by Mason Dakota
I saw him no longer as former Agent Jeremiah Lorre. He was my frustration, my anger, my darkness, my release of everything wrong with the world. Somehow, some dark part of my soul convinced me I made the world right by breaking someone. This was no longer about Lorre or the cure. This was now about my past and my present and the fear of my future rolling into one moment where the only control I felt was the lack of control I unleashed upon him.
In that moment, Lorre morphed before my eyes to take a new shape—one with a mirror image of myself.
I gasped for breath. Exhaustion fell upon me. Sore and beaten, I collapsed. Raven had hammered me, but I gave Lorre a far worse beating—one he never deserved.
I don’t even know who I am anymore!
I rose and stepped away from my beaten opponent. He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t even move. He lay there in a bloody mess. The sputtering of breath was the only signs he still lived. Guilt crashed down upon me heavier than any fist could manage. Something violent tore apart my soul. I’m responsible for every pain Lorre experienced in life. I exist to torment him and it crushed me to the core.
I am no different than my father.
What have I become?
Most people take gradual, unnoticed steps toward hell. I plunge headfirst.
I stumbled back toward the small, silver case with the cure inside and popped it open. A syringe with some sort of blue liquid sat within. I took it and held it up to gaze at its content with lustful desire. This liquid could free me from certain doom. It would spare me the strength needed to stop my father. What did it matter if Lorre died in exchange for countless other lives? People die every day.
I can’t be responsible for everyone.
I know what Chamberlain would do with this.
How broken am I?
“I should have known,” said Lorre. His voice was raspy and weak, coming out through coughs of blood. I turned my gaze on him but didn’t say anything. He coughed again and looked at me. Suffering, not hate, filled his eyes. “You’re just like your father—a warlord’s son. You’ll get what’s coming to you soon enough.”
I ignored him and carefully studied the cure, past its contents to my reflection in the liquid. I have had moments that defined my future—my existence. But they have never really been isolated to being my burden to carry. Others have been affected by them. I chose the mask, and Evelyn suffered the death of our happy ending. I chose to trust Gabriel and my city fell into darkness. I chose revenge and Chamberlain was crippled. Now I must choose again, damnation or genocide. One life in weight of another’s.
I’m tired of others carrying my brokenness.
I stuck the needle into Lorre’s arm.
“You’re wrong. I’m nothing like him,” I whispered. Lorre stared at me, too shocked to speak. I must admit even I was surprised by my decision.
No going back now. I hope this makes you happy, Chamberlain!
Forty-Four
“GRIFFON!”
She flew out of the darkness like a phantom. She wore bounty-hunter gear and held a stun gun up, prepared to fire with the barrel leveled on me. She stood behind my left shoulder. I never heard her approach. I spun around and hissed her name in disbelief, “Evelyn!”
Evelyn froze and I imagined she tried to process what she saw. Lorre lying at my feet on his back, covered in blood, with me sticking a syringe in his arm.
“What sort of party is this?” asked Evelyn. She tried to joke, but a tension hung in the air. She didn’t lower her stun gun.
“It’s a long story,” I muttered as I pulled out the empty syringe from Lorre’s arm and pocketed it.
“I would very much like to hear it,” she said. Her eyes grew wider the more she processed what she saw.
“As long as we call it a treaty for tonight,” I said, since she still had not lowered her stun gun.
Her eyes sparkled and she holstered her weapon. “I’ll accept that as payment for now. Besides, the deal is that I’m hunting Shaman. As far as I can tell he isn’t here. Probably not smart walking around dressed as Shaman without a mask in these parts.”
“My mask was taken from me.”
“By whom?”
“My father.”
“Your father?”
“Another long story that now is not the time to get into.”
“Then let’s add that to the agreement as well,” Evelyn said.
“Who is she?” muttered Lorre, still coughing up blood.
I opened my mouth to say something, not sure what exactly, when suddenly Evelyn said, “Evelyn Chambers, bounty hunter.”
