"Why?" the man asked suddenly, his voice softer now, touched by something deeper than anger—something closer to grief. "The organization was evil. My father was evil. He believed in genocide. He bathed in the blood of innocents and called it cleansing. You know this."
John said nothing.
The man went on, voice cracking as the truth spilled out like an old wound reopened. "And the others? They followed him blindly. You know what they did. What they were. And yet they worshipped him."
John's jaw tightened.
The man gave a slow, bitter laugh and shook his head. "You destroyed it all, didn't you? Everything—burned to ash, one by one. The facilities. The files. The agents."
His eyes sharpened.
"And when we finally found a trace of the trail… it led here. To you."
He let the silence settle between them for a moment, then took a step closer.
"You said it was because we were evil. That you wanted peace. But tell me, John—what about you?"
John raised an eyebrow, his expression unreadable.
The man's voice dropped, low and venomous.
"You were part of it. Every kill. Every mission. Every innocent who got caught in the crossfire… You were one of us. Doesn't that make you evil too?" He smiled coldly. "So why not just die?"
The words were barely out of his mouth when chaos broke the quiet.
From the far side of the library, one of the college boys—until now meandering among the shelves—moved. Too fast. Too trained.
His book dropped, and beneath it, a silenced pistol gleamed in his hand.
The gun fired.
Crack.
The bullet tore through the still air, aimed straight at John's chest.
But it never found its mark.
In one fluid motion, John's hand snapped downward. From beside his chair, hidden in plain sight, he grabbed a slender iron stick—old, rusted, and seemingly useless.
It sang through the air.
Clang!
The bullet struck metal and ricocheted into the wall behind, embedding itself in the wood with a violent thud.
The entire room froze.
Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
John stood tall now, the iron stick in his grip no longer seeming so ordinary. His posture shifted—no longer the quiet old man by the window, but something else. Something carved from war and precision. Something lethal.
He took a single step forward, his eyes on the boy with the gun.
"I counted five of you," he said, voice calm and ice-edged. "But only one was foolish enough to pull the trigger first."
The remaining four students had shed their disguises—no longer casual, harmless visitors. Each moved with practiced silence, hands already reaching into bags, behind coats, beneath bookshelves.
But John was already moving.
And the war he'd buried deep within him had just risen from the grave.