by J. J. Newman
“The Elites answer to Gravelock.”
Chapter Thirty Five
Not One Drop
Midnight. The streets are quiet, as they always are when night falls. The City was so alive during daylight, and seemed so dead at night. It was an illusion, of course. Everything important happened when the sun was down. Scheme became action, life became death. The tides shift ever so slightly each and every night. Only the shadows themselves ever really notice. So many lives all herded like sheep towards whatever pasture their master deems fit. Never questioning, completely unaware of the existence of their shepherd and his loyal dogs.
Tonight, this shadow hunted another shadow. This hound hunted a lesser hound. Cloaked in the deepest of blacks, rendering him invisible in the moonless night, the Hunter waited. His prey and its pup sat not five yards away, on the same rooftop, oblivious to his presence. He listened to them talking in hushed voices about mundane matters. So confident in their skills that they couldn’t even sense that they were being hunted in the first place.
Their back was too him, and he stood up straight from his crouch, silently. He took several steps towards the agent and his novice, a young girl. Still they talked, and the agent put and arm around the girl. It seems the agent and his novice had become something more. They were obviously sharing a bed. He found it disgusting. Such a breach of regulation. It would make his strike so much sweeter. He wondered for a moment why he ever cared, then decided it was a matter of principle.
He stood directly behind them now. No shadow was cast upon his prey, as there was no light to cast it. He acted swiftly. He kicked out his right foot, catching the girl in the back of the head. She cried out as she flew from the roof to the street below. A loud crack sounded, and the girl was silent. Her mentor cursed, and jumped to his feet, sword in hand. It would not be enough to save him.
“You son of a bitch! You killed her!” The agent cried out in sadness and rage.
There was no duel, no protracted fight of blade clashing against blade. With one swift motion, he buried a knife in the agent’s eye, a favorite spot as it offered little resistance between his face and his brain. The agent hadn’t even had the time to swing his weapon once.
The Hunter dropped from the rooftop and landed in the street below, beside the girl. He examined her quickly. Her head was twisted in an unnatural direction. Her neck was clearly broken and she was quite dead. He nodded in satisfaction.
An easy night’s work.
***
The hunter had one more target for the night. This one was considered high priority, and difficult. He was not concerned. This one would die easily enough. He spotted his prey before long, walking down the street. He smiled to himself. This was always so easy. The Third Eye Agents considered themselves untouchable. They were fools.
He tracked his prey for a time, waiting for the perfect chance to strike. He knew it would come. It always came. He leaped the gaps between rooftops easily enough, never making a sound.
The street lanterns did little to illuminate the dark night, but they served him well. He could easily keep track of his prey as the agent and novice passed in front of the fire. The agent and his novice didn’t even have the sense to stay hidden. What fools. They had already lost enough people that he was surprised it hadn’t made them more cautious. He shrugged. This just made it easier for him and his brothers.
His prey passed another lantern and he made his way ahead to await them at the next one. A few moments passed, and his prey never appeared. They had disappeared. He frowned, and then cursed himself. He shouldn’t have gone ahead, shouldn’t have taken his prey’s direction for granted.
He backtracked to the other lantern, looking for signs of his prey. It didn’t take long. He smiled in relief when he saw the door to what appeared to be an abandoned house was open just a crack. He was sure it had been closed before. The agent had neglected to close it all the way.
Agents often made use of abandoned houses and other empty buildings for sleep if they were too far from the safe house, or were close to a mission objective and wanted to steal a bit of sleep before an appointed time. This agent would not awaken.
He climbed down to the streets, staying in the shadow and crossed to the old poorly maintained house. He climbed the face of the structure, using the boards on the windows as hand and footholds. Climbing to the top window, he peeked through the boards inside. His prey was lying on the floor, candle by his side. He didn’t see the novice, who was likely sleeping in the dark away from the candle.
He dropped to the street again, and waited for a half hour or so, to make sure his prey was asleep when he entered. Finally he approached the door, and slowly and carefully pushed it open. The hinges didn’t creak. Somebody must have oiled them recently. Likely a street kid or and agent who wanted to be able to enter without announcing themselves, on the off chance it was already occupied. He entered the foyer.
