Chapter 1

He was running from the police when he heard the screams. Well, technically, hiding from the police. He'd found his way onto a rooftop by way of pushing a dumpster underneath a fire escape in a back alley, and he'd been laying low, figuring he'd wait till nightfall just to be careful. He'd run into cops before, and only once he'd made the mistake of trying to escape from a perfectly good hiding spot early. Plus, it wasn't like he had anywhere he needed to be, well, until he heard a woman screaming. He'd heard that kind of scream before, and he knew in his heart that it wasn't a joke or the result of a prank. There was another, and he could hear the high pitched whine of pain in that voice, and though he was about as much of a hero as a stray cat covering up a pile of shit in a vegetable garden, he knew he'd never sleep peacefully at night again if he ignored this.

So, against his rule of never drawing attention to himself, he got up and scrambled hands and feet over the slightly sticky and warm shingles of the shitty apartment roof. This was probably one of those five story apartment buildings in the city with the outdoor skeleton staircases and the single elevator that was out-of-order as much as it was occupied by the fat family who constantly broke it. Suddenly he heard another scream of pain, a muffled plea for help, and his pace quickened; He was right on top of the flat, he was sure, he could hear thumping and yelling below. He looked over the edge of the roof and saw the concrete balcony below him, and he jumped down facing the sliding glass door to keep from having a bout of vertigo. He stood up, and tried the door, view blocked by wall length plastic blinds. Locked, damn! He thought.

"Please no! Stop! Please stop hurting him, please!" a woman inside begged, as he noticed the metal chair and table set next to him, a man inside yelling something about money.

The woman was standing in front of her teenage daughter, arms wide, trying to shield her from the three men in her apartment, one aiming a Colt 1911 at her and her daughter while the two were trying to hold down her husband to beat him. Suddenly one of the other two men yelled in agony as the man pinned on the floor clenched his jaw on the attacker's arm, earning a relentless bout of punching and screaming – and that's when a patio chair flew through the balcony window, quickly followed by a guy diving between the blinds with a knife, shouting, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?"

For a half second, everyone was stunned; then the man with the pistol swung it in the unexpected guest's direction – who jumped on the other side of a couch - and was about to start yelling himself when the mother charged him. He tried to react in time, and she had one hand around his throat, the other grasping for the gun, when he finally reacted.

One gunshot, two, a third, and the howling of the man on the floor who had kicked the third asshole in the back of the knee when he turned to face the new intruder, still being beaten by the man whose arm he was trying to bite clear through. The guy with the knife ran over the couch, using it as a launchpad to assault the gunman, tackling him and smashing both of them against the dining room wall of the open flat. He was drawing his blade from the bastard's shouldee, and plunging it back into the crook of his neck and shoulder when the gun went off again – and he jumped, visibly shocked - then realized he was fine and the gun was now on the floor – he spun on his heel and saw a man helping another man up.

The second man was holding a Beretta 9mm with his left hand, the same one he was trying to cradle his injured arm in, and the other man did a double take in the guy's direction. He turned towards him, revealing a huge gleaming blade – a bowie knife much bigger than his own pocket knife now lodged in the neck of a man yelling loudly - gargling actually - on the floor in his own blood.

He charged at the teen, who dropped to the floor, tripping up the large attacker. The boy saw the 1911 next to him and didn't hesitate, grabbing it and pulling the trigger several times at the man's back. He turned around as quickly as he could while standing up, to see the man with the chunk of his arm missing running out the door. He spun around in an adrenaline-fueled whirl, looking the trashed flat over several times.

He stared at the bodies around him: a woman, the mother, lay facedown on the tan carpet in front of him; the man to his left lay on his side, back to the wall, neck and chest covered in blood; behind him was the man he shot in the back, still clutching the bowie knife. The man in the dining room lay face up next to the flipped over dinner table, blood pooling under his head, a dime sized hole an inch up and over to the left from his left temple.

And then the girl emerged from behind the couch he had jumped behind earlier. He gently lifted his hands, palms towards her to show he wasn't going to harm her. She looked on at him and the scene around him with the dazed expression people get when they go into shock.

The boy said something that she nodded at, her mind completely blank, refusing to process what had just happened. She walked towards her mother and knelt down, trying to roll her over, the limp weight fighting her. He quickly knelt down beside her, and put his hand on her shoulder, and said something else, facing her but looking at the mother with his eyes. He lifted her gently on to her side, and went to put two of his fingers next to her throat to check for a pulse, and paused mid-motion, noticing the hole on the bottom of her jaw and the little line of blood already starting to cake, pointing upwards against gravity from another hole, higher up on her left cheek. He continued to go through the motions, feeling for a pulse, but the girl sat back on her feet, staring at her mother's slack face, head tilted slightly to one side.

The image of those droopy eyelids only half-closed over two eyes facing in slightly different directions etched itself into her memory. The tip of the tongue sticking out slightly against the roof of the half open mouth, just behind her teeth. The way her dark hair lay like a river frozen midflow over a small waterfall.

