When Locke had decided on New York, he'd also decided on contingencies.
Not because he was paranoid — because he was thorough. You studied the terrain before you moved through it. You identified the exits before you needed them. You prepared the ground before something forced you onto it. He'd spent two evenings on satellite maps before he ever set foot in the city, and he'd filed away half a dozen locations under useful if things go sideways.
One of them was going to be useful right now.
He left the R8 in the parking lot of a big-box store just past the bridge into New Jersey — unremarkable lot, lots of turnover, no cameras covering the far end — and hailed a cab from the curb.
"Water treatment plant. The old one, out past Route 1."
The driver didn't ask questions. Locke watched the city thin out behind them as New Jersey's scrubland took over, the kind of flat, unremarkable landscape that nobody went to unless they had a specific reason. The abandoned water plant out here had been offline for years. Urban explorers found it occasionally. Otherwise it was quiet, accessible from one road, with enough structural cover inside to give a prepared person a significant advantage over an unprepared one.
He paid the fare, watched the cab pull away, and walked into the plant.
Five minutes later, the cab came back.
It idled at the entrance while the driver — who had done exactly what Locke had anticipated, which was to access his phone the moment he'd handed it over to show his destination — made a call.
The man who got out of the cab was not someone Locke recognized by face. But he recognized the type immediately: stocky, deliberate movement, the compact physical confidence of someone who had been in serious violence many times and had always come out the other side. A large fixed-blade knife was visible at his hip. A pistol sat in a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
The Butcher. One of the Fraternity's combat trainers. Currently in the middle of running Wesley Gibson through a training cycle at the textile mill — which meant Locke was a side job, a clean-up errand between sessions.
The Fraternity's intern stayed with the cab. Smart. He was low enough in the hierarchy that he had no business following the Butcher into a kill zone.
Locke watched from the iron rafters above the main floor as the Butcher entered, slowed, and checked his phone. The small red dot — Locke's phone, placed on an abandoned oil drum directly below — pulsed steadily.
The Butcher crossed to it.
The phone screen read: Long time no see.
He turned around.
Locke dropped.
The kick connected cleanly — boot to wrist, momentum behind it — and the pistol clattered across the concrete floor. The Butcher recovered faster than most men his size had any right to, pivoting into a fighting stance with the knife already clear of its sheath.
There it is.
Locke gave ground, keeping distance. The Butcher was built like someone had stacked muscle over a load-bearing frame — the kind of physical presence that absorbed punishment and returned it with interest. Close-quarters with that knife was a losing proposition. The gun was the play.
"Interesting," the Butcher said. His accent was Eastern European, unhurried. He tracked Locke's movement with the patience of someone who had done this a thousand times. "A high school student who thinks ahead."
"I had some time to prepare." Locke kept moving, angling for the dropped pistol without making it obvious that's what he was doing. "I didn't realize I'd be getting a welcome committee so soon."
"The Loom doesn't give much notice."
"So I've gathered."
The Butcher grinned — not warmly — and charged.
He moved fast for his size, closing the distance before Locke had fully committed to a direction. The knife came in low, forcing a hard pivot. Locke felt the air of it pass his ribs and kept moving, putting a concrete pillar between them.
The Butcher didn't stop. He went around the pillar and kept coming.
Locke's hand closed on the dropped pistol.
Now.
He fired twice in fast succession. The Butcher read it — the man had reflexes that belonged on a much more expensive problem — and the knife came up in a blur, deflecting the first round with a metallic clang that sent sparks off the blade. The second caught his thigh.
The Butcher went down to one knee with a grunt of rage rather than pain, hauled himself behind an iron drum, and a moment later a throwing knife came out of nowhere with enough velocity to sink three inches into the concrete where Locke had been standing half a second ago.
Locke had already moved.
He'd moved the moment the Butcher's arm started its throwing motion, because he'd known what was coming, because he'd done his research, because the Butcher's entire combat philosophy was to absorb damage and keep pressing until the other person ran out of room or nerve.
He was not going to run out of either.
He pulled up the System.
[Treasure Refresh Voucher — Apply to Achievement Store item?]
He'd spent part of last night identifying the right purchase. The Intermediate Imprint Card normally cost 50,000 Achievement Points — money he didn't have. The voucher dropped that to 5,000. He had 5,800.
[Confirm: Intermediate Imprint Card — 5,000 Achievement Points. Target NPC within range: The Butcher. Proceed?]
The Butcher was bleeding, down behind his cover, and loading something into the second pistol he'd produced from his jacket. Locke could hear the slide.
Confirm.
[Imprint Successful!][Gun-Flicking Technique — Blue Quality, Intermediate][Your marksmanship is no longer a straight line.]
The knowledge arrived differently from the skill upgrades he'd done before — not a door opening into a lit room, but something more physical, like a recalibration. His grip adjusted slightly. His read of the angles in the space shifted. He understood, suddenly and completely, that a bullet was not a projectile on a fixed path. It was a variable. It could be worked.
He stepped out from behind the pillar.
The Butcher fired. Locke was already moving, and the round passed through the space he'd just vacated with a flat crack that echoed off the concrete.
Locke raised the pistol. Thought about the angle. The drum, the gap, the man behind it.
Bang.
The silence afterward had a different quality than the silences before it.
The Butcher didn't come back up.
Locke walked over. The man was staring at the ceiling with the particular expression of someone who had been certain of the outcome and had gotten the wrong one. He was still alive — barely, and not for much longer — when Locke crouched beside him.
"You," the Butcher said. His voice was already thickening. "How."
"Did you want an explanation, or were you just surprised?"
The Butcher's eyes moved to the pistol in Locke's hand.
"Neither," he said, after a moment. And something about his expression shifted — not quite respect, not quite acceptance. The look of a professional acknowledging a result.
Locke stood up.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I wasn't on the list for a reason you'd like. Someone put me there."
He wasn't sure the Butcher heard that part.
He left the card — the small one, the one he always left — and walked out of the water plant into the grey New Jersey afternoon.
Behind him, [Mission: My Fate Is Mine to Command — Progress Updated] appeared briefly, then dissolved.
One step closer.
He had a cab to catch, a car to get back to, and the strong suspicion that the Fraternity would notice when the Butcher stopped checking in.
He'd need to move fast.