The heavy stink of cheap motor oil, stale sweat, and iron hung thick in the rafters. I crouched on a rusted steel beam twenty feet above the warehouse floor. Below me, seven guys sat around a battered folding table lit by a single hanging bulb. Two more were down the hall in the back office with the hostage.
I took a slow, silent breath, letting my senses map the floor. Pulse rates. Respiratory rhythms. The twitching muscle in the big guy's left forearm. Easy targets.
Thug1: I'm tellin' you, man, it was him! On the rooftop! He was watching us! I saw the eyes!
Thug2: Shut the hell up, Jimmy. The Legend of the Night's a bedtime story for guys who owe money to the mob. He ain't real.
Thug3: Oh yeah? Tell that to the guys in Reno! Half a gang wiped out in ten minutes! They say he's ten feet tall, got glowing red eyes, claws like butcher knives, and his mouth splits wide open like a snake when he screams!
Thug2: You guys are idiots. It's propaganda. The cops want us scared of our own shadows so we stick to the books. There's a giant bounty on his head. If he was just some guy, someone would've claimed it.
I tilted my head. People have zero imagination when they're terrified.
I dropped.
No sound. Just two hundred pounds of dense muscle and ballistic armor landing silently behind the loudest skeptic. I grabbed a thug by the back of his collar and the seat of his pants, drove his skull face-first into the concrete floor with enough force to crack the slab, and yanked him up into the shadows before the first drop of blood hit the floor.
Thug1: ...Hey, where'd Miller go?
Thug4: He was right behind you, man. Miller?
I hung Miller's unconscious body from a meat hook by his belt loop, snatched a heavy wrench from a box, and tossed it into the far dark corner of the bay.
Thug3: What the hell was that?!
Thug1: Check the shadows! Grab the shotguns!
Three of them moved toward the noise, weapons raised, boots clattering like a tap-dancing convention. I dropped behind the trailing man, hooked my arm around his neck, crushed his windpipe just enough to induce instant hypoxia, and dragged him up into the rafters before his buddy turned around.
Six left.
Thug4: Yo... Marcus is gone. MARCUS!
Panic is a funny thing. It starts as a drop of cold sweat, turns into erratic breathing, and ends with men shooting at dust motes.
Thug5: (voice shaking) HE'S HERE! THE LEGEND IS IN THE ROOM!
Thug1: SHUT UP AND FIRE! FIRE AT EVERYTHING!
They started blasting. Muzzle flashes strobed through the dark, illuminating their terrified, sweating faces. I moved through the flashes like a shadow through a fence. I caught one shotgun mid-blast, redirected the barrel toward the ceiling, snapped his wrist inward, and delivered a short, brutal palm strike to his solar plexus. He hit the deck, gasping for air that wasn't coming.
Five left.
I kicked a metal crate into the shin of another one shattering the tibia, grabbed another one by his throat, and slammed him repeatedly into the steel support beam until the screaming stopped.
Two minutes later, five men were dead, crippled, or pinned under heavy machinery. The main room was dead silent save for the low, pathetic whining of the last thug, who had dropped his gun and was curled in a fetal position in the center of the floor.
