I grew up hungry in the poorest corner of Cretan City, a tragedy of fallen potential called Farsky. Originally intended to be the next big project, a hub of cultural significance, the largest grant funding the would-be arts district had mysteriously dissipated following an infamous mayoral election. Foul play was cited by the team of city planners and art historians that had originally proposed the Farsky model, but after an exhaustive legal battle with the new Cretan mayor’s office, the case was dropped. A neighborhood half-built was left unfinished as a sweeping wave of commercial development took the public’s focus.
My mother was a member of the Farsky development team, a brilliant poet whose praise for the plan’s ambition had sparked the initial flood of donations and grants from the city’s collegiate upper-crust. She threw herself into the project obsessively, dragging our little family along for the ride. Initially reluctant, my father was soon swept up in her vision, investing himself thoroughly in hopes of creating an ideal environment for me to be raised in. They bought an old house in the heart of soon-to-be Farsky, as architectural restoration was one of the plan’s central themes.
I was six when we moved into that house, our things hardly filling a quarter of the space when all was said and done.
“We’ll fill it,” I remember my mother saying to us, that first dusty afternoon as we ate dinner on the ancient hardwood floors, “even if it takes us a lifetime.”
Their zealous desire to realize the dream had arrived too soon, and in a matter of months the proposal had fallen through. My parents—whose tireless efforts had finally yielded them deliverance from the constant struggle of being poor artists—were financially ruined. My father had stopped his work to pursue the plan, and even with my mother’s royalty income from her poetry collections and a professor’s salary, they could barely manage to make payments on their numerous loans. The hard years began then, just when things had seemed so sweet. They would never stop.
Being so young, I don’t think I truly realized how bad things had become until I was thirteen. That was the year I finally registered the existence of my father’s addiction, and the strains it had placed upon my mother. The drug was new on the streets at the time, a nasty inhalant called Reflex. People claimed it made the human brain process things at a rate of seven to one. What they didn’t mention was that when the user came down, the withdrawals would render them effectively tortured by the molasses pace of reality. Crippling depression left my father a husk of himself, and though he promised again and again that he would stop, I could tell that he found our mundane, everyday speed to be a special kind of hell.
Soon enough, even stealing from my mother couldn’t pay for the amount of Reflex that he needed. My father turned to alcohol as a cheaper method to lose himself. I ceased to have any kind of father figure, and between my mother and I, we struggled to make things work. The years slipped by, my adolescence stolen by the pressing need that poverty created, isolating me from my peers. The occasional acquaintance from school would try to befriend me, or I’d catch the eye of admirers from time to time, but I never felt as though I could really identify with those around me.
Still, it was the house itself that this story really begins with. Our love for the thing that represented my parents’ failings; the place that meant the world to me, its expansive emptiness my only escape from the cruel circumstances we lived in; my safe place away from my father’s drunken stumblings and the cold things he would mutter to me when the liquor had him; all of that and more. It was really a beautiful building, all Gothic facade and mysterious, experimental architecture the likes of which no one ever seemed to recognize. I believed it was special, even if it was the force anchoring us in misery so much of the time. That belief would be exploited, beginning my descent into a world I could never have been prepared for.
<|>
I was twenty-three when the letter arrived, the only thing in the mail pile that wasn’t an overdue bill or a threat from a collections agency. Knowing my mother would worry if she saw more correspondence from the city zoning office, I opened the envelope and scanned the letter, picking through the legal jargon and unnecessary fluff. My jaw dropped, my heart hammering in my chest as I read the words forfeiture, demolition, and settlement. I was unstudied, having worked my entire adult life, but it was clear that the city meant to divest my family of our home.
Panic rising in tandem with confusion, I tossed the other mail aside and gathered my coat, barely lacing my work boots in my haste. I rushed to the Cretan City government center, familiar as I was from our numerous dealings with the zoning office in the course of the Farsky case. Natasha, the caseworker responsible for our property, would have answers for me. She represented a heartless machine of bureaucracy, but she had a good heart.
