The freezing night wind in Queens swept through the empty streets like a dull, rusted knife.
The glowing neon sign of the "Blue Lizard" Nightclub had been switched off hours ago. The back alley was heavily piled with stale garbage bags, where a few emaciated stray cats violently hissed and rummaged for scraps.
It was one of the Tarasov syndicate's newly acquired, legitimate localized businesses.
At 2:17 AM, the club was entirely closed to the public.
Mason limped out of the second-floor VIP lounge, leaning heavily on a pair of aluminum crutches. The agonizing pain radiating from the fractured tibia in his lower leg felt like a red-hot iron rod had been violently driven into his marrow. He gritted his teeth with every single step.
Because his severe combat injuries rendered him tactically undeployable for Vanguard operations, Anthony had reassigned him to manage the club's localized security.
"Fucking pathetic," Mason muttered under his breath. He wasn't cursing the physical pain; he was cursing the sheer, suffocating humiliation of his current reality.
He had served eight years as a tier-one operator in SEAL Team Six. He had survived seventeen highly classified overseas deployments. And now, he was reduced to sitting around like a useless piece of garbage, babysitting a civilian nightclub.
"Hey, Mason. You want to come down and play a few hands of poker?"
The voice drifted up from the ground floor lobby. It belonged to Carlo, a twenty-one-year-old security guard who had grown up brawling on the streets of Brooklyn. He was green, but he possessed sharp instincts.
"Negative. Thanks anyway, kid," Mason called back, leaning heavily against the second-floor balcony railing. "You boys have fun."
Mason pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his jacket and lit one. He had barely taken two drags when his highly trained ears caught a distinct, deeply unnatural sound.
It wasn't the distant rumble of street traffic. It wasn't the feral meowing of the alley cats.
It was the incredibly faint, microscopic, high-pitched squeal of metal violently grinding against structural glass.
Mason instantly spat out his cigarette. His right hand violently slapped down to his waist, perfectly gripping the handle of his customized Glock 19.
The explosive, twisting movement sent a blinding spike of agony shooting up his shattered leg, but deeply ingrained muscle memory entirely bypassed his pain receptors. He drew the weapon and racked the slide in a fraction of a second.
"Contact! Weapons free! Everyone on alert!" Mason roared into the lobby.
Downstairs, Carlo and the other three security guards froze for a microsecond. Then, their street-survival instincts kicked in. They violently kicked the card table over and snatched the heavy shotguns resting on the surrounding chairs.
CRASH!
The massive, reinforced glass wall of the nightclub's main entrance violently shattered inward.
It hadn't been smashed by a blunt instrument; it had been flawlessly, surgically sliced entirely in half along a perfect diagonal axis. The massive upper triangular pane slowly slid downward, hitting the marble tiles with a deafening, crystalline crash.
"Group A, lock down the primary fatal funnel! Group B, seal the ventilation access!" Mason roared his tactical commands from the high ground.
Zero stepped casually through the shattered threshold.
In the dim emergency lighting, the bald assassin's face looked like a slab of bluish-gray granite. His minimalist black tactical suit clung tightly to his lean, wire-corded musculature. Resting loosely in his right hand was his signature weapon: a specialized, high-carbon short-sword. The blade was exactly thirty centimeters long, possessing a microscopic curvature. It looked like a grotesquely magnified surgical scalpel.
He was immediately followed by his four top disciples.
Two men. Two women. All identically dressed in pitch-black tactical weave. All possessing faces entirely devoid of human emotion.
The youngest female disciple, who looked no older than twenty, stepped forward. She wielded a terrifying, two-meter-long whip forged entirely from woven, flexible steel cable. The razor-sharp tip dragged against the marble floor like a dead, metallic snake.
"The Tarasov syndicate's localized ghost army," Zero spoke, his voice completely flat, carrying effortlessly across the large room. "Where are they?"
Carlo was the first guard to react—or rather, the first to be completely consumed by pure, unadulterated survival panic.
He violently racked the pump of his heavy Remington 870 shotgun and jammed his index finger toward the trigger.
He never pulled it.
The young woman's steel whip snapped forward faster than the human eye could track.
It wasn't a standard whipping motion; it was a highly precise, lethal piercing thrust.
The razor-tipped steel cable lunged forward like a venomous viper striking its prey, instantly violently piercing straight through Carlo's right wrist. The Remington shotgun clattered uselessly to the marble floor.
