A thick cloud of steam slithered across the surface of the underground lake. His burnt body made contact with the water, exchanging scorching heat with the frigid liquid.
The man now knelt on the shallow surface as if refusing to sink and die.
A mix of blood, ash, and dead skin now polluted the pristine underground lake.
| Cough |
That gave me time to process things.
Or at the very least, try.
"How-" I struggled.
"How are you still alive?"
I had poured everything into that flame, and now I saw the result.
That boy- Man- Thing, whatever, was a corpse.
A few seconds had been enough to burn off his skin, combust his muscles, and boil most of his brain and lungs.
Yet he was still alive.
Clearly and ominously so.
A chill ran down my spine.
Paranoia was leaving my mind, I was regaining my senses.
Senses that relayed the fatal damage I had inflicted on this man... kid.
Barely older than me. I think.
The urge to vomit crashed on me. What had I just done? Had I just killed a kid, like that?
A wave of heart-wrenching regret, followed by a tidal wave of ominous fear.
My expression contorted in primal fear, eyes opened in terror.
"Why are you not even wincing in pain?" - I gave an unconscious step back.
"Why do you look so fucking relaxed?" - My voice breaking with terror.
Then it happened.
The undisturbed surface of water rippled in unexplainable excitement. Tiny, brimming droplets of water moved in unison.
| Splash |
In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
The kid, what remained of him, dove into the lake, his eyes glassy, his body giving out, limp.
At the same time, a pale silhouette emerged from the waters.
Its dark, abysmal eyes gazed back at me.
I staggered back.
...
LOCATION: DISTRICT. 23 - Western harbor.
A pitch black car halted with a wet hump, the sound of its engine echoed across the empty streets of sector 23.
In contrast with the lively inner circles brimming with night lights, these were cold, silent streets.
Unnaturally so.
Silence, but the chatter of heavy rain.
| Clench |
The day had been a nightmare from start to end.
The already hopeless negotiation efforts with those Carbone had devolved into a frenzy to absolutely no one's surprise.
Carbone's vice-head had been murdered that same Sunday; that's how it started.
The bastard was taken out along with his daughter and wife whilst celebrating her third birthday at a high-end restaurant in Sector 13.
His corpse had been retrieved the following morning and cremated along with the other dead. All big names.
All to say.
...
We had been impeccably framed with the murder.
A few of our best men had been found dead on the scene.
One of our most precious marksmen also dead, in a nearby apartment. Along with piles upon piles of documents of undeniable evidence against us.
After that, all hell had broken loose.
The Carbone Family initiated the assault by taking hostages from our side, and we retaliated, initiating skirmishes all over their territories.
Needless to say, the situation we had fought decades to prevent. It was about to happen.
The conflict would end in an all-out war.
The door of the vehicle clicked, revealing the contour of a single man dressed in a similarly pitch black coat. His face covered in the deep shadows cast by a hat, hiding any remarkable features.
His left hand, covered in thin tattoos, held onto a loaded firearm with a grip of steel.
He moved rapidly, his long coat gliding behind him.
"They are all fucking dead."
He muttered, thick veins popping on his forehead as he turned a corner.
His gaze settled on the tavern at the far end of the street, three of their vehicles remained parked near the entrance, their doors unlocked.
The thick stench of death emanated from them.
His steps came to a halt next to the corpse of one of his men.
His gaze slid to the man dead at his feet.
The corpse's eyes stared into oblivion. Dry blood slid from his forehead,
eleven bullets to his face.
Two bullet holes as eyes, another curved trail of bullet holes as mouth.
In short, he was staring at a smiling face, drawn with bullets on the forehead of his dead underling.
...
His teeth gnashed bone to bone, his fiery red eyes lit with bloody light.
The rain sizzled violently, a bubble of scorching steam formed around the seething marksman.
"IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE!?"
His fury required an outlet. Anything would do.
The corpse's head burst open with a single kick, cold blood gushing out.
| CRUNCH!! |
Then another one, and another one. The corpse turned into bloody paste and rags in under three blows, tinting the pavement crimson.
