Chapter 193: Kill With a Borrowed Knife

Chapter 193: Kill With a Borrowed Knife

Caesar bent his head and coldly looked down at the blood-soaked driver still pinned behind the wheel.

There was no pity in his eyes. Only the indifference reserved for a dead man.

Without a word, Caesar dragged the badly wounded Monica along with one hand, turned, and walked away from the totaled Dodge.

He'd made it maybe seven, eight steps.

Behind him came a deafening BOOM—!

The leaking high-octane fuel caught a spark from the wiring, and a violent bloom of fire swallowed the entire car in an instant.

"AAAAAHHHH—!!!"

The driver's shrill scream echoed through the canyon. But it lasted only a few seconds before the towering flames and the rolling black smoke consumed it completely.

Caesar dragged Monica to the safe edge of the road and dumped her onto the grass.

She lay flat on her back. That left eye—shredded by the glass, already caved in—hung half-open, blood sheeting across half her face. Her breathing had thinned down to almost nothing.

Caesar crouched and slid a matte-black tactical knife from his boot.

Holding the blade in his left hand, expressionless, he drew a deep cut across the vein on the inside of his own right wrist.

Dark red blood, carrying a heat far hotter than any normal man's, welled up out of the wound.

Caesar pried Monica's jaw open and pressed the bleeding wrist to her mouth.

The scalding blood dripped in, sliding down her throat.

Monica's single remaining eye first filled with shock.

But within a few seconds, that shock twisted into pure, staggering disbelief.

She could feel a violent, undiluted surge of life force racing through every limb, every fiber of her body, carried along by that blood. Her caved-in eyelid actually stopped bleeding. The snapped bones and ruptured organs inside her were knitting themselves back together at a speed that defied every law of medicine.

Caesar fished a roll of hemostatic bandage out of his tactical pocket and wrapped it carelessly a couple of times around the wound on his wrist.

That knife cut—deep enough to bare bone—had already begun scabbing over on its own.

Caesar rose to his feet and looked down at Monica lying in the grass.

"What's with the surprise?"

There was a trace of mockery in his voice. "You shot yourself full of that Enhancement Serum too, didn't you?"

"My blood. Works a hell of a lot better than that cheap knockoff you injected, doesn't it?"

Monica lay there, staring up at him, her eyes full of the kind of shock reserved for witnessing a miracle.

"You… you're the one from the rumors… Subject Prime."

Caesar didn't deny it.

Those deep, dark eyes just watched her. "What? You seem surprised."

Monica lay there, then suddenly let out a broken, wretched laugh.

"Heh… I should've seen it."

"If you weren't the perfect Patient Zero, there's no way you'd have that kind of power. The kind that just crushes everything in its path."

She paused for a long moment, and there was a bottomless sense of helplessness in her voice when she added it. "That kind… of power. Strong enough to make a person despair."

Caesar dug a crumpled pack of Marlboros out of his tactical pants, tapped one out, put it between his lips, and lit it with a windproof lighter.

He took a deep drag and let it out slow.

The gray smoke scattered on the night wind blowing through the Nevada canyon.

"Start talking," Caesar said, looking down at her. "Why'd you suddenly turn into a rabid dog dead set on killing me?"

Lying there in the grass, now that her injuries had stabilized, her voice steadied back into something calm.

"To stay alive."

"For a long time, I thought I was strong enough. A top-tier operative. I could handle any situation life threw at me—I even thought I wasn't afraid to die."

She paused, and a self-mocking, bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "It took today for me to find out I'm not as tough as I imagined."

"At least… when death closes in the way it did… I can't just accept it with a straight face."

Caesar took another pull off the cigarette and drawled lazily, "Wow. A real profound little existential crisis. Go on, then. What was it that suddenly filled you with all this philosophy?"

Monica was silent for two seconds.

Then she twisted her neck to the side and pushed her tangled hair away.

By the light of the burning car in the distance, Caesar's sharp eyes caught it—a tiny, blinking red dot buried in the subcutaneous tissue behind her carotid artery.

"There's a subcutaneous nano-explosive planted in my body. Harry put it there."

The hand holding the cigarette went still in midair.

Monica shut her eyes, her voice trembling. "If I didn't follow his orders—if I didn't come and try to kill you—"

"All he has to do is press a button, and my head turns into a cloud of red mist."

When Caesar heard that, he didn't feel a shred of sympathy. Instead, a cold little laugh escaped him.

"That son of a bitch Harry actually had the nerve to show his face in front of me."

He flicked the cigarette butt off the cliff, and a flash of bloodlust lit his eyes. "Interesting."

Monica didn't answer. Her mind was being pulled back to the nightmare from a few hours earlier.

...

【A few hours earlier】

Las Vegas. Inside a discreet safe-house hotel.

The curtains were drawn tight, not letting in so much as a thread of daylight. Only the ghostly blue glow of a laptop screen fell across Monica's cold, striking face.

On the screen, a message flashed up—encrypted at the highest level.

【Handler Change Notification: Your current direct contact has been reassigned.】

【A new handler will conduct a top-secret document handoff with you at a designated time and place.】

【Please confirm receipt.】

The instant she saw the message, Monica's brow knotted into a hard line.

In an underground operative organization like theirs, the rule had always been absolute: single-line contact, for security. Every person knew only their own handler. And a handler was never swapped out lightly—not unless they were dead.

A sudden change of contact like this? In her ten years in the business, she'd never once seen it happen.

