The two special agents of the Mendakian Union’s Triple I Division walked up the many flights of the piss-stained and cigarette butt-studded stairs of the Rollins Apartments in North New Chemeketa. Jerry led the way through the ambient filth, while Braxton, his coworker and husband, walked next to him.

  Both men were quite tall, as imposing as newly built skyscrapers from New Mannahentank, and carried themselves with the casual menace of seasoned thugs on their way to collect payment from a difficult client. Beyond their impressive height, the physical similarities ended there. Even Braxton had a notable height advantage over Jerry.

  Where Jerry had long, sandy hair tied into a messy ponytail, Braxton opted for a smooth, clean-shaved head that reflected the poor light of the gloomy interior. Where Jerry had pale skin that was common to most Nuragians, riddled with all manner of scar, pockmark, and blemish, Braxton’s skin was smooth, save for a few major scars here and there. He also had darker skin than most Yerbakians, his neo-ethnicity.

  Where Jerry had wide, haunted blue eyes that darted everywhere with paranoid impatience, Braxton had deep, soulful brown eyes that carefully analyzed everything in view. Loud lapis lazuli studs shimmered in Jerry’s ears, while a total of six steel cuff earrings gleamed dully in Braxton’s.

  Lastly, both men wore fine, three-piece NorbatonTech suits and ties. The only pieces of clothing that weren't black on them were the white dress shirts underneath their suit jackets.

  “I’ve been wondering about something for a real long time,” Jerry said, his lispy, Moundgia-gifted accent languid and easy as ever.

  “Are you wondering about how to combat your unreasonable anxiety over taking elevators?” Braxton’s Moundgia accent was less pronounced but still present, overshadowed by his deep, bellowing voice. “That’s what I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Nothing good ever happens in elevators, especially the ones in rotten vullenpits like this apartment building. Elevators break down all the time, force you near people you have no business being near, and get you sneezed on like crazy.”

  “Why are you worried about getting sneezed on? Yeah, it’s gross, but we're Touched if you somehow forgot that. We don’t get sick unless something truly horrible like frost tongue fever has infected us.”

  “You never know, my sweet man. Have you been keeping up with the papers I share with you much?”

  “I usually do, including those deranged rags you smuggle in from Arrowzonac that claim the Mendakian Union is secretly ran by a cabal of Vullenites who drink the blood of children to stay young and virile, which I don’t get. There’s no reason to invent a shadow government to get mad at when there’s plenty of real governments to get mad at for real reasons.”

  “Ignoring some of the admittedly less sane papers I enjoy like the Truth Seekers Incorporated, I read in a more reputable science journal that the average human mouth is full of more bacterial spookums than a men’s bathroom floor. Really think about that, Brax.” Jerry’s face twisted in revulsion. “A man’s bathroom floor being more sanitary than a human mouth? That’s fucking disgusting!”

  “Uh huh.” Braxton scratched his smooth, hairless chin. “So is this the thing you were wondering about or are you actually going to get into it now? Your insight into the world around us has never failed to amuse me, dear.”

  “Oh, that,” Jerry said. “What I’m wondering about is if a man has ever called his cock a groot?”

  “A groot?” Braxton regarded Jerry with one of his well-utilized, blank, unamused stares. “What the Vullen are you talking about now?”

  “A groot is a portmanteau of guy and root because I could imagine a man, a thing you could call a guy, referring to his cock, a thing you could call his root, calling his cock a groot.”

  “You’re losing not just me, but the entire plot here.”

  “What do you think?”

  “We’re both grown men who served in the Henryson Marine Corps,” Braxton said. “We, of all people, should know that anything you can imagine a man calling his genitals has certainly been done ten thousand times over.”

  “You got me there,” Jerry said. “You don’t think this 'groot' thing has any roots?”

  “No.”

  “Damn!”

  They walked up the rest of the apartment’s stairs in relative silence until they reached the fifth and final floor, their journey soundtracked by loud arguing, louder music, and unfortunate people destroying their minds and bodies with drugs at the loudest volume possible penetrating various thin doors and walls.

  “I’m damned glad I got my pieces on me.” Jerry patted the concealed service pistol he kept in his suit’s internal pocket. He also thought of his automatic revolver loaded with silver bullets on his ankle. “Every other place in North New Chemeketa gets fucking frightening past 1700. Even the rats must be packing a shiv or two that they made from toothpicks in this mean, rundown-looking son of a bitch of an apartment.”

