CNS | Chapter 22

Chapter 22, Confrontation

Shen Run looked at that face and clenched his fists.

He had not even gone to settle accounts with him yet, and this bastard had actually taken the initiative to come looking for him.

“Chi Yu, give me your gun.” @infinite good stories, all in Jinjiang Literature City

“?”

Chi Yu did not understand why, but he still lifted his denim jacket and pulled his most commonly used sidearm from his waist, the sleeve blade, “Ripple.”

“Shifu, what are you going to do?”

Shen Run took the gun, did not even aim, and fired straight at the blond man upstairs. The bullet skimmed past Joshua’s hair and struck the concrete ground.

“Shen ge!”

Luciusi had not yet reacted, and hurriedly reached out to grab the gun in Shen Run’s hand.

Joshua’s bodyguards upstairs heard the gunshot and immediately raised the shotguns in their hands to aim at Shen Run. After Joshua lifted a hand to stop them, they once again put them away.

“Don’t be nervous, he didn’t mean to kill me.” He said.

Shen Run walked upstairs and came before Joshua, then fired another shot.

Joshua did not even blink, only smiling as he looked at him.

After dismissing all the bodyguards, he stepped forward, grabbed the still-hot barrel of Ripple, and pressed it to the position of his own heart.

“Fire here.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t do that?” Shen Run’s finger rested on the trigger.

“No.” Joshua let out two low laughs. “It’s that you don’t dare kill me. If I die, the New Alliance’s aircraft carrier will immediately sail into Jade Bay.”

Shen Run put down “Ripple” and gritted his teeth. “I quit. I want to resign.”

Joshua restrained the smile on his face. “Don’t say angry words.”

“You broke the contract first.”

Shen Run’s voice was cold. “Why did you deliberately leak the news about Prometheus?”

“Don’t tell me it wasn’t you, the only person in the world who knew that thing was in Jade Bay was you.”

Joshua seemed amused by him. “You’re angry just because of this?”

He leaned against the car door, letting the rain soak that expensive handmade suit.

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen you angry.”

“You look better when you’re angry, Arun.”

He wanted to reach out and touch Shen Run’s face, but Shen Run stepped back and dodged it.

“I said it before, I hate it when other people touch me.”

Joshua smiled, and the hand frozen in the air smoothly took the “Ripple” tightly held in Shen Run’s hand.

He fiddled with the hammer, as if explaining it to Shen Run. “Thanks to you, Suzuki Heavy Industries is going to be driven out of this city, and SGPD is going to be reorganized too. With such a good opportunity, how could we not think of a way to set a fire in Saint Grange big enough?”

“That still doesn’t mean you needed to drag Prometheus out.” Shen Run’s face was dark. “Do you know what kind of people you’ve provoked?”

“Some low-level thugs, drifters, a rabble, that’s all. You don’t need to be so afraid, Arun.”

Joshua’s tone carried authority. “On this stretch of land, there still hasn’t been anyone who can touch my people.”

“Does the Security Bureau also count as the rabble you were talking about?”

Shen Run had already calmed down, and once again returned to his usual indifference. His gaze was calm as he stared at Joshua.

“You want to muddy the waters in Saint Grange, want me to be your target, I have no objections. But you’d better watch yourself, watch out for playing with fire and getting burned.”

Joshua seemed to have heard the world’s biggest joke. “Hahaha, playing with fire and getting burned? I have never feared flames. The people of the Phoenix family were born to dance with fire.”

Crazy.

Shen Run rolled his eyes, just about to suggest that his boss should go see a doctor when he had time, when he heard that bastard’s soothing words.

“Don’t worry, unlike that group of drifters and thugs who came looking for treasure, Prometheus isn’t the Security Bureau’s main target for this trip. National division has always been a thorn in that President’s heart, he wants to unify Yalan within his term, Saint Grange is absolutely the first step in his plan.”

“With Suzuki Heavy Industries gone, everyone can see that Phoenix will take over their position, but Sam’s identity is awkward. He is still wanted by the Yalan government on charges of treason. The one surnamed Chen won’t want to see the traitor who escaped from under his hands take charge of Saint Grange. He will definitely find a way to kill Sam.”

Joshua directly called his father’s name, his tone calm, as if he were talking about something unrelated to himself.

“Infiltration and assassination are the Security Bureau’s specialty, Major Shen. Am I right?”

