Jin walked up to a store, the sign above his head introducing it as Pine Lake Swords and Cutlery. Knowing that Mark would still be asleep, Jin bypassed the front door and walked around to the alley and over to the fire escape. Jin jumped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder, pulling it down to the ground, allowing Jin to climb up without any difficulty. He took the fire escape all the way to the top story, where he leapt upwards and grabbed the edge of the roof before pulling himself up. Once on the roof, Jin crouched down to avoid being spotted and crept over to the skylight.
On warm summer nights, Mark Donovan liked to come up onto his roof and stargaze. To facilitate this, Mark had one of the windowpanes rigged to open and close. He didn’t usually lock it, however, and while that boggled the minds of the heads of the Black Dragon Clan, Jin knew why Mark didn’t worry about it. Mark was a very light sleeper and always slept with a gun under his pillow. If anyone decided to break in through the skylight, all they would find was an angry Irishman with a loaded gun pointed at their faces.
Chuckling at his old friend’s eccentricities, Jin opened the hatch and eased himself inside. While he hung there, Jin gazed all around the room and noticed nothing had changed. The wallpaper was still solid red, highlighted by thin, wavy gold patterns. The floor was covered in a soft, almost feathery red carpet. Mark’s bed, which he currently inhabited, snoring rather noisily, was in the corner just off the skylight, with a bookcase set into the wall above it. Jin also noticed a chair right underneath him. Apparently, Mark had been expecting him. Processing this new information, Jin eased himself onto the chair and pulled the skylight shut before locking it. He then stepped off the chair just as Mark’s alarm clock went off.
Mark reached out a hand and feebly smacked his alarm clock, shutting it off. He sat up in bed and turned to face Jin, clad in nothing but a simple muscle shirt and a pair of white and blue-stripped pajama pants.
“Well, this is a welcome thing to wake up to,” Mark said in his thick Irish accent as he rubbed sleep out of his warm, hazel eyes. “A visit from the Black Dragon himself.”
“Expecting me?” Jin said, smiling slightly as he sat in the chair Mark had provided.
“You need to ask?”
Jin’s chuckle was his only answer.
“Even though I knew they wouldn’t stand a chance of even scratching you,” Mark said apologetically, “I am sorry for the attack.”
“Dorigan’s orders?” Jin asked, his voice losing some of the humor.
Mark nodded before closing his eyes and letting out a massive yawn. He stretched and scratched his back before shaking his head to further wake himself up.
“He didn’t tell me why, just ordered me to do it. I figured that he picked me because you were my Master and friend, and he wanted to test my loyalty to the B.D.C.”
“And you did it,” Jin continued for him, “because A, you knew that your Grunts wouldn’t be a threat to me. B, you knew that the only way you’d be able to help me was to play his side of the fence as well, and C, he threatened to kill you.”
“Well, he didn’t actually say it,” Mark said defensively, “but yeah, I’m pretty sure he was thinkin’ it.”
Despite his situation, Jin grinned.
“So after you sent them, you knew I would kill them and be pissed as hell. You knew I would almost certainly take it as my personal mission to hunt down and kill every single leader of the Black Dragon Clan, and you also knew that you’d be the only person who could help me.”
“Are you sure you’re not psychic, my friend?” Mark asked.
Jin gave a sad, oddly twisted smile.
“If I was, Rachel, Alex, and Katie would still be alive.”
Mark grimaced. “I’m sorry, Jin, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Jin shook his head and waved it off. “Don’t worry about it, Mark,” he said somberly. “No one can change the past.”
“That doesn’t mean they always accept it.”
Mark shot Jin a pointed look, and Jin sighed and looked away. The two friends sat in silence a moment longer. Finally, Jin shook himself out of the memories that had bubbled to the surface and ended the silence.
“So,” he asked. “Do I have any friends left in the B.D.C.?”
“Not really,” Mark said with a slight laugh in spite of the situation. “Dorigan branded you a traitor the day you went into hiding. Told us all you tried to kill him. Made a rather compelling argument, though naturally, there were those that didn’t believe him.”
“How many of them are still alive, besides you?”
