Jack: Sorrow and Retribution
Hot lead flies over my head. I'm way down south in some backwater swamp way out in the wilderness. Darien eventually got the location we needed. Luckily for us, New Dawn doesn't segment their information well. Even a new recruit knew their center of operations. Usually, it's bad form to just wipe out the competition—it leaves a vacuum for new players to enter, and then you have to go through the work of figuring them out and making new deals. But New Dawn fucked with the Amontillados, and me, and the girl I love. Loved. Plus, they're racist, fascist scum bags. Don't get me wrong, I realize the hypocrisy of a man like me judging anyone else, but even evil has its levels.
We’re tucked behind an embankment leading up to their compound. Stupid of them—they should’ve leveled it. Some tweaked-out fascist is firing an old M60 non-stop over our heads, cutting the woodline behind us to shreds. Darien’s coming in behind them with most of my guys. They haven’t realized he’s here yet. I’m drawing fire from the front with Wyatt and Benjy.
These guys are locked and loaded—full body armor, grenades, a few rocket launchers, and a pile of automatic rifles that I'm pretty sure they started collecting in the seventies. But they're still not quite on level with us. All my top men were sourced from combat—guys I knew or private contractors looking for a new line of work. They're vicious, and they’re the best at what they do. These assholes have full body armor; my guys have DARPA-tech combat suits that the military doesn't even use yet. Congress balked at the million-dollar price tags, but I figured two dozen would be nice to have for the gang.
I wait patiently behind the hill. Benjy huddles next to me. He just barely squeezed into his armor and insisted on coming. He’s the one guy here who hasn’t seen active combat, but he’s doing well.
“This stuff is getting a little close, boss!”
The rockets can’t make it through the hill we’re behind, but I’m a little worried about a grenade making it over.
“Just gotta hang in until Darien flanks them, Benjy. Wyatt, why don’t you send them something to keep them on us.”
Wyatt fires the M203 grenade launcher mounted to his M4 and shrapnel rips through the front of the compound.
I used to feel alive doing this—fighting to the death. I used to even take dark satisfaction in building my empire by destroying rivals like this. Now it all seems like pointless cruelty. I keep having to bring my mind back to it. All I can think of are her eyes, Riley’s stunning eyes, haunting me from the deepest parts of me.
I know now that I’m going to carry this girl with me to the end of my days. I’m as bound and trapped by her as the knight in that old poem, bewitched by his dark enchantress. La Belle Dame sans Merci.
I thought she’d float away if I let her go. I thought she’d release me. I’ve been trying to think of other girls to go to—New York socialites or the highest-priced call girls to satiate my desire. I have access to women that would be the wildest dreams of any man. And I can hardly even bear to consider them.
I should feel better. I finally managed to make the right decision. Riley is a weakness. However bad life on the run will be, I would’ve been worse for her in the end. She’ll survive. I’ve taught her how. She’ll survive, build a beautiful life for herself, and be glad she was rid of me.
Even if I'd run off with Riley, it couldn't have worked. We played a game we both enjoyed—a game of pretend where we both thought we were in love. Those games don't last. There's nothing real about them. They're not worth losing your life and an empire over.
Something plops down next to me and Benjy is dragging me away before I realize what’s going on. Shrapnel explodes over us and punches into the armor, but Benjy gets us far enough away that it doesn’t penetrate.
I throw Benjy off and check his armor. Not Benjy, too—“I’m fine, boss, it’s okay!”
“You see a grenade, you get to cover, okay? You don’t worry about me!”
“Gotcha, boss.”
“But thanks for saving my life.”
“No problem.”
I can feel the kid smiling through his armor.
Wyatt slides the visor up on his helmet.
“Benjy’s right, boss. You’re distracted.”
“Benjy said I was distracted?”
Benjy slowly slides up his visor, too, and looks nervous.
“I’m not mad at you, you’re right,” I assure him
“You’re fine, boss. I’m just saying, you fucked up,” Wyatt says.
“I’ll catch it next time.”
“Not with the grenade, with the girl.”
“You really want to talk about this now?”
Wyatt fires another grenade over the embankment. “Hey, I’m just sitting around.”
“I’ve never seen you like this,” Benjy says. “And Wyatt says he’s never seen you like this, either, except maybe when you were in Mexico and wanted to die, he says.”
I worry that my underlings have mistakenly started to believe they’re my friends and advisers, but considering that we all may be dead at the hands of psychopathic tweaker-skinheads in the next few minutes, I can’t see the harm in humoring them.
“If I’m miserable it’s because I fucked up and let New Dawn get to us.”
"Boss, we've had plenty of setbacks before and you've been fine. You weren't eating this morning, and I don't think you even realized. We were planning this out and you were just sitting there with a bowl of cereal, and you had a full spoon in your hand, but you were just staring into the distance. And—"
“Point illustrated, Benjy.”
Darien radios in to let us know they’ve reached an impasse within the building.
I flick my visor back down and Wyatt and Benjy follow suit. “Alright, let’s go make our money.”
I crawl over the hill and blow a hole in the guy with the M60 the next time he pops up. Wyatt and Benjy are launching grenades and I cross the field between the hill and the front of the building, laying down fire. I feel myself get hit, then again, then again, but the armor takes it, and then I’m into the building with Wyatt and Benjy behind me. We wipe out the guys left at the front and then trap the rest between us and Darien.
One moment it’s pandemonium and cacophony, and then a moment later the silence is deafening.
“We’re sweeping the building,” Darien says.
“Don’t kill the rest if they surrender. We can drop them with Ariadne; maybe her g-men’ll want them. When you’re done, take the records and burn the place to the ground.”
“I thought Ariadne was bent, boss?”
“No, she was with Byron, but she’s a good cop.”
“How do you know?”
“She had the guts to stand up to me once, a while ago.”
I stand in the wreckage as they go about their work. I should feel satisfaction or horror or anything at all, but I only feel a profound emptiness.
Riley.
I think of her smile. Her laugh. The perfect curve of her naked back. Her small, delicate, hesitant kisses like raindrops. Her big, luminous eyes that offer a glimpse into her vibrant soul.
I had her. I had her right there in my hands. Maybe she even wanted me. And I let it go to ruin. I have all the power in the world—all I could ever need—and I still let things crumble and die.