"In the End"
Frenchie parked the Old Ford outside the Chinese restaurant at Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street and killed the engine.
Two red lanterns hung outside the restaurant. The smell of grease caked on their shades mingled with star anise and char siu drifting out through the ducts.
"This the place John mentioned?"
Mother's Milk leaned out from the passenger seat and glanced at the faded Chinese sign above the storefront.
"If I'm not mistaken, it should be a noodle joint. Yeah, run by people from Hong Kong, too."
"Oh, as long as it's not called The Eight Immortals Restaurant or something. That fucking thing scarred my childhood."
Frenchie chewed his gum and took out a notebook.
"Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street, red lanterns, closed for rectification. This is definitely it."
Frenchie pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, took it out, and flipped to the notes John had dictated.
"Her designation is K-17. She was one of Vought's last batch of test subjects for reverse-engineered Compound V. Her specific ability should be spontaneous enhancement of close-quarters combat capability.
"Right, she also has a younger brother. They were captured together, but his younger brother was designated a superterrorist by Vought.
"After learning about her brother, she went berserk and destroyed the entire lab. Then they put her in solitary confinement.
"After that, she was transferred through several detention sites and finally escaped during the chaos at a Black Creek Company outpost."
"And then?"
"Well, here she is, isn't she? Must've been caught again."
Frenchie pushed open the car door.
"Let's go. John said he needed more test material. No idea whether she'll work."
"Didn't it work on The Deep?"
"That dumbass has spent two whole days playing in the Atlantic Ocean. I'm starting to think he's an isolated case. Letting him try it first was a real fucking blunder."
"Still, you have to admit, New Compound V works surprisingly well. Remember, The Deep used to be nothing but a dumb prick who played with fish."
"Yeah. It's making me want a shot, too."
The two crossed the street and reached the restaurant's entrance.
A handwritten notice in traditional Chinese hung on the door: "Closed for rectification." But the exhaust fan in the kitchen was clearly still running.
Something was wrong.
They exchanged a glance, kept walking, then circled into a narrow alley along the side.
Empty cardboard boxes and several plastic buckets cluttered the alley. A stray cat crouched on a trash can, licking its paws. When it saw the two-legged creatures approaching, it raised its tail and hurriedly leaped into the darkness.
"What an ugly cat."
"Shut up. Get to work."
Mother's Milk peered inside and found the fire door unlocked, dish-soap suds still clinging to its sheet-metal handle.
That suggested there was probably a kitchen inside, with someone still in it.
At Mother's Milk's signal, Frenchie pushed open the door. A gray-haired old man from Hong Kong stood tossing a wok beside the stove, green peppers and sliced meat flying inside it.
Hearing the door, he paused with his spatula, then resumed tossing the wok without turning around.
"We're closed today. Says so on the sign."
"Uh... nei hou. Forget it, I'll stick to English. Sir, we're not here to eat."
Frenchie spat out a phrase of broken Cantonese he had learned from a local Hong Kong gang, then thought better of it and gave up.
"We're looking for someone. Black hair, Asian woman, can't talk. Her name's probably Kimiko."
"What? Kimi-what?"
The old man lifted the wok off the flame and turned around. His eyes swept between Frenchie and Mother's Milk twice before settling on Frenchie's open hands.
"Kimiko."
"What-miko?"
"All right, gramps. Go play."
"Oh, I don't think the person you're looking for is here. I'm just a cook. Want some char siu?"
"Uh... no, no. Take a look at this."
Frenchie pulled a sketchbook from his shoulder bag.
On it was a profile sketch of Kimiko he had drawn from John's description. Actually, John thought it was an eighty-percent likeness.
"She really ain't here. If you're not eating, fuck off. Fuck your whole damn family."
Although Frenchie and Mother's Milk couldn't understand Cantonese, they could grasp the general meaning. The old gentleman was politely sending them his regards.
"All right. If you see her..."
Before Frenchie could finish, footsteps from the back alley cut him off.
The footsteps were a jumble, at least five or six people, their soles grinding over broken bricks and empty cans with an unbearably grating noise.
A hoarse voice came from the alley entrance:
"That feral woman's somewhere around here. We let her get away last time. Don't screw this up again.
"Boss said alive is preferable, but if she resists, dead works too."
These people spoke English, which the two understood all too well.