Yet it wasn't enough.
It clearly wasn't enough.
| BANG! |
The car in front of the man burst into a pillar of flames with a silent kick, engulfing the nearby buildings in a gasoline-fueled inferno.
Suppressing his slightly ragged breath, the man turned around.
His eyes were strangely composed, cooled by the wave of violence unleashed.
Sticking his hat down, his gaze settled on the interior of the burning tabernacle, his steps paid no mind to the sea of flames, nor the thick door standing before him.
The flames sizzled out in a perfect circle around him.
Then, like burning through a sheet of paper, the walls standing in his way turned an incandescent shade of orange, then to ash in a perfect sphere around him.
His steps echoed on the burning wood.
'Securing the monopoly over sector 23 without purging the Carbonne is now impossible.'
He continued advancing through the empty establishment, paying attention to every subtle detail.
Shards of broken glass, some smeared in blood, empty bottles of whiskey, flipped tables, the thick linger of steam, and finally, Gerth's corpse.
His eyes stared down with traces of detachment and disgust.
Decades of built-up businesses, faith, and shared blood between the Carbone Family and the Night Hand... Us.
His own sister... married to the Carbone.
They had all died along with this one man.
Our single bargaining chip.
The blood brother of the Regent Boss of the Carbone Bloodline, Gerth Carbone, had been cold-bloodedly murdered whilst under their watch.
He kneeled.
A glint of murderous rationality glinted through his eyes as he reflected.
'Once Gerth's death reaches that bastard's ears, the Carbone will not be satisfied with just a couple of hits.'
'They'll want our heads.'
Although of weaker influence than The Night Hand, the Carbone were not to be underestimated;
Reason why the absolute control over the 23rd sector had been battled with decades-long diplomacy, instead of... other methods.
That being said, both of their factions would be annihilated if given an equal battleground.
'We must take them out of the picture before this reaches them.'
Time is of the essence.
But the worm behind this attempt could and would not be ignored.
His awareness returned to Gerth's corpse. What remained of it, at least.
He had only met Gerth three times, and the details were not abundant, but the man was strong. Not comparable to his bastard of a brother, but strong nevertheless.
'Yet he died without struggle.'
Experienced eyes could tell the difference between a clean death and the subtle damage caused by a struggle to survive.
Gerth showed no signs of the latter.
"The scene has been clearly manipulated after the act." - He muttered.
The placement of broken glass, turned tables and so on was uncoherent.
The murder had not been a close match between marksmen, as naive eyes would be led to believe.
It had been a one-sided purge. Gerth had been a plaything for whoever did it.
'Had the seasoned ganster understimated his murderer?'
The smell of subtle steam lingering in the air said otherwise.
The man frowned further.
The struggling Gerth had been given time to deploy his mark. Yet still miserably died.
That complicates things.
Because it meant the enemy was not just cunning and deceitful, he was also lethally strong.
The man's gaze slid to the mass of mushed skull and brain that was Gerth's head.
A lethal marksman... One that could crack open a wielder's skull from the inside.
That only left two common types as suspects.
'Air... No, water.'
Other hybrid ones were a possibility, but highly unlikely.
A few minutes passed in silence.
The flames continued devouring the tabernacle, and with it all possible evidence he could have missed.
Alas, there was little he could do about that.
Just when he was about to move.
For the first time since he could remember, Crimson, reverend member of the board of The Night Hand, stood incredulous.
Gerth's corpse had been cleanly stripped of its mark.
LOCATION: NOWHERE
POV: ???
I saw two of them just now.
One falling limp into the lake, dead, another one emerging from it.
My body could not help but jerk further backward in raw primal terror, still not entirely able to process what was going on.
I could feel my hands shaking.
Eyes trembling as I tried to discern whether my senses were portraying reality or a mere distortion of it.
But it wasn't a distortion.
I could hear its heart pumping blood, and its lungs heaving. It was clearly real, and it was very much alive.
However, that was not all.
Those same abysmal black eyes were sentient, they gleamed with something resembling synthetic, cautious intelligence.
