Cultwick: The Science of Faith

by J. Stone

  Running into the room, Pearl asked, “What happened, Max? Are ya alright?”

  “I remembered,” he simply answered.

  Chapter 17. Vincent’s Rampage

  Oscar Graham was a name that Vincent knew quite well. As a child, Vincent’s father worked for Quentin Graham, Oscar’s father. When Quentin died, the very successful mining operation was left entirely to his son. Both of the Graham men were known for being brutal taskmasters, willing to sacrifice everything for profits. Over the years, the Graham Mining Company had become so powerful and influential that they basically directly controlled the town of Chrome City, where they had come into a huge supply of the chromite mineral.

  Within the city, Graham was all powerful even though he wasn’t always around to enforce his rule. The idea that Cassie and her late husband would have gotten involved with the man instantly troubled Vincent, though it had been too late to worry about that. Now with Felix gone, Cassie was fixed on the idea that someone had to pay for his death. Graham was to be one of those men. The bounty hunter had taken down his fair share of difficult targets, but nothing like what she was asking of him now.

  Graham, currently staying in Cultwick, would be under constant guard by a staff of security in a house built with advanced technology to keep an eye on anything suspicious. Getting the job done seemed a stretch. Doing it without getting caught seemed nigh unfathomable. They would have to go in with this in mind, and Vincent was even more concerned because of the new mechanical arm that Erynn had built for him.

  He simply hadn’t had enough time to work with it to get it functioning to a level he was comfortable with. Ever since the chromesmith had strapped it to his limbless stump and jabbed the chip in the back of his neck, he’d been trying to get the finer controls down. Moving his flesh and blood limbs was so natural, that it was a jarring experience to explicitly focus on those actions and movements for the new one. He knew he could perfect it if given the time to do so, but Cassie was growing more impatient with every passing day.

  While he hoped that crossing one of the names off her list might help to quell the growing anger within her, at the same time, he knew that it would only serve to flame her need for revenge. Regardless, he simply didn’t see any other way to help her through her loss, so they pushed forward.

  Watching over him, they had discovered that Graham’s schedule was anything but predictable. They never knew when he would be in or when he would head into the city. When he did leave, it was typically to some establishment of questionable morality along Hush Street. Due to his unpredictable nature, Vincent ultimately decided that, despite the difficulty getting into Graham’s mansion, that was where they would have to strike.

  Of course, as all his plans tended to do, it quickly became obsolete. As they approached Graham’s mansion, guarded by his entourage of security personnel, Vincent spotted the mine owner leaving the property in an automated carriage along with a smaller unit of his guards. Vincent and Cassie both had to quickly react, getting out of the way of the speeding vehicle and onto the side of the road.

  “Come on,” Cassie said. “Let’s follow him. This will be easier than getting into that fortress of his.”

  “We’re not prepared for that,” he replied. “We’ve no idea where he’s going.”

  “You know there’s only one place he’d be going at this time of night,” she argued.

  While Graham didn’t keep to any particular schedule, it was true that he frequented only a small subset of establishments. One such location was a brothel on Hush Street called The Gentleman’s Companion. Though he had considered setting up an ambush for Graham there, Vincent was not eager to get into a confrontation in that part of the city. That block of buildings was lawless, its only master being currency. The bounty hunter was certain that Graham would be no less dangerous there.

  “We should just stick to the plan, Cassie,” Vincent urged.

  “I’m following him,” she said. “Are you coming?” Without waiting for a response, she flagged down a taxi and got in.

  The orange and black checkered metal along the side of the vehicle was dinged and scratched like it had been in more than a few collisions. The front wheels were rather small, while those in the rear were much larger, the metal spokes at their center considerably thicker as well. Though the back seat was covered by a roof and protected by a layer of glass, the driver sat outside with the fumes and smoke of the exposed engine blasting in his face. His skin had turned black from the day’s work, and to somewhat protect him from the discharge of the engine, he wore black goggles and a cheap respirator.

  “Damnit,” Vincent grumbled, following her into the back of the vehicle.