“Bounty hunter? Hunting?” asked Lorre.
Evelyn smiled and looked at me. “Shaman.”
Lorre coughed and wheezed out something that might be considered laughter. “Well, he’s right here.”
“Sir, I honestly do not know what you mean. All I see before me is a kind gentleman helping to take care of you.”
I stifled a grin as I scooped Lorre up on to his feet, setting his arm and most of his weight along my side and shoulders. He was too weak to protest and I was too distracted to think of the irony of how I beat him into such a pitiable situation. Lorre, shocked and frustrated, repeatedly looked between Evelyn and me. He opened his mouth to speak, something foul and angry.
Knowing that in his pain and anger it would certainly not be anything respectful to a lady, I interjected, “I swear Lorre if you open your mouth to complain or say anything ugly toward this nice lady, I will throw you back on the ground and leave you here to rot.”
It might have been the pain he was in, but I like to think it was my threat that shut him up. Evelyn, however, couldn’t resist a moment to make a sassy remark. “It would be rather rude to say mean things to someone who is trying to rescue you.”
“Rescue?” I asked in confusion.
“Yeah. Are you not aware of what is going on in this district right now?”
“Been a little tied up this evening.”
She didn’t get my joke, but Lorre rolled his eyes. “Someone tipped off the Sabols that Shaman was operating somewhere in the Stinks tonight. How do you think I found you tonight and last night? Been following the Sabols,” Evelyn said.
“But that means…”
“The Mayor’s mob is here also,” finished Lorre, coming to the realization. It wasn’t until then that my ears picked up the sounds of gunfire out in the distance. I turned on Evelyn and snapped at her, “Why didn’t you tell us there was a war going on around us?”
“I thought you could tell? Don’t get snippy with me. I’m here to help you, remember?”
I grumbled, “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here before the whole Stinks is burned to the ground.”
I limped with Lorre following Evelyn when she suddenly stopped and said, “Wait, lose the outfit.”
“What?”
“Use your head, Griffon. You look like Shaman—someone whom everyone out there wants to kill. Lose the coat or lose your head.”
“The Sabols still want to kill me as Griffon,” I said, not really wanting to leave behind my gear, despite her logic.
“Yes but not the NPFC. Technically those guys are supposed to protect politicians. Better to have only one enemy than two right now, so shut up and strip!”
I muttered a complaint as I shifted Lorre’s weight off me and onto Evelyn’s shoulder. I stripped off the duster and the bullet-proof vest and anything else that might suggest I wasn’t an average pedestrian. I found that my father and Raven had disposed of my weapons. In accepting Lorre back from her, Evelyn pulled out a pistol and offered it to me.
“Take it. I feel safer with you having it.”
“No arguments on that,” I said as I took the weapon and stuffed it into my belt loop. Lorre was growing groggier and groggier the more blood he lost. I think the effect of both receiving the virus and the cure in such a short amount of time took a lot out of him. His ability to walk turned into a stumble and eventually a drag.
He woul
d not survive if we didn’t get him somewhere safe to rest.
Evelyn moved toward the door and asked, “You ready?”
I shifted Lorre’s weight on my left shoulder, holding him tightly against my side with my left hand and his arm across my shoulders with my right, and nodded.
As ready as I’ll ever be to rush through hell.
Then Evelyn opened the door and we charged into a battlefield.
Forty-Five
I called the Stinks home. In my orphaned years living on the streets, prior to meeting and living with Chamberlain during my adolescence, I survived in these very alleyways as I scraped for food.
It was a land for the misfits of Chicago, where the ground between Noble and Outcast leveled on the basis of pure survival need. And now all around me bullets ripped apart shackled buildings of brick and mortar, and the walls of the Stinks crumbled around us.
It will all burn before the fight ended.
We charged out of the building, Evelyn leading the way with me holding Lorre up. NPFC mobsters and Sabols packed the streets, firing upon one another in mass confusion. There were no defined firing lines. The battle was everywhere, like two bee hives smashed together and tearing each other apart. Smoke and fire and flashes of muzzle fire filled the air. My lungs filled with ash and the stench of the Stinks, and we did our best not to trip over the corpses the battle created.
