Matt gritted his teeth and was about to argue.
Suddenly, his ears twitched almost imperceptibly.
The mutated hair cells inside his cochleae were picking up ultrahigh-frequency sound waves. His face instantly went from pale to a horrifying ashen gray. His body, limp on the bed a moment ago, snapped taut like a fully drawn bow.
"Get ready to fight..." Matt forced the words through clenched teeth, his voice distorted by extreme tension. "Bullseye's found us!"
Frank wasted no words. His Tactical Knife flashed out of its sheath, and he slipped into the shadows in the corner like a hunting leopard, his eyes fixed on the clinic's already warped Roll-up Door.
"Thirty people... no, thirty-two." Cold sweat slid down Matt's temples as the 3D echolocation map in his mind frantically reconstructed the scene outside.
"Tactical boots, every one of them. They've blocked both ends of the street. HK416 assault rifle safeties clicking off. And..."
Matt sucked in a sharp breath.
"An RPG-7. They're loading an armor-piercing warhead!"
"Fuck!" Jessica kicked over the triage desk in front of her. The heavy stainless steel table crashed against the concrete floor. "Can't a person get some sleep in the middle of the night?! This shithole has worse security than a dog could provide!"
She ripped a rusty heating pipe off the wall. The cast-iron pipe, as thick as an adult's arm, snapped under her strength, its jagged end turning it into a vicious-looking heavy bludgeon.
"Quiet."
Yang Ming's voice was soft, but its unquestionable authority cut through Jessica's temper in an instant.
He stood and took off his white coat, revealing a deep black turtleneck underneath. Rather than looking at the Roll-up Door that could be blown sky-high at any moment, he walked straight toward the row of sheet-metal medicine cabinets at the back of the clinic.
With his back to the others, the dark silver ring at the base of Yang Ming's right index finger flashed faintly.
Clang! Clang!
A few dull metallic impacts sounded. Yang Ming turned around with several new objects in his hands.
He tossed them over casually.
"Catch."
Frank caught them reflexively. He looked down, and the corner of his mouth twitched sharply.
A military Remington M870 shotgun smeared with mud and blood, along with an equally filthy Thompson submachine gun.
These were the spoils Yang Ming had taken from the dead Rat Gang members in Gotham City's East End earlier.
"What century did these antiques come from?"
Holding the Thompson, Frank felt as if he had stepped into a World War II museum. The gun had plenty of firepower, but its recoil was tremendous and its accuracy terrible. In a tactical age dominated by HK416s, it was practically a fire poker.
Yang Ming ignored him. He was holding a Thompson himself.
The instant his hand closed around the grip-
In his mind, the [World-Class Firearms Mastery] the system had just awarded surged into his central nervous system like a flood bursting through an open sluice. Muscle memory, ingrained habits of skeletal leverage, and formulas for calculating ballistic wind drift fused perfectly with his body in a tenth of a second.
Yang Ming closed his eyes.
Click.
His thumb pressed the magazine release. His left hand caught the falling drum and tapped it against his leg to check the follower spring's tension. His right index finger hooked the charging handle and yanked it all the way back.
Clack.
The mechanism engaged with a crisp sound. Yang Ming's hands moved so fast they blurred, without a single wasted movement or a trace of hesitation.
These were not movements an ordinary person could make. They were the muscular instincts of an elite marksman who had spent over a decade crawling through piles of corpses and treating his firearm as part of his own body.
Frank's knife hand paused.
His gaze locked onto the thumb Yang Ming had used to release the magazine. Four-tenths of a second. Even the Navy SEALs' finest CQB instructors could not achieve that kind of fluidity.
"It's old, but it kills. That's enough." Yang Ming opened his eyes, absolute coldness showing in his black pupils. He held the submachine gun in one hand, its muzzle angled toward the floor.
"Jessica, take the back door. Whoever comes through, use that pipe to knock his head down into his chest."
"Frank, the vent on the right. There are seven rounds of buckshot in the shotgun. Your job is to stop anything alive from getting near the windows."
"As for the front door..." Yang Ming stepped behind the load-bearing wall beside the Roll-up Door, pressing his back against the cold red brick. "Leave it to me."
Clear orders. Perfect assignments. It was a textbook special-operations deployment for defending an interior.
Outside, rain poured down.
Bullseye stood in the middle of the street, letting the rain wash over his signature black combat suit. He toyed with a hardened-steel throwing dart coated in neurotoxin, his sinister gaze fixed on the dilapidated sign at 22 Lake Street.
"The boss said to wipe out the clinic and everyone in it." Bullseye grinned, exposing stark white teeth.
He raised his right hand, then chopped it down.
