The End

Doyle stood before the window, his heavy breaths fogging the glass. London, shrouded in rain, looked like a pencil sketch soaked in water, its outlines blurred.

This was a duel to the death. Either he would be ruined and retire in disgrace like an old dog, or he would show those people that even a lion with its teeth pulled could still have venom on its claws.

His withered fingers rubbed against the window frame.

The neon lights distorted by the rain reminded him of someone: the ghost who prowled the underworld, the killer codenamed "Beta." He was the one who had taken out the female reporter, then taken his son's life.

A glimmer flashed in Doyle's murky eyes.

He would contact the killer and tell him an interesting fact: his employer had only paid a deposit, yet had set things up so he'd completed two targets beyond the agreed number. That wasn't how things were done. More importantly, he'd let Beta know that Doyle was now willing to pay him to hunt down the people who'd played him and reclaim justice with bullets.

Rainwater trickled down the glass.

Doyle turned and walked toward the safe. He still held one last trump card: those people's true identities.

Beta stepped out of the car with his backpack and turned toward John in the driver's seat. "Are you sure you want to do it this way? I say I go in while you cover me, or we storm the place together."

John shook his head. "I'm dealing with Iosef. I have to do it myself."

Beta nodded. "Your injury?"

"It won't kill me," John replied curtly.

Beta grinned. "That's not what I'm worried about. I was wondering, if we dug up Helen's ashes and stuffed you in there too, would that be disrespectful to the dead?"

John gazed at Beta for a long moment before slowly uttering one word: "Yeah."

Of course, Beta was only joking.

With the heavy backpack on his back, Beta silently climbed the metal fire escape of the abandoned chemical plant. The rusted building stood nearly three stories taller than the mineral sorting plant opposite, making it an ideal sniper's nest. His soles made no sound as they touched the rusty metal stairs.

At the top floor, Beta set down his backpack, unzipped it, and took out a desert-tan M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle.

He began preparing the rifle. He screwed the folding bipod onto the Picatinny rail beneath the barrel, then fitted a suppressor to the muzzle. The metal threads made a faint click as they locked together.

He spread the backpack beneath him, then lay on top of it and gently rested the barrel in a gap in the factory's parapet. From here he could survey the entire sorting plant, while keeping the rifle's outline from showing against the edge of the building.

He regulated his breathing and looked through the scope with his right eye, slowly sweeping the crosshairs over every spot where a gunman might be positioned in the opposite building. His left eye stayed open, watching the building for movement.

John appeared in Beta's scope.

The man in the distinctive black bulletproof suit was sneaking along the outer wall of the sorting plant. Beta's crosshairs caught a guard with a gun patrolling the wall directly above John.

Beta gently squeezed the trigger. A muffled pop, and a faint wisp of blue-gray smoke puffed from the suppressor. The guard atop the wall jerked, then pitched forward.

Below, John spread his arms and caught the unexpected "gift" as the body fell. He laid the limp body at his feet, vaulted onto the wall, and disappeared from Beta's scope.

Beta's scope moved slowly, the crosshairs sweeping over every corner of the sorting plant.

The piles of ore left behind when the site was abandoned and the towering rusted conveyor belts cast a maze of shadows in the sunlight. The windows of several surviving control rooms reflected a cold gleam.

The scope traveled along the buildings until, in an open factory building, Beta finally spotted three black Saab Station Wagons parked neatly side by side. Beside them, a gunman sat lazily on a wooden pallet, head down as he fiddled with his phone, probably chatting with someone.

Beta's gaze moved up along the factory building's structure.

On the second floor, a window with its glass still intact stood out. Through the scope, Beta clearly saw the blond target: Iosef had his back to the window, pacing around the room and occasionally shouting into his phone.

Beta's index finger gently brushed the trigger.

Iosef's nape was clear in the center of the crosshairs. One squeeze of the trigger and it would all be over. But John's insistence still rang in Beta's ears, and in the end, he lowered the scope.

The lens shifted down, and John's figure returned to view.

He was climbing up the rust-covered conveyor belt, its steel frame groaning faintly beneath him. Beta noticed a guard with a gun moving toward the rooftop's edge, in the shadows of a building beside John.

Beta's breathing gradually slowed, his heartbeat clear in his ears. The red aiming box held steady over the target. As he adjusted the muzzle, the box narrowed to a precise point.

Pop. The muffled crack of the bullet piercing the skull rang out clear as day.

The figure on the distant rooftop jerked backward and fell. John glanced up to the side but didn't break stride. He continued climbing the conveyor belt, leaving a trail of handprints smeared with rust.

Beta's scope slowly traveled up the conveyor belt's rust-red slope.

Inside the control room at the top of the conveyor belt, a gunman lounged against the windowsill, a pair of binoculars dangling carelessly against his chest. Suddenly, he stiffened. He'd noticed that the guard on the wall was missing. He raised the binoculars and carefully studied the wall, then looked toward the distant factory building opposite.

The moment he pointed the binoculars in Beta's direction—

Pop.

The bullet pierced the eyepiece, sending shards of glass and a spray of blood flying. The gunman fell backward, the back of his head slamming into the sheet-metal floor with a loud clang.

Almost at the same time, John darted into the control room. He dropped to one knee, scanned the distant factory rooftop, and pulled the radio from the corpse's waist.

In Beta's scope, John gave his pistol one last check, then turned and disappeared into the darkness at the back of the control room, like a drop of ink dissolving into it.

Beta swung his rifle toward the target in the open factory building. The gunman seated on the wooden pallet was still hunched over his phone.

Pop.

The bullet pierced his temple, and blood blossomed. The gunman slumped to the ground, his phone falling beside him. An unsent chat message remained on the screen.

A few gunshots suddenly rang out from inside the factory building.

Beta quickly shifted the scope upward. Through the intact window, he saw that John had already stormed into the room. Several gunmen fell in quick succession, their shell casings bouncing across the floor.

In the center of the scope's crosshairs, Iosef's face twisted in terror. Sweat plastered his blond hair to his forehead, and his trembling lips formed words of pleading.

But John didn't hesitate.

"Bang! Bang!" Two shots ended it all.

The back of Iosef's head burst against the window in a splash of crimson. His body toppled backward, knocking over the chair behind him and smearing a shocking streak of blood across the pristine white wall.