Prism Academy- Shadows Fall Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2- Light in the Dark

“I’ll pay the toll,” I said slowly. It ate me up inside to give a single buck to these idiots but better than P-guns eating me up. I had to be alive to try for my dreams after all.

The leader said, “Nah too late for that. You disrespected your new boss. Hell to you I might as well be your new god. This entire block has been too uppity. Time for some tough love boys.”

Then he whistled. Two fingers in his mouth like some sort of clown. No sooner had he done so than I saw groups of people being pulled out of nearby buildings. Old women, young men, it didn’t matter. Some cried and kicked but most were inurned to this type of thing. This was the life of a slummer after all. Different face, different names but someone always had their boot on your neck.

At least I didn’t see Cara with any of the groups. She might be a druggie who seemed to ignore me most of the time lately but she was still technically me girlfriend. Well that and even with the weight she had lost she was still hot. Life in the slums was harder for women like her. There really are things worse than death.

“Hold him. We’ll turn him into a lesson for all these people,” the leader of the gang called out. The pipe and shovel wielders took up positions on either side of Aden while the two guys with the knives moved forward but not within reach yet. The unarmed member of their crew was the youngest and clearly still nervous.

Then Dog turned to the other groups that were dragging the residents out of the nearby apartment buildings. “Get them all lined up here. Let’s show them what happens to fools that lip off.”

My adrenaline was pumping big time by now. Things were beyond serious. I hated to think about what could happen with all these people out in the street and that P-gun, but surrender wasn’t an option. I didn’t think they intended to let me off with a beating, not that I was one to roll over for that either. This was definitely not a time to hold back.

As the pipe guy walked up on my left side, he must have expected me to be too scared to move because he left himself totally open. I quickly threw my backpack at shovel guy behind on the other side and stepped forward at an angle taking a 45 degree angle on pipe guy who was raring back for a big swing.

“What an idiot,” I thought but the side of my foot driven into the big idiot’s knee caused it to buckle and showing him the cost of his mistake. I rode the knee to the ground, hard. The impact probably fractured the man’s patella but couldn’t stop there. No half measures.

A conscious enemy was still a dangerous enemy. So my hands shot out to grasp the man’s head which was now little more than waist high and then pulled it forward while driving my own knee up into the oncoming face. Once, twice, three times, knee met face.

All that was left was a bloody ruin as a flat nose and teeth all over the ground attested too. Still the man groaned when he fell face first as soon as I released him. It wouldn’t due to have an enemy coming up behind him. So he pivoted and stomped on the broken mess of the man’s face while lining himself up for shovel guy and hoped that their boss wouldn’t shoot while I was still next to his guys.

Predictably, the second idiot swung hard for my head. A shovel, even a small one like this is hardly aerodynamic when used like this. A quick duck brought me under the swing and a charging step forward brough me inside my foe’s guard. I drove his shoulder into the open solar plexus which emptied the man’s lungs of air post haste.

I didn’t stop there though but continued my motion forward. The real threat was Dog with the P-gun. Seeing how these guys had moved, they were never a danger to me.

I kept my momentum while I used shovel guy as part battering ram, part shied. I used him to knock one of the knife wielders backward and then threw him into Dog. Thank goodness for long hours in the foundry. At six foot four, I was a big enough guy, but hard work had refined me into a stack of muscle. The impact sent Dog stumbling and the flailing feet from shovel guy even managed to knock the knife out of the second guys hands.

Continuing forward I delivered a quick snapping crescent kick to the first knife wielder’s wrist. It pushed his hand wide and knocked the knife free. Then I saw Dog on the ground underneath shovel guy. He was struggling to free the arm that held the gun so I helped him free him of that need by stomping down hard on his wrist. I could hear the sound of bones cracking under the force.

Between me and shovel guy we had managed to kick the knives out of both thei hands but the two of them were still standing and pissed. I slide up next to the closer of the two and blocked a punch with a knife hand strike to his inner elbow. Not only did it keep him from punching me, but I knew from experience that his arm was likely numb now.

I hooked his arm and spun him around jerking him back so that he was off balance. I locked my arm around his neck. Killing them wasn’t something I was afraid to do but living in the slums or the past nine years taught me that anything I could do to say off the police radar was a good thing. I simply meant to choke him out.

