Floor fifteen was the only silent place.
Hina noticed it as soon as the stairwell door shut behind her, cutting off the distant gunfire below.
The carpet swallowed her footsteps, while gold-leaf sconces burned steadily along a corridor of suite doors no one had kicked in tonight.
No bodies, no casings, no blood drying into the carpet.... Nothing.
She kept the Glock low, and the knife reversed against her forearm, her steps slow. Empty rooms had killed more careless people than crowded ones.
She checked three doors out of habit and found three untouched suites. Beds turned down, minibars stocked, everything waiting for guests who would never check in.
The whole floor felt like something set aside. Saved.
Then, the speakers crackled overhead.
"Hina."
The voice came from everywhere at once, warm and unhurried, and her stomach dropped before she had even finished recognizing it.
She had heard it explain, without ever needing to raise its volume, exactly what would happen if she tried to run.
"You don't have much time," Sabushi said, sounding almost gentle. "Take the service elevator at the end of the hall and go to the forty-ninth floor."
The Glock came up, tracking the ceiling for a target she knew wouldn't be there.
Her heartbeat climbed. Her breathing didn't. An old trick she learned during her time distant from the criminal world. Sabushi hearing even a glimpse of fear in your voice was the same as putting the leash back in his hand.
"Rude of me, disturbing you mid-climb," he continued, almost fond. "But I'd rather you arrive somewhere I've chosen than stumble into it blind. Not tonight, of all nights."
Then, the speakers went dead.
Gold light continued burning along the corridor as if nothing had happened.
Hina waited three seconds.
She hated that she trusted him, but not because Sabushi deserved trust. Trust had nothing to do with it.
Her 'father' had spent years building her into something specific, and men like him did not throw away investments with a rigged elevator when a hundred cleaner ways to kill her already existed below.
If he'd wanted her dead in a shaft, she would already be dead.
So the elevator was safe.
Knowing that made her hate him more.
The worst thing was what his voice had done to her before she could stop it. Her shoulders had loosened at the first syllable, responding to some old childhood law her body still obeyed: when Father spoke calmly, the calm part of the room was the safest place to stand.
She had spent too much time tearing his lessons out of herself. Apparently she'd missed one.
Kai surfaced in her mind, somewhere below in the guts of the building, but she pushed the thought aside before it could become fear.
Then, she slowly walked to the service elevator and pressed the call button with one bloodied knuckle.
It arrived without a sound.
Brushed steel walls, brass hotel crest, spotless floor... clearly an elevator made for champagne carts and luggage, not a woman with a Glock in one hand and a stranger's severed head hanging from her shoulder in a duffel bag.
After taking a long, deep breath, Hina stepped inside.
The doors closed, catching her reflection again and again in the polished steel. Gray eyes stared back from six angles, but she looked away.
The ascent took forty seconds, but it felt way longer. Hina gripped her Glock tightly and kept her eyes closed.
Then, the forty-ninth floor opened onto a corridor with no doors.
Smooth walls ran on either side beneath a single strip of cold white light, leading straight ahead to a pair of double doors standing open in the dark.
Hina stepped through, and the lights came on in sections across the room.
It had once been the hotel's private VIP gymnasium. The machines were gone. Empty racks lined the far wall, mirrors covered one side from end to end, and the polished floor had been ruined by old blood. Dark patches, smears, places where it had pooled and dried. Enough of it that nobody needed to tell her what the room had been used for.
And in the center of it, with his hands in his pockets, stood Haruto waiting as casually as if she'd kept him late after school. He hadn't changed. That hit harder than she expected.
Same easy posture. Same cold expression he always had during their criminal life together, but with just a small difference: his eyes looked wrong, different in some ways.
But then, Hina's gaze moved past him.
About twenty men knelt in two uneven rows beside the wall, hoods over their heads, wrists zip-tied behind them. Some were shaking, while a few wore torn hotel uniforms.
The nearest still had his laminated employee badge clipped sideways to his shirt, but Hina didn't read the name.
"What does this mean, Haruto?" Hina's voice came out flat.
"Your last trial, Hina." He said, lightly, almost bored, before opening his hands toward the prisoners like a teacher presenting an assignment.
