A Hitman's Guide To Becoming A Hero

The flight was pushed back twenty-four hours.

Nicholas hadn’t delayed it because he was afraid of the Association. He simply didn’t want Marina and Katie getting caught up in the mess.

Trying to smuggle Marina and Katie through international airspace while every perimeter checkpoint had his face plastered wasn’t an experience he wanted them to have. And he also didn’t want anyone using them to bait him. So he had to be sure of their safety.

He moved his sisters to a reinforced safe-house outside the city, one hidden from the public network and secure enough to keep anyone from easily finding them. After making sure they were safe, Nicholas vanished into the rainy night.

By midnight, Nicholas was crouched on the rusted fire escape overlooking an industrial storage yard in the lower docks of District 6.

Beneath him, the scene of the second massacre was still bathed in the harsh, rotating amber lights of local precinct cruisers. The yellow caution tape fluttered in the damp harbour wind, cordoning off a grease-stained loading dock where three bodies had recently been zipped into black vinyl bags.

The municipal police were dragging their feet, visibly terrified that the killer might still be lurking in the blind spots, giving Nicholas a clean three-minute window before the heavy investigative sweeps began.

Dropping soundlessly from the iron ladder, Nicholas melted across the wet asphalt like a shadow cast by the harbour cranes.

He stepped over the painted chalk outlines, his single visible eye scanning the pavement in micro-sections.

No shattered concrete. No scorch marks. No bullets.

Just cuts, deep ones.

The wooden pallets had been sliced apart, steel locks cut clean through, and the blood around the area told him everything had happened at close range.

’Whoever copied me knew exactly what they were doing.’

Just then, Nicholas caught the sound of approaching vehicles.

Heavy-armoured vans rolled into the streets around the district, cutting off the main exit routes from the district. Red laser sights swept across alleyways and fire escapes as the first wave of bounty squads mobilised to hunt him down.

Nicholas slowly stood from the ground.

The drizzle quickly turned into a heavy downpour, drowning out most of the sounds around him.

Nicholas glanced around, three on the roofs. Two moving through the containers.

And one directly ahead. A total of six people.

Their movements were coordinated and silent. It was clear that this wasn’t a group of random bounty hunters hoping to claim the reward.

Nicholas recognised them almost immediately.

The Iron Vulture Syndicate.

An elite black-market group known for hunting rogue Impures, they were more of a support team for heroes, using sedatives and weapons to weaken Impures for Heroes to finish off. They were a trained group that worked under the council.

’Larry’s people?’ Nicholas wasn’t surprised.

Nicholas didn’t quicken his pace. He calmly walked straight into the centre of the gravel clearing, stopping beneath the flickering floodlight.

From behind, a towering man clad in ceramic-plated tactical armour stepped into the rain. He carried a heavy pneumatic combat shotgun slung low against his hip, his face scarred with deep shrapnel burns and an ocular cybernetic implant that glowed a cold, predatory crimson.

"Phantom," the leader rumbled, his deep voice cutting through the deluge. "Fifty million credits is a bit too much for a simple rogue hero. You made a lot of noise at St. Jude’s, kid, but taking out a dying fanatic doesn’t make you a god. Drop your blades, turn around, and put your hands behind your head. You might have abilities, but don’t think those will help you; we’re professionals, a simple graze from our weapons and you’re down." The man said with a dark glint in his eyes. "The Directorate pays the same whether you’re breathing or in a body bag, but I like saving on zip ties."

The remaining five stepped out from their hiding places, weapons raised as they surrounded him from every direction.

Nicholas did not raise his hands. He tilted his head slightly, his single visible eye reflecting the amber light with a dead, hollow chill.

"And to think only you six can take me on." Nicholas glanced around them. "Six powerless humans... I truly am not feared enough." Nicholas said softly, his voice devoid of anger, fear, or bravado, "Don’t worry, I won’t use any ability. You don’t deserve it."

The leader sneered, raising the barrel of the shotgun.

"Talk all you want, dead man—"

Nicholas moved, so fast that he simply disappeared from their sight.

Before the syndicate leader’s finger could finish pulling the trigger, Nicholas closed a seven-yard gap in a single, fluid blur. He bypassed the shotgun entirely, sliding inside the leader’s guard. His left palm struck upward against the mercenary’s chin with a precise upper cut.

CRACK.

Simultaneously, Nicholas materialised a short carbon blade.

[-700 Charm points]

In a reverse grip, the blunt steel pommel slammed down like a sledgehammer onto the leader’s right collarbone, snapping the thick clavicle and forcing the giant down to one knee in the gravel.

From the roof to the left, the sniper fired.

THWIP.

The suppressed high-calibre bullet tore through the empty air where Nicholas’s chest had been a fraction of a second prior. Anticipating the trajectory, Nicholas had already spun around the kneeling leader’s back, using the armoured giant as a human shield. The second round sparked violently off the leader’s ceramic shoulder plate.

