Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing Read online

  It had been Dorigan who had planned and ordered the murder of Jin’s family.

  Taking a series of very deep breaths, Dorigan relaxed and spoke to his fellow Black Dragons.

  “Project Hellbound will continue, and this time, Jin Sakai will not stop us!”

  --<(0)>--

  Two hours after leaving Dorigan’s mansion, Jin pulled up in front of the Pine Lake Informant’s two-floor office building. Despite its wholly average appearance, Jin knew that the Informant inside that building was well guarded. Over the course of its operation, the Black Dragon Clan had amassed an incredible wealth of information, and it guarded this information, as well as its keepers, jealously.

  Unbuttoning his coat, Jin pulled out each of his guns in succession, inspecting them and making sure he had properly loaded them. Satisfied that he had, and that they were all in proper working order, Jin re-holstered them and reached over to his glove compartment. Popping it open, he reached inside and withdrew a pair of black leather gloves. Jin slipped on the gloves and then got out of his car, casting a few casual glances around to make sure no one was around to see him. No one was, so Jin drew out one of his Desert Eagles and walked through the front door.

  When the receptionist looked up, she only had enough time to recognize Jin before he snapped his right arm up and popped off a single shot. The bullet drilled the receptionist right between her eyes, and her head snapped backward with the force of the gunshot. Walking past her, Jin kicked his way through the door behind the front desk, where he found the Informant’s assistants scrambling frantically to arm themselves; clearly they had been trained poorly. Scoffing at the sight before him, Jin drew his Mac 11 and sprayed the room with bullets. The unfortunate assistants were cut down in seconds. Those who were standing staggered back as bullets punctured their bodies before falling, and those sitting in chairs were thrown backward out of them. Papers were shredded, and computers sparked as bullets peppered their circuitry. Blood was splattered across the floor and walls, and when Jin’s gun clicked empty, all of the Informant’s assistants were down. Instinctively, Jin ejected the empty clip and slapped a fresh one in before moving on.

  I might have to use my sword after all, Jin thought.

  Unfazed by the carnage that surrounded him, Jin walked through the room to the door in the back. He eased this door open only to hear the hurried footsteps of several men running down the staircase. Jin quickly ducked out of the doorway and dropped his guns before drawing his sword. He reversed his grip on it, and as the first of the guards approached, Jin plunged his sword into the doorway. A sharp shout of pain told Jin that he had hit his target, and he jerked his sword out of the guard. He flipped the sword around again, holding it normally as the second guard rushed forward to help his wounded partner. Jin stepped away from the door and swung his sword so hard that while he effortlessly removed the second guard’s head, he also drove the blade more than an inch into the wooden doorframe.

  The third guard saw this opening and kicked Jin in the chest. Jin grunted and staggered back, but when the guard threw a right hook at Jin’s face, Jin bent to the left to dodge and grabbed the guard’s arm in his right hand. Before the guard could even think about trying to break his grip, Jin dropped his left arm straight down on the guard’s elbow, snapping his arm in half. The guard howled in pain, and Jin delivered a brutal back-fisted strike to the guard’s nose. The guard grunted, stumbling backward, and Jin used this chance to snatch up his discarded Desert Eagle. Just as the guard recovered and turned to resume his attack, Jin leveled his gun at the guard’s face and fired. As the guard’s corpse fell to the floor, Jin bent down to collect his Mac 11, sliding it back into its holster. That accomplished, Jin placed a firm grip on the hilt of his sword and tore it free of the doorframe. Glancing cautiously up the staircase, Jin found it devoid of guards, and he slowly made his way up.

