Breathing slowly and deeply to calm himself down, Jin walked to Leah’s kitchen and pulled a washcloth off the counter, using it to wipe the blood from his sword.
“It’s clear!” Jin called out to Leah and Will.
For the moment, he added bitterly inside his head as Leah and Will opened the door.
A gasp and a loud series of expletives told Jin that both Leah and Will had seen the aftermath of Jin’s little scuffle. He sighed, this was not how things were supposed to go.
“That won’t be the last of them,” he said solemnly. “If you stay here, Victor will send even more of his men. Even if you leave on your own, they will find you, and they will kill you.”
At that, Jin turned around to face them, so they could see how honest he was being. Their faces bore looks of extreme horror, and Jin felt a strong pang of regret for what he had exposed them to.
“It was never my intention to involve you in all this,” he continued. “For that, I’m so sorry. But the fact remains that if we don’t leave now, even more of Victor’s men will arrive.”
He let his words hang in the air and waited for a response.
But just then, speaking at all was far from Leah’s ability. She looked at Jin with unrecognizing eyes, horror glowing through them. Only a few hours ago, Jin had been such a happy person. He’d been bright, upbeat, and energetic. Yet now she looked upon a man who was so utterly fragile, so broken, yet even being in such a state, he was easily capable of committing acts of violence so nightmarish that Leah couldn’t tell if she was looking upon a man or a monster.
Meanwhile, Will was in such a state of shock that he couldn’t really think at all. The sight of four blood-soaked corpses on the floor of the apartment was such a shock to his system that his mind had effectively ground to a halt.
When neither of them responded, Jin took a step towards Leah.
“Leah, listen…” he said, reaching out to her.
Yet Jin’s first step, and the words he spoke, unlocked something in the back of Will’s heart and sparked his mind back into action. The sight of Jin reaching for his mother infuriated Will beyond all reason, and suddenly he had no problem speaking at all.
“Get away from her!”
Jin suddenly looked over at Will just as the youngster threw his entire strength into a shove that made Jin stumble backwards. There was a fraction of a second’s pause where Jin regained his balance, and then Will was right on top of him, punching every inch of Jin’s body that his fists could find.
In truth, Jin could have stopped Will whenever he wanted to, but just now, Jin didn’t have the heart to do so. He knew Will was more than justified in what he was doing, and if the roles had been reversed, Jin knew he would be doing the exact same thing.
More than that, Jin knew he deserved it.
Just as Will delivered another stinging hook to Jin’s face, his mother shouted above the substantial din he was making.
“William, stop it!”
Next second, Leah was on her son, surprising Jin by drawing on her aikido training to restrain her son with a firm joint lock.
“Stop it, William,” she said firmly. “Stop it!”
“Let me go,” he growled, struggling against his mother’s hold.
“You cool?” she asked sternly.
“Yes, I’m cool.”
Leah looked at Jin, who nodded. Leah released the joint lock and let her son go. Jin leaned up against the wall and raised his hand to inspect his face. As ferociously as Will had attacked him, Jin had suffered far worse beatings at the hands of far stronger people; the bruises would be light. Jin looked down and found Leah looking up at him, her eyes suddenly filled with a fire that Jin hadn’t expected. There was apprehension too, but it was obvious that she had made up her mind.
“There’ll be more?” she asked, looking at Jin with that same hard, fiery look.
“A lot more,” Jin answered.
Leah sighed. “Then we’re going with you.”
“Mom!” Will burst out.
“We have to, Will!”
“No, we don’t!”
Leah sighed, she knew it was hopeless to try and convince her son to do something when he was so dead set against it. Jin rubbed his temples in mild aggravation; much as he understood Will’s point of view, this had to stop.
“William, please,” he said. “I understand why you feel the way you do…”
“No, you don’t!” Will barked at him. “Not even close!”
Jin sighed.
“Even so,” he continued. “The fact remains that if you stay here, you and your mother both die! I do not want that to happen!”
Will growled but nodded, looking away.
“Fine,” he said quietly.
“Alright then,” Jin said, walking back to retrieve his coat. “Let’s get your stuff together and go, we’ve wasted enough time here as it is.”
As Leah and Will walked to their respective rooms, Jin walked over to the chair his coat was slung over and sheathed his sword. He then slid his coat on as best he could with his left arm in a sling. About a minute later, both Leah and Will came out of their rooms, each with a single duffle bag.
“You ready?” Jin asked.
They both nodded.
“Okay then, let’s go.”
With that, Jin led them out of their apartment, down and out of the building, and back into his car. They loaded their bags into the trunk, got into their seats, and Jin began the drive back to the only safe haven he knew he had.
Pine Lake.
Chronicles of the Apocalypse
--<(0)>--
Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing
Chapter 11: Jin’s Story
“Where are we going?”
Jin didn’t respond.
“Jin, please,” Leah implored. “Tell me where we’re going.”
Still Jin’s jaw remained locked in place.