Nicholas didn’t wait for a third shot.

Without looking up, he reached into his coat, unclipped a four-inch tungsten throwing spike, and snapped his wrist upward in a blinding flash.

The spike sliced through the heavy rain, piercing straight through the rooftop sniper’s right wrist, pinning his hand directly to the wooden stock of his rifle.

The sniper let out a muffled shriek of agony, losing his balance on the wet corrugated iron and tumbling fifteen feet down onto the gravel below with a sickening thud.

"Surround him! Fire at will!" one of the container flankers screamed, raising an automatic submachine gun.

Nicholas kicked the leader’s dropped shotgun off the ground with the toe of his boot, catching the receiver mid-air. He didn’t fire it. With a violent two-handed swing, he hurled the heavy weapon end-over-end across the yard like a steel javelin.

The twenty-pound steel shotgun struck the screaming flanker dead in the solar plexus at eighty miles per hour.

The impact crushed the man’s tactical vest, knocked the breath out of his lungs in a spray of spit, and sent him flying backward into a stack of wooden crates that collapsed in a heap of splintered lumber.

Three targets down.

The remaining two flankers rushed forward, drawing their trench blades to engage in close-quarters combat.

’Are they dumb or is this just stupid confidence?’ Nicholas didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the stupidity. Did they possibly think they would win him in close combat?

They were fast, coordinated, and trained in dual-angle suppression.

Nicholas stepped into the pocket between their blades as if he were walking through an open doorway.

He ducked beneath the first horizontal slash, his left elbow driving deep into the ribs of the left assailant with a dull, hollow THUMP.

As the man doubled over, Nicholas caught his wrist, twisted the arm into a brutal standing armlock, and redirected the mercenary’s own blade forward.

The edge severed the second assailant’s combat harness, cutting clean through his sidearm holster and grazing his thigh. Before the second man could recover, Nicholas released the first, pivoted on the ball of his right foot, and delivered a spinning sweep to the back of the second mercenary’s knee.

CRACK.

The joint gave way. The man crashed to the muddy ground, and Nicholas’s boot descended onto the back of his neck with exactly enough calculated pressure to knock him out.

He turned back to the remaining mercenary, who was clutching his fractured ribs in sheer, paralysed horror.

Nicholas didn’t draw a blade. He took one step forward.

The mercenary looked at all his fallen comrades, his eyes went wide with terror. He didn’t even attempt an attack; he dropped his weapon into the mud, raised both trembling hands, and collapsed backward onto the gravel, sweating in primal panic.

’He didn’t even use his abilities... All we had to do was get a scratch with the sedatives and we couldn’t! We clearly underestimated this monster,’ the man thought, trembling.

The entire squad of elite syndicates had all been beaten to a pulp, bodies littered over the street, groaning in pain.

Not a single shot had been fired by Nicholas. Not a drop of his own blood had been spilled.

"Am I sweating?" Nicholas wiped a streak of rain from his brow. "Oh, it’s just the rain. That wouldn’t make me sweat."

He sheathed his blade and walked back over to the kneeling syndicate leader, who was clutching his shattered collarbone and gasping for breath in the mud.

"Now tell me, how did you know I was here?" Nicholas asked.

"Tsk. You’ve got fifty million; everyone is out for you."

Pulling out the x-glasses, his dark blue eyes staring deep into the man’s eyes, Nicholas asked again, this time his voice low, deep, and threatening, "How did you know I was here?"

The leader felt a cold chill run down his spine; his mouth moved almost instinctively as the primal fear gripped him, "Someone sent us the message... It was an anonymous sender." The man stuttered out of fear.

’That’s strange, who would know that I was coming here? Only someone who knew I’d come to investigate,’ Nicholas let out a sigh as he glanced around, "Seems my double really likes trouble," Nicholas muttered, a deep frown crossing his face.

Nicholas pulled out his burner phone and dialled Julie’s private number.

"Julie," Nicholas said as soon as the line clicked open.

"Nicholas?! Are you seeing the news?!" Julie’s panicked voice blared through the speaker. "The bounty hunters are going insane! My private channels are blowing up! People are saying you’re a monster, your fan clubs are deleting their accounts, and the government just deployed—"

"Quiet," Nicholas commanded calmly, cutting her off. "I need your drone arrays and your private broadcasting servers."

Julie paused, her breath catching. "What are you going to do?"

Nicholas looked down at the unconscious mercenaries scattered across the muddy lot, his single eye narrowing with lethal intent.

"They want Phantom to put on a show," Nicholas replied coldly. "Let’s give them an audience they can’t ignore."

[A/N: I’ll be posting three Chapters for some days! As an apology for the poor updates! Thank you all so much for supporting this work! I appreciate the power stones, golden tickets and gifts!]

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