Viggo Tarasov sat in his office at the Russian mob headquarters, watching the surveillance footage for the third time. His jaw clenched tighter with each replay, until he could hear his own teeth grinding together.
Marcus. Of all people, Marcus.
The video showed everything—Marcus and John Wick meeting, talking like old friends. No, not just friends. Conspirators. The man Viggo had personally hired with 4 million dollars to kill John Wick had instead saved him.
Viggo's hand tightened around his glass of vodka until his knuckles turned white.
Marcus was a registered Continental killer, one of Viggo's most reliable contractors. Their relationship had been similar to what Viggo once had with John Wick himself—professional, lucrative, built on mutual respect and the rules of the Continental system. When Viggo had needed John dead, Marcus had been his first call. Four million dollars. A fortune for a single kill.
The mission had failed, Marcus had reported. No clear shot. Bad timing. The usual excuses.
Lies. All of it.
Marcus hadn't failed—he'd betrayed him. Actively worked against him. Those warning shots at the Continental that had given John the chance to kill Perkins? That was Marcus. The reason John had survived long enough to slaughter Viggo's men and murder his son? Marcus had enabled all of it.
Viggo could tolerate interference from outsiders like Smith Doyle and Fox. They were unknowns, wild cards, beyond his immediate control. He'd deal with them in time.
But betrayal from his own people? That was unforgivable.
"Damn you, Marcus," Viggo growled, slamming the glass down hard enough to crack it. "I'll make sure you understand the price of treachery."
He pulled out his phone and sent a text to his surveillance team: Continue tracking Marcus. Find out where he's going. I want his location at all times.
The response came within minutes: Target heading home. ETA 15 minutes.
Perfect.
Viggo immediately sent orders to his enforcers scattered across the city. Surround Marcus's residence. Prepare for a takedown. This was personal now—Viggo would handle the traitor himself. He wanted to look Marcus in the eye when he pulled the trigger.
As he was coordinating the Marcus operation, another call came in. Viggo answered without checking the ID.
"Sir, we've located Smith Doyle. He's driving toward the suburbs with the woman."
Viggo's lips curled into something that might have been a smile on a less angry man.
"Send him on his way," Viggo said coldly. "Permanently."
"Understood."
Viggo ended the call and leaned back in his chair. Two problems, one solution. By morning, both Smith Doyle and Marcus would be dead, and Viggo could finally begin rebuilding what John Wick had destroyed.
Fox guided the car through New York traffic with the casual confidence of someone who'd conducted high-speed chases through worse. Smith sat in the passenger seat, watching the city slide past through the window.
They were heading back to the textile factory—back to the Assassin's League headquarters. Back home.
The light ahead turned red. Fox eased to a stop at the T-junction, fingers drumming absently on the steering wheel.
"So the final assessment is really happening?" Fox asked, glancing over at him. "This is it?"
Smith nodded. "Cross said they've selected the mission. I need to get back, review the intelligence, and prepare for deployment."
Fox's entire face lit up with barely contained excitement. "That means once you complete this mission, you'll officially become the leader of the Assassin's League. The one and only GOD."
The title still felt strange to Smith. GOD—an acronym the Fraternity used for its supreme leader, standing for something appropriately grandiose that he could never quite remember. What mattered was the position itself: absolute authority over one of the world's oldest and most deadly organizations.
Smith allowed himself a small smile. "Eighteen years. Everyone's been waiting eighteen years for this moment."
"Not just waiting," Fox said warmly. "Believing. We always knew—"
The black SUV came out of nowhere.
It slammed into the driver's side with the force of a freight train. Metal screamed. Glass exploded. The world spun sideways in a blur of motion and violence.
Smith's instincts kicked in before his conscious mind could catch up. He grabbed Fox and yanked her toward him, using his own body to shield her from the worst of the impact. They were both wearing seatbelts, but the collision was so violent that physics didn't care about safety features.
Their car was driven sideways across the intersection, tires shrieking against asphalt, until it slammed into the concrete barrier on the far side of the road.
Fox's head snapped forward and back. Smith felt her go momentarily limp in his arms, stunned by the impact. Blood trickled from her temple where her head had caught the edge of something—the window frame, maybe, or the ceiling.
"Fox!" Smith's hand went to his gun automatically, but before he could draw, another SUV rammed them from behind.
