Finding Mathias
Prologue
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank you all warmly for coming." The man who spoke raised his glass of wine as a salute to the others situated around the small, round table. He wore white suit with a pale green tie, black shoes polished, normally unruly brown hair now tamed and smoothened into a more formal and business-like appearance.
"Oh, Romulus," one of the four other people standing around the dining table gave a small laugh. "Ever the courteous gentleman." It was a regal, beautiful woman who raised her wineglass as well and inclined it to the man – Romulus. Her face was free of make-up save for a light lipstick and mascara, but her dark curls were smoothed back into a bun held in place with twisting gold, and her royal blue dress hugged her figure snugly. "There's no need to be so formal, is there? We're all friends here."
"Helena is right." The deep rumble of a tall and broad-shouldered man caught the attention of the other people in the small luxury compartment. "This is a day of celebration." His long blond hair and stoic expression made him all the more intimidating in more ways than one, but his icy blue eyes were soft as he gazed around the room.
Romulus threw back his head and gave a quick bark of laughter. "How true." He lifted his glass once more. "Then let me say this: we're in Rome, which means I'm probably paying the bills. This restaurant is not cheap, and we're all growing old and fat, so don't eat too much!"
"Of course," a third man spoke up, his pale lips curling into a light-hearted smirk. "We shall eat till our stomachs burst and drain your wallet completely." He ran a hand through short, light blonde hair, violet-blue eyes filled with a playful light.
"Erikur, honestly," another woman spoke this time, rolling her eyes. Her caramel colored skin and golden eyes gave her an exotic look, her black hair was neatly trimmed to just above her shoulders, a gold headband keeping her bangs at bay. Her flowing white dress was modest enough, but golden bangles and bracelets rattled from her wrists and slender neck. "Today is not just a day of celebration, it is also a day of remembrance. Let's take this a bit seriously first before going wild, shall we?"
"Of course, Nefertiti. Valid point." Romulus cleared his throat and said, "Two years ago, on this day, we created paradise among humanity. Despite many obstacles, God – or Allah," he shot a quick glance at Nefertiti, who gave a small smile, "– has helped us overcome all problems, and allowed us to flourish and grow. Today, let us celebrate and remember this day as the day paradise was born." He lifted his glass of dark red wine, his actions echoed by the others around the table.
"To Paradizo: the origin of Paradise!"
He knew she was awake the moment he entered the room, but she did not actually stir. Her light blonde hair, silvery in the moonlight, was splayed over her pillow, her pale skin almost glowing. A slender arm was thrown over the steadily rising and falling chest of her husband, who remained oblivious to the dangerous trespasser in the room.
A child, no older than two, snored gently in a crib near the bed, the round features filled with such life and innocence he felt guilty just by looking at him.
Her eyelids fluttered, cracking open curiously, unafraid to stare at him. Her lips moved quickly, but the words were soft, and reached him a second later. "They sent you."
"I'm sorry." The words scraped against his throat, raw and broken.
"Don't be." She rose gracefully, thin blankets slithering off her slender shoulders and revealing too much cleavage behind a thin nightgown. He quickly averted his eyes. "I actually expected you to come a bit earlier."
"Laila?" The man next to her stirred, groaning slightly as he woke. "What-" And then he saw him.
The husband shot up into a sitting position, dark blue eyes wide and staring. For a moment, all that was on his face was cold terror, before it drained away, and the man laughed.
He did not see what was so funny about the situation.
"It's time then, isn't it?" the man asked no one in particular. "Don't know if I expected it or if I'm surprised."
"This is no joking matter," he said coolly.
"No, of course not." The smile disappeared. He flopped back onto the bed, an arm thrown over his eyes. "Just make it quick."
He glanced at Laila, who was staring down at her husband. She felt his gaze, and she nodded slowly. "This is the only way to do it. Any way else would only make life a living hell." Then, she gave a bitter laugh. "Not like death is any better."
"You're not going to hell, Laila." It sounded ridiculous, even to his own ears. Where else does a killer go?
Laila was more realistic than him. "Well, I'm not going to heaven either, am I?" She sighed, and offered a small, sad smile. "Just finish it, quickly. Before they wake up." And then she laid down as well, eyes closed, throat clenched.
His knife glinted in the faint light that peeked through the thin curtains, and just like every single time, his hands trembled.
"Arthur." He looked up, away from the weapon and towards the bed where two still figures laid. When she called his name, her voice was soft, but stern at the same time. "Steady."
