Rumors. They were everywhere, about anything and anyone. No one quite knew when and where they started. But there were rumors. Always.
Rumors were Dolan's livelihood. He caught them, traded them, sold them, and sometimes even started them. Mostly small ones, a few big ones here and there.
Never important ones. Important rumors were deadly.
It was an important rumor, too important for him, that took away the ring finger of his left hand.
Well, not literally. The one who actually cut it off, with a pruner of all things, had been a thug under Scarface Mikhail - who had a scar on his face, hence the unoriginal nickname.
But the cause behind everything was an important rumor Dolan shouldn't have known but knew, and shouldn't have sold but did. And examples needed to be made. That was how the underworld worked.
So, no important rumors for Dolan. Just small ones and the occasional big one. It put bread on the table - not much, but it did.
That was how Dolan, who had just turned 22, found himself working 'The Quarter', which was the name of a tiny underground black market somewhere.
Just somewhere. The location, though known by many, was the kind of important rumor small fry like Dolan didn't sell.
Although not like the huge black markets controlled by the more powerful underground factions, The Quarter had a fairly well established reputation. You could find almost anything you wanted in it, guns and counterfeit documents being just the tip of the iceberg.
No, what The Quarter was most famous for was the people.
Any kind of service you wanted, you could find in The Quarter. Whores? Whatever kinks you have, they could fulfill it. Smugglers? Just look around. Safe crackers? Take your pick. Bodyguards and thugs? They were a dime a dozen. Mercenaries? You just need the money to pay. Assassins? Look in the shadowy corner over there.
And, of course, there were people like Dolan. Informants, spies, snitches. Storytellers, that was how most people called them. The Quarter wasn't a market for important rumors, but anything else, from small to big, they had. Again, you only needed the money to pay for it.
And Dolan was, unfortunately, just the lowest of lows in the food chain of The Quarter. A storyteller who tried to bite more than he could chew, and ended up bitten instead.
He was an orphan, like many others in this kind of life. His mother was a prostitute and his father one of her many clients. Dolan never knew him, and neither did his mother. She tried her best to raise her child in their little slice of hell, at least until she died of pneumonia when he was five, and left him to fend for himself.
Dolan survived the way all the other kids in his situation did. He became a street rat and pickpocket, stole food and money from people who, in his mind, had too much - which was just about everyone - and worked as a courier for gangs - you can imagine what he transported for them.
That was the kind of life Dolan had for seventeen years. Not the best life by far, but there were worse fates. Once he had learned the rules - the hard way, as his missing finger reminded him everyday - and kept out of trouble, it wasn't actually that bad. At least he was alive.
The question was: for how long? To Dolan, who was hiding underneath rotten planks and tattered tarp, the answer seemed to be: not much longer.
The Quarter was burning. The small section of the underworld, which was supposedly safe, was under attack. And from the military nonetheless. Soldiers swarmed the place, hundreds of them, beating people up and putting them in handcuffs.
The same soldiers who had for years ignored the existence of The Quarter. Because there couldn't be light without dark, and it better be the dark you knew than the one that would sprout if they had squashed The Quarter.
The criminals who made The Quarter their home first tried to run. A few managed to escape, but most were caught. The soldiers seemed to know every passage, every entrance and exit. They were checking every nook and cranny to make sure not a fish slipped by, no matter how small.
Then, some people tried to resist. The first one who made the mistake of touching a gun was Scarface Mikhail, the bane of Dolan's existence.
The underworld lord now laid dead in a pool of his own blood, along with several of his underlings. He, who controlled wind and thunder on The Quarter, wasn't even spared one more glance from the colonel leading the soldiers, despite their many dealings over the years.
The blood and death didn't scare Dolan. He had seen a lot of it over the course of his short life, although he had never actually killed anyone. He got into a few brawls, and shanked a guy once for trying to rob him - he lived. So he wasn't scared of the scenes around him. But he was certainly terrified that he might be next.
He shivered as one of the soldiers came close. The man was searching. He approached the tarp Dolan was hiding under, poked it with his rifle. Grabbed one end of it and pulled.
"Hah!"