Then another hit them head-on.
They were boxed in. Perfectly positioned. This wasn't an accident—it was an execution.
Fox shook her head, trying to clear the daze, and her training kicked in. Her hand went to her holster, drawing her pistol with muscle memory alone. She raised it toward the driver of the first SUV—
The third impact hit them like a hammer. The gun flew from Fox's grip, clattering somewhere into the footwell.
Then the doors of all three SUVs opened, and men emerged like ants from a disturbed hill. They moved with military precision, positioning themselves around the wrecked car. Each one carried a submachine gun.
Smith's vision let him see everything in crystalline detail. He counted twelve shooters total. They were already raising their weapons, fingers moving toward triggers.
They had maybe two seconds before this car became a metal coffin filled with bullets.
"Hold on!" Smith roared.
He kicked the driver's side door. The frame was crumpled from the impact, the metal bent and twisted, but Smith's leg drove through it like it was cardboard. The entire door tore free from its hinges and flew outward, slamming into the nearest gunman and sending him sprawling.
Smith grabbed Fox around the waist with one arm and moved.
He threw himself out of the ruined vehicle, pulling Fox with him, just as the gunfire started. The sound was deafening—twelve submachine guns firing simultaneously, the muzzle flashes creating a strobing nightmare of light and noise.
Bullets chewed through the car's interior, shredding upholstery and punching through metal. The windshield exploded into a thousand glittering fragments. If they'd stayed inside for even another second, they'd be dead.
Smith rolled with Fox behind the car, using the engine block and wheels as cover. Bullets sparked off metal and rubber all around them.
"I'll handle them," Smith said, his voice preternaturally calm despite the chaos.
Fox, still shaking off the effects of the collision, reached back toward the passenger side of the car. Her backup weapons were still in there—if she could just reach them during the next reload cycle.
Smith didn't wait for her response. He launched himself upward and forward in a movement that defied physics.
One moment he was crouched behind the car. The next, he was airborne, sailing over the vehicle entirely, his trajectory carrying him directly toward the first SUV—the one that had initiated the ambush.
The gunmen's eyes went wide. A few tried to track him with their weapons, but he was moving too fast, too unpredictably.
Smith came down beside the SUV's B-pillar—the structural column between the front and rear doors. He planted his feet, twisted his hips, and kicked.
The sound it made was wrong. Metal shouldn't crumple like that. Structural frames shouldn't bend from a human kick.
But Smith wasn't entirely human anymore, was he? Not after the Dragon Ball system had integrated into his being.
The SUV's entire side collapsed inward from the impact. The vehicle tipped up onto two wheels, hung there for an impossible moment, then rolled. Once. Twice. Three times. It tumbled across the intersection like a child's toy, glass and metal fragments spraying in all directions, before finally coming to rest upside down.
Inside, the occupants were a tangle of broken limbs and unconscious bodies. They wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.
The gunmen in the other two SUVs froze for a critical half-second, their brains trying to process what they'd just witnessed.
Then their training reasserted itself. They pivoted toward Smith, raising their weapons, fingers tightening on triggers. Muzzle flashes lit up the street.
Smith reached into his system inventory and withdrew a combat knife. The blade was matte black, military-grade, perfectly balanced.
He moved.
The bullets closed the distance in milliseconds, but Smith was already reading their trajectories. His enhanced perception, combined with the knowledge from Yamcha's template, let him see the paths the bullets would take as clearly as if they were drawn in the air.
The knife flashed. Once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession.
Each bullet that would have hit him was intercepted by the blade. The knife edge caught the rounds at precisely the right angle, shearing them in half with surgical precision. Split bullets fell at Smith's feet, still hot from the barrel, sparking against the asphalt.
One of the gunmen watched this happen in real-time. His eyes bulged. His mouth opened. The submachine gun in his hands suddenly felt useless, like he was fighting a tank with a water pistol.
"Monster!" he screamed, his voice cracking with terror. "He's a fucking monster! Drive! DRIVE!"
The driver of the second SUV, pale-faced and shaking, threw the vehicle into reverse and stomped on the accelerator.
That's when Fox made her move.
She'd used the distraction to grab her weapons from the passenger side—two custom Berettas, perfectly maintained, intimately familiar. She rose from behind the wrecked car in a smooth motion, arms extended, both pistols aimed.
