The face reflected in the elevator mirror looked young and exhausted.
Nate stared at himself for two seconds before the elevator came to a stop.
“Ding.”
The doors opened onto a hallway covered in deep blue carpet.
It was so thick that his footsteps were almost completely silent.
Subtly patterned wallpaper covered the walls, with brass sconces every few yards casting a soft, warm glow.
Nate walked down the hall, counting the room numbers.
301, 303, 305…
As he reached 305, the door suddenly opened.
Nate instinctively shifted half a step aside, his right hand moving toward the knife behind his waist.
A woman stepped out.
She looked to be in her early twenties and stood around five-foot-three.
A cream-colored cashmere cardigan hung loosely over a pale pink silk nightgown, and fluffy slippers covered her feet.
Her dark blonde hair was slightly wavy and fell loosely over her shoulders.
She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, yet her complexion was almost flawless, pale with a healthy flush as though she’d just climbed out of bed.
She held a ceramic mug bearing The Continental’s gold logo, steam curling from the top.
Their eyes met.
Nate’s first thought was that he’d somehow wandered onto the wrong movie set.
She looked nothing like the female assassins he’d imagined.
No leather jacket or leather pants.
No icy stare.
None of that intimidating aura that warned everyone to keep their distance.
Instead, she stood there half asleep, cradling a mug like the girl next door who had just gotten up on a lazy weekend morning.
“Good evening.”
Her voice was soft, with the slight rasp of someone who had just woken up.
“Good evening, ma’am.”
Nate gave her a small nod and kept walking.
“New here?” she asked from behind him.
Nate stopped and turned.
She switched the mug to her left hand and extended her right.
A pleasant smile appeared on her face, revealing two shallow dimples.
“I’m Elena. Looks like we’re neighbors.”
Nate glanced at her outstretched hand.
After half a second of hesitation, he shook it.
Her hand was soft, her fingers slender, and her neatly trimmed nails were covered with clear polish.
“Nate Lin.”
“Nate Lin,” Elena repeated, her expression shifting with recognition.
“Wait. You’re the one from Good Luck Restaurant, aren’t you?”
Nate’s expression changed.
“Relax. I’m just confirming.”
Elena raised one hand in a calming gesture.
Her smile returned.
“Everyone’s already talking about it. An ordinary guy with a kitchen knife takes down two experienced assassins. You’ve become pretty famous overnight.”
She paused and blinked, curiosity visible in her light brown eyes.
“But here’s some advice. Getting famous too quickly in this business isn’t usually a good thing.”
She shrugged slightly.
“Not that you had much of a choice.”
Then she added lightly, “And no business inside the hotel. Breaking that rule can get you killed.”
She took another sip from her mug, turned, and went back into her room.
Before closing the door, she leaned her head out and smiled at Nate.
“Come by for tea sometime. You’re always welcome.”
The door closed.
Silence returned to the hallway.
Nate stood there for another two seconds, staring at the closed door before continuing on.
307.
He inserted the key, turned it halfway, and heard a crisp click.
The moment he pushed the door open, the lights inside came on automatically.
The door closed behind him.
Nate stopped dead in the entryway.
This place was seriously luxurious.
Room 307 was huge, easily around a thousand square feet.
The entryway was covered in handcrafted Italian mosaic marble.
A built-in wardrobe stood to the left, while a full-length mirror occupied the wall to the right, its bronze frame covered in intricate carvings.
Farther inside was a living room of roughly four hundred square feet, furnished with a set of deep blue velvet sofas.
Across from them stood a wood-burning fireplace.
The flames inside hadn’t completely died down yet.
An oil painting hung above the mantel.
Nate had no idea what it was supposed to depict.
A minibar occupied one corner of the room.
The shelves behind it were packed with bottles of whiskey, brandy, and several other spirits Nate couldn’t identify.
A crystal decanter sat beside them.
He wondered whether everything there cost a fortune, like the minibar in any high-end hotel.
The opposite side of the living room was dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows covered with two layers of velvet curtains, one cream-colored and the other dark blue.
Nate walked over and pulled back the inner curtain.
The view was incredible.
The Manhattan skyline stretched out before him, with the spire of the Empire State Building faintly visible against the night sky.
Farther away, the gray-blue waters of the Hudson River reflected the city lights while several tugboats moved slowly across the surface, long wakes trailing behind them.
An arched hallway opened off the right side of the living room, its walls decorated with photographs of New York streets.
The bedroom lay at the end.
It was smaller than the living room, though still easily over three hundred square feet.
A king-size bed stood in the center with neatly arranged cream-colored linens.
Walnut nightstands sat on either side, each topped with a brass lamp.