  Jin held his Desert Eagle out in front of him as he ascended the stairs, keeping his sword held back but ready to thrust forward at a moment’s notice. Approaching the door at the top of the staircase as silently as possible, Jin moved to its left side and placed his back against the cold concrete. He sheathed his sword, withdrew his Mac 11, took a deep breath, and kicked the door open. Jin snapped his leg back just as hundreds of bullets flew through the door in a full auto fusillade. Moments later, the gunfire stopped and a lone guard came to inspect what he thought would be a bullet-ridden corpse. When the guard got close enough, Jin lashed out with his right hand and broke the guard’s nose with the butt of his gun. The guard stumbled, dazed and off balance, and Jin moved forward. He slid his arms through the guard’s and turned him into a human shield. The guard’s teammates held their fire, but Jin did not. He fired his Mac 11 and used half the clip to kill the remaining security guards. No longer having a use for his human shield, Jin released him and kicked him forward. The guard stumbled forward and started to turn around, only to have Jin shoot him in the chest with his Desert Eagle.

  As the dead guard fell to the floor, so toppled the last wall between Jin and the Informant.

  The Informant, dressed in a pristine white suit, sat behind a simple gray desk ten feet in front of the assassin. His small beady eyes and thin mouth, coupled with his suit and darting gaze, gave Jin the distinct impression of a mouse cornered by a hungry predator. The analogy, Jin decided, was oddly fitting.

  “Given the amount of people that I’ve had to kill to get to you, I assume you’ve been expecting me,” Jin said to the Informant, holstering his Mac 11.

  “You assume correctly. Did you really think that Dorigan wouldn’t let me know that you would be coming?”

  Jin gave a nonchalant shrug but jerked to the side as the Informant threw a rather sharp-looking letter opener straight for his eyes. Jin shot his gaze back to the Informant, looking extremely insulted, and as the Informant began to pick up the phone on his desk, dialing some mysterious number, Jin lazily pointed his Desert Eagle at it and fired. The phone exploded in a shower of sparks.

  “You didn’t just happen to throw a letter opener at me, did you?”

  “Of…of course not,” the Informant stuttered.

  Jin hung his head and sighed exasperatedly.

  “Why do people always lie to me?”

  With that, Jin vaulted over the desk and twisted the Informant’s left hand behind his back.

  “I’ll keep this simple,” Jin hissed menacingly. “I want all the information you have on the leaders of the Black Dragon Clan, and you are going to give it to me.”

  “And if I refuse?” the Informant asked.

  Jin pressed the barrel of his Desert Eagle against the base of the Informant’s thumb and pulled the trigger, blowing the finger clean off. The Informant howled in agony.

  “You wanna try that again?” Jin asked.

  “I…don’t…have…that…information,” the Informant hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Bullshit.”

  Jin pulled the trigger again, and this time removed the Informant’s pinky, eliciting fresh howls from the captive.

  “Don’t value your fingers very much, do you?” Jin said offhandedly.

  The Informant didn’t respond, and Jin pressed his gun into the Informant’s palm.

  “Does the Black Dragon Clan pay you enough to afford the kind of surgery you’d need to repair your hand if I keep blowing your fingers off?”

  “PDA…right drawer,” the Informant said, his voice less than a strangled whisper.

  Jin released the Informant’s mutilated hand and extracted the aforementioned PDA from the indicated drawer and plugged it into the USB cord that fed into the Informant’s computer.

  “All right,” Jin said coldly, as he pressed his Desert Eagle into the back of the Informant’s skull. “Download it.”

  Amid stifled whimpers and assorted moans of pain, the Informant pecked a few keys on his computer’s keyboard with his as yet undamaged right hand. In a matter of seconds, all the information Jin requested was downloaded onto the P
DA. Jin unplugged it from the USB cord and stuffed it into the outer pocket on the right side of his coat.

  “Now that that’s been taken care of…” Jin said, letting his last words trail off.

  “Oh God,” the Informant whimpered pathetically. “What else could you possibly want from me?”

  Jin leaned forward, so far forward that his mouth was millimeters from the Informant’s ear. He only spoke two words, uttered in a voice that was the deadliest of whispers.

  “Your life.”

  The Informant’s eyes went wide with horror and in the next instant, Jin fired a single shot point-blank into the back of the Informant’s skull to blow a silver-dollar-sized hole in his forehead.

  His goal accomplished, Jin slid his Desert Eagle back into the holster on the inside of his coat and walked around the now blood, bone, and brain-splattered desk. As Jin left the Informant’s building and drove off in his car, the first wails of police car sirens began to stir the otherwise silent night.

