Chaos and the Ten Rings

Hammer Industries.

"Win back the contracts and bring Hammer Industries back from the dead."

Natasha walked over to John and set down his coffee, scrutiny in her beautiful eyes. "What's next?"

John rested a finger against his lips, gazing out at the busy streets beyond the window as he pondered something.

"This building doesn't seem very tall."

"Hammer Industries is entirely devoted to military manufacturing," Natasha said. "Its workshops are among the best in the world."

"But it isn't tall," John said, raising an eyebrow. "I like looking down on everything else."

Even Natasha was starting to struggle to follow his train of thought.

"To be precise, this is your father's company." Natasha could only remind him, "You used your father's name and money to acquire it. He's the company's majority shareholder."

"But he isn't home."

John picked up his coffee, rose, and walked to the window. "As his heir, I'm entitled to use these things," he said casually.

"He's just away from home, not dead." Natasha let out a weary sigh. "If you don't want to give your father a heart attack, stop throwing money around."

"Money only has value when you spend it."

John took a sip of coffee and said with a smile, "Just like this twenty-five-dollar coffee you bought downstairs."

"Thirty-five dollars," Natasha said flatly. "I paid the extra ten."

"Really?" John blinked. "Then thanks for treating me."

He approached Natasha, placed the empty coffee cup in her palm, and smiled. "Still, with your thirty-thousand-dollar monthly salary, buying me a cup hardly seems unreasonable."

John was in a particularly good mood that day and brazenly left the company to skip work.

Natasha lowered her eyes to the cup, which still felt slightly hot.

She reached out a finger and lightly dabbed the coffee left at the bottom.

She put her finger in her mouth and sucked it, tasting the bitterness of the black coffee. Something flickered in her eyes.

Stroking the cup's handle, she murmured, "Strange."

She had deliberately switched his coffee to the bitterest variety, yet John, a longtime coffee drinker, hadn't noticed anything wrong.

Moreover, the freshly delivered coffee had been scalding hot, but John had drunk it all without so much as a change in expression.

Natasha sank into thought.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had begun shifting the focus of its investigation into John Wick from his father to John himself.

Both the mysterious developer behind the Iron Soldiers and John's peculiar personality made the whole affair a puzzle.

While Natasha was pondering this, her phone suddenly rang.

She took it out and answered.

"I need you to come back to headquarters, Natasha."

It was Nick Fury, but this time, the director's tone sounded somewhat strange.

"What happened?" Natasha asked gravely.

"Someone brought something out of the ice," Fury said. "I need you and Barton back here."

Ice?

Something?

"I'll be right there."

Fury nodded. "Hopefully your boss will let you take time off."

"He already left."

Hearing that, Fury grumbled, "Not very gentlemanly for a Brit."

"He gave me a Ferrari." Natasha swept back her hair and teased him with the easy humor of a friend. "The latest model."

The call ended.

At S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury rubbed his bald head, then looked down at his figure.

"Female assistants sure have it good," he cursed.

As a terrorist organization, the Ten Rings had long operated in unstable regions.

Wherever they went, they generated enormous profits for arms dealers.

Some people supported those activities so they could keep creating wars.

The leader of the Ten Rings slowly awoke.

The pain of his wound tearing open drew a low, agonized groan from him.

He lifted a corner of the tent flap, his gaze vicious.

He had always been the one arranging assassinations. He had never expected to become the hunted instead.

This was his second brush with death.

The first had been in the cave where Iron Man was born, when an explosion had nearly killed him.

The second had come when an assassin he sent out returned and nearly killed him.

He couldn't understand why that man had betrayed him.

Was it money?

Those he sent out were all absolutely loyal to him.

It wasn't just loyalty. The family members they cared about were also under his control.

After that assassination attempt, the Ten Rings had known no peace.

As the world's most notorious terrorist organization, their security was tight enough to keep people from easily getting close.

But ever since that bounty went up, skilled, daring individuals had come to try to kill him day and night.

Outside, Iron Man was striking at the Ten Rings' forces. Inside, the hotel's assassins appeared and vanished at all hours.

It had nearly driven their leader to a breakdown.

Fortunately, he had held out.

He had shown those assassins no mercy.

None had survived.

He had been forced to relocate his headquarters and recuperate at another base.

Those assassins specialized in infiltration and assassination. Even special forces weren't necessarily their match in that field.

Feeling around inside the tent, the leader found a pistol and gripped it, his eyes fixed on the outside.

A team had arrived the previous night.

They were formidable, professionally trained mercenaries.

Their leader's shooting was fast, accurate, and ruthless.

Another used throwing knives, and every throw killed.

A heavy sniper rifle provided support from afar, forcing the leader to hide in the tent and play dead.

Under that group's fierce assault, this base had also crumbled.

Fortunately, he had established the base in a civilian village, which had kept the group from using fire for fear of hurting other people.

