Stepping onto the loading ramp was like walking down a dead leviathan's throat. The air inside was thick and cold, tasting of rust, river sludge, and decay. Every sound was amplified and twisted in the cavernous vehicle bay. The slow, rhythmic drip of water from a corroded pipe sounded like footsteps trailing me in the dark. The groan of the hull settling in the mud was the moan of a dying beast.
I pushed the Tinkerer ahead of me, his body trembling so hard I could feel it through the thin fabric of his coat. "In here," I rasped, my voice a low gravel that the shadows seemed to swallow whole. I shoved him into a small storage hold filled with rotted life preservers and coils of stiff, greasy rope. The place smelled like drowned rats.
He stumbled, clutching the briefcase to his chest like a holy relic. His eyes, wide and terrified in the sliver of light from my tactical lamp, darted into every dark corner. "What—what are you doing?"
"Making sure we live long enough for me to get paid," I said, my tone leaving no room for argument. "Stay here. Don't make a sound. Don't even breathe too loud. If you hear anything other than my voice, you press yourself into that corner and pray it isn't for you."
He nodded, a jerky, puppet-like motion, and scurried into the deepest shadow the hold offered. Leaving him to his fear, I went to work. This ferry wasn't a trap; it was a hunting ground, and I intended to be the only predator left walking when the sun came up.
My hands moved with grim efficiency in the gloom. I found a crate of empty bottles, their glass thick and brown. With a sharp rap from the butt of my knife, I shattered them, scattering the glittering shards across the main thoroughfare of the lower deck. A welcome mat for anyone not watching their feet. Next, I located a nest of heavy anchor chains dangling from a winch system. A few minutes of work with a pry bar had them rigged to a tripwire. They wouldn't stop a man, but they would make a hell of a racket—a dinner bell announcing the arrival of the main course.
My final preparation was a piece of spiteful ingenuity. Tucked away in a rusted emergency locker, I found a flare gun and a single, fat cartridge of magnesium red. I secured it to a stanchion with zip ties, aimed it down the longest, narrowest corridor, and ran another tripwire low across the floor. It wouldn't kill, but temporary blindness was the next best thing.
With the stage set, I found my perch on a catwalk overlooking the vehicle bay, melting back into the latticework of steel and shadow. The ferry groaned around me, the dripping water kept a steady, maddening beat, and the river lapped softly against the hull. Every sound was now a part of my symphony of violence. I waited, my pulse a slow, steady drum against the impending chaos. I was no longer a man hiding in a derelict ship; I was the ghost in the machine.
The first sign of their arrival was subtle—a gentle, almost imperceptible lurch of the entire vessel as new weight settled on the gangplank. It was a tremor a civilian would have dismissed as the river's current. To me, it was a seismic event. Moments later, the sound came: the heavy clatter of boots on steel, confident and unhurried. One set. Then a second, a dragging, scraping sound that spoke of brokenness.
I peered through a gap in the grated floor of the catwalk. The beam of a powerful flashlight cut through the oppressive dark below, illuminating Deadshot. He was exactly as I remembered him from the rooftops: poised, economical in his movements, the picture of cold professionalism. But it wasn't him that held my attention. It was the thing he was dragging behind him.
Brick.
The man was a ruin. The concrete slab had done its work. One of his legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, forcing him to limp and drag it like an anchor. His face was a swollen mask of purple and red, crusted with dried blood. A thick, wet cough rattled in his chest with every ragged breath, and a dark stain was spreading across the front of his jacket. But his eyes… his eyes were burning. They were twin coals of pure, undiluted fury glowing in the ruins of his face. He wasn't a man anymore; he was an engine of hate running on its last drops of fuel.
Deadshot heaved him the last few feet onto the deck. Brick swayed, his massive frame a study in agony and rage.
"He's in here, you overgrown ape," Deadshot's voice was a calm, cutting whisper that carried unnervingly in the dead air. "The one who did that to you. The one who left you to die under a pile of rubble. I brought you to him."
Brick let out a low growl, a sound that started deep in his shattered chest and vibrated through the steel deck plating.
"You want your vengeance?" Deadshot continued, his voice a silken thread of poison. "He's hiding in the guts of this ship. Go find him. Break him. Bring me his head, and we'll call it even."
He gave Brick a final, contemptuous shove. For a moment, the giant just stood there, swaying, his breathing a harsh, wet rasp. Then he lifted his head, and a roar of pure, animalistic rage tore from his throat. It was not a human sound. It was the bellow of a wounded bull, a sound of agony and murder that echoed through the ferry's steel belly, shaking loose flakes of rust from the ceiling. He was unleashed.
The rampage began. Brick stormed into the ferry's bowels, not navigating the space but simply moving forward, smashing anything in his path. A stack of folded metal chairs was obliterated, a rusted steel door was torn from its hinges, his wounded body fueled by a berserker's strength. He was a force of nature, a hurricane of broken bones and vengeance.
Then he hit my first welcome mat. The crunch of shattering glass was immediately followed by a howl of pain and fury. I saw him stumble, looking down at his boots, now studded with glittering shards. The pain only seemed to enrage him further. He roared again and plunged deeper into the darkness.
A moment later, the deafening clang and rattle of the anchor chains echoed through the ship. I pictured them whipping against him, heavy iron links lashing his already broken body. He bellowed, a sound of frustration this time, batting the chains away like bothersome flies. The noise was my cue. I dropped from the catwalk, landing silently on the deck below, and began to move.
He was a bloodhound tracking a scent, and I was the fox leading him on a fatal chase. I let him see a flicker of movement, a fleeting shadow, drawing him toward the narrow maintenance corridor. He took the bait, charging with a surprising speed for a man so grievously wounded. His foot caught the tripwire.
