Weight settled into his limbs. Pain resurfaced, no injury, but exhaustion. He looked around at the bodies scattered across the ground, the blood smeared across his vision and pooling at his feet.
There was no regret in his eyes.
Only annoyance.
Annoyance that this was what his life demanded now. Annoyance that progress came packaged in corpses and gunfire. He took another breath, slower this time, grounding himself.
Then he did it again.
John followed the chi-pathway he had carved through death and repetition this time without the artificial stillness of induced calm. The flow resisted him. His thoughts wavered. His muscles trembled slightly as his brain rejected the unfamiliar pattern.
It took a full minute.
A minute to achieve what had taken a few second while in his calm state.
But it held.
John stepped forward, boots crunching softly as he walked across bodies and shattered weapons. He stopped beside a fallen pistol, bent down, and picked it up. With practiced ease, he racked the slide and glanced into the chamber.
Rounds remaining, enough.
John tossed the gun into the empty air before him. Without hesitation, his IBM manifested, wings spreading wide like a dark angel, snatching the weapon mid-flight. Its talons curled around the grip as it leveled the barrel.
"Do it," John said, voice calm. He met the IBM's gaze, silent understanding passing between man and his ghost. The ghost tilted its head, glanced at the gun, then back at John, and with a deliberate motion, pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out inside the hideout.
John's body jerked violently as the bullets tore through him, each impact perfectly timed, each wound making him look exactly as if he'd been caught in a fierce firefight. Blood painted his chest and arms, a testament to the illusion he had chosen to create.
He didn't panic. He didn't even flinch beyond the simulation. With precise taps to key acupoints, he slowed the blood loss, controlling his body like a machine as distant sirens signaled the arrival of the police.
The trucks, the crates, the illicit cargo, they didn't concern him.
"Time to wake the sleeping beauty," John murmured. His IBM responded instantly, lifting into the sky and darting toward the roof where the camera still perched.
As before, John's consciousness transferred, flowing through the IBM's perception. He located the man he intended to awaken and tapped the acupoint, sending the necessary signal.
Back in his own body, John staggered into the role he had designed with meticulous care. His shoulders sagged, one arm hanging useless at his side, each step uneven as if his legs might buckle beneath him at any moment. He walked like omeone who had taken bullets meant to kill and was still too stubborn to lie down and die. Blood smeared his clothes, some of it his, most of it not, and he made sure to drag his feet just enough to sell the illusion.
Behind him, on the roof, the other man began to stir.
Consciousness returned in sluggish fragments. A pounding headache. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, until instinct jolted him fully awake. He shot upright with a sharp gasp and froze.
Strapped to his forearm was his camera.
Its small indicator light blinked patiently, almost mockingly. He hadn't remembered turning it on. He didn't remember much of anything past his candy stick. Heart hammering, he lifted his arm and activated the viewfinder. The camera hummed softly as it adjusted, auto-focusing through dust and haze.
He zoomed in.
The lens caught John's retreating figure, limping, half-collapsed, disappearing down the alley. The man sucked in a breath, then instinctively widened the frame, panning the camera to understand what he had missed.
Bodies.
So many bodies.
They lay twisted across the floor, some slumped against walls, others face-down in spreading pools of blood. The room looked less like a crime scene and more like an execution chamber. Bullet casings glittered faintly among the carnage. His stomach lurched.
"Fuck," he muttered, panic creeping into his voice. "Fuck, how did I miss all of this?"
His hands began to shake as he scrambled through the camera's settings, dread tightening his chest. And then he saw it.
The red icon.
It was recording.
Video mode. Still running.
He stared at it, disbelief cutting through the panic. He couldn't remember when it had started filming or why but hope was up and he desperate. If the camera had been rolling the whole time…
Maybe he hadn't missed everything after all.
The man stopped the recording and saved the file, his fingers moving on instinct more than thought. Almost immediately, he pulled it back up and began to watch.
That was when realization crept in: somehow, before he'd blacked out, he must have switched the camera to video mode. An accident. A useless stroke of luck.
And it showed.
The footage was bad. Worse than bad, it was worthless. The video opened with a shaky glimpse of John sprinting across the frame, followed almost instantly by deafening gunfire. The image jerked violently as the camera hit the floor, then angled uselessly toward the background. From there, it captured nothing but chaos: muzzle flashes blooming at the edge of the frame, shadows darting past, bodies collapsing out of view. People screamed. Rifles barked. Sniper rounds cracked through the air.
The man sat there, watching it all unfold again, listening as the gunshots echoed from the tiny speakers. Each burst made him flinch, even though he knew it was coming.
"How can someone survive that?" he muttered.
He replayed the clip, eyes narrowing. He knew the League of Assassins was different, trained, conditioned, hardened beyond normal limits but this? With automatic fire, overlapping angles, and sniper rifles involved, no ordinary human should have walked away. Hell, no extraordinary human should have.
Yet John had.
"Fuck," he cursed again, dragging a hand down his face.
There was no proof. No clear angle. No moment of clarity that could explain what he'd just witnessed.
With a frustrated exhale, he shut off the video. He would just have to make something up to inform his friend, it was not a good look for him that he blacked out on his first night.
He began to trace John's path, following the direction he had limped away, tracking him as he made his slow return toward the apartment.
John didn't drop the act when he reached his apartment.
Even behind closed doors, even with the locks slid into place, he moved like a man on the brink of collapse. He let himself stumble against the wall, breathing hard, as if every breath burned. Only after a long moment did he straighten, just slightly eyes flicking to the corners of the room.
He wasn't sure if the League still had eyes on him.
So he kept going.
He stripped off his blood-soaked jacket and carefully sat down, jaw tightening as he dug into the wound along his side. One by one, he pried the bullets free, metal clinking softly as they dropped into a dish. He worked slowly, deliberately sloppy, letting his hands shake just enough to sell the pain. From the first-aid box, he used whatever was available, gauze, antiseptic, cheap painkillers cleaning the wounds with visible strain, hissing through clenched teeth.
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