His body still felt stiff, as if he was learning to walk before learning to crawl and the muscles were not ready. Jackson’s skin felt rigid, and there was a twirling in his stomach, like a carnival ride, that made him want to spew its contents at any minute, which he realized was probably nothing after nearly two decades. This new life was not one he was accustomed to, and the odd memories of Paragon came and went like the pulsating flicker of a dying light bulb. Nothing felt right; life felt more like death, and that alien-like anger that punched him in his core still sat there waiting for an outlet, waiting to be utilized as an Order should.
“I feel… sick,” Jackson said as he sat stiffly on his couch. “And weak…”
“Normal,” Azazel said with a grin. “As normal as it can be for someone who’s dead.”
Jackson slumped over and felt the creaking tightness of his body as he rested his scruff face in the palms of his hands. His elbows dug into his thighs and he cringed for a minute as his pain receptors ignited, having not been triggered in some time. The funny part, Jackson thought, is that the last time I felt pain was the last time I was alive. His dry, gray hair remained stiff as he slowly shook his head side to side.
“What are you doing here, Azazel?” he asked bluntly.
“Ya know, a good boss checks in on his new employee, isn’t that how it works? All I ever get is you people cryin’ about ya fuckin’ jobs, so I got a good handle on the thing,” Azazel smiled toward Jackson. “Speakin’ of that, got some work for ya, kid.”
“Work?” Jackson groaned. Then, instinctually, he remembered a brief moment of Paragon and why he was truly back. Why he wore the guns at his sides.
Azazel passed an opened envelope to Jackson with a bit of crumpled, white folded paper sticking out of its mouth. Jackson painfully sat upright again and grabbed it with a robotic coiling and uncoiling of his fingers. He removed the paper only to find a list of addresses and dates over the span of a few months written in beautiful script, in what appeared to be colored pencils. On the corner of the page was a drawing, like that of a beetle.
“What is this?” Jackson groaned.
“Body traffickers,” Azazel responded and stood up from the couch. He walked over to the dried pool of blood that was hardened and brown on the carpet, stared at it, then shook his head. “Snatchin’ up the good people of this city, and sellin’ ’em to the highest bidder.” Jackson stared at him with a blank gaze. “Literally, they do auctions,” he said more firmly.
“Are they all Demons?”
Azazel shook his head, “Afraid not.”
“Never killed a person before…” Jackson stared intently at the addresses and dates scribbled on the page.
“Haven’t killed an Un-Ascended before either, Jackie. But, first time for everything I heard.” Azazel flashed a stare at Jackson followed with the widening, horrific grin of the Demons. “The top ones are written in blue, they are light gatherings according to my other employee. The last one is written in red, and I’m guessin’ you’re a smart boy, Jackie, so you can figure out that’s the big one.”
Another loud pop reverberated through the small room. Jackson stood up and propped himself against the wall, one arm wrapped around his torso holding his ribs, and another raised with the silver handgun pointed toward the figure. The shining silver, reflective and untarnished, glowed from the stage lights nearby. The width of a single hair seperated the weapon for the large man’s face. Just beyond the barrel stood a void where flesh once lived.
The large man fell back expressionless as the blood ran from his face, caressing his chin and dripping onto his chest.
“Can you hear me up there?” huffed Jackson.
The young man nodded, still bound and muffled.
“There any more back there? Enemies?”
He shook his head, trembling.
“Good…” said Jackson as he slowly made his way to the stage. The man on the ground before him, sprawled and lifeless, had a small, metal object poking out from his pocket that reflected the light. He bent down, his body roaring in pain greater than when he had just awoke, and he took out a small switchblade with a black handle and matching black blade. The young man was startled by the sound as the blade swung open and snapped into place, but much more relieved when he felt the knife slicing through his duct tape confinement. Jackson grabbed the tape’s corner from his cheek, “Gonna sting...” and ripped it from his mouth. The young man panted, choking on air with a nervous panic. He swallowed repeatedly, trying to say anything until his stomach turned and from his gasping, open mouth, poured the liquid contents in a splash below.