Frenchie and Mother's Milk exchanged a glance and moved into another room.
The next second, Mother's Milk pulled the switchblade from his waist.
Thud!
The back door of a side room not far from them was kicked open. The sheet-metal door struck the wall and bounced back, only for a hand to stop it.
A big, bald man with a full beard entered, followed by five men who looked like thugs.
The last to enter was tall and thin, wearing glasses and holding a tablet displaying Kimiko's file photo.
The bald man scanned the kitchen, then fixed his gaze on the dark figure crouching just inside a concealed doorway by the cold-storage entrance.
"Just as I thought."
He grinned, revealing rotten teeth yellowed by tobacco.
"Told you she hadn't gone far. K-17, you made me chase you for blocks.
"Last time, you broke two of my men's wrists. Their medical bills are coming straight out of what we get for your organs.
"Cooperate this time, and I might consider not breaking your legs. Yeah, being just a little gentle."
The bald man drew a stun gun from his waist. Blue-white arcs crackled between its contacts.
The others spread out around the cold-storage entrance, one circling to the side to block the escape route through the concealed door.
Inside the concealed doorway, Kimiko slowly rose from her crouch.
She looked neither at the bald man nor at the people surrounding her. She simply stared fixedly at the entrance.
"Hhh... hhh..."
Her nostrils fluttered slightly, her fingers half curled beside her thighs. Then an extremely low whimper rose from her throat.
She looked just like a she-wolf about to spring on its prey.
"Bitch. Guess you don't want to behave."
The bald man curled his lip and attacked first.
He pulled the trigger, sending the stun gun's electrodes flying toward Kimiko's chest on two thin wires.
Kimiko reacted extremely quickly and dodged.
The electrodes skimmed past her shoulder and struck the shelving behind her, their arcs scorching a small patch on a frozen duck's packaging.
"Hhh..."
Before the bald man could react, Kimiko denied him a second pull of the trigger and slammed into him like a cannonball.
The next second, the back of his head struck the sheet-metal corner guard on the stove's edge with a dull thud.
Kimiko raised both hands and hooked her blackened nails down between his shirt sleeves and his skin. Then her teeth sank into his wrist.
She bit and tore with all her strength!
She jerked her head violently, ripping away a small piece of flesh.
Blood instantly spurted from a branch of the bald man's artery, splashing her face and dripping from her chin onto the shirt over his chest.
"Aaaaah-"
Screaming, the bald man dropped the stun gun and tried to choke her with his other hand.
But Kimiko had already slid forward, driving her knee into his abdomen. Stomach acid surged straight up his throat, mixed with his half-digested lunch, and poured violently from the corners of his mouth.
"Boss!"
The thug in the plaid shirt ran up from the flank, trying to stab a cleaver into her lower back.
Unfortunately, before the cleaver could reach her, Kimiko's hideous face, smeared with blood like a yaksha's, was already in front of him.
"No-"
Kimiko's back arched sharply as she looked down at the thug sprawled on the floor.
Crack-
She seized Plaid Shirt's neck with a backhanded grip. As her fingers tightened, a faint crack came from the bones beneath his skin.
She wasn't finished.
She twisted his arm half a turn against the joint, wrenching his shoulder out of its socket.
Then she swung his entire body up and hurled him at the third thug charging toward her.
Their foreheads collided, splitting skin and flesh. Blood gushed from their hairlines and smeared their faces, and the impact sent the jars beside the stove flying dozens of meters.
The remaining two thugs lunged at her together.
One tried to lock his arm around her neck from the side, while the other bent to retrieve the bald man's fallen stun gun.
The instant the arm closed around her neck, Kimiko tilted her head, opened her mouth, and bit into the forearm choking her.
Her canines pierced shirt fabric and skin, sinking into muscle. With a scream, the arm around her neck loosened.
Looking at the fallen thug, Kimiko instantly turned her ferocious gaze toward the man reaching for the stun gun.
(Remember my schedule: either two chapters a day-if the word count looks off, that means two chapters-or one extra-long chapter a day.)
"That should be her!"
Just as Frenchie and Mother's Milk, armed with frozen fish, were about to rush out from inside the cold storage, the fight was already nearly over.
To be precise, Kimiko had already wiped out everyone on her side, while there were still surviving remnants on theirs.
