The first thing Bradley felt when he woke up were frozen raindrops dancing across his bruised back. The second thing he felt were the raindrops soaking into his various wounds, burning them like sulfuric acid. And the third thing he felt was hot piss pooling in his pants because that’s often how people physically reacted to falling several stories from their living room window.

  The intense pain and shame motivated him to roll over, causing even more agony as he learned what parts of his body were barely functional, barely worth considering, or barely intact from the fall.

  As it turned out, a lot of his body was in the third camp.

  Bradley got to his feet and staggered into the closest brick wall with great, agonizing effort. Cold water and blood flowed down his body that refused to stop shuddering. He declared his first order of business was to get his pistol off the wet ground, which he did with no little ease. He tucked it into the waistband of his soaked through pants. Even though its magazine was empty, it still had the potential to be useful down the line. Then the second and final order of business was to dose himself with the last of his pearl dust. He got it out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment, contemplating if this was what he really needed right now.

  That babbling idiot fence known as Shatter Moon and that tedious bitch known as Taquina were probably right about this stuff, their own addictions notwithstanding. Peal dust was nothing but addictive, demonic bullshit.

  Sure, it poisoned him with enough crazy confidence to not only draw a handgun, but use it to engage in a failed shootout with two Triple I special agents.

  Sure, it sometimes made him fight Taquina when she got deep into one of her combative, nagging moods after a long day of drinking and doing nothing.

  Sure, it put horrible, flickering visions of his dead father with a flensed scalp in his head.

  But in the end, Shatter Moon and Taquina weren’t just wrong—they were both fucking idiots who weren’t smart enough to see the true power of the pearl dust in Bradley’s trembling hand.

  Shatter Moon was a dumbass who believed in fake laws and nonsense legal procedures he read about in underground, poorly written newsletters while high on raggabush, crisk, or whatever he got his grubby hands on. He was nothing but a twelvedamned drug addict and more than likely skimming off the top of the Grey Men operation Bradley was already skimming the top off of.

  Taquina was a secondary school dropout who picked fights with everybody when she drank herself into a blind stupor every other day. She was also one of the most abusive girlfriends Bradley had ever had, like the time she woke him up by breaking a bottle on his tailbone for no real reason.

  But no matter what, Bradley knew that he, struggling as he was with nothing but a menial hotel job interspersed with robbing trucks for the Grey Men to his name, was bound to be something special. He was bound to be something unique and awesome among the roiling, degenerate masses of New Chemeketa. And all he needed was a bit of pearl dust here and there to obtain the energy, aggression, and creativity he needed to manifest his destiny.

  Bradley poured what was left of the pearl dust into his trembling hand. He tried to snort it at first, but realized it was too much like a paste to do that. A terrible idea popped into his battered skull. He steeled himself, then smeared the pearl dust paste into the gaping wound on his face. Bradley bit down a strangled cry of pain as he almost went down on his knees. The pearl dust paste burned like ground glass and hot ash was rubbed into the wound, but the effect was not only immediate, but seemed to be even more potent than the usual methods of smoking or snorting it.

  The pain radiating throughout his body vanished. He felt like he could crawl up the fire escape and have another go at those two Triple I assholes. He glanced out the alleyway and saw a vision of his father, his skin the color of bleached bones while his scalp was red and gleaming, disappearing around the corner. The apparition shocked him, but failed to truly harrow him as usual. Bradley felt too great to be scared.

  Bradley limped out of the alleyway as fast as he could with a half-functional foot and entered the streets. Based on the previous events, he needed to get out of this damned city days ago. He planned to eventually return for some sort of revenge later, but this place was now hot enough to cook him like a fresh fish if he stayed a minute longer. Unfortunately, he had no personal car like most people in New Chemeketa. Fortunately, he had a pistol that could give him the means to get one.

  At this hour, everything was winding down because all the respectable people were home or in the process of getting there. Few cars or auto-trolleys drove through the freezing rain soaked streets. Bradley knew that hopping into an auto-trolley, with their cameras equipped with facial identification programs, would be the equivalent of flashing his genitals to some gendarmes on patrol, so he wrote them off as a means of escape. He also knew that escaping on foot would fail to be viable as well. This meant that only a car to get to Carber’s Carpentry would be the best option.

  Bradley staggered about the cold, empty streets, attempting to stop an elusive car to hijack, but each one damn near ran him over as their drivers swore at him, blared their horns, and kept on going.

  Lucky bastards, Bradley thought bitterly. But not so lucky for me it seems.

  In spite of the pearl dust and adrenaline coursing through his singing bloodstream, a spike of potent dread hit Bradley.

  What if this was it? What if this was how those feds or somebody was going to find him—half-dead on his feet, high on drugs, and waving his hands around in the freezing rain like a crisk smoking madman?

