He woke to the weight of a wooden chair and the cold bite of metal at his wrists. The light in the room was lazy and unforgiving; it mapped every bruise on his face. His uniform had been stripped away—only trousers and a rumpled shirt remained—so that he sat exposed and vulnerable on John's floor. For a second he wondered where he was, then the apartment resolved itself: a single bed, curtains blocking off the windows. John was on the bed, watching him—calm, the assassin's hood down, his face bare and unreadable.
"Woke up, huh?" John said.
The templar's mouth produced a fog of sound. "Wha—" He blinked, tried to stand and found only tight metal and the hard ache of exhaustion. "What happened?"
John's answer was a flat declaration. "You were captured. Now you"—he jabbed a finger—"will answer my questions."
John's nose had been patched with several tiny strips of bandage where the templar had slammed his face onto the ground which broke it. He studied John: the scar along his cheek, the fierce, dead-serious eyes, hair dry and messy across his forehead. Then he noticed the bandage on his thigh—exactly where John had stabbed him in the hallway. The templar's head spun with one simple, casual question: How did I end up here?
John's reply was steady, almost bored with itself. "I covered your leg, stopped the bleeding, then carried you here. Held you by the arm, dragged your legs across the floor like you'd passed out drunk. You were heavy."
He tried his cuffs, found them useless against the angle of his fatigue. "Handcuffs, huh? Where'd you get those?"
John shrugged. "Snatched them from a cop on day two" It was the same handcuff he had stolen from Officer Grant on day 2…
"Has anyone been looking for me?" he asked.
John's eyes slid away for a heartbeat. "I hope not." Then, sharper: "Now answer. Who the hell are you?"
"You must know," the templar said. "You're an assassin." The word was almost a dare.
John's smile was a dry thing that barely reached his eyes. "Well, I don't. That's why I'm asking."
"Jeez," the templar said. "I'm an elite Templar."
John's eyebrow went up. "Who are they?"
"Elite Templars" the man said, as if reciting a job title, "are a group of the Order — trained and built to guard things of real importance. High-value targets, secure sites, that sort of thing."
"What's so valuable about that tower?" John asked.
The templar shrugged, annoyed. "How the hell should I know? I'm a guard. I don't run the projects. Ask the scientists. All I know is the place holds something they called —" he spat the words like bad taste — "Project Darkness. That's why we were posted."
John let the name sit for a beat, then shifted to the practical. "Okay. How did you move like that? What were you wearing?"
"What?" Templar asked pretending not know.
He followed John's glance to the corner where the ruined suit laid on the floor. The templar smiled through a split lip. "AMD. Aerial Movement Device. Engineers and physicists made that — gives elites fast point-to-point movement. Expensive as hell. Sell one on the black market and you can retire twice."
John felt irritation climb. Why was the man so calm, so unguarded? He'd expected lies, maybe a desperate trade. Instead, the templar—Donald, he'd called himself—spoke like someone past the point of self-preservation. People lied when it mattered. They only told the truth when nothing was left to lose.
"Are you afraid of me?" John asked.
Donald gave a short laugh that scraped his throat raw. "Me? Hell no." He leaned back against the chair, the motion casual but brittle, blood flashing on his teeth. "I talk because I don't care. When the others find you, you're dead anyway. So what's the point?"
John studied him—this was no fanatic. The man's eyes didn't burn with loyalty; they were tired, hollowed by something smaller and more human. "Don't you care about the Order?" he pressed.
Donald's answer came slow, heavy. "No. The Order's just a job. I do it for my family—so they eat, so they're safe. That's it. You think I give a damn about any of them?" He shook his head, a ghost of contempt tugging at his mouth. "I just do the job. Call it what you want. It pays and I get to keep food on the table"…
The word landed differently in the room. For a flashing breath John's mind was a camera shutter—his parents' faces across time, the hollow, private silhouettes of loss. Then he returned to the task.
"Tell me how to destroy the western-northern tower," he said. "How can I do it without fighting the other elites?"
John's patience snapped. The first hit wasn't measured—it was instinct, a crack that broke the silence more than the man. The second came faster, sloppy, angrier. By the third, John wasn't speaking in words anymore. The room seemed to shrink around the sound of knuckles and
breath.
"Tell me," he hissed between blows, voice fraying. "Right now."
The templar smiled through the mess of it, blood threading from his lip. "Look at how desperate you are!" he rasped. "What a shame!".