It was disgusting. It was sad. It was pathetic. It was so unlike anything she'd ever imagined about death. She knew as soon as she saw her mom like that that there was no pulse. And she just sat there, trying to fathom…

The guy looked at the girl. She was sitting there, on her knees, the dazed look replaced by one he could only mentally describe best as betrayed, but in a sad way, resigned, not the angry betrayal of someone who has been betrayed by someone, but the betrayed you feel when something is completely out of your control.

It was the panicked knocking of a misguided tenant on the apartment across the hall that woke both from their shocked stares. He blinked a few times, the exhaustion from the lull after the adrenaline rush leaving his face, eyes becoming alert. She just looked at the door with a tired face.

"I uh, I can't stay here for the cops. This whole shitshow is way over my head, I'm sorry, and I can't be here any longer. I heard someone who needed help and- I- I- I am so, so sorry about all of this. I want to help you but there's nothing else I can do."

He shook his head. He took one more spin, looking around the place, and then slowly headed towards the balcony. He stepped by her slowly, feeling an uneasiness about leaving her. He felt differently about most things than different people, so this was unusual for him, but then again, even though he'd been in plenty of fights and encounters with both sides of the law, he'd never killed anyone before or witness someone else's family get killed.

He stood on the balcony, looking down, trying not to pay attention to the people on the other side of the street looking out their windows from between the blinds, too afraid to do anything but call the police and wait for someone else to clean up the mess. He figured he could drop down each of the four balconies below him, but he realized the open street below with all the watching eyes would only help him get caught. He turned around and walked back inside, trying not to look at the girl next to the couch, when she mumbled something.

"What… what'd you say?' he ventured, trying to not be a completely insensitive douche.

Clearing her throat, she said louder than she meant to, "Where are you going?"

"I'm uh, I'm… I'm not… I don't have a home. I just walk from city to city, sometimes I work under the table, but usually people don't hire me, so for the most of the past three years I've been… anyway."

"Who are you? You came through the window… who does that?" she asked, finally looking at him, and he could see she was starting to come out of her fog.

"I'm no one. Like I said, just a nobody who's going nowhere. And I was hiding from the police. On the roof," he said matter-of-factly.

And then she did the damndest thing. She smiled. It started as a confused grin and quickly spread from one ear to the other, and then she started chuckling, and after a second she was bent over laughing, head in her hands, hair in the gaps between her fingers.

And he couldn't help himself but damnit he grinned, and he had no idea why. He shook his head and became serious as the grave again, and when she looked back up she was calm again, eyes shining brighter from tears that hadn't fallen, and she looked down again and wiped them away with the back of her hand before they had a chance to.

He heaved a sigh, blowing out the heavy gunmetal taste in his mouth from residue, and asked, "You gonna be ok?"

"I guess. What other option do I have? I'm alive. That's better th-" and she suddenly stopped, looked down again, gulping the knot in her throat. Another rub of the eyes. And she took a deep breath and sighed too.

"Shit," she said, gesturing limply at the carnage around them, gently shaking her head in disbelief.

"Yeah." came the agreement.

"Look, cops should be here soon, but I can't stay till then. I gotta go. I wish there was something I could do for them… for you. You're the one who has to deal with this shit, not them. So… uh, goodbye."

"Just like that? What about the po… right, you said you were running from them. What about the gun? That's evidence, right? But you can't wipe your prints, because that's tampering with stuff." she went on.

"I just don't worry about any of that sort of thing… laws an' stuff. I have my own sort of code I go by. I know that sounds weird to someone like you, but the world is just a big rock with animals trying to survive on it. All this 'society' and 'rules' crap, it's all in our heads. It doesn't exist or have meaning anywhere else. And I'm not sticking around for a bunch of thrill-seekers and control-freaks to interrogate me or beat my ass to a pulp," he confessed.

He took his short sleeve button up off (not that he ever buttoned it, he just liked tanks tops and unbuttoned shirts) and rigorously wiped off the chair he'd smashed the window with, then walked over and paused for a moment, before pulling his blade out of the dead man's neck.

"Let's see," he said, cringing a little as he wiped it off on his shirt. "I touch anything else?" he asked himself.

Nope, he thought, and he looked at the girl one last time as he approached the door, swinging his shirt around as he tried to put it back on.

"Well… have a good life, I guess," he said with an expression that conveyed his awareness of how poor of a farewell that was.

"Tch, you too..." she said back, holding her knees to her chest and looking in his direction but not making eye contact. She leaned her head against the back of the couch for a second, then looked over to ask one last…

… He was gone.

Where the hell… I didn't even hear him walk out, she thought to herself.

She took one look around the room, and realized… she didn't want to wait for the cops either. Tears began to spring in her eyes, and she tried to get up but her vision started going black. She sniffed and wiped her eyes again, waited out the momentary blindness and accompanying dizziness, like the world was swinging her around on the end of a string with a blind fold on. She stood up again, holding onto to the couch for support, and when she made her way over, she took the pair of keys off the hook by the door, and paused for a moment.

Don't look back, it'll just be harder…

And with that, she stepped out the open doorway, and walked down the hall to the stairs.