Marvel Monkey King: CH 3 (Patreon)

Jack let the memory go before it could drag him under.

He tipped the bottle back, letting the amber fire slide down his throat, burning away the old smoke in his lungs.

"Aaahhh," Jack exhaled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah. Break the bottle on the table, put the jagged end into some bastard's throat, stomp out the rest of his crew, and run like hell into the rain. Big whoop."

Eric looked at him sideways, that quiet, familiar smirk tugging at the edge of his lips. The kind of look shared between two people who had washed each other's blood off the sidewalk more times than they cared to count.

"I think the same old man gave something to me too," Eric said quietly. "Last night."

Jack turned his head, the neck of the whiskey bottle resting loosely in his fingers.

"I stepped out for a smoke around two in the morning," Eric said, eyes fixed on the empty avenue ahead. "Street was dead quiet. Then this peddler comes shuffling past with bundled sacks balanced across his shoulders. Something slipped out and hit the pavement. A small chain. I picked it up to hand it back, but he waved his hands. Muttered something about the thread of fate finally drawing into a knot. Said something about the turn of my life and the road ahead."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "He gave you a necklace?"

Eric reached up, his fingers slipping beneath the collar of his dress shirt. He tugged free a thin silver chain.

Dangling at the end was a smooth, polished stone. Embedded in its center sat a small eyeball with a golden iris and an obsidian pupil, catching the yellow glare of the streetlamp above. It looked unnervingly awake, as if peering straight into the quiet parts of a man.

It was the very same piece Jack had seen resting on that makeshift wooden cart 2 days earlier.

Jack blinked at it. "Huh... weird."

Eric let out a heavy breath, tucking the pendant back beneath his silk shirt where it disappeared against his chest. His brows remained knit, tight with the kind of unease that didn't wash off easily.

"I don't like it," Eric murmured. "Feels like there is something I missed. Something right in front of me."

"Oh, I don't know," Jack drawled, leaning his head back against the stone balustrade. "Maybe spending your wedding night with your bride is what you missed."

"Ling is already home," Eric replied, his voice softening at the name. "She locked the door, took off her heels, and went to sleep. I told her I'd be back once the hall was locked up."

"After what?" Jack snorted. "After you sit here and interrogate your gut feelings until dawn? Ling is a good woman, Eric. Go home. Sleep in your own bed. I will watch your boys make sure they don't steal the silverware."

Jack leaned forward and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting toward the curb where three young men were struggling with a round table.

"Lift with your legs, you useless bastards! One scratch on that varnish and I'm charging it to your wages!"

The crew members flinched, sheepishly picking up their pace.

Eric laughed, the tight knot in his posture loosening a fraction. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at Jack. "Wanna get a sandwich?"

Jack squinted at him in utter disbelief. "Huh? It's... what, three in the morning?"

"Yeah," Eric said, shrugging. "And their hero bread is still fresh."

"On a roll, man," Jack scoffed, shaking his head with deep moral offense. "A hero at three in the morning is a crime against God and digestion."

Eric stood up, brushing dust from his tailored trousers. "I am not having this argument with you again."

Jack pushed himself up too, wobbling slightly on his single dress shoe before finding his balance. "Alright, fine. But my opinion is still the right one, kekekeke."

Eric rolled his eyes, turning toward the street.

The air shifted.

It was subtle at first. No horn, no headlights. Just the low, predatory purr of a heavy engine gliding around the corner, rolling in dark against the curb.

A black four-door sedan drifted into view, its tires skimming the asphalt like an omen.

Jack's instincts screamed before his eyes fully focused. The hairs on his forearms stood straight up.

His hand was already under his suit coat, fingers wrapping cold iron.

"Drive-by!" Jack roared.

The sedan's windows dropped in unison.

Darkness tore open.

Muzzle flashes strobed like lightning in the narrow street, turning the brick facade into a strobe of white fire. The deafening hammer of automatic gunfire ripped through the stillness, chewing concrete into dust and shattering the banquet hall's glass doors into cascading rain.

Eric reacted without thinking. With a violent kick, he slammed the heavy wooden banquet table on the sidewalk onto its edge, dragging it forward into a thick wooden wall just as a hail of lead slammed into the opposite side.

Splinters sprayed like shrapnel.

Out by the curb, Eric's crew dove frantically beneath the bed of the pickup truck, bullets punching jagged holes through sheet metal and blowing out the front tires in loud pops.

Jack slid behind the overturned table on his knees, his tailored slacks tearing against the stone.

He didn't hesitate. He pulled his piece from his holster, leaned around the splintered edge of the mahogany table, and acquired the muzzle flashes strobing from the sedan's passenger window.

His finger squeezed the trigger. Three controlled, lethal cracks barked back into the smoke.

Beside him, Eric drew his own weapon, firing low into the sedan's chassis.

The driver panicked. Tires screeched in agony as the sedan fishtailed, rubber burning against asphalt. Brass casings rained down on the street in a loud, metallic clatter before the car accelerated wildly, tearing down the avenue and leaving behind a choking cloud of sulfur, shattered glass, and ringing ears.

The silence that followed was deafening.

It settled over the street like heavy dust. The distant wail of emergency sirens echoed from miles across Manhattan, a faint hum swallowed by the cold morning mist.

Around the shattered facade of the banquet hall, bodies lay crumpled on the pavement. Two of Eric's boys were motionless beneath the pickup truck. Another groaning man clutched a shattered knee against the curb, his red blood pooling with the motor oil.