  No, that couldn’t be it. In fact, fuck that. Bradley knew he deserved a better end than that. Bradley continued shambling through the streets, his anxiety spiking higher and higher with each step.

  As if the world decided to bend to his desperate will, he found an old, beat up looking car parked outside of several rowhouses huddled together underneath the cold, punishing rain. It was still running and occupied by a lone driver Bradley couldn’t see from where he stood behind it. His fading spirit flared like petroline poured on a dying bonfire.

  Bradley peeked into the car through the left passenger’s side window. In the right driver’s seat was a small, pale-skinned woman with messy brown hair and eyes that told a story of long hours working and far too few sleeping. That was good. That meant if this weakened woman resisted, there would be no real fight, no real beating needed. However, there was a small hiccup with Bradley’s hijacking plan.

  Bradley noticed there were two small children in the backseat of the vehicle. They were swaddled in thick winter clothing and wholly ignorant of what was coming.

  Rather not involve children in this escape plan of mine, Bradley thought. But oh fucking well, it’s them or me now.

  Bradley skipped the pleasantries of pretending to be somebody who got into a bad car accident or set upon by a gang of vicious strangers. He pointed the empty gun at the woman’s face and yelled at her to roll the window down. She froze for a few moments, but the insistent knocking of Bradley’s gun on the window brought her back into immediate focus. She kept one hand raised in the air while using her free hand to lower the window a little.

  “I have money if that’s what you want from me,” the woman said. “If you don’t hurt me or my children, I’ll give you everything I have in my purse.”

  “Fuck you, your money, and your children,” Bradley growled at her. “Open the passenger side door right now.”

  Bradley kept the gun pointed at her the entire time as he did so. It surprised him how much the simple action of sitting down in the worn seat hurt his entire body, especially his bruised back, but he pushed through the quivering agony of it all. The attainment of a few hostages as bargaining chips and a vehicular means of escape did little to soothe the persistent pain gnawing away at what felt like his very soul.

  “This might sound crazy coming from somebody who looks like me, but I’m not a crazy piece of shit who wants to hurt you or your kids for no real reason. But if you don’t work with me right now, I promise you I will,” Bradley told the woman. “All you need to do now is shut up, drive me where I need to go, and don’t do anything stupid. Do you understand?”

  The woman nodded. Bradley glared at the two children in the backseat. They noticed the ruined state of his face and started to cry. There was little Bradley hated more than the miserable squalling of children, but he ignored them. He was halfway where he wanted to be, and knew that causing even more of a ruckus would only hurt his already fragile and dubious efforts at obtaining what he needed.

  “Name?” Bradley asked the woman.

  “What?”

  “Your name, lady. The thing your parents gave you after you were born or the thing a medical examiner will put on your death certificate if you even think of doing anything to piss me off.”

  “J-Jane. My name is Jane Winthrop.”

  “Nice name. I’m Birdshit. Do you know where Carber’s Carpentry is?”

  “I don’t.”

  “I do. I have a good friend there I want you to take me to see.”

  “But-“

  “I told you to shut up and drive or I will make orphans of those crying sprogs you call children in the backseat. Now do as you are told, twelvedamn it!”

  “Just answer one question I have for you?”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “What?”

  “Why…why do you reek of urine?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Now shut the fuck up and drive already. I’ll give you the directions there.”

  Jane gripped the wheel until her knuckles went white. She drove off into the frigid blackness of the night.

  Despite nearly passing out several times from the waves of agony coursing through his body, Bradley managed to stay conscious, give directions, and hold the empty gun on Jane the entire time. She parked the car outside the workshop in its large parking lot, where there was an alarming scene.

  Rather than the workshop being deserted and devoid of people, dozens of students, their families, and friends were milling outside of the building, which appeared to be even more packed. The freezing rain seemed to bother them very little.

  Bradley then recalled that tonight was the graduation of the workshop’s students, a thing he should’ve easily remembered if he wasn’t expelled from the place two years ago for fighting another student.

  It wasn’t his fault Jordan Morris, that arrogant, Native Almandican son of a bitch, lorded over the other students with his supposedly superior skills. Even though Bradley had lost that fight after Jordan put him in a chokehold that rendered him unconscious, he wasn’t such an arrogant son of bitch when Bradley got him a few good times in the face.

  Regardless of the workshop’s population being in the middle of a graduation party, Bradley exited the car. He opened Jane’s door and forced her to get out at gunpoint, leaving her children alone in the car. They wailed through the windows and pounded on the glass, trapped by child safety locks and their seatbelts.

  “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” she screamed. “I need my children! Don’t make me leave my children behind!”

  “Don’t worry about them and stop making such a scene,” Bradley told her as he kept the gun hidden behind her back. “Trust me, Jane, the inside of your shitty, half broken car is the safest place they’re gonna be all night.”

