"Why does it matter that he doesn't recognize you?" Davis asked. "I mean, he's always been observing from a distance, right?"
"He would've been shown a picture of my face, at the least." Aiden shook his head. "No, the spy has been crafty up to this point, and was even able to disguise his trail from the Dianists. He is well-trained. This is not a well-trained man."
"He did give off that common criminal vibe," Rain nodded. "And he did drop his weapon just because he was startled. So then, he's just hired help?"
"Yes. An expendable pawn."
The man just now began to stir. His eyes went wide as he saw them all staring down at him. He was young, probably around Rain's age, and he even looked sort of familiar. "Oh, shit," he muttered to himself looking down. "You got me."
"Yes, we did," Aiden affirmed with a nod.
"You did run like hell, though," Rain added.
"Could've run a lot faster without all that garbage in my lungs." His voice sounded familiar too.
"Yeah, no kidding," Rain laughed softly. It was sort of odd talking to a teen who had just moments ago tried to kidnap and then shoot him. He didn't really know what to think about him. He seemed just as normal and human as anyone else he had talked to.
"You used your CS smoke on him?" Aiden caught Rain's gaze. "Very impressive work. And here I thought giving you your equipment was—"
"He CS smoked himself—the criminal just so happened to get caught up in it," Alyse butted in.
"Gee, thanks, Alyse," Rain growled. "And no, I did mean to use it on him. I just used the wrong one."
"Well, your intentions were correct, at least," Aiden offered before turning back to his captive. "So, you seem of the reasonable sort. I have a few questions for you to answer. You can answer them by choice, or I can inject this very unpleasant needle into you and extract the answers by force. I will allow you to choose."
"Ah, what the hell, I'll talk—the guy's not gonna pay me anyway without bringing Vivian to him."
Rain's internal alarms went off. He had called him by his last name. He had hardly told anyone his last name except when he was boasting, and it definitely never came up in conversation while the spy could've been eavesdropping. It seemed Aiden was similarly interested.
"Did he tell you Vivian's name?" Aiden asked.
The teen nodded his head. "They did, but I've met him before, and he said he was a Vivian, so I figured out who they were talking about, even before they showed me a picture."
Rain gasped as he put two and two together. "You were from that group I talked to at the Merchant compound!" he exclaimed. "Oh, my gods, I can't believe it! But what the hell, why are you here trying to kidnap me?"
"I didn't get in," he replied slowly. "The money they gave for you would've been enough to pay off conscription. They demanded that you couldn't be harmed, so I didn't think they were going to do anything bad to you...but I didn't ask questions."
"An unusual request," Alyse noted.
"And a small world," Rain muttered.
"So, what did this man look like?" Aiden pressed.
"He approached me in the dark, it was almost impossible to see his face, really, but he was in pretty normal clothing Sorry - I really don't know much, but there was one thing about the picture he showed of Vivian. He—"
A loud gunshot rang out, echoing through the narrow alley and causing Rain's eardrums to almost burst. Rain watched as bright red blood and brain matter splattered against the wall the teen was leaning against. His eyes, filled with intent a mere moment ago turned to a glassy, empty stare as a gory bullet hole appeared between them. He slumped over, leaving a trail of blood on the wall behind him as he fell with a thud. More blood slowly seeped from the gaping hole where the back of his head once was, and began to pool around him.
Aiden looked up, drawing his pistol. Everything had a blurry haze to it, making Rain feel like he was in some sort of dream. He could hear the muffled sound of Aiden shouting above the loud ringing in his ears. Rain turned to him in confusion; his mind was blank, unable to process what was going on. It could only observe like a passive agent. A bright blue flicker flashed before his eyes as the sound of another gunshot went off and was deflected. As another blue flicker flashed in the air but inches away from Aiden's body, he turned to Rain and grabbed him, pulling him close to shield him from the bullets.
Rain's eyes darted to his left to see Alyse screaming and covering her ears. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she cowered against the wall right next to the corpse. She looked down at it for a moment before frantically crawling away as the pool of blood stretched out to touch her.
Rain's focus then fell on Davis and Janet. They had their pistols pulled and were returning fire at whoever was shooting at them from above. They were taking accurate shots; using both hands on their pistols to better stabilize their aim. Their faces were dark and serious; their entire minds and bodies focused in the moment and on hitting their mark. They hadn't panicked at all, they had reacted. So did Aiden; his first move was to protect Rain.