The foyer was a small square area where guests would have left their shoes. He couldn’t make out anything beyond the foyer, but judging on where his prey had been sleeping, he imagined that the staircase must be straight ahead, possibly through a sitting room.
He took a step forward, and cursed himself silently when he felt his legs break the tripwire. It had been a trap. Two devices exploded, one on each wall, and the shrapnel tore his legs apart. The devices were expertly placed, meant only to cripple, not kill. He fell to the floor, clutching at his shredded legs.
Light flooded his vision as his prey appeared before him, candle in hand. His face had several small marks, probably burns of some sort, and his right eye was covered by a dark green scarf. Tsaeris Sydarin. A dangerous target indeed, it seemed.
Sydarin didn’t speak and neither did the Hunter. Brutally, and painfully, the agent grabbed him by one of his decimated legs, and began dragging him deeper into the house. He would not scream, he told himself. He would not. He was dragged by the legs up a flight of stairs, his head cracking painfully on the wooden steps.
When they reached a wide open room at the top of the stairs, Sydarin let go of his legs. He turned to face him and pointed to a chair. Then Sydarin moved forward to lift him up. He waited, a dagger concealed in his hand, and when Sydarin leaned down he stabbed for his throat. Sydarin seemed to have been expecting it, and caught his wrist. The Hunters injury had made him slow. Sydarin would have been a dead man had he been whole.
Sydarin tried to pry the dagger from his fingers, but he held on tight. He would not give in. He would make this hard for the man. Sydarin, tiring of the struggle, shrugged and produced a long needle from his coat with his free hand. He brought the tip of the needle to the Hunter’s wrist, and pushed it in, slowly and painfully. The needle made in through the other side before his hand lost all strength and the dagger dropped from his grip. Sydarin wasted no time and forced him into the chair, then tied his hands to the back of it.
“I want names,” Sydarin said.
In response, the Hunter spat in the man’s face. Sydarin gritted his teeth and opened his long coat to reveal a set of cruel looking knives and hooks on one side, and vials of chemicals on the other.
“The other Elites. Who are they?” Sydarin asked.
“The what?” He replied.
Sydarin took out a knife, and then cut the top three buttons from the Hunter’s dark vest. He held up the string with the brass ring at its end with the tip of his knife, frowning. He then removed a vial from his coat and grabbed the Hunter roughly by the hair, holding his head back. He raised the vial above his left eye and let fall a small drop. The Hunter screamed despite himself as the liquid sizzled and he could smell his own eye burning. Wrenching his head back and forth, he began to vomit from the pain and the smell.
“Names?” Sydarin repeated.
He didn’t reply. He would not betray his brothers. Sydarin waited for a moment, and then removed a different vial from his coat, replacing the first one. Again, he grabbed him by the hair and held the vial under his nose. The
smell was repugnant. His still functioning eye began to tear up, but there wasn’t any pain. He wondered what this was supposed to accomplish. He got his answer almost immediately. His head felt like it had been hit by a hammer. It was more than just a headache. It felt like a giant was crushing his skull, and again he screamed. A part of him wished that Sydarin would switch to the knives.
The torture went on for what felt like eternity, but was probably less than an hour. His fingers were gone now, as were his legs, his arms below the elbows, his ears, and his penis. After each dismemberment, Sydarin would use one of his foul chemicals to cauterize the wounds closed, so as not to have him bleed out.
Despite the torture, he still did not betray his brethren. He wanted it to end. He wanted Sydarin to just kill him. He waited for numbness to set in and take away his pain, but it never came. The pain was fierce, even though there was very little left of him.
Eventually Sydarin seemed to understand that it was over, that he would get nothing from this. The Hunter was grateful when the dagger finally slid across his throat, and smiled in relief as the world began to fade away.
***
Tsaeris looked down into the old chamber pot, where he had placed some of the pieces he had cut off of the man. It was starting to smell. He was frustrated. After all that, he hadn’t learned a damn thing.
