CHAPTER 20: THE RHYTHM
Three weeks.
In another life, three weeks was nothing. A paycheck cycle. A rotation through Netflix shows. The gap between forgetting to buy milk and remembering again.
In this life, three weeks meant four contracts, seventeen thousand dollars in earned income, and one funeral I attended from a rooftop across the street.
Contract Three: Anthony Mercer. Insurance adjuster. Embezzlement.
I found him at his mistress's apartment in the Bronx. He'd been arguing about money when I came through the bedroom window. Two shots. The woman screamed. I left before she stopped.
Contract Four: Diana Chen. No relation to Mr. Chen. Accountant for the wrong people.
She worked late every Tuesday. Ghost Mode got me past the security cameras. The building's old elevator wasn't networked—I waited in the stairwell. When she emerged at eleven PM, I was already behind her. One shot, suppressed. The sound didn't even echo.
Contract Five: Michael Torres. Drug courier. Skimmed from his suppliers.
This one fought back. Street kid instincts, quick hands. He managed to slash my arm with a butterfly knife before I put him down. Three shots—more than I'd have liked, but combat's never clean.
I stitched the cut myself in a gas station bathroom. The System noted the injury but didn't care. Contract complete. Blood Coins awarded.
Contract Six pending. Marker not yet issued.
Routine saved my sanity.
Morning coffee at the diner on Forty-Second Street. The same booth every time, facing the door, back to the wall. Maria the waitress knew my order now—black coffee, two eggs, toast dry. She'd started leaving a newspaper at my place before I arrived.
Weapons cleaning every third day. I'd bought a proper kit with my first gold coins. The ritual of field-stripping the Glocks, inspecting each component, oiling and reassembling—it calmed something in me. Meditation by another name.
Thursday drinks with Elena.
She'd become a fixed point in my week. We'd talk about nothing important—Continental gossip, city recommendations, the particular insanity of our shared profession. She never asked about my contracts. I never volunteered. The unspoken boundary suited us both.
"You're looking healthier," she said, three Thursdays in. "The haunted look's fading."
"Practice." I swirled my whiskey. "You stop seeing faces eventually."
"No." Her voice was quiet. "You don't. You just get better at filing them away."
I thought about Yuri Petrov. Volkov's eyes going wide as the bullets hit. The insurance adjuster's mistress screaming.
She's right. They're all still there. I just stopped looking.
The Tarasov situation escalated.
I heard it in fragments. Whispered conversations at the Continental bar. Chen's carefully neutral updates when I stopped by for ammunition. Elena's increasingly worried expression when the Russians came up.
"Iosef's done something," she said, early October. "Something bad. The senior people are scrambling."
The dog. The car. The beginning of the end.
"What kind of something?"
"Nobody's saying exactly." Elena's jaw tightened. "But Viggo put out calls to everyone he's got markers with. He's calling in favors. That doesn't happen unless he's preparing for war."
I knew what he was preparing for. The Baba Yaga. The man you sent to kill the Boogeyman. The unstoppable force of professional vengeance that was about to descend on his organization like the wrath of God.
Stay away from the Russians. Elena's advice echoed.
I intended to follow it. Whatever happened with the Tarasovs, I wanted no part of it. John Wick's rampage would be someone else's problem.
The System tracked my progress in cold, clinical numbers.
[BLOOD COINS: 425] [TIER 2 THRESHOLD: 500 BLOOD COINS] [MARKER CONTRACTS COMPLETED: 5/5] [CURRENT STATUS: 75 BC FROM ADVANCEMENT]
One more contract. Seventy-five coins. Then Tier 2 would unlock, and with it, new capabilities I'd only glimpsed in the System's documentation.
The Ledger. Social Infiltration. Tools that would make me more effective, more dangerous, more entrenched in this bloody profession.
I should have felt excited. Accomplished. Something.
Instead, I felt the weight of five bodies pressing down on my shoulders. Five people who'd been alive until I decided they shouldn't be. Five families who'd never know what happened to their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers.
The nightmares are less frequent now.
That fact disturbed me more than the nightmares themselves had.
The sixth Marker came on a Tuesday.
I was cleaning my primary Glock when the brand ignited. Fire racing up my forearm, familiar now but never comfortable. Information flooding my consciousness like water through a breached dam.
[MARKER CONTRACT ISSUED] [TARGET: MARCUS WEBB] [DESIGNATION: SILVER] [LOCATION: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN] [KILL WINDOW: 168 HOURS] [REWARD: 100 BLOOD COINS]
Marcus Webb. Money launderer. Operated from a legitimate-looking accounting firm on Sixth Avenue. Served several major organizations, including—I noted with dark amusement—the Tarasovs.
Killing a Tarasov-adjacent target right before John Wick tears their world apart. Convenient timing.
I pulled up everything the System provided. Webb worked late most nights. Security was minimal—a building guard who checked bags, electronic locks on his office door. He lived in Jersey but kept a mistress in Tribeca.
Silver tier. A step up from the bronze targets I'd been handling.
The contract would push me over the threshold. 425 plus 100 equaled 525 Blood Coins. More than enough for Tier 2.
I checked my weapons. Full magazines in both Glocks. Backup ammunition in the bag. Ghost Mode ready. My stitched arm had healed to an angry pink line.
One more kill. Then I level up.
The System hummed approval in the back of my skull.
I started planning.
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