“Th-Thank you. Thank you. Th–” the boy said between heavy panting and coughing.
“You’re safe now,” interjected Jackson. “Go free the others.”
The young man wandered into the room where muffled sobbing could be heard like a muted church chorus. Jackson took the chance to approach the bodies that lay on the floor fanned out in a row of collapsed corpses that took shallow, fleeting breaths; all but the one man, the human man, who would never draw a breath again. From the pocket of his trench coat he removed a small pouch full of tiny crystals and put it under the first body’s nose, waving it around.
A startled man sat up quickly, coated in sweat with wide, scanning eyes. “H-holy shit,” he said. “What the hell just happened?”
Jackson ignored him and continued to the next body with his smelling salts. This one rolled over and rose to his knees with a similar expression. As he continued down the line, finally reaching the sixth body he had shot with the Arm of the Savior, each woke with the same questions and confusion.
“It... it was like watching a long movie through my own eyes,” one man said.
“I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. My body moved and my lips opened but nothing was mine,” said another.
Jackson stood up, brushing off his pants and jacket before addressing the confused, suited men. “You have all just been inhabited,” he said in an emotionless expression. “Guess possessed would be a better word. You weren’t in the driver seats.”
Slowly people emerged from the dark corridor behind the stage, each also barely clothed. Many were young men ranging in age and race but all with athletic builds. Two young women had also emerged and behind them, clinging tightly to one’s side, was a small child.
I have been tracking this Hive for over a month, Jackson thought to himself. Still no closer to taking down this faction’s leader. These fucking Scarabs… They are revolting. Selling off the most valuable human life they can find, just the keep their grotesque existence going. I will kill every last fucking one of them. Every one, until I find the man in the tan suit.
“W-where do we go? What do we do?” asked a suited man who scanned his surroundings with trembling eyes.
“Don’t care,” answered Jackson as he limped toward the door.
“I’ve seen…” Another man started and paused, pressing his hand to his face. “I’ve seen so much… I had no control…” He began to whimper, but Jackson was already nearly gone.
“Are you a hero?” asked a small, frightened voice from a young girl behind him.
“No,” he answered, and vanished from the doorway into the dark streets of New Ashton.
Jackson walked through the city, limping a bit, and thought about the world he now lived in, and the past he left behind. Just outside of the door, he walked into the brisk air of New Ashton at nighttime, which smelled of cigarettes and gasoline, and he embraced the light drizzle of fresh rain that pattered against his old face. He walked the city like a nameless man with no face, just another street-sleeping bum in an overcoat covered in bruises. He could ignore the looks of those who passed, unless he saw that familiar smile.
The few months since he returned had not been kind, but they had been fruitful. Azazel would deliver tasks, or cases as he called them, and Jackson would move out. Even though it was simply a list written in colored pencil, these cases were special in that they held promise
of a certain man, the unknown assailant in a tan suit. A lot has changed since his first case, the first time his finger felt the pull of a trigger, and his wrist felt the recoil of an exploding gun barrel. Jackson could recall the fear of what could happen, and the weight he felt when it meant ending someone’s life; even a life already ended. As a boy he thought he understood the words of Fortega and Greene, the world they weaved of Dust and the North-Lane. He even could understand the evil incarnate that hid behind the glass smiles that he could now see as clearly as the moon glowing in an open sky.
Then, there were the Scarabs.
Jackson mumbled angrily to himself, which only granted him further puzzled glares from those who he passed by on the dark streets. He stalked under the street lamps, swarmed with buzzing insects, and he crept by heaping piles of torn garbage bags crawling in thick, city rats. The New Ashton he left hadn’t declined this much, but nearly two decades will ruin anything, he thought to himself as he remembered his old, burly body. Around the corner, just passed the pizzeria with boarded windows, was his building.
