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“Most corporations exist only to make a profit. Giving PMC corporations too much power—like letting them form armies for hire—with too little regulation and then being surprised when it gets somebody innocent killed—and only one somebody if you’re lucky—is like giving a known mafia hitman a gun and being surprised when he shoots a federal witness dead. It’s not shocking—it’s willful ignorance and bad policy.”
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—Richard Caperno, advocating for PMC corporations to be either banned or much more heavily regulated.
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Pyre hurled himself from rooftop to rooftop, in the torrential downpour of rain, ignoring the lightning and thunder in the distance, hoping that he wouldn’t be too late. Time was of the essence.
Pyre was traveling through the area where a portion of the Docks District—the city district which bordered the Mississippi River, encompassing both the port facilities of New Hellensburge, and the non-port areas surrounding the city’s port facilities—began to bleed into a part of town called the City Center, otherwise known as Central New Hellensburge, or New Hellensburge Central. Given its name, it was ironic that the crime-infested City Center was not actually in the geographical center of the city—where the Midtown and Uptown Districts of New Hellensburge were located. Rather, the City Center was located in the southernmost area of the city. Originally, it had been the center of New Hellensburge’s geography, but as the city changed, so did its geography, and the City Center—New Hellensburge’s oldest district—not only tripled in size, but also ended up overrun with poverty and crime.
While Pyre knew that not all crime was caused by poverty, he also knew that the rates at which muggings and other types of thefts—including those using extreme violence, and endangering innocent bystanders—occurred, were much higher in poverty-stricken areas. He wasn’t stupid. Pyre knew that when men and women were a single day away from eviction, and couldn’t afford to put food on the table for their kids—despite working two or even three minimum-wage jobs—people got desperate. This was especially true given that the jobs which would allow them to support their families—namely, the jobs that would pay them a livable wage, instead of a pitifully low starvation wage, in the form of a minimum wage that couldn’t even pay the lowest of rents on a full-time work schedule, let alone feed one’s children—required either a college degree or a trade school education. Higher education that the poor were priced out of, trapping their families in a cycle of poverty. When the food security and the roof over the heads of a person’s children were in such constant jeopardy, when somebody couldn’t feed the hungry stomachs of their children—or their own stomach, for that matter—then said people naturally got desperate. Desperation can inspire greatness, but it can also lead to violent stupidity.
Violence against the innocent needs to be shut down, with zero tolerance enforced, Pyre thought, Whatever the cause, it is that simple.
In Pyre’s opinion, between the State Government’s refusal to raise the minimum wage, and a large lack of job opportunities which those who had been priced out of higher education could actually obtain and pay rent on—combined with a lack of job opportunities in general—it was no wonder that most of the state had a people leaving Louisiana problem. With only a few notable corporate exceptions, nobody moved to Louisiana anymore, because there were so few good opportunities in the state to attract new residents. Pyre loved his home state but refused to deny the reality of Louisiana’s economic situation.
Anyway, as Pyre passed over a car, parked by the curb, smoke billowing from under the hood, he noticed that two adults—one male, one female—and a little girl, were standing against the wall of a nearby building, their hands over their heads, their faces pressed into the wall’s bricks. Then, Pyre saw the three men ransacking the car, as another two thugs aimed pistols at the family.
Fuck. I can’t miss the target time, but no way can I let them get robbed or killed, Pyre thought, as he hurled himself down towards the concrete of the sidewalk.
It was a good two-story drop down to the metal awning of one store that jutted out from the building, and it was another, one-story drop, from the awning down to the street. Upon landing both times, Pyre bent his knees to help absorb the shock, then bounced back up.
“Hey, scum,” Pyre yelled, his voice mechanically altered by the Vocal Disguise Unit grafted to his helmet.
All five of them looked at him. He clearly had their full attention.
“Normally, I don’t give warnings. Thing is, I got somewhere I gotta be. So drop your weapons, leave the nice family alone, and I’ll let you walk away. Deal,” Pyre inquired.
“Hey, fuck this guy,” one of the fools replied.
Pyre immediately sprang into action—he didn’t need to be told again that there was no deal and give these fools extra time to shoot him. Using a pillar of solidified fire, Pyre hurled himself at the two thugs holding the family at gunpoint, as he simultaneously generated a ball of fire in each hand. From those two flames spewed shrapnel, in the form of orange crystals, which flew around Pyre like snowflakes in a blizzard.
