Night didn't arrive in Kyiv all at once. It crept in slowly, draining color from the streets, softening edges, changing how sound behaved. Rain followed not long after—thin, persistent, almost polite. It didn't flood the streets or drive people indoors. It simply altered the rules.
John Wick stood inside an unfinished apartment overlooking the river, seven floors above the street. The building was half-abandoned, caught between development plans and bureaucratic delay. Wick had chosen it because no one noticed it anymore.
The room was bare concrete and exposed wiring. No furniture except a single metal table near the window. No lights. He didn't need them.
On the table lay a pistol, disassembled with deliberate order. Slide. Barrel. Spring. Frame. Magazine. Everything aligned in a way that made sense only to him. He wasn't cleaning it. The weapon didn't require attention.
This was ritual. Ritual kept the mind steady.
Outside, traffic moved in predictable rhythms. Wick didn't watch the vehicles directly. He watched reflections—headlights bending across wet glass, motion distorted just enough to betray surveillance equipment. Cameras revealed themselves that way. Drones even more so.
The first drone hovered too cleanly.
Civilian models drifted, corrected, hesitated. This one held altitude with quiet confidence, stabilizers compensating too smoothly. Wick counted silently. One. Two. Three.
That was enough.
He stepped closer to the window, adjusted for distance, rain, and refraction, and fired once.
The shot punched through glass and casing alike. The drone collapsed midair and spiraled into the river below. No explosion. No alarm. Just absence where something had been.
The second drone reacted instantly, retreating on automated threat logic. Wick didn't pursue it. Fear was more useful than destruction.
Information loss spread faster than any bullet.
Three kilometers away, inside a S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile command vehicle disguised as municipal maintenance, a feed blinked out.
"One drone just went dark," Skye said, fingers already moving. "Second one disengaged. That wasn't us."
Coulson leaned back slightly, hands resting loosely on his knees. "No. It wasn't."
May stood behind him, arms folded, posture relaxed but ready. Her eyes stayed on the map overlay. "HYDRA doesn't pull surveillance unless something spooks them."
"Something changed the tempo," Coulson replied.
Fitz highlighted an industrial cluster near the river. "Movement near the old rail depot. Heavy units. Not covert."
May's jaw tightened. "They're done hiding."
Coulson nodded once. "And when HYDRA stops hiding, they make mistakes."
Back in the apartment, Wick reassembled the pistol in seconds. No wasted motion. No hesitation. He checked the magazine, chambered a round, and slid the weapon beneath his coat.
Then he left.
He took the stairs. Elevators introduced variables. Outside, he merged into the street without changing pace. He crossed intersections when traffic shifted, not when lights instructed. He passed beneath cameras when rain distorted contrast and glare confused motion detection.
People brushed past him. None noticed. None remembered.
The rail depot sat at the edge of the district like a forgotten scar. Rusted steel. Cracked concrete. Infrastructure abandoned and quietly repurposed by those who preferred places without witnesses.
Floodlights snapped on as Wick reached the perimeter.
Too fast. Too reactive.
He stopped.
Listened.
Counted.
Six on ground level. Four elevated. One sniper—bad placement, favoring height over angle. Two armored units near the main entrance, compensation for fear rather than strategy.
Radio chatter overlapped. Orders repeated. Men shifted weight too often, adjusted grips too frequently.
Bad leadership.
Wick moved.
The fence breach wasn't his work. Someone had cut it weeks earlier and never repaired it properly. HYDRA logistics had noted it, deprioritized it, and moved on. Wick slipped through without touching metal, avoiding vibration sensors placed too close to the ground to matter.
He took the sniper first.
Rain pooled along the rooftop edge, reflecting movement just enough to betray position. Wick fired once. The man fell backward, already irrelevant.
The perimeter didn't react immediately.
That delay cost them.
The first guard turned just in time to see Wick step out of shadow. He raised his weapon. He didn't fire. Wick closed the distance before the thought finished forming, redirected the barrel, and shut him down with controlled force.