In the exact same microsecond, the female disciple violently snapped her wrist backward. The flexible steel cable curled around Carlo's neck like a python, instantly pulling taut. She gave one sharp, merciless yank.
CRACK.
The sickening sound of a cervical spine violently snapping echoed loudly through the silent nightclub.
Carlo's body instantly went completely limp, collapsing onto the tiles like a discarded puppet. His dead eyes remained wide open, perfectly preserving his terrified, final intent to kill.
The other three security guards finally processed the execution and desperately raised their weapons.
They were hopelessly, pathetically slow.
Zero didn't even shift his stance. The two male disciples flanking him exploded forward in a blur of motion.
The disciple on the left slid seamlessly beneath the line of fire, utilizing a reverse-grip short-blade to violently slice entirely through the first guard's throat. A massive arterial spray of crimson painted the walls as the man collapsed.
The disciple on the right utilized heavy, spiked brass knuckles. He delivered a devastating, crushing straight punch directly into the second guard's Adam's apple, immediately following it up with a spinning, backhand elbow strike that audibly shattered the third guard's temporal bone.
All three bodies hit the floor within a single, horrifying half-second.
From his elevated position on the balcony, Mason possessed a perfect, unobstructed view of the massacre.
Mason was intimately familiar with the brutal mechanics of murder. He had watched Taliban insurgents execute localized prisoners with rusted machetes in the mountains of Afghanistan. He had witnessed heavy VBIED car bombs turn half a city block into pink mist in Fallujah.
But this specific methodology of killing was entirely different. It was chillingly clean. It was mathematically efficient.
There were zero wasted movements. No hesitation, no adrenaline-fueled sloppiness. It was like watching a highly automated industrial assembly line specifically designed to process human meat.
"Another fucking freak," Mason hissed through his teeth.
Knowing his shattered leg entirely prevented him from seeking heavy cover or relocating, Mason simply leaned his weight against the railing, raised his Glock, and centered the tritium sights perfectly on Zero's bald head.
Zero slowly looked up at the balcony. His dark eyes remained completely devoid of emotion.
"Lower your weapon," Zero commanded mildly. "Provide me with the specific logistical coordinates I require, and you may survive the evening."
"Go fuck yourself."
Mason pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The 9mm hollow-point completely missed.
In the exact microsecond Mason's finger depressed the trigger, Zero fluidly shifted his cranium less than five centimeters to the left. The supersonic bullet violently grazed the tip of the assassin's ear and buried itself deep into the drywall behind him.
It wasn't a tactical prediction. It was pure, superhuman reaction speed.
Mason's stomach violently dropped into his boots.
He fully realized he was going to die in this nightclub tonight. But before he bled out, he was absolutely determined to drag at least one of these ninjas straight to hell with him.
Mason rapidly adjusted his aim and executed a flawless, three-round burst, deliberately staggering the spread to perfectly block Zero's anticipated evasion vectors. It was standard SEAL close-quarters doctrine, highly lethal against fast-moving targets.
Zero moved.
He didn't attempt to dodge sideways. He exploded violently forward, charging directly intothe fatal trajectory of the incoming fire.
His movements were so horrifyingly fast they left blurred afterimages under the club's strobe lights. Zero violently snapped his wrist, spinning his short-sword upward. The thick, unsharpened spine of his high-carbon blade struck the first 9mm round mid-air, sparking violently and successfully deflecting the bullet's trajectory into the ceiling.
Mason had spent a decade operating in the deepest, most violent black-ops of the American military, and he had never witnessed a human being actively utilize a sword to parry incoming ballistics.
The second bullet violently grazed Zero's left shoulder, tearing a neat hole through the black tactical fabric and drawing a thin, bright line of blood.
But Zero had already cleared the kill zone. He reached the base of the stairwell, rendering the third bullet completely useless as it buried itself in the floorboards.
Mason aggressively dumped the empty magazine of his Glock and reached for the secondary Sig Sauer P226 holstered on his hip.
Before his fingers could even brush the textured grip, Zero violently materialized at the top of the stairs, directly in front of him.
The assassin's short-blade thrust upward in a lethal, blinding arc, aiming directly for Mason's throat.
