John Wick - Chapter 176: Dual-Gun Dead Eye (Patreon)

The instant the elevator doors opened, every guard sheltering behind cover in the hall felt his stomach tighten.

Six bodies lay tangled across the floor of the car. Throwing knives had pierced throats and eye sockets, pinning some of the corpses to the walls. Blood and other thick fluids had run down the handles and congealed in ugly patches. It was a horrifying sight.

The image scraped across the guards' nerves like a blunt blade. For half a heartbeat, their trigger fingers froze.

47 used that half-beat to emerge from the stairwell.

He landed without a sound and covered five meters in less than a second. His right arm extended, followed immediately by his left.

In a fraction of a second, the muzzles of his two Silverballers swept across the room. Fourteen threats registered in his vision, each one's position and elevation fixed precisely in his mind.

Three guards closest to the elevator knelt behind a large potted plant, just lifting their gun barrels away from the bodies inside. On the second-floor gallery, two marksmen leaned out of separate windows. The lenses of their rifle scopes caught the overhead lights for an instant.

Those five positions, together with the other nine, formed a three-dimensional grid in 47's mind. He had already located every target from the stairwell. He even knew the order in which he intended to shoot them.

His arms moved through separate arcs. His right pistol angled down toward the three men behind the planter. His left rose toward the two riflemen in the second-floor windows.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Without their suppressors, the Silverballer 1911s cracked sharply through the hall. Some of the shots followed so closely they seemed to merge into a single report.

Three .45-caliber rounds from his right pistol struck the three guards behind the planter through their temples. Their heads snapped in the same direction. The force pitched their bodies over the planter and onto the floor.

Almost simultaneously, two rounds from his left pistol caught the exposed marksmen upstairs. Each bullet entered an eye socket beside a rifle scope. Both men toppled helplessly from their windows, their rifles slipping from their hands and sliding down the outside wall.

Five dead in less than half a second. None of them had even turned toward the gunfire.

47's shoes traced a half circle against the marble. He pivoted, his pistols swinging smoothly onto the next targets.

Only now did the rest of the guards recover from their shock. They swung their weapons toward the stairwell.

Two men had taken cover behind a curved sofa to the hall's left. One rested his weapon over the backrest, while the other leaned sideways to expose only half an eye.

Two more crouched behind a test bench in the center. One reacted quickly enough to pull the trigger at 47, but his submachine gun failed to fire, and he was fumbling desperately to chamber a round.

Across the hall stood four metal support columns, each concealing another guard. Two of those men were already leaning out with their weapons trained on 47.

At the far end of the second-floor gallery, a burly gunman stood behind a heavy wooden door. He hadn't even brought his submachine gun around yet.

47 lifted his left pistol. A .45-caliber bullet slipped through the gap beside the upstairs door and blew away half the gunman's head. The impact knocked the door shut again.

The upper floor was clear.

47 lowered both weapons until their muzzles pointed across the main hall.

Two shots from his left pistol threaded the narrow gap above the sofa's backrest. Each struck a guard directly in the eye. The bullets drove into their skulls, snapping both bodies backward so violently that the sofa shifted half an inch.

At the same moment, 47's right pistol had turned toward the test bench. One round burst through the top of the first man's head in a spray of blood. The other guard managed to bring up his handgun and fire. His shot skimmed past 47's shoulder and shattered against the wall behind him.

A heartbeat later, a .45 round struck that man's nose. His head jerked back, hit the edge of the bench, and his body slid to the floor.

A second and a half had passed.

Four guards remained, one behind each metal column.

47 had already fired ten shots. Even these men couldn't fail to understand what was happening now.

Gunfire erupted from all four pillars at once. A storm of bullets swept toward 47.

But he was moving before the first shots rang out. He lunged two steps left and dropped his body low, evading the opening burst. Ricochets gouged pale chips from the marble behind him.

He brought both pistols up while still in motion.

The first shot, from his right hand, struck the guard behind the far-left column in the forehead. His knees gave out, and he slumped sideways from cover.

The second, fired from his left, went toward the second column on the right. Its guard had just leaned out, trying to follow 47's movement. The bullet tore through his eye socket, wrenching his head backward and flinging him out from behind the column.

Two guards left.

The man at the third column on the right emptied an entire submachine-gun magazine. 47 twisted his upper body as he ran. Three rounds brushed his bulletproof suit, pressing dents into the fabric before the protective lining stopped them.