A half-open door on the right led into the bathroom.
Both the floor and walls were finished in gray marble with natural flowing veins.
There was a separate glass-enclosed shower, a bathtub, and an overhead rain shower.
A recessed niche in the wall held three bottles of toiletries.
Nate couldn’t make sense of a single word on their labels.
Beside it was a separate toilet room fitted with a smart toilet.
A small bookshelf hung on the wall nearby, holding several magazines and a vintage cordless phone.
Nate stood in the bathroom taking it all in.
One thought came to mind.
If this place cost one gold coin per night, those coins had to be worth a fortune.
He had no idea what one coin was worth in dollars, but judging by the room alone, this was easily five-star luxury.
A suite like this would probably run three or four thousand dollars a night at minimum.
And the coin Winston had given him only covered one night.
By noon tomorrow, Nate either needed another gold coin or he was checking out.
He returned to the living room and sat on the sofa.
Even the firmness was perfect, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.
He took the gold coin from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table.
Then he found a sheet of paper and wrote down everything he’d memorized downstairs.
Contract Number: NY-2021-0892.
Target: Nate Lin.
Bounty: $100,000.
Client: Anonymous.
One hundred thousand dollars for his life.
For a cook, that wasn’t exactly cheap.
Nate closed his eyes and leaned back against the sofa, his thoughts racing.
The System was still adapting.
The progress bar had stalled partway through, and he had no idea how long it would take.
Right now, all he had was a boning knife, one gold coin that barely covered a single night’s stay, and a neighbor whose intentions he couldn’t read.
He needed weapons.
He needed gold coins.
And more than anything else, he needed to know who wanted him dead.
Just as he was considering his next move, the cold mechanical voice sounded in his mind again.
[Ding. Host’s current location meets the requirements.]
[System Module 1-1 loaded.]
[Set current location as the Operations Base?]
Nate’s eyes snapped open.
Operations Base?
Delta Force?
“Yes.”
He answered silently.
[Operations Base deployed.]
[Loadout unlocked.]
A translucent interface suddenly appeared before him, floating in midair.
It looked almost like an AR projection.
The design was simple, with the word [Loadout] in the upper-left corner and several sections beneath it.
At the center stood a three-dimensional human model dressed in black combat gear.
Several square equipment slots surrounded it, each labeled with the corresponding gear type.
[Primary Weapon 1: Damaged]
The outline showed an M4 with a large red X across it.
[Primary Weapon 2: Damaged]
The same as the first.
Probably another consequence of the System’s forced activation.
[Secondary Weapon: Empty]
The silhouette showed a handgun.
[Melee Weapon: Boning Knife]
That slot wasn’t empty.
[Helmet: Empty]
A gray outline showed the shape of a standard FAST helmet.
[Body Armor: Empty]
The silhouette resembled a tactical vest.
[Backpack: Empty]
A number appeared in the bottom-right corner of the backpack interface.
0.3/200 kg.
Nate stared at the interface for a full ten seconds.
So the feature wasn’t fully functional either.
Maybe he could repair the damaged parts later.
Whatever.
He could worry about the broken slots when he actually had a way to fix them.
Nate cautiously reached toward the helmet slot on the model.
The instant his fingertip touched the gray outline, a submenu appeared.
[Available Gear]
[FAST Ballistic Helmet (Level III Protection): 400 Resource Points]
Nate tapped through the other equipment slots.
[Tactical Ballistic Vest (Level IV Protection): 800 Resource Points]
[Stimulant Injector: 100 Resource Points / 3 doses]
[Effect: Reduces pain perception by 80% for 30 seconds, triggers a surge of adrenaline, and increases wound healing speed by 200% for a limited time. After the effect ends, the user enters a weakened state for 2 hours.]
[Painkillers: 100 Resource Points / 2 packs (12 tablets)]
[Effect: Reduces pain perception by 80% for 60 minutes. No side effects.]
[…]
Nate’s mouth twitched as he looked at the prices.
Two people had died and he still hadn’t even reached a hundred Resource Points.
Where the hell was he supposed to get enough for any of this?
But then…
His attention shifted to the words [Carry Weight System].
He glanced back at the gray outline of the body armor on the 3D model.
The System’s cold voice immediately answered the question forming in his mind.
[The Loadout exists independently of the physical world.]
[Items stored in the Loadout may be equipped or removed at any time. The host may freely choose whether equipped items are visible or concealed.]
[Concealed equipment cannot be detected by outside observers.]
[The weight of equipped gear and items stored in the Backpack counts toward the Carry Weight System, but does not affect the host’s physical perception of weight.]
Nate’s eyes widened slightly.
“That’s insane.”