"What's going on?" Rain cried out as the ringing in his ears slowly began to die down. "What the hell! What the hell?"
"We've been attacked, but he was retreated," Aiden explained loudly, slowly releasing his grip on Rain and looking him over. "How do you fare?"
Rain was shaking like a leaf, but he didn't feel any pain. The scene of the teen's blood splattering everywhere was perpetually repeating in his mind. It seemed so surreal. Rain took a quick glance down at his bloody corpse as if to authenticate it wasn't just a figment of his imagination or something. It wasn't.
Aiden moved from him to Alyse, helping her up. She was curled into herself, and she swatted Aiden's hand away when it touched her shoulder.
"Get away from me!" Alyse screamed up at him. Her eyes were hysterical and her lips were trembling. "I want to go home! Let me go home!"
"What's wrong with her?" Rain asked. He was terrified, too, but Alyse seemed to have completely lost it. "Did she get shot?"
"She just witnessed someone's gruesome murder a mere foot away from her," Aiden stated plainly. "This is a very natural response. She has never seen such death before." It stood to reason that Aiden, Davis and Janet had. "How do you feel?"
"Not great," Rain admitted. "Gunshots are very, very loud. And seeing that guy die feels so surreal—sudden. I sort of knew him!"
"Yet you hardly react to it. Have you encountered death before?"
Rain shook his head. What was Aiden hoping his reaction to be? Did he want him to curl into a ball and scream, too?
"Interesting. You may not feel calm, but normally people feel much, much worse. You had a very mild reaction for someone who wasn't exposed to death before..." Aiden shook his head. "It matters not. We've been attacked; this situation has just escalated drastically."
"Where are the Dianists?" Rain asked.
"Still looking for the spy's hideout, in all likelihood. The same spy who has surely just murdered our deceased friend here to prevent us from learning anything from him.'
"So what's our next move?" Davis asked, holstering his pistol. "We can't let him get away."
"I'm going to talk with the Dianists and see if they've found his hideout yet. Even if he now moves to a different one, he could well leave behind evidence that we could use."
Rain heard a scuffling sound behind him and turned to see Alyse slowly rising to her feet. All the blood had drained from her face and she looked sickly.
"S—s—sorry about that," Alyse muttered and looked down at her feet. "I wasn't ready for that."
"All is well," Aiden consoled. "No one blames you."
"Yeah, it's all good," Davis said, lightly patting her on the shoulder. "Happens to everyone."
"Normal," Janet added.
Alyse seemed to ease up a bit, but was still on edge.
"We need to disperse," Aiden decided. "Janet, Davis, return home on standby; having a small party of Vincent assembled will only arouse suspicion and make us easier targets. Now quickly..." Aiden's voice trailed off as his gaze was fixed on the end of the alley. "Damn."
Rain followed his gaze. Four men decked out in crisp, all-white buttoned-up uniforms appeared. They had red stripes on the sides of their pants and shirts, and a very visible bronze badge on their chests with the symbol of a clenched fist. Their heads were shaved, and their facial expressions were staid yet somehow intimidating.
"Justicars," Rain muttered into the silence.
"You are all under arrest!" one of the Justicars in the middle shouted as they began to walk towards them. They had heavy-looking pistols in their hands, but for the moment they weren't raised.
"We have immunity," Aiden called back. He reached into his pant pocket and pulled out a shiny silver card and showed it to them. "We are sanctioned by the government of Apollo as a symbiotic entity."
"I don't care who you are." The men stopped a dozen yards away from them and halted. "I'm looking at four armed suspects surrounding a dead kid. You're coming with us."
"If you want to arrest us you will need a warrant from the head of the family of that respective district. You have no such warrant."
"I won't ask again!" the man barked, raising his revolver. The other three followed suit. Alyse flinched, but held her ground all the same. No one else moved. Tension saturated the air. Rain just couldn't catch a break today. The thought almost made him laugh at the irony. He had been bored for most of his whole life, and now it was just one tense moment after another. "Force will be used."
"What are we going to do, Mentor?" Alyse asked worriedly.
