Despite his gasping and wheezing, Jin looked up at Victor with murder blazing in his eyes. Victor merely grinned and raised Jin’s sword above his head. Jin knew he was finished. As much as he wanted to, Jin just couldn’t muster the strength to move; his lungs were still straining for air. Suddenly, a single gunshot cut through the air and Jin’s sword flew out of Victor’s hands. Victor whirled around and saw Mordechai standing on the stairs, glaring down the barrel of Jin’s other Desert Eagle.
“And you didn’t shoot me in the head – why?” Victor asked.
“Your life isn’t mine to take,” Mordechai replied.
“Well that’s a rather ridiculous sentiment,” Victor mocked. “Seeing as I’m under no such obligation to spare you for Dorigan.”
At that, Victor reached into his coat for the pistol he had holstered there. Yet as his fingers wrapped around the gun, he howled in agony as a searing lance of pain shot through the knee of his left leg. He fell awkwardly to the floor and looked back to see that Jin had retrieved his sword and had thrust it through the back of Victor’s knee.
As Victor continued to grunt in pain, Jin withdrew his sword and stood up to glare down at his wounded enemy.
“You miserable son of a bitch,” he spat before raising his sword above his head.
“Jin, wait!” Mordechai called out from behind him.
Jin turned around to glare at Mordechai. The instant he did so, Victor made a second move for his pistol. Jin heard him do this, and whirled back around to kick Victor in the head hard. There was a slight crack, and Victor’s body went limp. Breathing deeply to calm himself down, Jin kneeled over Victor’s unmoving form and checked for a pulse. He found one and then stood back up, turning towards Mordechai.
“Why the hell did you stop me?” he shouted.
The second those words left his mouth, Jin noticed Jonah peering out from behind his father.
“Never mind,” he added quickly.
“Is he dead?” Mordechai asked.
“No, just unconscious.”
Mordechai nodded.
“We need to go,” Jin said to Mordechai. “If Dorigan doesn’t hear from Victor soon, which he won’t, he’s going to come here himself, and he won’t be alone.”
“I know,” Mordechai replied, walking down the staircase with his family close behind.
Jin joined them at the bottom of the staircase, sheathing his sword and collecting the Desert Eagle he’d thrown in Victor’s face. As he slid it back into its holster, Mordechai spoke.
“Jin, I know this is a stupid question before I ask it,” he said, handing Jin’s second gun back to him. “But why don’t you come with us? Forget about Dorigan, forget about…whatever it is he’s doing. Get away from all this.”
Jin reached for the Desert Eagle Mordechai was holding and took it. As he holstered the gun, a sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Come on, Mordechai, you and I both know that I could never do that. You said it yourself not half an hour ago, I’m not the kind of person who can let things slide.”
“Yeah, I know,” Mordechai said with the same sad smile. “But it’s always better to ask.”
Jin gave a halfhearted chuckle, and then he, along with Mordechai and his family, walked out to the driveway. As Jin walked over to his Mustang, Mordechai led his wife and son over to Alexandra’s car, a soft gray Audi A4.
As Jin sat down in his driver’s seat, he stole a glance over at Mordechai. He was helping Jonah get situated in his seat while his wife kept a hand on her husband’s shoulder. As Jin watched them, something shifted in his heart, and Jin found that he no longer held any animosity toward Mordechai. How could he when he saw how plainly his family needed him right now? Times had changed; the world that they lived in was no longer what they believed it to be. Friends had become enemies, and enemies had become friends. All that was left to them was fear; fear of a relentless enemy whose face seemed to change with the rise and fall of the sun.
As Jin came to understand this, he realized that for almost his entire life he’d been the worst kind of hypocrite. All those years he’d spent as an assassin, he’d purposefully avoided missions where the target had a family of his own. What he hadn’t realized was that even though he may not have been killing a father, he had still been killing a son.
You can’t let that stop you now, a voice whispered inside his head. You live in a kill or be killed world. All compassion will do is get you killed.
