Bullseye felt it before he heard it—a sudden, sharp drop in air pressure as the ammonia gas mixed with the pressurized mineral spirits suspended in the freezing air.
"You crazy bastard," Bullseye spat into the pitch blackness, his boots already shifting backward along the steel gantry toward the open skylight. "You brought volatile precursor into an enclosed space—"
"Not volatile, Lester!" Jack’s voice echoed from everywhere at once, bouncing off the steel overhead rails with a raspy, metallic ring. "Stoichiometric! HAHAHA!"
In the complete darkness, Jack didn't aim the butcher knife at Bullseye's throat.
He reversed his grip and drove the heavy steel blade straight down into the copper terminal box of the plant's main refrigeration compressor—a three-hundred-pound electrical unit he’d cracked open twenty minutes ago.
KZZZZZT-CRACK!
A blinding arc of high-voltage blue sparks erupted from the shorted capacitor.
The air didn't just catch fire; it expanded in a single, deafening, supersonic shockwave. The dense cloud of ammonia and mineral aerosol detonated with a deep, concussive BOOOOOOOM that blew out every window frame along 14th Street and tore the rusted corrugated roof clean off its steel trusses.
The force lifted Bullseye off the gantry, slamming him hard against the brick chimney stack before the steel catwalk buckled, folding like wet cardboard under three tons of falling masonry and collapsing iron girders.
Jack didn't try to stand upright. He’d already thrown himself flat into the narrow concrete drainage trench beneath the central processing floor, his arms locked over the back of his neck as a torrent of burning timber, shattered glass, and frozen beef carcasses rained down around him.
The shockwave slammed into his back, driving the air clean out of his lungs.
Pain—sharp, white, and incandescent—flared up his left side as two fresh stitches snapped beneath his bandages, but the [10.8% SYNCHRONIZATION] held his brain steady. The agony was just data. Just friction.
For ten seconds, the world was nothing but roaring orange fire, suffocating white smoke, and the heavy, metallic crunch of a three-story building caving in on itself.
Then... silence.
Save for the hiss of cold rain hitting hot, charred brickwork.
A pile of shattered concrete blocks near the rear alley wall groaned, shifting two inches.
Jack’s right hand, coated in soot, blood, and gray mortar dust, forced its way out of the rubble. He dragged himself out of the drainage trench inch by inch, his dead left arm trailing through the wet ash.
Hisgrey thermal shirt was scorched black, his face painted in grease and fresh crimson where a flying brick had split his cheek open, but his eyes were wide, clear, and burning with an unholy light.
He turned back to look at the center of the ruins.
Where the processing floor had been, there was now only a fifteen-foot crater of twisted steel monorails and smoking brickwork. Beneath a crushed ten-ton refrigeration unit, a single gloved hand twitched once, pinned flat against the asphalt, before going completely still.
Jack stood on the edge of the crater, his body swaying slightly in the freezing rain.
He didn't check for a pulse. He didn't search the body for cash.
He reached down, picked up a single silver-plated tooth filling that had been blown onto the rim of the crater, and dropped it into his coat pocket.
"One million dollars..." Jack rasped into the quiet night, his mouth slowly opening into a wide, crooked, bloody grin that cut through the soot on his face. "...and you didn't even leave a tip, Lester."
A dry, breathless laugh bubbled up from his chest, turning into a loud, hysterical cackle that echoed through the burning alleyway.
"HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!"
Jack turned his back on the inferno, dragging his left boot through the wet gravel as he vanished into the fog of 14th Street, leaving the burning remains of Fulton Meatpacking behind him.
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