The heavy rain had stopped, leaving behind a thick, suffocating fog that clung to the fire escapes of 47th Street like wet wool.
Jack walked alone down the middle of the empty asphalt, his boots making a distinct, deliberate clack-clack against the damp pavement. He wasn't hiding in the shadows anymore. His dark wool coat hung open, revealing the thick white bandages wrapped across his chest, but his stride was long, fluid, and unnaturally relaxed.
With the [10.2% SYNCHRONIZATION] threshold crossed, the constant, feverish delirium had settled into an eerie, ice-cold clarity. The ambient noise of the city—the hum of distant neon signs, the drip of rainwater off rusted gutters, the low rumble of a subway train three blocks down—seemed to process through his brain with mechanical precision.
THWIP.
A sound no louder than a snapping rubber band cut through the fog.
Jack didn't duck out of instinct; his head simply tilted three inches to the left.
CLINK!
A heavy, silver-plated steel tooth filling slammed into the brick wall behind him, embedding itself half an inch deep into the mortar right where his left ear had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Jack stopped walking. He didn't reach for a gun. He slowly turned his head toward the dark roofline of a four-story tenement building across the street.
"A tooth?" Jack rasped, his voice smooth and cold. He reached back, flicked the embedded silver filling out of the brickwork with his thumbnail, and held it up to his eyes. "Classy. Who’s your dentist, pal? He’s got terrible taste in fillings."
From the shadows of the roof, a tall, slender figure in a dark tactical suit stepped onto the iron ledge.
Lester—Bullseye—balanced effortlessly on the narrow edge, an unlit cigarette hanging between his lips. In his right hand, he casually flipped a heavy brass Zippo lighter between his fingers, the metal making a rhythmic clack-flick-clack in the quiet street.
"Fisk gave me two million for your head, kid," Bullseye said. His voice was light, almost conversational, lacking any of the heavy menace of Cooley’s mercenaries. "I told him I’d do it for one, just because I don't like guys who burn paperwork."
"One million?" Jack let out a short, dry chuckle—a low, melodic hehehe that echoed off the damp alley walls. "Damn. I knew I should've worn a nicer tie today. You're getting ripped off, Lester."
Bullseye’s eyes narrowed slightly. He flicked his wrist.
CRACK.
The Zippo lighter flew through the fog like a high-velocity bullet, cutting straight toward Jack’s throat.
Jack didn't try to block it with his hand. Cognitive Chaos Overload fired behind his temples—a flash of pure spatial geometry mapping the projectile's arc in real-time. Jack leaned his torso back at a grotesque, unnatural sixty-degree angle, his boots remaining planted on the asphalt.
The lighter whizzed past his cheek, grazing a single strand of hair before slamming into the wooden door frame behind him, shattering the heavy oak paneling like a shotgun shell.
Jack snapped back upright, his lips pulling back into a wide, unblinking smile that stretched across his pale face.
"Good arm!" Jack cackled, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Bullseye's position. "Now my turn!"
Jack reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a handful of loose, rusted iron nails he’d scooped up from the brewery floor, and threw them straight up into the air above his head—not at Bullseye, but into the dark sky.
Bullseye frowned. "Missed by a mile, idiot—"
CLANG!
Jack’s right boot kicked the base of a high-pressure fire hydrant beside him. The rusted brass cap, which Jack had unthreaded three turns before walking into the street, sheared off under four hundred pounds of water pressure.
A roaring geyser of water erupted straight up into the alley, catching the airborne iron nails and blasting them like a cloud of shrapnel straight toward the roofline.
"What the—"
Bullseye was forced to throw himself backward off the ledge, rolling across the gravel roof as three iron nails slammed into the brickwork where his chest had been, showering him in red dust.
When Bullseye scrambled back to the ledge, his gun drawn and ready, the street below was empty.
Only the roaring fire hydrant remained, spraying cold water into the fog, and a message scrawled in thick black grease across the hood of a parked taxi:
DARE TO AIM BETTER, LESTER
High up on a rooftop two blocks away, Jack leaned against a chimney, breathing slowly as his body registered the exertion. He looked down at his right hand—his fingers were steady, his pulse calm.
"...dare..." Jack whispered into the wind, his smile widening into the dark. "...dare to hunt the Demon... HAHAHA..."
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