  “I don’t see the need for such mean-spirited commentary like that,” Braxton said. “A lot of the people that live here and in North New Chemeketa are the disadvantaged, the downtrodden, and the unfairly disparaged simply because of their postal codes.”

  Jerry scoffed. “Didn’t know I accidentally married a preacher man of the Twelve. Let’s see how disadvantaged, downtrodden, and unfairly disparaged these poor lost souls would act by sending somebody like Noura or Howard instead of two rough bastards like us here alone at night.”

  “I never said that everybody who lives here were all innocent victims of circumstance who did nothing wrong in their lives, just a lot of them, statistically speaking.”

  “I’ll use that line of logic the next time we have breakfast with the rest of the Rangers.” In a deep, mocking voice reminiscent of Braxton’s, Jerry said, “I don’t know why y’all aren’t eating the pancakes after I said I paid the line cook to poison every third one. Not all of them are poisoned, statistically speaking.”

  Braxton shook his head while Jerry grinned smugly at him.

  “Why do you vex me so?” Braxton asked.

  “Because I love keeping you on those bigass toes of yours, my bigger man. Speaking of such, look alive. We’re here.”

  They arrived at the desired apartment door moments later. Like most of the other doors in the apartment, it was dingy, cheap, and looked like a good, solid kick could send it flying off its cheaper, rusty hinges. Jerry filed that last detail away in his mind, in case this simple arrest warrant went off the rails—a not-too-uncommon event involving rowdy suspects in a rowdier place like North New Chemeketa.

  Jerry prepared to knock on the door, but his intuition, honed by decades of dangerous situations, halted him for an unknown reason.

  Over the past few weeks, Jerry, Braxton, and the other Rangers had been tracking down the four other members of this current suspect’s truck-robbing crew. They had gone down like dominoes, giving intelligence that led to the arrest of one crew after another member. Despite the violent records of the truck-robbing crew, none of them had violently resisted their arrests. They had either given up as soon as they saw loaded guns pulled on them or attempted to flee in some embarrassing fashion, like poor Holiday “Hot Hands” Philips, who barricaded himself in a fast food restaurant bathroom until tear gas pumped into the room convinced him to see reason through the tears in his eyes.

  Something mysterious nestled deep within Jerry’s mind told him this final suspect would be different.

  “So… are you just gonna stand there or knock on the door?" Braxton asked, raising an eyebrow at Jerry.

  Jerry shook his head clear of any further distractions and did so. He then clasped his hands behind his back and waited patiently. Several seconds passed. Just before he was about to knock again, the door cracked open, held in place by a rusty security chain. A Native Almandican man with reddened eyes exposed his face through the narrow opening. He reeked of burned raggabush and furiously bad body odor.

  Twelvedamned raggabush burners, Jerry thought. He forced himself to smile politely. Turning some drug into their entire personality like it’s something admirable.

  “Hello?” the man asked. He examined Jerry and Braxton with glazed eyes and a calm face. “Do I know you two dudes?”

  “What are you doing?” A woman in the apartment behind the man shouted. She sounded shrill and intoxicated. “Why are you opening the door to strangers at a time like this?”

  “Calm down, Taquina! It’s only a little past 2100,” the man hissed at her. “I think these guys are legit.” The man smiled at Jerry and Braxton, causing Jerry to grimace in disgust. The man’s remaining teeth seemed to enjoy being every color underneath the two suns of Catto Occulo except for white. “Sorry about that, gentlemen. I’m Shatter Moon. That’s not a nickname by the way. No matter what anybody says, my real first name is Shatter, and my real surname is Moon.”

  “Good evening and better blessings from the Twelve, Mr…uh…Mr. Moon,” said Jerry. “I’m Jensen Archibald and the man next to me is my coworker, Brandon Reginald. We’re private detectives representing Larenzo Investigations from our firm in downtown New Chemeketa.” Jerry handed Shatter a fake, custom-made business card. In the event Shatter called the very real number on the very fake business card, a civilian stationed in the Triple I Division field office of New Chemeketa would answer to affirm their false identities and mission. “Do you happen to know if the individual known as Mr. Sandaux is available?”