Brick walls, cracked windows, a few dead plants on the steps, and a sign so worn that someone unfamiliar would never know it said “Ashton Garden Complex.” The garden part used to give Jackson, and her, a good laugh.
These days, Jackson did not laugh.
On the morning of his first assignment, the very top address and date written in sky blue pencil, Jackson paced the length of his apartment living room spouting out nervous grumbles and pep talks. Each thick step landed with a loud thud that shook the dust covered television or the cobweb coated lamps, and he carefully stepped around the large circle of dried blood that reminded him of why he agreed to this new life; reminded him of her. His hands, not as stiff and brittle as just a few days before, fumbled at the handles of his guns as he tried to remember the split-second memories of his time in Paragon with the higher beings. He knew he held the Arm before. He physically remembered the weight and how he gripped it tightly, but pulling the trigger was just a memory that was as distant as static on a dying television. And so, he continued to pace and grab at the weapons on his hips.
“Fourth and center…” he mumbled. “September nineteenth,” he continued to growl. “First assignment, come on…”
He stopped and threw himself down on the couch, shaking his head from one side to another and running his rough fingers through the dry, gray hair.
“You can do this, Jackson,” he told himself in a whisper that rolled like gravel. “You aren’t the same man as before…”
He closed his eyes and focused on Paragon, on the higher ones. He thought of Azazel, his words and his sneer, with the ways he toyed with the new Order and almost goaded him to act on that foreign rage that still tumbled inside. He remembered the gifts instilled within him to make him strong, to grant him the ability to truly end the Demons’ hold on innocent lives and the gifts that made him more than just Jackson Crowe: Bank Loan Officer. Then, he remembered the First Light, Usra The Creator. Her flowing sheer cloth, the brief flashes of golden armor, and the words she spoke to him in that distant, haunting breath that was less than human but more than godlike.
“Usra…” he said in an almost silent breath.
Before he could even open his eyes, a loud phasing explosion sounded before him and a bright light turned the darkness he saw into bright red from behind the skin of his eyelids. He opened them just a crack, but the light stung the old, dead eyes he awoke with and he raised a hand to block them. The sound was unbearable as it rattled his eardrums. He felt that his ears would fall from his head and hide under the couch like frightened rats. He forced himself to his feet while blocking his vision with the sleeve of the jacket. Almost instinctively, as if something from Paragon had retained even if his memories did not, his free hand pulled the Arm loose and raised it toward the bright, cylindrical beam that roared before him.
Then, as quickly as it came, it had ended, and he could open his eyes once more.
“Order,” a voice sounded before him, feminine and firm.
At first he could see nothing but the silhouette as his eyes adjusted, and he raised the barrel up toward it with caution.
“Who the fuck are you,” Jackson growled as his vision began to restore. His hand trembled nervously as it gripped the gun.
The glow of new light and restored sight had revealed it to be a dark-skinned woman in a reflective, bronze armor. The bits of metal bounced the light and between each piece were tightly bound leather straps. She stood, back to the large picture window over-looking the narrow New Ashton street below, her broad shoulders outlined in the moonlight that beamed in, and her defined arms crossed in a guarded fashion. This warrior woman stood with her muscular legs firmly open and locked, as if both an immobile statue and a lion ready to leap all at once. Beside her stood a tall lamp which hadn’t been turned on in nearly two decades, but she reached up and pulled the small metal-beaded cord.
The light let off a simple glow that shown against her bronze breastplate, chiseled with ornate designs like that of vines with thorns dancing around her torso. Her shoulder pauldrons held the same design with that of an etched eye shape at the center of each. On those same shoulders, down her back, and over her neck hung thick dreadlocked hair that dragged over it all as she turned her head to once more face Jackson.
She was stoic by nature, like an ancient warrior who had no time for this world, and yet her eyes flashed with life as she eyed him with a pointed brow.
“Nice to meet you, Order,” she said with a near-sarcastic spin.
Jackson, fighting the trembling of his hand, raised his thumb and cocked the hammer of the gun. “Won’t ask again.”
