Around 3:00 AM, three black SUVs crawled over the flooded streets of Mill Neck, their headlights extinguished.
Twelve assassins, dressed head-to-toe in black tactical gear, deployed silently from the vehicles, fanning out to encircle John Wick's property.
Watching from the shadows across the street, Anthony couldn't fathom why Viggo would send a squad of standard enforcers.
Did Viggo actually believe that just because John had retired and aged a few years, he was no longer dangerous? Or did he foolishly assume that John's physical decline meant his lethal instincts had vanished as well?
Anthony pulled out his burner phone and dialed John's number.
"Twelve men. Standard Bratva hit squad," Anthony whispered as soon as the line connected.
John sounded mildly surprised by the warning, but didn't question it. He simply let out a low hum of acknowledgment.
Anthony knew that John's house was rigged with sub-floor pressure sensors that could detect unusual vibrations across the perimeter. John had likely been anticipating Viggo's retaliation since the moment he hung up the phone with Winston.
Anthony's call wasn't meant to save John's life; it was a calculated move to buy goodwill and cement their alliance.
"At least put some boots on!" Anthony advised lightly. "Don't let stepping on shattered glass slow you down."
"Can you see me?" John asked, his voice puzzled. He looked away from Daisy's empty bed and glanced down at his white t-shirt and loose pajama pants.
Anthony chuckled softly. "Aren't pajamas and slippers your standard at-home attire?"
"Thank you," John replied simply. He looked toward the windows, but the heavy curtains blocked any view of the street.
Inside the house, the silent alarm on John's bedside table began flashing red—the pressure sensors had been tripped. John immediately killed the master breaker, plunging the entire house into pitch blackness.
Anthony smiled and hung up the phone.
John was undeniably confident, perhaps even a bit stubborn about his age and rust. He hadn't even faced the High Table's elites yet, but in the original timeline, he had taken quite a few unnecessary beatings from Viggo's standard thugs.
Although he always survived, his allies often paid the ultimate price for his stubbornness—like his mentor, Marcus, who was brutally tortured and killed by Viggo later in the story.
Anthony drew the Walther P99 he had purchased off the black market earlier that day. He smoothly screwed the heavy suppressor onto the threaded barrel and tracked the movement of the tactical flashlights sweeping across John's lawn.
Thanks to his Compensatory Perception and his visits over the past few days, a flawless, three-dimensional wireframe model of the house's architecture was locked into Anthony's mind.
His understanding of the first floor's layout, sightlines, and cover points was arguably just as sharp as John's.
As the alarm light flashed upstairs, John reached beneath his mattress, his right hand gripping the Heckler & Koch P30L. The cold steel of a custom compensator was already secured to the barrel.
"Are these guys really this unprofessional?" Anthony muttered, shaking his head as the assassins began kicking in the doors with their tactical flashlights blazing, completely exposing their positions.
"Even if John is rusty, you shouldn't serve yourselves up as target practice."
Anthony checked his flanks, ensured the street was clear, and moved in.
He adopted the Center Axis Relock (CAR) stance—pulling his arms in tight against his chest, the pistol bladed at a slight angle. This structure utilized the body's core to absorb recoil, allowing for incredibly rapid target acquisition and follow-up shots.
More importantly, it was the perfect stance for close-quarters battle (CQB) in confined spaces like hallways and doorways. It maximized weapon retention, allowed for tight cornering, and minimized the shooter's profile.
It was also, famously, John Wick's signature shooting style.
Muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness as Anthony swiftly breached the rear kitchen door.
At that exact moment, John was locked in hand-to-hand combat with two assassins on the second-floor landing.
Using the narrow hallway to his advantage, John tripped the first assassin, grabbed his tactical vest, and sent him crashing to the floor with a brutal judo throw.
Watching the struggle through the floorboards via his spatial modeling, Anthony could tell that John's physical strength had indeed atrophied during his retirement.
Anthony estimated that John's current physical conditioning was hovering around LV5, while his Firearms Mastery was easily pushing LV8 or LV9.
If it weren't for the legendary "protagonist halo"—and the sheer incompetence of these thugs using glaring flashlights to broadcast their positions—John might not have survived fighting two armed men barehanded in a dark hallway.
Anthony raised his Walther, aiming at the ceiling directly beneath the second-floor struggle. He fired two suppressed rounds through the plaster, targeting the assassin who was scrambling to get back to his feet.
Upstairs, John heard the muffled pfft-pfft of the suppressor beneath him. The assassin he had just thrown suddenly collapsed, dead before he hit the carpet.
Without pausing to question his sudden guardian angel, John smoothly executed the remaining assassin with a point-blank shot to the chest.
Downstairs, a beam of light sliced through the darkness like a lightsaber, snapping toward the spot where Anthony had just fired.
