The abandoned Fulton Meatpacking plant on 14th Street smelled of frozen grease, rusted iron, and seventy years of dried blood.
Outside, the mist had turned into a steady, freezing drizzle. Inside, the only light came from a single flickering fluorescent tube hanging by a frayed wire over the central processing floor.
Jack stood in the middle of the main room, surrounded by rows of heavy stainless steel meat hooks that hung from overhead monorails like silent, silver pendulums. His dark coat was off, draped over a butcher’s block. He was wearing a grease-stained grey thermal shirt, his fresh bandages pulled tight across his ribs.
His right hand worked with fluid, effortless speed.
He wasn't building a pipe bomb. He was rigging four commercial-grade cylinders of pressurized liquid ammonia—left behind in the plant's ruined refrigeration system—to a series of thin copper tripwires stretched across the floorboards.
Every wire was strung at a different height: three inches, eleven inches, two feet.
[10.8%... COGNITIVE CHAOS OVERLOAD: GEOMETRIC PROJECTION ACTIVE]
In Jack’s vision, the dark room wasn't just a physical space; it was a grid of angles, ricochet vectors, and dead zones. He knew Bullseye didn't need a clear line of sight to kill a man. Lester could bounce a quarter off three iron pipes, hit a light switch, and send a shattered lightbulb filament straight into a man’s carotid artery.
So Jack gave him no flat surfaces.
He pulled three heavy plastic sheets across the central doorway, coating them in a thick layer of industrial lard and mineral spirits. He unscrewed every overhead lightbulb except the flickering one in the center, leaving the corners in pitch-black shadow.
Jack stepped back into the shadows behind a row of hanging beef carcasses—frozen rock-solid decades ago and left to desiccate in the cold air.
He pulled an unlit cigarette from his pocket, tucked it between his lips, and waited.
He didn't have to wait long.
TAP.
A sound no louder than a raindrop hitting a tin roof echoed from the upper catwalk.
Bullseye didn't walk through the front door. He dropped silently from the skylight thirty feet above, landing on a steel gantry without making a sound. He held three heavy iron butcher knives—looted from the loading bay—between the knuckles of his left hand.
"Nice place, Jack," Bullseye’s voice drifted down from the darkness, smooth and mocking. "Smells like my uncle’s butcher shop in Chicago. A little cold, though. Bad for your joints."
Jack didn't answer with words.
He reached out with a long wooden pole and tapped a hanging meat hook three feet to his left.
CLANG.
The heavy steel hook swung out, its sharp point catching a copper tripwire.
PFT-SSSSSSSS!
The first valve snapped open. A dense cloud of white, freezing ammonia vapor erupted from the lower pipe, instantly filling the doorway in a thick, choking blanket of chemical mist.
Bullseye’s eyes narrowed on the catwalk above. "Ammonia? Really, kid? You think a little fertilizer fog is gonna stop me?"
Bullseye flicked his right wrist.
WHIRL-CRACK!
An iron butcher knife flew through the air, cutting through the fog like a silver razor. It wasn't aiming for Jack; it struck the central fluorescent light fixture thirty feet away.
SPARK-SNAP!
The glass bulb shattered into a thousand tiny fragments, plunging the entire processing floor into pitch-black darkness.
"Can't shoot what you can't see, Jackie boy!" Bullseye yelled, his voice bouncing off the metal walls as he shifted positions on the gantry.
In the complete dark, Jack’s lips pulled back into a wide, unseen grin.
He didn't need light. His mind had mapped every hook, every wire, and every ricochet angle before the light died.
Jack didn't run away. He began to sing—a low, raspy, off-key melody that echoed off the cold iron walls, vibrating right through the darkness.
"...dare to jump... dare to fall..." Jack hummed, his boots dragging across the concrete with a slow, deliberate rhythm. "...dare to find me... in the dark... HAHAHA!"
WHIRL-WHIRL-WHIRL!
Two more knives cut through the black air, guided only by the sound of Jack’s voice.
THUNK! THUNK!
The blades slammed deep into the frozen beef carcass six inches from Jack’s nose.
Jack didn't flinch. He reached out in the dark, grabbed the wooden handle of one embedded knife, pulled it free from the frozen meat, and held it reverse-grip in his good right hand.
"Found you," Jack whispered into the pitch-black cold.
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