  “Sand who?”

  Taquina shouted, “Stop talking and close the-“

  Shatter turned his face towards Taquina and shouted, “Shut up, woman!” He returned his attention to Jerry and Braxton. His once-relaxed visage was now bug-eyed and drenched in a visible sheen of sickly sweat that smelled like hot metal shavings. “No, I don’t know who that is, and even if I did meet him, I don’t think I would remember meeting him.”

  “Please be reasonable with us, sir,” said Jerry. He flashed Shatter Moon a false, wolfish smile that failed to reach his eyes. “One of his street names is Birdshit. I think everything would be easier if you simply—“

  Shatter slammed the door in Jerry’s face.

  “Motherfucker!” Jerry roared at the shut door. He got so angry his hands shook with rage. “Shatter, moon, comet, or whatever fucking celestial body you’re calling yourself, if you don’t open this door right now, I’m going to—“

  Braxton placed a gentle hand on Jerry’s shoulder. It did little to calm him. “Get a handle on yourself. Instead of doing something you will probably regret, how about you try reasoning with the man first?”

  “You really think reason is gonna work with the raggabush-burning bum behind this door?”

  Braxton shrugged his massive shoulders. “Unlikely. But if I were to make a list of individuals who excel at putting the fear of the Twelve into others without immediately resorting to physical force, I would put you on the shortlist.”

  “Thank you for noticing my efforts, dear.”

  “No problem, sweetheart.”

  Jerry pounded on the door. In a voice that wasn’t much calmer than before, he said, “Open up, or we will return with a squad of TAC-ACT gendarmes I don’t think you or anybody else in there wants to see. This can be a very easy night or a very hard night, and the choice is yours.”

  “Eat frozen shit in Vullen, pig,” Shatter shouted through the door. “Your so-called authority here is null and illegitimate. Unless you return with a warrant written and signed in purple ink by a vice-admiral or higher from the Mendakian Union Navy, fuck all the way off!”

  “A vice-admiral?” Braxton asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Jerry found himself equally baffled. “Purple ink? Yeah, what the Vullen are you talking about?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Stupid pig bastards,” Shatter said. “It’s a common fact that any legally binding document that is not signed by a vice-admiral or higher with purple ink makes that document null and void. Otherwise, I promise you I will piss on whatever else you give me.”

  Braxton shook his head. “Shatter, I think your definitions of ‘common’ and ‘fact’ differ vastly from ours. Now open the door instead of making a scene.”

  “Please tell me who told you that,” Jerry said, “so I can find them and beat their head in with a hammer for putting that kind of nonsense in yours.”

  “Call it whatever you want, piggy. I’m not opening this door until I get that warrant signed in purple ink by a vice-admiral.”

  “Here you go.” Jerry slipped the warrant that was definitely not signed in purple ink with the help of a vice-admiral underneath the door. “If you call that illegitimate and even think of pissing on it, I’m gonna show you a very legitimate way to get through your cheap, shitty door, Shatter.”

  While a few absurd moments passed, Jerry heard an intense argument involving three people behind the door. Unsurprisingly, there was a second male voice, most likely belonging to Bradley “Birdshit” Sandaux.

  Once the harsh, three-way argument settled, the warrant was slipped underneath the door back to Jerry. He bent down to examine it, but dared not touch it even with the assistance of gloves. Not only was the warrant rendered illegible and wet, it was soaked with the piss of somebody who could use a few glasses of water.

  Jerry laughed in the nastiest, snarl-filled way possible. “You think this is clever, huh?”

  “That ink is black and not signed by any vice-admiral I recognize,” Shatter Moon said smugly from behind the supposed safety of the thin door. “Return when both of those criteria are met, piggies.”

  “I’ll show you something purple, right after I beat your face three different shades of it!”

  Jerry pulled out the service pistol from his suit jacket, took a few steps backwards, and readied himself to kick through the door. But at the last moment, he was stopped by Braxton grabbing his arm. His grip was solid as a bear trap.

  “Come on!” Jerry whined. “You know we gotta do this, right?”

  “I don’t disagree with that choice of action,” Braxton said. “But we should do this the proper way by calling in TAC-ACT instead of going in there ourselves. We both heard the crazy stuff this maniac was ranting about. We could be walking straight into the jaws of something very unpleasant if we’re not careful right now.”

