From Ex-con To Supreme God Of War

Chapter 2. Solo Slaughter

Cold rain poured in heavy sheets over Cargo Zone Nine, a decaying industrial dockland on the edge of Valmoria.

In the center of the yard stood a massive, rotting warehouse with broken windows and rusty corrugated steel doors.

Outside, six men in heavy raincoats stood guard, armed with shotguns and cheap handguns.

They laughed while smoking cigarettes.

Thomas Green walked out of the darkness like a ghost born from the rain.

He wore his plain black coat, drenched in water. His face was cold, hard, and devoid of any human warmth.

He did not hide.

He did not crawl behind crates. He walked straight down the gravel path, his eyes locked onto the steel doors of the warehouse.

"Hey! Who the hell are you?" one of the guards shouted, throwing his cigarette into a puddle and leveling his shotgun at Thomas’s chest.

"This is private property, pal. Turn around and scram before I put a hole in your guts."

Thomas did not slow down his pace. His heavy boots crunched against the wet gravel in a steady, terrifying rhythm.

"Where is Mia Wright?"

The guards blinked, then erupted into loud, harsh laughter. "Oh! You’re the little hero from the phone." the lead guard sneered, stepping forward with a cruel grin.

"Look at this guy. He actually came alone. No money bags, no guns, just a wet coat. You really thought you could save her, you broke loser?"

The guard raised the shotgun to aim directly between Thomas’s eyes.

"Get on your knees, boy. Boss Vance is gonna let us play with you after we ship the girl out.”

He never finished his sentence. In a fraction of a second, Thomas closed a five-foot gap. His hand shot forward like a striking snake, gripping the barrel of the shotgun and twisting it upward.

A deafening blast echoed into the night sky.

Before the guard could scream, Thomas smashed his elbow directly into the man’s throat with crushing force. The guard’s neck snapped back, and he dropped into the mud like a sack of stone, gasping for air that would never come.

"Kill him!" The remaining five guards shrieked in absolute panic, drawing their pistols.

Thomas did not draw a firearm.

He pulled the six-inch black combat knife from his belt. What followed was not a fight; it was an execution.

Thomas moved with terrifying, unnatural speed honed by seven years in the brutal northern warzones.

He dodged a wild bullet with a slight tilt of his shoulder, grabbed the shooter’s wrist, and snapped it backward with a sickening crack. He spun the man around as a human shield just as two other thugs opened fire.

Bullets tore into the human meat, and Thomas lunged forward through the spray of blood.

He drove his blade upward into the second guard's sternum, pulled it free, and delivered a sidekick that sent the third man flying ten feet through the air into a heavy metal container.

The man’s skull cracked against the steel, and he slid down lifelessly into the rising rainwater.

The last two guards dropped their weapons, their faces pale with pure terror. They had fought rival gangs and local cops, but they had never seen a human being kill three men in seconds without taking a single breath.

"Demon... he’s a demon." one screamed, turning to run.

Thomas threw the combat knife with lethal precision. The blade spun through the rain and buried itself deep into the back of the runner’s neck.

The man hit the ground face-first.

Thomas walked up to the last surviving guard, who was now trembling violently on his knees, his hands raised in desperate surrender.

"Please! Don't kill me! I was just paid to guard the door!" the thug wept, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks.

"Boss Vance is inside. He's the one in charge of the auction. He's in the office with the girl."

Thomas reached down, grabbed the man by his jacket collar, and lifted him off his feet with one arm.

"Who bought her?"

"I don't know. I swear I don't know." the man shrieked.

"It's a secret online bid. High-society rich folks from Valmoria. The buyer paid a five-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit ten minutes ago. They're shipping her out to a private yacht in twenty minutes."

Thomas slammed the man’s head against the steel doorframe, knocking him unconscious instantly.

He pulled his knife out of the dead guard’s neck, wiped the blade on the man's sleeve, and kicked the heavy steel warehouse doors wide open.

The loud bang reverberated inside the massive building.

Inside, lit by flickering yellow overhead spotlights, sat a high-tech mobile office van surrounded by twenty heavily armed mercenaries. In the middle of the room, tied to a heavy iron chair inside an open cargo container, was Mia.

Her small body was trembling violently, her hair soaked, and a purple bruise swollen on her pale cheek where she had been struck.

Boss Vance, a burly man with a scarred face, wearing an expensive tailored suit over a heavy gold chain, stood next to Mia holding a thick leather whip.

He turned around angrily at the sudden noise, his eyes widening when he saw a single blood-splattered man standing in the doorway.

"What the hell happened to the guards outside?" Vance barked, drawing a heavy chrome revolver from his coat.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Thomas." Mia cried out from inside the cage, her voice choked with desperate tears.