  Chronicles of the Apocalypse

  --<(0)>--

  Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing

  Chapter 4: Hoxie

  It was about two o’clock in the morning when Jin returned to Mark’s after visiting the Informant. Parking his car in Mark’s garage, Jin performed his usual trek up the fire escape and through the skylight. Jin climbed down quietly enough and saw that Mark was still asleep. Considering that it was so late that one could call it early, Jin decided to let his friend sleep. Walking over to the trapdoor at the foot of Mark’s bed, Jin opened it as silently as possible and slid through before easing it closed and walked down the stairs.

  The third floor was styled in much the same way as the fourth. With the same carpet and wallpaper, the only thing that distinguished this room from Mark’s bedroom was what filled it. Rather than a bed, bookcases, and a wall-to-wall display of weapons, this room had a forty-six-inch flat-screen TV with a large couch in front of it, a pool table, and then in the far corner of the room was Mark’s kitchen, with a handful of chairs lined up against the counter and a table not too far from the chairs.

  Jin walked to the kitchen first, finally acknowledging the fact that he hadn’t eaten in a full day. His search of the cabinets turned up quite a few interesting odds and ends, but nothing he felt like eating. It wasn’t until he moved to the refrigerator that Jin noticed a note written for him, reminding the master assassin that his friend knew him better than he gave him credit for. The note read:

  Pizza in fridge, help yourself. And by the way, I heard the gunfire from here.

  Jin chuckled at the note and opened the refrigerator. A large cardboard box dominated the lower shelf, and Jin slid it out, lifting the top as he did so. Inside were three large slices of pizza, and Jin’s stomach grumbled hungrily. Setting the pieces of pizza on a plate that Mark had left on the counter, Jin stuck the pizza in Mark’s microwave and pressed the reheat button.

  As the pizza began to cook, Jin pulled out the Informant’s PDA and perused the data he’d acquired. To his mild surprise, all of the Black Dragons lived on America’s coasts. Dorigan lived in California, Victor and Mordechai both lived in or around Manhattan, Jessie lived in Oregon, and Hoxie lived in Maine; about fifty miles south of Pine Lake!

  At least this solves the issue of who I’m going to kill first, Jin thought.

  As he had already killed the James twins, Jin didn’t bother looking up their information. He slid the PDA back into his pocket just as the microwave started beeping – his pizza was done. Jin gingerly extracted the warm plate and walked over to the couch. Once there, he laid himself lazily across it and started to eat.

  As he ate, Jin let his mind wander back through its memories, coming to rest on the day he and Dorigan had found Hoxie. He’d been hunting cougars in northern California, having grown bored with typical game. They’d heard of his skill with firearms and had come to see it firsthand. Though snide and arrogant, Hoxie’s abilities had been the real deal, and they’d offered him membership into the B.D.C.

  Dealing with Hoxie now as an adversary, Jin knew he was going to be in for a challenge. In a straight up fistfight, Jin knew he was far Hoxie’s superior – the man was a hunter, not a warrior. The challenge lay in actually getting that close. Hoxie was a true crack shot, as deadly with a gun as Jin was with a sword. If Jin made even one infinitesimal mistake, his head would be splattered across the wall before he even realized he’d made one.

  But all this was assuming that they would be fighting on a level battlefield. If the battlefield was not level, it might grant Jin the hair’s breadth of advantage he would need to take Hoxie down.

  Finishing off his pizza, Jin set the plate on the floor and slid himself out of his coat. He lay back on the couch and then draped his coat over himself like a blanket. The last forty-eight hours had been exceedingly eventful, and Jin was in need of a good night’s rest.

  --<(0)>--

  At around nine-thirty the next morning, the smell of bacon, hash browns, and buttered toast gently wafted up Jin’s nose and roused him from his otherwise sound sleep. Groggily getting to his feet, Jin laid his coat on the couch and began to stretch blood back into his arms and legs.