Another man shouted.
That one died loudly.
The depot descended into disorder—not panic yet, but confusion. Floodlights swung wide, blinding their own men. Armored units advanced when they should have held.
Wick flowed through them with methodical precision. Shots were clean. Movement economical. No wasted effort.
He wasn't angry.
He was correcting a problem.
Across the river, HYDRA's internal cameras went dark one by one.
"They're losing visibility," Skye said quietly.
"They already lost control," May replied.
Coulson leaned forward. "And when HYDRA loses control," he said, "they escalate."
Inside the depot, Wick disappeared into steel and shadow.
The interior of the depot smelled of oil, rust, and damp concrete. Sound behaved badly here—flat surfaces, long corridors, too many angles. Wick adjusted his pace, syncing movement with distant machinery hum and the muted drum of rain on the roof.
HYDRA's people were regrouping. He could hear it in the radios. Short transmissions. Overlapping commands. Someone trying to establish a perimeter again. Someone higher up demanding updates that didn't exist.
Wick cut through a maintenance corridor barely wide enough for two men. A door at the end opened abruptly. A rifle barrel emerged.
Wick fired through the doorframe before the man stepped out.
The body collapsed inside the room. Wick pivoted immediately, already moving as the shot echoed.
Two operators rushed from the opposite end, armor forward, weapons raised. They advanced together, angles overlapping. Trained. Better than the others.
Not enough.
Wick fired low, shattering a knee joint through an exposed seam, then high, striking under the helmet where it didn't seal properly. He stepped past them without looking back.
Boots thundered somewhere to his left. Too many to count. HYDRA had committed fully now. This wasn't containment.
Good.
It meant they'd stopped thinking.
He reached the central loading bay as interior floodlights flickered on. The space opened wide, stacked with shipping containers marked with false corporate logos. Weapons. Components. Money.
An armored unit charged from behind a container, shield raised, weapon firing blind. Wick slid behind a forklift as rounds sparked off steel. He waited half a second longer than instinct suggested.
Then moved.
He rolled, came up inside minimum engagement range, jammed the weapon, and fired twice into exposed joints. The armored man collapsed heavily.
Automatic fire erupted from multiple angles. Wick moved constantly, never stopping long enough to be fixed. He used containers as funnels, forced poor lines of fire, turned HYDRA's numbers into a liability.
A man tried to flank wide. Wick anticipated it and intercepted him mid-turn. Another tried to retreat. Wick didn't allow it.
Minutes passed. Maybe less. Time compressed into angles and breath.
When the firing stopped, the depot was unnaturally quiet. Smoke hung low. Shell casings littered the floor.
Wick stood still, listening.
One heartbeat. Another.
Then movement above.
A control room overlooked the bay. Reinforced glass. Inside stood a man frozen in place, hands hovering near a radio. Not a soldier. Logistics. Coordination.
Wick raised his weapon.
The man shook his head, mouthing words Wick didn't need to hear.
Wick fired once.
The glass spiderwebbed. The body dropped out of sight.
Across the city, Coulson watched the final internal feed cut to black.
"That's it," Skye said. "They're blind."
May exhaled slowly. "Alive units?"
Fitz checked the numbers. "Minimal. Retreating."
Coulson nodded. "Then he's done."
Wick didn't linger.
He exited through a side corridor already mapped in his head. He didn't collect anything. Didn't sabotage equipment. HYDRA would burn the depot themselves. Evidence was a liability.
Outside, rain washed the blood from his coat. Sirens rose in the distance—not police yet, something closer to panic.
He merged into the street, pace unchanged, face forgettable.
Behind him, HYDRA counted losses they didn't understand.
Ahead of him, the city kept breathing, unaware of how close it had come to chaos—and how quietly it had been spared.
Somewhere deep inside HYDRA's hierarchy, a new directive would be issued.
John Wick would no longer be treated as a variable.
He would be treated as a problem.
And problems like him were never simple to erase.