that: to trace the flow of dark money suspected of flowing to criminal organizations in Russia—one of which was through the Tsvetkov family, a pharmaceutical conglomerate whose name had begun appearing frequently in intelligence reports.
A small hotel in Brooklyn became their temporary base. Far from the glitter of Manhattan, this place was chosen for a simple reason: not many people asked questions. Yuri, with grey hair at his temples and a weary face that had seen too many corpses, was more comfortable working from the shadows. Dmitry, his partner ten years younger, was the opposite—he was restless if he wasn't moving.
That morning, they received a call from the hospital. A car that had been sunk in the Hudson River had finally been recovered, and inside it was a corpse. Not their assignment, really—this case fell under New York police jurisdiction. However, preliminary reports indicated that the man found was a member of the Donnano mafia, an organization that a few years ago was suspected of having connections with Russian syndicates. Reason enough for the FSB to take a look.
[•°]