When I arrived at the zoning office, I asked to speak with Natasha. The woman at the front desk told me it would only be a few minutes, so I waited in an uncomfortable plastic chair that could hardly fit my six-foot frame. Shortly thereafter a short man in a gray suit came and collected me, telling me Natasha was busy that day and that he could answer any questions I had for her. This was my first meeting with Alan Parkins, the rat that would torment me, the middle-grade criminal responsible for all of what would follow, good or bad.
<|>
Parkins told me that some previously-unseen powers had taken root in the city council, and were trying to oust unfortunate families like mine all over the Farsky district. He claimed that the letter I had received was fake, and that I might not be the only person to have received something like it.
“I’m with internal affairs,” he said, flashing a badge from inside his lapel. “Someone higher up wants that neighborhood torn down, and I mean to find out who. They’re illegally posing threats of demolition to force poor folks to sell their homes at ridiculously undercut prices. But Mr. Hayne,” he went on, “with you they made a fatal mistake.”
He smiled fiercely as he explained that my home had been granted status as a historic landmark some time ago, and that the occasion had been forgotten during the tumult of the Farsky litigation. Parkins went on to explain that he had been investigating the matter, but that he had to take extreme care not to alert the other members of the office, as he didn’t know who had ties to the mysterious faction behind the scenes. Then he grabbed my arm, a serious expression crossing his pinched features, his small fingers barely wrapping around half of my bicep.
“Mr. Hayne, if you can recover the paperwork denoting your home as a landmark from the archives, we can bust this thing wide open. I can have the door left open for you later today, all you have to do is go inside, grab the folder and leave. I have to be out of the building when it happens, or they’ll know it was me and my whole investigation will be compromised. Time is of the essence here. Will you do it?”
I balked at him, overwhelmed by the information he had just laid on me. Still, something in me had always suspected that something illicit had occurred surrounding the Farsky debacle, and here was a story that practically confirmed it.
“I don’t know,” I said, my poor upbringing always making me wary of a man with a badge, “I can’t get in trouble.”
“I can promise you immunity, Mr. Hayne. Believe me, if you’re forced to accept the settlement and it comes out afterwards that your family consented to have a certified landmark torn down, you might get sued by the very people that did this. I wish I didn’t have to do it this way, I really do, but unfortunately, right now this is the only lead we have.”
After some minor discussion over the execution, I agreed to help him. The entire situation made me almost sick with unease, but given the circumstances I was in, I couldn’t see an alternative. If I ignored the letter and went along as I had been, whoever was trying to pull this scam would simply take advantage of other people in my community. After all, my house was the only one with landmark status, and was by extension the only opportunity to unravel the clandestine paper trail leading back through the zoning office.
“Otherwise,” said Parkins, “they’ll just claim it was a mistake and we’ll get nowhere while tipping them off. We need something hard like this infraction to solidify our case.”
I didn’t really understand, but if I could help, I would try. After all, if it were revealed that there had been some underhanded dealings in the city council, maybe something concerning the Farsky project would shake loose.
I left shortly afterwards, planning to come back in an hour when Parkins had made sure to leave the archives unlocked. I walked around for a while downtown, trying to calm my nerves, then returned to the government center and made my way to the archives. I went in past an unmanned desk and an unlocked door, rooted around in the stacks for ten minutes until I found the row he’d told me about, and retrieved the file in question. I left, walking down the nearby hallway until I reached the main stairwell, the folder tucked into my pants underneath my shirt.
Waiting for me just past the door was a guard, his billy club tapping against his thigh, as though he’d been there for some time. I froze, my mind drawing a blank, and was astounded when the man smiled at me underneath a thick mustache, gesturing with his club for me to walk down the stairs in front of him. We didn’t speak, the tapping of our feet on the concrete stairs the only sound, although I could hardly hear it over my own pulse beating in my ears.
Then, to my utter surprise, he brought me through the exit into the car park, and let me go.
I turned to look back at him with visible confusion, our eyes meeting. Was he working with Parkins? There could be no other reason. Wishing I could understand but unwilling to spill anything in case he was on the wrong side of things, I pulled the folder from under my shirt and offered it to him.