He clenched the knife harder, and he swallowed thickly. "I can't." He hated how broken and vulnerable he sounded, like a whining child.
"Years of lessons and drills and reminders, and the moment you face the real thing, you throw all my teachings out the window? Don't be an ungrateful brat." How could she sound so lighthearted?
The many voices and words were finally waking the baby in the crib, and there was a little whine.
His hand trembled harder than ever, but he angled it, stepping forward towards one side of the bed. The man first.
He had wanted a quick, maybe clean death, but it did not end that way. Between one breath and another, he slit the throat unevenly open, and the second breath was a gurgling choke of blood congesting his nose and pumping through the severed arteries and veins, spraying into air and splattering the room.
He stumbled back, horrified. "I'm sorry-"
"Arthur!" Laila was nearly drenched with her husband's blood. The man beside her convulsed, jerking as he choked on liquid life. He gave one more spasm before stilling, and the blood stopped spraying.
The child uttered a small wail, shifting in the crib, before quieting on his own accord.
The woman's eyes were squeezed shut, but otherwise she seemed unperturbed by her husband's ugly death. "Arthur," she repeated, and now, her eyes were open, staring unseeingly at the small splatters of blood on the ceiling. "Are you still alive?"
"I don't know," he mumbled miserably. "I don't understand why this is happening. This isn't right: how did it become like this?"
"Greed," was Laila's reply. He was standing over her now, hilt gripped tight in his hand, trying not to aim the blade at himself the way he truly wanted to. "And paranoia. Paradizo is wonderful, but it's not truly heaven, and everything on earth goes rotten some time, sooner or later." She glanced at the knife in his hands. "Do it," she ordered. Then with a teasing, almost sly, smile, she added, "I'm not going to go down quietly like Sigurd, you know."
He forced himself to smile, and watched her chest rise once, fall, and then the blade was drawn over her throat, and everything was blood again. But this time, the blood was not silent.
Dark liquid gushed from Laila's mouth as she unhinged her jaw wide and released a shattering scream. The child in the crib woke abruptly, and he wailed with his mother. It was difficult for Laila to draw breath, so she was only able to gulp down liquid filled air before another scream exploded from her.
He was paralyzed and terrified and broken beyond repair, and he thought that maybe he should just shoot himself in the head right now and then to end it all because it was simply becoming too much for him. The knife clattered from his gloved hands, and he found himself pulling free the gun strapped to his belt.
The screaming trailed off into silence, and Laila was dead beside her husband, their horrifying deaths painted across the rooms. But the baby screamed with sobs, and Arthur Kirkland felt incredibly guilty for letting death linger so close to such an innocent creature.
Patters of small feet sounded in the hallway outside the chamber. There was another child.
He lifted his gun; his hands were no longer trembling.
The lure of death was stronger than ever, especially with such power in his hands.
Maybe he should just-
Lukas woke up, and realized that he was not trembling in the middle of the night so many years ago with silent screams echoing on the walls and blood still slick and warm on the walls. It took him yet another moment to realize that he was sleeping in the middle of the day in a silent room with the musk of death still lingering and blood already black on the walls.
Where was he? He remembered she said-
Frankfurt.
He shot up, finding himself on the coach in a blood-splattered office. A cold corpse of was half sprawled over the desk, head pinned to the wooden surface by a fire poker through one temple and out the other, papers strewn all over the place in a struggle that no doubt lasted for less than a second. She was efficient that way.
Lukas picked himself up from the couch, stretching out his limbs, then grimaced when he caught sight of blood stains on his sleeves, with more on his back, he was sure. She was wonderful in her work, but did she have to make it so messy?
At that moment, two sharp knocks sounded on the office door, a woman's voice calling something in German. Lukas did not understand German, but it didn't matter. He patted his pockets, then cursed mentally when he realized that there was nothing on him save for a scrap piece of paper with the words 'Good Luck' scribbled onto it, a smiley face crudely drawn beside it. Sighing in annoyance, he stuffed the note back into his pocket.
Another great big joke and twisted game of hers, it seems to be.
The woman outside was calling again. "Herr? Bist du da? Herr?"
With a sharp tug, the fire poker squelched off the man's skull, cold gore clinging onto the black metal.
The doorknob turned, and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges, the woman's jaw dropping when she realized what was behind the door. But then he was there, she hadn't even noticed him next to the blood and reeking death, and with a simple thrust, the fire poker stabbed straight into her mouth and through her throat, cracking against her spine. She screamed then, as she fell, blood gushing onto the brown carpets covering the building's floors.