Mother's Milk kicked an approaching thug in the small of his back from the side, knocking him over with one blow.
Then he grabbed a frying pan from the stove and swung it backward into the face of another thug trying to ambush him from behind.
The pan's bottom struck the man's cheekbone with a satisfying crunch. His nose bent halfway sideways, and blood sprayed everywhere, mingling with the cold oil still left in the pan.
Disgusting as hell.
But farther away, Kimiko hadn't stopped what she was doing because of their appearance.
She sat astride the bald man's chest, both hands clamped around his throat.
"Urgh..."
The bald man's hands weakly clawed at the gaps between the floor tiles. His lips had turned bluish-purple, and his eyes kept rolling back.
Looking closely, you could even see Kimiko still chewing scraps of human tissue she had torn off.
By now, her pupils had shrunk into two tiny black dots. There was no reason in them, only extreme repression and brutality pouring wildly out.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She slammed the back of the bald man's head against the tiles an unknown number of times. Only when he stopped moving completely did she stop and raise her head slightly.
On the floor beside her lay humanoid creatures, every one mangled beyond recognition and dead beyond all doubt.
Just then, Frenchie also delivered a full-force blow to the last thug with a baseball bat he had swiped, smoothly bursting his head: fatal damage dealt, Destruction unleashed again.
A complete victory.
"Did you see that? I don't think she's someone we want to mess with."
Mother's Milk tossed away the bat coated in yellow and white matter with disgust and spoke to Frenchie.
"Hey, I think there's still a chance... I'm so kindhearted. We're reinforcements!"
"Who fires on reinforcements?"
As he spoke, Frenchie tossed his goggles to Mother's Milk, approached from the side, and raised both hands where Kimiko could see them.
But the idea was beautiful, while reality was all bare bones.
Neither of these two had ever appeared in Kimiko's memories.
To Kimiko, these weren't "reinforcements." She didn't believe anyone would be willing to help him. All that remained were threats.
After suffering persecution taken to its utmost extremes, she now trusted only herself.
At that thought, Kimiko whipped her head around, released the bald man, and lunged at Frenchie.
With a dull thud, the truck came hurtling in, and Frenchie's back slammed squarely against the stove's hard edge.
"Fuck-we..."
Before he could catch his breath and finish, Kimiko smashed the back of his head against the sheet-metal corner guard on the wall.
The next second, dull pain bored through his skull into his brain. A white glare exploded across his vision, and an incessant ringing filled his ears.
Kimiko had never played Street Fighter and didn't know what a turn-based game was.
So before Frenchie could make another move, she drove one knee out and pinned his breastbone hard.
Then she pressed down with her entire weight, her fingertips locking around his windpipe.
"I'm-here to help-"
Severely suffocating, Frenchie gripped her wrists and tried to pry them apart, clenching his teeth until his jaw ached.
But Kimiko's fingers seemed rooted in place, tightening further and further, her nails gouging deep into the flesh along the sides of his neck.
Soon, warm blood welled between her fingers and slid down the hollow of his throat into his collar.
His vision began to darken, collapsing inward in rings from the edges toward the center.
Just as his thoughts were about to sink to the bottom, Frenchie suddenly remembered.
What John had told him that day at the auto shop.
Kimiko should also have a younger brother, surnamed Miyashiro. His exact name was unknown, but only the Japanese naming format worked that way.
And this Miyashiro had already been identified by Vought as a terrorist and was constantly on the run.
If Kimiko refused to cooperate, they could use this to their advantage.
"Cough, cough... Miyashiro, your brother... he's wanted."
Frenchie fought through the intense feeling of suffocation and barely managed to force out a few words.
All he could do now was take a gamble-bet that John's information was true.
So far, nothing John had given them had been wrong.
And Frenchie's gamble paid off.
Within seconds of his words leaving his mouth, Kimiko's fingers paused for an instant.
Then she released Frenchie's neck, got off him, and took two steps back, her back hitting the cold storage doorway.
The next second, she raised her hands and made a very short series of signs.
Frenchie slumped weakly against the edge of the stove, clutching the bleeding nail marks on his neck and gasping for breath.
He didn't understand sign language.
"Mother's Milk, what's she saying?"
Mother's Milk had once worked as a guard at a juvenile detention center and had seen some serious situations. He should have been able to understand a little sign language.