The guard chuckled, shaking his head, and waved me off.
“Keep it,” he said, and the humor in his voice was bewildering.
As I walked away, my mind racing as I tried to identify what had just happened, I opened the folder and looked inside. It was a series of tax reports for property development in an entirely different neighborhood than my own. There was nothing about a historic landmark status, let alone my family’s home.
<|>
I waited, unwilling to answer any of my mother’s halfhearted questions, vaguely telling her that everything should be alright, I just needed to hear back from someone. Two days later, a man I had never seen before knocked on my front door. He was tall and muscled, his suit more than enough to make him stick out in my neighborhood. If it weren’t for the gaudy rings on his fingers and his neck tattoo, he could have been from “internal affairs.” He confirmed that I was in fact Ian Hayne, then handed me a thin parcel with something hard and rectangular inside.
“Don’t talk,” he said in a calm, unwavering voice, “just listen. You will bring twelve hundred dollars to the location listed inside that envelope tomorrow at seven AM. The money will be in cash. If you fail to do this, the footage copied onto that disc makes itself known to the public. If you are late, or in any other way failing to meet these terms, the same will occur. Watch it, so you know what I mean. Am I understood?”
“What the hell are you-”
His arm lifted almost faster than I could register, and though I’m a bigger guy, considerably more fit than most from years of labor, his grip on my shoulder was iron, his right fist hammering into my stomach so hard I doubled over instantly. I dropped the parcel, choking and gasping, feeling that I would throw up if I couldn’t make the feeling stop. I watched as the polished toe of his loafer nudged the parcel closer to my spread feet, then felt his hand resting on my upper back as he leaned over.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just mouth off to me, Mr. Hayne, since our arrangement is just beginning. Best to start off on the right foot.” His voice was right in my ear, almost intimate as he said, “There are a lot of things worse than blackmail, Mr. Hayne, one of which would be the theft of federally-protected tax documents. Pray that we don’t discover the others too intimately. I doubt you can speak very easily right now, so I’ll accept a nod of the head as a ‘yes.’ Now, I’ll ask you again. Am I understood?”
Keeled over as I was, I was at first confused when the man lifted his jacket, exposing a firmly muscled abdomen barely concealed underneath a white cotton button-down. Then I saw the pistol poking out of his waistband and it was all I could do to nod my head in affirmation.
“Good.” His hand left my back, trailing lines of heat as his fingertips lingered on the lower part of my neck. The man walked away without another word.
I already knew what was on the disc, but I watched the footage of my theft anyways, just to confirm that it was really there. Then, my heart in my throat, I walked two blocks over to the bank.
<|>
I developed a hatred for Alan Parkins and his thugs that surprised and frightened me, compounded each time they made it clear they weren’t done with their extortion. My savings dissipated like a wisp of steam, and within a matter of two weeks I knew they wouldn’t stop until they bled me dry. Each day I left the house in fear, and as the days wore on I began to try and think of some way out of my predicament. All of this I did while working, asking both of my bosses for extra hours where I could get them.
Finally, it came to me: I could try to beat them at their own game. I was a nobody, some young workman under their thumb, but Parkins was invested with the local government. He had to be, or he couldn’t have just approached me in front of the front desk attendant so casually. He had risk attached to this operation he was running, the size of which was a mystery to me. If I could trace the illicit behavior from his lackeys back to him, maybe I could catch him doing something illegal on camera. It was a long shot, but it was all I could think of, and I didn’t have the time or the resources to try and find something better.
<|>
So there I was, half a block down from the spot they always had me drop the money; an empty storefront’s mailbox on the outskirts of downtown Cretan. Tucked around the corner of an alley, I had a perfect view of the store’s front window, hopefully, good enough that I could identify whoever arrived to collect my payment.