  “That’s fine by me. We got nothing to fear from this bum or anybody he’s stupid enough to harbor. They’re all bark and no bite, especially when you tell them to bark when the business end of a loaded gun is in their faces.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Sure as a knife is sharp.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Braxton said. “Watch the door. Give me a moment to call this in, and don’t do anything stu—“

  “Ready or not, here we come, you fuckers!”

  Jerry slipped out of Braxton’s grasp, then kicked the door in front of him. It splintered out of the door frame and swung into Shatter’s back with an incredible amount of force. He cried out in pain. Shatter staggered across the dirty floor of the apartment, traveling an impressive distance until he tripped on something and screamed. In the center of the apartment’s living room, a wooden table was kind enough to catch him—forehead first. His skull struck its corner with a meaty thud that left him unconscious. A great gash on his head poured copious amounts of blood down his face and on the floor, dirtying it further.

  Though Jerry had ignored his niggling intuition and decided caution was for other people, he entered the apartment slow enough to examine its surroundings first. The apartment was an eye-watering sight. Literally. Empty takeout containers buzzed with insectile life. The wooden floor was obscured by a thin layer of moldering trash and festering clothes. Glass bottles and crushed aluminum cans were everywhere, filling the apartment with the sour stench of old, leftover beer.

  Jerry’s skin crawled as his stomach turned. He guessed this was his reward for not listening to his own good sense or Braxton’s better sense.

  As for the apartment itself, it had the skeleton of a decent place underneath all the rot. To the left of Jerry was a small hallway that led to the apartment’s one and only bedroom. To the right of him was an open kitchen in a ghastly state. Front and center was a small living room with two ratty couches. Taquina sat upright on the first couch, paralyzed with fear. In front of her was a wooden table. Shatter’s unconscious body remained by its legs. He continued to bleed heavily from his forehead, creating quite the sight with his own vital essences. Near the living room’s only window, there was another ratty couch, occupied by the quarry of the evening—Bradley.

  “Everybody in here, especially you, put your hands in the air!” Jerry shouted, raising his handgun towards Bradley.

  Braxton rushed to his right side, a pistol in his hand as well. It was a tight fit in the small hallway considering his broad, incredible size, but he made it to work with Jerry. He looked less than pleased at being forced into this position.

  “You heard him,” Braxton shouted. “Hands up now!”

  Bradley sat with a casual, unbothered air. He wasn’t much to look at. He was on the scrawnier side, needed more sunlight to invigorate his pale skin, and had a patchy, black-haired beard that needed shaving rather than more chances to grow. True to his nickname, he had black, curly, well-looked after hair with a large streak of white above his forehead. Bradley looked like he was caught eating a midnight snack rather than being raided by two special agents from the Triple I Division.

  Taquina was shocked and fished-mouthed while Bradley remained calm. In fact, he almost looked prepared for this. This observation caused Jerry to keep a close eye on him. Before the arrival of Jerry and Braxton, it appeared that all three of the apartment's occupants were in the middle of a smoking session, judging by the bong that was in Bradley’s still hands. The raggabush in it smoldered. Thin threads of acrid, skunky smoke twirled through the air.

  “Am I speaking Shibananese to you imbeciles?” Jerry shouted at Taquina and Bradley. “HANDS! AIR! NOW!”

  Taquina obeyed the order while Bradley scoffed and rolled his eyes with childish disdain. He took a hit from the bong, then exhaled towards Jerry and Braxton. This utter disrespect infuriated Jerry. Bradley noticed this. His neutral expression shifted to dark, giggly amusement.

  “I’m not a real big fan of repeating myself to people too stupid to listen to me the first time, Birdshit!" Jerry yelled at the top of his lungs. “Are you dumb, deaf, blind, or an unfortunate mixture of all of the three? Drop the bong and put your fucking hands in the air, or I swear on the Twelve I will shoot your chest full of new holes to blow smoke out of.”

  “You, my pistol packing friend, are pissing on the good vibrations like my roommate pissed on your warrant,” Bradley said. “That’s a disrespectful way to act when you’re in somebody’s home during a smoke session.”

