Shellnekoconeko

Holy War--Part Three

Mon, 07 May 2007 22:22:39 GMT

I know it's been a while since I've updated, but I've been very busy. I just got done moving to Texas, and for all of April I've had no internet. *sigh* But things are slowly getting better.

In this chapter, I make the most obvious reference to Max Payne. To the point where one of Tristan's lines will seem utterly absurd unless you know anything about Max Payne.

Part One: Fall of Asgard
Part Three of Chapter Two: Holy War

The three had met multiple times over the next three days. The warehouse lead hadn’t lead to anything more than another fixer who ended that exchange with a bullet in his brain. The meeting hadn’t been a total waste however, as Roxy, Angel, and Tristan had managed to get more info out of his spineless assistant. The man had pointed them in the direction of the owner of a small shipping company across town near the port. With a name like “Duilio” there had to be mob connections. The drugs leading them to the mafia was hardly a surprise to them.

Roxy sat on her bike, arms folded across the handlebars and her chin resting on her arms. Nearby Angel leaned against a light post, its light far above them sputtering pitifully. The two of them sat in wait along the portside, staring across the river at their target. Anxiously Roxy hummed to herself, her thoughts on the other side of town in Co-Op, lying in the arms of her sleeping child being watched by friends. She sighed to herself. Thinking of the Pilz left a sour taste in her mouth.

“Hey, Angel,” she finally spoke up.

“Mm?”

“Brig’s losin it, isn’t he?”

Angel turned his head to look at her, then turned away again. “Maybe.”

“I know he’s your friend, but he sucks at leading the Pilz.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know,” he sighed, glaring at her. “But stop it.”

“I know you and I’ve been keeping each other busy with the war and all …” she pressed. “But the Pilz aren’t doing as well as we are.”

Angel folded his arms and stared down at the water ahead of them. “I know.”

“I mean … That’s what started this whole thing.”

“I know.”

“There needs to be someone else, Angel,” she said, her voice growing stronger. She looked into his face and tried to slip through his outward coldness. “They’ve got no direction, no loyalty … They need a new leader. Brig is trying to be Tetsu, but he isn’t.”

“Tetsu was insane,” he said bitterly.

“Everybody knew that. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make you want to follow him. You did. Anybody could’ve followed him straight into Hell.”

“We nearly did.”

Roxy huffed and sat up straight. “The war’s for a good cause. But what about our families?”

One eyebrow lowered, Angel glanced back at her. “I haven’t talked to my family since I was sixteen.”

“The Pilz, Angel—you know what I meant!”

“Look, if you wanna say something, spit it out!”

“You, Angel!” she snapped. “You should take over!”

Angel stared at his lover in surprise. He stumbled over a response, looking into her dark eyes that pierced him unmercifully. “Rox …”

“They need someone better than what they’ve got. Brig doesn’t even know what he needs, much less what everybody else needs. I know you kept sayin you could never lead, but look what you pulled out of me,” she said passionately. She stood and moved her red hair from her face, and meaningfully pulled her arm out of her coat to show off her fading scars. “You saved me, Gabriel. I think if you could do that to me … and God knows I was close to gone … Then you can save the Pilz too.”

Angel looked away from her, staggered by her flame. “L … Rox, I can’t handle that kind of responsibility.”

“Bullshit! You wanna take care of a kid who isn’t even yours.”

“Because I love you.”

“And you don’t love your family?”

Angrily he turned back to her. “Look, I’m not gonna sit here and let you say to my face I don’t care about my pack.” She was about to say more, but he quickly held up a hand. “Whether or not you believe me, I just don’t think there’s a good enough reason to make me take that position.”

Roxy’s face was tight with anger, but she simply stared into his blue eyes. Before she could come up with a further response, a voice called to them.

“So, am I interrupting something?”

Roxy and Angel faced Tristan as he approached them.

“Yes,” Roxy said flatly.

“No,” Angel corrected her sternly.

An eyebrow raised, he glanced between his young partners. “… So, which is it?”