Sure enough, the bespoke goon that had roughed me up on my front porch walked out of the empty store’s backroom, striding towards the door and bending over to collect the envelope containing my hard-earned cash. A shot of anger rose in my stomach, and I clenched my fists as I watched him saunter back towards the room he’d come from. I knew the area quite well, and it took me seconds to jog across the street and enter the alley behind the building he was in. I watched as Parkins’ man came out of the back door, turning away from where I hid behind a dumpster and walking off in the other direction.
I thought I would have to follow him for some time, but to my surprise, he walked only half a block down the alley and entered a warehouse building on the opposite side. It didn’t appear that the old metal sliding door locked behind him, and after glancing around to confirm that no one was watching me, I approached. There was enough room that I could squeeze through into the darkened hallway beyond. I pulled my phone from my pocket and crept forward, trying to be as silent as possible as I opened the camera app and held it down at my side, recording.
After walking along in the dank hall for a stretch, I began to hear voices. Only two or three, and not loud enough to identify what was being said. There was a light several feet ahead of me, and as I drew closer I began to hear with more clarity. I lifted my phone underneath my chin and peered through a small crack in the doorway.
Parkins was there, as well as his goon I had followed and one other large man whose back was turned to me. The three of them were standing around a small table, each of them staring down at the contents of a large black crate between them. My envelope was on the table as well, stacked with a series of others of various colors and sizes. It appeared I was not their only mark. I made sure that my phone could capture the whole scene, hoping that whatever they were admiring would become visible if I stayed put long enough.
“You’re sure it’s legitimate?” Parkins asked the man whose back was to me, his eyes never leaving the crate.
“I’m sure,” the man said, his tone brimming with conceit, “she wouldn’t have given her life over it if it weren’t.”
Her life? I thought, my hackles raising. It was possible I had touched on something far worse than blackmail and fraud.
“Good,” said Parkins, “this’ll be good enough to show Kinkaid’s errand boy we mean business.”
I nearly gasped, catching myself just shy, my heart beginning to beat erratically. Leonard Kinkaid was the mayor of Cretan City, a man whose office had dodged lawsuits in perpetuity since his election. The only thing that stuck to the man was his unsavory reputation. This went beyond me. I needed to go, to regroup and try and figure out some other method of escape. Blackmail would do no good if these people were capable of murder.
I began to back away from the door, and before I could turn I heard a slight noise behind me. A flaring pain erupted on the side of my head, and then I saw only black.
<|>
When I woke I was in darkness, sitting on the ground up against a wall. My head ached fiercely, and through swimming senses, I found that my hands had been tied together behind my back. The same went for my ankles. I wriggled around, tensing my muscles, but when I tried to move my vision blurred again and I nearly passed out from the pain in my skull. I lay still, ignoring the vague sense of imminent danger welling up inside of me, and tried to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. It was near-absolute, and in my groggy state, I couldn’t seem to come into myself fully. A thin line of light on the ground nearby marked the only door.
I could hear the men talking nearby, so I must have been close to where they stood when I first arrived. The conversation was low, two voices conferring on the other side of the door in tones too hushed to make out.
Then one of the men, not Parkins himself, barked, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” a new voice called back, “you guys should know better than to take what’s not yours.”
“Oh, I see,” said another, “and are you here to take it back, then?”
There was a silence, and I strained against the nauseous feeling in my stomach to focus on what came next.
“And you were just going to walk up and grab it, is that it?” The same voice asked. “I’d love to see how you plan to make that work, buddy.”
“It’s simple,” the new voice replied, “here, I’ll show you.”
I heard footsteps, then silence again. Then one of the men burst out laughing, soon joined by the others.
“What the hell was that?” I heard Parkins yell, still laughing. “Oh, that was precious, really,” and I could hear scuffling footsteps followed by a short grunt, “I don’t even know what’s going on today. Just throw him in the back with the boy detective and we can figure it out later. Tie him, too, and one of you can clean up when we get back.”
Several moments passed, and I heard the discussion resume outside. Then the door was wrenched open, the spilling light blinding me and causing my head to jolt in pain. Silhouettes danced in front of my squinted eyes, and suddenly one of them was racing towards me. I winced, and as the door squealed shut I felt the concussion of someone ramming into my chest head-first. Whoever it was fell like a sack of potatoes, their full weight crashing painfully down with no attempt at cushioning the fall.