“Carlos is. He went nuts when I told him what had really happened, but I gave him orders to play the good little Enforcer, and he’s been doing just that.”
“Just Carlos?” Jin asked. “There’s no one else?”
Mark sighed. “About two weeks after you dropped off the grid, there were a few murders and disappearances throughout the Clan. Dorigan blamed them all on you, saying you were out to destroy us.”
Jin’s heart skipped a beat.
“He killed my men,” he said softly, “and blamed it on me?”
Mark nodded sadly.
Jin sighed and bowed his head. The names and faces of his men swam through his mind: Michael Park, his Informant, Karl Davis, his weapons master, and Richard Duncan, his ‘travel agent’, as he liked to be called; it had been Richard’s job to get Jin in and out of wherever his assignments took him. And that wasn’t counting the handful of Jin’s own Grunts, men that Jin had trained himself! Brian, Mitchell, Evan, and Paul – Dorigan had killed all of them.
The loss of each of these men punched a hole in Jin’s heart, and he took a moment to give grief its due.
“What else has Dorigan done?” Jin asked quietly.
A look of apprehension overtook Mark’s face, and he didn’t answer Jin’s question.
“What is it, Mark?” Jin asked, looking up.
Mark opened his mouth to speak, but his vocal cords locked on him. This response shifted Jin’s feelings from concern to suspicion.
“What do you know?”
“Jin, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t do anything to prevent this,” Mark began. “When I found out…I just…I just had to go along with it. I knew you’d come back someday, and that when you did, only I would be able to help you. I had to let it slide, Jin, I just had to!”
“Slow down, Mark,” Jin said calmly. “You’re losing me.”
“Jin,” Mark said, looking into his friend’s emerald eyes. “Dorigan has restarted Project Hellbound.”
The blast of shock and disbelief those words triggered wiped everything in Jin’s mind from existence. His eyes unfocused and disbelief turned his senses inward. Dorigan had restarted Project Hellbound? That action couldn’t fit within Jin’s world – not now, not again.
“He announced it a couple weeks ago,” Mark continued before his voice became frantic. “He told us all that the time had come to resume the plans that you had ruined. I swear to you, Jin, I swear to you, if there was something, anything, I could have done about this, I would have.”
“Hence the attack,” Jin said in an oddly distant voice, hearing but not acknowledging Mark’s words. “He wanted to make sure I was dead before he made any really heavy progress. The kind of progress that only I could undo.”
Mark nodded.
“Yeah, that’s my guess.”
“But I destroyed everything,” Jin said, looking desperately at Mark for some kind of validation. “The prototype machine, the blueprints, the notes, everything.”
“Dorigan must’ve made duplicates,” Mark said before giving a sarcastic chuckle. “He didn’t even trust you.”
Jin sat still for a moment and then stood up and walked to the side of the room opposite Mark’s bed.
“Jin,” Mark said slowly, “what are you doing?”
“I’m stopping him,” Jin said flatly as he reached the back wall. “I had to lose everything that made my life worth living in order to stop him before, and I refuse to let their death
s be in vain!”
Jin clicked on the lights before perusing the back wall, which was covered in swords and shields. He walked up to the shield in the center of the wall and pressed on the ornate eagle design in the center. There was a series of muted clicks and a mechanical hiss, and then the entire wall slid down to reveal a gargantuan collection of guns. Fluorescent lights behind the fogged glass display wall snapped on to illuminate the arsenal. Below the guns, at the level of Jin’s waist, dozens upon dozens of drawers sat full of different kinds of ammunition, and a number of black duffle bags rested on top of them. Jin looked all over the wall for a couple seconds before finding the guns he preferred to carry. These were two Desert Eagle handguns, one Mac 11 submachine gun, a Mossberg 590 shotgun, and a PSG-1 sniper rifle.
His guns collected, Jin grabbed one of the duffle bags and began perusing the ammunition drawers. He paused for a moment, calculating how much ammo he would need before collecting it. In total, Jin took twenty-two clips for his Desert Eagles, ten clips for his Mac 11, eighty rounds for his shotgun, and ten clips for the PSG-1.
