"Step on it!" Ferro urged Arkaneh. "Tylen is losing blood!" he referred to the wounded man in the van.
"Don't worry, Tylen, we're going to get you fixed," said Graysen, the fourth man inside the van.
"No, we’re not," Arkaneh stated in a cold, decisive tone.
"What did you say?" Graysen asked, irritated.
"Look how much blood he's lost. By the time I get anywhere, he'll be dead. There's no saving him," Arkaneh condemned Tylen with his words.
"If you drive faster, I'll prove you wrong!" Ferro growled at Arkaneh. No, you won't. Arkaneh decided to keep that reply in his mind alone. No point in further arguing with these idiots.
He recalled the unexpected appearance of his brother back at the store. What was he doing there? That wasn't part of my plan. If these guys had heard him calling my name, they'd have taken him out for sure. The fact that Edrimer managed to recognize Arkaneh through the mask tremendously surprised him. If it were any other man there in my place, holding that gun in front of him, Edrimer would probably be lying dead there along with those Justicars and that old man right now, yet I spared him. Threatening him and his loved ones, which can basically only be Uncle Jeremy, ensured that he won't talk about those we lost in the fight. Even if he suspects that it was me, he won't risk getting Jeremy killed.
A couple of police cars passed by the van, driving in the opposite direction towards the convenience store, their sirens making a vivid display of blue and red colors and an ear-deafening noise. Edrimer must have called them after we left. Doesn't matter much to us. The only things the cops will get out of that crime scene are the identities of two dead Justicars.
Ferro and Graysen kept urging Arkaneh to drive faster and reassuring Tylen that everything would be alright.
The Justicars... They showed up again. This proves my theory. It's not a coincidence that lately they always happen to know where and when to be. Someone in Men of Midas is tipping them off. After their appearance at the robbery attempt I started suspecting that it might be the case, but being a new recruit I had to put that theory to the test. That’s the only reason I went along with this stupid plan to attack that store again. I had to see if the Justicars would know to show up when we strike. And they did. Now that I'm aware that there's a rat somewhere around, I have to flush him out and dispose of him. He is a threat to my plans.
"Oh, fuck, he's getting pale, man!" Graysen panicked.
"Stay with us, Tylen!" Ferro said.
"I'm giving him no more than 10 minutes," Arkaneh coldly announced.
"Just shut up and drive!" Ferro yelled.
But am I sure it's a rat? Could it be that one of the rooms is bugged instead? No, impossible. Griffiths and Talimay make regular sweeps throughout the outposts for such cases. It has to be a rat.
From behind, Arkaneh kept hearing Tylen's heavy breathing and squeals of pain, along with Ferro's coarse voice reassuring him.
How is the rat even feeding the Justicars with information? Is he leaking it to them directly or is he wired in some way and is doing it without even knowing? Well, I can safely rule out everyone in the van. If any of them was snitching to the Justicars, whether directly or indirectly, then the Justicars wouldn’t have shown up and attacked us. They knew that we would have our Elastics on, so they could potentially kill their own rat without knowing. No… it can't be any of the people in this van.
As much as Arkaneh wanted to, concentrating on the matter wasn’t easy, with the two grunts constantly throwing empty promises at the dying man, always throwing him off his train of thought. The one thing that consoled him was that it was keeping them from seeing where they were heading. It had been a few minutes now since Arkaneh had passed by the turn to Ravenwey Burrows, where their outpost was, in the abandoned factory. Instead, he was heading towards Servein.
The immediate suspects are the two lieutenants since they're the ones who get involved in all the organization's actions. But it can't be Talimay Singh. Her brother, Heycliff, was recently killed by the Justicars in that robbery attempt. If she were the rat, she wouldn’t have leaked about that attack and jeopardized her brother, and if she were bugged, the Justicars would know that if they killed her brother their rat would stop functioning as she would be mourning him. Besides, with her gone at the moment, she wouldn’t have known about this attack. No… she's not the rat… which leaves Connor Griffiths as my prime suspect.
A sharp right turn onto a dirt road grabbed Ferro's attention. "What the… Where the fuck are we?!"
"Servein," Arkaneh answered.
"What the fuck are we doing in Servein?!"
"You'll see in a minute."