  “Good morning,” Mark’s voice called.

  Jin turned back to the kitchen and found Mark sitting at his kitchen counter eating his freshly cooked breakfast.

  “I made extra for you,” Mark said, his mouth full. “In case you were hungry.”

  “Thanks,” Jin said, surprised.

  Jin walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a plate from one of the cabinets, and took a rather generous helping of food.

  “Good lord,” Mark said as he swallowed. “You really are hungry.”

  “Well, apart from the pizza last night,” Jin replied, “I haven’t eaten in the last two days.”

  “And yet you still have the energy and strength to break into the clan meeting, kill the James twins, escape unharmed, and then kill the Informant and all his men. Are you sure you’re human? ‘Cause sometimes I wonder.”

  Mark smiled, and Jin chuckled.

  “It was part of Master Kowloon’s training. He would make me go for days without food or water and still expect me to fight and train at top form.”

  Mark grimaced. “Ouch.”

  Jin shrugged. “I would have put you through the same training had things not gone the way they had.”

  “Hmm.”

  Silence fell between the two of them, and while Jin ate away at the food on his plate, Mark stared into his half full glass of milk, lost in thought.

  “It’s kinda sad, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “What is?” Jin asked, swallowing a mouthful of food.

  “Well, that we’re the only two really left; the only ones that remember what the Black Dragon Clan used to be. The codes we lived by, the things we fought for. I mean, didn’t it ever make you sick that after the Reconstruction, we basically degenerated into glorified contract killers?”

  “We were always killers, Mark,” Jin answered somberly.

  “Yeah, but not like this. Back then we served a higher purpose. We killed to clean the scum off the planet. Now we work for the scum, and only because they pay better.”

  Jin sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean, Mark. There are a lot of things I miss about those days.”

  Sensing that his friend and mentor was heading down a darker train of thought, Mark swiftly changed gears.

  “So, who’s first on your hit list?” he asked, taking his last bite of food.

  “Hoxie. He lives the closest, and he’ll be the easiest to kill.”

  “Taking the easy road? That’s not like you.”

  “Which is why Dorigan and the others won’t expect it. Any and all plans they have are built upon the assumption that I’m going to go after either Victor or Dorigan first.”

  “And by going after Hoxie first,” Mark continued, “you cut the foundation of their plans right out from under them. Making yourself unpredictable in the proc
ess.”

  Jin nodded.

  “So I take it that Hoxie only has about twelve hours left to live?”

  Jin nodded again. “You take it correctly.”

  --<(0)>--

  Eleven hours later, the night sky was inky black. A slight breeze moved dark wisps of cloud through the air and rustled the leaves of the nearby trees. At the back wall of Hoxie’s estate, a hooting owl caught the attention of a pair of guards. A split second later, a deadly shadow closed down upon them and removed their heads from their bodies.

  Pressing his back against the wall, Jin Sakai glanced around for any additional guards. He found none, and then looked back up the wall. It was an easy ten feet high. Wiping the blood from his sword with a handkerchief, Jin sheathed it and backed away from the wall. Once he was a good ways away, he broke into a dead sprint and leapt up the wall. Pulling himself up to peer over the edge, Jin could see Hoxie pacing along his deck looking extremely agitated. On the field below, Jin saw over a dozen of what appeared to be massive sheets of metal sticking out of the ground. Perplexed, but relieved to have some cover, Jin hoisted himself up and dropped down on the other side of the wall.

  As soon as his feet hit the ground, Jin leapt forward and pressed his back against one of the sheets of metal. Curious, he ran his hand long it and then tapped it gently with his knuckles.

  That’s solid steel, Jin mused. Hoxie must use it so he doesn’t have to constantly replace his targets, at least as often.

  Allowing himself a slight smirk, Jin drew one of his Desert Eagles and peered out from behind his cover. Hoxie was still pacing, so Jin sprinted forward and ducked behind another of the metal targets. Proceeding in this fashion, checking to see if he was clear and then bolting to the next piece of cover, Jin managed to leapfrog his way across half of Hoxie’s shooting range.