The presumably unconscious man—obviously whoever had just made a joke of himself outside—slid down my torso, his chin dragging a rough path along my stomach and settling, of all places, directly over my crotch. It was almost comical how he ended up, and I might have laughed if I weren’t so afraid. He was sprawled, arms tied behind his back, in such a way that his torso was weighing painfully on my knees.
I tried to shift my hips so that he would settle in a more comfortable position, but my head began throbbing again and all I managed to do was cause his face to nestle deeper between my thighs, his nose pressing against the zipper of my jeans. After another unsuccessful attempt, I gave up, sitting back against the cement wall and trying to remain still.
Then I began to feel the warmth of his breath, deep and even against my crotch. Given the situation at hand, I would have expected a physical reaction to be out of the question. But something between the rough bindings holding me, my adrenals, and this stranger’s hot breath caused my cock to twitch and stir. It felt absurdly good, danger and lack of sight creating a tantalizing effect the likes of which took me completely by surprise. Within a matter of moments, I was hard, although confined, my cock laying sideways along the ridge of his cheek.
Trapped as it was in my jeans, my erection was in a painful spot, and I tried once again to shift his head with my hips. I was oddly embarrassed, forgetting for a moment that I was probably going to be shot as soon as Parkins and his men got done with whatever they were up to. I heard them talking outside still, and I strained to listen in. As I did, the stranger suddenly stirred, a soft groan escaping his lips and vibrating through the denim beneath him. A twinge of pleasure ran up the length of my cock, causing it to twitch again, pressing against his jaw.
He began to move around as I had when I first came to, testing the strength of his bindings. It took a few moments for him to realize he was on top of someone, and I felt him tense as his face once again came into contact with my straining cock.
“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as quiet as possible while still being audible to him.
The man didn’t answer me. Could he feel how hard I was? I felt blood rush to my face as I realized what must have been going through his mind at that moment. Instead of speaking, the man turned his head and began grinding the side of his face into my crotch.
What the hell is he doing?! I thought, and I fought back a groan as his rough contact caused my hard-on to shift and twitch.
“Umm,” I muttered, completely taken aback at his actions, at a total loss for words.
He continued doing this for several seconds, and just as I was about to tell him not to stop, I heard a small beeping sound.
“Doc,” the man said, his voice low, “can you hear me?”
My brow furrowed in the dark as I tried to puzzle out his meaning. Of course I could hear him, he was practically getting me off, we were pretty close. Then I heard a muffled voice reply.
“Thank God,” he breathed, still basically addressing my aching erection in his awkward position, “I thought you were dead.”
The tiny voice spoke again, but I couldn’t identify what was said, only its short duration. Had this guy just used my hard dick to activate his bluetooth? The idea passed through my confused mind with ease, no stranger than anything else that had happened so far.
“Doc,” he started again, “I don’t know what happened, I got here in time, but it didn’t work.”
Whoever was on the other end of the transceiver spoke for some time, and each time they paused the man on top of my legs would respond only with hmm, the vibrations driving my cock wild.
“Well,” he finally replied, “that would have been lovely to find out about before I got my head smashed. I’m tied up in some back room with another guy.” The voice buzzed again. “I don’t know who. You’re sure it’ll work now? I don’t want to look like an idiot again. Alright. Alright, get patched up, I’ll handle things over here.”
Handle things? How? Last I had checked, all this guy was good for was a laugh and maybe a pre-execution chin-job. What was he going to do, all tied up?
But as I was about to learn, underestimating Ryan Mortar was a losing disposition.
The beep sounded again, and he rolled off of my legs with ease, grunting slightly as he collided with the hard ground. If it was so easy, why did it take him so long? I thought, but I quickly forgot about it as I heard him moving around in the dark.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, trying to ignore the pain in my head.
“Something I would have done earlier if I’d been given the right instructions,” he replied. His easy tone suggested a confidence that hardly matched our situation.