Behind the bullet-chewed table, the air smelled of burnt powder, crushed mahogany, and copper.

Jack sat with his back against the wood, chest heaving in shallow, jagged gasps. He looked down at himself. A dark crimson blossom soaked through his tailored jacket at the left shoulder. Lower down, his slacks were torn open where a round had punched cleanly into his upper thigh, pulsing hot and slick.

"Fuck," Jack breathed, teeth gritted.

Then he looked to his right.

Eric sat slumped against the stone steps, both hands clamped desperately over his lower abdomen. Dark red spilled between his fingers, staining his pristine wedding shirt.

Jack dragged himself across the glass-strewn ground on one elbow, his teeth clenching against the fire in his leg. He pressed his own palms over Eric's hands, trying to hold the blood inside.

"See what I mean?" Jack choked out, forcing a crooked smirk through pale lips. "The universe is telling you. A roll was the right call."

A dry, rattling chuckle slipped past Eric's lips, followed by a cough that speckled his chin with red.

Jack craned his neck, roaring at the survivors scrambling in the alleyway. "Get a doctor and a car! Move your fucking asses! Now!"

The two crewmen who were still on their feet bolted down the street.

Minutes stretched like hours.

Eric, unlike Jack, had spent years wrapping legitimate ventures around his underworld empire. He kept ties with private clinics, board members, and discreet physicians on retainer, men who asked no questions and lived within a five-minute sprint anywhere south of Midtown.

A black SUV tore around the corner, brakes squealing as it halted inches from the shattered curb. The rear door flew open, and a doctor in a wrinkled shirt stepped out, clutching a trauma kit.

Jack hauled Eric up by the arm, bearing the groom's weight as they stumbled toward the open door.

The doctor took one look at both men, his eyes wide at the carnage.

"Check him," Jack barked, shoving Eric into the leather seats before collapsing onto the cushion beside him. "Work on him. I'm fine."

The doctor ripped Eric's shirt open, pressing gauze packs into the ragged hole in his gut. His hands were already slick. "This is beyond what I can do back here. The bullet tore something deep. We need the operating room right now."

Jack kicked the driver's seat from behind with his good foot. "You heard the man! Floor it!"

The SUV surged forward, hurling them back against the headrests as it rocketed toward the hospital.

Eric groaned, shifting his hips against the agony in his belly. Through half-lidded eyes, he turned his head to look at Jack.

Jack was swaying loosely with the turns of the vehicle, his chin dropping toward his chest. His skin was the color of wet chalk, his lips faintly blue.

"Jack," Eric rasped, his voice trembling. "Why the hell are you paler than me?"

The doctor looked up from Eric's stomach, his gaze dropping to the floorboard.

Blood was pooling around Jack's shoe, pouring from the wound in his inner thigh in a steady, heavy torrent that soaked the car's carpet.

"Fuck off, will you?" Jack muttered, his eyes glazed over, staring at nothing. "Save your breath, Eric."

The doctor's face drained of color. He scrambled over, tearing open Jack's trouser leg with surgical shears.

"The femoral artery," the doctor whispered, his voice cracking with panic. He drove his fists down into the crease of Jack's thigh, trying to compress the vessel, but blood welled up around his knuckles regardless. "It tore straight through the femoral artery. It's deep in the tissue. I can't clamp this without retractors. We need the hospital!"

The driver shouted back through the partition. "Four minutes out!"

Four minutes.

Eric watched the ceiling lights of the tunnel blur together into long yellow streaks. His own body was growing cold, a quiet numbness creeping up from his toes to his ribs. His vision frayed at the edges.

"Jack," Eric shouted, forcing the word through his throat. "Jack, talk to me!"

Jack tilted his head back, a delirious, faint giggle bubbling up in his chest. "You should've... gone home, man. Ling is waiting up. She's gonna be mad..."

"Jack! Look at me!" Eric gripped Jack's sleeve, his fingers weak.

"Kekekeke," Jack whispered, his voice fading into the hum of the engine. "I bet you're just yelling 'cause you're scared shitless... still a virgin at heart, you prick..."

"Doctor!" Eric pleaded, his chest tightening.

The doctor pressed his entire body weight onto Jack's leg, his forearms painted in crimson. "It's severed! I can't find the ends in the dark! I need hospital lights, I need clamps!"

Jack let out a soft, wheezing sigh. "Kekeke... Excuses. Always excuses with you quacks... I bet an itchy asshole is beyond your skillset too, doc... Kekekeke..."

The laughter trailed off into the rush of the air conditioning.

Eric looked at his friend.

The frantic panic in Eric's chest suddenly gave way to a strange, weightless clarity. The cold reached his heart. He felt the thread slipping through his fingers, snapping one strand at a time.

He had spent his whole life trying to build something clean out of the dirt, trying to step out of the shadows and into a home with Ling. Yet fate had a cruel symmetry to it.

He was going out exactly where he had begun: beside Jack, amidst the smell of cordite, blood, and broken glass.

Eric let his head fall back against the headrest. His grip on Jack's sleeve softened, fingers falling limp against the leather. He closed his eyes.

The black SUV screeched into the private bay of the hospital, doors flying open into the sterile white glow of the emergency lights.

Inside the cabin, the stillness was absolute.

As the first pale golden sliver of dawn broke across the Manhattan skyline, kissing the gray clouds above Chinatown, Eric Shen and Jack Hou slipped beyond the edge of the world.