Evelyn took a route of least resistance and cut to an alleyway to our immediate right. With her stun-based weapons, she shot down Sabols left and right who got caught in our way. We were three fleas amongst two fighting wolf packs, and though the walls around us echoed with ricocheting bullets, it looked like we might just make it out alive.
That was until Rigs appeared.
He came around the corner with his shotgun aimed in our direction. He had us cut off. Two henchmen followed him—the same two who had attempted to gun me down with Rigs at lunch the day before. He raised his shotgun, his fat smile gleaming with ugly perfection, as he took aim at my chest.
Evelyn was quicker.
Her stun gun fired. Small needles spun out and struck Rigs in the chest. Volts of electricity shot through the wires and into Rigs. His large body of meat and muscle hardly flinched under the thousands of volts. He locked up like a statue with a gritty expression of anger. The stun gun was enough to temporarily keep him from firing his shotgun and ripping us all to pieces in that tight alleyway.
It wasn’t enough to stop his henchmen from firing.
They raised their pistols and began firing upon us. I half dove-half threw Lorre behind a dumpster. Evelyn dove the opposite way through an open window into the building on my left. Bullets struck the dumpster with a buzzing chorus. I glimpsed Rigs, despite his pain, reach up and rip out the chords electrifying him. He tossed them like trash and cocked his shotgun.
“Well, well, well. Never thought I would run into the Outcast Emissary here! And with a Justicar and that broad. This night keeps getting better and better, boys!”
Then Rigs fired his shotgun down the alleyway. The pellets struck into the side of the dumpster and shredded one of the dumpster walls. The roar screamed down the alleyway and ruptured my eardrums. My teeth clenched and I tightened into a ball behind what remained of the dumpster. I drew my gun, prepared to return fire, when Lorre, lying next to me said, “Give me the gun!”
“What? So you can shoot me?” I shouted over the barrage of gunfire.
“So we can live!” barked Lorre.
Rigs fired again and another wave of pellets barraged the dumpster. Tiny rivets dotted and weakened the wall of the dumpster. It couldn’t take much more.
“Do you think I’m insane?” I asked. I could only think of the horrible beating I gave him earlier. I couldn’t trust giving him a gun after everything that had happened tonight.
“Yes! Now give me the gun,” said Lorre. He didn’t wait for an answer. He dove for my gun and tried to wrestle it from my hands. I tried to push him off me. Rigs fired another shot high and struck the brick wall above our heads. Brick and mortar rained down upon us. Falling bricks smashed me to the ground. My bones ached and a brick hit my head and made me see stars. I tried to scramble out from beneath the pile of rumble.
I heard footsteps. Rigs was rushing around the dumpster. I was covered in bricks and my gun was missing!
God bless the fact that Evelyn was there.
She cried in a high pitch. A loud groan from one of the Sabol thugs followed it. I climbed up to my knees and saw Evelyn leap out a window and drive one of the Sabols into a wall. She bounced off him and moved like a cat, dancing from toe to toe as she worked a combo of kicks and stun baton strikes into her victim.
The other Sabol hopped backwards away from Evelyn and raised a pistol to fire at her. I scooped up a brick and chucked it across the alleyway at him. My brick hit his shoulder and threw off his aim. The gun roared but the shot missed Evelyn.
Something stirred in the pile of bricks around me and suddenly Lorre burst free like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface. He coughed up dust and squirmed his body free of the rubble. In his hand was my gun!
He’s going to kill me!
I dove upon him. I clawed with one hand for the gun and the other for his face.I forced him backwards into the pile of bricks. He snarled and squirmed, pulling the gun further away from me. I didn’t let up. I crawled and kicked and wrestled for the gun.
“Get off me!” he shouted.
“Give me the gun!”