Before I could respond, a dull, reddish light winked into existence from where I had heard him speak. The glow grew, and as I looked over, my eyes adjusting, I realized that it was coming from his clothes. No, that wasn’t right, it was all over him, a thin, pulsating spiderweb of vermilion energy was crawling across his entire body. I could hardly believe my eyes as the electricity-like membrane thickened, the interwoven lines of light coalescing into a layer that engulfed him everywhere but his head. I felt heat wash over me from where I sat, three feet away.
My mouth dropped open as I watched him, completely baffled. A hissing sound began shortly after the energy covered him and brightened, and it took me a moment to realize that it was the sound created by his contact with the cement floor. The dull glow intensified around his hands and feet, and after a moment I heard the zip ties biding him snap, the smell of burning plastic coming soon after. The man stood, and from my position, I judged him to be around my height, perhaps a bit shorter. The light made it difficult to make out his features in the darkened room, but I could see the shadowed lines of a strong, stubbled jaw and middle-length dark hair.
He stepped over towards me, and I flinched as the heat radiating off of him became almost painful against my face. He seemed to notice this, his eyes becoming wide, and the glow surrounding his body dimmed some, the heat receding.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he crouched, dipping one finger between my ankles and melting the ties there, “I don’t know how to control it very well, yet.”
“What is it?” I breathed, looking at his face through squinted eyes.
When our gazes met, he seemed to really notice me for the first time, his eyes widening momentarily. He crouched in front of me, one foot on either side of my thighs, the heat becoming intense again as he drew close. As he reached behind my back to undo the bindings on my wrists, he spoke softly, his voice causing the hair on my neck to stand on end. Surprisingly, the contact between his glowing hands and my forearms felt just like skin, although incredibly warm.
“I’m not totally sure myself. Can you stand?”
“I think so,” I replied quietly, suddenly remembering our predicament, “they hit me in the head.”
He helped me stand, grasping my hand and taking hold of my upper arm to steady me. Everywhere he touched almost burned, but not quite enough to make me cry out.
He drew close again, washing me in heat, and spoke quietly in my ear.
“Just stay in here, I’ll take care of it. They have guns, at least, two of them do. Don’t do anything rash.”
I looked at him, my mind still trying to process the impossibility of what I was seeing. He just nodded, pointing with one glowing hand to the nearby corner, away from the door. Not knowing why, I stepped over and stood there, feeling somehow useless despite my strength. Would he be alright?
Apparently, he would be just fine.
The stranger walked over to the door and tried the handle. When he found it locked, he began to pull backwards, even though it was designed to slide to one side. The glow surrounding him flared, and as I shielded my eyes I heard a wrenching, metallic screech. When I looked back at where he’d been standing, there were only the warped, destroyed remnants of the steel door and an empty frame.
“What the fuck is th-” I heard one of the men outside say, but the rest of his words were drowned out by a concussive FWOOM accompanied by a burst of red light flashing through the open doorway.
I heard the distinct snack of a gun being cocked, and my breath caught in my throat as I listened for it to go off. Instead, there was another burst of sound followed by more light, and then a loud crash as something heavy collided with the wall I leaned up against. It shook, dust raining down from the ceiling with the force of the blow.
Inching towards the doorway, my curiosity overwhelming my sense of self-preservation, I heard shuffling footsteps and heavy, wordless grunting. When I peeked my head through the doorway, I was astounded by what I saw.
There was no sign of the guy whose back had been to me earlier, or of whoever had cold-clocked me in the hallway. The warehouse floor was littered with the debris of wooden pallets, a large stack of which dominated the far wall. The stranger was on one side of the room, slowly closing on the thug who’d shown up at my house, the strange red electricity crackling around him, snapping out and striking randomly, leaving dark burn marks wherever it touched. He was glowing so brightly I couldn’t focus directly on him, and Parkins’ enforcer had an expression on his face that suggested he knew he was as good as cooked.
“What the hell are you?!” he yelled, his fists held in front of himself as though he would try to box his opponent.