That may be true, Jin replied. But I’m not going to stay in that world. Once this is over, it’s over.
“Mordechai,” Jin spoke aloud, stepping out of his car. “I don’t know what it’s worth to you, but…I forgive you. You were just doing what you had to do to protect your family. If I had to, if there were no other option…”
Jin sighed. A very large part of him didn’t want to admit this, but Jin knew in his heart that he could no longer afford to live with such ignorance.
Jin sighed again. “I would have done the same thing you did.”
Mordechai felt as stunned as if someone had clubbed him over the head with a sledgehammer.
“Jin, what…?”
“Don’t waste time trying to figure me out,” Jin said, sliding back into his driver’s seat. “Just take your family and run. Protect them. Don’t let Dorigan do to them what he did to mine.”
Without another word, and without waiting for a response from Mordechai, Jin turned his keys in the ignition and drove out of Mordechai’s driveway. Sparing a last look at Mordechai and his family, a pain that Jin had long thought buried reached from within the depths of his heart and wrenched painfully at his gut. Turning his attention back to the road and focusing on nothing else, Jin Sakai drove back to Manhattan.
With a single tear sliding down his cheek.
Chronicles of the Apocalypse
--<(0)>--
Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing
Chapter 8: Jin’s Defeat
The first sliver of consciousness that returned to Victor Malakai brought a surge of pain with it that catapulted him to full awareness. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the throbbing pain in his face, or the intense, razor sharp pain in his left leg. Victor groaned and propped himself up on one arm to inspect his leg. It was bleeding freely, and a pool of blood had already gathered on the floor. Gritting his teeth, Victor ripped off his tie and wrapped it tightly around his knee. He groaned loudly as he tied it off in a tight knot and then raised a hand to his face to gauge the damage there. Discovering that Jin had also broken his nose, Victor growled menacingly.
“When I get my hands on him…”
“That is,” a cold voice called out, “if you get your hands on him.”
Victor looked up and saw Martin James Dorigan standing in the entrance hall. His icy eyes smoked with cold fury, and his arms were folded tightly behind his back.
“I trusted you to take care of a matter of utmost importance,” Dorigan said calmly as he walked slowly up to Victor. “I trusted you to kill the Kruegers, and I warned you, explicitly, that Jin Sakai could be with them. You tell me you’ll take care of it, that by this time tomorrow, Jin will be nothing more than a distant memory. Yet I look now upon a very compelling piece of evidence that Jin Sakai will continue to be a massive thorn in my side.”
“It was outside my control, Master Dorigan,” Victor explained. “Mordechai shot at me just as I was about to kill Jin.”
“He shot at you? He didn’t shoot you? He shot at you? Meaning he missed?”
Victor tried to explain. He told Dorigan about Jin, about how he’d been about to kill him with his own sword. Yet with every word he spoke, Dorigan’s irritation increased. As Victor continued his tale, Dorigan heaved an exasperated sigh and viciously stomped down on Victor’s wounded knee.
Victor howled in agony and tried to pull his knee out from under Dorigan’s foot. Yet the harder he tried, the harder Dorigan ground his foot down. Victor leaned up, trying again to free himself, but Dorigan
’s strength was too great. As he leaned up, Dorigan leaned down and grabbed Victor roughly by the throat. When he spoke, his voice was a coarse, deadly whisper.
“I do not care how it happened. I do not care why it happened. All I care about is that it did happen.”
Victor gagged as Dorigan tightened his impossibly powerful grip on Victor’s throat for emphasis.
“If Jin Sakai is alive twenty-four hours from now, you won’t be!”
--<(0)>--
When Jin arrived back in his Manhattan hotel room, he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. He was exhausted, and more than just physically. In helping Mordechai protect his family, something had unlocked in the back of his heart. Memories of his past began to ooze back to the surface, and try as he might to fight them back down, he just didn’t have the mental force required. The harder he fought, the more mentally exhausted he became. Eventually, the effort became too much, and Jin let go of his memories.