  “Just do what he said,” Taquina begged. “Just look at his eyes. He’s a crazy fuck! You’re not going to win this!”

  “She’s right,” Braxton said to Birdshit.

  “Hey,” Jerry said. “Don’t you let her get away with calling me a crazy fuck.”

  “Focus,” Braxton barked at him. “Not that part. The other thing she said. Nothing but peaceful surrender will end this night on a good note.”

  “Exactly! Now shut up, you smug prick, and listen to me,” Jerry said to Bradley . “I’m respecting your home as much as you’re respecting it yourself. Just look at the state of this shithole, man! Now don’t do anything stupid so I can get a little closer to tell you how much I respect it.”

  Jerry stalked towards Bradley to arrest him, but had his ankle holster and automatic revolver suddenly grabbed at by Shatter. With a ghastly visage drenched in blood, he slurred nonsense at Jerry. Shatter made a few, sloppy attempts to get the gun.

  “Stop trying to touch that or I’ll blow your twelvedamned head off!”

  When Shatter refused to do so, Jerry pointed his gun at Shatter’s bloody face. But before he had a chance to pull the trigger and give Shatter’s head another new hole, Bradley jumped to his feet and rushed him. He smashed the bong on the top of Jerry’s head with a hammering strike. Jerry’s gun went off in the floor centimeters from Shatter’s head as his own was lacerated and drenched in foul, green tinted water. Jerry blindly reeled backwards, spewing a blackened rainbow of invectives from his mouth. Braxton aimed to shoot Bradley, but was blocked by Jerry stumbling into him and his line of fire.

  While Braxton and Jerry found themselves tangled together, Bradley rushed towards the couch where Taquina was seated. He threw her off the couch like a bag of garbage onto the actual garbage on the floor, ignoring her shrill cries of complaint as he desperately dug within it for something.

  Jerry struggled to clear his face and eyes full of water, glass shards, and soggy scraps of raggabush. "You little, white haired cocksucker! I'm going to—"

  “GUN!” Braxton screamed. “GUN! HE’S GOT A—“

  Jerry cleared his eyes just in time to see Bradley produce a semiautomatic pistol from the couch's cushions and point it at him. Braxton got in front of Jerry. Bradley shot the gun three times, filling the small apartment with thin smoke and ear-splitting thunder. Taquina screamed. Two of the bullets struck Braxton in the back while the third bullet went through the side of neck, biting it open and dying the white collar of his white dress shirt an alarming shade of red. Braxton fell to the floor with a throaty grunt, bleeding.

  “Motherfucker!” Jerry shouted.

  He retaliated with two shots of his own. The first bullet snatched Bradley’s right ear while the second shot ate away so much of his right cheek, it exposed several of his teeth. Bradley staggered backwards to the couch he was previously sitting on, grabbing his injuries with his free hand while he wailed in agony. Blood ran freely from his face and onto his lap, the couch, and the floor.

  Jerry ignored him as he grabbed the back of Braxton’s suit collar and dragged him outside of the apartment. Braxton was not an easy mass of man to move, much less drag anywhere, but the adrenaline and rage pumping through Jerry’s body and his will to save him made the difficult task as easy as dragging a bag of apples.

  Jerry forced Braxton to sit upright against one of the two walls by the apartment’s exterior. He crouched to examine Braxton’s neck wound and swore. It looked deep and painful, but not like it hit anything vital.

  “Brax!” Jerry roared while shaking his shoulder. “If you let that piece of shit of all people kill you, I swear I’ll find out how to resurrect you just to kill you again myself!”

  “I’m alive, but a little hurt,” Braxton said. “None of the bullets got through the back of my vest, and the wound on my neck is just a flesh wound. It’s nothing worth screaming in my face about.”

  Jerry grinned. “Attaboy! You sure you’re good to stay in the fight?”

  “As much as you are willing to stay in it.”

  “Just what I needed to hear.”

  Braxton smirked bitterly. “Who needs faith in the Twelve when you can have faith in NorbatonTech vests and suits?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jerry heard Taquina shouting at Bradley. Shatter moaned in the background. “Now they’re going to kill you! They’re going to kill all of us, you fucking lunatic!”

  “Stop shouting at me!” Bradley screamed. “Nobody but these fucking feds are going to die tonight!”

