Page 13

Madness.

Descend into madness.

I follow the steps down, down, down. Into the subway tunnels long forgotten by this city. A year ago, they were used against them. Like some scene out of an action movie, dear Artemis and her twin brother entered the bowels of the city and very nearly perished.

Explosions seem so peaceful.

I get to the electrical room that once stored generators for those nasty little subway cars. The metal door swings open easily, the hinges kept in tip-top shape.

The generators stored here were removed by the city—funny, that, since the city doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything else—and repurposed after the gang war spilled over to the water plant at the edge of the reservoir up in West Falls.

It took out running water for almost three days to half its citizens.

But does anyone care about that? No . Not hardly.

With the room free and clear of all except dust, I felt obligated to take it over. Give the dust a new home, carry in my equipment, and set up a secret shop.

It’s dark and creepy down here, and it reminds me every second that I could easily be swallowed by tons of rock and dirt. I could get trapped in this room, suffocate and die. I could be buried and crushed, then die. I could starve, go wild with hunger or thirst, and die.

Die, die, die.

The laptop in the corner is hard-wired into the power source, a delicate ethernet cable run down through some venting and attached to Madness. A concealment, I think, if anyone were to come looking.

The laptop is also connected, by a nifty invention, to the toll building at the edge of Sterling Falls. Bit of a fun turn of events, Artemis discovering that password.

Who would’ve thought to look under the desk?

Not me!

But she did, proving her worth.

Would you believe me if I said giving her the drugs makes me sick?

But also… Sort of happy, too.

Heroin is a nasty business. As long as it has her in its grip, she’s off the chessboard. She’d do anything, even betray her brother. She didn’t think about it like that, but that’s what it is.

Twisting up her insides, making her do things she’d normally never cave on… the old Artemis was so righteous. She was confident in her morality. She would’ve been a crusader for honesty and ethics.

Ethics . Gah. They’re so boring.

But now I have access to the scanner. I replaced the plastic I broke—my rage might be vapor, but it ignites at the slightest spark—and now I have a record of all the vehicles entering and exiting Sterling Falls.

And the income to boot.

With a few keystrokes, I up the tolls a fraction. I divert the payments into a new account, one that will fund Kade and all his toys.

An alert pops up, and I pause. I duck forward, clicking the notification, and my blood goes cold.

There’s not much that can do that nowadays, but…

My pretty little nemesis has flown the coop. Who said she could leave Sterling Falls?

That just won’t do.

Closing the laptop with a slam, I move to the far side. The metal wire shelving that houses my fun supplies. Plastic explosives, wire, random bits and bobs to use as detonators or filling to cause damage. I don’t do that so much, preferring the sheer brilliance of fire to lead the way.

It’s peace, as I said earlier. A single spark, a timer running out—okay, sure, that part might not be relaxing—and then it’s just over . It burns too hot for anyone to consider running, especially if they’re up close and personal.

I set to work crafting the perfect bomb to draw my dear Artemis back to Sterling Falls. She left? She’s not allowed to leave. It’s an unwritten rule, and maybe even unspoken. But that doesn’t mean shit.

She’s never left before, has she?

An entire life spent within the confines of this city.

What happens if she likes the outside better?

She won’t . The outside world is different. There’s order there… and order, in the wake of chaos, feels unstable.

She’ll return here, and she’ll breathe easier when she does. Even as she returns to find everything in ruin.

Bomb made, wires carefully in place and waiting final attachment, I run my fingers along the edge of it, humming under my breath. There’s someone creeping closer, out of the shadows, and I only hum louder. I add some words, my shoulders already lowering back into a nonchalant place.

People come to spy.

People come to stare.

They don’t understand me. They don’t understand what I’ve been through, where I’ve been. They don’t get to judge me for something that was forced upon me.

One person doesn’t judge, and he doesn’t even really stare. He watches from the shadows as I close up the bomb in a box.

Ha— bomb in a box .

I should stick it in the mail. Perhaps I’ll ship it to the sheriff, just to watch his arrogant face when he realizes he fucked up. But no—the sheriff is off-limits. He does Kade’s bidding, drawn by the allure of deep fucking pockets.

