Dawn slid over Seoul in streaks of pale silver, cutting through the rainclouds that still clung to the skyline. The streets steamed faintly from the night's downpour, and the Han River below looked calm — too calm, as if the chaos at the dockyard had never happened.

Lin hadn't slept.

He sat at the small kitchen table in the safehouse, a chipped mug of coffee cooling in his hands. Keller had crashed on the couch, boots still on, one arm dangling over the side. The faint hum of traffic filtered through the single-pane window, but Lin's focus was on the phone vibrating on the table.

It was his burner, and the messages kept coming.

"Heard you clipped Jin's crew."

"Word's all over Gwangjin."

"Boss says you should get out of town now."

Half the senders didn't sign their names. They didn't have to. Seoul's underworld moved on rumors like blood through veins, and last night's fight had pumped a fresh surge straight into its heart.

Keller stirred, rubbing his face. "Please tell me that's just spam."

"Not even close," Lin said, sliding the phone toward him. "It's started. Everyone knows."

Keller scrolled through the messages, whistling low. "Jin's not going to just lick his wounds. He's going to make an example of you."

"That's what I'm counting on," Lin said, though his voice lacked its usual edge. "If he comes after me, he's moving pieces. And if he's moving pieces, I can see his hand before he plays it."

Keller gave him a skeptical look. "Or you're just painting a target on your back."

By mid-morning, the city felt sharper, like a blade freshly honed. Lin could see it in the way people moved — heads down, conversations short, eyes flicking toward the alleys as if expecting something to spill out. Seoul was a city that understood tension; it lived with it daily. But when the underworld was restless, it seeped into the daylight.

Lin left the safehouse in a plain black jacket, hood up, and moved through the streets with purposeful anonymity. His route took him away from the markets and into the warren of smaller roads south of Itaewon — a place where the shops didn't bother with English signs and the police rarely walked without backup.

He wasn't looking for Jin. Not yet.

He was looking for someone who could tell him what Jin was doing right now.

The man was called Guseong, and he ran a cramped basement bar that doubled as a message drop for anyone with enough cash to keep their name off official records. Lin found him exactly where he expected — polishing a cloudy glass and pretending not to notice the two men asleep in the corner booth, their empty bottles lined up like fallen soldiers.

"Lin," Guseong said, glancing up only once before returning to his glass. "You bring trouble to my door?"

"Just a question," Lin said. "Jin's next move."

Guseong gave a soft laugh. "You think I keep track of warlords with grudges?"

"You keep track of everyone worth keeping track of," Lin said, dropping a folded stack of bills on the counter. "And you know I'm not asking twice."

The bartender's hands slowed. He looked at the money, then at Lin. "Word is he's calling in debt markers. Old ones. The kind you don't ignore. He wants muscle — not just his crew, but freelancers, hitters from outside the city."

Lin frowned. "Foreign?"

"Some. Mostly domestic, but from other provinces. That way no one local feels too tied to you." Guseong's smile was thin. "When strangers do the killing, the city doesn't cry as much."

Outside, Lin lit a cigarette he didn't intend to finish. The air was damp, heavy with the smell of exhaust. If Jin was pulling outside muscle into Seoul, it meant two things: he was nervous about a straight fight, and he wanted the kill clean — no political mess, no lingering vendettas with local gangs.

That made the three-day deadline even more dangerous. It meant Jin wasn't going to wait.

Keller caught up with him at the corner. "You get what you wanted?"

"Enough," Lin said. "We have to move. If he's bringing people in, they'll need a place to stage. That means warehouses, service garages, anywhere off-grid but close to the main arteries."

"And how exactly do we check all that in forty-eight hours?" Keller asked.

"We don't," Lin said. "We make him come to us again."

That night, Lin set his second trap.

It wasn't explosives this time. It was information — carefully leaked through channels Jin would trust. A fake shipment moving through the port district, high-value enough to justify a small army to guard it. The kind of bait Jin couldn't resist taking for himself.

The risk was obvious: if Jin saw through it, Lin would lose the element of surprise completely. But if it worked, he'd draw Jin's new recruits into a controlled kill zone before they had a chance to dig in.

Keller worked the comms while Lin watched the map on the laptop screen. Every ping was a camera, a contact, a pair of eyes feeding them the street's pulse.

At 11:17 p.m., one of the pings turned red.

"Movement," Keller said. "Five vehicles, southbound on the expressway. No plates, but convoy pattern looks military."

Lin's jaw tightened. "That's him."

By the time they reached the port district, the streets were nearly empty. The wide lanes echoed with the hum of streetlamps and the distant clang of shipping containers being moved by unseen cranes. The air was salt-thick, the smell of wet steel everywhere.

Lin took position on the roof of a low warehouse overlooking the dock where the "shipment" was supposed to be. From here, he could see the whole approach.

The convoy rolled in slow, headlights sweeping the slick asphalt. The lead SUV stopped short of the dock, and figures spilled out — heavy coats, rifles slung, movements precise. These weren't Jin's regulars.

"Foreign enough for you?" Keller murmured over comms.

Lin's eyes narrowed. "Let's find out how they bleed."

The first shot cracked the night open.

What happened next was fast, brutal, and loud enough to make the seagulls explode into the air in a screaming cloud. The hired guns returned fire instantly, disciplined bursts that chewed into the corrugated metal siding of the warehouses. Lin moved between skylights, firing down in short, controlled shots, forcing them to spread out.

Keller worked the flanks from ground level, his silenced rifle dropping two before they could regroup.

But these men weren't green. They pushed forward under covering fire, closing the distance with the kind of coordination that spoke of military training.

Lin ducked behind a vent, reloading. His breath steamed in the cold air, his pulse hammering. Somewhere below, a voice barked orders in a dialect he didn't recognize.

This wasn't just Jin being cautious. This was Jin sending a message: If I can't kill you myself, I'll send men who can.