“You know, Jin,” Mark said as Jin finished collecting the ammo. “If I didn’t already know better, I’d ask you if you were getting ready to fight a war.”
“I am,” Jin said simply as he inspected and loaded the guns.
“That’s why I said, ‘If I didn’t already know better.’”
With the guns loaded, Jin set them down next to his duffle bag. He worked his arms out of his coat and laid it flat on the ground, revealing a number of concealed holsters and pockets for spare clips. Jin placed his Desert Eagles in the two holsters under the armpits, and the Mac 11 went into a holster below the Desert Eagle on the left side of the coat. Finally, Jin placed two spare clips for his Desert Eagles and one for his Mac 11 in the clip holders under the holsters. For good measure, he also stuffed a spare clip for the PSG-1 in his right coat pocket, and he buttoned the pocket closed. All of this added a fair amount of extra weight to Jin’s coat, but due to his strength, it made little difference to him. He stood up and put his coat back on, once more facing Mark. Jin then began to hop up and down on alternating feet, before performing a few different kicks, punches, and acrobatic maneuvers to adjust to the new weight and make sure that everything in his coat was stored securely. Nothing fell out and Jin seemed satisfied.
Mark shook his head in utter amazement.
“Jin, you never cease to amaze me.”
“Why’s that?” Jin asked, pulling his coat tight around his waist and pushing the two buttons through their slits. The effect of this was to close Jin’s long, black leather coat tight enough so that his sword, guns, and the spare clips weren’t visible.
“Because,” Mark said as he watched Jin, “even when the odds are stacked almost completely in your enemy’s favor, like they are now, you always act like it’s just another day at the office.”
“Well, if you want to thank anybody for that, thank Master Kowloon.”
Mark shrugged.
“So what’s your plan, Jin?” he asked. “You’re going to attack during the meeting tonight?”
Jin nodded, and Mark glanced at his clock and saw, to his surprise, that it was 8:45 a.m.
“Well, Jin, I need to go downstairs and open the shop, but if you want to help out, you’re more than welcome to. You killed all of my Grunts; Carlos is the only Enforcer that I have, and his day job is as my assistant. I can call him and tell him to take the day off.”
“Why would you do that?” Jin asked.
“Because you’re going to need some way to pass the twelve hours between now and when you’ll need to leave to get to the meeting on time, and I know you can’t spend it all practicing.”
With that, Mark walked over to the closet on Jin’s right and changed into a red long-sleeved shirt and navy blue jeans.
“So, you gonna help me today or not?”
“Sure, why not?” Jin said with an enthusiasm that surprised Mark.
Together, they walked downstairs and began to set up shop for the day. Jin worked upstairs with the swords, and Mark worked downstairs with everything else. They day passed without anything of much note happening. The one interesting thing that did occur was the hyperactive eight-year-old that almost demolished the upstairs while his father looked for a new hunting knife downstairs with Mark. Jin caught the kid before he had done any real damage, and the father had collected him a few minutes later. Before Jin knew it, Mark was telling him that it was almost eight p.m. and that he should get going. Mark closed the store and took Jin back upstairs to his bedroom.
Once inside, Mark turned on the lights in response to the overwhelming dark of the cloudless night and opened the drawer in the nightstand next to his bed. He pulled something out and tossed it to Jin, who caught it and looked at what was in his hands – the keys to a car.
“I figured you were going to need your car sooner or later, so I decided that I’d just give you your keys before you asked.”
“Thanks, Mark,” Jin said, pocketing the keys.
“You don’t need to thank me, Jin,” Mark said. “You’re my friend, and I owe you a lot. I haven’t forgotten.”
Mark walked forward and tapped Jin just above his heart.
“I haven’t forgotten the bullet you took for me, or what you saved me from.”
Jin bowed his head and gave his old friend a small smile.
“My loyalties lie with you, Jin,” Mark continued. “And you alone.”
Jin nodded.
“Thank you, Mark.”
Mark smiled. “You just make sure you do what you need to do,” he said. “And I’ll help you however I can.”