  “The Blood of the Twelve Saints protect me,” Taquina wailed. “My mother was right about you! You’re not just a dumb piece of shit, you’re a crazy piece of shit, too!”

  “Go to Vullen and take your witch of a mother with you,” Bradley snapped. “Don’t bring up that old, tedious bitch to distract me while I’m in the middle of a fucking firefight, woman!”

  “Stop fighting and help me,” Shatter begged. “I think I can feel my brain poking through.”

  “Don’t act like you even have half a brain to poke through that stupid, empty skull of yours,” Taquina said.

  “Don’t you dare insult Shatter like that,” Bradley said. “A quarter of his brain is worth two of yours! Even when he’s this hurt, he risked getting shot to help me while you sat there like the useless lump of flesh you are!”

  “How can you be such a bastard to me after everything I’ve done for you?” Taquina asked. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate—“

  Jerry dashed to take cover on the wall parallel to Braxton and shouted, ”Hey! I don’t mean to intrude on this unique lover’s quarrel, Bradley, but I would appreciate it if you surrendered and threw the gun out here. Since you tried to kill me and one of mine, I’m at peace with shooting you dead if needed. However, I would feel horrible about doing that in front of your ostensibly lovely girlfriend.”

  Jerry peeked at Bradley. All he was able to see was Bradley hiding behind the living room’s upturned table before he shot at him. The bullet struck the wall Jerry was using for cover, sprinkling his face with plaster, bits of brick, and wood. Jerry swore and resumed hunkering down. For a seriously injured man high on raggabush and only the Twelve knew what else, Bradley was a shockingly skilled shooter.

  “Come on now,” Jerry whined. “That one nearly got me good in the face—kinda like I got you good in the face. You’re being unreasonable!”

  “I’m being unreasonable?” Bradley screeched. He shot a few more times towards Jerry and Braxton. The bullets ate away at the walls they were hiding behind. “Just fucking die already! You’re not a part of this conversation with us, and if you don’t leave right this fucking instant, you’re not going to be a part of life anymore.”

  “Clever wordplay you did there,” Jerry said. “But I’m being serious, Bradley. Stop shooting at us, throw the fucking gun out here, and come in peacefully before you make more mistakes you can’t take back. You’re a younger man than I who can still do a lot with his life, even if you’re doing some of the dumbest shit I’ve seen in mine.”

  “I can do whatever I want,” Bradley said. “And what I want to do right now is to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Think five seconds into the future,” Jerry said. “You just tried to kill not just one, but two Triple I Division special agents. Even if we did let you go for some insane reason, how far do you think you’ll go? You can say a lot about the organization my coworker and I work for, but you can’t say they’ll forget something like this.”

  “I’ll go as far as I want,” Bradley said. “And I’m not afraid to kill either of you bastards to do it. I might even make these two hostages!”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Taquina said.

  “That pearl dust you’ve been smoking has fucked your head up worse than the gash on my head has fucked up mine,” Shatter yelled. “You’re turning into a demon, man!”

  Bradley laughed hysterically until his voice broke. “Maybe I’ve always been a demon in human skin, Shatter. Maybe I’ve always wanted to start putting hot ones in pricks like you or Taquina, but I never had the courage to do it. Nobody actually knows me or what I’m actually capable of!”

  Bradley then continued to angrily rant and rave about nothing that made sense, occasionally firing shots at Jerry and Braxton.

  “Hey,” Braxton whispered to Jerry.

  “Yeah?” Jerry whispered back.

  “I don’t think you or I are going to make him see reason with the state he’s in,” Braxton continued whispering. “We need to do something before he tries to carry out that threat of shooting somebody or taking hostages.”

  “No argument here,” Jerry said. “I go high on the attack and you stay here while going low to cover me. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  “Alright. On my count to three. Got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “One…”

  Jerry checked the magazine of his handgun to make sure it was loaded and still fully functional. It was. He slid it back into the pistol.

  “Two…”

  He racked the slide of the pistol to put a round into its chamber. He then checked to see if the safety was still off. Few things would be more embarrassing than him running into a close quarters firefight with the safety somehow on.

  Lastly, Jerry inhaled and exhaled, mentally and physically preparing himself for yet another long night where he needed to kill or be killed.

  “THREE!”