  They instructed the driver to follow Graham, and, sure enough, he went exactly where they had expected. Exiting the taxi a block away, they saw Graham enter the brothel along with his armed escort. Vincent paid their driver, and the pair slowly made their way toward the brightly lit building along Hush Street.

  It was a high class establishment; one in which Vincent would not look the part. He would certainly raise suspicions immediately, but Cassie was right. This was their best chance. His security team was down to only five men. They should be no problem, but the brothel had their own men as well, which Vincent was concerned about.

  “I’ll deal with his guards,” Vincent said, as they approached the brothel. “You find Graham.”

  “Right,” she agreed with a nod.

  “I’ll give you a couple minutes to go in first, and then I’m coming in after you,” he continued. “Should give you enough time to find him, and then the distraction you’ll need to get to him.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  “You alright?” he asked. “We don’t have to--”

  “I’m fine,” Cassie interrupted. “I’ll see you in there.”

  She entered the brothel, while Vincent waited around outside. The bouncer the door gave her no trouble, as she entered the building, even holding the door open for her. Vincent took the time to inspect his weapons, verifying that they were in good condition. He’d brought along a pair of pistols. His usual revolver was situated along his waist, where he could draw with his good left hand. In addition, he’d acquired a bigger pistol that would require less effort aiming for his clumsier mechanical right hand, which was in a shoulder holster on his left side. The larger gun had a nickname of ‘the hand cannon,’ and it was not an inaccurate moniker.

  Prepared and having given Cassie enough time, Vincent pushed forward toward the brothel’s entrance. The bouncer did not so easily let him enter the establishment, holding a hand out at Vincent’s chest and stopping him before the door. The man looked particularly surly. His head was shaved, and in his hair’s place, he had a tattoo inked of what Vincent assumed was an old tribal design. The tattoo consisted of swirling black lines coming to sharp edges and crisscrossing over its various segments. The septum of his nose was pierced with a silver colored, curved barbell. The bouncer wore a tight shirt under an open, light jacket and tight leather jeans, all of which clearly showed him to be in far better shape than Vincent.

  “Think you’re a little out of your league, buddy,” the man told him.

  The bounty hunter was not eager to get in a physical confrontation with the bouncer. While it was certainly true that Vincent got into a lot of fights, most of those were gunfights. He’d never been much of a pugilist. A curious thought did occur to him though. He wondered how useful the new arm might be in a fight.

  “That’s never stopped me before,” Vincent replied with a half-smile.

  He squeezed his mechanical hand into a balled fist and swung it straight into the man’s nose. He could hear something pop, but he wasn’t sure if it was the arm or the man’s piercing. His metal limb recoiled painfully against his still freshly injured stump of an arm, but despite the pain, the force was enough to knock back the bouncer. Blood poured from the man’s nose, as he grabbed his face with both hands. Not allowing him time to recover fro
m the blow, Vincent raised a boot and kicked the hefty man through a large window situated next to the door. The man loudly crashed into the building, alerting the brothel’s security as well as Graham’s men. The bounty hunter then casually strolled into the building beside the broken window and took a quick inspection of the area.

  It was three stories with an open layout. From the ground floor, he could see all the way up to the third floor’s row of rooms. On each wall was a set of circular stairs up to the next level’s walkway. In the center of the area, a group of the establishment’s girls danced for their patrons on an elevated stage, but they had come to a sudden stop with Vincent’s arrival. A bar was set up along the far wall of the room, with a staggering collection of alcoholic beverages.

  Then there was the brothel’s security. Aside from the man that Vincent had knocked through the window, there were two men just inside the door to his either side. There was a man beside the bar, one near the girls in the middle of the room, and he saw at least two on both the second and third floor walkways. He didn’t spot all of Graham’s men, but he did see one nursing a drink at the bar and a pair watching the women in the center. He couldn’t see Cassie from where he was at, so he had to assume she was either directly above him or in one of the various rooms lining the brothel. He didn’t have time to worry about her though, he needed to start dealing with all the armed men now staring intently at him.

