AN: In this, I wanted to go for an 'edgy' feel for this fic, in contrast to the cartoony style of The Third. Not angsty (I hope) but in a different vein to giant sword dildos, Gatmobiles and riding a tank through Loren Square, blowing the shit out of everything. Not that that isn't fun though!
The protagonist, just to get an image, has a default cockney voice and has no name, just being referred to as 'the boss'. I know it's common practice to give him a name, but I thought it was more fun to keep it as enigma as they do in the game. Also, he's default Caucasian, only with the slick exec haircut. I can never be bothered adjusting my avatar's face to an extreme fine point.
Anyway. For the sections set in Britain and HMP Belmarsh, I wanted to go as authentic as possible on the language and terms. If anyone finds it difficult to read, please mention in reviews. In fact, that reminds me, please review! And enjoy.
Chapter 1
Viola DeWynter had never adjusted well to not getting her own way. It was a personality trait that had lasted throughout her early years, Harvard and service to the Syndicate. It had clawed at her fiercely; when Loren died, she'd planned for her and Kiki to rise to power, but that damn Killbane had gotten in the way. Now, she was in the Saints, and that raging id that demanded power seemed to be showing no sign of cooling down.
She supposed she shouldn't look badly at her place in the gang. She had been rewarded for turning against the Syndicate; she had a regime of her own, as well as all the organisation's resources. The others at her level, Zimos, Angel, Oleg and Kinzie, didn't seem to mind not possessing ultimate power. They saw the Saints' power structure as a necessary thing. Viola, with the same single-minded ambition that impressed Philipe Loren, as well as countless professors at Harvard, saw it as a hindrance. The structure relied on three people; a triumvirate, to quote the Romans. Just from the top there was Pierce and Shaundi. Pierce was fair with everyone, even an enemy turncoat, but he'd rather face the business end of an RPG than give up an inch of the position he'd worked for and cultivated. Then there was Shaundi. Viola didn't need to tap any phones (bad, bad move, Kinzie) to know that Shaundi neither liked or trusted her. She had a natural slant against anyone that hadn't been with the Saints as far back as Stillwater, even those that had never given any reason not to be trusted. Plus, from what Pierce and the boss said, she had taken a turn for the worse after Johnny Gat's death. Grief, even over someone who appeared to be an emotionally unstable authority figure, could do things to a person.
But Shaundi wasn't the wild card. Oh, no. That dubious honour went to the man at the top of the theoretical pyramid. What made Pierce and Shaundi the easy ones to deal with was the fact that Viola could read them. The boss, on the other hand, was a question mark. She only knew a handful of facts about him; he was somewhere between twenty five and thirty, he was British with a strong, rasping accent crafted by years of smoking Marlboros. Like any sociopath, he had the logical mind to lead the gang but in combat situations was violent and unstable. Neither Viola or anyone else knew the basic facts about the man to classify him in any way: his name, his background, et cetera.
The answer came from a place she could never expect. It was a habit of hers to get her news from alternative sources; the press in Steelport was vulgar at best, filled with tidbits about Nyte Blade, pictures of local party-hard celebrities and the filler the masses liked to dose them selves up with. CNN was always a positive, as well as the Liberty Tree over in Liberty City. Even Stillwater, the city the Saints had fled, had informed news. But if she was hard-pushed, her favourite sources came from the United Kingdom. The BBC had never served her wrong.
It was a cold January evening when she saw the video that would change things forever. The others were at the penthouse, drinking and celebrating their success. Viola was laying low, staying out of the cold and avoiding the social enclosure of the gang that she often found stifling. She was on the BBC news, when the link to a video caught her eye.
'Ten years on, the Green Park Murderer still defies justice'.
She clicked the link with interest, expecting to be greeted with a lurid murder mystery, full of shots of forensic teams and coroners. What she got was an old photograph of a man in a suit. He was middle aged and looked important.
"This," read the reporter's narrative overlay, "is Colin Francis. The former CID Chief Inspector was shot dead ten years ago in Green Park. It is believed he was taking a shortcut. The killer fled the scene, but was partially identified. This is a sketch from testimony by the witnesses present."
The screen changed, and a rough sketch of a man was displayed. He wore a dark bomber jacket and a god, but his face was clear. It was a remarkably good sketch. Out of sheer curiosity, she paused the video and studied it closer.
Then, she got the faintest sense of déjà vu . She had seen the killer before. At first, it was a loose, difficult-to-place feeling. She cycled through all of the faces she had collected in her visual memory, trying to match his even slightly. After a few moments, she growled in frustration. It was probably just a resemblance. After all, how many British killers did she know?
One, whispered a voice in the back of her head. Just one.
