Page 123 of Dragon 7

I sliced the back of his hand, getting the extensor tendons that fanned out to the fingers. The ones that let a man grip and hold a gun. They were instantly severed. His fingers fell slack and would not close again.

“Kenji! Just shoot me! Hiro is insane! You know this!” The Fox dragged himself forward on his elbow. “Don’t let your brother—”

“I told you to shut up.” Kenji shifted one boot and closed that path too.

“Have you two no shame?!” The Fox crawled into my brother's legs, looked up the length of him, and found nothing there to beg to. “Without me, you would have never been born!”

I took his ankle, slicing into the Achilles—the thick cord at the heel that let a man stand, walk, and run. I cut through it all and his foot went slack. "Riku."

“What is wrong with you?!” He cried out in pain and tried to kick out with the other leg. “Stop saying names!!”

"Hiroko." I slashed the right heel damaging that Achilles too.

By now he was sobbing. His thin chest heaved and the wet rattle in his breath had no dignity left in it. Somehow, he still tried to pull himself forward with the one working arm. The elbow scraped the metal, and his loose fingers grasped at nothing. “You. . .w-were a-always. . .insane. . .seeing. . .the people. . .I killed in the. . .house. . .I s-should. . .have killed you too.”

"Nura. Again. Because she is so important." I cut inside his elbow. “Because. . .Nura and I. . .we could have been. . .everything. . .because of her. . .I wish I could kill you a hundred times.”

The Fox had nothing left to move with. Every cord that let him crawl, every line that let him grip, every cable that would have carried him one more inch from his sons—I had taken all of it.

He lay in his own blood on the floor of his own plane. . .sobbing.

I stood over him.

The knife dripped blood onto the metal.

Then she crawled into the red light. The baby girl in the pink onesie came around the edge of the nearest crate on her hands and her chubby knees. She was always so curious.

Thankfully, no blood ran from her temple.

With a little gurgle, she sat back on her haunches beside my father's ruined body and looked up at me with those calm dark eyes that had probably never learned fear.

"And. . .” I stared down at him. “And this for the baby girl in the pink onesie with Nyomi’s eyes."

Kenji's head turned. “What?”

“Her eyes, they look like Nyomi’s eyes.” Sad, I shrugged. “But what do I know? Maybe it’s because those eyes have so much curiosity and peace. . .and in our world. . .no one usually has eyes like that.”

Kenji studied me.

I crouched down by my father, gripped his hair, and lifted his head off the floor. “Tell me something.”

Tears left my father’s eyes.

“Why would you bomb Tokyo tonight? Why kill so many innocent people?”

He blinked. “What?! That was you and your brother!”

“We were on the island.”

“But the Lion’s men were in Tokyo, and who else had the Lion’s ear—”

“Kill him, Hiro.” Kenji stepped forward.

My stomach twisted.

The Fox looked at my brother and then me. “Oh! You didn’t know how cruel the Dragon could be? Did you? How ruthless Kenji truly is when he wants to win?”

A dark laugh left him.