Wen didn't just barge inside; he exploded through the door.
The cheap wood shuddered against the frame, a pathetic little thud that was instantly swallowed by the bonfire of rage burning in his gut. His vision tunneled, the edges of the hallway growing hazy, tinted red by the incandescent fury that had consumed him since he first got the call. He spun his head, eyes darting, trying to find the source of the insidious, unnatural calm that permeated the house.
There they were. His mother and father.
They stood in the center of the spacious, sterile living room—a room that suddenly felt less like a home and more like an operating theater. His mother's hand was pressed against his father's back, a gesture that, in any other context, would have been tender. But the whole tableau was wrong. His father was half-naked, the top half of his torso exposed, the rest concealed by the shadows and a misplaced towel.
"I said leave, didn't you hear me?"
The voice was his mother's, cold and hard, a chisel striking granite. Wen barely registered the words. He was looking at his father. The anger, the white-hot rage that had driven his injured leg up the front porch steps, subsided immediately. It didn't disappear; it was just frozen, held in check by a wave of nauseating dread.
He saw the back.
It wasn't just skin. It was like looking through a sheet of transparent glass. The skin was taut, thin, unnervingly pale, and beneath it, every vein stood out in sharp, blue-black relief. He could see the intricate, sickening movement of the blood flow, the pulse thrumming too fast, the vessels like exposed, agitated wires. It was the skin of a man who was desperately, fatally ill.
Gods, he thought, the word echoing uselessly in the sudden silence. He's not just sick. He's—
"Dad is sick," Wen croaked, the sound scratching against his throat.
The response was immediate and lethal. His mother didn't even flinch. Her face, a mask of grim determination, barely moved as her left hand slid down, resting deliberately on the polished chrome grip of a gun holstered at her hip. The movement was economical, the practiced reflex of a professional assassin, not the comforting gesture of a concerned wife.
She drew the weapon. The metallic snick of the safety coming off was louder than the shout that had preceded it. Wen watched her eyes—cold, unforgiving emeralds—grinning, ready to shoot.
Her gaze dropped, fixating on his shattered knee. He felt the pain then, a crushing, belated realization that his leg was screaming for mercy. It was the first time he truly acknowledged the crippling injury he'd sustained escaping the dockyards.
"Leave or I shoot you," his mother repeated, her voice perfectly even. The muzzle of the gun leveled, aimed squarely at his good leg. If she took out his remaining support, he was done. Paralyzed.
Wen raised his injured leg off the floor, the other leg trembling as it took his entire weight. He looked past his parents, towards the stairs. Up there was the child's room. Luna. Mina. The only reason he was here, bleeding out on the marble floor.
I have to get up there. The command was absolute.
He looked back at his mother. Her finger was nesting on the trigger, the tension in her stance coiled and ready to release.
"I would not mention it again, Wen. When I said move out, I meant it."
He froze. His mind raced, calculating the impossible geometry of the escape. How to run up two flights of stairs, carrying a dead weight of a leg, without getting a bullet through his spine. He placed the foot of the injured leg back down tentatively. The floor felt like shards of ice. The pain was instant, a scorching wire of agony that shot straight up to his brain, screaming: Give up. You lose.
"I would count one to give. And before five, you must be out."
Wen didn't hear the number 'one' or 'two.' He was distracted. Amidst the silence, the sharp, damning word pierced the air.
Bastard.
It was a whisper, a barely audible curse meant to crush the spirit, and he knew, with chilling certainty, it came from his mother's lips. She had already judged him, condemned him.
"Three."
The sharp, clipped sound of the number made him lose his tenuous balance. He swayed, reaching for the wall.
"Four."
He locked eyes with the gun. His mother's grip was steady, her expression devoid of doubt. She was ready to kill him. She is ready to kill her own blood. He looked desperately at the stairs. His mother moved her weight forward, planting her leading leg, making herself a perfect, stable platform for the shot.
"Five."