John tracked the beam through the floorboards. Realizing the shooter was in Anthony's blind spot, John crouched low against the wall and fired blindly through the floor. The 9mm hollow-point tore through the pine planks and perfectly severed the encroaching assassin's throat.
Anthony remained on the first floor, melding into the shadows of the living room, tracking the crisscrossing beams of tactical lights.
An intruder's flashlight swept across the empty room. But before the beam could illuminate Anthony crouching behind the grand piano, the Walther P99 spat three tongues of suppressed fire.
Pfft-pfft-pfft.
Two rounds struck the man's center mass, dropping his Kevlar. The third round punched through his windpipe, spraying a fan of crimson across the expensive wallpaper.
A second assassin in the hallway fired blindly toward the piano. Anthony dropped to the floor, combat-rolling behind a heavy oak liquor cabinet.
He clamped his left elbow tightly against his ribs to stabilize the frame, swinging his right wrist outward like a pendulum.
Pfft-pfft.
Two rounds punched through the corner of the pine cabinet, drilling precisely into the enemy's exposed chest.
It was a flawless execution of the Center Axis Relock system—a tactical shooting method designed specifically for reacting and firing rapidly in claustrophobic environments.
Upstairs, John was suddenly flanked by three more men rushing the master bedroom.
Two targets left, seven paces, he calculated instantly.
The backup Glock 26 materialized in his left hand with lightning speed. Crossing his arms in a tight, fluid motion, he fired simultaneously with both weapons.
Puff-puff!
Two 9mm rounds shattered the thin veneer of a closet door.
The first shot obliterated the lead killer's jawbone, spraying shattered teeth and bone fragments across a glass display case.
The second shot drilled directly beneath the second man's Adam's apple. Arterial blood erupted in a high-pressure geyser, painting the ceiling.
John smoothly retreated into the en-suite bathroom. The sharp click of his P30L locking empty was masked by the chaotic gunfire of the third assassin.
While keeping the enemy pinned with the Glock 26 in his left hand, John stomped the heel of his boot against the tile floor. A fresh magazine for the P30L slid smoothly from his tactical belt directly into his right palm.
Thumb guide, wrist rotation, slam, slide release.
The entire one-handed reload took 1.3 seconds.
Before the metallic snap of the slide returning to battery even faded, John blind-fired through the bathroom door, blowing the third assassin's head apart.
"Contact in the kitchen!" an assassin roared downstairs, sweeping his submachine gun across the center island. A hail of bullets chewed into the stainless-steel dishwasher, leaving it looking like a metallic honeycomb.
"Fuck! There's two of them!" another thug screamed into his comms unit.
Anthony grabbed the heavy handle of the double-door refrigerator and ripped it open, pulling the massive appliance forward until it crashed onto the floor.
Using the heavy steel door as a barricade amidst splashing milk and shattered frozen meat, Anthony slid along the linoleum and opened fire.
Pfft-pfft-pfft!
A three-round burst shattered an assassin's shinbone. The man's Achilles tendon snapped with the sickening twang of a breaking bowstring, and he crashed heavily to the kitchen floor.
Before the man's agonized wailing could peak, Anthony vaulted over the fallen refrigerator and landed gracefully on the kitchen counter.
He fired downward. A 9mm hollow-point removed the top half of the screaming man's skull, splattering brain matter across the pristine white cabinets.
Anthony instantly dropped flat against the granite to avoid the inevitable retaliatory fire.
In the chaotic darkness, with muzzle flashes blinding his natural vision, his Compensatory Perception was his only true advantage.
"Your seven o'clock! Behind the load-bearing column!" Anthony shouted toward the ceiling.
Upstairs, John spun on his heel. Using the hallway wall for leverage, he launched a brutal crescent kick into the back of an assassin's knee, forcing the man hiding behind the pillar to buckle.
With a sickening crunch, John shoved the barrel of the Glock 26 directly beneath the man's jaw.
Puff!
A mist of blood and intracranial pressure exploded upward, raining down on the hallway chandelier.
"Group B, engage the target!" the remaining squad leader yelled, falling back into heavy cover near the stairs.
The muzzle flashes of their Glock 17s flickered like violent fireflies in the dark. A stray bullet shattered the massive 55-inch television screen downstairs. The pale blue electrical sparks briefly illuminated John's silhouette as he combat-rolled across the landing.
Amidst the hail of lead, John rebounded off the wall, twisting his torso mid-air.
He fired a single shot. The bullet punched through the thick leather of a sofa chair on the ground floor, precisely entering the back of a prone assassin's skull.
The man slumped over the armrest, his finger still twitching against his trigger, spraying useless rounds into the floorboards.
The two remaining assassins focused their heavy suppressive fire on John, pinning him down behind the banister of the second-floor stairs.
High-velocity rounds chewed massive, jagged holes into the wooden floor. Flying splinters of oak cut thin, bloody lines across John's stoic cheeks.
More PS = More chapters!