Chapter 11: Leave behind the Prison of the Distant Shadows of the Sinking Sun (4)
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Bright lights reflected off the chandelier, creating prisms. The voices of hundreds of people rose into the air. Laughter flowed along with the wine. Did they laugh while drinking, or did they laugh because they were drinking? By this point, no one remembered or cared about the difference.
An elegant party. Something slipped into that decadent atmosphere.
'Something' slipped in from the darkness of a starless night. If anyone had been looking in that direction, they would have seen nothing, only felt the movement. They surely would have said, "It must have been the wind," and gone back to their business. But no one was looking in the first place.
So Alex Mercer slipped into the noble's party without any problems, naturally wearing a different face. Edmond Dantes had every right to attend that party, but for obvious reasons, it was not convenient for that mask to be seen here.
Alex Mercer flowed through the dense crowd of partying nobles without even touching any of them. They might not notice his presence until his work was done. Humans were really poorly designed. It was madness akin to sheep not realizing there was a wolf among them.
Looking into his eyes, in an instant, they should feel that he was not human. They wouldn't scream, wouldn't jump to conclusions, but it was something evident, for sure. Alex Mercer continued through that hall without anyone getting in his way. He was wearing the mask of one of the few nobles who had arrived late. Only this man was paid for it, however, haha.
He could kill anyone in this world easily. To not jeopardize his identity, he wouldn't cause a scene, but isolating them wouldn't be much more difficult. Besides, he had a more personal reason for wanting to be alone with Angelique's parents instead of quickly disposing of them. Could it be called a personal reason when he wasn't really angry with them, had no desire for revenge?
In any case, he would call it that, why not?
From the beginning, this had been about pretending until the mask became reality, after all.
It didn't take long to find his targets. Angelique hadn't given him a detailed description, in fact, she had barely been able to speak, as if she was starting to have second thoughts, or as if the memories were too much for her, but it didn't matter.
He had seen them through Edmond's eyes, and that was enough.
One of the few benefits of having a perfect memory is that he knew without a doubt when he was wrong and when he was right in cases like these.
He wasn't wrong.
He stood behind them, but even so, they didn't notice his presence until he spoke.
"You are the Dumonts." He was going to make it sound like a question, but in the end, he changed his mind. Too much effort for little gain. They would suspect him a little anyway because they didn't know this mask. Besides, he wasn't exactly an actor. He never needed to be. Humans filtered the world through their eyes. What he said had always been less important than his ability to 'resemble' who he needed to resemble—"Do me the favor of accompanying me for a second."
"Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" asked the woman, Rose. "Or at least tell us what you want from us in the first place."
"Well, I'm just a nobody, it doesn't matter."
"Then why should we listen to you?"
"Because it's not me who wants to talk to you.
I'm just delivering the message."
"Who?" said the man, Alan. Neither of them deserved the epithet of father. "Look, if you're here, we're both nobles. I respect that. I don't think nobles should fight each other, especially given the current state of things. It's nothing but a waste of time and effort. But I must confess that you are testing my patience."
Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Too much talking. Nowadays, people would say: Get to the point or I'll send you to hell. Not very refined, perhaps, but then time wouldn't be wasted.
"A certain Edmond Dantes, duke of I'm not sure what. He mentioned something about a transaction from a few years ago? I suppose that will mean something to you."
But it wasn't a question, of course; the change had been instantaneous on both of their faces, more obvious than ever.
I suppose there's no other choice. The man sighed. "What the hell is going to happen now? When and where do we have to meet?"
"Tonight. As for where, he will show you."
"So Edmond is here?" Rose said. "I didn't know he was attending."
"Not technically. He's not here to celebrate and will leave as soon as his business is settled. At least that's what he told me. Anyway, gentlemen, can we finish this as soon as possible? After all, I know your bad reputation... I don't want to give him reasons to get angry with me. Understand me."
"The sooner we finish, the better, yes," said Rose.
