Page 19 of Remnants: Disruption
“Hey, Arya,” Alice’s soft voice pierces my thoughts for the second time. I glance up at her, and she gestures to the window outside. “There’s a guy here looking for you.”
I frown, but give her a nod. Polishing off my coffee, I toss it in a waste bin and pocket my phone.
“Have a good night, Alice,” I say, passing by. She gives me another smile, this one friendlier, but only just.
I only make it one step out of Arthur’s doors before a hand wraps around my face and I feel the barrel of a gun against my back.
“Move quietly. I’d hate to blow the cute blonde’s head off.”
I say nothing, complying as the man prods me off towards the nearest alley. My heart thumps a few times before steadying. My breathing regulates as he spins me to face him, gun still leveled at my chest.
Where my heart would be.
His face is truly uninspired. A regular, run-of-the-mill white guy with dark brown hair. He’s as unoriginal as Malachi Blackwood had been, and I almost wonder if these guys are just cloned vat-babies being used for whatever DAEMON has going on.
He gives me a sardonic grin as he pulls back a lever on the weapon. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, the device itself seems manifested rather than built.
“You make that yourself or is there a black-market for strange guns I don’t know about?” I ask, gesturing at the implement.
The weapon disappears and then reappears in his other hand. “It’s my own.”
“Fancy trick,” I say, giving him a grin. “What can I do for you, Mr. Gun?”
“That’s not my fucking name,” he hisses, the gun reappearing in his right hand again. Clearly the guy’s not a lefty. “It’s Triggerman.”
“That’s actually insanely dumb,” I scoff out, dropping my hands to my knees as I laugh. “You should go with Mr. Gun.”
He swipes at me, the weapon nearly striking me on the crown before a tendril of dark blackness wraps around the barrel. It goes flying into the darkened alley behind me.
“What the—” he looks startled for a moment before another weapon manifests in his hands.
“Look, man,” I say, raising my hands in mock supplication. “What do you want? I don’t have any money. I’m a Tier 1.”
“There’s a bounty for information about that serial murderer,” his grin malicious. “Who better than the necrophilic freak?”
My teeth slam together as I bite back the insult brimming on my tongue.
“Alright,” I begin as calmly as I can. “We haven’t found anything yet besides the bodies. Whoever’s put out the bounty will just have to wait.”
“Not good enough,” he sneers, leveling the gun at my forehead. “Guess I’ll have to go find that pretty detective and shake it out of her instead.”
Darkness floods the alley. My own form disappears into the inky black as it shifts and vibrates around him.
“Hey—” Triggerman yells out, but his mouth is summarily gagged with a tendril of shadow. Shadows bind his right hand, a quick wrench shatters something in his shoulder, the snap echoing down in the alley.
He lets out a pitiful scream as I move around him, still bathed in the darkness. He’s seen my face and threatened Percy. His left hand comes down to try and re-manifest the weapon, but it’s shakier in his offhand.
“The Dark One is here,” I say behind him before shadow-jumping deeper into the alley. I pull the cloak and mask from the shadow-vault, sliding both on in the cover of the darkness.
Triggerman coughs out a swear before firing out into the closing darkness around him.
“You stupid bitch!” he cries out, voice much higher than before.
“I wouldn’t talk to her like that,” I say, my voice modulated by the mask. My boots squelch through the damp dirt and debris scattered along the alley floor.
“Wait,” Triggerman says, his voice pleading as he tries to look through the darkness. “Wait, I can explain.”
“No more time,” I say, emerging from the ink. “Just be thankful I’m not about to end you where you stand.”