He was now walking towards me.
'Shit!!...'
I gave another step back, as I reignited my flames.
'He is not- He is not a joke.' - He was gaining ground.
Maybe faster than I was regaining my rationality.
My eyes trembled.
The kid was a marksman, a water marksman.
The thick runes plastered across his naked body were all the proof there could be; This time, there was no denying it.
My vision refocused on his neck and right arm, both glinting with alien markings, shining with various shades of red.
Speaking the eerie truths of the nature of blood, brains, and flesh.
I felt a heap of breath leaving my lungs. Time seemed to halt.
This was not the first time.
I had seen marks in the bare before.
Most marksmen did hide them from plain sight, but there were exceptions. I could count the times I had experienced it on one hand.
One time, one of the gifted kids in school when I was little.
Another one, on one of my distant relatives, and then on a few people I'd crossed paths with later in life.
Still, none of them.
Not even one.
Spoke a truth as deep, as forbidding, and cursed as this one.
It paralyzed me.
It froze me.
A foreboding notion of the powers it wielded entered my mind.
I understood I was at his utter mercy.
I didn't know how many seconds passed before I came back to my senses.
My legs trembled, my stare was lost on the floor, my skin sick pale.
LOCATION: NOWHERE
POV: NOONE
Marks.
A mark could only tolerate inhabiting on the flesh of those who had persevered a tribulation.
Whatever kind it was, a mark meant the conquering of a nightmare.
It was the undampened, unfiltered rebirth of the human soul.
Be it for better or for worse.
...
My face twitched.
The sensation of being a brand new one was always... uncomfortable.
Even if the differences were minimal, the little microscopic connections between tendons and muscles always changed.
Letting out a long, tired sigh, I let my eyelids slip open.
'It smells like meat.' - I pondered.
Right, it was my flesh that had just burned.
It had been a while since I suffered such terrible burns. The sensation of having your organs cooked from within was... not exactly pleasant.
'Either way.'
I stopped walking forward like a mindless husk.
My gaze refocused, I threw a glance at the ill-looking silhouette of the girl at my feet.
'Right, I forgot about the lapsus... Well, she'll take a few minutes at most.' - I thought, letting out a loud chuckle.
I shook my head.
'I should probably call Silas.' - I noted.
He was way better at dealing with this sort of thing anyway...
My gaze slid to the opposite step of the cavern, a tall man dressed in an impeccable, elegant dark-purple suit.
His head covered by a bowler hat, hiding his face behind a curtain of shadows. His steps were silent and surgical in precision.
The humanoid carried a brand-new suit.
"Purple, do not attack her."
A menacing, low-pitched snarl echoed.
One to be expected.
Purple-man was not the kind to let foreign... things invade his turf.
The new girl, mixed with the pungent smell of charcoal, must have brought him some bad memories.
Poor thing.
Either way, he obediently stayed clear of the entranced girl.
"Thanks."
Halting his pace, he offered me the suit with a light bow and an audible - "Grnnl"
I stared blankly at him.
A few seconds passed in silence.
"Purple." - I voiced.
His featureless, unreadable, slenderman-like face stared back at me.
"The underwear."
We stared at each other for a couple of seconds.
Then, bowing once more, he gave me the suit and went to fetch some underwear.
I let out a long sigh.
"Also..."
He turned back.
"Call Silas."
With a nod, Purple vanished in the shadows of the tunnel.
...
My gaze slid towards the pale girl, forcing it to meet hers for a fleeting moment.
All in all, it had not been more than a couple of dozen seconds of lapse. Which was... Impressive. Very much so.
"Look."
I said as I forced out a warm smile. Or at least something resembling that.
"You can relax."
I crouched, my hands up in surrender. Trying my best not to scare her dead.
It took some time, but the expression of horror plastered on her face slowly eased, first to one of simple terror, then to something akin to distrust and seething hate.
"I mean no harm." - I sat on the ground, my hands still up.
"You know... this is the third time someone remains sane after seeing it."
I said, a small grin on my mouth. This time a genuine one.
"My mark, that is."