  Without bothering to issue any threats against him or warn him to stand down, the security personnel began pulling their guns and aiming at the bounty hunter. Simultaneously drawing each of his pistols, Vincent pointed them at the two guards at his either side. With a single shot from both guns, the men were hit and knocked backward. The other guards had now steadied their aim on him, so the bounty hunter jumped to the side, landing beside a table. He flipped it over and took cover behind it, as an onslaught of bullets was unleashed.

  The wood of the table splintered and broke with each shot. He quickly realized that the table wouldn’t last as cover for very long. Had Vincent not been under fire, he might have found it amusing that this was the second brothel that he had shot up for Cassie. Given his present condition behind that table, he did not. Looking up into the second and third floors, he was now able to see above him to the railed walkway. One guard leaned over the second floor railing, looking down at him with his pistol drawn, so Vincent picked him off with a single shot. The guard plummeted down crashing into another table not far from the entrance.

  After a brief pause in the gunfire, Vincent leaned up from his cover and took out the two men from Graham’s security team that had been near the dancing girls. The women had scattered with the onset of gunfire, some of which had been clipped by the guards’ shots. The brothel’s guard that had been posted near the dancers had ducked behind the elevated dance floor and was peeking over it. Vincent stood up from his nearly worthless cover, running over to a pillar that was holding up the second floor walkway. Along the path, he took out the guard hiding behind the dance floor, as his head bobbed up into his sight.

  The new area gave him line of sight to another guard on the second floor, but the gunman saw him first and fired. The bullet landed in the wood of the pillar, splintering and getting fragments of the wood in his eye that wasn’t protected by the eye patch. Half blinded and in pain, Vincent fired wildly up toward the shooter, eventually managing to clip him as well. The bounty hunter slumped down to the ground, dropping the gun in his left hand. Attempting to clean his eye of the splinters, Vincent kept his mechanical hand aimed upward toward the guard on the second floor. Instead of looking down, the shooter slipped his gun through the railing and fired blindly toward where he guessed Vincent was. Luckily, the man’s aim and memory didn’t present much of a problem, but regardless, he shot the man’s hand, nearly removing it at the wrist. He dropped the gun with a scream and no longer posed Vincent a threat.

  With a final rub of his eye, Vincent blinked several times and was able to see clearly enough to continue. A mixture of blood and tears trickled from the eye, but he picked up his second gun, stood, and rushed around the side of the pillar. There were only two guards left on the first floor. One of the brothel’s and one of Graham’s. Both had taken cover behind the bar and were periodically standing to take shots. Vincent ran towards the bar, firing the full load of ammo in both guns. Instead of aiming towards the men, he aimed high, shattering as many bottles of alcohol as he could and spilling the contents down to where they were. He slammed against the other side of the bar, taking cover, and pulled out a match. Striking it against the box, Vincent flipped up the lit match behind him to where the guards were hiding. The alcohol ignited with a burst, and the security men screamed as they were torched by the flames.

  Vincent casually took the time to reload both guns, while the men slowly burned to death behind him. They would be short on time now, as the building was sure to go up in flames pretty quickly. He knew there were at least four men left, but he didn’t know where they were. Looking around for them, presuming they were somewhere on the third floor, Vincent was surprised to see no one.

  “Vincent!” Cassie shouted from somewhere above him. “Up here! I need a hand!”

  Tracing the sound, the bounty hunter located the origin on the top floor, just above where he had come in. With all of the guards on the ground floor dealt with, he stood, ran up the spiral staircase nearest her, and found her smashing her shoulder into the door, trying to get it open. At either side of the door were the bodies of two more of Graham’s men that Cassie had apparently taken out. On the opposite side of the level, he spotted the last two guards from the brothel. She had done well in his absence.

  Vincent approached her and asked, “He in there?”

  “Yeah, but it’s locked and I’m out of ammo,” she answered.

  “Grab the guard’s gun,” he suggested, pointing at their bodies.

  Cassie nodded and stepped away from the door, inspecting both men for their weapons and ultimately picking up one of their rifles.