The number was a gunshot itself. Wen didn't think; he reacted. He lunged towards the stairs, throwing his weight, his good leg driving him forward in a desperate, ugly scramble.
BOOM!
The bullet slammed into the marble floor exactly where his left heel had been half a second before. A chunk of marble exploded into dust and shrapnel, a razor-sharp piece stinging his cheek.
He dragged his body up the first step, the injured leg scraping heavily on the wood. The sickening thud-drag, thud-drag rhythm was punctuated by the splatter of fresh, scarlet blood dripping onto the carpet below.
His mother didn't hesitate. She rushed to the foot of the stairs, stabilizing her stance again. She raised the gun, sighting down the barrel. The shot was perfect—a clear, straight line to the back of his head, where a man would fall instantly, cleanly.
She pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
The silence was deafening. The gun had lacked a bullet.
A miscalculation? No. She planned this.
She pulled the trigger again, the hammer falling against an empty chamber. It only produced a hollow, lifeless crack. In a furious, inarticulate roar, she hurled the now-useless pistol against the mahogany banister. The metal shrieked against the wood.
"WEN!" she shrieked, the sound less like a mother and more like a predator robbed of its kill. She spun, rushing away from the stairs and plunging into the shadows of the kitchen.
Wen heard the frantic sounds of destruction: the smash of ceramic plates, the metallic clatter of silverware hitting the tiled floor. She was looking for a replacement. A closer, quieter weapon. He imagined the scene: her eyes, wild with frustration, throwing dinnerware aside until she found a knife.
He had bought himself ten precious seconds.
He didn't stop, didn't look back. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed, but the image of his daughters' smiling faces, those happy pictures upstairs, drove him.
THUMP-DRAG. THUMP-DRAG.
He reached the landing.
The Children's Trap
Wen stumbled into the second-floor hallway, leaning heavily against the wall for a moment to suck in a ragged breath. The air here was heavy, scented faintly with baby powder and ozone—the smell of a clean, controlled environment.
He looked for the room. The one designed for the child. He knew it—a pale pink door at the end of the hall. He didn't bother with the handle. He slammed his shoulder into the wood, ignoring the fresh spike of pain in his leg. The door wasn't locked. It flew inward with a theatrical CRACK, hitting the wall hard.
He lunged inside, his eyes immediately assessing the space.
It was a sanctuary, a bright, cheerful space utterly discordant with the horror unfolding below. In the left corner, a small, wrought-iron bed was draped in a canopy of white linen and pink flowers. On the nearby nightstand sat a framed picture: Luna and Mina, sitting on a swing in the park, their faces wide with toothy, innocent smiles.
Next to it, a second bed, plainer, slightly larger. On that stand, another photo: him, Luna, Mina, and Chun, all beaming. It was his fiftieth birthday. The restaurant. The terrible, fleeting moment of peace that now felt like a lifetime ago.
Where are they?
The question was a frantic knot in his chest. The room was empty. Too quiet.
"Luna!" he screamed, the name raw and desperate. He spun, ignoring the throbbing agony in his leg. The pain had vanished, temporarily suppressed by pure adrenaline and paternal terror. "Mina! Where did they hide you?"
His answer wasn't his daughters' voices, but the escalating shriek of his mother from the staircase.
"WEEEENNNNN!" she yelled, dragging the vowel out, her voice rising in pitch with every second that passed. She was ascending the stairs with chilling speed.
Wen's professional training slammed back into him. Hide.
He darted behind the door, pressing his back flat against the wall, holding his breath until his chest burned. The floorboards began to creak—the sound of his mother's determined footsteps.
In that moment of suspended time, pressed into the shadows, his mind didn't panic. Instead, it flashed back. A mission. The Senator Kill.
He remembered the pressure, the dust-choked air of the utility closet. He was waiting for the prominent society man, who walked in, not with a knife, but a fully loaded revolver. Wen had lunged, taken the weapon, only to discover the man was a trigger bomb. Killing him would have set off an explosion that would wipe out a city block.