  “Please!”

  Bradley jabbed the gun deeper into her back. “I said stop talking and keep fucking walking.”

  Bradley and Jane made their way to the workshop’s back door, where there were less prying eyes and people were distracted by one thing or the other. Near it, several graduates and other people were drinking soda and smoking cigarettes. Anger flared in Bradley's trembling chest when he noticed that one of the nearby graduates with a soda and a smoke was Jordan.

  Jordan acknowledged Bradley a few seconds later. His face switched between anger and confusion until he had enough time to take in the mess that was Bradley's face, making him settle on unabashed terror.

  “Whoa!” Jordan shouted. “Bradley? What are you doing here and what the Vullen happened to your face? I know we had a bit of a thing a little while ago, but I’ll take you to the hospital right now.”

  Bradley removed the gun from Jane’s back and pointed it at Jordan’s face. He wasted no time raising his hands in the air, causing the soda bottle and cigarette to drop from them. With the help of the bottle breaking on the ground, some of the more attentive graduates and partygoers noticed the gun in Bradley’s hand. They reacted by screaming and fleeing as fast as they could.

  “Bradley, I need you to listen to me,” pleaded Jordan. “I know you and I haven’t been on the best of terms about anything, especially after that one bad dust up we had, but that doesn’t give you the right to pop me or light up the place like a fucking maniac!”

  I’d give my whole hand for just one bullet to blow your brains out, Bradley thought. But you’re one lucky bastard tonight. Luckier than me.

  “Jordan…” he growled through bared, bloodstained teeth.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Mr. Carber here?”

  “Of course he’s here tonight. Why do you want to see him?”

  “That’s between us, Jordan. Take me to him or I will kill you, this woman, and anybody I see.”

  Jordan was silent for a few moments before answering. “Okay. I can do that. I promise you I can. Just please don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want when I want. Now get your ass moving already!”

  A trio consisting of Bradley, Jordan, and Jane walked through the workshop. The party was in such full swing and populated by so many people in the building, any expensive equipment and the machinery that could be moved was moved aside. Following a surprisingly uneventful walk through the roiling party, the trio arrived at the exterior of Mr. Carber’s office. It was a large, separate room from everything else with wide windows covered in soundproofed cloth.

  Bradley pointed the gun at Jordan then pointed it at the door. It was an unspoken order he carried out with trembling hands. The moment Jordan opened the door, Bradley pushed him in. Jordan stumbled inside and hit the floor with a cry of pain. Bradley stepped on and over him, joined by Jane, who he was still pulling along for the unconsenting ride. To not look like a threat, Bradley threw the gun on the ground far from Jordan and raised his hands in the air.

  Just like Jordan said, inside the office was Mr. Carber. He was better known to Bradley as Corsair, his Grey Man nom de guerre. Corsair/Mr. Carber was a large, pot bellied, middle aged Lascauxian man with a thick brown beard, heavy, hirsute arms full of nautical themed tattoos, and a balding head wreathed by brown hair.

  To Bradley’s mild surprise, Corsair was joined by two other men he failed to recognize. They were both Lascauxian like Corsair, except one was a regular, mundane shaped fellow while the other man was a heaving mass of one. They all stopped their ongoing game of darts to look at the loud intrusion. Corsair looked about ready to make a go for Bradley, but stopped more out of confusion rather than anger or shock when he looked at the strange group before him.

  “I’m glad I don’t keep a mirror in my office,” Corsair said to Bradley. “Did you try to fight a blender with your face or something silly like that, Birdshit?” Corsair had the voice of a heavy smoker.

  Bradley paused, his hands still raised in the air. “You don’t seem very surprised or angry at me.”

  “I actually feel like steam should be shooting out of my fucking ears right now,” Corsair said. “But to be perfectly honest with you, I always had a feeling your dumbass would eventually write a check you couldn’t cash one day, so being visibly pissed off at you would be a waste of time.”

  “I…I…uh, see?”

  Corsair sat down in his plush office chair then instructed the two other men to stand on high alert. They did as they were told, but regarded Bradley and his two hostages with hard, icy stares colder than the night outside. Bradley noticed that one of the two men, the skinnier, regular looking one, had the faint outline of what appeared to be a handgun in the front of his waistband. Appendix carry for easy access. This sight did little to calm Bradley’s already blistered nervous system.

  Unarmed, wounded, and in front of three very pissed off men with guns and/or Touched powers, Bradley noted. This is going to be a very bad night for me, isn’t it?

  “Morris?” Corsair asked.

  “Y-yes, Mr. Carber?”

  “Leave the graduation party and get as many people to leave with you as you can,” he said. “This is not a mild suggestion, but a serious order from me. Make sure to tell them terrible things will happen if they decide to stay.”

