The hustle and bustle of New York's JFK Airport felt like a massive, tireless beast, constantly swallowing up steel and crowds of humanity.
When John and Anthony finally stepped out of the international arrivals gate, the air was thick with something far more potent than the smell of aviation fuel and industrial disinfectant.
It was a chilling, palpable killing intent. It felt even more suffocating than the Roman catacombs.
Santino's massive open bounty had spread like a virulent plague, instantly infiltrating every shadowy corner of the city through the High Table's subterranean network.
Seven million dollars for the Baba Yaga's head, dead or alive.
Five million dollars to capture the sitting boss of the Tarasov syndicate, alive only.
Two staggering bounties, easily enough to drive any desperate outlaw completely mad. The contracts had stirred up the entire New York underworld into a feeding frenzy.
As the two men navigated the crowded international arrivals channel, a familiar figure smoothly squeezed out from the gaps in the crowd.
Sergei, Anthony's loyal captain, was dressed in an unassuming airport janitorial uniform. He was casually pushing a half-empty luggage cart.
His face was taut, his eyes scanning his surroundings with extreme paranoia, yet his movements remained incredibly smooth and practiced.
"Boss," Sergei greeted, his voice dropping to a low murmur.
He casually pushed a massive, heavily loaded black canvas duffel bag from his cart toward Anthony.
"Everything you requested is in the bag." Sergei quickly looked Anthony up and down to check for injuries. "Abram has also positioned a four-man security detail outside the main terminal."
As he spoke, Sergei couldn't stop himself from glancing nervously at the stoic, expressionless face of John Wick.
Sergei simply couldn't believe it. His boss was actually running operations with America's most lethal hitman. And they had just returned from Rome after assassinating the newly appointed High Table successor!
Anthony replied coldly, "We don't need the detail. Tell the men to disperse immediately. In this environment, we have to treat anyone acting suspiciously as a potential threat."
Sergei nodded in understanding. In a chaotic, city-wide free-for-all, standard mafia muscle would be entirely useless against High Table assassins.
"Boss, Aurelio has also staged two armored vehicles at the secondary exit..."
Before Sergei could even finish the sentence, Anthony shot him a withering glare.
"Tell my uncle that moving forward, I want the Tarasov syndicate explicitly distanced from any of my dealings with John. I will not have my family dragged into this crossfire."
Sergei hesitated for a fraction of a second before speaking up again. "Boss... our Staten Island refinery was hit early this morning. And we've completely lost contact with one of our oil tankers."
Seeing Anthony's eyes narrow dangerously, Sergei quickly added, "Abram ordered us not to bother you with it yet. We're actively investigating the breach."
"We will discuss it when I get back to the safehouse," Anthony replied, his tone chillingly calm. "Leave. Now."
Sergei didn't dare argue. He quickly merged back into the flow of the bustling crowd, pushing his empty luggage cart until he vanished completely.
Anthony hoisted the heavy duffel bag, briefly unzipping the top to inspect the contents.
Inside sat two meticulously maintained SIG Sauer P320s, accompanied by neatly stacked rows of spare magazines. Beneath the armaments were two high-grade, hard-plate ballistic vests.
This was a highly classified smuggling channel Viggo Tarasov had established years ago. Tonight, it served as a desperately needed forward supply depot.
Anthony handed John one of the handguns and a handful of spare magazines.
John didn't even turn around. He simply gave a subtle nod of acknowledgment, accepted the weapon, and continued his relentless march toward the terminal exit.
Anthony fell back, trailing John like a ghost. He maintained a strict following distance of about twenty meters—neither too close nor too far.
This specific spacing kept Anthony positioned perfectly within John's peripheral vision while remaining well within effective pistol range, allowing the two men to provide overlapping fields of fire.
Anthony genuinely wasn't worried about the low-level, street-tier contract killers currently hunting them. What he truly feared were the apex predators. Assassins operating at the same tier as Cassian or Ares.
Anthony possessed an incredibly powerful, tactically brilliant mind, but his physical body was currently incapable of keeping up with the superhuman reaction speeds his brain could calculate.
During the flight, he had dumped all twenty-four of the attribute points he earned in the Roman catacombs directly into his [Combat Mastery] skill tree. While it wouldn't immediately turn him into a martial arts god, it significantly bridged the gap, vastly improving his baseline physical reaction times.
The further they walked from the main terminal, the thinner the crowds became.
Anthony fully activated his Compensatory Perception. The organic radar spread out like an invisible spiderweb, constantly scanning the environment ahead, behind, and to their flanks.
As John stepped onto a relatively open glass skybridge connecting two terminals, the trap was sprung. Danger descended from three directions simultaneously.
From the front, three men in business-casual attire suddenly stopped walking, seemingly engrossed in conversation, perfectly blocking John's path.