“What can you tell us about Duilio?” he said quickly, keeping Tristan’s attention on him.

“We’re in luck,” he began with a dark smile. “This one’s a talker.”

Morgan Duilio was also a man of habit. Every third Friday meant records checks. It meant a long time after company hours, hunched over paper receipts and squinting at computer screens. It also meant that save a handful of night shift guards and cleaning staff, he was alone.

Duilio sat behind his desk, rubbing his eyes wearily. He got up to get a drink out of the small fridge in his stuffy office. Adjusting his pants over his girth, he opened the fridge and pulled out a soda. Taking a first hard swallow, he coughed from fizz forcing its way down his throat and idly stood in front of his door. Unconsciously his eyes went to the window in his door. His eyes met with a second pair, young and blue.

The door flew open in his face before he could react, and Angel flowed into his office. Duilio staggered, and forced himself to straighten just in time for him to swing his fist into his face. Roxy and Tristan followed Angel inside, she joined Angel in incapacitating Duilio as Tristan quickly double checked the hall. Seeing no one coming, he hurridly shut and locked the door to the office, then pulled the blinds over the door’s window.

Duilio was heavy, even for both she and Angel. Somehow the two managed to pull him back into his office chair

“The hell is this!” he coughed out finally, struggling under Angel’s grip.

“Get comfortable,” she said simply, pulling out a roll of duct tape. She roughly wrapped his wrists to his chair as he shouted profanities at her viciously.

“You might as well stop yelling, Duilio,” Tristan said calmly, walking next to the desk.

“The hell I will!” he shouted. “I got guys all over this building! You’re dead, you hear me? Dead!”

“You only had five,” Angel said in a soft purr. “You didn’t hear any gunshots because my dear and I are very good with pipes.”

Unconsciously Duilio’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and he took heavy breaths through his nose. His dark eyes darted between the three of them, and finally his lips untensed. “Alright, the hell do ya want?”

Roxy laughed. “Hey, the guy thinks he’s in charge and isn’t tied to a chair.”

“You think yer cute? Huh?” he snapped at her. “I know that if you kill me, you’re all gonna be in unmarked graves by the end of the night.”

Her eyes fell to Tristan, who was muttering softly to himself again. “Hey, Trist,” she called to him. “Come back.”

His eyes focused again suddenly and he looked at the Mafioso in the chair in front of him. He blinked several times and softly cleared his throat. “You’re a small-timer, Duilio. No one will care if you die.”

“Fuck you!” he blasted back. “You don’t know nuthin’ about me.”

Impatiently Angel moved to in front of Duilio, placing his hands over the armrests where his hands struggled. “Let’s get to business, shall we?”

“Val-hal,” she began. “We’re after val-hal.”

His eyes grew wider momentarily and he frowned. “I run a legit business. I don’t sell drugs.”

“Don’t lie, Duilio,” Tristan scoffed, motioning for Angel to move aside. “You’re one of the biggest suppliers in the area.”

A smirk crossed his face. “First ya call me a small-timer, now I’m a big mover? Make up your mind.”

Tristan frowned, then looked to his partners. “I don’t think he understands the question.”

Roxy shoved the chair forward and it rolled to Angel, who grabbed the armrests under Duilio’s hands. “Wait, wait, what the fuck is this!” he shouted as Angel pulled the chair from behind the desk to the center of the room.

“This is what happens when we get impatient,” he replied coldly.

Roxy yanked a strip of duct tape off the roll and covered his eyes. “See what happens now … Never mind, I’ll let ya be surprised.”

Without another word she roughly grabbed his left pinky and yanked it hard the wrong way—so hard she could feel the satisfying shatter of bones and watched it dangle. He let out a loud shriek of pain and kicked his legs violently. Angel sharply tore the tape off his face.

“That was a warning,” Tristan said calmly. He walked back around to the front of Duilio, then kicked a chair by the door to allow him to sit facing him. “Whenever I give the signal, you get the blindfold again and get to guess what they’ll do to you next.”