Yet, despite multiple hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of pieces of shrapnel, which were hewn from solidified fire, flying around; despite each one being razor sharp and roughly the size of the full metal jacket, 5.56mm NATO standard bullets used in U.S. military assault rifles; despite each one being as deadly as a bullet fired from any riffle; the innocent family, and their vehicle, were entirely unharmed. This was because Pyre was standing right there, directly in the middle of this swarm of shrapnel, and actively controlling where the shrapnel went. As long as the family stayed where Pyre could see them and didn’t move faster than Pyre could adjust the course of the solidified fire, they would be perfectly safe. After all, Pyre would not hurt innocent civilians, and would not accept innocent casualties—regardless of who inflicted those casualties on the innocents in question.
Pyre’s Variant abilities included pyro-kinesis, or the ability to generate fire, and to manipulate fire, including solidified fire, naturally occurring fire, and artificial fires, with his thoughts. That said, manipulating chemical fires, depending on what chemicals were involved, and the amounts of said chemicals present, was typically more difficult, and—unlike electrical fires—sometimes impossible for even Pyre to control.
It took a lot of effort and concentration for Pyre to control this many pieces of solidified fire, and the direction and speed of the shrapnel could only be actively controlled within a certain distance of himself, as opposed to hurling a sliver of solidified fire on a set path with a predetermined degree of force—without controlling it after it went flying at its target—which would allow him to attack enemies at a much longer range, but had a much higher risk of missing its target and hitting someone innocent, as a bullet fired from a gun might. The distance at which Pyre could control the movement of solidified fire, or make it levitate and change course as it flew through the air, was also much shorter than the range at which Pyre could manipulate regular fire. This Storm of Shrapnel technique was, out of all the ranged attacks Pyre had developed, the ranged attack with the shortest range, and it had such a short range that Pyre barely considered it a ranged attack at all.
As it flew around, the shrapnel tore through the bodies of the two thugs who had been holding the family at gunpoint, with most of the bullet-sized pieces of shrapnel penetrating one side or another of their bodies, bursting out of another side of the criminals’ bodies, before turning around in the air, and hurling themselves into the thugs’ bodies again and again. In a matter of seconds, the two thugs sustained the equivalent of thousands of gunshot wounds. Two of the other three thugs—who had previously been inside the car, ransacking it—dropped what they were carrying as they ran off, apparently not bothering to take any stolen goods with them.
They’re not as brainless as I first thought. Good to see them running in fear, though. Two fewer enemy combatants to deal with, Pyre silently observed, Besides, they’ll spread the word about what abusers of the innocent get.
All this as the corpses of the two thugs Pyre had targeted with the shrapnel dropped to the ground, reduced to very limp, and very dead, pulpy masses of shredded tissue, shattered bones, and blood.
Then the shrapnel stopped in mid-air, and simply hovered there a moment, before the solidified fire dropped to the ground, and dissolved to ash. Pyre turned around on his heel and saw the only living criminal that remained, pointing a gun at Pyre, pulling the trigger—yet, for some reason, it would not fire. The criminal’s eyes were wide open in sheer terror—the thug hadn’t thought to check the weapon for a jam.
Running at the remaining criminal, Pyre kicked the malfunctioning weapon from his hands. The remaining thug sank to his knees, visibly wetting himself.
I put too much concentration into that Storm of Shrapnel technique! I let myself get sloppy, Pyre thought angrily, If his gun hadn’t jammed, I would be dead!
“You make sure to tell everyone you know that if I catch someone holding the innocent under a loaded gun, they will face a fatal reckoning. Now run, or you’re next,” Pyre told the criminal, knowing that his voice would be heavily altered by his helmet’s Vocal Disguise Unit, but that some of his emotions and tone could still be heard through it. Accordingly, Pyre tried, deliberately, to put as much menace, aggression, and malice, into his voice as possible. The criminal scrambled to his feet and ran away.
Pyre then turned to the family he had just saved. The little girl with them couldn’t have been older than Alex had been when Alex Westsmith’s father had pushed all that pain onto his now-ex-wife, and his sons. Actually, she looked younger. And those thoughts sent Pyre’s mind racing.
But here, in this moment I’m not Alex, the little boy too weak to protect his loved ones, that little coward who ran, Pyre thought, Here, in this moment, I am Pyre, the one who sees all the pain in this world, all the pain and suffering inflicted on the Innocent by the Abusers. I hold righteous outrage, and the courage to act on my outrage. I have the strength to protect others. No one can change the past. But here, I can atone for the failures of Alex Westsmith. I can burn through the fear, and burn away the guilty. I can see to it that the innocent, the victimized, aren’t left out in the cold when they’re abandoned by society. Alex is weak, and I, Pyre, am strong, strong enough to atone—not with hollow words that cannot change anything, but with actions that can alter the future! Pyre is the Darkest Burning Star, and as Pyre, I can light the way to safety for those others would abandon.
