Total Annihilation

It wasn't especially fast, but against two killers who had lost their sense of direction, it was more than enough.

His right elbow came up, striking the wrist of the first man as he tried to raise his gun. A sharp crack of breaking bone rang out.

Then his elbow followed through and slammed into the man's nose.

The man didn't even groan. He toppled backward.

Lynn pivoted, his left leg whipping around like a lash to strike the back of the second man's knee as he bent over, coughing violently.

The man lost his balance and fell forward onto his knees.

Lynn's palm came down from above, chopping into the back of his neck.

Down he went.

From the moment the door was kicked open to the moment both men fell, the whole thing took no more than four seconds.

He kicked their weapons into a corner, making barely a sound.

At the back entrance,

Grey Falcon charged in with his last subordinate.

He didn't spare a glance for the two men lying by the doorway. His eyes immediately locked onto the far end of the corridor.

Two men lay sprawled on the floor in strange positions, motionless.

The air carried a faint smell of silicone oil and blood.

Grey Falcon's expression changed.

"The target isn't an ordinary person!"

He didn't shout, but the Throat Vibration Sensor clearly transmitted his words to the last member of his team.

The next second, he drew two short blades from behind his waist. Their matte blades reflected no light.

Lowering his center of gravity, he moved like a hunting leopard, feet crossing soundlessly as he pounced on Lynn, who stood at the clinic's examination-room doorway.

He was an expert.

Lynn's mind reached the same conclusion in an instant.

He accessed Batman's knowledge base on martial arts styles.

Bullseye.

The opening stance of this knife technique bore the unmistakable hallmarks of Bullseye's style.

Fierce and crafty, it relied on feints and reverse-grip thrusts to create opportunities for a killing blow.

But there were differences. This style focused more on close-quarters grappling and suppression.

He was an elite trained in Bullseye's system, with other fighting styles woven into it.

His response path was calculated.

Grey Falcon's first blade thrust straight at Lynn's throat, moving incredibly fast.

But in Lynn's dynamic vision, the blade's trajectory was crystal clear.

He made only one move.

He took half a step back.

That half-step was enough for the blade's tip to skim past his collar.

At once, Grey Falcon's left-hand blade swept upward in a reverse-grip slash toward Lynn's abdomen. This was the real killing blow.

Lynn didn't dodge.

He grabbed a stainless-steel tray from the nearby operating table and used it to block the strike.

The metallic clash rang out sharply in the silent clinic.

Sparks flew.

Grey Falcon's pupils narrowed.

He blocked it?

The angle and timing of his strike had been honed through countless repetitions, designed to cut off every escape route during a pursuit like this.

But his opponent moved as if he had foreseen the attack.

After blocking the strike, Lynn didn't throw the tray away. Instead, he let it roll upward with the force of Grey Falcon withdrawing his blade and slapped it toward his face.

Grey Falcon could only lean back to avoid it.

That backward lean left him open for 0.3 seconds.

Lynn seized the opening.

He drove his right fist forward.

Not at Grey Falcon's face, but straight into the elbow of his knife-wielding right arm.

With seventy percent of a Super Soldier's strength, boosted by a further fifty-five percent from Superhuman Strength, even using only a fifth of his power was enough to cause structural damage.

"Crack."

Grey Falcon heard his own bone break.

The pain instantly numbed his entire right arm. His short blade flew from his hand and clattered to the floor.

The third move.

Lynn's knee had already driven into Grey Falcon's abdomen as pain bent him over.

Grey Falcon's body curled up like a cooked shrimp.

For the final blow, Lynn brought his elbow down on the back of his neck.

Grey Falcon hit the ground.

He didn't get back up.

The last killer following him had watched the whole thing unfold.

He had seen his captain, one of Kingpin's top killers.

The man codenamed Grey Falcon had been cleanly taken down in three moves, like an amateur.

Fear overwhelmed him.

All he could think of was running.

He turned and sprinted toward the back door.

But before he had taken two steps, a silver streak flew at him from behind, cutting through the air.

He felt something prick the side of his neck, like a needle.

Then a powerful wave of numbness rapidly spread from that spot throughout his body.

His legs gave way. His body wouldn't obey him, and he pitched forward onto the floor.

The last thing he saw was Lynn walking up to him, then pulling a... syringe needle from his neck.

Absolute silence returned to the clinic.

Six men.

All down.

Lynn stood amid the wreckage of the clinic, his chest rising and falling steadily, his breathing even.

He didn't deal with the men right away.

Instead, he took out his phone, walked over to Grey Falcon, and snapped a photo of his face.

Then he photographed his equipment, the raven tattoo on his arm, and the ring on his other hand.

He captured every detail clearly.

He recorded the equipment serial numbers, communicator models, and distinctive markings on all six men.

They were all links in the chain of evidence pointing to Kingpin.

Only after he finished did he start cleaning up.

He dragged the incapacitated men one by one into the storage room and bound them with zip ties.

He set the broken door back in place, bracing it with spare wooden strips and nails.

He mopped up the blood and alcohol on the floor.

He put the shifted medicine shelves and furniture back where they belonged.

The whole process was calm, efficient, and methodical, like performing a delicate surgical procedure.

He put everything back the way it had been.

Except for one thing.

Seven hundred meters away, on the top floor of an office building,

a bat-shaped miniature drone hovered in the shadow of a billboard.

Its high-sensitivity lens had just captured a brief flash of sparks from the metal collision inside the clinic.

It had also caught the blurry silhouette of a man falling in front of another.

The image shook once, then went dark.

The battle inside the target building was over.

It had ended so quickly that the remote operator hadn't even had time to react or adjust the focus to make out more details.

The Batcave.

Four in the morning.

Gotham City lay cloaked in the deepest silence, but the lights here had never gone out.

A blurry frame was frozen on the Batcomputer's enormous screen.

Bruce Wayne sat at the control console, still wearing his heavy suit of armor. His gaze beneath the cowl was sharp as a blade.

He had held this position for over an hour.

The image on the screen came from the miniature drone hovering high above, seven hundred meters away.

The distance and poor nighttime lighting made for an unsatisfactory image, riddled with noise.

But for Bruce, it was enough.

He had slowed the brief footage of the clash inside the clinic, captured by the drone, to one-twentieth of normal speed and was replaying it frame by frame.

The first key moment.

One figure struck another in the neck with a hand chop, and the other figure crumpled to the floor.

Bruce tapped the control panel, zoomed in on the image, and froze it at the instant Lynn struck.