Chapter Five
Emil hissed as Lukas cautiously pressed a few fingers onto the spot on the side of his calf where the blood seemed to be seeping from, examining the wound. He sighed shakily, but was only slightly comforted. "It's just a scratch. A deep scratch, mind you, but there's no bullet buried inside of you."
"That's good news," Emil grumbled with a grimace, "although it doesn't feel very good."
"Emmy!" Mathias exclaimed, horrified. He had forgotten that he was supposed to be acting as the lookout, and had noticed Emil's injury when he turned to the brothers. "You're bleeding! Does it hurt?"
"Of course it does."
"Get back to your post, Mathias." Lukas pointed in the direction away from them, signaling Mathias to turn around, and then to Emil, "We need to get this wrapped up."
"I don't need to take off my jeans, do I?"
"We can rip it open!" Mathias suggested, peering over Lukas's shoulder and not returning to his post, probably because he wasn't sure what it meant. "Your pants are already torn."
"Mathias," Lukas's voice was edged with a warning, "I can handle this. Leave."
"You can tear out the sleeve from your shirt to wrap it up nice and tight," the taller blonde added. "Here, let me help." He reached forward to further split open Emil's ruined jeans, but his hand was slapped away.
"I'll handle this," hissed Lukas. "You get away from him."
Mathias shrugged, lifting both hands in the air. "I was just trying to help."
"Help?" The elder brother sounded incredulous. "You've done enough, thank you very much." He stood suddenly, spinning around to face his victim, ramrod straight spine making him seem taller than Mathias despite the actual height difference. "If you didn't insist on coming to this cursed city, none of this would have happened. We wouldn't have been attacked, Emil wouldn't have gotten hurt, and we wouldn't be stranded in this place because there are probably more assassins placed around the city to hunt us down!" Then, Lukas sneered disdainfully. "To hunt you down."
Mathias frowned. "I don't-,"
"Of course you don't. You've probably already forgotten everything I said, not to mention what had happened." Lukas turned away, ignoring Emil's wide-eyed stare, and began to pull open the torn cloth to reveal the weeping wound.
Mathias gingerly stepped forward. "Can I-?"
Lukas shook his head. "Forget about it. That's what you do best, isn't it?"
Finally realizing that he had done something to screw everything up and make his best friend angry at him, Mathias tried to make amends. "Lukas-"
But the smaller blonde whipped around, an enraged expression, cold blue eyes wide and glaring, teeth bared. "SCRAM."
Mathias was startled by the vicious sharpness that slapped him in the face, and with barely a moment of hesitation, he did just that: he scrammed.
He did not go far: just enough so that Lukas and Emil were still in view, but they could easily ignore him if they wanted. He slumped down against a brick wall, hugging his knees to his chest, and felt that despicable feeling of loss rising again from that black hole in his mind. The feeling came so often he was almost used to it, but still it never failed to make him feel like a petrified child wandering in the dark, searching and weeping and pleading for- "Help!"
Mathias froze, jerking upright, blue eyes wide and curious.
"Please, somebody!"
Was he imagining that voice? It didn't sound too far away…
He got to his feet, just as the same small, frail voice called again, "Help!"
Around a corner and peeking into the darkness of a deep alleyway, Mathias heard the voice become clearer, desperation laced into the imploration.
"Sir, please, I beg of you…"
"Hello?" he called, still waiting for his eyes to adjust and make out the dark lumps at the dead end. "Somebody there?"
"Yes, yes please…"
Mathias stepped into the alley, and he noticed something pale in the midst of the shadowy shapes. The lighter shapes shifted and moved, and the voice seemed to come from them. "Please help…"
It was a child, he realized suddenly as his eyes finally decided to adjust to the darkness. A little girl, no older than ten; the pale things were her face and limbs, marred by ugly bruises. One of her legs was twisted in an awkward angle, and her dark eyes shed silvery tears that made her cheeks glisten. "Please…"
"You're-" Oh, this was bad, this was awful. This little girl was hurt and Mathias didn't know what to do… "Are you okay?"
The girl did not answer, instead crumbling into broken sobs and choking. "I want my mother…"
"Okay, okay." He squatted down, hands fumbling and nervous, touching her shoulders and hands without really knowing what to do. "Where- Where is your mother?"
"I want to go home…"
"Shh…" He didn't know how to do this! He should comfort her, but he should bring her home to her mother but he doesn't know where and-!
"Please, sir…" She reached up with both hands, pleading for a hug, and being the disoriented person he was, Mathias gave it to her. She held him tight around the neck, wailing into his shoulder as his own hands fluttered confusedly. They landed around her waist, and he wrapped her up gently in his strong arms.
"Here, I should-," and that was when he felt the needle prick his neck.
Startled, Mathias dropped the girl, clapping a hand to his neck, where something was numbing his skin and spreading…
"Isn't she brilliant?" a voice called suddenly; a semi-familiar voice, but no longer warm and affectionate. The bright streetlights enabled him to see only the silhouette of the speaker, a tall, willowy woman, long hair tied back, with a confident gait and a cruel voice. Mathias found his vision shifting queerly, unable to focus as the numbness spread outwards down his shoulder, seeping into his skull. When the woman moved, she was a blur of shadows, and when she laughed, the sound bounced and echoed in his head, blocking out all other sounds while he swayed on his feet. One leg gave out, the other kicking weakly as the ground came rushing up, bare inches away with his elbows and arms as a weak, trembling support.
