Black Equation - The Deceived Ones

Number Twenty-One

When she didn't respond, the man's heavy boot slammed onto her wrist, making her cry without sound. The man didn't seem to like her response. He growled at her, kicking her once, twice, again and again. "Answer me, goddamit!"

"Easy there, H. You're going to kill her," one voice admonished, probably the one filming the whole thing.

H spat on the ground. "I know what I'm doing."

Soon, she completely passed out – the small movement of her chest the only indication that she's alive. Barely.

"M!" the man hollered. "Get your butt in here!"

"Sir?" Another man entered the scene. His face too was shadowed. "Do you need something?"

"Are you feeding the girl?"

"Of course."

"It doesn't seem so. The drugs would only make her wasted, not a skeleton! What have you been doing?!"

"Well, by the looks of it, she vomited everything she ate."

"I don't care what she did –"

The camera jostled, the screen momentarily fading in and out. Some parts went static.

" – should be in shape when I return. Is that clear, M?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, about that other one we got..."

The video stopped there. And without wasting another second, Krad stormed out of his room and took all necessary albeit illegal steps to make them pay for wronging the most undeserving girl to ever live.

Too bad, only the copycat had been near enough to bear his rage. And too bad, he couldn't kill her. At least not yet.

Krad now wholly understood what 13 said – that he was incomplete. Losing his memories made him lose his reason for fighting alongside Creed, made him less efficient, less persevering, because he had no cause, no driving force that would make him teeter at the edge of insanity.

He had one now.

If only he had acted early on his suspicions, he could have prevented this. Faye would have been pursued before she reached the enemies' base. If only he acted on his instincts, she would be living a normal life, unharmed. If only he had been more honest to himself... but now was not the time to blame himself. He had learned his lessons the hard way. Without hesitation, he would hunt the Light and make them pay their crimes thrice over.

01 is back, for real this time.

*

Wearing sunglasses, Arashi surveyed the looming structure carefully, a seemingly harmless teenager in a middle of a dangerous city, ignored by the Mafioso who loitered at the gate of what the public knew as an ordinary printing press company.

Even at the entrance, he could perceive the sickening stench that corrupted the air. Death. It didn't surprise him, considering the wreck in which he and 13 found the Kiev branch; it was near total annihilation.

The Bases they brought with them had cleaned up the place, but the air still reeked of blood and gun powder and sweat and destruction. A few Russian-born agents had subtly kept the civilians away; too near would raise their suspicions.

According to reports, seventeen agents died, fourteen were alive but mutilated, eleven were knocked out by sleeping gas and only the five field agents who went out to scout the outskirts of the city were unscathed.