He allowed the target to beat him—a methodical, agonizing, pulp-creating beating—until the man escaped, thinking him dead. Only when the Senator was a safe distance away did Wen fire a single, precision shot from his backup pistol. The man had detonated harmlessly far away, the flash of fire dwarfed by the night sky.
Calculated risk. Calculated sacrifice.
His mind snapped back to the present. The shadow of a blade appeared, sliding around the edge of the door. The reflection of the hall light flashed across the steel: a heavy, wide-bladed kitchen knife.
Wen reacted on instinct. He thrust his hand forward, not to grab the handle, but to clamp down on the knife's tip.
CRUNCH.
The blade sliced deep into his palm. A hot, thick river of blood immediately began to stream down his wrist, pooling on the floor. But the pain anchored him. Using his superior strength, he twisted his hand, leveraging the knife's direction, making the grip awkward and uncomfortable for his mother.
He sprang out from behind the door, confronting her eye to eye.
She looked tired, feral, and utterly terrifying. Her gaze dropped instantly to his injured leg, searching for a weakness, a spot to kick or disable him further.
He couldn't risk another move. Before she could react, Wen used the only weapon he had left: his head. He drove his forehead into hers, a hard, brutal head-butt. Her vision doubled, a sharp, disorienting pain making her gasp. She stumbled backward, crashing to the floor, the heavy knife sliding from her numb fingers.
Wen didn't hesitate. He grabbed the knife, turning it in his bloody hand, holding the handle firm.
He looked down at her. Her eyes had cleared, and a strange, contemptuous smile spread across her face.
"You are a Fool, Wen," she hissed, her voice low and venomous.
Wen braced, his mind scrambling to decipher the meaning, the trajectory of this insane encounter. He just held the knife, a silent, bleeding sentinel of vengeance, ready for the next move.
"You killed them all," she continued, the words dropping like stones into a well. "To our family, you are a beast, a bastard, and dead to everyone."
The words stole his movement, his breath, his will. He was frozen, the accusation hanging heavy, incomprehensible. I killed them? What is she talking about? His mind was a battlefield of confusion and pain, yet his eyes remained laser-focused, the training refusing to give up.
It was in that silent, lost fraction of a second that she moved.
Silently.
Wen watched, through the fog of shock, as she brought her arm up from underneath her clothing. Another knife. Smaller, designed for throwing, kept hidden. Her eyes darted, watching his face, confirming his momentary distraction.
She set the knife in her hand, coiled and ready to throw.
She didn't get the chance.
The moment her arm flexed, the moment the killing intent solidified in her eyes, Wen reacted. He didn't aim his large kitchen knife. He threw hers. The one he had just picked up from the floor.
It spun only once.
The heavy blade struck her, not in the chest or the throat, but squarely in her forehead. The impact was sickeningly dull.
She stopped. Her eyes widened, a flicker of genuine shock replacing the hatred. Then, she dropped—a heavy, lifeless sack. The throwing knife she had been holding fell from her limp fingers, landing harmlessly beside her head.
Wen walked toward her, the pain in his leg forgotten. He picked up the dropped throwing knife. It was perfectly balanced, cool, and sharp.
This is it.
A coldness, deeper and more profound than the rage, entered his skin. It wasn't the pain of his wound or the shock of murder. It was the entry of the devil. It moved through his blood, settling in his heart, hardening it to an impenetrable stone.
He looked at the woman who had birthed him, who had called him a beast and a bastard. The woman whose knife was now in his hand.
He knelt, and without a sound, without a single thought of remorse or hesitation, he began to insert the knife into her motionless body, a precise, methodical series of strikes. He worked with the detached efficiency of a butcher, aiming for the core.
Organs began to pop out. The air filled with the coppery, metallic smell of fresh blood, which sprayed, coating his hands, his shirt, and finally, his face.
When he was done, he stood in the silence of the children's room, covered in his mother's blood, clutching the two knives. The silence of the empty room was absolute.