The assassin convulses once, violently, before going limp.

It’s over in an instant, but the sound of the shot echoes in my mind like ripples disturbing a pond, the memory overlapping repeatedly over itself. I can see blood sprayed against the wall and the scarlet pool spreading under the body. The gaping wound in his head.

My stomach gives a violent lurch. It’s too late to stop it, so I just fall to my knees and spill the contents of dinner on the floor.

Jax yanks me hard to my feet. “Calm down. Follow me.” She tilts her head and signals for me to keep moving.

The blood on the wall splatters over and over again in my mind. She killed him far too easily. She’s used to this. I think about bolting away—but Jax had defended me and hadn’t tried to kill me herself. Is there a higher ransom on my head if I’m taken alive?

A thousand questions crowd the tip of my tongue, but I force myself to stumble dizzily after her. There is no sound now except for the echo of our boots against the ground. Police sirens and ambulances must still be at the scene of the shooting upstairs, and maybe someone has already discovered the dead body Jax has left behind.

The seconds drag on like hours before we finally reach our destination—where the gold line ends in front of a narrow utility closet.

Jax types in a code on the door’s security lock. It glows green, lets out a single beep, and opens for us. She ushers me inside.

The room looks like a standard utility closet, filled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling. Jax leans against a counter and starts to reload her gun.

“Can’t take you through the regular exit,” she mutters as she goes. “There’s a police barricade up there blocking the car. We’ll go this way.”

The car. Maybe she really is with Zero.

I huddle in a corner and squeeze my eyes shut. My throat still feels coated with acid. The killing shot echoes in my mind. I let out a long, shaky breath and attempt to compose myself, fixing my eyes on the girl’s gun, but my hands keep quivering, no matter how hard I clench my fists. I can’t seem to gather my thoughts properly. Every time I try, they scatter apart.

Jax sees me struggling to steady myself. She pauses, takes a step toward me, and holds my chin with one gloved hand. Blood stains the leather. I hold still for a moment, wondering how she can be this firm and calm after she just shot someone in the head. Wondering if this is when she’ll snap my neck like a twig.

“Hey.” She locks her stare on me. “You’re okay.”

I pull away from her grip. “I know that.” A quaver lingers in my voice.

“Good.” At my reply, she reaches behind her back and pulls another gun from her belt. She throws it at me without warning.

I fumble the weapon. “For chrissakes,” I blurt out, holding the gun in front of me with two fingers. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

“Fire when needed?” she suggests.

My blank stare continues until she rolls her eyes at me and snatches the weapon back. She replaces it on her belt before picking up her own gun and clicking the old cartridge out of its magazine. “What, you’ve never shot a gun before?”

“Not a real one.”

“Seen someone die?”

I shake my head numbly.

“I thought you were a bounty hunter.”

“I am.”

“Don’t you do that kind of stuff?”

“What, kill people?”

“Yeah. That.”

“My job’s to catch my marks alive, not to put holes in their heads.” I watch her snap a new cartridge into her gun. “Is this my cue to ask you what’s going on? Did Zero send you?”

Jax tucks the freshly loaded gun back into her holster. The look she gives me is almost pitying. “Listen. Emika Chen, isn’t it? You clearly have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” Without missing a beat, she pulls a knife out from the inside of one of her boots and continues. “You were having dinner with the Phoenix Riders tonight, weren’t you?”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“I was observing you.” Jax walks over to the other side of the closet, where she pushes one of the stacks of crates aside. Behind it is an inconspicuous door, visible only as a thin rectangle against the wall. She takes her knife and jams it carefully into the subtle cracks. “Tell me I don’t have to explain everything.”

“Look, let’s start with you telling me what the hell just happened, and we’ll go from there.” I cross my arms. It’s an easier way to disguise my trembling, and the feeling of my arms crossed protectively over my chest gives me a small hint of comfort. Showing this girl weakness seems like a dangerous thing.

“I just saved you from your would-be assassins,” Jax says, pointing her knife at me. “Zero warned you about them.”