Boom!
The Gang member carrying the RPG pulled the trigger without hesitation. A backblast more than two meters long erupted into the rainy night, and the armor-piercing warhead streaked straight toward the clinic's Roll-up Door, trailing orange-red fire.
Within the same ten-thousandth of a second that the RPG fired-
Inside the clinic.
Yang Ming did not even peek out. From the sound of the projectile tearing through the air as it left the launcher, he instantly pinpointed its trajectory in his mind.
Bang!
The muzzle of Yang Ming's Thompson protruded half an inch through the gap Frank had kicked beneath the Roll-up Door. One single shot.
A .45-caliber brass bullet tore through the curtain of rain.
It did not target the speeding rocket, nor the shooter. Instead, it crossed thirty meters with uncanny precision and struck a spot three inches below the fuel filler door of an abandoned Ford sedan across the street.
Severe rust had left the sheet metal there as thin as a cicada's wing.
The bullet pierced the metal, generating intense friction against the gasoline vapor inside.
BOOM!!!
The Ford instantly became a raging fireball, and a massive shock wave swept through the narrow street.
The RPG rocket-propelled grenade, which had traveled less than ten meters, was knocked violently off course by the blast. It whooshed past the clinic's roof and slammed into an abandoned warehouse on the next street, exploding with a muffled boom.
"Fuck! A sniper?!" The Gang members outside fell into chaos.
"Sniper, my ass! That was a stray bullet!" Bullseye slapped the thug beside him to the ground, the white target on his forehead twisting in the firelight. "Suppressing fire! Tear that door down!"
Thirty HK416s opened fire at once.
The dense hail of bullets tore the Roll-up Door into tatters like a metal storm. The shriek of ricochets echoed wildly through the clinic. The surgical light shattered, scattering broken glass across the floor.
"Covering fire. They'll advance in three seconds!" Frank shouted from beneath the vent. He knew this tactic all too well.
"No need to wait three seconds."
Yang Ming drew a deep breath, then darted out from behind the load-bearing wall.
No invisibility blanket. No operating table for cover.
His knees bent slightly, his center of gravity low, he braced the Thompson firmly against his shoulder.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Yang Ming held the trigger down. At this distance, the Thompson's fearsome rate of fire and the stopping power of its .45-caliber rounds were pushed to their limits.
But even more terrifying was Yang Ming's recoil control.
Despite the violent recoil, the muzzle did not climb at all. His muscles acted like precision hydraulic dampers, perfectly absorbing every vibration.
The bullets did not scatter across a broad area. They traced an extraordinarily precise horizontal line, sweeping across the street at the height of the windows of the cars being used as cover, like a scythe wielded by Death.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Blooms of blood burst one after another in the rainy night.
Three gang machine gunners who had just been about to peek out and shoot had the tops of their skulls blown off before they could even scream. Brains mixed with rainwater splashed onto the red brick wall beside them.
Absolute fire superiority.
Not because of the gun, but because of the man.
Bullseye hid behind a bulletproof SUV, his face thunderous. Watching the three mutilated corpses on the ground, the corners of his eyes twitched violently.
The intel had said this was just an illegal clinic.
But the shooting stance and suppressive power of the man inside were even more terrifying than that lunatic Frank's!
"Throw flashbangs! Get in close!" Bullseye changed tactics. His specialty had never been lining up and trading gunfire, but lethal throws at close range.
Several cylindrical Stun Grenades were tossed through the clinic's ruined entrance.
"Eyes shut! Mouths open!" Frank roared.
Whump!
Blinding white light and a blast loud enough to rupture eardrums erupted inside.
Seizing the opening, five gang assault troops charged into the clinic with their guns raised, boots crunching over broken glass.
But what awaited them were not helpless lambs ready for slaughter.
Whoosh!
A savage rush of air swept in from the side.
Jessica's eyes were closed. She did not need to see. Guided by their footsteps, she swung the cast-iron heating pipe, as thick as an adult's arm, like a baseball bat and smashed it into the lead attacker's chest.
Crack!
Bones shattered with a teeth-grating crunch. His body armor might as well not have existed. An appallingly deep crater caved into his chest, and he flew backward like a cannonball, knocking over two companions behind him. Blood mixed with fragments of internal organs spurted high into the air.
"Monsters... what the fuck are these monsters?!" The two remaining attackers were terrified out of their minds and were just about to swing their muzzles around.
Bang! Bang!
Two deafening shotgun blasts thundered.
Frank leaned out from the vent, his Remington M870 belching clouds of propellant gas. Countless pellets spread in a fan at point-blank range, riddling the two men's upper bodies with holes.
The first assault wave was wiped out.