"They cannot legally arrest us without the proper warrant," Aiden spoke quickly and darkly. "The Justicars know this well. Something else is going on here, and I would not have us captured and at their mercy under these circumstances."
"So, we're going to fight them?" Rain inquired.
"No, if we attack them then they'd be within right to take us on. That could well be what they want. My initial plan stands."
"And that is?"
Aiden pulled two blue smoke grenades from his utility belt and gave a slight smirk. "Disperse." He threw them down quickly and they were all immediately covered in a shroud of smoke. Rain could barely see the outline of Davis, who had just been standing next to him. He followed the sounds of movement and quickly found himself outside the cloud and in the open street.
"This way, apprentices!" Aiden shouted. Rain and Alyse followed him down the street. Davis and Janet went the other way, forcing the Justicars to either split up, or only follow one group. Rain heard reports of gunfire behind him as they ran on ahead through the streets. There was no one to protect him from the bullets now; any one of them could find their mark. Rain really, really wished his suit would work. He was in mortal jeopardy, this should be the time where it magically worked all of a sudden—but it wasn't.
"I can't believe they're freaking shooting at us!" Rain yelled over the sounds of gunfire. It was in the middle of the day and there were pedestrians in the streets. They were all screaming and running now, rushing into their apartments or into cover. A woman grabbed up her small child in her arms and rushed into a small, rundown store. There were security guards intently watching the scene unfolding from their posts, but they didn't act. This wasn't their problem.
"How dare they open fire with all these civilians around," Aiden growled.
"And they call themselves peacekeepers," Alyse added. A narrow side street came up and they turned onto it. The street was largely deserted, probably because of all the gunfire. Rain looked around quickly and saw their opportunity.
"There," Rain proclaimed, pointing towards the low-hanging rooftop of a hardware store. It was mushed between two apartments, but they were much taller. They ran over to it quickly, using each spare second they had before they were in the Justicars' line of sight once more. As Rain neared the brick wall, he leaned back and pushed his foot up against it, using it to repel himself upward. He grabbed the ledge with both hands and pulled himself up just as a bullet shot into the ledge a mere inch from his hand, its whistling sound following immediately after.
Rain ducked low and continued to run across the rooftop. Unfortunately, the rooftop ended without any way to jump onto another; the next set of rooftops was too far past an expansive street below them. Rain held his breath as he leapt off the rooftop to the pavement, landing on the balls of his feet and tucking into a roll. Aiden and Alyse soon followed.
They continued to run down the street, cutting every corner they could and ignoring any gawkers. As they grew more and more tired, they finally slowed down to a stop, breathing deeply. Rain and Alyse were hunched over with their hands on their knees while Aiden remained upright and alert.
They had lost the Justicars.
"What the hell was that about?" Rain breathed. "And why the hell do we run so damn much?"
"Such is our life," Aiden explained through his deep breathing.
"This stuff is intense! Someone got killed and we got shot at, and I'm not even an official agent yet! My stupid suit thing won't even work!"
"That poor guy," Alyse muttered. Rain looked over at her. Her face was riddled with grief and she matched his gaze. "That could've been any one of us, Rain. He was our age."
"I know, Alyse, I know. It was really bad. Like you said, this isn't a game." Rain's mind was still racing. Even though he was nearly exhausted, his mind pushed on, reviewing everything that happened and trying to decide how he felt about the whole situation. It was terrifying and exciting all at once. He never felt more alive.
His thoughts turned somber when he thought of the man who was killed in front of him. He didn't deserve that. He probably was just enticed with a little coin, an opportunity to eat. Rain knew the feeling. He never would've gone so far as to try and kidnap someone, but he could understand that sort of desperation.
Now the guy was dead, just like that. Murdered in some dirty alleyway. Who would claim his body? He probably had a family, but if he was trying to kidnap Rain just to avoid conscription, they probably were too poor to be able to pay for a real funeral. He would just be incinerated. His only mark on this world would be that of his ashes as they flew through the wind.
Rain sighed and shook his head. He was getting all poetic. He should be more worried about himself. What was the picture they had used? What was so curious about it that he thought it was important enough to mention? Rain had never had his picture taken, at least not as far as he could remember.
Just who was this spy?
landed and landing used too close to one another