Despite their relaxed clothing, their unnaturally tense shoulders and the fact that their hands were buried deep in their coat pockets completely betrayed their lethal intent.
The fireteam leader was a massive, bald brute sporting a hideous facial scar and a feral glare.
As John calmly walked past them, the three men seamlessly pivoted, drawing three suppressed pistols and aiming them directly at John's back.
Anthony had already anticipated the movement. He rapidly raised the SIG Sauer he had concealed under his jacket and fired a single round directly into the back of the first assassin's head.
He specifically avoided aiming for center mass, anticipating the assassins were wearing concealed Kevlar.
At a distance of twenty meters, with his System locking onto the targets, Anthony didn't even need to aim down the sights.
The sudden, suppressed crack startled the remaining two gunmen. The scarred leader instinctively attempted to dive for cover.
Thwip-thwip!
John spun with terrifying speed, firing two suppressed shots that perfectly shattered the gun-arms of the two remaining assassins.
Anthony followed up instantly, firing two more precision headshots, permanently neutralizing the crippled threats.
Anthony offered a subtle wink to John and continued trailing twenty meters behind him.
Both men understood the tactical reality: the second Anthony fired that first shot, he completely blew his cover. He was no longer just an observer; he was actively participating in the war.
Anthony couldn't have cared less.
The two men moved in perfect, lethal synchronization. John took the point, Anthony held the rear. A flawless, two-man pincer movement.
They turned the first street corner outside the airport and encountered a female busker playing the violin in a narrow alleyway.
She played with an expression of rapt, artistic attention, but her eyes remained entirely fixed on John as he walked past her.
The moment John's back was turned and he was ten paces away, she abruptly raised her right leg, reaching for a pistol strapped to her thigh holster.
Pfft! Pfft!
Two soft, muted cracks echoed down the alley. Anthony had already taken the shot.
One round to the spine, one round to the back of the head.
Before the "artist" collapsed, she desperately turned her head to see her killer. She saw the young Russian calmly slipping his hand back inside his suit jacket. He hadn't even broken his stride.
Further ahead, a city sanitation worker was resting against a rusty metal trash can. Beneath the brim of his hard hat, his eyes were locked aggressively onto John's back.
Anthony casually crouched down to tie his shoelace. The SIG Sauer slid smoothly from his waistband into his palm.
The exact second the sanitation worker reached for the pistol concealed under his high-vis vest, Anthony's bullet found his brainstem. He beat the assassin to the draw by half a second.
Entering the Fifth Avenue subway station, a massive sumo wrestler—easily weighing four hundred pounds—leaned casually against an illuminated advertisement board, his enormous bulk completely blocking half the pedestrian tunnel.
He pretended to check his watch, but his left hand was subtly resting on a concealed radio mic on his lapel.
Anthony stopped fifteen meters away, casually pretending to check his phone. The barrel of his suppressed pistol was already poking through a small opening in his duffel bag.
Anthony recognized the giant from the canon film. He knew this specific assassin was an absolute bullet sponge; the man had remained standing even after John pumped multiple rounds into his chest.
As John walked past, the sumo wrestler lunged, opening his massive arms to trap John in a crushing bear hug.
The instant the giant took his first heavy step forward, a 9mm hollow-point slammed brutally into his right buttock.
The sumo wrestler screamed in agony, his massive leg buckling instantly as he collapsed to his knees.
John didn't hesitate. Two shots to the chest, two shots to the head.
John never once looked back as Anthony systematically executed the trailing assassins.
He simply used the reflective glass of the storefronts and subway tiles to monitor his six o'clock, fully prepared to intervene the second Anthony was overwhelmed.
John understood the strategy. He was deliberately acting as the high-value bait, drawing the assassins' full attention while Anthony played the role of the invisible executioner. Even so, John was secretly astonished by the terrifying precision and timing of Anthony's shots.
Ten minutes later, the two men entered Grand Central Station.
John pushed through the doors of the main men's restroom, while Anthony hung back to buy an energy drink from a nearby vending machine.
They desperately needed to catch their breath, even if only for sixty seconds.
Inside the restroom, John turned on the faucet and splashed freezing water onto his face.
He stared into the mirror. His grey-blue eyes looked exhausted, yet still terrifyingly sharp.
Suddenly, the reflections of three Asian men materialized in the mirror behind him.
Simultaneously, out in the concourse, Anthony was aggressively boxed in.
Two men in sharp, tailored suits trapped Anthony between the heavy vending machine and the tiled wall, completely cutting off his escape routes.
The lead assassin, a blonde man with dead eyes, grinned like a hungry shark.
"Anthony Tarasov," the blonde man purred, his voice low and threatening. "Our employer would very much like to have a word with you."
The second man sneered, keeping his hand inside his jacket. "Your little sneak attacks won't work on us, kid. Don't even think about trying to draw."