“Ah,” she answered, and unfolded her arms to place her hands on her hips, in an almost heroic stance, and then, as she closed her eyes in a slow blink, she turned to face out of the window and look at the streets below. “I thought you would be expecting me.”
He stepped toward her, weapon raised, and then noticed the blade that hung beside the leather straps of her warrior’s skirt. It was a little shorter than a sword, but wide like that of a butcher’s cleaver, and the handle was wrapped in tight red designs around its leather base.
That blade, it was like the one that briefly materialized on Usra in Paragon, he could nearly remember.
“I am Ayres,” she said, and Jackson halted. “I am here by the direction of Usra, the First Light. A guardian, to assist or protect you.”
Jackson hesitated, the Arm raised and shaking began to lower as he stared toward the back of the stoic and strong figure. He eyed the oblong blade carefully as it sat on her hip and questioned if he was letting his nerves get the best of him; if he was becoming too trusting of this new figure. Still, he thought to himself that if she truly was an emissary of Usra he should hear her out, or perhaps even ask for assistance.
For she was a warrior, and he was a man heading to his first potential kill.
“You came at the right time,” he grumbled. He dropped his gun back into the holster on his hip and its weight plopped into the leather bounds of the carrier. “First job is tonight, a small nest of these people. Human traffickers, potentially Demons.”
She let out a huff, as if to laugh and then slowly lurched her head to give him a brief glance from over her shoulder, “Written in crayon, Order?”
“Colored pencil, actually.”
Ayres sighed, “I will not assist you on this assignment. I do not work for the Ender, or his runts.”
Jackson took a few steps towards her, which shook the apartment’s trimmings around him, and she turned with her back to the moonlight once more to meet his gaze with a glare of her own. Her wispy eyes flicked with a blink as they found his.
“What happened to the assist and protect, act?” he questioned and shoved his hands in the scratchy pocket of the overcoat.
With a shake of her head she answered, “I do not hunt the Un-Ascended, that is not my duty. I simply protect you, here, as you rest
and heal.” She stepped toward him and they were now face-to-face where he could admire just how broad and strong she truly was. “I assure you, Order,” she said and ran her eyes down the length of his body and back up. “You are not the only one who will hunt. Sometimes, the prey hunts you in return.”
“Appreciate the help,” Jackson said sarcastically with a grunt.
“Order,” Ayres said quietly. He cocked his head to her and made a shallow noise to confirm his attention. “I’d like to share something with you, a story I have held from others. You are new, but you need to hear this.”
Jackson again did not respond, but he softened his cold eyes, and gave a nod.
“My kind, the followers of Usra, are not always so… enlightened. I have been around your people before, too many times I am afraid, and I have seen madness in all of its splendor.” She finally turned away once more, arms still crossed and legs still braced. “I know what the title can do to the mind, for I witnessed this once before. When he fell it was by my blade, but when his mind left him there was nothing that I could do to bring him back.” The warrior, who always remained on guard, had momentarily lost her fiery stare before she recomposed herself. “The truth is that I am not here for your protection. The day will come when you need me, but I will not be there. No, it pains me to admit that I am here to claim only one life: yours. Should it need to be claimed, that is my position in this home with you, and the old boy.”
Jackson pushed a fake smile, “Wasn’t much of a story, more of a threat. But, when that day does come,” he looked down at the wide blade that hung off of her, “I won’t go down without fighting back.”
Jackson slid a key into his apartment door after a slow, painful walk through downtown New Ashton from his injuries. It was deep into the night now, and he still needed to speak to Azazel about the leader’s escape. He turned the key, twisted the knob, and embraced the desolation of his apartment, but his eyes stared at something unfamiliar: a clean living room carpet. The red that stained its center with the memories of Jackson’s last moments with her was now cleaned, as if it had never happened. He stepped into the darkness of the room, dimly lit by street lights and the moon pouring through the windows, and searched the floor beneath him.
Order of Dust Page 3