Yet, when Pyre saw the family, the adults were huddled together, both holding their child by one or the other of her hands, and even Pyre noticed—despite his obliviousness to social cues—that they were clearly terrified of the vigilante. The child, a little girl—presumably their daughter—looked at Pyre differently, though, with an expression Pyre believed to be amazement.
“Don’t worry,” Pyre stated, “They’re gone. You’re safe now.”
“Stay back,” the mother said to Pyre, “Don’t come any closer.”
The father began to pick up their daughter, but she squirmed out of his grasp, and ran towards Pyre, shouting, “Thank you for saving us from the bad men, mister! My name’s Sally! S-A-L-L-Y! What’s your name?”
“My name's Pyre,” Pyre replied, as Sally wrapped her little arms around Pyre's legs in a hug, before Pyre proceeded to spell it out, like she had spelled out her own name, “That’s spelled P-Y-R-E!” Pyre noticed how both parents were staring at him now. Keeling—and breaking the child’s grip on his legs in the process—Pyre patted Sally’s shoulder with one hand, and told Sally, “Hey I need you to go back to your parents now. Can you do that for me, Sally?”
Sally nodded, saying, “Okay, Pyre!”
Sally then ran back to her parents. Her mother scooped Sally up in her arms, and Pyre heard the sound of klaxons screaming in the distance as the vigilante stood up.
“There’s my cue to go,” he said, his voice coming out sounding synthetic, or even demonic, through the Vocal Disguise Unit, as he generated a pillar of solidified fire beneath his feet, and hurled himself back onto the rooftops. Who knew? He might make it to his destination in time after all.
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Alex was tired and cold. It was dark out, and he wanted to sleep. However, the small child was simply unable to sleep in the back of the SUV.
“Mom, are we there yet,” he asked again, unsure of how long it had been since he last asked the same question. It felt like forever ago.
Meanwhile, Jake Junior sat on the other side of the SUV’s back seat, looking at Alex funny, with an expression on the younger boy’s face that Alex couldn’t quite place.
“We’re almost there,” his mother replied while driving the SUV.
Eventually, they pulled up in the parking lot, which sat adjacent to a set of large buildings, ringed by a brick wall that was topped with barbed wire. It was dark, but a sign next to a gate of some kind said something about a Shelter. Francine parked the SUV in the cement lot and shut off the SUV’s engine. There was a clicking sound as the doors remotely unlocked.
“Okay, let’s head inside. We’ll be staying here for a while,” Francine told the boys.
Obediently—and also just worn out—the boys complied, unbuckling their seatbelts, and exiting the SUV.
“How long a while,” Alex asked Francine, oblivious to the hateful glare of Jake Junior, now firmly fixed upon him.
“It could be a couple of months,” Francine softly replied, as they walked toward the gate, “or it could be longer. It depends on how quickly I can find work. I haven’t had a job—other than raising you two—in a while, so it might be difficult to do, and we may have to stay here longer as a result.”
The trio walked up to the gate, only to be confronted by someone Alex thought looked like a police lady, who was standing in a booth—although Alex just thought of it as a miniature building, considering he hadn't yet heard the word booth enough to understand it’s meaning.
The lady in the blue uniform said, “I’m with gate security, ma’am. Are you checking in?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Francine replied.
“And these are your children,” the Blue Uniform Lady inquired.
Francine nodded, replying, “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m here as much for their safety as I am for mine.”
“I‘ll need to see some government ID, ma’am,” the Blue Uniform Lady politely demanded.
Francine looked confused for a second until the Blue Uniform Lady spoke. She was a black lady who Alex thought was very pretty—although Alex didn’t have much experience with any age group of the other gender, or even boys his own age, except for bullies of both genders—and she said in a soothing voice, “Sometimes, abusers hire scumbags—male and female—to track down and harass their victims. Or to kidnap their children. Hence why the organization running this shelter—among other battered women and children’s shelters—paid my employer for security personnel. Granted, I believe you’re telling the truth, but my supervisor’s orders are clear—check all IDs at the gates. Except for any kids who are obviously minors upon visual examination. We understand that in certain…urgent situations, a lady might only be able to grab her own ID.”
“Of course,” Francine replied, before showing her something similar to a credit card—only later would Alex realize that it was not a credit card—which prompted the Blue Uniform Lady to tell Francine, “Everything checks out. Go to the trailer with the sign marked Front Office. You’ll need to check in there.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Francine replied, before bundling the boys through the metal gate, which creaked as some unseen machine slid it open in response to the Blue Uniform Lady pushing a button somewhere in the booth.
Or, at least, Alex thought the Blue Uniform Lady had pushed a button. That said he wasn’t certain, and could not see the probable pushing of said button.
Regardless, the gate, a grey, metal thing, slid aside, prompting the Blue Uniform Lady to say, “You can come inside now.”