Anthony calmly finished the last sip of his energy drink and lazily crushed the aluminum can in his fist.
"Of course," Anthony smiled playfully. "But before we go, could you please tell me..."
Before the two assassins could even process the question, Anthony exploded into motion. He violently smashed the jagged edge of the crushed aluminum can directly into the blonde man's left eye, simultaneously dropping into a deep, aggressive crouch.
His suppressed SIG Sauer materialized instantly, firing two soft shots that completely shredded the second assassin's abdomen.
The blonde man roared in agony, clutching his ruined eye as he desperately tried to draw his weapon.
From his crouched position, Anthony contorted his wrist to an impossible angle and pulled the trigger.
The 9mm round cleanly shattered the blonde man's gun-hand.
Anthony instantly lunged forward. Mimicking John's brutal CQC style, Anthony grabbed the screaming blonde man by his tactical rig, violently spinning him around to use his body as a human meat shield.
Anthony shoved his SIG under the blonde man's armpit and fired two more muted shots.
The second assassin, desperately trying to return fire through his gut wound, unloaded his entire magazine directly into the blonde man's back.
The heavy caliber rounds punched clean through the blonde man's body. Two of the bullets violently struck Anthony's chest, burying themselves deep into the ceramic plates of his concealed ballistic vest.
Anthony coldly dumped the blonde man's bullet-riddled corpse, casually brushed the masonry dust off his suit, wiped a splash of blood from his cheek, and immediately sprinted toward the restroom.
Inside the bathroom, the faucet was still running. Three assassins had already fanned out behind John, weapons drawn.
John's lethal gaze quickly swept across the porcelain sink.
A cheap bar of soap.
Three yellow promotional pencils.
As John spun around, the lead assassin, a man wearing wire-rimmed glasses, raised his pistol to fire.
John violently snapped his head to the side. The bullet shattered the mirror inches from his face, raining glass down into the sink.
Moving with blinding, supernatural speed, John snatched one of the pencils and lunged forward.
Using his left hand, he violently slapped the assassin's gun offline. Simultaneously, he drove his right hand forward, plunging the wooden pencil directly into the assassin's right eye with terrifying, piston-like force.
The pencil punctured the orbital bone and drove straight into the brain!
"AGH—!"
John ruthlessly shoved the dying, screaming man aside, stepping directly into the path of the second assassin.
John delivered a devastating, bare-knuckle strike to the second man's temple, instantly disorienting him. John seamlessly snatched the second pencil from the counter and viciously drove it deep into the soft tissue just beneath the assassin's ribs.
The pencil completely punctured the man's lung.
The assassin's pupils dilated in absolute shock. As John violently ripped the bloody pencil free, a spray of crimson droplets painted the air. John instantly grabbed the dying man and hauled him forward, using him as a human shield.
The third assassin panicked and opened fire, burying two rounds into his partner's back.
John was already spinning. He hurled the bloody pencil like a throwing knife, aiming directly for the third attacker's face.
The assassin's combat instincts flared. He raised his arm to protect his face, and the pencil buried itself deeply into his forearm.
John capitalized on the flinch. He closed the distance instantly, seizing the man's gun-wrist and executing a flawless, bone-snapping Aikido joint lock.
The assassin's pistol clattered harmlessly onto the wet floor tiles.
John lunged forward, grabbing the edge of the porcelain sink with his left hand to anchor himself. He violently kicked his right foot off the tiled wall, using the rebound to generate massive rotational torque.
Twisting his body completely around in mid-air, John retrieved the third pencil and used the sheer momentum of his spin to plunge the wooden spike deeply into the side of the assassin's neck.
The pencil completely severed the carotid artery and lodged itself just beneath the man's Adam's apple. Dark, arterial blood rapidly soaked the yellow wood.
The assassin froze in absolute terror. He slowly sank to his knees, a sickening, wet hiss escaping his lips as air bubbled from his punctured trachea.
John spun back around to the first assassin, who was still desperately trying to raise his gun despite the pencil lodged in his brain.
John grabbed the man by the back of the neck and violently slammed him face-first into the tiled wall.
John jammed the blunt eraser-end of the pencil against the hard tile, and then ruthlessly shoved the assassin's head backward.
Crunch.
With a sickening, dull thud, the pencil was driven completely through the man's skull. The assassin's mouth fell open in a silent, trembling scream before his eyes rolled back into his head.
John released his grip. The corpse slumped heavily to the floor.
The entire brutal engagement had lasted exactly twelve seconds.
When Anthony finally burst through the restroom doors, MP7 raised and ready to fire, he found John calmly standing at the sink, meticulously washing the blood from his hands.
A single, blood-soaked yellow pencil rested on the edge of the porcelain basin, rolling lazily back and forth as the water continued to run.
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