John's breath slowed. He pulled his hands into his face and let the room go quiet while his mind worked. The templar's confidence bothered him—too impenetrable, like armor. If one elite could walk him, the others would be worse. He needed another path. The templar's private pride—something that would break the mask open—might be the seam to pull.
Then he got up and walked towards the ruined suit in the corner. The templar's eyes drifted to the uniform as John rose and crossed to where it lay. He fumbled in the pockets, fingers suddenly anxious. John found an ID card, thumbed it free, read aloud in a flat voice: "Elite Templar — Donald. Age thirty-four. Born 1980. Resident, Apt. 46, Building 9."
On the back, a taped photograph: a smiling woman and two small girls, caught in a moment of ordinary happiness. The templar's hands trembled as John held the picture up.
"The family you mentioned," John said, and for the first time something like pity softened his tone. "You must love them."
Donald snarled at the implication and tried to silence the thought with anger. "Don't you—" he began, but John spoke over him.
If John had been honest with himself, he'd have admitted the next line was a lie. He would not hunt down a man's children. He didn't kill innocents; that rule had bones. The lie was a tool—sharp, ugly, necessary. Still, saying it felt like scraping his own palms. "If you want them alive," John said, "tell me how to destroy the tower without facing your brothers."
Donald's mask cracked. He closed his eyes and let out a long, ragged breath. "There's an old tunnel system under the city. Gold-digging shafts from the days of King York. The Order turned them into a spy-network—mazes, passages. Under the western-northern tower there's a pillar. The pillar is the foundation. You destroy that pillar, you bring the tower down. There's a map in my pocket. It shows the entrance and the route."
He was done. John took the map, looked at the ruined man, and saw the truth: love tethering him to life more tightly than any oath to a cause.
"Family is more valuable than a tower?" John asked, almost without surprise.
Donald's eyes went distant, fixed somewhere John couldn't see. "It is," he said at last. The words weren't defiant—they sagged under their own truth. His hands flexed uselessly against the restraints, a man trying to touch what wasn't there. "I'll do anything for them."
For a moment John saw the shape of that anything: a man trading loyalty for bread, standing guard for people he'd never meet, lying to himself that it was temporary. Love had turned into survival somewhere along the way.
John dressed in his assassin uniform, readied himself at the window. Donald's voice came then, raw and desperate, practical as a blade. "You're an assassin. Why don't you kill me? Isn't that what you do?"
John paused on the sill. For a heartbeat he almost did—habit, duty, vengeance all pressing on the same nerve. But something in Donald's voice, or maybe in the photograph's quiet proof of a life beyond the Order, cut through. The man wasn't a zealot or a monster. Just another piece in someone else's game.
"I used to think killing them all would make it right," John said, not turning. "That every Templar's death would fulfill my promise. Well… at least I did." He looked back, eyes unreadable. "Then I met one with a reason."
Donald stared, uncomprehending.
"I'm not a monster," John finished. "I don't kill blindly… From now on. You have a family to go back to. I don't."
Donald sat very still for a long time, eyes on his broken uniform as if he could will himself into it.
Outside in the city the wind moved through the streets and the world continued. John ran through wooden planks and across metal pipes jutting from the building walls…
He called himself someone who didn't kill blindly… but he did. Mark, a stranger. Edward, just defending his name. The Master Templar, who might've had reasons not unlike Donald's. The tower—dozens dead, none he'd ever known.
Was he acting noble? Lying to himself? Coping?
Maybe all of it.
Too late to know now.
Then he reached the entrance that Donald had named—north side of the city, beneath the great walls, hidden in lianas. He cut them away, stepped into dust and cold, and followed the map.
The tunnels were lit in a sparse geometry of yellow bulbs that hummed like tired insects. He turned left, then right, then left again. Passageways narrowed and widened until he found a cavernous chamber and, at its center, the pillar Donald had described. A small, upside-down triangle emblem was embedded in the stone.
The foundation that held a giant tower was, awkwardly, so small in the dark.
John stood a long time looking at it, thinking of explosives and someone who would have them. He felt the familiar tilt of resolve settle in his chest—a dull, dangerous certainty. He had found a way in. Now he needed a way out.
He turned away from the pillar and walked toward the city, toward someone old and useful, and toward whatever it would cost to pull down the Order's house of glass.
He sighed. "Guess, I will have to meet an old friend…" He had deep irritation and uncertainty in his voice. As if something deep had happened between them before.