"Thomas. Run! There are too many of them."

Seeing Mia’s swollen cheek and the fear in her eyes sent a wave of icy, lethal fury straight to Thomas’s heart.

He did not answer Vance.

He stepped into the warehouse, his boots leaving bloody footprints on the cold concrete floor.

"Shoot this trash to pieces." Vance ordered, pointing his gun at Thomas.

Twenty mercenaries opened fire at once.

The cavernous warehouse exploded with deafening gunfire.

Muzzle flashes lit up the dark space like lightning. But Thomas was already gone.

He dove behind a heavy forklift, sliding across the slick floor as bullets chewed up the heavy iron frame above him. He picked up an iron pipe lying near the tire and sprang forward into the middle of the enemy squad like a hurricane.

He shattered guns and wrist bones with the heavy iron pipe, moving so fast that the mercenaries accidentally shot each other in the crossfire.

A thug tried to tackle him from behind, but Thomas grabbed the man's throat, flipped him over his hip, and drove his knee directly into the man's ribs with the sound of snapping bone.

Within three minutes of frantic, bloody chaos, the gunshots ceased, seventeen mercenaries lay broken and bleeding across the concrete. The remaining three threw their rifles away and fled into the dark corners of the dockyard, screaming in terror.

Boss Vance stood alone next to Mia’s cage, his hand shaking so violently that he dropped his chrome revolver onto the ground.

"What...what kind of monster are you?" Vance whimpered, backing away until his spine hit the metal wall of the container.

"You're just her orphan friend! You're supposed to be a nobody."

Thomas walked up to Vance smoothly.

He did not have a single scratch on his skin, though his coat was dripping with enemy blood. He grabbed Vance by the throat and slammed him against the container wall, lifting his heavy body completely off the ground.

"You hit her," Thomas said quietly, staring into Vance's bulging eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Vance choked out, his face turning pale.

"I didn't know. A rich client in the city paid us to secure her. They wanted an orphan girl with no family to cause trouble."

"Who is the client?" Thomas asked, his thumb pressing harder into Vance's windpipe.

"It's... it's done through the Johnson Financial Group." Vance gasped out, desperate to live.

"Edward Johnson. He signed the transfer order for the auction deposit five minutes ago. He's celebrating at his sister's engagement party at the Grand Valmoria Hotel right now."

Thomas’s eyes widened slightly with a dark, terrifying realization.

Edward Johnson.

The same cowardly brother-in-law whose hit-and-run crime Thomas had taken the fall for.

The man who was living in luxury while Thomas bled in prison and on the battlefield. Now, Edward was buying helpless women for secret auctions.

With a swift twist of his wrist, Thomas snapped Vance’s neck. He dropped the lifeless body onto the floor like trash.

Thomas stepped into the cargo container, reached down, and snapped the thick iron chains holding Mia with his bare hands.

He gently pulled the tape from her mouth and wrapped his warm arms around her shivering shoulders.

"Thomas... you came..." Mia sobbed, clinging to his coat with all her strength, hiding her face against his chest. "I thought I was dead... I thought I was never going to see you again..."

"I promised you I would always come back, Mia," Thomas whispered gently, patting her hair as his voice softened completely.

"You are safe now. No one in this city will ever hurt you again."

Suddenly, Vance’s high-end encrypted satellite phone on the ground began to ring loudly.

Thomas looked down.

The caller ID on the glowing screen showed a familiar name: Edward Johnson.

Thomas picked up the ringing phone and swiped the green icon. He brought the receiver to his ear, remaining completely silent.

"Vance!" Edward Johnson’s arrogant, drunken voice bellowed over the speaker, accompanied by the background sound of upbeat classical music, laughing guests, and clinking champagne glasses.

"Did you secure the goods? My sister Alice and her fiancé George just announced our family's new business partnership. I need that orphan girl delivered to the private yacht by midnight for our VIP investors! Answer me, you fool!”

Thomas listened to the voice of the man who had ruined his life seven years ago. He took a slow, deep breath, his lips curving into a cold, lethal smile.

"Edward," Thomas spoke softly into the receiver, his voice like ice cutting through the warm noise of the party.

"You have thirty minutes to enjoy your drinks."

On the other end of the line, Edward’s arrogant laughter stopped instantly. "Who... who is this? How do you have Vance’s phone?"

"This is the man who took the fall for your crime seven years ago," Thomas replied, his tone dripping with absolute doom.

"And I am coming to your party."

Before Edward could speak, Thomas clicked the end button, smashed the phone under his boot, and took Mia by the hand, leading her out into the stormy night.