The man wearing a beret had a tough guy's build and a face to match.

"Christmas, are you sure you hit him?"

"Shut up," the man who couldn't escape going bald young muttered bitterly. "A ricochet might've hit him."

"All right, let's pull out. Hopefully that flea bites him to death."

"I said ricochet, damn it!"

As the voices faded into the distance, the leader finally released the breath he had been holding.

But he didn't leave. Instead, he stayed in the collapsed tent for another two days.

Only when he was finally certain they had left did he push the tent aside.

The weather had caused his wound to become infected and fester. Gritting his teeth, he cut away the rotten flesh with a knife.

He pried open a bullet and poured the gunpowder onto it.

Then he lit it with his last match.

The gunpowder burned across the wound, and the excruciating pain made the veins bulge on his face.

He clenched his teeth, refusing to let himself scream.

Limping, he made his way toward what had once been his tent.

Inside the collapsed tent, he found a phone stored in an iron box.

He took it out, checked the missed calls, and called back.

The call connected after three rings.

A low voice came through. "You're late."

"I need your help, or you're going down with me!" the leader threatened. "If I get caught, you'll die too!"

"Relax, my friend."

"Fuck you, Fisk!"

The leader couldn't relax at all. At first, he hadn't taken a bunch of assassins seriously either.

Only after a string of covert attempts and outright assaults had he finally understood the gap between himself and the Underworld President.

"I nearly died! But I swear, before I die, you'll be exposed too!"

"Now send me the money, and guarantee you'll take care of this!"

With that, the leader hung up.

Pushed to the brink, his emotions erupted. He hurled the phone in fury, smashing it.

Ferdinand was driving, and he was being especially careful.

This was already his boss's fifth car. Nothing could happen to this one.

Hip-hop music played inside the car.

John sat in the back seat, browsing the latest news on his phone.

"Tony Stark hasn't slept with any cover girls lately," Ferdinand said, his mouth working as much as his hands. "That's taken a lot of the fun out of the entertainment section. I even bet a friend last time on whether he'd fancy the latest cover girl."

"Even a playboy can turn over a new leaf. Not everyone likes putting their sex drive on public display." John swiped a finger across the screen and said casually, "You could read more books. It would help you improve yourself."

"Thanks for the advice, boss." Ferdinand curled his lip. "But my understanding of books stops at ABCD."

"Then you can't become a manager." With one sentence, John had Ferdinand right where he wanted him.

Hearing that his promotion was involved, Ferdinand immediately found his motivation. "I'll go read at the library tomorrow."

"Pull over at the intersection ahead."

The car stopped, and John lowered the window to look outside.

"This is Brooklyn, not Hell's Kitchen," Ferdinand said, puzzled. "What's around here besides these houses?"

"People, Ferdinand. You need to learn to pay attention to your surroundings."

John closed the window, and the car started moving again.

They had already stopped and started more than a dozen times.

Ferdinand didn't understand what John was trying to do.

"It's always worth getting familiar with your surroundings," John said mildly, rubbing his ring with a finger. "After all, New York might get destroyed one day."

"Haha, boss, is that some kind of British joke?" Ferdinand laughed.

Who would believe that a prosperous economic metropolis in the world's most powerful country could be destroyed?

The end of the world?

"We used to have Captain America. Now we have Iron Man."

Ferdinand stopped at a traffic light and raised both hands, pointing toward the sky. "God bless the United States."

"If God controls everything, then he sent you your suffering too."

John shook his head. "How can you guarantee he won't get the urge to destroy New York one day?"

Ferdinand scratched his head. His scalp itched so badly it felt as though he might be growing a brain.

When the light changed, he stomped on the accelerator, forcing a car that had nearly made it through to stop.

The driver rolled down his window and loudly offered his regards to Ferdinand's parents.

John had spent the day touring pretty much all of Brooklyn.

As the sky darkened, the car drove into Manhattan.

Ferdinand complained, "God, I feel like my ass is about to fuse with the seat."

"It's all right. The people in the car behind us feel the same." John casually pointed behind them. "You need to learn to observe."

Ferdinand looked in the rearview mirror. A silver car was following them.

When he turned, it turned too.

"Are they tailing us?"

"I'm glad you know such a technical term."

John raised an eyebrow. "They've been following us since we left the company."

Ferdinand exclaimed in disbelief. He hadn't noticed at all.

As they passed through a sparsely populated area, the car behind them opened its sunroof.

Then someone pulled out a rocket launcher.

Ferdinand's eyes widened at the sight.

Words referring to a certain substance kept spilling from his mouth.

He floored the accelerator, but the rocket launcher's trigger had already been pulled.

Trailing fire, the rocket struck the car.

An explosion erupted amid the chaotic blaring of car horns.

Flames engulfed the luxury car worth more than five million.