"Who're…?" he tried to call, but his tongue was a dead slab of meat in his mouth, moving sluggishly, the words dragging out and slurring. "What…?"
Mathias squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push the nauseating feeling away to no avail. When his eyes opened again – with great difficult as he fought the sudden, overwhelming sense of drowsiness, the shadowy woman had disappeared from her spotlight, but there was gentle hand caressing his cheek and running comfortingly through his hair as that malicious voice cooed, "Poor, little Viking, lost in the dark. Do you even know the way home?"
"Home…?" Hjem, he said, and wasn't entirely sure what it meant.
"Ja, come home," she said, an unpleasant accent marking words from a familiar language.
"Home…" he repeated, and found himself grasping at memories of hours on hours of staring at blank walls and the joy and relief when the door opened every afternoon. "Lu…kas…"
The memories slipped from between his fingers no matter how tightly he clutched them, and he felt the darkness swoop in.
It was the reckless sort of release seeking decision Lukas had made on one of his sleepless nights. All the lights were on, of course – he wasn't sure how he had managed to sleep without them before.
The apartment was silent with an electric hum in the air from all the open lights – the Bad Touch Trio never returned to it afterwards, and Tim and his siblings had their own places to take care of.
But Lukas stayed.
He didn't know why, especially since it reeked so much of… his death, but home smelled too much like his life, and for some reason, that was even more painful.
So he stayed, with the musky air and dusty sheets and old, flickering lights. The familiar banner fluttered in the nonexistent breeze beyond the balcony, and Lukas could find little pinpoints of red from hypersensitive cameras, like red eyes that wouldn't stop staring, no matter what happened, no matter how much you pleaded, no matter how hard you fought.
That was when the thought hit him, and he had to wrestle with it a bit because- wasn't it still a bit near home?
But then- what did it matter? Root out the danger closer to your heart, and the more likely you'll survive.
He barely lasted till noon before he couldn't take it anymore. Strolling into the building dressed in casually formal clothes was easy, and no one glanced his way as he took the elevator up to the seventh floor, four levels from the very top.
The level was mostly deserted, voices seeping from cracks into the hallway he was strolling past in, wondering where he should start.
But his musings went to waste when he passed a guard patrolling the halls, and he was stopped.
"Hey, you're not-"
Blood had a very distinctive smell and taste, metallic and lifeless and lukewarm, but there was a hidden sweetness that most people forget. Blood was beautiful; if only it was a bit easier to wash out.
The body dropped to the floor, and he left it there, front stained and hands covered in crimson life.
It seemed like he would have to start here.
The well-oiled hinges did not creak, but there was a bang and crack as his foot connected with the first office door he came to and decided to enter with a semi-dramatic entrance. The office, unfortunately crowded, was startled into silence, but the blood dripping from his hand and knife drew a scream from a woman quite close to him.
A simple snap of his wrist, and she was silenced, his knife stabbing into her open mouth and through the other side, severing her spine and pinning her to the wall. His footsteps were silent as he approached the feebly twitching woman, but there was a disgusting squelch as he wrenched his knife free. She dropped to the ground and did not move.
The spell was shattered.
Several screams pierced through the air, accompanied by loud shouted threats and the sound of guns being readied and aimed: some things he could reap after he'd planted death.
He moved before they were actually ready to punch him full of holes, and the first gun he took from a man writhing on the ground and choking on his own blood was the only one he needed to take down everyone in the office.
Then, just because he could, he casually tucked six more guns into his belt. The more the merrier, right?
He didn't even need gasoline or oil: bodies burned easily, and the wooden furniture did nothing but help. It started off as a small smolder, smoke curling lazily towards the ceiling.
When the fire alarm rang, there was nothing more on seventh floor than blood and carrion, and he was halfway through the sixth floor.
A simple spark, and that floor was set ablaze as well.
The elevators were abandoned, but traffic clogged the stairs as everyone hogged in that direction for escape.
He waited vigil on the first floor, guns in hand, and the moment the first fleeing face appeared, he opened fire.
The cameras watched him, alarmed, and somewhere overhead, there was an explosion, accompanied by the screams of desperate souls who had escaped through the window to avoid the flames, only to splatter onto the ground like water balloons filled with dark red liquid.
The rushing mob was overwhelming, and he wasn't particularly in the mood to cut down every single person in a burning building, so all it took was one bullet: aimed towards one beady red eye, and suddenly, gas was spewing everywhere, and the building was in lockdown.
He was out the door before the bullet proof double doors could slide and bolt shut. Bullet proof did not necessarily mean sound proof, and there was the frightened screams and hopeless pounding against the doors and windows before the first of the fiery tendrils brushed against the permeating gas.
The force of the explosion sent trees snapping, and the building crumbled on itself and all the occupants inside.
Outside the apartment window, the world was a blazing inferno. If Lukas tried, he could almost imagine that the fire burned cold: it was a pity it didn't.
After all, that was how hell burned, and if hell was going to crumble, let the fire burn towards the heavens.
I updated!
Not the best chapter, no, but I updated!
I'm not very satisfied with it, but when am I ever?
The plot has finally started to accelerate (hopefully).
Thank you for reading, and PLEASE REVIEW!