Duilio’s teeth were grit in seething rage and tears of pain landed on his shirt. “Street punks,” he growled at the teenagers. “Don’t think you’re worth anything cuz you can make a helpless man tied down scream.”

“Val-hal, Duilio,” Tristan said, his voice slowly growing. “Who are the makers who supply you?”

“Nuthin’ but cowards!” he shouted furiously back.

Roxy and Angel were about to skip Tristan’s signal and go straight to more beating, when they saw him rise sharply. In the three days they had known him there had been little readable emotion in his face. Now there was anger. Tristan pulled out his gun and pistol whipped Duilio across his face.

“You call me a coward!” he screamed. “Me?” Dropping the gun, he grabbed Duilio by his collar and pulled him as high as his bound wrists would allow. “You hide behind your rank in the syndicates and call me a coward?”

Through the blood trickling into his eyes, Duilio stared gaping mouthed at him.

“Cowardice is paying off dirty cops and judges to keep your drug rings,” he hissed. “Cowardice is making the drugs to keep control of kids who don’t know better—Real cowardice is leaving a woman and child in their own blood to get at a nosy cop!

“I’ve seen cowardice. I’m no coward. I’m the worst kind of brave. The kind with nothing left to lose. No family, no job, barely any memories. Just a pistol fused to my hand and one, murderous thought seared in my brain: take ‘em down. I’m taking your suppliers down, Duilio. You either open your fat mouth and spill out names for me to send to New Century’s finest cemeteries, or you sit and you get comfortable with the idea of having your foot tagged in a few hours.”

Duilio coughed loudly, spitting out blood that had finally trailed its way into his open mouth. He stepped back from him, snapping out of this latest trance and looking down at him silently. Roxy and Angel stared at him in awe. Not that either of them couldn’t guess why he was fighting, but seeing this new passion in his face—the raw, violent intensity of his manner—was near spellbinding.

“You think you’re lookin’ for the mob,” he mumbled out finally. “Yer off. You’re off by a million miles. I’m only talkin’ cuz I can see you’re out of your goddamned mind.”

“Keep talking,” he said, getting comfortable in the chair again.

A smile slowly formed on Duilio’s bruised, broken face. “You called me a small-timer. Yeah, yeah I am. In the family I am. But the drugs don’t come from the syndicates, you stupid bastard.”

The air in the room seemed to grow more heavy as he said this. The three looked between each other, unsure of what this meant.

Duilio chuckled softly. “Yeah, yeah, now you’re startin’ to get the picture. The patches, they’re no syndicate controlled drug. Naw. They’re corporate made.”

Tristan’s face paled visibly, and Roxy could see Angel’s eyes grow wider.

“Corporate designer drugs, they’re real good shit,” the captive continued. “No addiction, barely any side affects. Takes years and years of usage for anything to show up in even so much as a blood test … But that’s the good shit. What you floating pieces of dog crap get is the marketable types. Every major corp has got one they sell.

“Dontcha get it?” he laughed. “I was a small fish in the family, so I went corporate! Godheim Reign pays me to ship the patches to the fixers and dealers.”

“Please tell me you’re lying,” Tristan said hoarsely.

“Ha!” he boomed out. “Whatsa matter, Mr. Nuthin-left-to-lose? Thought you were gonna get to take down the families all on your lonesome? Fat chance.

“And you wanna know what?” he added with a smug grin. “I half ship the patches for fun. Cuz I hate you worthless cyber-punks.” His eyes, crazed and red, turned to Angel and Roxy. “You street punks clogging up the city like too much shit in the crapper. You think you own the world now, dontcha? Think you thugs and gangstas and fuckin’ road burners are gonna replace the families? Fuck no! You know why? Cuz you can’t keep your fuckin’ grimy hands outta the cookie jar—and it ain’t cookies! You stupid punks never live past thirty cuz you’re too busy slappin’ and shootin’ to notice you’re killing yourselves for us!”

Roxy nearly ran forward to shut up the fat bastard, but Angel’s hand went to her shoulder. Her breath heaved with rage, but she kept herself steady.