Despite his injuries, Lorre’s Noble blood gifted him greater strength. He easily threw me off. I landed on my back, my top half exposed to Rigs on the other side of the dumpster. Rigs lifted his shotgun and fired. I barrel rolled to my right against the wall just in time to avoid certain death. Pellets hit the metal dumpster, screeching the metal apart, before turning brick and mortar into dust. The powdered debris filled my lungs. I felt blood and searing pain. Everything blurred into red.
I looked to see Lorre lying upon the pile of debris. He held my gun and aimed it right at my chest. But Rigs cocked his shotgun again and the sound made Lorre shift his focus. He rolled over and stuck the barrel of the gun through a gap in the dumpster wall. He fired three times and down went one of the thugs. He instantly shifted his weight and aim toward Rigs, who rushed to the side. Lorre fired again and his fourth shot struck Rigs in the arm.
Rigs stumbled out of Lorre’s firing range. That was when Evelyn, having dispatched the last of Rigs’ thugs, lunged upon Rigs. She jabbed her stun baton like a lance into Rig’s lower back. His body went rigid, his posture shooting upward like a rocket. He stifled a cry of pain, tightly clenching his jaw, as the electricity coursed through his body. Evelyn yanked back her stun baton and Rigs whipped around swinging his shotgun like a club. Evelyn ducked under the swing and lunged forward, jamming her stun baton upward beneath his chin. Sparks flew from his teeth and his shouts were a crackling scream.
Lorre shifted around and struggled to stand. He still held my gun. His eyes darted between Rigs and me as though he were deciding on whom was best to kill. I rolled to my belly and pounced upon him like a cat. I hit him in the knees and drove him backwards. His head and shoulders smashed into the dumpster. I felt the vibration through his body. His body locked up and he slumped into a fetal position, moaning and holding his head. I ripped the gun from him and stuffed it into my back belt loop.
I stood up and looked over toward Evelyn to see how she was doing. Rigs lay on the ground unconscious at her feet. Her short height compared to his massive size looked rather comical when I thought about how she managed to take the man down. It hadn’t been easy for her, though. Just one look at her confirmed that. She stood hunched over, her hands resting on her knees as she breathed heavily and dripped sweat from her forehead.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her answer came in the form of a raised hand. She coughed, leaned back up, wiped he forehead on her sleeve, and said, “Next time, you’re taking the big guy.”
“You want the strong man to protect you from the big bad guys?”
She scoffed and kicked Rigs’ hand. “I’m really starting to not like this guy.”
“Tell me about it. I appreciate the help.”
“You should with all the work I’m having to do to save you. I’ll be sending a bill.”
“Hey now, it’s rather difficult to drag this much dead weight around and still look this good doing it,” I said as I scooped Lorre up on to his feet and slipped one of his arms over my shoulder. I wrapped my other arm around his side to keep him stable.
“You’re right, that makes this all worth it to finally see you do some work for once.”
“You’re more than welcome to trade places,” I said.
“No. I don’t do things like that,” she said. She winked, turned, waved her hand, and said, “Come on, we don’t have all day. Stop gawking and start walking!”
She got maybe five steps down the alley before turning back and smiling like she made the funniest joke in the world—the same look she gives every time she laughs at her own jokes. I once fell in love with that look and even now felt it stir something in my dead soul. I grumbled under my breath, and Lorre did the same. He was in a half-conscious state. We stepped over the unconscious Rigs, probably the most enjoyable step of my year, and followed after Evelyn out of this battle.
Forty-Six
The Stinks saw its worst gun fight since possibly the Abandoned War. The Sabols and the NPFC mobsters viciously gunned each other down in the streets. Civilians scattered in every direction in mass panic.
It didn’t matter if you were Noble or Outcast, if you got in the way you died. The innocent civilians, the homeless surviving in shattered buildings in the Stinks, faced the dire consequences of the battle. The Justicars no longer existed to reign in both parties. They acted without restraint in their violence against each other.
Somehow I felt to blame.
And this all started because my father tipped off both parties that Shaman was in the area.
