# Chapter 6
Exactly one week had passed since I crossed out of Sokovia. A week of breathing air that didn't carry the constant aftertaste of cave dampness, ash, and dread.
Getting out had been its own ordeal. The borders were sealed tight, patrols combed every approach, and the official evacuation channels were a pretty myth for the desperate. I had to find people who moved bodies and cargo along the black routes. I found the right ones. They asked no unnecessary questions, didn't pry into anyone's life, and simply named their price. The sum was astronomical, but the chance to vanish and start over was worth every coin.
We moved at night, avoiding military checkpoints, sticking to old smugglers' paths that were barely visible even up close. Our guides were three grim men with worn-out rifles who carried themselves like lords of these mountains. Everything went smoothly until the third day, when we crossed the invisible boundary between zones of control.
On the black market, competition doesn't allow for lengthy negotiations. Another crew of smugglers decided we looked like easy prey.
There were six of them. They materialized from behind rocky outcroppings on a narrow mountain pass, neatly encircling us in a half-ring. All of them had weapons drawn, their faces radiating the particular arrogance of men who believed they had already won, rifle bolts clicking loudly in the cold air. The usual argument began about who owed a toll for passage. My guides were visibly nervous. The way their eyes darted around told me it would only take another moment before they abandoned me here with the remaining cargo to save their own skins.
I hadn't sacrificed my barely-acquired savings to end my journey in an anonymous ravine.
The short exchange broke down, and when one of the rival smugglers jerked his barrel nervously and stepped toward me to begin a search, I understood. It was time. I didn't reach for a weapon. I needed to move faster than they could pull their triggers.
A short lunge forward. I grabbed the barrel of his rifle, redirected it away from the line of fire, and simultaneously drove the heel of my palm upward hard into his jaw. A dry crack echoed off the rocks. The man dropped like his strings had been cut.
The second tried to turn toward me, but I'd already closed the distance. A hard kick to the back of his knee buckled him, and a sharp strike with the edge of my palm to the side of his neck put out his lights instantly.
The third — the biggest of them — came at me with a roar, a military knife already in his hand. A rookie mistake, attacking with that wide a windup. I stepped easily off the line, caught his wrist, torqued the joint, and used his own momentum to send him over my hip and straight down onto the sharp boulders.
It took no more than five or seven seconds. Three of them were on the ground, making dull, strangled sounds. The remaining three attackers simply froze. The arrogance drained from their eyes and was replaced instantly by something much more animal. They exchanged a look, slowly lowered their weapons, and silently backed away into the darkness of the ravine.
My guides stood with their mouths open. The eldest was white-faced, one hand clenched convulsively around the strap of his rifle, his gaze moving back and forth between me and the groaning men on the ground.
I calmly brushed off my jacket, picked up a pistol someone had dropped, tucked it into my waistband, and looked at my guide.
"We keep moving," I said in an even voice.
The rest of the journey we completed in absolute silence. Nobody addressed me dismissively as "cargo" anymore — only respectful nods and careful distance. Nobody asked where I'd learned to move like that, or to kill like that. Which was exactly how I preferred it.
Sokovia was far behind me. And the skills I'd acquired there now served no one but myself.
---
We parted ways on the outskirts of Belgrade. A gray, damp dawn wrapped the old industrial warehouses in thick fog. My guides wore their relief openly — our shared journey was over. I paid them what remained of the agreed sum.
The eldest of the group counted the bills, nodded with satisfaction, and then suddenly reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. I tensed reflexively, but he only produced a small rectangle of thick black cardstock.
"You're not the kind of man who stays quiet for long," he said, holding out the card. There was a strange mix of respect and wariness in his voice. "Men with your kind of skills don't work construction. This is a contact. We call him the Spotter. He looks for people for… specific assignments. The pay is generous."
The card had no name, no address. Only an embossed phone number and a single word in Serbian: *Reshenie.* Solution. I took it without a word, turned, and walked toward the waking city.
The days that followed blurred into an endless string of gray walls in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. I slept lightly, one ear always tracking footsteps in the hallway, counting my rapidly shrinking reserves. The money left after paying for my escape from Sokovia would stretch maybe two months of modest living, no more.
But staying in Europe wasn't part of my plan.
I needed to get to the States. To disappear into a place where no one cared about your past as long as your present was convincing enough. Everything that was going to matter in the coming years would happen there — all the upheaval, all the chaos. Building real power and real connections would be easier in America than anywhere else on earth.