If I ever give that much of a shit about money, I’ll deserve a bullet to the brain. I’d take it happily, too. If Kade didn’t buy Madness, well, formerly Descend, if he didn’t pay for the renovations and fund it entirely for me to then take over… I don’t know.

I wouldn’t have a place to sleep at night, surely. Or I’d be sharing his house.

A giggle bursts past my lips.

He doesn’t have a house anymore. Artemis burned it down, down, down.

Box taped shut, I write Nemesis on it. I put the box back, carefully patting it goodbye.

“Who’s that one for?”

I’d almost forgotten Kade came to see me. I face him, cocking my head. “An empty building far, far away.”

He rolls his eyes. “Right.”

“How’s Malikai?”

He pauses. “How?—”

“Do I know you took your men and rode down the main road of East Falls like you owned it, thereupon stumbling drunkenly into the leader of the Hell Hounds and eleven of his men?” I wave my hand. “It doesn’t matter. I want to know how you think it went.”

Oh, I wish I had been there.

I nearly clapped with glee when I was informed. Hadn’t I just said to Kade that I wanted to push into East Falls? Perhaps not quite so dramatically… no, wait, absolutely dramatically . Kade Laurent took a page out of my book!

Except, it didn’t end quite the way it should’ve.

Malikai Barlow is not one who bows. Naturally. Men like him are practically born with iron spines. If only I could’ve seen Kade’s expression when the Hell Hounds’ leader met him eye to eye without flinching…

“Tell me,” I demand.

Kade sighs. He leans on the doorframe, crossed arms, crossed ankles. “One of ours got stabbed.”

I cackle. Fuck those guys Kade rides with—they’re loyal Cyclopes, sure, but they’re narrow-minded to the point of detriment.

Sometimes I think Kade is right there along with them, and it’s sad .

He used to have a mind and goals, but now that Reese is nice and safe…

what’s a guy to do? Lose his brains and flush our hard work down the toilet?

“It’s not a laughing matter,” he hisses.

I pick up the box I just taped, crossing out Nemesis and writing Barlow on it instead. I shove it none to delicately into his arms.

“Solve the problem, then, brother.” I smile. “Let me know when you want it to go boom .”

He holds it like a baby, cradling the thing carefully. Which is good, because it’s always wise to have caution around explosives. It’s not armed, though. Not until I pop the tape off—which I do while he holds it—and slide the last plug into the black box.

It blinks to life.

“Shit,” Kade mumbles.

“All it takes is a phone call.” I brighten. “And only I know the number.”

I usher him to the door. “Go forth and deliver.”

“We need to talk about?—”

“About your massive fuck up?” Every fiber in my being goes still and focused. “I told you I wanted to go east. I didn’t want to wave a giant red flag and declare our intentions.”

He glares at me. “I didn’t.”

“You went for a fucking joyride. Get the fuck out of here.”

When he leaves, the hard armor in my expression melts away. Alone, I can return to being me . Which… doesn’t leave much to be desired, sure. To be normal is to be an oddity.

No one is fucking normal, least of all me.

I trail Kade back the way he came, taking care to step lightly and stick to the shadows. He takes the stairs back into Madness, and I continue on. The hallway ends in the subway tunnels. The actual ones. They go almost everywhere, and it’s my own personal playground.

No one’s brave enough to venture under the streets.

Anyway.

I stroll along the tracks, always considering running my fingers along that infamous third rail. It could still be hot , as they say, or… well, since the generators are gone, it could just be my imagination creating the buzz of electricity in the air.

My eyes are well adjusted to the dark, and the route is memorized. I traverse it easily.

Half a mile away, I come upon a man handcuffed to one of the normal rails. There are ties on either side, ensuring he can’t slide like an inchworm down to one of the abandoned platforms.

He comes awake when I bring more sound into my movements. Skittering my toe across a loose collection of pebbles, landing harder with every step. Thud, thud, thud.

I locate the flashlight I left behind and flick it on. It illuminates the man ahead.

He squirms and lifts himself into a sitting position.

There’s an awful lot of blood on him.

Might be due to the missing eye and all.

“Hello, Jeff.” I squat beside him, poking his shoulder.

Poor fella flinches back like I stabbed him.

Might’ve done that, too.

A few stabs never killed anyone.