Entering the walled-off perimeter, Francine and her children saw a set of four, large, red brick buildings, like motels Alex had seen in movies. These red brick buildings were two-story affairs, with balconies lining every side of them, and staircases leading up to said balconies. The doors to the second, third, and fourth,-story rooms were located on the balconies, like at some motels. Between them and the two-story buildings were a few smaller buildings, which looked like trailers that had been cemented in place.
Coming to one trailer with a sign reading Front Office the trio walked up a ramp and entered. Upon entering the trailer, they were immediately greeted by what appeared to be the front desk of what Alex had seen portrayed on television as a run-down hotel.
“How may I help you, ma’am,” an Old Lady, with a head full of grey hair, asked Francine from behind a massive, counter-like desk, as they entered.
“I’m here to check in with my two sons,” Francine replied as she bundled them towards the desk, and handed over her driver’s license—which Alex still thought was a credit card.
The Old Lady took one look at the driver’s license, and handed her a packet of papers, saying, “You’ll need to fill out these forms. I’ll get your room key while you do so.”
The Old Lady walked through a door behind her desk, and swiftly returned holding what looked like a small plank of wood with a bit of writing painted on it, attached to a key by a small chain. The writing painted in red on the wooden plank was 23-A.
When Francine finished filling out the forms and handed them to the Old Lady, the Old Lady told Francine, “Thank you, Francine. Here’s your room key. You have room 23-A. I hope you and those adorable little boys do well.”
“Thank you, miss…” Francine’s voice trailed off mid-sentence, prompting the Old Lady to tell Francine, “Oh, please, just call me Cheryl, dear.”
“Of course. Thank you, Cheryl,” Francine stated, as Cheryl handed the key to her.
“Come on, boys. Let’s go,” Francine told her sons, as she herded them towards the door, in a manner somewhat similar—but not identical—to how a sheepdog would herd a flock of sheep towards the desired destination.
Their room was in the building closest to the trailer labeled Front Office and was on the ground floor. Reaching the door, Francine unlocked the lime-green door to the room and guided the two boys inside.
The instant immediately after the door shut behind them, Jake Junior slammed Alex into the wall, before proceeding to punch Alex, screaming, “You should have stayed! But you ran! You lit—.”
Jake Junior had managed to punch Alex at least four times before Francine managed to pull him off of Alex, interrupting Jake Junior’s words by furiously declaring, “Jake, that’s enough! Get off of your brother!”
Leaning against the wall, while sliding down the wall to the floor, Alex cried, as his brother simply glared at him, and snarled one word.
“Coward.”
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Specter watched the green-painted house very carefully—oh so very carefully—from the alley across the street in New Hellensburge’s City Center. Her eyesight was not in the least restricted by the lenses of her mask.
Specter could remember when—as a small child—Lela asked her mother why a particular type of house was called a “shotgun house”, and how Kathrine had told her daughter to look it up on the internet. Dutifully, Lela had done so and found that shotgun houses were typically only one room wide and were defined by a certain style of architecture, which connected the two or more rooms that made up the house without the use, or presence, of any hallways. This made passing through one room necessary to enter the next room. The shotgun house building style allowed for all the essential rooms to fit into a very small amount of property, and supposedly permitted a cool breeze to blow through the buildings in the harsh southern summer, which made sense when considering that the building style originated before Air Conditioning systems and HVAC (read: Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) technology existed and was very prominent in Louisiana—particularly in the older buildings.
Another common feature was that many—but not all—shotgun houses had a second floor which was much smaller than the ground floor, in that it typically only covered a fraction of the space that the ground floor covered. This type of shotgun house was referred to as a Camelback or Humpback style of shotgun house. They were built this way due to a previous quirk in the tax codes. Namely the fact that, in the past, if the second story of a house only covered a fraction of the area covered by the first or ground floor of a shotgun house, then most cities would have previously categorized the home as a one-story building, and taxed it accordingly. In turn, this would result in the homeowner having to pay a lower sum of tax money for their property. Regrettably, that legal quirk had been amended out of most tax codes sometime in the year 2031.
Regardless, while the target building was not a true shotgun house—it instead looked like someone had bolted an abnormally wide shotgun house to the front of a more conventional house—it was flanked on either side by shotgun houses, both the single-story and humpback varieties, among other rundown buildings. The target house was on a street, lined by houses on one side with a few businesses on the other side, which were flanked by houses themselves. Specter hid in the alley between a little bakery—not the one she’d grown up in, but it brought back memories all the same—and the wooden planks of a fence around the lot where a gas station stood.
