Chapter 1: Retirement Day
On the 35th floor of the skyscraper, the rain battering the city lashed against the windows. The room was enclosed by massive glass walls that symbolized luxury, coldness, and power. Next to the leather sofas on the right, a minibar stood cluttered with half-emptied glasses and expensive liquor bottles. Right at the heart of the room, behind his heavy oak desk, sat Dominik; he had arranged everything in the room to his own liking, cutting the figure of a boss ruling in arrogant silence.
The sound of gunfire echoing from the corridor outside raged relentlessly for two full minutes, then abruptly cut out. The room’s lights flickered erratically, and nothing but a deep silence came from the phone line. Dominik held his breath, staring at the main door, when it suddenly burst wide open. His burly bodyguard stumbled inside, but before he could take even a single step, he collapsed to the floor with a massive knife embedded in his back.
Standing right behind the bodyguard was Vance. He wore a white t-shirt with a body armor vest thrown casually over it — a look that made him seem less like a professional assassin taking his job seriously, and more like an outsider who had turned this violent moment into a stage for his own amusement. His light brown hair was slightly tousled, and his mustache, paired with a faint stubble, gave his face a rugged, somewhat reckless expression. He wore a look as if he were pulling the funniest prank in the world.
“Helloooo,” Vance said. His voice echoed through the coldness of the room like a muffled bell.
Dominik didn’t even get the chance to reach for his gun; with superhuman speed, Vance was already atop the desk. Before Dominik could comprehend what was happening, he felt the fingers of his right hand severed, and in a single swift motion, Vance pinned his left hand to the desk with a knife. Dominik’s shriek pierced every corner of the room.
“What do you want, you psychopath?!” Dominik groaned in agony. “Money? Fame? I can give you everything!”
Vance pulled out his intelligence phone from his pocket as if checking a trivial grocery list.
“Oh Dominik, your file is quite extensive,” he said, scanning the screen. “Arms trafficking, human smuggling, financing terrorists… Just to name a few. But you’re retired now.” Vance paused and added with a mocking grin, “Why do you even live?”
Right at that moment, a sound ripped through the silence of the room. The phone line on the desk flickered to life with a one-second crackle, like the dying breath of someone on the verge of passing, and rang shrilly. The smile that had been hanging on Vance’s face until that moment froze like a mask at the very first ring of the phone. Without any transition, his body tensed with mechanical perfection. While that first ring was still echoing, he shattered the phone with a single gunshot. As sparks and plastic shards scattered through the office, hanging suspended in the air, Vance holstered his weapon, and that smile returned to his face as if nothing had happened.
He shrugged at Dominik, completely unbothered. Right then, tearing out of the void just behind Vance’s right side, a dark, faceless silhouette emerged — two and a half meters tall.
Dominik’s eyes widened in sheer terror. “What the fuck is that thing?!”
Vance turned his head slightly to look at the silhouette. “Right on time, as always,” he whispered. Then, leaning down toward Dominik, he raised his hands like claws and made a “GRRRRRRR…” sound. As Dominik tried to cover his face and screamed, shielding himself with his fingerless right hand, Vance burst into a roaring laughter.
“You should have seen your face!” he laughed. Then he leaned in closer to Dominik, whispering as if sharing a great secret: “This thing keeps following me around too, honestly, I don’t get it either.”
Vance yanked the knife out of Dominik’s hand and, in one swift motion, hurled him out the window, into the dark void of the city. The silhouette turned its head slightly toward Vance, its face still shrouded in darkness. Caring about absolutely nothing, Vance turned his back and began walking toward the main door. At that exact moment, the dark silhouette drifted like smoke through the shattered window where Dominik had been thrown, melting into the night.
To be continued..