  When she moved away, Vincent aimed the hand cannon held in his mechanical arm at the knob of the door and blasted a hole in the wood. Following it up with a sturdy kick, the door was down. Pressing his back against the side of the wall near the door, Vincent peered around the frame, looking into the room. Graham stood inside with one of the establishment’s prostitutes held as a human shield in front of him. He held a knife to her throat to keep her in place.

  Graham’s dirty blonde hair was greased down, split unevenly on one side of his head. His eyes were sunken into his face, the lights overhead casting a heavy shadow underneath. He wore a black leather jacket and had a white and red ascot hanging loosely from his neck.

  “Ah, Cassandra,” he said. “How have you been, my dear? I have so missed our little… visits. And you, I’m not quite sure who you are.”

  “Her friend,” Vincent replied.

  “Ah, trying to win her heart and nether regions?” Graham asked. “Allow me to let you in on a secret - she’s easy.”

  "You should really shut your damn mouth," Vincent warned him.

  “Once I got her away from that husband of hers.” He smiled his smarmy grin. “She was a wild thing.”

  “Warning you…” the bounty hunter said.

  “Had her a few times myself,” he continued. “Nothing special really.”

  Cassie fired, hitting Graham’s arm, causing him to release both his hostage and the knife. The woman screamed, her face freshly covered in a splattering of his blood, and she ran from the room. Graham crumpled to the floor, groaning from the gunshot and attempting to hold the wound. Vincent had seen her shoot several times now, each time with notable skill, however, what she had just done seemed to him to be entirely reckless and more than a little lucky. Cassie dropped her gun, as she slowly walked toward him. Graham managed to crawl forward slightly, trying to get the knife back. Before he could, Cassie put one heavy boot on the blade and used the other to kick Graham squarely in t
he face.

  Blood from his nose splattered over the hem of her dress and flung backward with him against the wall at his back, as she knocked him to the floor. Cassie leaned down and picked up the blade he had been after, not letting her eyes off him.

  “You bitch!” Graham yelled with a nasally snarl, slowly squirming backward toward the corner of the room.

  Cassie continued walking toward him, as he hit the wall with his back. Not stopping, she hurried forward and swung her boot again, this time landing right between his legs. The attack hurt even Vincent, but the bounty hunter knew he deserved it for what he’d done to Cassie. For what he’d taken from her. Not relenting, Cassie knelt down to the bent and broken man and jabbed the blade into his gut, his arms, legs, shoulders, neck, anything she could get to. Blood splashed over her, the floors, and the walls. Graham wailed in pain. Begged for relief, but she offered none. Vincent knew the rage in her now. He was intimately familiar with it, and as much as he wanted to let her get it out, there simply wasn’t time.

  “Stop!” Vincent shouted. “He’s dead!”

  “I…” Cassie said, turning to face the bounty hunter with tears streaming down her bloodied cheeks.

  “I know,” he said. “I know, but we gotta go. This place is gonna go up in flames.”

  Helping Cassie up, Vincent grabbed her hand and guided her from the room, out into the hall, and down the stairs. Her body nearly went limp after the kill. Vincent decided that it had all been too much for her. Her mind needed time to digest what had happened, but with the fire building, they had to keep moving. Besides, they weren’t done yet. There was one more kill left before her revenge would be sated.

  Chapter 18. Pearl’s Assistance

  The mid-morning light illuminated her canvas as Pearl splattered on a layer of green for the overgrown bushes from Rowland’s yard she was painting, as her mind began to wander. Doing his particular landscape was hard to resist due to the chaotic nature it naturally exhibited. Some of the flowers, trees, and bushes didn’t even seem to be like anything she had seen before. She had long ago made the assumption that there was no experiment that the professor hadn’t at least dabbled in at one time or another. His yard certainly didn’t seem to be a likely exception. Pearl had been sitting in the room that had become her private painting quarters since she had breakfast with her companion. She fully imagined that both Erynn and Rowland had spent the morning in their respective work areas as well.