The problem was that crossing an ocean required more than forged paperwork bought in an alley. To get through the checkpoints and give myself a real shot, I needed the complete package: a legitimate passport with an airtight history; a confirmed biography that would hold up against any database search; a new identity with no thread connecting it to the ruins of Sokovia; and enough seed money to take the first steps on a new continent.
Work like that cost enormous amounts of money, and reaching craftsmen of that caliber required serious connections in the shadow world. Earning the necessary funds honestly, hauling cargo in some port, was simply not realistic.
I sat on the sagging motel bed for a long time, turning the black card over in my hands. Going back into the world of violence I'd fought so hard to escape — that wasn't something I wanted. But my old life had taught me one hard truth: ideals don't exist. There is only survival.
The choice was stark. Either rot here slowly, flinching at every police siren, living in fear of Hydra's shadow — or risk everything for a ticket to a new life.
I walked to the nearest gas station, bought the cheapest push-button phone they had and a prepaid SIM registered to a fictitious name. Back in the room, I dialed the number from the card. It rang for a long time. Finally, a dry voice with no inflection whatsoever answered.
"I'm listening."
"I'm coming from the smugglers on the eastern route," I said, keeping my tone level. "They told me you have work for someone who knows how to solve problems."
A brief pause. The Spotter was apparently connecting the dots.
"Tomorrow at midnight. The old docks on the Sava River, hangar number four." The voice didn't shift in tone even slightly. "Come alone."
The call ended. I stared at the dark screen of the phone and exhaled. The Rubicon was crossed. My road to America ran straight through the local filth, and I was going to have to use the one thing I'd learned to do genuinely well.
---
The old docks on the Sava River greeted me with thick fog and the sharp smell of rotting water, motor oil, and rusted metal. At midnight, not a soul moved through the place. I advanced silently, cutting from one container to the next, constantly scanning blind spots. Every instinct I had was screaming that this was a perfect place for an ambush.
Hangar number four turned out to be a massive, half-abandoned structure of corrugated iron. The heavy door was cracked open just enough for a person to slip through. I slid inside with my hand resting on the grip of the pistol I'd taken from the men in the mountains.
The interior was empty and cavernous. No armed guards, no Spotter. Only at the very center of the wide space, directly beneath the single working lamp — a dim, grudging bulb — stood an old metal barrel. On top of it lay two items: a thin cardboard folder and a cheap push-button phone.
I moved closer, watching every dark corner carefully. The moment I came within arm's reach of the barrel, the phone erupted in a shrill ring that bounced off the iron walls.
I let it ring three times. Then I picked up.
"Punctuality," said the voice on the other end. "A useful quality in a man of your profession."
There was no way to determine who was speaking. The voice had been run through a vocoder or some sophisticated distortion program — completely synthetic, flat, stripped of inflection or any recognizable gender. A metallic rasp that could have been concealing anyone, from a gray-haired crime boss to a young hacker somewhere across the city.
"I prefer not to waste anyone's time," I answered evenly. "Especially when I expect the same in return. Where are you?"
"Where I need to be. And you are where your evaluation begins." The synthesized voice stayed cold. "Open the folder."
I flipped the cardboard cover open with my free hand. Inside were several medium-quality printed photographs, a layout of some abandoned warehouse, and a sheet with a patrol schedule. The photographs showed young, aggressive faces — men in tracksuits with cheap tattoos.
"These are called the New Wolves," the voice continued. "Local bottom-feeders who suddenly convinced themselves they were the next power in this city. They started squeezing operations that fall under the protection of serious people, intercepted a couple of shipments, and made far too much noise. The classic mistake of people who confuse brazenness with actual authority."
"And you want me to explain the difference."
"I want you to eliminate them. Everyone who will be at that warehouse tonight. No negotiations. No survivors. This is a demonstration."
I flipped through the photographs, assessing the weapons and counting the targets. Around a dozen people. Amateurs, judging by the way they posed with their guns — but there were a lot of them.
"The smugglers told me you're worth what you cost," the voice in the speaker said, growing a fraction colder. "Consider this your entrance exam. A verification assignment. Do the job cleanly and without leaving traces — and we'll start working in earnest. Complete the assignment, and we take the first step toward you. Fail…" A pause. "Well. The Sava is deep. One more nameless body, and no one will notice."
I closed the folder, rolled it into a tube, and tucked it inside my jacket.
"Have the next assignment ready. By morning, the New Wolves won't exist."
I pressed the end button without waiting for a response, pulled the battery from the phone, and dropped the handset back on the barrel. The evaluation had begun. Time to get to work.
---
I reached the target coordinates — an abandoned motor depot on the edge of an industrial district — at two in the morning. I didn't approach directly, instead taking a position on the roof of a neighboring concrete garage.
