Milo was barely a hundred steps away from the car before the old chill descended over him. He knew who he was and what he was in this place; he knew how to move through the dark and be unheard. He knew how to be death. It was a skill he’d learned a long time ago, and at the side of a man he’d once thought of as a brother. Thinking of that time, of Bastille, hurt him through and through. They had been close once. They had been – Well, friends was too much for the likes of them. They had been willing to work together. That was the most he had expected, some days. The most he’d been able to hope for.
They’d trained side by side, and in the early days, they had worked on jobs together. And then Bastille had gone rogue, murdering so many of the men who had raised them, even if their version of “raising” was “turning into sharpened weapons”. The men had known nothing more than that world themselves. And the children who’d been slaughtered – there was no version of that which had been fair or just. They had been children. Nothing but children. If Bastille had taken them away from the compound, they might even have grown up to be men, instead of death. But it was too late to think about it now. Milo hadn’t been able to save them, and he couldn’t avenge them. Life didn’t work that way.
He moved through the growing darkness, part of the shadows. He wasn’t some kind of action hero who pulled out his gun miles before the target was reached; that was a good way to get your arms tired or hamper your hands in a way that made an unreasonable amount of noise. It didn’t help anyone. He drew close to the warehouse and found his entrance – a window to the side which had been broken ages ago, based on the dust on either side. There wasn’t any glass left in the frame; it had all been knocked out by those who used the warehouse for shelter, or weather, or something else entirely. He boosted himself up through the window easily – Another reason you never get your gun out until you need it, he thought to himself – and slipped down inside. The distance was slightly more than he expected, and he landed with more noise than he preferred, but still nothing anyone else was likely to hear. He moved quickly through the building; once he got away from the side windows, he did see that there were tracks in the dust. More than one set, enough to have worn something of a path. He made a scornful noise – in his head – about whoever had let security get so sloppy here. Even if Toro was running on his own, he should have known better.
He moved carefully along the path, searching for wherever Toro and his men would be hiding out. The building was quiet, far quieter than it should have been. Something twisted in his guts, and he found himself thinking of Bastille again; he’d had the same sense of nervous concern heading into the facility that day. He hadn’t known then what was wrong in his head, but he knew now. He knew that sense of too quiet that meant something was seriously, seriously wrong. People waiting for him would leave a scent of anticipation in the air. This feeling? Either Silk Road had given him bad information, or something else had gone horrendously wrong on the way.
He was about fifty feet into the warehouse when he smelled death. Blood and shit in a toxic mixture that still made him gag after all these years. His feet sped up; he knew, somehow, exactly what he was going to find. The dust trail led to an open door into an office, a light hung in the corner that was splaying down into the rest of the room, and the stench of death heavy on the air.
Bastille sat on a desk, one foot up on the surface, the other dangling down. He was the absolute picture of lounging casual appearance, except for the gun resting in his lap.
“Milo,” he said, without looking up, “so nice to see you.”
“Can’t say the same, Bastille,” Milo replied. His weapon rested on his thigh, but he didn’t for a moment pretend that would mean Bastille didn’t know exactly where it was. “I was just fine not having seen you for years. What are you doing here?”
Bastille shrugged. “Hired for a contract. You know how it is.”
“I do,” Milo replied. “Little strange, though, don’t you think? That we got hired for the same deal?”
Bastille smiled the wide, creepy grin that Milo had hated for a lot of years. “What makes you think it was the same deal?”
Milo’s brain stuttered just a little over that, trying to guess what in the world Bastille was talking about. If they hadn’t both been hired to deal with Toro, then why had – oh God.
“That’s right, little brother,” Bastille said, his voice twisting harshly on the final word, “I was hired to take you out. To deal with you, after all these years. Silk Road wasn’t satisfied with your work, and I was their insurance policy. Does that feel good – knowing that you didn’t deserve a clean death? They knew I’d take out all these frustrations on you. All the years of living in your shadow…”
“Bastille,” Milo said, trying to regain his mental footing. “It’s been a lot of years. Do we really still have a grudge? After all this time?”
Bastille laughed, and then his gun was trained on Milo so quickly that Milo caught his breath and froze. He wouldn’t have a chance to bring his own weapon up, and at this range, Bastille couldn’t miss.
“Do we still have a grudge? Brother, you got me shot, got me caught. Yeah, we have a grudge.”
“So, you’re here to murder me. That’s how we’re going to end this? Just like you murdered all our brothers, all our fathers?”
Bastille shook his head. “You’ll never understand how that happened. You’ll never understand—”
It turned out that Bastille was right; Milo never would understand. There was a loud crack of gunfire, and then a small hole appeared in Bastille’s face, just above his eyes. Blood and matter spattered behind him, and even though he was dead in a heartbeat, his body didn’t seem to quite know it for a moment. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, muscles operating on fading electric impulses, before his body went limp and slid to the floor.
Milo spun around, ready to face down whoever was coming through the door, but before he could, pain exploded in his head, and his vision went black.