The blade in the night

Night fell, and Queens was swallowed by boundless darkness once again.

The nights here were deathly still, broken only by the occasional shrill police siren and the barking of mutated stray dogs in the distance. Under the pallid moonlight, ruined walls cast savage, clawing shadows, like so many silent, enormous tombstones.

Over the past few days, Zhao Fan had used Benjamin's information to venture frequently into high-risk blind spots among the ruins, hoping to find high-grade remnants. If he could analyze them, he might gain an ability that brought a qualitative change. But reality was always harsh. All he found were low-grade remnants whose analytical value was barely better than nothing.

Tonight's location was the last one Benjamin had provided, and the one with the most abnormal energy readings.

Zhao Fan had changed into a dark gray hooded tactical shirt and carried the Lead Shadow radiation-resistant backpack he had bought for a hefty price on the black market. Though it was a secondhand, hand-modified piece of equipment, as heavy as a solid tombstone, its built-in circulating filtration system and high-density lead lining could keep deadly radiation firmly sealed inside. He tightened its straps, his right hand instinctively reaching toward his waist, where another black-market purchase-a tactical belt-held ten specially made small throwing knives in neat rows.

He put on his respirator and night-vision goggles. Following Ben's information, he wound through the maze of ruins for nearly forty minutes before finally finding the ventilation shaft entrance deep inside a dead-end alley.

Dust and enormous cobwebs filled the passage. Zhao Fan crawled carefully, trying not to make a sound. After roughly fifty meters through the cramped duct, a vertical maintenance ladder appeared ahead.

He slid down the ladder, stirring a faint cloud of dust as his feet touched the ground.

This was the second basement level of a subway maintenance station on the edge of Manhattan. It was an underground cavity without any natural light, its absolute darkness as thick as ink, pressing against the optic nerves.

Zhao Fan switched on his tactical flashlight and set it to its dimmest setting.

[Weak Energy Perception] activated.

Suddenly, the stillness in his mind broke. Roughly at two o'clock ahead, a faint but exceptionally clear, highly regular pulse signal appeared.

Hum... hum...

It was not scattered background radiation. It was a rhythmic pulsation, like the heartbeat of some beast sleeping deep within the ruins.

Zhao Fan switched off the flashlight, plunging the entire basement into darkness so complete he could not see his hand in front of his face. He closed his eyes and slowly approached in a crouch, relying entirely on the faint blue guide lines projected onto the retina in his mind.

He felt his way to the broken section of an overturned carriage.

Inside the carriage, in a gap pinned beneath several enormous concrete slabs, a somewhat battered silver-gray metal arm lay silently. Bundles of metal resembling biological muscle fibers covered its surface, and its fingertips glimmered with an unsettling, spectral blue light in the absolute darkness.

[B-grade remnant detected: Chitauri Biomechanical Arm (active).]

[Analysis value: medium.]

Zhao Fan's heart pounded. B-grade! Active!

He swallowed, reaching back with his right hand to grip a throwing knife's handle. The cold touch of metal instantly cooled his heated mind. He drew a crowbar from the side of his backpack, preparing to pry up the concrete slabs pressing down on the mechanical arm.

But the instant he raised the crowbar, an intense sense of danger shot up his spine like an electric current!

"Don't move, kid, unless you want your head to burst like a watermelon."

A coarse, grating voice came from the darkness behind him.

Then, click! click! click! Three dazzling tactical flashlight beams tore through the darkness. Like three pale swords, they crossed over Zhao Fan, pinning him in their glare as he half-crouched on the carriage wreckage.

Accompanied by footsteps crunching over rubble, three dark figures emerged from the other end of the passage. Their leader was a burly white man with a brutish face. He held an illegally modified large-caliber pneumatic shotgun, its black muzzle looking especially vicious in the flashlight glow. Two scavengers followed behind him, carrying hydraulic cutters and a machete.

They belonged to the Rust Gang, one of the notorious bottom-tier gangs in the "sewers."

"Throw those toy knives on your belt onto the ground, then get the hell out. I'm in a good mood today. I might let you keep your miserable life." The burly man grinned, his greedy gaze passing over Zhao Fan and fixing on the blue-glowing mechanical arm.