Without warning, they surged into him, flashing before his mind’s eye in an impossible rush.
Suddenly Jin was twenty-nine again, helping his eight-year-old son, Alex, practice his karate. Then he was helping his daughter, Alex’s twin, Katie, with her homework. He felt all the joy they had brought to his life, the bright rays of hope that his life would never fall back into the pit of hell that he’d viciously fought his way out of.
Then the pictures changed. Suddenly Jin was thirty-one, crouched in his living room cradling the mutilated corpses of his wife and children, while Dorigan and the others sneered derisively down at him.
All the pain that he had felt that night came flooding back to him then, filling his system with more pain than it was equipped to handle. A strangled sob rose in Jin’s throat and lodged itself just behind his Adam’s apple. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t release it, and silent tears began to stream down his face as the pain overwhelmed him. With every tear that was shed, Jin fell further and further back into his past.
Suddenly, Jin was eight years old again, living in an orphanage and wondering why no one had come to save him. He remembered the cold nights he’d spent crying that his mother and father were gone, unable to be with him when he’d needed them the most.
He’d spent so much time denying his pain and his grief, spent so much energy making sure that he never felt it, never acknowledged it. But now that thirty-six years of repressed pain and grief had been released, Jin knew he didn’t have the strength or the will to fight them any longer.
He finally released himself, letting go of all pretense and illusion, and letting himself feel all the emotions that he’d so long denied.
He cried for a long time.
--<(0)>--
When Jin returned to the world around him, the clock on the table in front of him read 9:15 p.m. Slowly, Jin eased himself off the floor and pulled his PDA out of his pocket. He knew that Victor also lived in Manhattan, but he hadn’t bothered to look at the actual address. Jin brought up the information in question, memorized it, and then set the PDA back in his pocket. Victor lived in a penthouse that was about a mile away from the hotel Jin was staying at, and Jin knew that, because of his pride, Victor wouldn’t have any bodyguards. Because of this, Jin knew he wouldn’t need his guns. Taking his two Desert Eagles out of his coat, Jin stuffed them in the duffle bag at the foot of the bed that contained the rest of his weapons and ammunition. Next, Jin drew his sword. He inspected the blade closely, and finding it to be in perfect condition (as it had always been), he sheathed it.
With his gear prepared, Jin took a moment to reassemble himself. He must have fallen asleep during his meltdown, for though he was still emotionally spent, his physical exhaustion had passed. Walking to the bathroom, Jin took one of the hand towels off the rack and doused it with cold water. Once it was soaked through, he wrung it out before pressing it against his face. The cold was refreshing in a way. It cleared him of all the emotions and memories he had and allowed him to focus on what he had left to do.
He had lost things, lost everything, but just now none of that mattered. It was in the past, it was already over, already done; nothing could be done to change it. All that mattered, all that Jin had left, was his revenge. It was all he needed, all he wanted. All he expected to receive.
It was time for him to go.
--<(0)>--
With New York traffic being what it was, and Victor Malakai’s penthouse being so close, Jin decided to walk the distance. As he walked, Jin could feel all of the old animosity and contempt he held for Victor bubble up to the surface. While Hoxie’s arrogance in his abilities had been tolerable, if annoying, Victor’s pride was insufferable. He constantly talked down to others, and when his pride was attacked, Victor defended it with blind ruthlessness.
Jin learned this the hard way when he had sharply criticized the way Victor had accomplished one of his missions. The contract had called for discretion and minimal casualties. Rather than follow this, Victor had left a massive body count in his wake, and even though he killed his target, the contractor had refused to pay. Though Dorigan had sent an Enforcer to convince the contractor to pay up, Victor’s pride had been wounded badly enough that money ceased to matter. He insisted on killing the contractor himself, and when Jin had argued against it, saying that Victor needed to learn a lesson from this, Victor had attacked him. The ensuing fight had been shockingly brief, with Jin quickly subduing Victor, vowing to undercut his pride at every opportunity until he realized that he was not above the judgment of others, especially those who signed his paychecks. Ever since then, Victor had endeavored to one-up Jin at every opportunity. To cause Jin as much pain and humiliation as Jin had caused him.