Hearing this confirmation from her sends another wave of dizzying fear through me. I steady myself against the wall. “So he sent you to fetch me?”

She nods. “I’m willing to bet that some of those hunters were working together, from the way they placed themselves on either side of the street and covered the basement floor of this place. They won’t be the last, either. Plenty will be targeting you as long as that fat jackpot stays up in the Pirate’s Den.”

She walks over to me and drops a metal fragment into my hand. “Hold this.” Then she heads back to the door and continues working on wedging her knife into the outline.

I look on, frozen in shock. “Why do people want me dead?”

“Is your connection to Hideo Tanaka not enough?” She grunts once as her knife’s blade becomes stuck. “People think everything that’s gone wrong in the games this year is because of your hack of the opening ceremony game and your fling with Hideo. Rumor’s that you’re also the one responsible for installing the cheat in the Final, as a rebellion against being kicked off your team.” She shrugs. “I mean, they’re not wrong.”

Anger slices through my surprise. “People want me dead for that?”

“There are a lot of gamblers out there who probably lost big money on that Final. Doesn’t matter. You’re going to have assassins on your trail for a while, so I suggest you stick close to me.” She yanks the knife out and presses it into a different spot in the crack, then pushes her weight against it.

Zero. This is the first time I’ve heard someone other than Hideo acknowledge his existence. “Why’d he send you?”

She pulls off her black cap, revealing short silver hair, and looks up at me. “Why else? To save you from being pumped full of bullets. And you’re welcome.”

A tingle runs through my limbs. Zero had been genuine about warning me, after all. Hadn’t he? “No—I mean, what do you do?”

She pauses to glance at me. “Takes an assassin to stop one, doesn’t it?”

An assassin. It shouldn’t shock me, not after what I just witnessed her do, but suddenly I think back to the Pirate’s Den in the Dark World, where I’d seen potential assassins watching the lottery rankings, their figures as patient and quiet as death. Maybe Jax was one of them.

I swallow hard. “You work for Zero, then? Are you part of his crew that was trying to sabotage Warcross?”

She considers this question thoughtfully before answering. “You could say that. We’re both Blackcoats.”

Blackcoats.

I frown, thinking through all the shadow groups I’ve come across in the Dark World. There are the bigger names, of course—the Wrecking Crew hackers; Anonymous—that the public knows, and smaller gangs who aspire to be notorious.

But the Blackcoats aren’t a name I’m familiar with at all. I have no concept of how big or small they are, what they do, or what their purpose is. In my world, that’s even more dangerous. They’re not here to pull publicity stunts. They’re here to do serious damage.

“I’ve never heard of them,” I reply.

She shrugs again. “Didn’t expect you to. If you had, I’d be more suspicious.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“Don’t want to what?”

“What if I don’t want to know more? What if I don’t want to go with you?”

This time, a small smile creeps onto Jax’s lips that changes her entire expression into something sinister. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m trapped in the same room as a professional killer.

“Then leave,” she says, cocking her head once toward the door.

She’s taunting me now, testing the resolve of my words. Out of sheer stubbornness, I lunge toward the door and seize the handle, ready to throw it open and rush out the way I came. I half expect to feel the searing pain of a bullet in my back, ripping through me to drop me on the spot.

“If you’re fine with dying tonight,” she adds casually behind me.

As much as I hate myself for it, her words stop me cold.

“Zero’s going to be disappointed to lose you,” she goes on, “but he’s also never forced anyone to work with us against their will. Step out that door, and you’ll be both free and dead. Your choice.”

There are hunters on the other side of this door, waiting for me to come fleeing out into the dim basement level . . . and there’s an assassin in here, one who claims to want to help me escape.

My hand tightens against the door handle. Jax is right. I’ll last two seconds out there by myself, facing off against who knows how many unknown hunters all eager to claim my jackpot. Or, I can take my chances in here, with a so-called Blackcoat who nevertheless saved me and—so far—seems interested in keeping me alive.

I clench my jaw and force my hand to release the handle. Then I turn to glare at her. “This isn’t a choice,” I say. “And you know it.”