He glanced out the closest window, and found himself much too far from the ground. The building had to be at least fifteen stories tall.
He gave another sigh, no obvious expression on his face other than boredom and slight exasperation. Fifteen stories up with nothing but a fire poker to protect him against assassins and guards armed with weapons of every kind. Not too bad.
Investigating footsteps rushed up from the stairs, the elevator dinged at its arrival.
Not too bad at all.
Bodies were falling, blood was spraying before they even realized that he was there. The elevator was empty of life and the door was closing before the people who had taken the stairs arrived in the hall.
Lukas stepped on corpses of men and women, blood soaking into his black sneakers as he waited for the little box to arrive at the first floor. He examined the creases on the clothes of the slaughtered people, and lifted the end of a jacket to discover two pistols strapped to the belt.
Not bad at all.
Nodding in approval, he freed the guns, just as the elevator chimed again, this time at the fifth floor.
Not ideal, but good enough.
The door slid open, and the people outside the elevator balked at the sight of Lukas, perched atop a mountain of the corpses of their colleagues.
Lukas blinked, lifted a gun, and fired.
Pandemonium erupted. He launched himself out the elevator and into a wide hall with over a dozen men fumbling with their weapons even as he unleashed himself upon them. How foolish and amateur. Shots through the head, the throat, the heart, and Lukas couldn't help but wonder at the sheer easiness of it all. Death must be passing by today.
He was on the third floor now, lesser and lesser people now that everyone was filling into the six elevators around the building and was shooting up towards the top floor where they'd find their director and boss cold and stiff in his office. What a surprise it'd be for them.
Second floor, and a woman was screaming at the sight of him, like a white ghost splattered with dark stains of crimson. She was dead before he realized that it might not have truly necessary to kill her, but he didn't feel guilty. They were all bastards, through and through.
At least, that's what they kept telling and reminding him. That was what he kept telling and reminding himself.
The first floor lobby was empty save for an old woman scrubbing on the floors with a mop, humming quietly to herself. She did not hear his soft footsteps until he was nearly in front of her, and it was just one crack, one jolting backlash of the gun, and it was over and he was finished.
Leave no witnesses, he reminded himself. No one.
He dropped the gun, clapping his hands as if trying to shake off the blood soaking into his skin, and strolled casually out the front door of the building.
She was waiting.
"Ten minutes," she told him as she handed him a jacket and gloves, along with a pair of boots. "Not too bad."
He changed his shoes first, throwing his soiled sneakers back into the building. He turned to her, an eyebrow raised in a silent question. Her confirmation came as the form of a little black box with a small red button in the middle its shiny black surface. He nodded, and threw on the jacket and gloves.
"Let's go." His words were clipped and short, but she only shrugged, hooking an arm around his elbow and gently steering him out onto the streets. They took several turns before she revealed the device again, this time holding it out to him.
"Do you want to do the honors?"
He shook his head, and she shrugged again. "Very well, then." And then she casually pressed the red button, as if it was not connected -
The ground shook, an explosion sounding not far from the distance, cries of alarm and panic rising on the streets as a fire erupted, engulfing and collapsing a fifteen-story building filled with people, dead and alive.
-to a bomb planted inside the Underworld base located in the city of Frankfurt.
She flipped her brown curls over her shoulder, then tossed the little black device into the nearest trashcan, not caring about the evidence it could be leaving behind. Not caring, because it was an Underworld product weaseled out from Antonio's stash, and it would self-destruct ten minutes later. A burning trashcan after an exploded building was suspicious, but it wouldn't be giving anyone anything unless they could wind back time.
She flashed him a charming smile, and tugged at his arm again. Lukas glanced back for a moment, watching the smoke rise into the blue sky, then shrugged.
And allowed Magyar to lead him through the German city as hell began to crumble beneath his feet.
Welcome to Finding Mathias, where everything (quite literally) goes to hell! As usual, updates are inconstant, but I'll try to keep the stone rolling.
A few things before we start:
-This story starts off as a darker, twisted, Hetalian version of Finding Dory, and ends as a dark, twisted, Hetalian version of Sleeping Beauty. I don't know how, or why. It just happened.
-Yes, DenNor will exist here, but it's not the main focus, sorry about that.
-Any questions will be answered further into the plot.
-And... ehh... I forgot. If anything comes up, I'll get it up.
Please review!