Victor had finally achieved that goal five years ago when he’d killed Jin’s son and handily defeated Jin in the ensuing brawl.
After ten minutes of navigating Manhattan’s ludicrously crowded streets, and several stops for directions, Jin found himself staring up at the obsidian black pillar that was the building Victor’s penthouse was at the top of. Jin gave a derisive snort. It figured that Victor would live in such an ostentatious building. Shaking his head in disapproval, Jin walked inside.
The outside of the building may have been black, but the inside was almost blindingly white. The only thing of any color was the black marble floor and some gray highlights around various pieces of artwork. Taking in these details but paying them no mind, Jin walked straight up to the front desk.
“Excuse me,” he said to the receptionist. “I’m looking for a Mr. Victor Malakai, do you know what floor he’s on?”
The receptionist looked up questioningly.
“Hi,” Jin continued. “My name is Mark Donovan, and I’m a close friend of Victor’s. I’m in town for business, he called me to visit him.”
“Mr. Malakai lives on the seventieth floor, suite seven-twelve,” the receptionist said , clearly bored and not wanting to be bothered.
“Thanks,” Jin said jovially as he walked over to the elevators.
He found the one that led to the necessary floors and pressed the up button. It took a moment to arrive, but when it did, Jin was pleasantly surprised to find it empty. He slid inside, tapped the button for the seventieth floor with his foot, and leaned against the wall as the elevator shot upward. As the elevator traveled, Jin couldn’t help but marvel at how stupidly easy things had been so far. He wasn’t used to being able to just walk in uncontested. It both pleased him and unnerved him, for it made him wonder what Victor really had up his sleeve. When the elevator reached its destination, and no one was there to greet him, Jin walked out.
Just as white and spotless as the lobby several hundred feet below, Jin ignored the finer pieces of decoration in his search for Victor’s suite. He found it easily enough at the end of the main hall. Before the double doors that led inside the penthouse, there was a wide-open area decorated with several statues and busts. On the floor, Jin made special note of an obscenely ornate rug. As he walked toward the doors, Jin took special
care to scuff up the rug as much as possible. Upon reaching the doors, Jin drew his sword and rang the doorbell. He then quickly moved away from the door and pressed his back tightly against the wall, keeping an eye out for any passersby. In hindsight, wearing all black was a very bad idea in this building. It made him stand out like a sore thumb against the stark white that surrounded him. However, that soon didn’t matter, as the person who opened the door wasn’t Victor Malakai.
It was a woman.
Her long, blond hair obscured her face, and Jin lowered his sword. This was most unexpected. She glanced around, looking for whoever had rung the doorbell. When she looked over to her right and saw Jin, they both gasped. For the face they saw in each other was a face that they had both known they’d never see again.
Standing before Jin Sakai was Rachel Hartman – his wife, and the mother of his two children.
“Rachel?” he whispered, too shocked to do much else.
“Jin?” she asked, her gray eyes wide with a shock that matched Jin’s. “What are you doing here?”
“I…I could ask you the same question,” Jin responded. “I thought…I thought you were dead!”
Jin stepped automatically toward Rachel, who took a series of quick steps backward into the penthouse, fear wide in her eyes.
“What’s wrong, Rachel?” Jin asked, worried, and following her inside. “Why are you backing away from me?”
Rachel’s gaze flicked quickly over to Jin’s sword, and Jin understood at once.
“Oh Jesus, I’m sorry, Rachel!” he apologized quickly. “I was here for Victor, but I didn’t think…I mean, how could anyone…think…Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m…goin’ a little crazy over here.”
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