Fear worked better when it could see you.
High above, his IBM drifted silently, its attention on the sniper rifle in it's hand. John chose something better for it.
Control.
On the video feed still recording from the roof, John's figure briefly crossed the frame. He walked past the camera's edge, then without warning broke into a run. That was all the footage caught. No context. No conclusion. Just motion cut short.
Meanwhile, inside the compound, the gang members' earpieces chimed all at once.
A calm, distorted voice slid into their ears.
"Eyes up. Ghost is here."
The effect was immediate.
Conversations died mid-sentence. Fingers tightened on triggers. Men spun in place, weapons raised, scanning rooftops, doorways, shadows that suddenly felt too close. Heart rates spiked as the implication sank in.
It was then that the two guards at the gate finally saw him.
John was sprinting straight toward them, closing the distance far too fast for comfort. Even mid-stride, his focus turned inward. Chi surged as he redirected it toward his brain, forcing it down an untested pathway. At the same time, he deliberately induced a calm state within himself no panic, so he could retain every sensation, every fragment of feedback if the attempt failed.
He needed to remember the failure.
The first attempt collapsed instantly.
Before he even reached the first guard, John's expression went empty. His eyes lost focus, his movements stuttering for half a step, just enough.
There was no hesitation.
A gunshot cracked through the night.
Then another.
Bullets tore into John's body, snapping him backward as he hit the ground hard, motionless. Blood spread beneath him, dark against the concrete. The sudden silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire itself.
The two guards stared at the body, then at each other.
Uncertain.
Unsettled.
Was that it?
Was this the "ghost" their boss had been so terrified of?
Then John's body twitched.
Before their eyes, the bullets were forced out of his flesh, clattering wetly onto the ground. Wounds sealed. Skin restored. Breath returned as if nothing had happened at all.
The truth of his Ajin nature became unmistakably clear in that moment and as his senses flooded back in, the sound of approaching footsteps reached his ears. The two guards were moving closer now, weapons raised, fear finally catching up to them.
John exhaled slowly.
Data acquired, he thought. Pathway rejected.
Round two was about to begin.
John moved the instant he regained sanity.
The two guards were still advancing, uncertainty slowing them just enough to matter. They had seen him die and his body twuch. Their training told them to shoot, but their instincts screamed that something was wrong.
John didn't give them time to resolve the conflict.
He surged forward, chi flaring through his body, not toward his brain this time, but reinforcing his muscles and joints, a familiar and stable pathway. The first guard barely managed to raise his rifle before John was on him. A sharp strike crushed the man's wrist, bone snapping with a dry crack, and the weapon clattered uselessly to the ground.
John pivoted smoothly, flowing into the second guard's space. The man fired reflexively, the muzzle flash blooming inches from John's face but the shot went wide as John twisted past it. His elbow slammed into the guard's throat, cutting off the sound of his scream. A follow-up strike to the temple dropped him instantly.
The first guard tried to scramble backward, clutching his ruined arm, terror fully set in now.
John stepped in and ended it with a precise blow.
Shouts echoed from inside the compound now. Boots pounded against concrete. More men were coming.
John straightened, listening to the chaos spreading toward the gate. His breathing was calm, controlled but his mind was already replaying the moment his thoughts had gone blank, mapping the failure with ruthless clarity.
Too much chi. Too fast. Wrong angle.
He adjusted the flow, testing a slightly altered pathway as the first shadows rounded the corner. A subtle hum filled his senses, potential.
John rolled his shoulders and stepped forward to meet them.
The night wasn't even close to over.
John stepped into the oncoming wave and began his second attempt.
Chi flowed upward again, slower this time, threaded more carefully toward the brain. The world sharpened, edges clearer, sounds cleaner but then the pressure spiked. His vision fractured into overlapping frames, time desyncing just enough to ruin his footing.
A bullet took him through the shoulder.
He didn't bother compensating. John let himself fall as another shot punched through his skull.
Reset.
Third attempt.
The moment he revived, he was already moving. The chi-pathway shifted laterally, skirting the earlier failure point. This time the sensation was… different. Heat behind the eyes. Awareness expanding unevenly. He dodged the first burst of gunfire, almost cleanly still caught by shrapnel that tore through his thigh.
Too sluggish. Too noisy.
He pressed forward anyway, breaking a man's knee before catching a round center mass.
Reset.
Fourth through sixth attempts blurred together in violent refinement.
Each revival came faster. Each pathway adjustment smaller.
By the seventh, bullets slowed.
John weaved through gunfire with millimeter precision, his body reacting before conscious thought could catch up. He snapped necks, shattered clavicles, used falling bodies as momentary cover. Still, the strain built too fast. Blood vessels burst behind his eyes.
A sniper round from his IBM ended it cleanly.
Reset.
On the eighth, John didn't die.
He shouldn't have survived, but the men were not dealing the final blow seeing as they never could really hold him down.
Pinned behind a forklift, chi feedback threatening to lock his motor cortex, John hesitated for half a second too long. A muzzle flash bloomed from above and vanished.
His head erupted in a soundless spray as the IBM fired from the rooftop, the suppressed shot nearly lost beneath the chaos. John felt the pressure ease immediately.
John exhaled. Adjusted. Continued.
Ninth. Tenth.
By now, he was smiling.
The pathway stabilized just enough to grant true recognition. He moved from where bullets were about to be as he saw the flash muzzle. Men emptied magazines into empty air, screaming as John passed through them like a glitch in reality.
The eleventh attempt almost held.
Almost.
A tremor in his left hand. A half-second of lag.
The IBM intervened again, removing another shooter before the shot could land. John tore through the remaining ground troops while riding the edge of neurological collapse.
Then, Twelfth.
The chi settled.
No pressure spike. No fragmentation. No delay.
The world slowed not dramatically, but correctly. Every sound had weight. Every movement intention. Bullets traced lazy arcs through the air, and John stepped between them as if strolling through rain.
This was it, grandmaster.
The last body hit the ground with a dull, final thud. John stood still as the echo faded, drawing in a slow, measured breath. The air was thick with blood, cordite, burnt metal lingering in his lungs. Smoke drifted lazily through the compound lights.
Silence followed.
In the distance, people who had fled at the sound of gunfire began to breathe again. Doors cracked open. Phones were lifted. Voices murmured as calls were made to the police, friends, anyone. Life cautiously resumed beyond the perimeter of the slaughter.
John let the calm state drop. The world rushed back in.
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