The dirt road led to a large forest; one with gray trees which barely presented any foliage. The ground had a brown shade to it, with twigs and sprigs everywhere. The trees stood almost naked, rising to a height of 30 feet, blowing in the harsh wind.
Somewhere in the middle of the road, with a few more miles still ahead to go on it, Arkaneh stopped the van and turned off the engine.
He turned around and watched as Graysen closed Tylen's eyes with a sad expression on his face. "He's gone," he declared. Arkaneh didn’t appear even slightly sad. His face remained as serious and devoid of any emotion as always.
"Let's go," Arkaneh ordered the two without even giving them any more than 5 seconds to mourn their brother.
"Go where? What are we doing here?" asked Ferro.
Arkaneh grabbed a black bag from the left rear corner of the back of the van and pulled four shovels out of it. "Well, I guess we'll only be using three." He threw the spare shovel back into the van. He looked into Ferro's fiery eyes and knew he was bound to hand out some explanations. "Griffiths's orders," Arkaneh said. "Before we went out, he told me that if anyone should die on this attack, they must be buried here, where no one will ever find their body."
"W-Why?"
"Because if the news reports that another one of us got killed in a fight against the Justicars, our image will be damaged again. We can't have anyone knowing that we lost two brothers." He hated using that last word. Ferro exchanged glances with Graysen as if the two were deciding telepathically whether or not to trust him. Eventually, after a few seconds, they each grabbed a shovel.
The three crawled out of the van, with Graysen carrying Tylen's body on his back, and Ferro carrying Tylen's dead partner. Following Arkaneh's lead, the three walked into the forest for a few minutes until hitting a 100 square foot clearing. "Here." Arkaneh shoved his shovel into the ground, marking the place to bury the bodies.
The three started digging vigorously. As a pile of dirt stacked on one side of the clearing, a hole was created on the other. For a bit more than 10 minutes they thrust their shovels into the ground again and again, until the grave was complete.
"That’s enough," Arkaneh ended the tiring digging process with the wipe of his sweat. The other two dropped their shovels to the ground and placed the two bodies in the hole. The grave was wide enough to take the two without needing to stack one body on top of the other.
"Great job, guys," Arkaneh acknowledged their hard work.
"So, what now?" asked Ferro. A slight curve appeared on Arkaneh's mouth. He looked at the two with his cold, dead eyes, giving them a chance to realize the answer for themselves a second before he drew his gun. They had no time to react. No time to do anything against it. Their fate was sealed as soon as they got into that van with the ominous blonde-haired tenderfoot known as Arkaneh Frye. He pulled the trigger, shooting Ferro in the head, and then quickly shooting again at Graysen's head. It happened so fast that none of them could even show any hint of a facial reaction. Arkaneh found himself slightly disappointed at that. He wished to catch a look at their expressions upon the face of death.
Once he threw their bodies on top of the other two in the grave, he started shoveling dirt back in. Once the bodies were almost completely covered, he took one last glimpse at Ferro's dead expression. Arkaneh felt nothing. Not even a shred of sympathy or guilt. His face remained the same, cold as the winter's night. Upon finishing, he went back into the van and drove away, this time heading for the abandoned factory in Ravenwey Burrows.
With the van now empty, Arkaneh relished the silence he had from all the nonsense every one of those 'brothers' around him kept blurting. Ever since joining their ranks, his dislike for people had only grown.
I can't know for sure if Griffiths is the rat, but I have to cover that possibility. An idea was already forming in his mind to tackle the situation.
Once he finally arrived at the abandoned factory, he entered the old building and climbed up the deteriorating stairs to the main hall. While some of the machinery was pushed aside against the wall to make room, some of it could not be moved. The resulting outcome was a large, spacious room with several large machines standing in seemingly random spots. Some of the men were sitting and talking while a few others were maintaining their guns.
In the right corner of the hall stood a room, at the top of a staircase just as shaky as the previous one, which Griffiths claimed as his office. Arkaneh could see the OldGen's cigarette smoke trail through the clear windows in that room. He climbed the stairs and entered the lieutenant's office, catching Griffiths just as he was snorting a short line of Vex.
"I just got tipped off about what happened there," said Griffiths as he rubbed his nose. A few grains of the addictive, high-inducing purple powder still lingered below his nostrils. "Two dead Justicars, none on our side. Great work. Where are the rest?" he took an inhale at his cigarette.