Duilio laughed at her restraint. “Don’t like the truth, do ya? Well, deal. There’s no way you’re gonna go against all the major corps. You’re gonna die before you make it to the front door.”

Tristan stood slowly and turned away from Duilio, staring into nothing and mumbling to himself again. Roxy could see the anger in Angel’s eyes, yet he was stiff and silent. He firmly walked in front of Duilio, his soft face tense and unreadable.

“Thank you for your time,” he said softly, his back straight and tall.

Duilio spat blood on Angel’s shoe. Angel looked down at the red and spittle on his boot, then back at his face. His hand suddenly flew to his jaw, and he pulled an edge from his coat. He waved the blade in front of Duilio’s fat face. “You have a very big mouth. We’re going to be leaving, but I’ll be taking your tongue with me. Then we’ll be telling your ‘family’ that you’re doing outside business behind their backs. One way or another, you will shut up.”

The three stood by Angel and Roxy’s bikes. Not a word had been said since the interrogation in the office, and Roxy was getting tired of the silence. She got on her bike and pulled her surgical mask from her mouth. “Alright, we got a name to go for. Pretty good night.”

Angel turned to her sharply and shook his head in disbelief. “What the fuck, Rox! Did you listen to a single word from that guy?”

“Yeah. Godheim Reign,” she replied coldly.

“Don’t lose it, Freeman,” Tristan added.

“And you!” he growled, spinning on him. “You actually had some idea of where this was leading, didn’t you?”

Tristan lowered his eyes for a moment. “None of it’s clear anymore, I told you. Now that I heard it from someone else’s mouth I can … I can almost remember that logo in the lab—”

“Genius! It’s good you’re remembering logos instead of boogey men and puzzles and flamingos or some shit!”

“You chose to come with me on this, no matter where it lead to.”

He was about to say more, until Roxy stormed off her bike and grabbed the shoulder of his coat roughly. “What are you really mad at, Angel? You’re acting like Tetsu when he was pissed at something. It was never what he said it was.”

“Don’t compare me to Tetsu.”

“Then spit it out!” she shouted. “Just say what’s wrong instead this crap.”

“How can you not know what’s wrong!” he snapped back. “We always figured that the rich and the corps shit on the street level every day—but now we know it for a fact! They’re controlling us. The power companies, the grocery stores, the fuckin’ soda makers—they’re all monopolies and no one thinks twice. But it’s more than that, they even control the drugs, Roxy! They control the stuff that people who want to get away from ‘em use! Even when you think you’re so low and so poor that no one will care about you, they’re still trying their hardest to control you.”

“So we burn them all!” she screamed in his face.

“A role-playing game.”

“What?” Angel snapped at Tristan.

“… The truth was a burning crack through my brain,” Tristan mumbled out, his eyes staring off again. “I was in a role-playing game. Personal statistics printed on paper, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, my successes determined by the roll of a die, the paranoid feel of someone controlling my every action. I was in a role-playing game. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.”

The gangers stared slack-jawed at Tristan for a moment. Angel finally threw up his hands and let out a frustrated cry to the empty docks. “What the fuck was that!”

“They’re all playing games with us,” he replied with a new control over his voice. “It’s not a question of middle class or poor. It’s a question of a few sick men and women deciding the fates of every man, woman, and child in this country. The drugs may be the only way to prove that they like playing games with human life. To use your word, this isn’t the ‘war’ I thought I would be fighting. But it’s worth it. If we can find a way to prove the drugs go straight to the corps, then we win. We steal the dice and rip up the character sheets. Game over. We win.”

Holy War -- Part Two

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:31:14 GMT

I had intended the rest of this scene be added into my last post, but the post would have been too large. So, I'm just sticking it here. The Holy War continues, and Daren Tristan finally appears.

Part One: Fall of Asgard
Part Two of Chapter Two: Holy War

The two of them burst through the doors to the office like leather-bound forces of destruction. Roxy announced their presence in the outwardly mundane, darkened office by swinging her pipe like a bat and knocking all of the potted plants down. While she did this, Angel took one of the waiting room chairs and shoved it against the front door’s handle, forcing it to remain closed.