He smiled as he changed the form of address, and before Shen Run could speak, he asked again, “But I am rather curious, between your former workplace and Phoenix, Arun, which will you choose?”

The Phoenix tattoo on Joshua’s neck extended its sharp beak from back to front, and its blood-red eye seemed to have a soul of its own, casting an inquisitive gaze at Shen Run together with its owner.

“Do I have a choice?”

Shen Run shrugged. “The Security Bureau agent Shen Run died seven years ago under the guns of the Yagi Mobile Corps. The one alive now is Heimdall’s ‘Sleeve Blade’.”

He looked at Joshua. “How is it, Boss, are you satisfied with my answer?”

Joshua had not undergone any cybernetic augmentation. His natural blue eyes reflected the fine rain, with the bizarre neon lights refracting within them.

Shen Run looked at the slightly upturned corners of his eyes, and for some reason thought of Shen Ze.

Madam Zhou Zhimin was a beauty, and Shen Ze and she were seventy percent alike. The biggest difference between mother and son was those eyes.

In her pupils, there was always a trace of melancholy in her gaze. Her eyes were dull, like a lost deer.

Only later did Shen Run know that the so-called confusion and melancholy were actually death.

Compared with his mother, Shen Ze’s eyes were extremely aggressive. Both the corners and the tails of his eyes carried sharpness, and those ice-blue eyes were clearer than seawater.

Countless times, Shen Run would involuntarily sigh at those eyes and call them “the most dazzling gem of the Yalan Federation.”

And at this moment, he actually saw Shen Ze through Joshua’s eyes.

“You…”

Feeling the gaze from the person in front of him, Shen Run rarely, no, this man almost never looked him in the eye.

Joshua could not help but think back to the day he met him.

That was Christmas seven years ago. He had gone to his study as usual, and as soon as he entered, he was pointed at by a pitch-black muzzle.

“Don’t move if you don’t want to die, and don’t make a sound.”

A face he had never seen before, and still an Oriental.

Joshua immediately thought of the news he had received half an hour earlier. Suzuki Hiko was dead, the top-secret project jointly created by Suzuki Heavy Industries and Ark had been stolen, and it had been done by a Security Bureau agent.

The person who had stirred up a storm across the city actually looked like this.

“Are you that Security Bureau agent?”

He raised both hands and praised, “No one can escape alive from under Sakai Kazuya’s hands. You’re very impressive.”

Joshua looked at that agent’s face and, from his determined gaze, discerned many things he had never seen before.

“You…”

Seeing that the agent was about to be unable to stand steady, he ghosted forward and reached out to support him.

The next second, a gun fitted with a silencer spat out a flash of fire, and a bullet skimmed past his ear and nailed itself into the door behind him.

“I said, don’t move.”

After saying that, even he could not hold on any longer and knelt down onto the study carpet, the gun in his hand also falling away some distance.

“You should care about yourself first, you seem like you’re about to die.”

Joshua crouched beside him. The black training suit was already soaked through with blood, and there were too many bullet holes on his body to count, one of them appearing directly above the heart.

There was a suitcase beside his hand, with the center engraved with the mark of the Ark Research Institute.

Joshua knew what this was. He reached out to take it, and a sharp gleam howled out, the cold blade pressed against the tattoo on his neck.

“Don’t touch.”

That was a sleeve blade, extending from that person’s wrist, his implanted weapon.

“You are Joshua Phoenix, Sam’s son.”

That person accurately stated his name and identity.

“I want a plane, an M221, and an RPG-7.”

Joshua looked at his stubborn gaze and developed immense interest in this dying man.

“You still want to go back?”

“Suzuki Hiko is dead. The people of Suzuki Heavy Industries need an explanation. All information on the action team has already been made public. You have been abandoned by that man.”

Seeing that person’s gaze grow slightly dimmer, Joshua extended an invitation to him.

“This is Jade Bay. No one can get in without my permission. You can stay here.”

“I won’t.”

The sharp sleeve blade once again pressed close to Joshua’s neck, drawing a thin line of blood.

“I want to go back. I want to go to Alia.”

Large amounts of blood flowed from his body, dyeing the study carpet red. That person’s consciousness began to blur, repeating the same words.

“I want to go back… I must go back…”

Joshua became immensely curious about this. What exactly did Alia have that could make him still want to go back in this kind of situation?

