Ethan moved through the branches like an ape in the dark, vanished, reappeared from another angle, then vanished again.
The urge to hunt was there now, hard and almost physical.
Someone had opened fire on him in a city residential block as if laws, custom, and consequence were all optional. He was usually controlled, usually quiet, but right now it felt like a caged dragon was turning inside his chest, demanding release.
He had never wanted so clearly to kill back.
He wasn't timid. Never had been. If people came to his door to execute him, of course he would think about counter-killing.
"There are still more."
His senses were sharper than they had ever been.
The near-miss at his temple had pushed his whole system into overdrive - blood surge, metabolic acceleration, mind-body lock. Every leaf edge looked cut from glass. Night birds sounded close enough to touch. Footsteps on the street outside the complex arrived in his ears as if the distance had collapsed.
He fixed on the fence line at the far side of the old neighborhood. In the shadowed trees beyond it, a muzzle was pointed coldly into the woods.
Then another.
And another.
This state was abnormal even for him: vision, hearing, smell - all sharpened into something close to the old-arts threshold called the released-over-self response.
In modern terms, extreme stress reaction.
In an old-arts practitioner, more complicated than that.
For several minutes he kept shifting position in the trees, collecting data, letting the first burst of killing impulse cool into control.
He did not charge out.
Outside, at least seven shooters were waiting in silence for him to commit to a counter-hunt.
If he had believed there were only three and pushed into open ground, he would likely already be dead.
Worse, he had the faint but persistent sense that more dark muzzles were watching from even farther out.
He kept moving to avoid lock, but pure defense wasn't enough.
At minimum, he needed to hold them in place and buy time for Aoki's response team.
He crouched near a root, picked up a fist-sized stone, weighed it once in his hand, and almost laughed at himself.
Stone against firearms.
Prehistory against modern kill systems.
No better option.
His one advantage was the state he was in. His eyes felt bright enough to burn in the dark.
At that range he could still mark shooter positions. He could even catch details under the hood line - eyes, forearm tattoo, posture changes.
He couldn't leave the trees. The moment he crossed open ground, they would lock and cut him down.
Then the window came.
No one outside believed a man in darkness could read their movement this clearly.
His body and focus fused tighter. He watched one shooter and the motion track drew itself in his mind before it happened.
The man was about to lift slightly, relax, expose.
Ethan threw.
Full body torque. Full release.
The stone crossed the distance at brutal speed.
Impact.
It caught the man at the forehead as he rose. He went over backward without even a full cry. Nearby shooters snapped their heads around and froze for half a second, unable to process what they were seeing - depressed frontal bone, blood, immediate collapse.
The disbelief on their faces was almost clean.
Like bombing cavalry from a jet and getting speared out of the sky.
They were trained professionals. Not first mission. Not first old-arts target.
This outcome was outside their model.
Gunfire answered almost immediately.
Rounds cut through where he'd been a moment earlier, slamming bark and grass.
Ethan shifted deeper into the woods behind heavy trunks. Warning pressure rose in his chest. The outside team was no longer waiting for a clean shot pattern.
They started suppressive sweep fire into the tree line.
He moved fast and low to a large ornamental stone that residents used as a daytime bench. At night it became hard cover.
Rounds struck near it, stone chips spraying.
His anger sharpened rather than blurred.
These people had crossed every accepted line. Urban kill attempt. Then open sweep fire in a residential zone.
What kind of backing made them this confident?
Who would clean this up after?
"If I learn who sent you," he said under his breath, "I'll pull the whole root system out. Organization, financial house - doesn't matter."
For one moment he cursed the fact that he hadn't completed Golden Body.
If he had, he would already be outside killing.
Then the woods went quiet.
He saw several figures lifting the downed shooter and pulling back in split directions, disciplined and fast.
Ethan moved immediately, darted to the utility room edge in the trees, found a short steel rebar length - a little over half a meter.