Her sharp operative's instincts screamed at her—something had gone wrong. There was a fatal trap buried in this.

She sank into deep, uneasy deliberation.

But then a second thought hit her. She'd been wanting to offload that hot potato—the Enhancement Serum data—for a long time now. If the new handler could take it off her hands, she could finally pull herself out of this bottomless swamp for good and disappear.

Monica turned it over for a while. In the end, she typed out a single line:

【Agree to the meet. Trade immediately. Location: Downtown Financial District.】

A moment later, a short reply appeared on the screen:

【Agreed.】

Monica shut the laptop and physically destroyed it.

She dragged a silver-gray titanium alloy case out from under the bed, set it on the table, keyed in the code, and opened it—confirming the "thing" was still inside. Then she made an extremely subtle little modification to the case's latch mechanism.

She changed into a plain gray tracksuit and pulled on a wide sun hat, hiding her flawless figure and face.

She left, and flagged down an unregistered cab.

...

Ten in the morning in the Downtown Financial District. The white-collar crowd was already up in the office towers, and the foot traffic on the street was light.

Monica got out across from a Starbucks.

She didn't go straight in. Instead, drawing on her elite counter-surveillance training, she walked a full two laps around the block the café sat on. Only after she'd confirmed there were no suspicious black SUVs and no operatives tailing her did she push open the café's glass door.

"Iced Americano, black."

She took a seat by the window.

She pulled off the sun hat and set it on the table. Brim up, facing the door.

That was the agreed-upon signal.

She waited quietly for two minutes.

A server in an apron came over with an iced Americano and set it in front of her.

"Thanks."

Time ticked by, second by second. Ten minutes later.

The wind chime over the door jingled, and a young man walked straight over to the seat across from her, pulled out the chair, and sat down.

Monica's pupils shrank hard.

The new contact was younger than she'd ever expected.

He wore an exquisitely tailored gray Armani casual suit, every gesture carrying an aristocratic ease. And the most striking thing of all—he had a head of short, ice-cold white hair.

"Is this seat taken?"

The white-haired young man looked at Monica, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth, and delivered the countersign. "I hear the espresso here is to die for."

As he said it, his eyes stayed locked on her like a viper fixed on its prey.

Every alarm in Monica's head went off at once.

Instinct told her: this man was no organization contact. He was Death itself, come to collect her life.

"Sorry. You've got the wrong person."

Monica snatched up the sun hat and the case off the table and turned to leave.

But her wrist was instantly seized by a leather-gloved hand, gripping with the force of a hydraulic clamp.

Harry's voice was cold and taunting, and it cut straight through her cover.

"Monica. My time bills by the second."

"I don't have the patience to sit here and play Cold War spy games with you."

Her face went white, and she strained to break free. "What are you talking about? I don't understand you! Let go!"

Harry didn't argue with her.

He released her wrist with elegant ease. Then he gave a soft snap of his fingers.

Shhk—

Every set of blinds in the café was violently yanked down at the exact same instant.

The barista at the door—the one who'd been all smiles a moment ago—turned and dropped the heavy metal roller shutter, then hung up a "Closed" sign.

And then, the seven or eight "ordinary customers" scattered through the café, the ones reading newspapers and tapping at laptops, all stripped off their disguises at once. Faces blank, they drew suppressed Glock 19s from beneath their trench coats. Every black muzzle locked onto Monica.

Harry stayed seated, calm as ever, hands folded on the table like a director enjoying his own stage play.

"You're smart. And your counter-surveillance instincts are excellent."

He looked at her and gave an appreciative nod. "A woman who's this smart and this deadly, and beautiful on top of it—they really are hard to come by."

Harry lifted the untouched iced Americano in front of her and took a leisurely sip.

"But you clearly underestimated my resources. And my methods."

"You thought as long as I didn't slip poison into your coffee, you were safe?" He gave a cold laugh. "While you were out there walking your little laps around the block, I bought the entire café. From the manager to the staff—hell, even the homeless guy out front. Every one of them is mine."

Monica stared at the ring of black muzzles surrounding her, her expression darkening to its absolute limit.

Now what?

Her mind was spinning at a savage, impossible speed, calculating in fractions of a second. Under this kind of absolute firepower, a straight fight meant nothing but death.

Then she made her decision.

Monica slammed the titanium case down onto the table.

"I don't care who you are. I came to hand over the data."

Her voice went cold. "It's delivered now. The code is six zeros. So can I go?"

Harry raised an eyebrow and shot a glance at a burly henchman beside him.

The man walked over, picked up the case, keyed in the code, and hit the release.

Click.

The instant the lid flipped open—

Hisssss—!!!

An acrid, high-pressure blast of tear gas erupted from a hidden compartment inside the case, gushing out like a fountain.

Thick white smoke flooded the entire café in a heartbeat, blinding everyone.

"Cough, cough— Fuck! My eyes!"

"Hold your fire! Watch it, you'll hit each other!"

Monica reacted faster than any of them. A full second before the gas even sprayed, she'd already held her breath, dropped her body low, and was tearing along the floor like a lioness toward the exit at the back kitchen.

But just as her fingers were about to close on the door handle—

A fist packing terrifying power punched through the smoke like a war hammer and slammed with pinpoint accuracy into her stomach.

THUD!

Monica felt like her internal organs had shattered. Every ounce of strength drained from her body at once. Her vision went black, and she crashed to her knees.

Harry stepped out of the smoke, pressing a handkerchief with custom embroidery over his nose and mouth, without a hair out of place, and looked down at her from above.