He heard footsteps coming from below. Two sets. It would be Elias and Tyrier. After he had set the trip wire trap, Tsaeris had had Aedrus slip out the back with instructions to find the two men and send them here. Tsaeris had fully intended to get some information out of the man, and wanted to share it with them as soon as possible. It hadn’t quite worked out that way
Elias and Tyrier appeared at the top of the stairs, weapons in hand. They sheathed them when they saw Tsaeris.
“Hey, guys. I got my hands on an Elite,” Tsaeris said, grinning. “Though he didn’t tell me anything. But still, it shows that we might be able to trap another if we need to.”
He continued to grin at the two men, but then his grin faded when he noted the looks on their faces. Elias looked shocked and maybe a touch sad. Tyrier’s face was both horrified, and angry.
“By the light, Tsaeris. What have you done?” Tyrier said, his gaze locked on the husk of the former Elite.
“What do you mean? I captured and interrogated him,” Tsaeris said calmly. He wasn’t sure what the problem was.
Tyrier walked towards the body, his face white. He stared at it, and then glanced down at the pot of body parts, and the legs and arms on the floor. He turned to look at Tsaeris again.
“Tsaeris...” Tyrier said.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I still haven’t gotten around to cleaning up all the parts. I’ll do it in a minute,” Tsaeris replied.
“No. Tsaeris. Look at him,” Tyrier said.
“Yeah. So what?” Tsaeris replied.
Tyrier rushed forward and grabbed Tsaeris. He hauled him in front of the body, and then stood behind him holding his head in place.
“Look at what you did to this man,” Tyrier said angrily. “Look at him!”
Tsaeris looked. The man was naked, his body little more than bloody stumps and a torso. It had only gone so far because the man wouldn’t talk.
“So what? He wouldn’t talk,” Tsaeris said.
“Get him back to the safe house. He’s done,” Elias said.
“What?” Tsaeris said, angrily. “Why? Because I tortured him? You’ve tortured people, Elias,” Tsaeris argued.
“Not like this. Never like this.” Elias actually sounded disgusted.
“What difference does it make? I wanted him to talk. Had he talked, it would have ended sooner. He’s our enemy, for light’s sake.” Tsaeris had expected praise for his work. Instead he was being treated like he screwed up.
“There’s a line, Tsaeris. You cut him to pieces, you castrated him. You kept going and only stopped because you knew it was hopeless. You didn’t realize that when you cut off his cock?”
“I thought the whole point of torture was to keep it up until they talked,” Tsaeris said.
“Not one ounce. Not one drop,” Elias said, and he started walking away, disgusted.
“One drop of what?” Tsaeris asked.
“Compassion,” Tyrier said. “Mercy”.
“I’m just doing what I was taught,” Tsaeris called after Elias’ back.
“Nobody taught you that,” Elias called from the shadows.
Tsaeris felt angry, confused and worried as Tyrier dragged him down the stairs, and all the way back to the safe house.
Chapter Thirty Six
Morally Insane
Tsaeris sat on the bed with his back against the wall in one of the cell like rooms that the recruits slept in. He had spent three years in one of these rooms while he was training, yet somehow it felt even smaller now. He wondered if this was the same room he used to sleep in. He wasn’t sure, as they all looked the same. The room barely had room for the bed, which touched both the back and side walls of the room. A foot or two in front of the bed held a trunk and two feet from that was the door. These rooms were even smaller than jail cells, and Tsaeris hated it.
It had never bothered him when he was a recruit. Most of the day had been dedicated to training, both physical and mental, and by the time he had returned to his room he would simply fall into the hard bed and sleep. The moment he woke up, it was time to start training again. But now he was an agent, and the only training he had was the exercises he imposed on himself to keep fit.
Since Tyrier had practically dragged him back to the safe house by the ear several hours ago, Tsaeris hadn’t spoken to anyone. Elias and Tyrier had been very upset with him. He thought it was ridiculous that a man like Elias would call him out on torturing a man. Elias tortured people. What a hypocrite.