She had already surveilled the house in question, to be certain that it was her target. And it was. Now it was all a matter of lying in wait for the opportunity to strike. Normally, Specter would have acted by now, but the two dirty cops taking money from the drug ring operating out of the house in question…well, that complicated things. Killing them would get messy. Which was why Specter had already taken certain incriminating photos of them being paid off. Photos that an anonymous, concerned citizen would soon be sending to their superiors at the New Hellensburge Police Department. But their presence meant that she couldn’t give the scumbags getting kids hooked on narcotics what they had coming. Not yet, anyway. The cops had to leave before that could be done. So, Specter waited. Specter was willing to wait, and it was perfectly fine if this scum wanted to test her patience. She could be patient. Some things were just that important.
Eventually, the cops walked away from the target house. They got into their patrol car, and they drove off. The sirens were blaring as they sped away, so they were probably having to put some effort into making their police colleagues think that the two were still good cops.
Walking out of the alley, Specter crossed the street and walked right up to the front door, which, in the magnificent hubris of the Diamond Dozen Gang’s members, was now left completely unguarded. Rather than noisily kicking in the door, Specter walked right up to it and simply passed through the wooden thing. One of her Variant abilities was something close to what pop culture would have called—at least in comic books—phasing. In short, Specter could move her body—and anything she was touching—through physical objects, barriers, and even people. It was almost as though she was phasing in and out of physically existing, like a ghost, which was why she had chosen the alias of Specter—although she hadn’t yet been given reason to use her chosen alias. Additionally, she had enhanced strength, enhanced stamina, and enhanced healing.
Specter emerged on the other side of the door, into an old hallway, with peeling, golden wallpaper, and a strong, musky odor, which was hard to precisely identify. Either way, this was definitely not a shotgun house. Specter walked down the hallway, and into what appeared to be the living room of the house, the soft-soled boots she wore emitting no noise. In the living room, there was a sofa, a flatscreen television, and a coffee table. The coffee table held up stack upon stack of little plastic baggies, holding white powder.
In the room, there were three adults—based on the fact she’d seen them before, probably gang members—and two girls, who were younger than Specter, and wearing what looked to be school uniforms of some sort, with one wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, and the other wearing an identical shirt with a khaki, knee length skirt. The one in the skirt was a Caucasian blonde and seemed to be tall or average height, depending on her age. The girl wearing pants was shorter, possibly younger, and Hispanic, with her hair pulled back in a waist-length ponytail. They had to be in either high school or junior high. Maybe even middle school. As she listened, Specter could hear the conversation between the students and the gang members.
“…well, that would be two grand. Understood,” a gang member stated.
“I wonder how we could make two grand,” the Hispanic schoolgirl stated, “After all, that’s a lot of money.”
“Well, the product is high quality,” another gang member stated, “And quality costs money.”
“Screw it, I just wanna get high,” the Caucasian schoolgirl declared.
As Specter’s blood boiled in her veins, she moved forward. These scumbags were hooking kids on drugs, and then leveraging that addiction to milk them for cash, like the kids were just livestock. This made Specter, quite literally, potentially lethal levels of furious. That is, potentially lethal for others. Namely, potentially lethal for these drug dealers.
Reaching with her right hand to her left forearm, she pulled a knife from a sleeve sheath strapped to the said forearm, beneath the black trench coat she wore. Now at the end of the hallway, she charged forward, knife in hand. The first Diamond Dozen Gang member immediately grabbed a nearby shotgun and fired a blast of shotgun pellets into Specter from three feet away, as the two schoolgirls screamed in horror while scrambling for cover. Specter simply phased through the pellets, which passed harmlessly through her body, before Specter ran past him, and out to his right flank, then solidified herself again. Using her enhanced strength to rake the knife’s blade across the back of the first gang member's head, Specter saw wet blood, bone fragments, and grey matter, spew from his skull, and onto the hand with which she held the knife—or, at least, onto the black work glove Specter wore over the hand with which she held the knife.
As the first gang member collapsed to the ground, deceased, Specter pulled another weapon from her belt with her other hand; this one was a throwing knife, which was longer than her other knives—it was fifteen inches long from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle—and which had a ring at the bottom of the handle, unlike the knives she had in the sleeve sheaths, to allow for better grip when it was used as a throwing weapon. With a flick of her wrist, the throwing knife flew at a criminal—but Specter slipped as she went to throw it, having forgotten that the floor beneath her feet was now slick with splattered and pooling blood. She’d been trying to embed the knife in one of the gang members’ necks, but—due to the way Specter slipped, and had to subsequently correct her own balance to avoid falling—her aim was off.
The knife embedded itself in the third gang member’s upper leg somewhere in the general thigh area. He collapsed to the floor, howling in pain, as the second gang member tried to shoot Specter in the head with a pistol at point-blank range. Specter swatted away the pistol with her left hand and lunged with the knife that she had originally pulled from the sleeve sheath in her right hand, plunging it into the second gang member’s neck, before repeatedly pulling it out and sticking it back into the criminal’s neck, as the second gang member collapsed to the ground.