Dolan sprung out, burying his shoulder into the soldier's stomach. When the man curled over and fell, the storyteller jumped over him and ran. But to where?
The soldiers were everywhere. All the exit routes he knew were occupied. He could only continue trying, to see if he could give them the slip. Maybe he could hide in the red light district, there were plenty of rooms there, and it was a veritable maze, and...
He heard the loud bang first. And then Dolan fell over, rolling, a large cut opening just above his left eye when he smashed face-first into the ground. And only then he felt pain. Not on his head, but on his left leg, where blood was flowing from a bullet wound on his calf.
Dolan grabbed his leg to try and staunch the bleeding, while groaning and whimpering under his breath. It hurt. It burned. It hurt so much. Not as much as when Scarface Mikhail cut off his finger, but still, it hurt.
A shadow covered him, and Dolan looked up to see the soldier he had hit looming above him. He had a smirk on his face and his eyes were shining maliciously. Smoke was still drifting out of the barrel of his rifle as the soldier raised it. The last thought Dolan had before the butt of the weapon smacked into his head was:
"Oh fuck..."
...
Dolan woke up with a splitting headache. Which was understandable, considering the last thing he remembered was being hit in the face with a gun by a very pissed off soldier.
Gingerly bringing his hand to his head, Dolan felt it with his fingers, and hissed when he felt another pang of pain. It was all swollen, and the cut he got when he fell down also hurt every time his expression changed.
His leg was also throbbing with pain, but when he slowly opened his eyes, he discovered someone had wrapped it with a bandage. The cloth was red with dried blood, but at least he wasn't bleeding out.
Now that his major concern has been addressed, Dolan finally looked around the space he was in.
There wasn't much to see. It was a giant prison cell, with metallic walls on three sides, and metal bars on the other. There were at least a hundred other prisoners in the same cell as him, many of whom Dolan recognized from his years over in The Quarter. He had had dealings with quite a few.
It was hard to find a single person who wasn't wounded in some manner or the other.
"Hey, you. Any idea 'bout what the hell's going on?"
Looking around, Dolan saw someone he knew, and dragged himself over to a skinny man, a few years older than him. The man, Muskat, was a storyteller like him, and he and Dolan could be considered to be in good terms with each other. But Muskat shook his head.
"No clue, Dolan. Bastards hit us hard and fast, no one knew they were comin'. Got me when I was trying to get out through the sewers. But you had it worse than me, didn't ya? They banged you up real good."
Muskat gestured towards his leg and face, and Dolan grimaced.
"Yeah, they did. One of 'em found where I was hiding, and I tried to make a run for it. Didn't work. Anyway, how long have we been here?"
If Dolan and Muskat looked somewhat calm, it was all a facade. Both were terrified, and knew it. But panicking - like a lot of the other captives were doing - would only make things worse. Dolan could see quite a few people who had screamed themselves hoarse, yet no guards appeared, not even to tell them to shut up. Muskat shook his head.
"I woke up three hours or so before ya, but I dunno how long I was unconscious for. Guards came once an hour ago, dropped 'bout fifteen other people, and left. Didn't say a word or even look at us the entire time."
After that, Muskat stopped speaking entirely and huddled down on his corner. Dolan also kept his silence. The was nothing to do but wait. Wait and hope...
...
Dolan woke up with a start. He didn't even remember falling asleep. Blinking the sleepiness away, he looked around. He was still in the cell. Muskat was to his left. But the other storyteller was standing up now. And there was a lot more noise.
Grimacing, he grabbed onto Muskat and pulled himself up. He barely managed to see over the people in front of him. The soldiers had come back, at least fifty of them. They were beating people back and aiming their guns at the prisoners, ignoring the shouts and curses.
"Order! Stand with your backs to the wall if you don't wanna get shot!"
Finally, one of the soldiers, a captain by the symbols on his jacket, aimed his pistol at the ceiling and fired. That quieted everyone down really fast. They had already witnessed in The Quarter that these soldiers weren't shy about pulling the trigger.