I saw a flash of movement in the center of the room. I glanced over to see Parkins, bent over the black crate from before, prying open the lid. The stranger didn’t seem to take notice of him, his attention was fixed on the man he faced.
“I’m a big fucking problem,” he replied, striding forward.
I turned again to Parkins and saw him grin as he reached inside the crate to grab something. Another burst of light came from the stranger, and in its crimson illumination, I saw Parkins lift the thing from the crate, settling its weight on his hip. It looked like a chrome-colored rod affixed to a large black plastic box, with two handles along the length of the rod’s bottom. He flicked a switch alongside the box part’s top and leveled it towards the stranger, and it struck home for me that the object was some sort of weapon.
Before I could think I was running, closing the distance between us even as my vision erupted in a series of dark spots, my head throbbing in pain with each step. As Parkins pulled back on one of the device’s handles I collided with him from behind. A thin line of white energy seethed from the end of the rod, carving a line of red-hot scar in the concrete floor, traveling in an erratic path that barely missed the red-glowing stranger where he stood fifteen feet away. As I struggled with Parkins’ arms to make him release the handles, I caught a glimpse of the stranger coming towards us. There was no sign of the other man he’d been entangled with.
I finally managed to pry Parkins’ hands from the device’s grips, pulling back one arm and punching him in the jaw. The strange object fell to the ground, but luckily nothing seemed to happen, other than a faint whirring sound coming from the box attached to it. I wrestled a yelping Parkins to the ground, and after another punch to the gut, he curled over, groaning and out of breath.
I felt the other man before I saw him as the heat of his approach washed over my back and shoulders. It quickly faded, and moments later he knelt at my side, the last of the red energy winking out from around his fingertips. He was wearing a black full-body suit of some strange, matte material that hugged close to the skin, as well as black combat boots. I was full of adrenaline, but from the corner of my eye, I noticed the taught muscles barely concealed underneath his peculiar clothes.
“That was close,” he said, “I owe you, big time.”
“What the hell is going on?” I cried, turning to look at him.
In that moment I finally got a good look at his face. Whoever this guy was, he was incredibly good-looking. He was young, perhaps just a little older than me, I couldn’t be sure. His skin was somewhat pale, lying in perfect contrast with the dark, almost-black hair draped to either side of his face, cut just below the ears. His eyes were a lucid green, staring at me underneath thick but well-shaped eyebrows. From his straight, slightly-upturned nose to full, pink lips, matched with the light stubble covering his chin and strong jaw, I was momentarily frozen until he spoke to me again.
“Forget that. You need to go, the police are going to be here soon.”
“What about you?” I said, trying to stand up but finding my knees wobbling beneath me. He helped me up again, lifting my bulk with relative ease.
“I’ll be alright, I just need to get this thing out of here.” He indicated the strange device at our feet.
“You saved me,” I pressed.
“You saved me,” he retorted, reaching over and collecting the device, turning around to walk towards the table with the crate, his back turned to me.
“What’s your name?” I glanced down at Parkins, but he didn’t appear in any shape to move around just yet.
The stranger placed the machine gingerly into the black crate, flipping the lid closed before turning to look at me. He seemed to think about my question for a moment, his eyes on the ground, and then he looked back at me again.
“Ryan.”
“I’m Ian. Thank you, seriously, I don’t know-oh, shit,” I said, looking back at Parkins where he lay on the ground, “it’s probably not good that this dirtbag heard that. Actually,” I went on, glancing around, “where are the others?”
Ryan just looked at me, and it took me several moments to look through the wreckage of the room to where Parkins’ enforcer had been standing before. A pile of ash surrounded by scorch-marks was the only evidence that he’d been there.
“Jesus,” I breathed.
Ryan’s expression remained blank. He glanced at Parkins for a moment, then back to me. His eyes lingered on mine, searching for something, before he said, “You should go. Seriously.”
Exhausted though I was, I could tell that Ryan was right. I thanked him again, counting my lucky stars as I hurried through the door to the hallway. As I sped towards the warehouse’s exit, a flash of red light and a burst of sound echoed from the room I had just left.