Then the third gang member tried to flee down the hallway Specter had entered the building through, as the two school girls began running down the same hallway, and towards the front door, only for the remaining criminal to—despite the knife jutting out of his injured leg, and his now-sizable limp—somehow clumsily barrel into the Hispanic schoolgirl, as both of the schoolgirls were practically tripping over themselves—and each other—to escape. Ultimately, the scumbag knocked the Hispanic schoolgirl over. Bearing down hard on the criminal, Specter saw him try—and fail—to stand, with the bloodless and tissue damage from the knife in his leg probably starting to affect him. The scumbag then proceeded to put his pistol to the Hispanic student’s head, while pinning her to the ground beneath him. They both lay there, facedown on the ground, as the second, Caucasian, schoolgirl ran away.
Rabid with fear and selfish malice, the criminal snarled, “Leave me be, or I’ll sh—.”
Before he could finish his sentence—which Specter figured would have ended with the words shoot her—Specter had slit the back of his neck open at the base of the skull. Whether he was dead or paralyzed was not something Specter was concerned with. Specter picked up the gun, before unloading it, and sliding the action back to eject the bullet in the chamber, before placing the gun on the wooden floor. Then using the bottom of one of her boots, she rolled the corpse aside—assuming that he was dead, although he’d probably be paraplegic if he was still alive. Either way, she rolled what was left of the criminal off of the remaining girl in the school uniform, before Specter walked around the girl. Kneeling Specter pulled the bloodied throwing knife out of the dead man’s leg. As she knelt there, Specter now observed that the girl was fourteen, at the oldest, with a brief look over. Specter then wiped the blood off of the knives’ blades, using the dead man's pants as a sort of cleaning rag, before she then sheathed both blades. As she did this, Specter debated whether the cops would get there too quickly for her to search for—and kill—any gang members who might be hiding in the second story of the house.
When Specter finally spoke, her voice sounded synthesized, due to the matte black Vocal Disguise Unit she wore, like an N-95 face mask, over the second mask, the latter of which she wore to conceal her eyes, hair, and face. This Vocal Disguise Unit was one she had bought off the internet—it was very expensive, but also very high quality. It did its job well.
“Do yourself a favor,” Specter said to the schoolgirl, “Get clean and stay clean. If the drugs don’t kill you, the scum selling the drugs will. Speaking of which, are there any more of them on the second floor?”
“No, I don’t think so. They mentioned that they deliberately keep more beds than people here so that they can hide members of their crew who flee arrest warrants. And thank you,” the younger female told Specter, the former’s whole body shaking as the latter stood before Specter proceeded to help the student into a standing position.
“You’re welcome,” Specter replied, before stating—more to herself than anyone else, “Now, how to send that message?”
“What message,” the kid asked, prompting Specter to reply, “The one making sure that these dealers know I’ll kill anyone peddling drugs, and victimizing people through addiction.”
“Do you want me to deliver it?”
The student's question took Specter off guard, especially as Specter had just decided that she should go through the second floor of the house, just to be certain that she hadn’t missed any scumbags who were hiding up there.
After considering the student’s offer for a few moments, Specter answered, “No. It would be too dangerous for you. Go home, kid.”
At that moment, Specter heard the sirens wailing off in the distance. The source of the sound was a way out, but not too far off in the distance. And the sound of police sirens was getting closer.
Specter decided not to risk sticking around any longer, as she told the schoolgirl, “That klaxon means I gotta go. Get home, kid. Get clean. And stay clean.”
Then Specter ran at a wall, and phased through it, repeating the process until she had escaped the sirens’ wailing.
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Pyre didn’t like the thought of working with scum. And Allen Brown was scum. About that, Pyre was certain. But he was the type of scum who might prove useful. Of this, Pyre was also certain. Besides, if every chance to rescue Jessica was not taken, there was a good probability that such would be her death. If Pyre had to work with scum for once, so be it. His apartment was in the Midtown District of New Hellensburge, a fact which genuinely surprised both Pyre and Reforger, as, in such a firmly middle-class area, especially one with so many businesses, suspicious activity was much more likely to be reported, as opposed to worse parts of town, such as the crime-ridden City Center, or—to a lesser extent—the crime affected Docks District.
Coming to the apartment complex in question, a group of buildings ringed by a wrought iron fence, Pyre used solidified fire to catapult himself from the rooftops outside the complex onto the rooftops inside the complex. The building he ended up on the roof of was three stories tall. Jumping to the ground, Pyre landed, bending his knees as his feet hit the ground, to better absorb the shock. The nerves in his knees stung a little, but not enough to indicate any level of injury.