Facing the direct glare of three beams, Zhao Fan did not raise a hand to shield his eyes. He merely stood up slowly. His gaze was terrifyingly calm, like an ancient, bottomless well.

"I found this first," Zhao Fan said without a ripple in his voice.

"You found it first? Hahahaha!" The burly man sounded as though he had heard the funniest joke in the world. "Out here in the ruins, it's not first come, first served. The living take everything!"

"You're right. The living take everything."

Before the words had fully left his mouth, Zhao Fan moved.

He did not reach for the knives at his waist, because the gun remained trained on him. Through his [Weak Energy Perception], a bright red warning had already formed in Zhao Fan's mind before the muscles in the burly man's trigger finger contracted!

"You have a death wish!" the burly man roared, pulling the trigger without hesitation.

Bang!

The deafening shotgun blast echoed through the basement as a broad fan of steel pellets tore through the air.

But at the very instant the gun fired, astonishing strength erupted from Zhao Fan's legs. Like a night owl flying close to the ground, he dropped into a sliding kick diagonally to the side.

The searing pellets skimmed his scalp and the bullet-resistant fibers over his shoulder, turning the carriage's metal shell behind him into a sieve. Riding the momentum of his dive, Zhao Fan rolled straight beyond the reach of all three flashlight beams. Like a drop of ink dissolving in water, he vanished completely into the boundless, absolute darkness around them.

"Where is he?! Find him with the lights!" the burly man bellowed in fury.

The three beams swept wildly through the dark basement, dust churning violently in their light. But the darkness was too vast and the ruined terrain too complicated. It was as though Zhao Fan had vanished into thin air.

Fear began spreading through the three thugs' hearts.

In this underground space without a single light source, their flashlights offered no sense of security. Instead, they made them the most conspicuous living targets.

"Where is he... I can't hear him..." The machete-wielding lackey's voice began to tremble as his shaking flashlight beam swept over a pile of scrap metal.

The instant his beam moved away, a slender hand rose without a sound in a dark blind spot less than three meters from him.

Whoosh!

The faint sound of something cutting through the air was masked by heavy breathing.

Squelch!

"Urgh..."

The machete-wielding lackey did not even have time to let out a full scream before a specially made black throwing knife precisely sliced through his carotid artery and buried itself deep in his windpipe. He clamped both hands over his neck, blood spurting between his fingers like a fountain. His flashlight clattered to the ground and rolled aside.

"Tommy! Damn it! Shoot! Just fire everywhere!" The burly man completely panicked.

The other lackey, carrying the hydraulic cutters, turned around in terror, sweeping his flashlight beam wildly.

Whoosh!

A second deadly streak shot out of the darkness from a completely different direction.

Clink-squelch!

Carrying the terrifying kinetic energy of the strength Zhao Fan had built up in the darkness, the knife shattered the lackey's goggles. Half its blade sank into his right eye socket, piercing straight into his brain. His massive body crashed down like a length of rotten timber, his flashlight beam pointing limply at the ceiling.

Just ten seconds.

Of the hyenas who had intended to hunt someone else, only the burly man remained.

The entire basement sank back into suffocating silence, broken only by the dying convulsions of the lackey on the ground whose windpipe had been cut open.

The burly man pressed his back against the cold concrete wall, panting heavily. His flashlight swept frantically around him, but all he saw was endless darkness and his companions' bodies lying in pools of blood.

Whatever was roaming through that darkness was no cleaner. It was a ghost that killed without blinking!

He broke down.

His extreme fear finally turned into hysterical madness. He knew he would not make it out today. His opponent could locate him in the darkness with the precision of night-vision goggles, while he was nothing but a blind man.

The burly man abruptly aimed both his flashlight and his gun at the blue-glowing mechanical arm in the gap.

His contorted face looked utterly savage, his eyes filled with madness.

"You want this, don't you? You bastard hiding in the dark!" the burly man roared hysterically. "Even if I die, I'm not fucking leaving it for you!!!"

Clack! He chambered another round in the shotgun.

Hidden in the darkness, Zhao Fan's pupils contracted sharply.

Not good!