"They're all dead." Arkaneh blatantly announced. "The Justicars killed them all. Only I made it out."
"Oh… I see." His expression turned grim. "Did you bury them, then?"
"Just as you ordered. Deep in the forests of Servein." Arkaneh sat down in front of his desk. Griffiths's SmartWrist rested on the table in its straight form, next to an empty bottle of scotch stood and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts, its latest one still emitting a faint smoke trail.
"Fuck, how many did we lose? 3?"
"4." That old junkie can't even hold count of his men.
"Goddammit." He put out the cigarette. "Shit around here comes in piles."
"What do you mean?"
Griffiths slid his SmartWrist across the table to Arkaneh in utmost contempt and indifference. The pictures of two people presented on the digital display. The first was a male with long black hair, big dark eyes, and rough stubble across his face. The second one was a young female, hardly older than 16, with long, silky brown hair, turquoise-colored eyes, a small nose and slightly puffy cheeks.
"Three of our brothers were killed in a warehouse in Ashcote. These are the two fuckers whose DNA was left on the scene. He's an ex-soldier of Blackburn's and she works at the Godly Succubi." The names 'Demilan McCloud' and 'Maileena Banister' were written at the bottom of the portraits.
"The Godly Succubi? You mean in the VIP section?" Griffiths refused to answer that question directly, but his reluctance was more than enough for Arkaneh to know that the answer to that was 'Yes.' I've heard plenty of rumors about the hidden VIP section of the Godly Succubi. Most of the girls, if not all of them, are bought from Lady Dread, whose human trafficking business is one of her primary sources of income.
"APD are backing off to let us have them, so the word's out that—" he stopped and sighed. "Oh, fuck it, why am I even telling this to a fucking tenderfoot?" He grabbed the SmartWrist from Arkaneh's hand in frustration and placed it inside a drawer in his desk. "God, I wish Talimay was here to take some of this shit off my back, but she's still in mourning for her brother…" he mumbled to himself.
"Forget about this now, there's something you should know, Griffiths," said Arkaneh, drawing Griffiths's eyes to him. "I tortured one of those Justicars to give up some information. Obviously, he had nothing on their HQ's location, but he did tell me about a gun trade taking place today."
"A gun trade? With who?"
"I don’t know. He said they never tell them who the supplier is, just like they don’t tell them about the HQ location."
"Well, that’s a shame. Knowing who supplies weapons for the Justicars would have helped a great deal."
"Then we have a chance to find that out while also doing considerable damage to them. He gave me an exact time and place."
"You're shitting me." He drew closer to the blonde tenderfoot. This is exactly why I killed those two halfwits, Ferro and Graysen, so no one could reveal my lie about this gun trade, and so that I would get his exclusive attention.
"It's happening in Swillstorm. We have a few hours. I say we gather a team and sabotage that trade. Not only will we get to kill some of them, but we'll also finally learn who's arming them. Once we know that, we might even be able to sever that trade connection."
"This might just cripple those fuckers."
"Exactly. Give me a list of your best men, and I'll drive them myself to the meeting point.
"Y-You? I don’t know… I mean, you're just a—"
"Tenderfoot? I think I've just proven myself against the Justicars."
"Yeah, but—"
"Think about it. If Reus learns that we caught the Justicars' gun supplier… heck, we might even be able to turn him to our side, making him OUR supplier. Reus would be showering you with everything you could ever ask for."
Griffiths stroke his goatee, pondering Arkaneh's wise words. That’s it. Take the bait. If there's anything that appeals to scum like you, it's greed. "Alright, fine." Jackpot.
"Let me worry about filling the guys in, you just make me that list of men and send me on my way." This would make sure that the trap would be set solely for Griffiths since I won't be telling them where we're going or why. If any of them know that, then I won't be able to rule Griffiths as innocent or guilty no matter the outcome. Only Griffiths must know. If he is the rat, and the Justicars show up there, it will prove that he's the leak, whether it's him doing it directly or using a wire device unbeknownst to him.
"Alright. I'll make you that list."
As Arkaneh sat there for the next few minutes, letting Griffiths know about the place and time of the supposed trade, each time he looked at the old lieutenant, he couldn’t help but see him as a little child who has just fallen into his trap. Arkaneh never tortured anyone. There was no gun trade. There was only a rat that had to be flushed out.
