God-fucking-dammit. Of all the ways to fuck up, I just had to do the dumbest thing possible. Raine wanted to bang his head against a wall.

His clenched fists shook with fear and fury. He wasn’t angry at the man in front of him, but rather, himself. Such a goddamn stupid mistake.

Raine stared right at the barrel pointed at him. It screamed “death.” His breath quickened, and his heart beat furiously, like it was as mad at him as he was.

The only thing giving him some relief was that he wasn’t already down and dying on the ground. He didn’t know much about guns, but he knew that suppressors weren’t as incredible as Hollywood portrayed them to be. He guessed that the man didn’t want to shoot and have everyone on the floor hear it.

Raine briefly wondered what Sora’s reaction was. Fear? Anger? She hadn’t made a single sound. Did she faint?

His attention returned to the man before him a moment later. It was his fault that he and Sora were in this situation. He had to figure out how to fix it. Somehow.

The man gestured violently with his gun. “I told you to get the fuck down—”

Raine couldn’t tell what it was, at first. Cylindrical and green, maybe the size of two fists. It was flying right at the man’s face. A bottle of juice?

It was his chance. There wasn’t enough time to think in words, only in images. Raine saw in his mind what to do, and he did it.

The bottle hit the man’s face. Hard.

“What the fuck?!” The man fired. But his aim was off, and Raine was already moving. The bullet passed him and hit the ground.

Raine threw his towel and dove for the man’s leg. The man fired again and again in a panic. Raine didn’t have the time to care where those shots went. The towel landed on the man’s face. As the man grabbed it and threw it aside, Raine caught his leg. He lifted the man up. Limbs flailing, the man yelled in fear and kept firing until they heard the click, click, click of an empty gun. Raine flipped him over his head and slammed him onto the ground.

“Huu!” It was the sound of someone being winded. The man’s eyes were wide with shock and fear. His hand still held the gun. He rolled onto his stomach and slowly got onto all fours.

Bastard. Raine kicked him in the ribs, sending the man rolling like a log and crying out in pain. He walked up to the man and grabbed the gun. The sound of it firing had been louder than he’d expected, and his ears even hurt a bit.

Raine tossed the gun aside and stepped on the man’s back. He resisted the urge to stomp on him and pulled out his phone to dial 911.

“Hold on, Raine.” Sora walked over from the sofa. Her gait was a bit unsteady, and there was sweat running down her face. “You don’t have to call the police. My family’s people will be here soon.”

“What?” Are you the daughter of a mafia boss?

“My family has some special connections.”

“I see.” He still wanted to call the police.

“You’re bleeding, by the way.”

Raine looked down and saw blood streaming from his thigh. A slowly expanding patch of blood at his side was staining his shirt as well. The sight made him nervous, but all he could think in that moment was, Deja vu. Now I’ll have some symmetry with my stab wound.

He quickly pulled the jacket off the man and used it to tightly bind his wrists. Then Raine used his towel (now with a bullet hole in it) to tie up the man’s ankles.

He grabbed a bundle of tissues and pressed them against the wound in his stomach. He felt nothing, like when he’d been stabbed in the mugging. But once the adrenaline wore off, it would be a different story.

I can still move my leg, so it isn’t really bad, right? Right? He wasn’t sure what to do to treat his wounds, but it was obvious that he had to stop the bleeding. He was about to go to the nearest bathroom and wrap a towel around his wounds when Sora hurried to him with a first aid kit in her hands.

“You carry a first aid kit with you?” he asked incredulously.

“No, it’s from a cabinet in the kitchen.”

They put a first aid kit in the suite? Wow. She quickly opened the kit for him and passed him a roll of gauze. He saw the concern and guilt in her eyes, and he felt terrible.

“I think you’re supposed to run water over wounds like that before wrapping them,” Sora said, staring at his leg. It wasn’t bleeding as heavily as his stomach.

“I’ll do that in a second, then.” He lifted the edge of his shirt and held it with his mouth. The brief glimpse he got of the wound horrified him, so he avoided looking directly at it while he wrapped it.

Sora stood in front of him, looking hesitant and unsure of what to do. Then Raine heard a soft buzz, and she checked her phone. She sighed with relief. “They’ll be here soon.”

“That’s good.” I guess. Raine passed the man lying on the ground and groaning in pain, and went into the bathroom and ran cold water over the wound on his leg. He nervously watched his blood run down the drain. The wound definitely didn’t look like something that would heal in a few days. Well, I guess I’m getting fired. He sighed. Again.

He turned off the tap and patted his wound dry with a clean towel. As he wrapped it in gauze, he heard the front door open outside.

He was about to leave the bathroom when the pain started to hit. He grimaced as he put on his pants. It hurt like hell to lift his injured leg. With one moronic mistake, I blew my shot at $3,000 and now I have two gunshot wounds to show for it. Lovely.

With a sigh, he walked stiffly out of the bathroom.

“Oh, Louise,” he said, surprised to see her in the living room, striding to him. “I’m—”

She punched him in the stomach. He crumpled.

“You fucking moron,” Louise growled. “What the fuck got into your head?”

“I’m very sorry,” he groaned.

“No shit you are. What the fuck are you doing on the ground? I didn’t even hit you hard. Get up.”

“Miss Louise, he’s injured!” Sora said, hurrying over.

“I’m aware, Miss Sora. He’ll be fine. Ruby, call the medics.”

A red-haired girl in black nodded and called over two people who immediately approached Raine to check his condition.

“Should we fail him?” Ruby asked.

“Well, he isn’t dead,” Louise said irritatedly, like it annoyed her that he wasn’t. “And he did keep Miss Sora from being harmed.”

“So...no?” She almost sounded disappointed.