Edmond had been merely a count, but his reputation was bigger than that, apparently.
They followed him, finally. He thought they would be chatting for an hour.
He led them to a dark, secluded room and disappeared around a corner.
"Where is he...?"
Only to reappear with the correct face.
"Edmond," said Alan, swallowing hard. "What's the problem?"
"Nothing, Angelique is a good woman, as always."
"Then why do you want to see us?" asked Rose.
Alex took a step forward, like a panther about to pounce on its prey. The night air seemed to be urging him to attack. The wind blowing was like a war cry.
"Do I need a reason to see my in-laws?"
"Well, no, not really, no, but..."
"But nothing. There's no but that matters. I was wondering, since we're here, why did you sell her? Do you feel good about it?"
"Now you bring this up, after all these years?" Rose asked. "Sorry, but I'm not in the mood for your little games. If we have anything to regret, it's because of you."
Alex smiled.
Alan seemed nervous, unable to speak. Apart from being selfish, a coward, at least the woman had guts. Anyway, everyone was selfish, especially him, but that didn't change the mission he had here.
"You knew well what Edmond Dantes was like, and yet you sold your daughter to me. Am I really the one to blame? You just accepted the highest bidder, no matter what he was like, it wasn't your concern. You had already sacrificed to raise her, and it was time for her to start paying you back, I suppose. Am I wrong about anything?"
"What do you want?" asked Rose. "To divorce her, send her away? In any case, it's not something you should be discussing with us."
"Us? You're the only one talking. Your husband was brave enough to sell his daughter like a common whore, but not brave enough to face me, even though I'm just a Duke."
Alan blushed with anger, opened his mouth, but nothing more came of it.
"You're right about one thing, however. Talking is useless. I just wanted, so to speak, to test the waters a bit, although I really don't care what you're like."
Alex let his face, only his face, return to its original form, smiling even wider.
The Dumonts gasped in unison.
"I'm her new husband," he introduced himself. "Your daughter sent me to kill you, but first I'll make you suffer."
Black tendrils shot out from his chest like bullets, and with them, he ripped out their vocal cords before they could scream for help. The carpet in that empty and dusty room quickly turned red.
"It's not my style, I prefer to crush my enemies quickly and decisively, but it's what I should do, right? If I really loved her, I would seek revenge, not just fulfill a favor. It's common sense, isn't it?"
Alex laughed softly.
He advanced towards the Dumonts, who writhed on the floor in pools of their own blood, seeking an escape from an irreversible situation. You reap what you sow, and they had planted the seeds over a decade ago. Therefore, the consequences were inescapable. Now that their daughter had acquired, so to speak, a minimum of power, of course, she would use it against them.
They had put her in that position in the first place.
Edmond might have been just a duke, but he was still nobility. Even if Alex had never come to this world, one day they would have paid for their sins. As soon as Angelique had gotten fed up and tried to kill Edmond.
Then all the power would have come to her hands.
But he had come, so their fate would be much worse than what awaited them at the hands of Angelique.
He imagined she wouldn't have the stomach to do the worst she could imagine to her parents, even if they were just pieces of shit who had given up their responsibility as parents and didn't deserve to be called that, even if she hated them with all her soul.
Alex was different.
Alex could do that and more. And now he had them at his mercy, unable to scream.
"It's nothing personal, but it's what I'm supposed to do, I guess, so I'll do it right." He shrugged. "Otherwise, this exercise of pretending to be human wouldn't make much sense. I don't really know who had the idea first, who's the worse of the two, etc., so I'll be fair."
Alex transformed his right arm into a blade sharper than any sword. He used it to cut Rose's face around her mouth, exposing all her teeth. The blood was hot and thick, flowing non-stop. Through his hands, through the blade of his sword, accumulating on the floor, mixing with the blood of the woman and her husband.
"You have a nice smile. You should have shown it to your daughter more often."