Unfortunately, even with the swiftness of my attack the second man moved more quickly than I expected. He managed to pick up the dropped P-gun and get a shot off. At least his aim was abysmal. It took his comrade in the chest. I couldn’t tell for sure if the particle had passed through me too. There were stories about P-guns shooting through three or more targets who were lined up. At least I felt okay for the moment.

There was nothing to do for it now, so I pushed the fear out of mind mind and shoved his now screaming foe into the one still pointing a gun. A second shot was fired and bloody froth came spewing out of the gang member turned victim as he went tumbling into his murderer.

I was already moving before either of them realized what had happened. I came in at an angle hoping he was too distracted to get a shot off at me. The writhing gun man was hacking up blood on his former comrade and prevented him from even raising his weapon. This left his arms bound up and his neck exposed as he pulled his head back trying to get it away from the blood being coughed up everywhere.

It also provide an opening as obvious as a flashing neon sign. I stepped in and executed a ridgehand blow to his throat. The thug’s larynx was crushed in an instant and he too fell to the ground grasping at his throat as he tried find oxygen that was no longer coming. Satisfied that neither presented a threat, looked for the boss who I’d knocked down before. He was no longer trapped under shovel guy. What I saw wasn’t good. He had his hand holding the hair of some teen aged girl while he held a knife to her neck.

“Fancy moves. You could have been useful but now you just have to die,” Dog said.

The unarmed gang member was behind him trembling as were most of the people from the apartment complex. Other gang members were clearly nervous as well. With any bully they weren’t prepared for someone to fight back. I was sure there were plenty of guys there who had the mettle to handle conflict. If there weren’t they wouldn’t last long. But they were caught off guard for the moment and I needed to press my advantage. The odds were still against me.

“Hold on, nobody else has to get hurt,” I responded, desperate to buy more time. The leader might be a loud mouth but he was smart enough to keep his distance. He ordered another of the gang members to hand over his gun and soon his knife was gone and he was holding a gun to her head. His gun was a much bigger advantage at 15 feet than it had been for the other two in close quarters. I held up his hands and took a step forward.

“Not another step. Not gonna fall for that again. Stand right there. You kill one of ours, we kill three of yours. Now everyone can see what happens when you resist,” the leader said as he called for his gang members to bring out a few victims.

He continued, “Before they were just gonna watch you. Now I may let you live at least for a while. I wonder how all these folks here are gonna feel about you being responsible for these deaths.”

My mind was racing. The world was an unfair place. If only I’d been one of the ones to get a power. I mean, I’d been too young when my parents were alive to go take the test. Since I’d been living on my own it hadn’t been a possibility. Eating beat paying a fee on the one in a thousand chance that I would be a refractor, what they called male supers. Now, I’d grown up. Dreams like that were for fools. I had dreams, but mine had to do more with starting small shop of my own in the burbs where people could pay more for my skills. I was good with my hands. I could fix most machine with moving parts.

“This doesn’t have to go like this. You know the police may be slow but eventually they are gonna come here. Just leave and I can promise you that I won’t remember your face.”

Dog looked at me. For a moment I thought he was seriously considering what I was saying, so I yelled to the groups of people being held at gun point. “None of us can remember what they looked like, can we?”

All around me voices echoed, confirming that they too would have amnesia if the police arrived. But just when I thought Dog might take the deal his face curled in a sneer. “Not gonna happen. You need to learn who rules the slums. I can’t go back to report a failure like this, not and live. And she always knows.”

I was lost at first but then it made sense. If they had actually taken out the Tri-Stars then they were likely better organized than a group of guys roaming the streets. It should have been obvious when they had enough guys to pull groups of people out of their apartments. The P-guns also should have been a giveaway.

Weakness was never a good thing. Showing weakness to the wrong person in the slum got you killed. I could only assume it was even worse in a gang. Apparently, Dog felt he needed to regain face and was intent on doing that by executing some of the others in front of me, in front of the entire street. This wasn’t good. There was no way I could move fast enough to close the gap between us, not before he could fire his gun. I had to think that a point blank shot like that into her head would kill her in the worst possible way and he was ready for me. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of me the entire time while he held the struggling girl.

It was going to happen and I couldn’t stop it. No matter how hard I worked, it all came back to this place. I hated feeling helpless. I hated it with a passion that burnt with the fire of a thousand hells. I hated that my parents had been killed and I couldn’t do anything then. I had made excuses that I was only 15 at the time. I was a kid, no one could have expected me to save them. But when would I be old enough? When would I be strong enough to take responsibility for the unforeseen consequences to my actions?