The impacts slowed him for an instant. His right Silverballer rose anyway, and the third shot struck the guard in the center of his forehead.

Only the man behind the final column survived.

He raised his pistol with shaking hands. The muzzle wavered wildly as it chased 47's fast-moving figure, never finding a steady aim.

47 stopped running and began walking toward him.

Five seconds. That was all the time that had passed since 47 had left the stairwell. Thirteen of the fourteen heavily armed guards were already down, having mounted almost no meaningful resistance.

With every step the silent, bald assassin took, the pressure bearing down on the survivor seemed to grow. The man's fingers trembled violently around his weapon.

He finally broke and squeezed the trigger. A bullet streaked toward 47's head, trailing a faint disturbance of hot air. 47 tilted his head aside as casually as if he were avoiding a fly.

A moment later, the Silverballer's muzzle touched the man's forehead.

One last shot. The guard fell backward, struck the base of the column with the back of his skull, bounced once, and lay still.

Fourteen corpses. Fourteen bullets.

Both Silverballers locked open on empty chambers. In 47's hands, they looked like precision instruments that had just completed a perfect calculation.

This was his familiar way of killing: carefully measured, impeccably efficient, without a single wasted shot or an unnecessary extra bullet. Almost elegant.

47 pressed the magazine releases with both thumbs. The empty magazines slipped free, and his left hand caught them before they reached the floor, tucking them into his suit pocket.

His right index finger slid through a trigger guard as he rotated both pistols, presenting their magazine wells upward.

With his left hand, he drew two spare magazines from behind his waist. He held one between his thumb and forefinger and the other using his ring finger, then brought both up against the bottoms of the pistol grips.

The two silver handguns rolled in his palms. The pistol that had been in his right hand slipped into his left.

He struck the magazine bases with both hands. Two muted clicks sounded as one. His thumbs released the slides together, chambering fresh rounds with a pair of perfectly synchronized snaps.

47 let his arms fall to his sides, muzzles pointing down. Both Silverballers hung quietly from his hands.

He turned his back on the scarred walls and the bodies scattered across the hall. His composed gaze settled on the stairwell, where Nate stood watching.

Nate had leaned against the doorframe for the entire performance. Now he came out grinning, applauding so hard his palms cracked together.

“Impressive! Seriously impressive! How the hell do you shoot that accurately with two guns at once?”

He kept clapping like an enthusiastic seal, determined to give 47 the appreciation he deserved. Amid the bodies, 47 lowered his head and offered a quiet explanation.

“I knew their positions in advance. It wasn't difficult.”

Then his gaze went distant, and he fell silent again.

Nate could have taken at least half the kills if he'd joined in. He'd stayed out of it because he wanted to see, with his own eyes, how the real 47 compared with the character in the games.

There was certainly a difference. The game version was already absurdly capable. The real 47 was even more outrageous.

No one else Nate knew used two pistols quite like that. At long range, Nate could only aim both guns toward the same point. He could engage two different targets at once only if they were close enough together.

47 seemed to have two separate brains. Each hand could aim and fire in a completely different direction, yet his accuracy never suffered.

And with his [Focus] state making the passage of time seem fifty percent slower to him, his movements must look almost unnaturally accelerated to everyone else. When 47 got going, he really got going.

Looking at the pistols hanging at 47's sides, Nate recalled the description of an ability from one of the games.

What was that skill that let you mark enemies ahead of time and then shoot them in the head? Instinct Shooting? Point Shooting?

He couldn't remember the exact name, but he'd seen the effect clearly enough. If this had been a game, every guard would have had a little skull icon above his head before dying.

A few research staff were still scattered around the underground facility, hiding in corners and too frightened to come out.

By now Nate's hands actually hurt from clapping, while 47 remained as silent as ever.

“What's on your mind?” Nate asked.

“A bit of a waste of ammunition,” 47 said, still looking down.

“What? Is that why you didn't want to go all out?” Nate asked, his mouth falling open.

47 studied him for a moment. Without answering, he returned the pistols to the holsters beneath his arms and walked toward the exit.

“Hang on...” Nate called.

47 turned back. Nate was picking up the fallen guards' weapons one by one. Before long, a small pile of guns was stacked in his arms.

“Why are you just standing there? Give me a hand!”