“Listen, you need treatment immediately, otherwise you will die.”

He looked at the dying man and met his eyes.

How strange, a person about to die from excessive blood loss, why could he still have such eyes?

Joshua saw his soul in them, a kind of vividness that he had never seen before, something that did not belong to this era.

After that day, Shen Run stayed in Jade Bay, but Joshua never again saw in his eyes the fervent resolve from that night. What replaced it was distance from the world and indifference.

Now, that soul-like obsession appeared again in Shen Run’s eyes, surging forward to seize the high ground of thought. He quickly stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Shen Run’s waist.

“Satisfied, of course satisfied.” He said.

“Let go of me.”

The sleeve blade shining with silver light popped out from his wrist, and Shen Run pressed the blade against Joshua’s waist.

If this man did not have a biological signal monitor on him, and if even the slightest break in the skin would summon a sky full of emergency hover cars, Shen Run would definitely stab him without hesitation.

Joshua laughed twice in his ear and let go. “I heard you were sick. Your face does indeed look bad.”

“As for the resignation, I’ll consider it.”

He brushed the rainwater off himself. “At the very least, I’ll think of a way to reduce your workload.”

Shen Run was not polite. “Stop being fake. If you were really considering me, you shouldn’t have dragged Prometheus out to make a fuss.”

Joshua did not comment, and brought up another matter. “Today Councilman Hainasen from the city council called, saying he wanted to thank Phoenix’s people for rescuing him from the cult’s hands.”

“He also said he wanted to deepen the cooperative relationship between Wave Transport and Phoenix. Their security contract with Suzuki Heavy Industries is about to expire, and they are considering replacing it with a completely new private security company.”

“Oh, that’s pretty good.”

Shen Run was not the kind of person who claimed credit, nor did he have any demands. He simply stated his view plainly.

“I heard you used the Sun Goddess that day?”

“Yeah, the situation was urgent. There was no time to ask you for permission.”

He tucked Chi Yu’s Ripple behind his waist, covered it with his coat, and put away the blade that had popped out from his wrist.

“How interesting. Mr. Shen is actually such a person who protects his own.”

Joshua looked at Shen Run with a smile, and the latter’s face darkened. “Did Luxiusi tell you that?”

Joshua clicked his tongue. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m afraid I won’t be able to resist wanting to kiss you.”

“Then I will kill you.”

Ignoring Shen Run’s warning, Joshua continued from before. “We’ve known each other for so many years, how come I have never heard you mention that you still have a younger brother?”

Shen Run did not speak. He did not want to discuss Shen Ze with this person.

“The name seems to be Shen Ze? Your real younger brother?”

Joshua seemed very interested in Shen Ze. “He should look a lot like you, right? Another day let’s eat together, bring him out and let me meet him.”

Shen Run’s face darkened, and Joshua continued talking to himself. “I heard he’s here on business. You haven’t seen each other for so many years, you must miss him too, right?”

“Then simply don’t let him go back. I’ll arrange a clerical job for him in Phoenix, your family is my family…”

Before he had finished speaking, he was interrupted by Shen Run.

“Joshua.”

Shen Run called his name.

“Don’t get close to him, and don’t think about meeting him.”

Black eyes stared straight at the person before him. Shen Run’s tone carried coldness.

“He is different from me. He grew up in Alia, never came into contact with the dark side of this world, he is a clean child.”

“Everything I have done was so that he could grow up healthy and happy all the time, live carefree, and not need to face any ugly things.”

“I don’t want him to be tied to anything dirty and dangerous here, so, put away all your thoughts.”

Shen Run extended his hand beyond the eaves, and black rainwater dripped into his palm.

“It’s enough for just me to live in hell.”

-@infinite good stories, all in Jinjiang Literature City

The annoying employer finally left, and Shen Run let out a long breath.

Before Joshua left, he told him, “Leon will arrive in Saint Grange tomorrow night.”

“Since you are so worried about him, let him stay over at Heimdall for the time being.”

That was probably the only human thing Joshua had said tonight.

Watching the taillights of the stretched limousine disappear into the rain, the string in Shen Run’s head finally loosened a little.

Just as he was about to turn around and go upstairs, a pair of long, powerful arms suddenly reached out from behind and, without any room for refusal, tightly hugged him.