“The employee door’s unlocked,” a man’s voice called from further in the building.

Roxy and Angel glanced between each other. The voice was oddly calm for gangers breaking into his business. The two of them had been following a trail for three weeks now, going from one dealer to another fixer—looking for the guy who knew a guy who works for some guy—and they’d mostly been met with aggression. The usual throwings around of the variations of the word “fuck” were followed by the firing of a great many guns until Roxy and Angel managed to get a hold of them. This kind of calm was new.

The two kept their senses sharp and went further into the building. As they were told by their previous lead, the office was just a front for a fixer’s business. When you needed something, you talk to a “fixer.” This one had been asked by a lot of the dealers to help get a hold on territory, and Shafiq had been happy to oblige, providing local gangs with drug-selling supplies for a sliver of a cut.

They walked down the poorly-lit hall into a wider room with a higher ceiling, a room filled to the brim with file cabinets, computers, and overstuffed boxes. Not even sitting at a desk, instead sitting on a file cabinet in front of a computer propped on a stack of boxes, was Shafiq. A warm smile rested on the face of possibly the most suave black man Roxy had ever seen. He wore a casual, stylish suit, his teeth sparkled brightly in the low light, and he held up his dark hands to show he was unarmed.

“Peace, friends, peace,” he began as soon as the three were in the same room. “Let’s just be friends.”

“Friends?” Roxy repeated in a low voice, practically growling it.

“What can I get you?” he offered, standing slowly. “Coffee? Tea? I have a soda machine just behind you.”

“Information,” Angel said stiffly.

“The drinks I would’ve given for free,” he said with a short chuckle. “Are you sure you won’t take that instead?”

“Val-hal. Scratch. Nirv.”

As Angel spoke harshly, a short scoff came from Shafiq. “Quite a shopping list you’ve got there. Will you be taking it all at once?”

Angel stalked closer to him. “Don’t fuck with me, Shafiq. You supply dealers all over this area. Who’s paying you to do it? Where are the patches coming from!”

“You ought to know better than that, kid,” Shafiq replied coldly. “I play all sides. I’m not gonna give one gang any more clout than another. And killing me isn’t gonna help you, now is it?”

Angrily Angel kicked down a file cabinet. “I don’t want the shit to sell!” he shouted. “You see a whole gang here?! I want names! I want businesses! Who makes the goddamn drugs!” he blasted into Shafiq’s face.

Shafiq tensed through Angel’s outburst, but other than that made no outward reaction. A barely visible sneer rested on his thick lips and he straightened, now Roxy could see just how tall he was, towering past Angel. “You come in here trashing my office and expect information just like that?”

“Roxy.”

Roxy stepped forward with her pipe in hand. Angel motioned her to stop, however, as Shafiq quickly held up his hands.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he snapped. “You don’t understand. I can’t give you that kind of information. You’ll beat me senseless, sure, but others will kill me!”

“Who says I don’t plan to kill you if you don’t tell us?” Roxy growled.

“What are you planning to do, kids?” Shafiq continued. “So I point you in a direction, what the hell do you plan on doing then? It can’t be worth getting in this deep. Just turn around and walk out of my office. I’ll even forgive you breaking my plants.”

Roxy shoved past Angel and whacked the pipe against the front of Shafiq’s knees in response. He let out a cry of pain and fell to his knees, gritting his teeth. Roxy roughly took a hold of his thick hair and pulled his head back. “Listen close, Shafuck. You want your life you’ll tell me where the drugs come from. My fight isn’t with you.”

“Roxy—”

“I want the drugs!” she shouted at the man on his knees before her. “I want to burn ‘em all! The dealers. The makers. I’m gonna stop ‘em all and if you get in my way you’re a dead man.”

Shafiq’s eyes were wide at this point, staring into Roxy’s face with a stunned expression. “You … You’re insane.”

“I’m just mad,” she sneered.