FWOOSH!
The world turned hallucinatory red as the flare ignited, blasting down the corridor with the force of a miniature sun. It was blinding even for me, fifty yards away and around a corner. Brick screamed, a high, thin sound of agony as his retinas were seared by the magnesium burn. He staggered back, clawing at his eyes, temporarily helpless.
This was my chance. I burst from the intersecting passageway, my knife a sliver of dark steel in my hand. I moved in low, striking for the back of his good knee, aiming to cripple, to bring the giant down. The blade sank deep into muscle and tendon. He roared and swung blindly, a backhand with the force of a battering ram. I was too slow, too close. It caught me square in the ribs.
The world exploded in a starburst of white-hot pain. I heard bones crack. The impact lifted me off my feet and slammed me into a steel bulkhead. The metal dented with a deafening BOOM. My head bounced off the wall, and for a second, the darkness swarmed with pinpricks of light. I slid to the floor, gasping, the air refusing to enter my lungs.
Brick, still half-blinded, wiped at his eyes with one meaty hand, blinking away the spots of light. He saw me, a crumpled shape on the floor, and a terrible, triumphant grin split his swollen face. He stalked forward, each step a thunderous impact.
Pain was a good motivator. I forced myself to move, rolling sideways as his boot stomped down where my head had been, cracking the deck plate. I scrambled back, using the walls to haul my screaming body upright. The fight became a brutal, running battle. I was a phantom, darting in and out of the shadows, using my speed and precision to land shallow cuts on his arms and torso. He was a juggernaut, swatting at me with fists the size of hammers, each miss cratering the metal walls around us. Rivets popped like gunfire. Pipes burst, spraying us with foul, pressurized water.
But I could see he was fading. The initial surge of adrenaline was burning out, and his injuries were catching up to him. His movements grew slower, more sluggish. The blood loss was making him pale beneath the bruising. His body was failing, but his hatred kept him on his feet. He had to be put down.
I spotted it then—a length of rebar, nearly an inch thick, lying amidst a pile of construction debris. It was perfect. I feigned a move to my left, drawing his attention. As he lumbered to intercept me, I lunged to the right, scooping up the steel shaft. It was heavy, solid. A spear.
"Come on, you bastard!" I yelled, my voice raw.
He charged, a final, desperate bellow tearing from his lungs. I set my feet, ignoring the fire in my ribs. I held the rebar like a matador's lance. He wasn't going to be feinted this time; he was coming straight through me. I waited until the last possible second, until his shadow completely eclipsed me, until I could smell the blood and sweat on him.
Then I sidestepped and drove the rebar forward with every ounce of strength I had left.
The impact was sickening, a wet, solid crunch of steel punching through flesh, muscle, and bone. The spear went clean through his chest, the tip emerging from his back with a spray of crimson. His momentum carried him forward, and the back end of the rebar slammed into the corridor wall, pinning him like a specimen to a board.
His eyes went wide with shock, then confusion. He looked down at the steel bar protruding from his sternum. He thrashed, a monstrous, violent spasm that shook the entire corridor. Metal screeched as the rebar bent under his weight. He opened his mouth, but only a choked, gurgling sound came out. He raised a trembling hand, not towards me, but towards the entrance of the ferry.
"Dead…shot…" he rasped, the name a bloody curse on his lips.
Then the fight went out of him. His head slumped forward, his massive body went limp, and he hung there, held up only by the steel I had driven through his heart.
The silence that fell was absolute, a heavy blanket smothering the echoes of the battle. It was deeper than before, a true, deathly quiet. The only sounds were the groaning of the stressed metal around Brick's impaled corpse and the gentle, indifferent lapping of the river against the hull.
My breath came in ragged, painful hitches. My ribs were a cage of fire. I leaned against the opposite wall, every muscle in my body screaming in protest. Slowly, deliberately, I walked over to the body. Planting a boot on the wall for leverage, I gripped the bloody rebar and pulled. It came free with a grotesque sucking sound. Brick's body slumped to the deck, a boneless heap of flesh that slid into the deepest shadows of the corridor.
He was the distraction. The rabid dog sent in to flush the prey. Now, the real hunter would come.
Somewhere in the darkness of the storage hold, the Tinkerer was trembling. I could picture him, huddled in the corner, clutching that briefcase, listening to the violence of the fight and now this sudden, terrifying stillness. He knew, just as I did, that the silence was not an ending. It was a prelude. It was the sound of the true predator circling its prey.
I didn't have to wait long.
A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows at the far end of the vehicle bay. A figure stepped into the weak, flickering glow of a single emergency light. It was Deadshot.
He moved with a liquid grace that was unnerving, his steps utterly silent on the steel deck. His own suppressed rifle was slung across his back, ignored. Instead, his hands were occupied. In each, he held a large-caliber pistol, sleek and black with custom sights. He wasn't a sniper anymore. He was a duelist.
With a casual, almost arrogant flick of his wrists, he spun the pistols, catching them perfectly, their muzzles settling in my direction. There was no haste, no tension in his posture. He was completely calm, completely in his element.
For the first time, we faced each other without a city block between us. There were no rooftops, no intermediaries, no wounded monsters to act as a buffer. It was just an injured hunter and a patient assassin, standing thirty feet apart in the belly of a metal corpse. The space between us crackled with a silent, lethal energy. I could feel him weighing me, assessing my injuries, calculating his odds. I was doing the same, my mind racing, cataloging every shadow, every piece of cover, every possible angle.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy. The dripping water seemed to have stopped. The groaning ferry held its breath.
Then Deadshot spoke, his voice a cold, flat line that cut through the stillness and chilled me more than the damp air ever could.
"Finally. Just you and me."