Of course, the woman wasn't crazy enough to be smiling in a situation like this. A smile was just baring your teeth, after all. Her perpetually exposed teeth almost looked like a smile.
Even though they were stained with blood.
He left her whimpering on the floor, her voice barely reaching beyond her own ears, and approached Alan. As he had said, he was going to be fair. In a sense, Alex Mercer was a man of honor. When he said something, he meant it. And no one could stop him.
He painted an identical smile on the husband with his sword. They were whimpering and writhing too much. Their biggest privilege was perhaps that they didn't know what pain was. Alex remembered being tortured thousands of times in thousands of different ways. Naturally, he even remembered the end as if it were his own death. They had no idea what pain or fear was.
Alex was very far from being a human being. That was the point of all this. However...
Even he was closer to being human than these people. I don't just know pain, I am pain. Hundreds of thousands of voices screaming that would never be silenced. Like deep wounds. Like forgotten ghosts.
I can be more than that, he thought.
Alex shook his head. It was true, but that wasn't important right now. He had two vermin to deal with. Now they were squirming on the floor as if begging for mercy, as if he cared. Annoying.
He had already ripped out their vocal cords, but Alex cut out their tongues anyway. First the woman's, then the man's. Just as he had said, equitably. He was going to distribute the punishment fairly, no doubt about it.
Alex smiled as he did it all. The Monster of Manhattan. He was more accustomed to crushing his enemies in the most efficient, albeit certainly brutal, way possible. However, he was also good at torture. He had a large number of torturers inside him and had experienced torture from both sides.
Besides, all those Blackwatch bastards enjoyed it. They filled their mouths with the idea that they were saving the world, but there was nothing they liked more than slashing people and kicking puppies after setting them on fire.
"Speaking of which, as parents you're supposed to love your daughter. What happened to that? I'm really curious, but I promised I wouldn't absorb you."
He managed to penetrate the fog of fear and pain. Although it was impossible for them to fully understand, their eyes were bulging out of their sockets. The fear of that ominous word was stronger precisely because they didn't understand it.
"I could ignore her," he said, shrugging, "but since I'm doing this, I want to do it right. So that will always remain a mystery to me. I am a scientist at heart. I only like unresolved answers to the extent that I can pursue them and corner them until they give me everything they have. Well, even if I healed your throats and tongues you wouldn't tell me anything, so I guess it doesn't matter. I suppose I haven't rushed too much after all."
He stomped on Alan's hand, making it crunch like a dry twig. Even on the brink of death, Rose trembled more violently upon seeing that. The reason was very simple. Because she knew her hand would be next. What you knew for certain could be much scarier than what you didn't know at all. The cruelty of the world was greater than that of your imagination, no matter how experienced you thought you were in that regard.
And these, as he had said, were no experts. They knew nothing of this.
"And if I have rushed, well, my life has always been defined by violence, so I was restless. I had been too long without food to play with. Eh, I'm a good person, okay? I know I promised not to do these things, but this doesn't count because you deserve everything I do to you."
He was talking to himself out loud uselessly, but for some reason he couldn't stop. Maybe because he had no one to listen to him. Not even Angelique, who had heard his story. Especially her. If he told her too much, she would fear him more than be grateful and everything would go to hell.
He had told her a tragedy, after all, in which a newly born being was forced to fight for survival and obtain answers. Not the story of 'something' that had begun to enjoy despair, adrenaline, bloody and rapid evolution. Not the story of something that was really starting to get bored of living in a cardboard world that he could tear in half whenever he wanted.
"Maybe it's an unchangeable biological imperative, and all this is useless. Maybe. But for now, I won't think about complicated things, just enjoy."
They had really been a good excuse to let his hair down.
Alex continued in the darkness the silent torture of the two worms while a few rooms away the nobles continued with their noisy and opulent party under the blinding lights.
Leave behind the Prison of the Distant Shadows of the Sinking Sun (4): FIN