Los Angeles was burning.
The events of the last twelve hours had turned the city's law enforcement infrastructure into a smoking ruin.
It started at the FBI Field Office. In the dead of night, an intruder had breached the inner sanctum—the Evidence Control Room. They hadn't come to steal. They had come to erase.
A high-yield explosive charge had detonated, gutting the room. The blast incinerated everything: Stansfield's ledgers, the narcotics seized from Michael's apartment, and evidence from a hundred other active cases. Decades of investigative work vanished in a fireball.
Miraculously, no agents were killed in the blast. But the operational damage was catastrophic. The FBI was blind, deaf, and scrambling.
Before the dust could even settle, the second wave of reports hit the Director's desk.
Multiple field agents—specifically those assigned to the Stansfield surveillance detail—had been assassinated in their beds by a sniper.
The LAPD, usually eager to assert jurisdiction, took one look at the precision of the kills and the victims' badges and immediately kicked the case up to the Feds. Whether out of professional courtesy or sheer terror, no local cop wanted to touch a case where federal agents were being hunted for sport.
The FBI was overwhelmed.
But the DEA was fairing no better.
Last night, the Director of the Los Angeles DEA had been executed in his own home. A single gunshot to the head while he slept. His wife, lying inches away, and his children in the next room were untouched.
At the same time, a senior DEA Captain—known to be on Stansfield's payroll—was dropped by a sniper round from three blocks away.
Again, the LAPD responded, saw the bodies, and backed off.
The final nail in the coffin was the political fallout. A City Councilman and a high-ranking bureaucrat were also found dead, victims of the same precise, ghost-like killer.
The entire city government was in paralysis. Every badge in Los Angeles was out on the street, chasing shadows, desperate for a lead that didn't exist.
In the eye of the storm, Stansfield was falling apart.
He sat in his office, the walls closing in. News of the Director's death had spread like wildfire, and with it, a rumor so pervasive it felt orchestrated: Stansfield did it.
Everyone knew the Director had been investigating Stansfield. Everyone knew the dead Captain was Stansfield's bagman. The narrative wrote itself: Stansfield was cleaning house. He was silencing witnesses.
His phone wouldn't stop ringing.
His secret burner—the one only his most trusted cartel contacts knew—was blowing up. Furious voices demanded answers. Why was the heat so high? Why were their safe houses being raided? Was he cutting ties?
Stansfield realized with a sinking dread that he had been played.
Last night, he had spent a fortune hiring a specialized crew to bomb the FBI evidence room. He thought he was buying himself time. instead, he had just made himself look like a domestic terrorist.
And the money...
Stansfield still couldn't wrap his head around the theft. The intruder—Hunter—had cleared out his bunker in minutes. The logistics were impossible. It would take a moving crew hours to haul that much cash and gold.
He had spent hours last night tearing his villa apart, convinced there must be a second, hidden chamber where the thief had stashed the loot. He found nothing.
The money was gone. The ledgers were gone (and now incinerated by his own bomb). The Director was dead.
He was broke. He was a suspect. He was alone.
After a tense meeting with the Deputy Director—who offered veiled threats instead of support—Stansfield made his choice.
He left the office early. He returned to his villa, packed a single bag with clothes and his remaining loose cash, and retrieved a fake passport from a hollowed-out book.
Stansfield was running.
4:00 PM. Chinatown.
Hunter lay back on the bed, eyes half-closed in bliss.
Tally was busy. Having recovered her energy, the young woman was currently under the sheets, eagerly demonstrating her gratitude to the man who had saved her life.
Hunter let out a low, contented groan, his hand idly stroking her hair as he ran the numbers in his head.
While Tally slept earlier, he had done a final audit of his inventory.
The DEA weapons were priceless on the black market, but unsellable—too much heat. He'd keep them for personal use.
The vintage alcohol—wines, cognacs, aged whiskeys—was worth a cool two million, easy.
The hard assets—gold bars, coins, jewelry, luxury watches—he estimated at roughly twelve million dollars.
Then there was the cash. Fifteen duffel bags, each stuffed with three million in non-sequential hundred-dollar bills. Forty-five million dollars in liquid cash.
But the real prize was the Bearer Bonds.
Stansfield had been a greedy bastard. Over fifteen years, he had converted the bulk of his empire into high-yield, untraceable bonds.
Four hundred million dollars.
Hunter suppressed a shudder of excitement. If he could launder them properly, his net worth would eclipse half a billion dollars. He was instantly one of the wealthiest men in the underground world.
Of course, he wasn't stupid. He couldn't just walk into a bank and cash out half a billion in shady bonds. The IRS would nuke him from orbit.
But he didn't need to cash them all at once. He had time. He had the System. And now, he had enough "fuck you" money to act with impunity.
He summoned the System interface. The translucent blue screen hovered in the air, invisible to Tally.
[Hunter Sun]
[Cash Reserves: $45,000,000 (Liquid) / $400,000,000 (Assets)]
[Skill Points Available...]
He scanned his skill tree. With this kind of funding, he could power-level his combat, stealth, and language skills into the stratosphere. He could buy materials, safe houses, identities.
He gently patted Tally's head, signaling her to pause, but she ignored him, redoubling her efforts with enthusiastic devotion.
Hunter smirked, leaning back into the pillows.
The city was in chaos. The FBI was crippled. Stansfield was on the run.
And Hunter Sun?
Hunter Sun was just getting started.
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