Jin grinned at Mark and hefted the duffle bag containing his shotgun and all his ammo before he climbed up the ladder and back through Mark’s skylight. Turning around, Jin reached through the skylight, and Mark handed him his sniper rifle. Jin took it, and then climbed back down the fire escape.
Back in the alley, Jin walked to the back of Mark’s building and punched a code into a keypad right next to Mark’s garage. The door opened and Jin walked inside to find a couple of vehicles. One was Mark’s red Ford F-150, and the other was Jin’s jet black 2004 Mustang GT. Jin walked over to it and gently ran his hand over the hood. He had fallen in love with this car the moment he’d seen it, especially with its look. It fit him perfectly; it was sleek, fast, and powerful. But he’d been forced to leave the car with Mark during his exile because for the first few weeks Dorigan had sent out scores of Grunts posing as police officers to pull over any and all black 2004 Mustangs.
As Jin eased himself into the driver’s seat, he took a deep breath and savored the feeling of being at the wheel of his ever-faithful Mustang again. Mechanized transportation device though it may be, Jin had always treated it and cared for it as though it were one of the wild horses that gave the car its name. Jin turned the key in the ignition and smiled as he heard the healthy roar of his car’s engine. In the storm of madness that Jin’s life had become, it was a small comfort to know that some things never changed. Jin smiled, and patted the dashboard.
“Come on, girl,” he whispered. “We’ve got some old friends we need to visit.”
He shifted into gear and then drove out of the garage, and on toward the Black Dragon Clan’s headquarters.
--<(0)>--
Two hours away, within the cold, stone walls of his castle-like mansion, Martin James Dorigan and the other heads of the Black Dragon Clan were sitting down to begin their monthly meeting.
Martin Dorigan was, by all accounts, an oddly unassuming person. He stood tall at an even six feet, but carried himself with an easy, relaxed demeanor. However, to those sensitive to such things, he held an immense air of regality and power that begged to be challenged. Yet his charming smile, shining blue eyes, and short brown hair masked that air to all but the most sensitive of people.
“Welcome, Dragons,” Dorigan said as he sat down at the head of the long, black fiberglass table. “Once again
we enjoy the pleasure of one another’s company as we discuss the future of our magnificent Clan. Victor, why don’t you start us off?”
The man in front and to the right of Dorigan stood up. Victor Malakai was huge. Standing at seven feet two inches and weighing in at 350 pounds, Victor Malakai was easily the biggest and strongest person in the B.D.C. A gray business suit mostly hid his dark brown skin.
“First off,” he said, his voice low and deep, “I would like to say that your plan, Master Dorigan, has worked beautifully. I successfully assassinated the leaders of the three designated organizations, and the area has been thrown into absolute chaos. Private contracts are popping up one after another.”
“Thank you, Malakai, the Clan owes you a deep debt. As such, the Black Dragon Clan will not take the usual ten percent from your next private contract.”
Malakai bowed.
“Thank you, Master. However,” he continued, with the slightest hint of apprehension, “I wish to express my concern over…recent developments.”
“Oh,” Dorigan said interestedly, leaning forward and cocking his head to one side.
“Yes,” Malakai continued. “I am aware, as we all are, that you ordered the Hatchling, Mark Donovan, to send fifteen of his Grunts to kill Jin Sakai.”
Two seats down on the side of the table opposite Malakai, Mordechai Krueger shifted uncomfortably.
“Everybody here knows that not even thirty Grunts would be able to stand up to Jin. Knowing that, we can safely surmise that all fifteen would do is tell him that we know where he lives, that we have a new reason to want him dead, not to mention piss him off.”
“I understand your concern, Victor,” Dorigan said calmly. “But I need you to understand that Jin poses no threat to us. I have known the man for nearly thirty years, and he will undoubtedly come looking for his revenge. In doing so, he will walk straight into the jaws of my trap. His mind will be too clouded by hate and rage for him to fight effectively. And with the benefits that Project Hellbound has already bestowed upon me, I will crush him. Rest easy, my fellow Dragons, Jin Sakai will soon become a thing of the past.”
Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing Page 2