One thing he’d noticed about his body after the Advent occurred—or, in other words, after the Advent Virus first appeared, and made him a Variant—was that his body had become more durable. Not bullet resistant by any stretch of the imagination, nor had he become immune to physical injury by blunt force—but he was far less vulnerable to an injury sustained from, say, falling off of a rooftop, than before. That’s not to say that, if such a fall were to happen in an uncontrolled manner, he was guaranteed to survive with no injury, but rather, that if the fall were conducted in a controlled manner, he could easily survive uninjured what others could not. Hence the bending of the knees to absorb the shock. It inflicted no injury on him, although—if forced to choose—Pyre would far rather have to deal with a knee injury than a spinal injury. There were possible ways to fix most, albeit not all, knee injuries—Pyre had heard of experiments in the field of curing spinal paralysis, but nothing so successful as to be considered a full cure yet.
Running through the complex, Pyre eventually came to a door marked A6 and approached it. Placing his gloved hand on the lock mechanism, Pyre began to superheat his hand—and, by extension, the brass lock. It glowed red and orange with heat at first, then it began to contort, before ultimately melting in his hand. This chunk of metal melting in his hand did not bother Pyre, as becoming a Variant had made him immune to thermal burns—that is, burns from high temperatures. Electricity, and certain chemicals, could still burn him, although Pyre had no desire to learn from further experience how badly, or how fast, they could burn him. Pyre tossed the molten blob of brass into a nearby bush, on the side of the bush facing the wall of one of the apartment complex’s buildings, hoping to avoid anyone stepping on it, or otherwise burning themselves. The other side of the lock, the one on the interior of the door, fell to the floor with a muffled thud, prompting Pyre to twist the doorknob and open the door.
Entering, Pyre found a neat, orderly, living room, completely devoid of anyone. But no, this was the target’s apartment. A target who might know where Jessica was, or who abducted her. Going straight to the next door, Pyre opened it, revealing a bedroom, which was a great deal more cluttered than the previous room, with objects strewn about a desk along one wall, and dirty clothes just dropped to the floor. In the queen-sized bed, lay a potbelly old man, with graying hair and skin that, while brown, was not as dark as Ethan’s. On one of the bedside tables—the one on the right side of the bed—lay a pistol of some sort. It looked like a Colt of some sort to Pyre, although what type of round it was chambered in was not something Pyre could deduce as easily. Walking up to the bedside table, and taking the gun, Pyre held it in his left hand. Normally, Pyre would have held it in his right hand, as Pyre was right-handed. That said, Pyre had no intention of using this sidearm—he simply intended to ensure that Allen Brown could not do so himself. Crouching down to slide it under the bedside table, Pyre stood back up and spoke four words.
“Allen Brown, wake up.”
Allen Brown’s green eyes slammed open, as he reached his hands out to the bedside table, to where the gun had been. But by now, Pyre had already pinned Allen to the bed, Pyre’s hands around his throat.
“Allen Brown,” Pyre’s synthesized voice said, “You’ve caused so much death, so much suffering…with your stealing and selling of information…”
“So you’re…Pyre, huh? Thought you’d…be taller…,” Allen choked out.
Pyre’s hands held Allen Brown’s throat ever so tightly, while Pyre replied, “Yet, the time has come. You could be redeemed. If you make the right choice.”
Letting go of the man’s throat, Pyre backed off several steps.
Gasping for air and massaging his throat, Allen asked, “Redeemed?… What the fuck are you on about?”
Then realization dawned on the man’s face, as he snarled, “You want me to snitch on my clients, huh? Go fuck yourself!”
“So the scum who attacked that Midtown boarding school the other day are clients of yours,” Pyre demanded, furious.
“Uh…no,” Allen Brown replied, seeming to realize only now just how much danger he was in, and just how deeply he was in it.
“You tell me everything you know about the abductors, and you keep me updated on those responsible. In exchange, I let you carry on, with the condition that you don’t get directly involved in any bloodshed hurting innocents. If it’s self-defense, that’s fine,” Pyre told Allen.
“Wait—you only want info on that one crime group…that’s it,” Allen asked, stunned.
“You can keep any info on other crime groups in the city to yourself, so long as it’s irrelevant to the group I’m after right now,” Pyre confirmed.
“And if I refuse,” Allen asked, clearly weighing his options.
“You’d regret that. Quickly. And painfully,” Pyre replied.
“Well, at least you’re upfront about that bit. Not many people are,” Allen said, in a manner halfway between a conversational volume, and that volume which one would use while muttering under one’s breath.
