The warehouse in Fo Tan was exactly as Wong's intelligence had described: a squat, corrugated metal box tucked between two larger industrial units, its windows grimy and dark. The rain had softened to a fine, persistent mist that haloed the few working streetlights. It was past 2 a.m., the world asleep, the perfect time for ghosts to work.
Kai sat in the stolen car a block away, the engine off, the silence pressing in on him. The pistol in his hand was a cold, familiar weight. It was clean, efficient, and final. Inside that warehouse were men—thugs, criminals, but men nonetheless—who had followed the orders of a mad dog. They were the same ones who had beaten Lok, who had held a knife to his throat. The rage was there, a hot, bright coal in his gut, but it was smothered by a heavier, colder dread. This wasn't rage. This was slaughter.
Inspector Chan's words echoed in his mind. "An acceptable loss." The phrase was a clinical abomination. These weren't abstract figures in a briefing file; they were breathing, sweating, scared men he was supposed to put bullets into. To cross this line was to become the monster everyone already saw when they looked at him. It was to confirm Lok's fears, to justify Sai Lo's contempt, and to fulfill Wong's design.
But the alternative was death. His death would mean the end of the operation. All the lies, all the blood, all the pieces of his soul he'd already sacrificed would be for nothing. The Wo Shing would continue to metastasize through the city, protected by the political and financial armor he was meant to expose.
He was trapped in a nightmare of his own making, every exit sealed with barbed wire.
He got out of the car. The mist clung to his leather jacket, beading on the black material. He moved through the shadows, a specter in the industrial gloom. The side door to the warehouse was unlocked, as promised by the intelligence. Wong's information was always flawless.
He pushed it open, the hinges groaning softly. The interior was vast and cavernous, lit only by a single, dangling bulb over a makeshift living area—a few stained mattresses, a table littered with beer bottles and noodle containers. The air stank of sweat, stale tobacco, and fear.
Four men. They were playing cards, their voices a low, tense murmur. They were jumpy, their laughter too sharp, their eyes darting towards the door too often. They knew they were hiding. They knew the Wo Shing had a long memory.
Kai stood in the doorway, pistol raised, his stance a textbook of lethal efficiency. He was a shadow given form, a promise of death made manifest.
The card game froze. Four faces turned to him, eyes wide with the primal terror of prey sighting a predator. One man, the one who had held the knife to Lok's throat at the fish plant, scrambled backwards, reaching for a cleaver on the table.
"Don't," Kai said. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the stagnant air like a whip crack.
The man froze, his hand hovering over the cleaver.
They were all looking at him. He saw the recognition in their eyes. They knew who he was. The Red Pole. The Dog Catcher. Lok's brother.
He had them. Four targets. Four shots. It would be over in seconds. A simple, brutal equation. He could do it. His finger rested on the trigger, the pressure a hair's breadth from unleashing hell.
He looked at their faces. Not as targets, but as men. One was barely older than a boy, his face pale with terror. Another had a faded tattoo of his mother's name on his forearm. They were brutal, they were cruel, but they were human. And he was supposed to be their executioner.
The ghost of Jin Kai was ready. The muscle memory, the training, the cold logic of the mission—it was all there, a perfectly crafted weapon.
But the man, Kai Jin, rebelled.
A tremor started deep inside him, a seismic shudder of his entire being. It wasn't fear. It was revulsion. A final, desperate refusal.
His arm began to shake. The pistol, once an extension of his will, felt alien and monstrous in his hand. He tried to tighten his grip, to force the ghost to take control, but the man would not be silenced.
He saw Lok's broken body in the clinic. He saw the photograph of Siu-wah with her ribbon. He saw the decent, stubborn face of To Kwok-wai. He saw the ledger, not as a document, but as a chasm swallowing everything he was.
He couldn't do it.
A strangled, guttural sound escaped his lips—a sob of pure, undiluted anguish. The pistol wavered, the barrel dipping.
The men stared, confused by this crack in the facade of the legendary Red Pole.
With a cry of rage and self-loathing, Kai jerked the pistol upwards and fired.
BANG!
The shot was deafening in the enclosed space. The single, dangling light bulb exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, plunging the warehouse into near-total darkness.
In the sudden blackness, chaos erupted. The men shouted, scrambling, knocking over the table. They weren't fighting; they were fleeing, their terror multiplied by the inexplicable act.
Kai didn't fire again. He stood, trembling violently in the dark, listening to the sounds of their panicked escape through a back exit. He had let them go. He had failed the test. He had chosen his shattered humanity over the mission.
When the last sound of flight had faded, he was left alone in the profound silence, the acrid smell of gunpowder stinging his nostrils. He had reached the point of no return and had refused to cross. There was no going back now. Wong would know. Sai Lo would know.
He walked out of the warehouse, the mist feeling like a shroud. He didn't drive away. He just stood in the empty street, the spent pistol hanging from his limp hand. He had saved four lives he was ordered to take, but in doing so, he had signed his own death warrant. The ghost had failed its master. The man had won a battle, but the war was over.
He pulled out his phone, his fingers numb. He didn't call Chan. He didn't call Wong. There was nothing left to say.
He dropped the pistol into a storm drain and began to walk, directionless, into the consuming grey dawn. He was a ghost who had remembered he was once a man, and in a world of monsters, that was the most fatal flaw of all. The reckoning would come with the sun, and he was too broken, too empty, to even care.