015 FIRST KILL
"How dare you attack ?" Mad Cat roared, his hand clamped tight around Dan's throat.
When Mad Cat was struck by ntal attacks he scanned for the closest threat….and that threat was Dan. With a shocking blink, he was at Dan's throat.
"Damnit, how did he catch ?" Dan complained in his mind.
Then he realized it was impossible for Mad Cat to know about his mining app and that he was the one attacking him.
Gasping, Dan managed to croak out feigning innocent, "It's not ! What the hell are you talking about? Are you crazy!!…I ca here for the concert!"
For a mont, a flicker of doubt crossed Mad Cat's eyes. Dan was just a teenager who loitered too near to them… not a powerful assassin. He's got the wrong person.
He released Dan and spun around, scanning the shadows for his unseen attacker.
But the street was empty. The only one in sight was Dan. He was the only suspect, so Mad Cat's finger jabbed toward him again. "It's you, isn't it, boy? You were the one who attacked ?"
By then Stephan and a handful of thugs ca onto the scene. Stephan's eyes lit up with recognition. "That's him! He's the kid who stole your money!"
"What?" Mad Cat bellowed.
"Damnit, I couldn't act my way out of this now when Stephan recognized ," Dan thought.
"No! You've got the wrong guy!" Dan pleaded, his voice cracking.
Dan knew he had made a terrible mistake. He was too hasty and greedy.
Targeting Mad Cat had been reckless. He hadn't expected the man could dash hundreds of ters in an instant. That was Mad Cat's superpower.
"I can't underestimate ta-humans ever again," he vowed but that was for a future ti.
Survival was all that mattered now.
"Damn it," Dan muttered under his breath. "There's no way out of this."
"It's him, Boss. I'm sure of it!" Stephan insisted.
"I should've killed you the mont I could," Dan thought bitterly.
"Kill him now, Boss!" Stephan urged.
Mad Cat usually ignored the chorus of his underlings, but this ti, he obeyed. With a wicked grin, he drew a dagger from his belt and lunged at Dan.
"This is it", Dan thought. "So, this is how I die."
His life flashed in fragnts—years of tornt under his uncle's family, the endless bullying at school, the injustice from teachers, thugs, from everyone.
The DemCoin app had seed like salvation, a glimpse of freedom. But that gift had turned short-lived, if he was going to die tonight.
The dagger drove into his chest, narrowly missing his heart. Pain ripped through him.
"AARGH!" he scread.
And then—sothing strange happened.
Mad Cat scread too, his face twisted in shock as he collapsed to the ground.
Dan's mining wasn't done yet. He pressed on "Acquire: Command," stealing Mad Cat's third available stat and fourth stat in quick succession.
Mad Cat was struck by powerful ntal attacks from his mining acquisition.
Everything blurred.
Dan wasn't in the right mind now. He suffered an almost death, so he wasn't thinking straight.
Acting on instinct, Dan wrenched the dagger from his chest. In one swift motion, rage overtaking reason, he plunged it straight into Mad Cat's skull before he recovers from the ntal attacks.
Blood sprayed all over him.
Mad Cat fell limp and dead.
"Run!" Stephan shrieked at the sight of his boss's death.
But Dan was beyond reason now. Adrenaline surged, and a killing madness was flooding his veins. He lunged at Stephan, driving the blade into him.
Stephan collapsed, lifeless too.
Then ca the others. Dan tore into the thugs, one by one. His strikes were brutal, rciless. Screams filled the night until silence swallowed everything.
When it was over, Dan stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving, and blood dripping from the blade. Slowly, the haze lifted.
He stared at the dead bodies before him.
"What… what did I just do? Did I kill these people" he whispered. Although they were deserving of it, Dan was still shocked that he had murdered Mad Cat, Stephan, all of them.
It was Dan's First Kill.
There was no ti for remorse. He fell to the ground in shock and panic.
It felt like eternity to him but in reality, it didn't take long before Dan returned to his senses. "Now I must deal with this ss."
He rembered the news of the frequent gang murders in the city. Dead gangsters were often found burned and all evidence destroyed. Even the police couldn't solve the cases.
With that as inspiration, Dan dragged the corpses to a nearby car, stripping them of their Aur cards before pouring gasoline all over.
"Boom"
Then with the strike of a lighter, the car went up in flas together with the bodies of Mad Cat, Stephan and the thugs with it.
Dan quickly escaped from the cri scene after that.
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Dan's body was a map of pain. The bleeding had stopped, but the wounds still burned, raw and screaming for proper treatnt.
Normally, he would have gone straight to a hospital.
But not tonight.
Showing up in shredded clothes with stab wounds would invite questions he couldn't afford to answer.
"What do I do now?" he thought, his jaw throbbing. "I need dical treatnt… but I can't be seen in a hospital with wounds like this."
A second passed.
Then his lips curled into a thin smile.
"Hospital it is."
Dan ran all the way to lrose Hospital No. 3. He bypassed the reception desk, slipped through a service entrance, and ghosted up a stairwell, staying close to the shadows.
In the doctors' locker room, his hands were slick with drying blood as he rummaged through cupboards until he found bandages—and a spare set of scrubs tossed carelessly over a chair.
He taped his ribs as best he could, bit back a hiss of pain, then pulled on the clean clothes. His bloodstained ones disappeared into a bin.
"Next stop… Suite—whatever it was," he murmured, forcing his aching legs to move toward the patient wing.
Then it ca back to him.
Suite 10051.
He slipped inside.
It was Ralph's room, shared with several other patients. Ralph was sound asleep, breathing evenly.
The cluster of occupied beds felt like a gift to him.
Dan allowed himself a bitter smile. "Perfect," he whispered. "There would be plenty of witnesses here who'll see here in the morning."
He sank onto the visitor's couch beside Ralph and kept watch as the night clawed at him.
The horror replayed itself again and again—Mad Cat's face, the others falling, the finality of it all. It was the first ti he had taken a life.
He knew, with chilling certainty, that he would never be the sa.
Dan forced himself to breathe.
Fear gave way to action. Action to preparation.
He stopped thinking about the killing itself and focused instead on what ca after—running through it over and over until it felt solid, until he was certain there was no evidence left to be found, there were no mistakes.
When dawn ca, he would be here. Seen and rembered. These people—Ralph, the patients, the staff—would beco his alibi.
If even a shred of suspicion tied him to Mad Cat's murder, this room would shield him.
Satisfied, Dan leaned back and closed his eyes… and finally, he slept.
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