“Yes. Levin will bitch if I drop him for this.” She paused. “Since this has happened, we probably won’t go through with the test.”

The two medics, one man and one woman, asked Raine a few questions while Louise spoke with Ruby. They decided it would be best if he didn’t walk. Someone brought a stretcher.

Well this sucks. He was carried out of the suite in the stretcher. Sora watched with concern as he left, while Louise and Ruby continued discussing something he had no idea about.

The medics weren’t particularly friendly, or talkative. They took him down to the basement, where they plopped him in the back of an ambulance. He asked them some questions, but they only responded with shrugs, sighs, and silence.

They took him to a nearby hospital.

“This might hurt.” In an emergency room, they were stitching the bullet wounds in his leg. There were two—one where the bullet entered, one where it exited. They told him the wounds were fairly shallow, so nothing too important was damaged, like a nerve or a bone.

His leg was fine. It was painful, but not excruciatingly so. But his stomach? They had to pull out the bullet. He bit down hard on a cloth they gave him. Hello, where’s my goddamn anesthetic?

“Suck it up. This is nothing,” the woman said. She looked like a demon to him. “Lucky bastard. It didn’t go deep. Must’ve been a weak shit pistol.”

“Take it easy on him. He hasn’t even been to the other side,” the man said.

Raine wanted to ask what he meant by the ‘other side,’ but with the pain, he didn’t think anything would come out of his mouth except a beast-like howl. He stayed quiet and kept biting down on the cloth.

“I got stabbed with a knife on my test, all the way up to the hilt,” the woman said. “Right in the gut. I didn’t bitch.”

“Yeah, because you were too busy being knocked-the-fuck-out.”

The woman just shrugged in response. The two worked in silence after that. Raine had to endure several more minutes of pain, but afterward, they were finally done. He almost cried in relief.

. . . .

“Okay,” Levin said, barely keeping the anger out of his voice, “so you want to fail him for that? It wasn’t part of the test. If the test has a difficulty of seven out of ten, that kidnapping attempt was an eight—maybe a nine.”

“He could have kept the door closed,” Elizabeth said, leaning back. She sat with her feet on her desk and her hands clasped behind her head.

“He couldn’t have expected an armed kidnapper to show up at the door. Armed with a pistol. We don’t test anybody like that.”

“We used to, occasionally. I got tested like that.”

Because you’re fucking crazy, and your recruiter knew it. Levin didn’t voice his thoughts. “Raine isn’t like you. The vast majority of our recruits aren’t like you.”

“That’s why they’re no good. We need people of a higher caliber.” She picked up a dart on her desk and tossed it at the dartboard on the wall. Bullseye. “How many times do we hit the recruiting bullseye each year?”

“Maybe ten times. Twelve times in a good year.”

“More like four times.” She frowned. “It sucks. Most of our recruits are shit.”

Levin’s hands balled into fists under the table. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Raine might not be a top-tier recruit, but he’ll do well in the New World. I’m sure of it. His actions today only increased my confidence in him.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “You and I see the situation differently. But whatever. Since you’re so sure he’s worth recruiting, go for it. The bright side of the kidnapping attempt is that we don’t have to test him ourselves.”

Levin heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you very much.”

“Yeah, but in exchange, you’ll be in charge of tracking down the other fuckers who tried to kidnap Takeuchi: the Duke and his lackey.”

Of course. There just has to be a catch. Levin knew no one else wanted to take that assignment. Hunting the Duke wouldn’t be that dangerous, just frustrating and time-consuming. Levin didn’t want to say yes, but he knew he had to if he wanted her approval to recruit Raine. Dammit, man. You better not fuck up this chance.

“Okay,” Levin said.

“Good.” She gestured toward the door while she picked up her book and started reading. “See you.”

. . . .

“Shields is insane,” Ava said, watching the footage on her phone. It was from the perspective of someone in the living room, but she still saw most of what happened. “Look at how the guy’s shooting! The banker could have died!”

“H6 says it wasn’t part of the test,” Song Hyun-woo said. He replayed the footage on his own phone. “But it’s impressive. He really does have that wrestling down. Another A minus for sure.”

“It was a nice throw,” Kim Jun-seo said in agreement. “Very nice.”

“But it’s not exactly the display of leadership you’re looking for,” Ava said.

“That’s the problem,” Song Hyun-woo said. “And I can’t see Shields testing him further at this point. He’s injured, and I’m pretty sure they’ve seen all they want. They’ll drop him now or take him.”

“What about us?”

“What do you think? There isn’t much time before Shields makes its decision, so we’ll vote now. Raise a hand for acceptance.”

Kim Jun-seo raised a hand. Song Hyun-woo raised his as well. Ava kept hers down. That was it.

“Tell June to meet me outside at eight. She and I will go meet Williams then,” Song Hyun-woo said to Kim Jun-seo, who consented.

“You’re not going to ask why I said no?” Ava asked.

“It’s clear,” Kim Jun-seo said. “You think he’s an idiot.”

“Yeah, because he is one,” she said, frowning.

“The man lives on beer and cup ramen and barely got any exercise for the last year,” Song Hyun-woo said. “But he’s proven twice that he can still dump grown men on their heads easily. That kind of talent more than makes up for a minor deficiency in common sense.”

“He isn’t fearless, but he acts without hesitation,” Kim Jun-seo said. “It’s a good trait for someone in the New World.”

“Okay, then.” Ava shrugged. “Anyway, I’m supposed to go back to the New World with this batch of recruits, right?”

Song Hyun-woo nodded. “We need more people at Rialis.”

“When do we go?” she asked.

“In four weeks.” Song Hyun-woo frowned. “Just in time for this year’s Expansion.”

“What?” Ava blinked.

“The Followers said it’ll be early this year.”

Ava ran her hands over her face. Aw, fuck.