"Step aside, Haruto. I don't have time to waste."
"No." His voice sharpened. "I can't. Orders from above." He gave her an almost apologetic shake of the head. "I'm sorry."
Haruto then drew a pistol from his waistband, walked to the nearest kneeling man, and shot him through the hood.
The body dropped sideways, silently. Not even a cry of pain.
The gunshot cracked off the mirrors and left a high ring behind it. Beside the corpse, another prisoner started sobbing through his hood.
"What the fuck?!" Hina already had the Glock leveled at Haruto's chest.
"If you want to walk past me and go straight to him," Haruto said, unconcerned by the muzzle aimed at his heart, "I'll kill every single one of these men." He pointed the pistol loosely toward the rows. "Imagine it, Hina. Fathers... Men who worked in this building before tonight turned it into whatever the hell this is." His smile thinned. "Dead because you were in a hurry."
Something in Hina's chest went cold. "What do you want, Haruto?"
"Our father said we should fight to the death." He spoke lightly, but the words came out tighter than the ones before them. "He wants to see if you're still what he made. If you die tonight..." Haruto shrugged. "I become the heir."
"And if you die," Hina said, "all these men will live."
His mouth pulled sideways, and then he nodded, slowly. "You don't know who these people are, Hina. Every man kneeling here could be a murderer for all you know. Sabushi doesn't exactly recruit choir boys."
"I don't fucking care, Haruto." Her pupils shrank.
She threw the duffel bag aside, and it hit the bloodstained floor with a heavy thud, and Luigi Morsuno's head rolled halfway out through the open zipper. Then, Hina stepped into the space between them with her gun raised and the knife loose at her side. "Come at me, Haruto."
He laughed, but this laugh sounded like it hurt.
"I feel sorry for fighting against you, Hina. I don't want it. Really." The gun remained low in his hand. "We went through a lot, didn't we? I thought that our life would've continued, together." His jaw tightened. "But you suddenly ran away and chose a useless human being like K—"
Hina fired.
The bullet cut past his ear and tore through the hair above it. Haruto flinched sideways, too late for the graze to leave a thin red line along his skin. His eyes opened wide.
"Don't you fucking dare to speak about Kai, you disgusting piece of trash." Hina kept the Glock on him. "You have always disgusted me, Haruto. You're an evil person with a rotten soul. I've never killed innocent people without a reason. That's the difference between us, and that's why I always hated you."
He stared at her. Blood ran from the graze and disappeared beneath his collar.
Whatever had been left on his face from the boy she remembered was gone by the time he spoke again.
"So that's it..." His voice was quiet. "You made your choice. There's no point in talking, then." Haruto raised the pistol and fired, and the first burst came tight and controlled.
Hina moved with the muzzle flash, dropping low and cutting across the gym toward the steel frame of an empty weight rack.
A round struck it inches from her shoulder and threw sparks across the floor, while another hit the mirror behind her, blasting glass over the kneeling prisoners.
They screamed beneath their hoods and curled against restraints they couldn't escape.
"I DON'T WANNA DIE!! LET ME RETURN HOME! MY DAUGHTER IS WAITING!" One of the men screamed after the gunshots, and Hina immediately recognized the voice.
Then, she broke from cover and sprinted across the open floor, cutting past the wreckage of an old rowing machine while Haruto tracked her with the patience of someone who had spent years being taught exactly where to place a bullet.
He didn't chase her with his shots. He aimed ahead. The first forced her to change direction, while the second passed close enough for her to feel it.
But Hina closed the gap anyway. Distance belonged to Haruto, while up close belonged to her.
Ten feet. He started backing away and lowered his aim toward her legs. Hina dropped into a slide across the bloodied floor. Her boots struck the back of his knee, folding it under him.
Haruto hit the floor hard, twisting as he fell, but the pistol was already coming around.
Even flat on his back, he kept the barrel searching for her chest.
"You always were faster," he grunted, pushing himself backward with his free hand, opening the distance again. "Doesn't mean you were ever going to win this."
Hina rose from her crouch. Cold light ran along the edge of her knife.
Behind her, the hooded men remained on their knees, waiting for one of them to stop moving.