Much.

“Jeff,” I admonish. The beam of light lands on his face. “Where are your manners?”

“H-Hypnos,” he stutters. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone?—”

I scoff. “Sorry, Jeff, you sing like a parrot. It’s a proven fact now. Maybe if you kept your mouth shut sooner … Alas. Much too late. And I still have details to extract from you.”

“Please.” His Adam’s apple bobs. He squints, trying to see me. Maybe. Or maybe he’s just trying to conceal that he still has one working eyeball. “I’ve told you?—”

“A fair amount about your favorite Olympians,” I concede. “But now we’re going to talk about Malikai Barlow.”

He stills. “I don’t?—”

My scoff silences him.

I have an excellent scoff. Sighs of disdain. Huffs of exasperation. Many a men have fallen still after such an exclamation.

I’m getting off track.

“Focus, Jeff.”

“My name isn’t?—”

“ Malikai Barlow ,” I interrupt.

He sighs, and it’s not nearly as powerful as mine. I creep closer and grasp his shoulder. The light is still on his face. His pupils—sorry, fuck, pupil —is a tiny pinprick.

Hmm.

“Tell the truth. Cross your heart, hope to die… stick a needle in your eye.” I tilt my head.

Do I have a needle on me?

“No.” He scrambles back, seeming to forget that he’s handcuffed. His shoulders bulge, his arms reaching the end of their limit. His chest rises and falls sharply. “No, um, Malik. He rarely goes by his full name. He, ah, he’s the leader…”

“Of the Hell Hounds.” I release his shoulder. “Do you have anything new or interesting to tell me?”

He considers that.

“For your freedom, Jeff,” I whisper. “Don’t you want to see sunlight again?”

“I do,” he agrees. “I just… I don’t know what you want.”

“Let’s start with a little history lesson.” I rock back on my heels. “And maybe some pain management. Would that loosen your lips?”

His eye widens. The other one flaps, the eyelid shredded. At least it’s stopped bleeding… terrible thing, eye wounds. All head wounds just bleed and bleed and bleed . This one is evident by the dried blood down his face, staining the front of his shirt.

He’s lucky he didn’t die.

I pull a vial and syringe from my pocket. I make a show of uncapping it, tipping the glass bottle upside down, inserting the needle in through the cap. Drawing a few millimeters of morphine.

He sways toward me now.

Fucking junkie.

“Talk,” I demand.

“A h-history lesson.” He wets his lips. “Okay. Um. The Hell Hounds used to be led by Cerberus James. Malik was his number two, but Wolfe James—Ares, you know—was his son. So everyone assumed Wolfe would take over. But then he said he didn’t want it, and neither did Jace or Apollo.

“Wolfe appoints Malik, and it’s part of the whole city clean-up thing in the wake of the end of the war. So I don’t know, I guess Malik is kind of?—”

“When did Apollo and Jace go into the Hell Hounds?” I thumb the plunger, letting a drop or two of morphine ease out. Our chats about the Olympians didn’t cover their early years.

“In their early teens,” he tells me, his voice fucking eager now that I have what he wants within reach. The metal handcuffs clink and scrape as he readjusts. “Malik was like an older brother to them, like a guiding force, you know?”

“No. Keep going.”

“He, uh, took them under his wing. Artemis, too.”

I perk. “Artemis?”

“Apollo’s twin,” he says needlessly.

As if I could forget who Artemis is. Was. Will be.

“She hung around the Hell Hounds a lot, when they were sixteen or seventeen…” He swallows sharply, his Adam’s apple dipping.

Kind of want to cut it out, just to see if he could still talk.

“So Malik has a soft spot for her, too?” I consider that.

“He must.”

I thought I knew the players on the board.

Apollo, Jace King, Wolfe James.

Sheriff Nathan Bradshaw.

Antonio Greco.

Reese Avery.

Kade, grudgingly, is added to my mental list.

And Malikai Barlow was never really on it, he was just there. Something to conquer, lumped in with the rest of the Hell Hounds. One bike slut is just the same as all the rest.

But now…

I rise.

His gaze goes to the syringe. “Please…”

The gleaming point catches on the beam of light, and I suddenly smile.

It looks like I have my needle, after all.