Pyke walked out of the convenience store and headed for the nearest train station. It was almost eight o’clock and the main street was crowded, so he decided to take a shortcut.

The dark alley was littered with trash from all the stores. Occasionally a rat would run across the alley, but Pyke paid it no mind. He walked past a hobo sleeping under a piece of cardboard and steered to the right.

He thought he heard someone shushing behind him, but he didn’t bother checking. Only when he heard a piercing scream did he stop and turn around.

“You bitch!” shouted a man, smacking the petite blond girl beside him. She fell to her knees, sobbing. The attacker looked at Pyke. “Hey there, pal. I’m sure you don’t want to get into any trouble, so how about you just walk away.”

Pyke ignored the man, glancing around. “This will have to do,” he whispered, placing his grocery bags on the emergency exit staircase next to him.

The attacker, still walking toward him, raised an eyebrow. Small beads of sweat started forming on his forehead.

“You have an accent. I presume you’re not from here,” Pyke said, approaching the attacker. The man suddenly halted.

“Who are you, fucker?” The attacker spoke hastily, retracting his steps. “What—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, as it was interrupted by a kick to his side. His body bent and smashed against the wall. Pyke eyed the slumped form for a moment, then turned his attention to the injured woman.

He bent down and inspected her injury—a nasty, bleeding bruise to the head. Pyke took out his phone and sent a brief text to Rafael, explaining that they were here again. He was forced to swiftly hide the phone when he felt a sense of danger from behind him.

A flicker of light in the darkness turned into a flying knife that Pyke caught a few centimeters from his eye.

“You’re good,” a croaky voice resounded through the darkness. “Question is, am I better?” The man laughed crazily.

Pyke wasn’t feeling good about this situation. He took up a battle stance just in time to parry an incoming strike. Using his forearm to block the enemy, he managed to halt the blade. As the attacker exposed himself, Pyke noticed his scarred face and gruesome smile, filled with bloody teeth.

The attacker dropped his knife and retracted his hand. He delivered a spinning kick, sending Pyke to the other side of the alley. Pyke reached out just in time to grab the falling knife.

He landed easily on a soft pile of garbage. Jumping up with a quick shake of the head, Pyke noted that the first attacker was still out cold. But the second one was armed, dangerous, and obviously crazy. Things weren’t looking so good for Pyke.

The injured woman, who had been smart enough to crawl away while they were fighting, was now crouching behind a garbage can.

“You’re not dead!” the man laughed hysterically. “That’s great!” he exclaimed, gesticulating wildly.

Pyke kept his eyes on the man before him. “Can you walk?” he shouted, turning his head slightly towards the hiding woman.

“I—I think so,” her voice trembled.

“Great. Run while I hold him off!”

The woman nodded and struggled to her feet. She turned and ran away.

Pyke heard the clatter of her heels, but he kept his eyes on the crazy attacker in front of him.

“That’s no fun. We could’ve enjoyed some time with her once we finished here.” The man’s shoulders slumped and his face turned sour.

“You’re a freak.”

“Why, thank you!” The man smiled and his posture returned to normal.

Pyke saw the man vanish and knew he would reappear behind him. He dove into a roll, narrowly avoiding a razor-sharp blade. A couple more blades flew in his direction, but he dodged those, as well.

“Stop running and FIGHT!” the crazy attacker shouted. “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” Every scream was followed by a knife flying precisely towards Pyke’s head.

Pyke kept dodging, but he had no time to grab one from the air. The man had already run out of knives, but since he had been moving forward, he started recycling the ones on the ground. He threw them up with his feet, catching and hurling them at Pyke in the span of less than a second.

Exhaustion was getting the better of Pyke; he knew he had to end this fast. He wanted to dash towards the man, but he wasn’t going to risk fighting unarmed. Running was an option, but he wasn’t sure if the attacker would give chase. If he did, he was as good as dead.

With his peripheral vision, Pyke noticed the first attacker lying next to him. With a Quickstep, he reappeared next to the first attacker, grabbing him by the collar and placing the man between himself and the incoming knife. The knife penetrated the man’s neck.

Pyke didn’t wait long to extract the knife. He dropped the body, and before the crazy attacker could realize what had happened, he already had a knife sticking out from the man’s jaw. Pyke swiftly took it out and cut the attacker’s throat to be sure.

Both bodies fell to the ground almost simultaneously. Pyke had to use the wall to support himself. He was lucky that things had worked out the way they did.

Hearing a clatter behind him, Pyke dove into a roll and swiftly grabbed a pair of knives. It turned out to be just the hobo he had passed earlier. He was cautiously approaching.

“I heard all the commotion and thought I’d come and take a look. What happened, young fella?”

“Nothing,” Pyke said, dropping the knives and reaching into his pocket. He took out a thousand sils from his wallet. He handed it to the hobo and asked, “And what do you think happened?”

“Nothing that I know of, good sir,” the hobo grinned. “I’m a heavy sleeper.” He pocketed the money and walked away.

Pyke took out his phone and dialled the first number.

“I think I found a couple of them. . . Yes, they’re dead. . . No, I’m fine. Just barely, but yes, I am . . . I need a cleaning crew on my position. I’ll text it to you. . . One was clearly an amateur, but the second one knew what he was doing. This is bad. They started sending in the cavalry. . . Yes. . . Talk to you later.”

He hid the phone and walked toward the lifeless body of the knife-throwing attacker. He searched his pockets, but apart from a couple of bills of foreign currency and a burner phone, there was nothing there.

The other man wasn’t any different, so Pyke decided to just wait for the cleaning crew. He didn’t want anybody else discovering the bodies, so he dragged them to a dark corner and threw a couple of garbage bags on them.

He sat down right beside them and waited.

***

A few minutes later, Rafael arrived at Pyke’s location with a cleaning crew and saw him leaning against the wall. He looked tired but otherwise unharmed.

“You okay?” Rafael asked.

“Well, I almost got killed, but other than that, I’m doing pretty fine.” Pyke stood up and stretched his limbs. “The bodies are in there, gentlemen. Please search them. I took a brief look but found nothing of significance.”

“Yes, Mr. Olsen,” the leader of the cleaning crew replied. He was the one in charge of the whole cleaning department, so he usually didn’t go to work personally. But since Mr. Ravilla insisted he had no other choice.

“Come here, Pyke,” Rafael said, walking away from the cleaning crew. “Have you found anything?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Pyke whispered back, taking out the burner phone he had found. “I found this. You should probably take it. They might try to search me.”

Rafael hid the phone. “Anything else you found out?”

“The first one had no idea what he was doing. He almost pissed himself when I released my killing intent,” Pyke said, looking at the body as it was dragged out of the pile of trash. “But the second one would’ve killed me if I hadn’t gotten lucky. We might have a problem.”

“Damn it! I’ll give the phone back to you later. Have your friend go through it and try to figure out who they are.”

“We still don’t know?”

“Sadly, no. It’s still 50-50. Or maybe even both.”

“I’ll let you know if she finds out anything. How did it go with Nathan?”

“He’s a bright kid. He might not be the strongest, but his mind is really something else. I think you two will like each other. You can teach him some of your tricks,” Rafael smiled.

“Oh, I’d love to! It’s usually hard to find an intelligent assassin that isn’t plotting against us.”