He had nothing better.
He shifted again, pushing hyper-sense to limit, then whipped his arm through with a crack of displaced air.
One of the retreating men pitched forward hard.
He hit the ground with a broken sound. A through-and-through hole had opened in his chest; heart destroyed.
The rebar had punched through and landed more than twenty meters past him, ringing against pavement.
The rest of the team changed color.
A thrown steel bar at that range, penetrating a high-alert veteran.
They stopped underestimating him.
"Move. Out. Now," someone hissed.
They hauled the dead and wounded and withdrew at speed.
One man sprayed something over visible blood marks as they retreated.
Professional exit discipline.
Ethan wanted to pursue.
He didn't.
He changed position again inside the woods. The farther overwatch was still there - dark muzzles, patient angle control. If he pushed out, he would eat sniper fire.
He made a fast read:
Either they had extraordinary real-time intel,or they had external lookouts already tracking Aoki's incoming response.
He held position and waited.
Minutes later, Aoki's people arrived - fast enough to be frightening in its own way.
Still too late to catch the first team clean.
"Chase them," Aoki ordered his crew. "I want names. They fired in a city, in a residential block. Find me which river-dragon thinks they can do that."
He sent teams along active lines, then entered the woods alone to Ethan.
He had brought a full equipment set, top grade.
Ethan changed immediately.
Heavy layered ballistic rig. Triple-plate core. Reinforced overcoat with additional defensive weave. Weighted cap that looked ordinary until you held it.
Then a firearm.
Tonight had lit something in him that wasn't going out by itself.
He lifted the gun and moved toward the tree line exit.
"Wait," Aoki said. "I'm changing too. We go together."
He removed the green mask - revealing not a real face, but another synthetic skin.
No one in this line worked bare.
He did not bring the larger response unit into the woods. Just the two of them from one vector, running the pursuit line Ethan had already built in his head.
After several blocks they holstered and shifted to foot-speed tracking.
Old Earth, under New Star pressure, had reduced street surveillance in the name of privacy reform. Too many blind sectors. Too many dead angles.
Otherwise Aoki could have pulled direct visual chains and solved the route faster.
Ethan felt again, in practical terms, how deep Aoki's organization ran:
rapid deployment, professional hunters, fast gear logistics, urban response architecture.
"You dropped one with a stone and one with rebar?" Aoki asked while moving, still sounding surprised. "You're twenty-two and handling contact like this?"
Ethan kept his eyes forward.
They reached a high-traffic night district - bar street, loud crowds, mixed commerce, multiple private security channels.
Aoki frowned. "Bad terrain for recovery. Too many exits, too many controlled routes, too many houses protecting client movement."
Ethan already knew.
By now the shooters were probably in a handoff chain.
Chasing this line all the way might return nothing.
Then he looked up and saw familiar faces.
Not far ahead, Julian Zhou, Iris Wu, Zhou Ting, and several others were walking toward one of the best-known bars on the strip.
Julian spotted him and came over first.
Tall, still carrying that feral edge in his stare - though less convincing tonight given the full injury profile: head wrapped, arm in brace, cracked nails medicated, nasal bridge treated.
"This look doesn't match your style from earlier," Julian said lightly, eyeing Ethan's gear. "Trying your luck in nightlife tonight?"
Ethan looked him over once.
"You're wrapped like a festival dumpling," he said. "Who did you fight this time?"
Julian's eyes hardened immediately.
He had redirected his rage onto the blue-eyed mixed-blood operative, but Ethan's line still hit nerve.
Ethan kept pressing, deliberate.
"You're really consistent. If you're not fighting someone, you're on your way to fight someone. Going to another appointment now? Who's the next one?"
Julian pointed at him, jaw tight, words not arriving in time.
Ethan watched him closely while speaking - not just Julian, all of them.
This encounter was too convenient to waste.
Tonight's kill order could still trace to any of several hands.