For thirty minutes I simply watched, memorizing patrol routes and reading the situation. The Spotter was right: the New Wolves were loud amateurs drunk on the idea that they were untouchable.
My assessment: twelve men. Two outside, the rest inside the main hangar. The external sentries were smoking, lighting up their faces with phone screens, talking at full volume — they'd completely destroyed their own night vision. The perimeter was full of holes. Inside the hangar, bright lights blazed and music played. The electrical panel was outside, mounted directly on the brick wall of an outbuilding.
The plan came together in seconds. A straight assault against twelve weapons was suicide even for a professional. My primary tools had to be darkness, panic, and their own stupidity. I changed into the Batman suit right there on the roof.
I climbed down and, keeping to the dense shadow along the fence line, worked my way toward the external sentries.
The first one had stepped away to relieve himself behind a heap of rusted tires. I stepped in behind him. My left hand clamped over his mouth, my right wrenched his neck with a sharp twist. A dry snap, and the limp body settled silently to the ground. The second man never understood where his partner had gone. I came at him from the side, from his blind zone. A hard strike with the butt of the pistol to his temple switched him off instantly and permanently. I lowered him carefully to the asphalt so his weapon wouldn't clatter.
I patted them down quickly and found nothing of value. The way inside was open.
Before entering, I stopped at the electrical panel, took out my folding knife, and cut the main cable.
The music inside the hangar stopped dead. The blazing light of the powerful lamps dropped to absolute, impenetrable darkness. For one second there was dead silence — and then from inside came outraged shouting, a storm of profanity, and the rattling of bolts being worked. Their eyes, adjusted to the bright light, were completely useless now. The Dark Knight's helmet, with its multi-mode visor, meant the dark was no concern of mine.
I slipped inside noiselessly through the cracked side door, moving along the wall to avoid being silhouetted against the moonlight from the windows.
"Somebody check the breaker! What the hell is happening?!" someone bellowed from the center of the hall.
Two men with phone flashlights switched on moved toward the exit. Perfect targets. I raised the pistol. Two quiet thumps — I'd found a piece of dense rubber back at the docks and wrapped it around the barrel as a crude suppressor to muffle the muzzle flash. Both men dropped.
Panic erupted. The amateurs made the most fatal mistake available to them — they opened fire in the direction where they thought the sounds of falling bodies had come from. They shot blind, deafening each other with the roar of gunfire in the enclosed space, each muzzle flash advertising their own position.
I didn't stand still. Shot — shift position. Shot — shift position.
I moved along the perimeter, using old machine frames and rusted equipment hulks as cover. Every flash they fired gave me a target. My shots were single and deliberate. Chest, head. No wasted movement. Three of them cut each other down with crossfire in the dark, unable to distinguish friend from enemy.
After four minutes, the shooting stopped. What remained was heavy breathing, the moaning of the wounded, and the ring of spent casings rolling across the concrete.
Four survivors had pressed together behind an overturned van in the center of the hangar. They breathed hard and looked around with the wide eyes of cornered animals.
I dropped down from the machine frame I'd been using. The remaining work took less than a minute. Precise, deliberate knife strikes to vital points. No anger, no emotion of any kind.
By three in the morning, perfect silence had settled over the hangar. I moved between the bodies, methodically checking each one, matching faces against the photographs in the folder. Ten inside, two outside. Every one accounted for. The New Wolves were finished.
I stripped them of everything useful — cash and firearms — then dissolved into the pre-dawn fog of Belgrade. The exam was passed. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the call. Hopefully my ticket to a new life was one step closer.
---
I got back to my damp motel room just before morning. I washed the smell of gunpowder, machine oil, and other men's blood off my skin, then sat on the edge of the bed with the cheap phone on the mattress beside me.
The wait wasn't long. At exactly noon, the phone vibrated.
The number was hidden. I pressed the answer button.
"The local news is already reporting a brutal clash between criminal factions," said the familiar flat, synthesized voice. "No trace of any third party. The police are happy to write it off as internal disputes among marginal elements. You worked perfectly."
"I held up my end," I answered drily, staring at the wall. "Where's my payment?"
"Exam passed. Welcome to serious business. Your money is waiting for you where we first 'met' — hangar four. At the bottom of that same metal barrel, there's an envelope. Enough to get you out of that hole, rent somewhere decent, and refresh your equipment."
A pause.
"Take the money and stay available. I'll have a real contract for you soon."
Short tones. The call was over.
I tossed the phone onto the bed and rubbed my face with both hands. The beginning had been made. All that remained was to go back to those oil-reeking docks and collect the first step toward a new life.