Tsaeris was jarred from his thoughts when a knock sounded at the door. He sighed, not really in the mood to talk. He supposed it was either Elias or Tyrier, here to lecture him.
“Yeah, it’s open,” Tsaeris called out. The door opened, and Raina entered the room. She smiled at Tsaeris, and then put her back to the wall to give the door enough room to close.
“Hey Tsaeris. I heard you were here,” Raina said, smiling. She sat down on the end of the bed.
“Yep. How’s Richard doing?” Last he had seen Raina, she was heading back to the safe house with a very miserable looking Richard.
“He’s alright. He’s taken over the tavern down here for now. It will take a while for the Tarnished Tankard to be rebuilt.”
“Rebuilt? Thank the light. That place was pretty much my home,” Tsaeris said, and he meant it.
“I thought you lived with your father,” Raina said, raising an eyebrow.
“Elias. And yeah, I guess I live there too. But I spend a lot more time at the Tankard,” Tsaeris replied.
“Right, Elias. Your father,” Raina said, and chuckled at the look of consternation Tsaeris shot her way. “Still don’t like the idea, I see.”
“It’s not that. I don’t know. Elias is Elias. It freaks me out when people refer to him as my father. Hell, if I started calling him ‘Dad’ he’d probably box my ears. Not that I could ever call him that without feeling nauseous.” It’s not that Tsaeris was unhappy that Elias was his father. He was mostly indifferent at this point, and found it kind of strange to hear when people brought it up. He liked to think of it all as an interesting note, and nothing more.
“Alright, I’ll drop it. So what brings you back to the safe house?” Raina asked.
“Well, my tavern burned down. Figured I could lay low here,” Tsaeris lied. He was not about to tell Raina about the man he had interrogated and the reaction of Elias and Tyrier. With his luck, Raina would probably agree with them. Besides, he wasn’t supposed to mention the Elites to anyone. Even Aedrus hadn’t known who had been following them....tonight? Last night? What the hell time was it? Had he slept? He couldn’t remember. The room was mind numbing.
“Want to come have b
reakfast with me?” Raina asked.
“Breakfast. So that means its morning?” Tsaeris asked.
“Very good, Tsaeris,” Raina replied mockingly.
“That’s what they tell me. Alright, let’s go have breakfast.”
Tsaeris spent the entire morning and afternoon with Raina. It was fun. He hadn’t spent much time with her lately, and the two joked and bragged about the missions they had completed. He made a mental note to spend more time with her. Tsaeris didn’t have many friends, and he often forgot that sometimes another person’s company could be enjoyable.
Evening had come, and Tsaeris had decided it was time to start drinking. Raina agreed, but they were cut short after their first drink when Elias entered the safe house tavern. Elias looked around at the agents gathered around the tables.
“Everyone out. Now,” Elias said. He didn’t say it very loud, but the room cleared almost instantly. Tsaeris stayed where he was. The ‘everyone out, except you’ was implied in the look Elias gave him. Elias took a seat across from Tsaeris.
“Elias,” Tsaeris greeted.
“We need to talk,” Elias said.
“I gathered,” Tsaeris replied, somewhat sarcastically. “So, you said I’m done. What does that mean, boss?”
“What you did to that man was monstrous, Tsaeris,” Elias began. Tsaeris rolled his eye. Elias glared at him. “This is the problem, boy. How could you do something like that and be so callous about it?”
“He was an enemy. And he was there to kill me and Aedrus. You expect me to feel sorry for him?” Tsaeris asked bitterly.
“Have you ever felt sorry, Tsaeris? For anything?” Elias asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that, honestly. I do what I do. I always do it for a reason. If I make a mistake, then I regret my bad decision. But feel sorry? Why should I?”
“You mean to tell me that you have never felt anything? The first time you killed someone? When that man was screaming for you to stop? You didn’t feel any compassion?” Elias seemed to be very invested in whatever Tsaeris was about to say. He seemed to fidget in his seat, shifting his position.