“Hey!” Will spoke up angrily from the back seat. “Answer her, you son of a…”
“SHUT UP!” Jin roared, snapping his head around to glare at Will with his blazing green eyes.
A surge of fear clamped Will’s jaw shut and sent him pressing backward against his seat with all his might.
Satisfied with that, Jin turned back to the road and set himself firmly back in place.
“We’re going to the only safe place I have,” he explained in a very curt, clipped tone. “We’re going to Pine Lake.”
“And why is Pine Lake so much safer than Manhattan?” Leah pressed, unable to stop herself.
Jin’s jaw tightened as another wave of fury welled up inside him, but he did not release it. His fury wasn’t aimed at Leah or her son – it was aimed at the world. Aimed at the world for the miserable hand it had dealt him as a child. Aimed at the world for causing, allowing, Dorigan to do the things he’d done. Aimed at the world for the utter unfairness of it all. Aimed at the world for allowing existence to exist at all.
But because he knew that such fury would only hinder him, Jin took a calming breath and stowed it away in his heart.
“I have a friend in Pine Lake,” he explained. “He can protect us until…until I can…he can protect us.”
What had just happened? What force had just paralyzed his vocal cords and stolen his voice? Jin had no problem tracing the source of that back to Leah, but what scratched at the walls of his mind was why. Why could he not just come out and say: ‘Until I kill the men responsible for this’? He had no problem admitting, freely, that he’d killed people, so why did it matter that he killed a few more? Surely Dorigan, Victor, and Jessie deserved death far more than the other people Jin had killed, didn’t they?
Jin looked to his left out the window, but the setting sun held no answers for him. As the trees and fields rolled by, it suddenly dawned on Jin that he’d been driving for hours. He considered pulling over or finding some roadside motel where they could spend the night, but all of his instincts rallied against that idea. He had to get to Pine Lake as fas
t as possible – hopefully ahead of whatever news Victor brought to Dorigan’s ear.
By the same token, however, there was so much noise, so many conflicting thoughts and emotions running around his head that he couldn’t think. And he knew that to enter Pine Lake with any of his faculties at less than 110% was tantamount to suicide.
Before he could make up his mind, the unmistakable blaring of a truck horn shot him back to the real world in time for Jin to swerve his Mustang drastically to the right to avoid the oncoming eighteen-wheeler. Swearing vehemently, he drove off the road and turned the car off, panting furiously.
“Jesus Christ!” Will exclaimed, face pale with fright. “Are you tryin’ to get us killed?”
Leah too looked worse for wear, with her eyes wide, chest heaving, and a white-knuckle grip on the armrest.
“Sorry,” Jin said sincerely. “My…I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Maybe,” Leah began cautiously, not wanting to anger Jin. “Maybe it would be better if we found a motel or something. Get some rest and start fresh in the morning.”
Jin sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go find one.”
Jin turned the key to his car, and as the engine growled back to life, he drove back onto the road.
--<(0)>--
Three hours later, after night had enveloped the world, Jin stood statue-still in the motel room he’d rented for the three of them. He knew he should sleep, give his mind a chance to process what had happened over the last two days he could remember. Yet his paranoia and inexplicable desire to protect Leah and Will overrode everything else and made sleep impossible.
In the beds on his left, Leah and Will slept, apparently peacefully.
Jin looked over to them briefly, wondering what they could have possibly done to deserve getting sucked into his world. Just then, the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot reached Jin’s ears, and within half a second he was by the window, peering through the blinds with his sword held firmly in his hand.
An overweight man in his mid-forties dressed in a business suit got out of a red Honda Civic and walked into the room next door to theirs.
Jin breathed a sigh of relief and sheathed his sword, walking back to his position at the middle of the room.
“What was that?” a gentle voice whispered.
Jin looked left and saw that Leah sitting up in bed, looking worriedly at Jin.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Just some businessman pulling in.”
“Oh.”
A moment of silence passed.
“Go back to bed, Leah.”
Another moment of silence ticked by, with Leah looking over at her son, feeling very real fear grow within her gut. She didn’t really care what happened to her. Sure, she didn’t want to die, but after the things she’d been through, death wouldn’t really be so terrible. She did care about what happened to her son though. William was a blank slate. He’d done nothing to anyone and had been forced to live through a series of traumatic events regardless. Maybe Leah deserved to die, but she would be damned if she would drag her son down with her.
“Jin,” she began, slowly. “What’s really going on?”
Jin looked at her, his expression indecipherable.
“I know you don’t want to say,” she said, looking back at him. “But if I’m going to protect my son, I need to know what I’m really getting into.”
Getting into? Jin thought incredulously. What is she thinking? That I’m going to let her tag along with me as I hunt down and kill some of the most dangerous people in the world? Yeah right!
Instead, he said, “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
A hint of mother grizzly came into Leah’s voice, and Jin looked at her again, his expression this time one of anger.
“It’s none of your business.”
“My son and I were nearly killed by some of your people not eight hours ago! That alone…”
“They are not…” Jin exclaimed in a viciously deadly hiss, “my people!”
