101: Chapter 101 My family's ashes are my only weakness!

In the War Zone, the basement of a residential building stripped to its skeleton by artillery fire.

The air was thick with the bitterness of instant coffee and the metallic scent of gun oil.

An LED light hung from exposed wires overhead, its glow swaying across the faces of the three as distant artillery fire shook the ground.

Viktor Dahl stared at the cup of cold coffee in his hands.

The six-foot-three Nordic giant had short blonde hair stained grayish-brown by gunpowder smoke.

His blue eyes, tempered on the battlefield like polar ice, now held nothing but exhaustion.

Marco Ferretti sat opposite him; a pale, old scar ran across his left eyebrow on his olive skin.

His stubby fingers repeatedly flicked the lid of a Zippo lighter—click, click—but he didn't light a single cigarette.

Katarina Voronova leaned in the shadows of the corner, her silver-white hair tied back with a black band.

As a sniper, her hands were steadier than a surgeon's. Now, they were trembling.

No one spoke.

Every time they closed their eyes, they saw that eye.

A vertical slit pupil over thirty meters in diameter, a scarlet iris, and that mental domain that drowned the entire brain in viscous black water.

They had lived on the edge of a blade for half their lives, but for the first time, they felt like ants.

Viktor had been fighting for twenty years, from the Swedish Snow Wolf Special Forces to the "Grey Wolf" private military contractor, and no battle had ever made him think that "humanity shouldn't exist."

That eye had done it.

"What's the plan?"

Katarina spoke first, her voice very soft.

Viktor set down his coffee cup; it hit the ammunition box that served as a table with a dull thud.

He was silent for ten seconds.

"Once this contract ends, I'm out."

Marco's lighter stopped.

"Me too."

He pulled his phone from his pocket and swiped it open; the screen lit up.

The lock screen wallpaper was a newborn baby, wrinkled like a little old man.

"Sofia gave birth last month... little Marco."

His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, as if choking on a piece of broken glass.

"Only three point four kilograms, ugly as hell."

At this, he smiled. He grinned wide, his eyes reddening.

Katarina didn't respond. She had no family.

She grew up in an orphanage in Odessa, touched a gun for the first time at fourteen, and killed her first person at sixteen.

She was nearly forty and had never even taken a family photo.

But she looked at the photo of Mia on Viktor's phone.

Seven years old, missing a front tooth, wearing pigtails, smiling like a sunflower.

Something in her heart softened. That was her goddaughter, after all.

The three tacitly avoided discussing the monster or the man who had walked down from the sky stepping on flames and shattered the giant eye with two slashes.

But they all knew one thing: that thing was not something humans could fight.

During the last retreat, their trio had been mocked by others in the unit as "cowards." No one believed their description.

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." That was the diagnosis given by the unit's medical officer.

Viktor didn't refute it. How could he? Say he'd seen gods and demons fighting in the sky?

By the time those people saw it for themselves, it would be too late even for a diagnosis.

"Buzz—buzz—" The satellite phone vibrated on the table.

Caller ID: Conrad Williams. The commander.

Viktor answered and put it on speaker. The basement was filled with only the hissing of static.

"I received your resignation requests." A raspy, coarse voice came from the receiver, like the gravelly throat of a chain-smoker.

"Tell me why."

Viktor was silent.

"Viktor, you've been with 'Grey Wolf' for twelve years. Marco for eight, Katarina for eleven."

Conrad's tone shifted, like a blade scraping over rusty sheet metal.

"You know too much. There is only death in battle, no resignation. I told you that rule on your first day."

"Bang!" Marco's fist slammed into the ammo box, the LED light shaking violently.

"Conrad, you mother—"

"Think carefully." Conrad interrupted, his voice devoid of emotion, yet the temperature in the basement plummeted a few degrees.

"Your most important things are still within my range."

Beep— The call ended.

Viktor's breath hitched.

Marco's fingers gripping the lighter went rigid.

Katarina leaned back into the shadows of the corner, her whole body seeming to sink away.

Not a word more was needed. The three stood up simultaneously.

In Viktor's ice-blue eyes, the chill faded, leaving only a burning rage.

"Let's go."

Gear, ammo, communicators—packed within sixty seconds.

Katarina's movements as she checked her Barrett sniper rifle were faster than on any mission.

Her hands weren't trembling. Fear could make a person shake, but anger wouldn't.

Marco buckled his bulletproof vest tightly, squeezing three words through his teeth, "Sofia..."

Viktor grabbed his shoulder, his grip so tight his knuckles protruded.

"We'll make it in time."

The three rushed out of the basement.

Outside was the pitch-black night of the War Zone, the orange-red reflection of distant artillery fire hitting their faces like congealed blood.

They sprinted in the opposite direction of the fire, toward the safe house where all their families were hidden.

Six hundred kilometers.

A modified Ford Raptor sped wildly down an abandoned highway.

Viktor drove, Marco stared at the satellite map in the passenger seat, and Katarina sat in the back holding her sniper rifle, closing her eyes to rest.

Inside the car, there was only the roar of the engine and the sound of tires crushing gravel.

They didn't speak all night.

At dawn, the horizon turned a pale, fish-belly white.

Marco's voice suddenly changed pitch, his finger stabbing hard at a coordinate on the screen.

"Three more kilometers... we're almost there!"

Viktor floored the accelerator.

The off-road vehicle charged up a dirt slope, and the view opened up.

Then, all three saw it.

At the end of the horizon, in the direction of the villa used as a safe house—a pillar of black smoke was rising straight into the gray-white morning sky.

The safe house was gone.

The three-story concrete detached villa had been completely torn apart by at least two rocket-propelled grenades and a set of C4 plastic explosives.

Viktor's military boots crunched on the broken bricks.

He squatted down and picked a photo from the rubble.

A family photo. Him, Elena, and Mia.

Taken last Christmas, Mia wearing red reindeer antlers, smiling with her missing front tooth.

The bottom right corner of the photo was scorched, but the three faces were still there.

Viktor's hands didn't tremble.

But his knees could no longer support the weight of his body. He knelt down, crashing into the pile of broken bricks.

Marco had lost his mind.

He was digging through the ruins, moving every piece of concrete, repeating "Sofia," "Little Marco," his nails broken, blood mixed with dust smeared on the bricks.

Katarina stood the furthest away. She didn't cry.

Her silver-white hair was scattered by the morning breeze, covering half her face.

But her hands, the hands that had never missed a shot, hung by her sides like a marionette with cut strings.

"Your families are still alive." The voice came from behind. It wasn't loud, and the tone was flat.

The three turned simultaneously. Backlit.

On the gray-white skyline of dawn, a black silhouette was frozen at the highest point of the ruins, atop a half-broken wall.

A black trench coat fluttered slightly in the morning breeze, and the cracks in the bronze half-face mask cast ancient shadows in the faint light.

Those eyes. Calm to the extreme.

No wind, no waves, no joy, no sorrow.

Viktor's pupils constricted. He recognized him.

That night, under the dark red sky, two dragons of fire incinerated the alien beasts, two slashes shattered the giant eye—it was this person.

The three hands reached for their holsters simultaneously. There was no hostility.

It was the uncontrollable trembling of beasts facing the top of the food chain.

Su Chen didn't care.

"Your former organization sent twelve people."

He jumped off the broken wall, the hem of his trench coat brushing over the broken bricks.

"I arrived seven minutes before them."