Relying entirely on sheer combat instinct, Mason violently threw his left forearm up to block. The razor-sharp blade cleanly pierced through his heavy tactical uniform, burying itself deep into his muscle tissue, wedging tightly between his ulna and radius bones.
Mason let out a guttural, agonizing roar. Simultaneously, he violently drove his good right knee upward, aiming a devastating strike directly at Zero's groin.
Zero fluidly sidestepped the heavy blow, violently twisting the embedded blade and violently ripping it free as he retreated half a step.
A thick spray of arterial blood erupted from Mason's shredded forearm.
"SEAL Team Six?" Zero observed casually, his eyes locking onto the heavy, faded ink exposed on Mason's bleeding arm.
It was a highly detailed combat eagle clutching a golden trident, with the bold text BUD/S Class 278 tattooed permanently beneath it.
Mason refused to answer. Ignoring the blinding, atomic pain radiating from his severed forearm tendons, he desperately grabbed the grip of his Sig Sauer and attempted to draw.
Before the barrel could even clear the Kydex holster, Zero's blade violently crashed down onto Mason's wrist.
It wasn't a lethal chop; Zero specifically utilized the flat spine of the heavy blade to execute a brutal joint-lock press.
A tremendous, immovable force pinned Mason's wrist down, locking the gun barrel firmly against his own hip.
Refusing to yield, Mason reached across his body with his bleeding left hand, drew his fixed-blade Ka-Bar combat dagger, and executed a desperate, sweeping stab toward Zero's abdomen.
Zero casually parried the strike, utilizing the heavy steel pommel of his short-sword to deliver a devastating, bone-shattering blow directly to Mason's cheekbone.
Mason's vision exploded into brilliant white stars. He collapsed heavily against the balcony railing, his crutch clattering to the floor below.
Down in the lobby, the remaining security guards desperately attempted to mount a counter-attack.
The male disciple flawlessly evaded a crossfire by executing a mid-air somersault. Landing smoothly, he violently drove his short-blade deep into the left eye socket of a firing guard, simultaneously launching a brutal, scorpion-tail roundhouse kick that completely shattered the trachea of the man next to him.
The second female disciple slid across the blood-slicked tiles like a ghost. She brought her heavy, long-handled naginata sweeping upward in a devastating arc, violently slicing entirely through a guard's abdomen from the pelvis to the sternum. His internal organs violently spilled outward, splashing wetly across the boots of his screaming partner.
"The Tarasov syndicate's Vanguard," Zero repeated, his blade resting gently against Mason's bleeding neck. "Where are they geographically located?"
"I don't fucking know," Mason gasped, his left eye completely swollen shut and blinded by his own blood. He aggressively spat a mouthful of crimson saliva directly onto the floor.
Zero simply nodded, as if perfectly accepting the reality that the SEAL was useless to him.
He glanced down into the lobby. "Round up the survivors."
Zero violently grabbed Mason by the collar of his tactical vest and effortlessly dragged the heavy operator down the stairs. As they descended, the final resisting security guard was being violently pinned to the floor, his spine actively being crushed beneath the heavy knee of the male disciple.
There were exactly seven heavily wounded Tarasov guards remaining alive inside the Nightclub.
They were brutally herded into the center of the shattered lobby like livestock awaiting the butcher, forced to kneel in a perfectly straight line across the blood-soaked marble.
Mason was violently kicked into a kneeling position at the far end of the line.
"I will extend this courtesy exactly one final time," Zero announced, stepping slowly in front of the kneeling men. His short-sword hung loosely at his side, thick blood dripping steadily from the tip.
"Tarasov's Vanguard. Where is their centralized base of operations? What is their current troop strength? What is the name of their tactical commander?"
A massive, heavily muscled Black guard spat a mouthful of blood onto Zero's shoes. "Go fuck yourself, you bald Japanese freak..."
A blinding flash of silver light arced through the air.
The massive guard's defiant roar instantly dissolved into a sickening, wet hiss as air violently leaked from his severed trachea. His heavy hands futilely grabbed at his destroyed throat as he collapsed forward into the growing pool of blood.
The young female disciple casually flicked the blood from her razor-sharp steel whip. She stepped forward, aiming the heavy steel tip directly at the bridge of the next middle-aged guard's nose.
Also Checkout My New Novel - John Wick: My Gun Shoots Through Walls
Now Get The FULL AVAILABLE NOVEL at Once!
@patreon.com/Authorizz/shop