In an instant, she remembered exactly where she had seen the face before. It was an old, stained photograph she had caught sight of once, on a shelf in the Saints' headquarters. Two men were in it, posing at a bar in Stillwater. One was Julius Little, the late founder of the gang, and the other was a lieutenant of his. Several weeks after the photo was taken, a yacht explosion had left that lieutenant alive, but without a face.
"Incredible," said the dark-eyed man as he studied the two pictures. The 'before and after' of the boss's facial reconstruction was remarkable, and Viola was half expecting him to push the second one back, disputing the likeness.
DCI Jack McGraw had intimidated her as soon as he had come into her apartment. He was part of the London CID, which Viola assumed was some sort of Vice and Homicide office. His eyes tore a hole through her, and there was an icy determination in every word he spoke. After she contacted him, he had taken a red-eye flight from Heathrow only precious few hours ago, but he looked alert as ever, dressed in a dark overcoat and a shirt and tie.
"It's him, alright," he said, with a relieved tone that seemed to detract from his reserved persona. "Jesus. Ten years I've waited for this. Ten fucking years. It never got any easier."
"You knew the victim?"
"Grew up together, Colin and me. Thick as thieves. Tackled some of the worst London had to offer - the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate, Kenneth Noye, Muslims in Finsbury Park. He was married to my little sister. She's a widow, now."
"All because of my boss?"
"That's right," he said. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. His lighter had an engraving of an eagle on it, and the letters CPFC were engraved below in an italic font.
"Oh, there's no smoking in here," Viola said, quickly.
"There is now," he said, blowing smoke in her direction. She considered challenging him on it, but decided against it.
"Now, the way I see it is, you're trying to punish this geezer," said McGraw. "Why don't you dobb him into the local Bill? He's committed, what, one 'undred and fifty murders, low estimate? That's a fast track to the electric chair. If I take him back to Blighty, he'll be in the nick, but he'll live."
"Ah, but he'll be close to the city, even if he's on death row. I want him taken out of the equation. Somewhere he can't run the Saints' business remotely. An ocean's far enough."
"Fink we understand each other," said McGraw. "I'll tell you how this will go down. I know a couple of geezers over in NYC. They'll start 'eadin up now. We get him out of the country back to London to avoid arseing about with extradition. I'll tell the higher-ups I found him hiding out in a squat in Deptford. He won't disagree, cause if he even mentions America, they'll 'ave him back here, waiting to face the chair. Then you can do what you need to do. Keen?"
"Sounds great," said Viola, smiling at the thought of taking over the Saints. "I'll note down his schedule."
The move wasn't made until a week later. The bounty hunters McGraw was planning to use had to pick their ideal moment to strike. Thee was a time when he would have liked to take out Colin's killer with his own brawn, but he was getting old now, and wasn't as much of as physical presence as he had been during the glory days.
They struck when the Saints' limo was travelling between the gang's headquarters and the Safeword penthouse. The Status Quo had a reinforced frame, Viola said, so they would have to hit it hard.
"Is that the car?" Billy Sheenan asked, pointing to the limo as it drove through Steelport's south side. They drove near it in a black Kayak. McGraw had first run into Sheenan's mob in Northern Ireland, where he'd been serving in the army, before he returned to London and joined the police. They originally hired themselves out to loyalists in Belfast, but started to do various merc jobs all over the western world. They had based themselves in New York for the last five years.
"That's the one," Jack responded. "Remember, we gotta ram the fucker until it won't start no more, but not so hard enough so it kills the geezer inside. Got it?"
"Got it," said Billy. He accelerated roughly and made a sharp collision with the limo behind. The windows were blacked out, so they could not see the reaction of the passenger within. They repeatedly hit the vehicle several times, Billy swearing roughly each time. The damned thing had a frame with seemingly unlimited inertia, but it would only take a few more rams to finish it off.
Soon enough, the car ground to a sudden halt. Billy and the others piled out of the Kayak and forced the doors open. Billy put a gun to the limo driver's face, grimacing.
"Get out of here, sonny boy, or I'll feckin' put your face in!" The driver considered his options briefly, then ran as fast as his legs could take him. He turned his attention to the back seat. The boss of the Saints had exited the limo, and he was squaring off to his attackers. He had a bigger physical frame than from before his face changed, and was holding his own well. It took Billy putting a shotgun to his head to quell his aggression.
"Down!" he demanded. "Put your hands up!" He pushed the barrel of the weapon right into the boss's cheek, threatening to decapitate him at a moment's notice.
McGraw got out of the Kayak himself with a pair of handcuffs in one hand and a gun in the other. He smiled with a savage fury that even a relentless sociopath like the boss found himself unnerved by it. He glared up at his captor with an anger of his own.
"I've been waiting to say this to you for ten years," McGraw said, with an eerie serenity. Without pausing, he turned his pistol around to the butt, and pistol whipped the boss aggressively. "You're fucking nicked!"