“Then who are they?” Leah asked, the voice of the mother grizzly rising to the fore.
In the bed next to hers, Will stirred.
Jin looked over at him, waiting to see if he’d wake up. When he did not, he returned his gaze to Leah.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” he said.
“Satisfaction brought it back,” Leah replied.
In spite of himself, the ghost of a smile traced its way over Jin’s face.
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
Leah shook her head.
“Alright,” Jin conceded. “Fine. Let’s go outside.”
Leah nodded and eased herself out of bed, throwing her shirt on over her pajamas and following Jin outside.
The night air was chilly, but the numerous lights over the parking lot illuminated the entire motel. Jin closed the door as Leah joined him and leaned back against it, closing his eyes and sighing. Leah leaned against the wall next to him, watching and waiting expectantly. After a long moment, Jin began.
“I’ve been an assassin for the last eighteen years. For the last fifteen years, in the circles that I traveled in, I’ve been considered the best in the world, and it’s not for nothing. I’ve taken out targets that were so well guarded that no other assassin would have even attempted them. I belonged to an organization called the Black Dragon Clan, and we were all the best of the best.”
Jin glanced over at Leah and found that she was still looking at him with all her focus, taking in his every word. Satisfied with that, Jin continued.
“A little over five years ago, our leader, Martin James Dorigan, started to…talk. He talked about things that I thought were…dangerous, out of line. He said that it was high time the Black Dragon Clan took a more…direct role in shaping world events. I argued, saying that the reason we could operate the way we did was because of our secrecy, because of our subtlety, because we were quick, quiet, and invisible. He replied by saying that with what he was working on, we would no longer have to be.”
“And,” Leah began slowly, “what was he working on?”
At this, Jin expression morphed into a twisted smile.
“You know, even now,” he said, “a part of me still doesn’t believe it. A part of me still thinks it was the deluded ramblings of a madman.”
“But…what was it?” Leah pressed.
“He called it Project Hellbound,” Jin began, still wearing his twisted smile. “And it was his way, his…attempt to…”
Jin sighed. This wasn’t going to work. If he was ever going to explain it, no matter how ludicrous it sounded, he was just going to have to come right out with it.
“Project Hellbound,” he began again, “was, and is, Dorigan’s attempt to bring real, honest-to-God, demons into our world.”
“Demons?” Leah asked, disbelieving. “As in Satan and hellfire demons?”
“Yep,” Jin answered.
“You’re…kidding, right?”
“Leah, why do you think he killed my children?” Jin burst out. “I sabotaged him! When I found out what he was really trying to do, I went after him. I destroyed his notes, I destroyed his blueprints, I killed all of his assistants, I even tore down the prototype machine he was building! I destroyed everything. And in return, he has my children murdered! And my wi…”
A memory came to him then, unbidden and uninvited, but it came anyway. The memory of his wife, Rachel Hartman, staring down at him with cold gray eyes just seconds before Victor Malakai broke his arm and sent him flying out the window. Jin shook the memory violently away and turned back to the real world.
“After that,” he continued, “I went into hiding. I’d done what I’d intended to do and had to pay a price for it that I never intended to pay. I just wanted to be left alone, and I would leave them alone in turn. Then, about a week ago I guess, they tried to kill me again. So I say the hell with it, if they’re going to fuck with me, I’m gonna fuck with them right back. I’
ve killed three of them so far, let a fourth one go, and got my arm snapped in half by the fifth, thus landing on your roof. The rest, as they often say, is history.”
Silence hung in the air with Jin’s speech done, and he had no intention of breaking it. He liked the silence. He liked the nothingness of it. He wished he could stay in that nothingness forever.
But Leah didn’t let him.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re so insistent about protecting us,” she said.
Those words sliced cleanly through Jin’s body and slid dangerously close to his heart. A throb of pain followed his next heartbeat, warning of the pain yet to come.
“Can’t you just be glad I am?” Jin snapped defensively.
“Why are you being so defensive?” Leah asked. “Do you think that if I know more about you…”
“You know nothing about me!” Jin growled savagely, cutting her off “Absolutely nothing!”
Leah sucked in a quick breath and reflexively took a step back, Jin’s suddenly flame-hot gaze driving a spike of fearful heat into her heart.
“Do you honestly think that the person you saw in your living room this morning was the real me?” he continued, his voice only slightly less of a growl. “It was a lie, Leah, the lie that I show the rest of the world so that I can go about my business without them being any the wiser. It’s not me, it’s never been me, and it never will be me. So I think we would all be better served if you stopped thinking that it is.”
“I don’t believe that,” Leah responded stubbornly. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s not a matter of belief. It’s the truth.”
“The truth?” Leah asked, her voice scathing. “Bullshit!”
“Bullshit?”
“Bullshit,” Leah said again. “If that were the truth, if this is who you really are, who you really were, you wouldn’t have gotten married, you wouldn’t have had kids, and you sure as hell wouldn’t have loved them enough to be on this…insane quest for revenge!”
Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing Page 13