“I can’t burn my meal ticket, you stupid bitch,” he grunted, trying to move his head from her grasp. “I—you don’t kill me, and I let you two walk out with that kind of information then I’m dead anyway.”

“Roxy, we can’t get anything like this,” Angel pressed. At that moment Roxy was unaware whether he was playing “good cop, bad cop,” or if he was honestly telling her that her threats were useless—but she didn’t care either way.

“If anyone comes for you then you can say it was tortured out of you,” she growled. “After all, you don’t cough anything up soon then it won’t be a lie.”

Roxy heard a short gasp utter from Angel, and she raised her face just in time to see a man walk from behind a pile of file cabinets not far away to directly beside her. Roxy only had a moment to register this man in her mind—his ratty jeans, brown hair, and lined face, along with the autopistal in his hand—before she saw him raise his gun and pull the trigger twice. Her hand jerked as the bullets shot directly into the back of Shafiq’s skull, his head jolted from her fingers and his body hit the floor face first with a heavy thud.

Angel descended on the new intruder faster than Roxy had time to react. He forced the man’s hand into the air to point the gun away and shoved the barrel of his own pistol directly under the man’s jaw. Roxy was surprised that the new man made absolutely no struggle as Angel slammed his back against a cabinet.

“What the fuck!” Angel shouted into his face. “You son of a bitch, you know how much we needed that fuckhead alive!”

The stranger’s expression was tired and unreadable and he casually dropped his gun. Roxy finally got a good look at him, at the white guy in his mid-thirties wearing a printed shirt over a plain, white t-shirt, and stared into his dark, glazed eyes. There was something familiar about his face, something she couldn’t pin down right away.

“He wasn’t going to tell you anything, kid,” he said softly. “But I can help you.”

“You were there the whole time?” Roxy asked with a lowered eyebrow.

“I was. I was having a talk with him myself. I came here to kill him, but I couldn’t let you two walk in and see a body until I knew you weren’t working for any of them.”

“Them?” she repeated.

“Son of a bitch,” Angel hissed. “Who are you!”

“Tristan,” he said calmly. “Darren Tristan.”

Angel frowned and roughly grabbed the shoulder of Tristan’s leather coat, pulling it, along with Tristan, away from the cabinet. As the man tumbled down the floor he fell out of his coat and Angel tossed it down. “Roxy, see what he’s got on him.”

“I told you,” he coughed out from the floor. “I can help you!”

Roxy knelt to search the coat’s pockets, but before she did something caught her eye. There was scarring on the man’s left arm, right over the vein. Her breath halted as she stared, unconsciously her eyes went to her own arm. Her trench coat covered the slowly fading scars from repeated patch usage. She was lucky she hadn’t been using the drugs longer than a few months, otherwise such scarring would be permanent. Tristan’s scars were exactly the same.

“Angel …” she began softly.

“Search ‘im,” Angel snapped.

“Shut up for a second!” she snapped back. “Who’s ‘they,’ Tristan?”

“’Who’s they?’ she asked,” he mumbled, his eyes clearly beginning to unfocus. “I stumbled for a clear answer through the fog of my memory, through the months of searching and placing of the puzzle pieces of my life back together. ‘Who is “they?’” I wondered myself—”

Angel stared at the man rambling at his feet and his gun began to lower. Dumbfounded, he glanced at Roxy and mouthed out “He’s crazy.”

“—It’s what I’d been wondering for months. It’s what the trail of blood and drugs were leading to. The ‘they’ that had control of it all. More than some boogey-man of rebellious minds, ‘they’ were the ones putting Val-Hal on the streets and into the hands of needful masses. ‘They’ were the ones who took my life from me. ‘They’ were the ones I had to stop.”

Roxy stared at Tristan through the entirety of his monologue, waiting for what more would come on bated breath. Finally the man looked up into her eyes as though the last few moments hadn’t passed at all, and replied “’They’ are the ones who make Val-Hal. Just like me you must have found out that the stuff is made in this city.”