“Okay, let’s begin,” Allen continued, now speaking at a normal volume, “Here’s what I know; the group uses a bloody knife as their insignia; they call themselves the Crimson Blades; they’ve been buying a shit ton of military-grade weaponry—including explosives—and they’ve killed anyone that’s double-crossed them. Plus, rumor has it that they’ve been stealing beyond top secret weapons—everything from small arms to explosives, to knockout gas, to nerve agents, and possibly even nuclear or biological weapons, from a set of secret research and development labs belonging to a private military company.”
“Which company,” Pyre demanded.
“Daedalus Contracting Incorporated,” Allen replied, “The same rumor states that Daedalus never reported the thefts, even goin’ so far as to cover it up, given most of the weapons developed there were illegal under international law, in some form or another, and more advanced than what the federal military’s scientists could ever possibly have. That said, these rumors can’t be confirmed. Dunno why they’re kidnapping school girls, but they do seem to hold a grudge against Daedalus, so if Daedalus employs some of her family, maybe that’s why? I have no clue why they hate Daedalus so much, though. And those rumors are on a shaky basis and should be taken with a grain of salt. That’s all I know, I swear.”
“I thought you’d have more intel on them,” Pyre stated menacingly.
“It’s not like I’d have much reason to. My clients are all street crews. Typically they just want to pull a bank job, get high, or kill a rival. I’ve never had a client get into fisticuffs with a PMC company or terror groups, let alone view such groups as targets. Hell, I doubt most of my clients would even consider stealing from private armies like Daedalus. They’re criminals, not suicidal maniacs…Well, most of them aren’t suicidal maniacs, anyway. Besides, most of them didn’t know the Crimson Blades existed before that schoolgirl got abducted,” Allen explained, before hastily adding, “I’m not lying, I swear on my mother’s ashes.”
“I need more than mere rumors. Look into it further,” Pyre ordered him, before handing Allen a burner phone, and adding, “Here’s a burner phone. I’m in the contacts. Keep me posted on what you find. If you can’t reach me, call Reforger, and give him the intel. Preferably via text message.”
“Who’s Reforger,” Allen asked.
“The other person in the contacts of that phone, and an associate of mine. I want constant updates. That’s all,” Pyre said, before turning away.
“Hold it! I have one more question!”
Pyre turned back to face Allen, snarling, “What is it?”
Allen inquired, “I’ll have a faster time getting results if I know your end goal, and therefore what information about them to prioritize. Do you want to join them, or something else?”
“My current objectives are the rescue of the abduction victim, followed by the complete destruction of the Crimson Blades,” Pyre informed Allen.
Allen nodded, and Pyre walked away.
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Lela Feris lay down on the sofa in an office within the police station. The office was warm, and—in addition to the beige sofa—had an old, black-painted, wooden desk; a spinning office chair behind the desk; a brown, wooden shelf with some photos, and a series of grey; metal filing cabinets. Two police officers had been posted outside the door as guards. To keep Lela safe, according to the Hispanic lady named Sasha. The other cops kept calling her “Captain Caperno” although she insisted that Lela call her Sasha.
Her eyes were open, as Lela tried and failed to sleep, listening to the two cops, a lady named Sara, and a man named John, talk. That being said, Lela was pretty sure that they didn’t realize that she was able to hear them from the sofa.
“Such a fuckin’ shame, someone doing this shit…and the trauma to the kid, too,” John’s voice said with a quiet, soft fury, “According to the security footage, all this was just so some junkie could get a fix. Pisses me off.”
“I know. And where’s her father, right? We sent for that asshole this morning! It’s after Nine PM! His daughter’s here, but he sure loves dragging his feet,” Sara replied, just as softly, and sounding just as furious as her colleague, “I mean, what the actual fuck?”
“Fucking deadbeat,” John said, talking at a slightly lower volume than earlier, but sounding no less furious.
Some time passed, in the darkness of the office. Was it minutes, or hours? Lela couldn’t tell. Regardless, she couldn’t sleep, even with her head on the pillow, and the camouflage blanket—a “poncho” Sasha had called it—draped over Lela, as she lay on the sofa. Eventually, the door opened, and the lights turned on, dazing Lela until her eyes adjusted.
Sitting up, Lela turned to the door and saw her father. Or, at least, someone she thought to be her father. In truth, she was having difficulty telling—she hadn’t seen him in ages.
He was an older, black man, with short-cropped black hair, and he wore a black tuxedo over a white dress shirt, black dress pants, a shiny pair of black dress shoes, and a red necktie, as he approached the sofa.
“Hey, Lela. It’s me. It’s Dad,” he said, kneeling, “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Lela practically bolted upright, throwing off the poncho, before running into her father’s arms, tears running down her face as she sobbed.96Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHS2MJRwFJS
and then Add to home screen.