Chapter 3: THE SURVEILLANCE
Red Hook smelled like salt and diesel fuel.
The cab dropped me three blocks from the address burned into my brain. Industrial buildings lined both sides of the street—warehouses, auto shops, a few businesses that looked like fronts for things that didn't belong on tax forms. The kind of neighborhood where people minded their own business because minding someone else's got you killed.
I walked with purpose. Head up. Shoulders back. The confident stride of someone who belonged here. The moment you looked lost, you became a target.
The System guided me.
Not with words this time. With sensation—a subtle pull in my chest, like a compass needle orienting toward magnetic north. Every time I turned the wrong direction, the pull shifted. Every time I walked toward the warehouse, it eased.
"At least you're good for something," I thought at the voice in my head.
No response.
The building appeared after a ten-minute walk. Three stories of brick and rust, loading docks facing the water, a chain-link fence with gaps big enough to drive a truck through. No security cameras visible. No guards at the perimeter.
"Too easy."
I circled the block twice before I found my observation post: a fire escape on the building across the street, rusted but solid. I climbed until I reached the second-floor landing, pressed myself against the brick wall, and waited.
The warehouse's upper windows were grimy but not opaque. Through the haze, I could see movement inside. Shapes. People.
I counted four men playing cards around a folding table. Three of them were muscle—broad shoulders, thick necks, the type who settled arguments with their fists first and their brains never. The fourth was different. Older. Heavier. Gold tooth catching the light when he laughed at something one of the others said.
Yuri Petrov.
The face from my vision. The target I had to eliminate.
"What did you do?" I wondered, watching him shuffle a deck of cards. "Who did you piss off badly enough to earn a death sentence from whatever the hell controls my System?"
Questions without answers. Questions that didn't matter.
The clock was ticking. The brand was burning.
I spent four hours on that fire escape. My legs cramped. My back screamed. The September wind cut through my jacket like it wasn't there. I pissed in an empty water bottle I found on the landing because leaving meant losing my position.
But I learned.
3:00 PM: Two guards left. Lunch break, maybe. Personal errands. They walked out like they had no concerns in the world.
5:00 PM: A delivery truck pulled into the loading dock. Three men spent an hour moving crates inside. Drugs, probably. Weapons. Whatever loan sharks moved when they weren't breaking kneecaps.
7:00 PM: The real opportunity.
Yuri Petrov stepped outside alone. No guards. No backup. Just a middle-aged man in a bad suit lighting a cigarette, watching the sun sink toward the horizon.
He stood there for almost ten minutes. Smoking. Checking his phone. Completely vulnerable.
"That's the window."
One shot. Maybe two. Down the fire escape before anyone inside realized what happened. Disappear into the maze of Red Hook's industrial blocks before they could organize a response.
It could work.
It had to work.
[TACTICAL ASSESSMENT: TARGET ISOLATED. WINDOW OPTIMAL. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: 67%.]
The System again. Offering analysis like a computer program breaking down a math problem.
Sixty-seven percent. Those weren't terrible odds. I'd taken worse in combat. Much worse.
But combat was chaos. Bullets flying both directions. This was different. This was walking up to a man and executing him in cold blood.
"You don't have a choice," I reminded myself. "Seven days. Fail, and you lose your sense of taste. Fail again, and it gets worse. Keep failing, and..."
I didn't want to think about what came after.
The sun finished its descent. Darkness settled over Red Hook like a shroud. Yuri Petrov flicked his cigarette into the gutter and walked back inside.
I climbed down from the fire escape. My knees nearly buckled when I hit the ground—four hours of cramped stillness taking their toll.
"Tomorrow," I decided. "Come back tomorrow at 6:30. Watch for the pattern. Confirm it repeats. Then execute."
The plan felt thin. Fragile. Too many variables I couldn't control.
But it was the only plan I had.
I walked toward the subway station. The Glock pressed against my back with every step, cold metal reminding me what I'd have to do tomorrow night.
My first kill in this new life.
My first step toward becoming whatever the System wanted me to be.
The brand pulsed on my forearm. Satisfied, almost. Like a dog pleased with its owner's obedience.
"I'm not your dog," I thought at it. "I'm just a man trying to survive."
No response. The System didn't care about my rationalizations. It only cared about results.
Blood Coins. Debt Markers. A hierarchy I didn't understand yet, leading to powers I couldn't access.
I descended into the subway. The platform stank of urine and desperation. A homeless man huddled in the corner, muttering to himself. Nobody looked twice at either of us.
"One hundred fifty-four hours," I counted silently. "Six and a half days until the deadline. Tomorrow I confirm the pattern. The next day I make the kill. Three days of buffer in case something goes wrong."
Something always went wrong.
The train arrived with a screech of metal on metal. I found a seat in an empty car and stared at my reflection in the dark window.
A stranger's face stared back. The face I'd have to wear forever.
"You can do this," I told myself. "You've done worse."
Had I? In combat, every kill was justified. Self-defense. Protection of my unit. Following orders in a war I might not have believed in but understood.
This was different. This was murder.
But the alternative was worse. Losing my senses one by one. Becoming a puppet with no strings left to cut.
The train carried me back toward Queens. Back toward the basement apartment that was now my home. Back toward a sleepless night spent staring at the ceiling, counting hours, planning murder.
The Glock weighed heavy against my spine.
"Tomorrow," I whispered to the empty car. "Tomorrow we find out what kind of man I really am."
The train rattled on through the darkness. Somewhere in Red Hook, Yuri Petrov was playing cards with his guards, completely unaware that death had marked him.
Completely unaware that I was coming.
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