“He’s not crazy, Angel,” she said, looking up at him. “Look at his arm.” To illustrate her point, she pulled her left arm out of her jacket and displayed her arm for the two men. “That’s from repeated drug use. By the look of it I’d say over a year.”

Tristan’s face hardened as he looked at her scars, then at his own. “Sharp eye,” he said softly. “You’re a user?”

“Was,” she replied. “That’s why they’re almost gone.”

“What the hell were you talking about?” Angel said to Tristan.

“When?”

“When you went off about ‘they,’ and boogey-men and shit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Angel,” Roxy hissed. “Look at him! He’s been pumped full of so much shit he can’t even think to himself anymore.”

“I was talking out loud?”

Angel raised an eyebrow. “Um. Yeah. Yeah, you were.”

Awkwardly one of Tristan’s hands went to cover the scars on his arm. “More proof that my mind wasn’t mine anymore,” he mumbled, barely audible.

Roxy slowly stood and tossed his coat back to him. “Did someone do this to you?” Angel sighed angrily at Roxy handing it back without searching the pockets, but her eyes remained steadily on the older man.

Still muttering something, too soft to hear now, he pulled the coat over his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said with finality. “The details get fuzzier every time I think about it, but I know that I was a cop. I was getting too close to something.”

“A cop?” Angel repeated. “Aw fuck this,” he said in frustration, pulling the gun back up.

“Stop it,” she hissed. “Let ‘im talk.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His brain’s gone. Come on, he’s just some junkie. He fried himself so bad he’s got delusions and just flat-lined our only lead.”

“If you’d searched the pockets you would’ve found this,” Tristan said, his voice clearer than before. Out of his coat pocket he pulled a badge and tossed it at Roxy’s feet. “I managed to get it back.”

She glanced down at it and picked it up. It was definitely real and clearly read “Darren Tristan.” Angel looked like he was about to argue that it could’ve been lifted off of someone else until Roxy turned it over—there was an I.D. on the back, a measure badges had to prevent theft. The thing looked real, and the photo was the man in front of them.

Roxy looked at Angel and saw him roll his eyes, wordlessly saying that this proved nothing. “You were after the makers of val-hal?” she pressed further.

“I think so,” Tristan nodded. “Even though I can’t remember how close I was … I know what the—” he stumbled over his words for a moment. “I know what they did to me in response.”

Roxy knew what looked familiar in him now. She had seen a similar look in her own reflection in the mirror. Every time she thought about losing Michelle there had been a shadow of this same thing in Tristan’s eyes. It was loss. Loss greater than anything Roxy ever hoped to know. She turned to Angel and saw his face soften. He saw it too, it was like how Angel had looked every time he’d thought she wasn’t looking during her rehabilitation. Like when he’d realized by trying to save her he’d nearly killed her.

Tristan continued. “They took … Never mind what happened then. After that, they got a hold of me. They drugged me. Did tests, I think. I can’t even say how long I was there. But I got out. I got out and I’m trying to put the pieces back together of the things I can’t remember … and make ‘em pay for what I do remember,” he finished in a low growl, his fist clenching unconsciously.

“You know it’s the ones who make val-hal?” Roxy asked.

“Yeah. I heard the word often enough.”

Angel folded his arms and sighed deeply. She nudged his side and said in Japanese, “This person can help.”

It took a moment for Angel to piece together what she had said, then as it sunk in he frowned doubtfully. “I don’t know about that,” he replied in broken Japanese back.

Aware that his fate hung in their exchange, Tristan held his breath anxiously.

“Were you here only to kill Shafiq?” she asked him.

A sliver of a smile formed on the man’s face. “No. I knew in his records he had the next stepping stone.” Out of his pocket, slowly so as not to indicate he was reaching for another weapon, he pulled a slip of paper. “I need to find the owner of this warehouse. Shafiq has the info in here somewhere.”

Roxy took the piece of paper from his hand and smiled as she glanced down at the address. “Angel.”

“Yeah?”

“We got ourselves a new ally in the war.”

Angel looked at her self-assured smile and sighed deeply. "Don't make regret this."