The gunfire from her weapons was precise and controlled—nothing like the wild spray-and-pray of the submachine guns. Each shot was deliberate. Each shot was lethal.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three headshots. Three bodies dropped from the second SUV.
Bang. Bang.
The third SUV's gunmen went down next, blood spraying across the vehicle's interior.
Fox pivoted smoothly, tracking to the driver of the second SUV as he tried desperately to escape. She put a round through the driver's side window. The man's head snapped back. The SUV rolled forward a few more feet on momentum alone before bumping gently into a lamppost and stopping.
The entire ambush had lasted less than thirty seconds.
In the overturned first SUV, movement. Three men crawled out through the shattered windshield, groaning and disoriented. One had a broken arm hanging at an unnatural angle. Another was bleeding from a deep gash across his forehead. But they were alive.
Smith was on them before they could even register his approach.
He grabbed the nearest man by the throat and lifted him off the ground one-handed. The man's legs kicked uselessly as he clawed at Smith's iron grip.
"Who sent you?" Smith's voice was flat, emotionless, terrifying in its calmness.
The man's face turned purple. His mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning in air. No words came out—he couldn't speak with Smith's hand crushing his windpipe.
Smith's eyes narrowed slightly. Then, with a casual twist of his wrist, he snapped the man's neck. The crack was sharp and final. Smith dropped the body and turned to the next one.
"Your turn. Who do you work for?"
Before that man could answer, the third survivor—the one with the broken arm—scrambled to his feet and ran. Pure panic drove him, overriding pain and rational thought. He just needed to get away from the monster who caught bullets with a knife.
Fox's pistol barked once. The runner collapsed mid-stride, a neat hole in the back of his skull.
The last survivor looked between Smith and Fox, then at the bodies scattered across the intersection. Twelve men had come to kill them. Eleven were already dead. He was alone, wounded, and facing two people who moved like gods of death.
"Russian mob," he blurted out, words tumbling over each other. "We're Viggo's men. He sent us. He wanted you dead. Please, I—"
Smith's knife flashed. The man's head separated from his shoulders and hit the ground a full second before his body did.
"Viggo," Smith said softly, wiping the blade clean on the dead man's jacket. "You've just signed your own death warrant."
Fox walked over, moving gingerly. The collision had hurt her more than she wanted to admit—probably cracked ribs, definitely severe bruising. She leaned against Smith, and he immediately wrapped an arm around her waist, supporting her weight.
"Damn John Wick," Fox muttered, pain making her voice tight. "We're cleaning up his mess now?"
Smith held her carefully, noting the way she winced with each breath. The initial impact had been brutal. If he hadn't pulled her toward him at the last second, if the car hadn't been as well-built as it was, she might have died on impact.
He pulled out his phone and dialed the Assassin's League's cleaning service. The line connected immediately.
"Cleaners, Klein Avenue intersection. Twelve bodies, three vehicles. I need a team here immediately."
"Understood, GOD. ETA eight minutes."
Smith ended the call and looked down at Fox. "Can you walk?"
"I can manage."
But Smith wasn't taking chances. He guided her to the least damaged SUV—the third one—and pulled the driver's corpse from behind the wheel. He settled Fox into the passenger seat as gently as possible, then climbed into the driver's side.
The engine was still running. Smith put it in gear and pulled away from the scene, heading toward the textile factory.
Behind them, the intersection looked like a war zone. Bullet casings littered the ground. Blood pooled around bodies. Three vehicles sat in various states of destruction.
And somewhere in Manhattan, Viggo Tarasov would soon learn that his ambush had failed catastrophically.
The Russian mob's time in New York was coming to an end. Viggo would die. His organization would be dismantled. The Assassin's League didn't forgive attempts on their future leader's life.
It was only a matter of time now.
Back at the textile factory, the massive bay doors rolled open. A garbage truck rumbled out, followed by three unmarked vans. The cleaning crew wore simple coveralls and carried equipment that looked mundane—trash bags, cleaning supplies, nothing suspicious.
But their real tools were hidden in the false bottoms of their cases. Bone saws. Industrial cleaning agents. Acid baths. Everything needed to make twelve bodies and three vehicles disappear without a trace.
They had eight minutes to reach Klein Avenue. Twelve minutes to complete the cleanup before the police arrived.