Shivering, Dolan pressed his back against the wall like he was ordered. Only then did he notice the person next to the captain. It was an Asian woman, chewing bubblegum and wearing a biker's spiked jacket, who couldn't look more out of place in the midst of all the soldiers. But it was exactly at her that the captain was looking.
"Xue Luo, if you would."
The woman nodded, blew a bubble, then walked to the left end of the line, and stood in front of the prisoner there. With all the soldiers still aiming their firearms at them, no one dared to do anything.
Then Xue Luo did something strange. She brought her right hand up, and poked the man's forehead with her middle finger. With a sharp intake of breath, the leftmost prisoner closed his eyes, clearly expecting something to happen.
"No."
Nothing did. After two seconds, Xue Luo pulled back her hand, and then took a step to her left, before doing the same thing with the next person.
"No."
And so it went. The strange Asian woman repeated her actions again and again. It was only on the 22nd prisoner that something changed. Xue Luo stood still for several more seconds, and the woman whose forehead she was touching started to grow restless. But the threat from the soldiers kept her in place until Xue Luo smiled, barely a curling of her lips. She gestured to the captain.
"This one."
The captain didn't waste time, and waved to two soldiers.
"Take her to the north wing."
"No, no, please let me go! Please!"
The woman started kicking and screaming, looking like she was being dragged to her execution - which, to be fair, seemed quite likely considering their situation. Being singled out certainly couldn't be good.
But quite obviously, nothing the woman did worked. When she started resisting too much, one of the soldiers simply smacked her across he head with his pistol, then carried her unconscious body out of the cell.
Xue Luo acted like nothing happened, and continued doing her strange selection.
Three more people were chosen before she arrived in front of Dolan. Muskat was trembling by his side. He hadn't qualified for whatever this was.
But Dolan had. When Xue Luo touched his forehead and didn't move away after two seconds, he knew he was doomed. Looking into her eyes, which he only now realized were of different colors - heterochromia, he believed it was called - Dolan sighed and steeled himself.
Before Xue Luo could give the go ahead, he was already limping forward, holding both of his hands out for the guards. He didn't miss the tiny smile on her face, and it sent shivers down his spine. And not the good kind.
Dragging his feet, Dolan was escorted by the two soldiers through a maze of corridors and elevators. They had their hands on his arms, just above his elbow, and shoved him roughly every time he slowed down.
After a few minutes, they arrived at the north wing, where Dolan was once again locked away in a cell. Only, this time he was alone.
'What the fuck is going on?'
The next thirty minutes were hell for Dolan, as he kept imagining the worst case scenario - and then something even worse. There were things worse than death. He would know, having grown up in The Quarter.
Just as he was starting to lose his mind, the door to his cell opened, and the captain from before strode in, followed closely by Xue Luo. The woman had a predatory smile stamped on her face. She blew a bubble at Dolan.
"Don't worry, kiddo, I don't bite. Unless you want me to, or I really feel like it."
Before Dolan could sketch a reaction to the creepy statement, the captain interjected. He had the face of someone who had done this many times, and couldn't be arsed to mask what he thought about it.
"Stop wasting time, Xue Luo. Just do the thing."
The biker stuck her tongue out at him and shrugged. Before Dolan knew it, she was next to him, and had a knife in her hands.
"You are cute, kiddo. If you don't die I might take ya for a spin."
Then, she stabbed him in the leg.
"Aaahhhhh!"
Dolan screamed, and grabbed the wound, trying in vain to stop his life from flowing out of him. But Xue Luo had severed his femoral artery. He was bleeding out. Again.
The storyteller didn't even notice when Xue Luo and the captain left his cell. He felt his strength leaving him and collapsed. Looking at ceiling as he slowly bled to death, all he could think was: why?
Why attack The Quarter? Why capture him? Why was he singled out by Xue Luo? Why put him in a special cell, only to kill him? And why kill him this way, instead of simply putting a bullet in his head?
Dolan didn't have the answer to any of those questions. His vision went dark, his breath slowed, and then stopped. He died.
[ Analyzing... Analyzing... Viable candidate identified. Starting digitalization... Digitalization complete. Processing credentials... Processing complete. Starting incursion. ]