A Hitman's Guide To Becoming A Hero

The tip of Malik Vance’s ceremonial blade hovered two inches above Nicholas’s chest. The dark steel shivered with the kinetic vibration of the Master’s mutated arm, casting a cold, sharp shadow over the torn fabric of Nicholas’s tactical vest.

On millions of screens across the world, the breath of two billion people caught in their throats. The hero who fought without powers was pinned, his throat locked in the crushing grip of an obsidian claw, his broken ribs groaning under the brutal weight of the monster pinning him to the floor.

"No final words?" Malik sneered, his grip tightening until Nicholas’s windpipe creaked. "Then die like the mercenary you are."

Malik plunged the blade downward with the full momentum of his mutated body.

In that exact fraction of a second, Nicholas did not try to reach for the descending blade. His left hand, resting flat against the splintered floorboards, curled into a tight, deliberate fist.

Inside the palm of his tactical glove, a miniature mechanical ratchet clicked.

Before setting foot on the execution stage, while the thermite smoke still blanketed the western flank, Nicholas had secured a spool of high-tensile tungsten monofilament along the floor’s foundational joists. During their very first clash, when Nicholas had deliberately rolled across the boards to absorb Malik’s backhand, his boot had snagged the weighted loop, flicking the micro-hook around the ankle of Malik’s mutated left leg.

Nicholas engaged the tension reel.

The spring-loaded spool inside his wrist housing whipped backward at two hundred miles an hour.

The razor-thin monofilament line snapped taut with a vicious, metallic hum. It didn’t pull at Malik’s ankle to trip him. The wire was routed up the Master’s back through a pre-rigged anchor loop on the scaffolding above, crossing diagonally over his left shoulder.

SHNNNK.

The monofilament line, sharper than surgical obsidian, whipped across Malik’s neck and shoulder.

It sheared clean through the armored polymer catheter that connected the crimson manifold directly into his subclavian artery.

The sudden, catastrophic breach occurred while the mechanical pump was operating at four hundred percent capacity. The superheated mutagen, pressurized to punch directly into a human heart, had nowhere to go.

BANG.

The glass-and-titanium manifold mounted to Malik’s shoulder violently exploded.

A shower of boiling crimson chemical, shattered casing, and superheated steam erupted against the side of Malik’s neck and jaw. The pressurized backfire reversed the fluid flow in an instant, blowing the arterial valves open and flooding his internal thoracic cavity with unrefined, toxic mutagen.

"AAAAAAGH!"

Malik let out an ear-splitting, agonized shriek that distorted the audio on every broadcast feed.

The blinding pain caused his nervous system to seize. The obsidian claw crushing Nicholas’s throat snapped open involuntarily. The ceremonial blade skidded off course, burying itself harmlessly into the thick timber six inches to the left of Nicholas’s ribs.

Malik stumbled backward, clutching his bleeding, ruined shoulder with his right hand as toxic scarlet foam bubbled past his lips. His left eye ruptured under the sudden intracranial pressure spike, turning completely red as his veins burned with violent chemical fire.

"My... my heart..." Malik wheezed, his body shuddering violently as the artificial strength tore his own muscles apart from the inside. "You... what did you..."

Nicholas didn’t give him the time to finish the sentence.

He didn’t take a second to breathe, ignoring the blinding fire in his broken ribs and the blood running down his neck. He surged up from the splintered floor like a coiled spring released from tension.

His right hand swept across the timber, snatching the jagged, broken half of his carbon-steel blade that had snapped during their earlier duel.

Nicholas closed the distance in a single, silent stride.

He stepped inside Malik’s wild, blind flail, his lone visible eye cold, steady, and utterly vacant of mercy. With the full, calculated leverage of his entire body, Nicholas drove the jagged carbon steel straight upward, punching through the fractured plating of the Master’s breastplate and sinking the broken blade deep into Malik Vance’s heart.

The impact drove the breath out of the Master in a wet, ragged gasp.

Nicholas did not let go of the hilt. He stepped forward, putting his forehead inches from Malik’s bleeding face, his voice barely a whisper beneath the hum of the dying manifold.

"Contract fulfilled," Nicholas said.

With a brutal, horizontal twist of the blade, Nicholas severed the primary valves of the heart, then ripped the steel free.

Malik’s eyes rolled back into his head. His mutated left arm went limp, the dark obsidian chitin rapidly graying and turning to chalky, brittle ash as the mutagen died in his veins.

The Master of the dome, the architect who had brought the Hero Association to its knees, collapsed face-first onto the wooden boards of his own execution stage with a heavy, hollow thud.

He did not move again.

A suffocating, dead silence fell over St. Jude’s Plaza.

Across the entire continent, on every public monitor, laptop screen, and television broadcast, the image froze on the lone figure standing over the corpse.

Nicholas stood tall on the elevated platform, his black hair matted with sweat and blood, his chest heaving with shallow breaths as crimson dripped from the broken blade in his hand onto the splintered wood.

The Master was dead.

The blood dripping from the jagged tip of Nicholas’s broken blade hit the scarred oak boards in steady, rhythmic taps.

For three agonizing seconds, the entire world forgot how to breathe. The two billion viewers watching the high-definition feed sat paralyzed before their screens, unable to process the sight of the architect—the man who had brought the entire Hero Association to its knees without taking a scratch—lying crumpled like discarded refuse at the feet of a battered hitman.

Nicholas did not raise his arms in triumph. He didn’t offer a heroic pose for the cameras mounted in the vents, nor did he roar into the dead sky.

He simply exhaled a slow, shuddering breath that rattled against his broken ribs. The sharp, metallic tang of blood filled his mouth, and he turned his head slightly to spit a crimson puddle onto the edge of the stage. Every nerve in his torso screamed with white-hot agony, the chemical burns from the manifold’s rupture smoking faintly against the torn fabric of his tactical vest.

He reached down, picked up a dry rag from his utility pouch, and calmly wiped the dark fluid from the serrated edge of his broken weapon.

Below the stage, the sudden silence turned fragile and dangerous.

The remaining lieutenants stood frozen in the surrounding dust, their eyes locked in disbelieving horror on the motionless body of Malik Vance.

From the eastern steps, Hexi’s hands began to tremble violently. The color drained completely from his face, his breathing turning into a ragged, hysterical wheeze as the reality of his master’s death pierced through the lingering smoke.

"Master..." Hexi whispered, his voice cracking into an unhinged, feral screech that tore through the quiet plaza. "MASTER!"

Nicholas heard the scream, but he didn’t turn to face it yet. He slid the broken blade into his belt sheath, his single visible eye shifting toward the iron pavilion where Selena and Dana were still struggling with the open manuscript.

"One down," Nicholas murmured under his breath, his knuckles tightening around his remaining sidearm. "Now comes the hard part."