  “Yessir.”

  Jordan peeled himself off the floor without another word and bolted out of the office. Based on how fast he tore out of the office, Bradley doubted Jordan, that bastard, would actually warn anybody but his closest friends of the imminent danger they were in.

  “Can I leave, too?” Jane asked, her voice small and scared.

  “Can you leave?” Corsair laughed. “You don’t need to ask twice, dear. Please do! And make sure you warn the others like Jordan, though.”

  Jane nodded. She scrambled out of the office.

  With Jane and Jordan now out of the office, the already tense atmosphere of the office took an even more uncomfortable and sinister aura. Bradley wondered if Corsair was really going to help him escape New Chemeketa or have him executed by the glowering man with a gun.

  “Shimmer,” Corsair said to the normal looking man. “Lock the office door.”

  “Yessir.” He did so and stood by it, still glaring at Bradley.

  Bradley dove to the ground on his wounded knees, wincing at how much it hurt, and clasped his hands together as he wept. “Corsair, I know I fucked up, I know I fucked up real bad tonight, but you gotta help me! I’m with you, and you’re with me like always, man! You gotta get me out of New Chemeketa as soon as possible or the pigs are gonna get me!”

  Corsair looked deeply unimpressed at Bradley’s shameless begging for his life. The two men in the office near Bradley looked even less impressed.

  “Why should I help you instead of having you killed, chopped up into little Bradley Bits, and dumped in the river tonight?” Corsair asked. His voice was even and casual, as if he was asking for the time and not somebody’s fate. “Not only have you proved yourself to be a profound security risk to our organization, you have proved yourself to be a profound security risk that can’t fix his own fuck ups. You’re a walking, or what it looks like right now, groveling liability.”

  “Over the past two years, I’ve done so much for the Grey Men ever since you gave me a chance to prove my potential,” Bradley argued. “Sure, the Grey Men chapter of New Chemeketa has tons of people to rob trucks to bring in cash and materials, but you didn’t have a man like me to rob those trucks. I’m fantastic at what I do.”

  Corsair continued to look unimpressed. “Really?”

  “Yes,” Bradley insisted. “Yes!”

  “I have a small objection to that claim,” Shimmer said. Compared to the notably larger, much more rotund man near him, he was a perfectly nondescript Lascauxian male. “Hello. I’m Shimmer, Birdshit. I didn’t get much of a chance to introduce myself for obvious reasons to you, but I am who you could consider Corsair’s chief accountant and operating officer of sorts.”

  “A chief accountant and operating officer?” Bradley asked. “I don’t get it. Why does somebody like Corsair need either of those?”

  “When you’re dealing with a lot of illicitly earned money, you still need people to keep track of it,” Shimmer said. “It’s a pretty simple concept to grasp, Birdshit. Have all those drugs, you know, that degenerate bullshit you’re not supposed to be doing as a prospective Grey Men, fried what’s left in that mangled head of yours or something?”

  Bradley looked at the floor and said nothing out of shame.

  “But returning to what I was originally saying,” Shimmer said, “the numbers you and your team have been producing are below average. So below average, your monetary influence on the New Chemeketa Grey Men chapter has been labeled as negligible at best, suspicious at worst. Or in this unique case of ours…expendable.”

  “Brutal stuff,” the second man near Bradley said in a deep, wet voice. He was the massive Lascauxian man of flab that was as vertically endowed as he was horizontally. He looked too big and unnervingly pale to be a mundane man, and was probably one of the Touched like Corsair was. “I can’t tell if I’m watching a man who made some terrible mistakes saving his ass or an utter idiot about to get shot in the back of his head.”

  “I’m quite comfortable with the latter of those two options, Bubbleguts,” said Shimmer.

  “I could go for an execution,” Bubbleguts said. “This night has been more dull than a hatchet used to chop rocks in half.”

  “Anyway,” Corsair said to Bradley, “let me ask you some important questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you finished robbing the trucks that you did, where did you keep most of the goods? What did you do with most of these goods in your possession? I imagine you and the aspiring Grey Men that you ran with had to figure out some special arrangement for that level of product you were moving.”

  Bradley refused to answer because he knew how damning the answers were. He kept most of the stolen goods in a storage unit owned by a shady Grey Man associate named Lamar LaCoco that asked no questions and only accepted cash, but kept some for himself in his apartment he shared with Taquina and Shatter Moon to sell and split the profits. When Bradley was silent longer than Corsair seemed to like, he looked at Shimmer and sighed in annoyance.

  “Hurt him until he talks.”

  Shimmer grinned like a wolf. “You got it, sir.”

  Saint Frank fortify my soul, Bradley thought. This is going to really fucking hurt.