Zhao Fan lunged out from behind a pillar, hurling his third throwing knife like a bolt of lightning!

But just as the knife was about to pierce the burly man's throat, the man pressed his muzzle firmly against the concrete slab pinning the mechanical arm and pulled the trigger, a crazed smile on his face!

Bang!!!

Squelch!

The close-range shotgun blast and the sound of a throwing knife piercing flesh rang out simultaneously.

The knife went straight through the burly man's throat, and he fell backward.

But the large-caliber shot had also shattered the already fragile concrete slab at point-blank range, pouring its terrifying kinetic energy without reserve into the Chitauri Biomechanical Arm.

Boom!

Under the shotgun blast, an extremely unstable, violent spray of blue energy sparks erupted from the mechanical arm's damaged core, lighting the surroundings as brightly as day.

"Damn it!"

Zhao Fan rolled clear of the flying fragments and immediately rushed to the wreckage.

His heart bled as he looked at the mangled mechanical arm on the ground. Its outer armor was almost entirely destroyed, more than half its muscle-like metal bundles had snapped, and its central energy source now lay exposed to the air, emitting a piercing electrical sizzle as its blue light flickered.

With his dying act, that thug had destroyed this perfect prize.

He placed his hand on the mechanical arm, and light flowed across it, but the system gave no further prompt that it could be analyzed.

But Zhao Fan did not give up. Even if it could no longer be analyzed, it should still sell for some money!

Enduring the burning sensation of the high-energy radiation, Zhao Fan put on lead-steel gloves, yanked the extremely dangerous core component out of the scrap, and stuffed it firmly into a radiation-resistant lead bag, quickly sealing it.

Just as he finished and was about to catch his breath, a faint, different smell of blood suddenly drifted through the air.

It was not the blood of those thugs.

This smell was stronger, more pungent, coming from the tunnel deeper inside the maintenance station.

Zhao Fan froze instantly.

His [Weak Energy Perception] sounded frantic alarms like a cat whose tail had been stepped on!

He could not detect the heat of any living creature, but he could sense a violent, cruel, icy residue, as though an invisible, blood-dripping scythe had just swept through there.

Zhao Fan tightened his grip on the bloodstained throwing knife and lightened his footsteps. Hugging the wall, he crept deeper into the tunnel like a shadow. The farther he went, the lower the temperature seemed to fall, and the stronger that nauseating smell of blood became.

Rounding an enormous transformer box, Zhao Fan saw a sight that instantly shrank his pupils to pinpoints.

It was a small underground storeroom. Now, it had become a hell on earth.

Seven or eight bodies lay strewn across the floor. Judging by their fine tactical vests, they had been a well-equipped underground mercenary squad-the Steel Monster.

But now they were all dead, and their deaths were extremely strange. There were no signs of an intense firefight. Every one of them had been killed with a single strike, their bodies and heavy bulletproof breastplates sliced cleanly in half. The cuts were as smooth as mirrors, and the metal edges even bore a faint purple glow from being instantly melted by high heat.

"Help... help me..."

A faint voice came from among the bodies. The mercenary squad's captain still had a breath left. With mangled hands, he desperately crawled outward, his eyes filled with utter terror.

Zhao Fan walked over, watching him warily. "Who did this?"

The captain clutched Zhao Fan's trouser leg, a rattling sound coming from his throat.

"Kes... Kestrel..."

Using the last of his strength, he uttered that name, which seemed to carry a curse.

"Help... help me..."

The captain breathed his last. On the floor not far from him, a specially made safe that should have contained a core energy source had been violently torn open. It was empty.

Zhao Fan stood in the pool of blood, cold all over.

Kestrel.

If I'd run into Kestrel in this tunnel just now... would I still be alive?

Zhao Fan looked down at the ordinary steel throwing knife in his hand, still dripping blood, then at the purple, high-temperature blade marks left on the mercenaries' wounds. A hunger unlike anything he had ever felt surged within him.

He did not want to be merely a pawn that could be crushed at any moment.

He lingered no longer. Tightening the backpack containing the broken mechanical arm against his back, he became a silent gray shadow and escaped through the ventilation duct into the New York night without looking back.