BY VINCENT TRIGILI
Evening, Day One: Assignment
They sat me in a chair and fitted restraints around my arms to keep me there. I could see the fear on their faces as they approached me; could smell the sweat soaking their clothes. To them, I represented an enigma, an emptiness their minds couldn’t reach. In an age where everyone had telepathic implants, where everyone was connected to everyone else one hundred percent of the time, my sealed mind was a fearsome thing.
“What do you want with me?” I demanded.
Agent Mikian sat across from me, his eyes fixed on my forehead. I could tell by his expression he was trying to probe my mind with his telepathic implant. I took advantage of his distracted state to slip out of my restraints. “Trying that again? You know that won’t work. You’re going to have to speak up.”
“Careful with your attitude, bounty hunter. We still have your family,” he said.
“Agent Mikian, the only reason you’re still alive right now is because I’ve decided to allow it.”
“One move against me and your daughter is dead,” he said. “Now, we can trade threats back and forth, or we can get to the point.”
“Then get to the point.”
“Samuel escaped.”
“Ah, I see. That is quite a problem for you.” Samuel was one of a very limited number of natural telepaths. He was also the most dangerous criminal mastermind ever to plague society.
He leaned in close. “You think you’re safe from him? You think your family is safe?”
“Of course we are. We have government agents like you to protect us, don’t we? What could ever go wrong?” I tried hard not to choke on these words. I had more reason to hate these agents than any criminal did.
“Very funny.” He leaned back in his chair and looked me over. I could tell he was nervous around me. I didn’t need to be a telepath to know that. The beads of sweat across his forehead, the fidgeting of his hands, his closed posture… they told me volumes. “I’ll make this simple for you. Capture him and bring him back to us, dead or alive, and your family goes free. Fail, and they will suffer for your crimes.”
“Tell me, Agent Mikian: why should I trust you?” I asked.
“Let’s not play games. There’s no trust in our relationship. If I had my way, you’d be dead, and I’m sure that feeling is mutual right now.” He slid a datapad over to me. “On this pad is everything we have on him. It’ll give you a place to start.”
I smiled, because I knew it worried him to see me smile. “What makes you think I can’t kill you where you sit?” I stood up then, allowing the restraints to fall to the floor. “Did you really think those could hold me?”
He attempted to jump out of his seat but I pushed him back down and leaned in real close. “Do you feel that?” I slowly let some of my power into his mind. “That is what nothingness feels like, Agent Mikian. Your mind can’t comprehend it. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that is all you will get from me.”
I picked up the datapad, leaned in even closer to him, and whispered, “If anything happens to my family, I will come for you.”
I stood and walked toward the door. As I opened it and walked out, a voice yelled, “Guards!”
Men and women poured into the corridor with weapons drawn. I paused, waiting.
“Let him go,” said Agent Mikian from behind me.
The security forces kept their guns trained on me, but I strode right past them. I knew that one blast from any of those weapons would scatter my molecules across the room, but I also knew that they were afraid their guns wouldn’t work. I was that rare oddity in their world of complete knowledge—a mystery—and they had long ago lost the ability to deal with the unknown.
I exited the building and headed for my speed-cycle, then turned and cheerfully waved to the guards before climbing in. Immediately I was surrounded by inertia-dampening gel. I sighed with pleasure as I punched the throttle to the max and took off with reckless abandon. There’s nothing quite like the feel of raw speed. The knowledge that a tiny error will spell death, combined with the scenery rushing by almost too fast to see, is euphoric.
My tactical sensors lit up, warning me that local police forces were being dispatched to my location, but they quickly broke off. I suspected that Agent Mikian had called them off. Once I was out of secure airspace, I slowed down and merged with the normal traffic flow.
I thought I had left this life behind. I’d married a beautiful woman and had a wonderful child. We had a nice ranch in the mountains away from society and were happy. That was until the government troops raided my home while I was out hunting and kidnapped my wife and child.
“How in the world did Samuel escape?” I wondered out loud. He was supposed to have been kept in cryogenic sleep until a means of dealing with his powers could be discovered. Some idiotic government employee must have woken him. But why?
Samuel’s natural abilities meant that he didn’t need implants, which made him untraceable and put him outside the control of the government. I suspected it was that inability to control him that they feared, more than anything he could actually do.
As I approached my house I saw a pillar of smoke. I broke out of traffic and accelerated to maximum velocity. As I executed a flyby of my property I saw the city fire suppression teams rushing to respond, but it was too late. There was nothing left of my house save a blackened crater.
Cursing vehemently, I landed and rushed to see if anything was left. Two firemen moved to intercept me.
“Let me through!”
“Sir, please,” said one. “You can’t go up there. It’s not safe.”
“What do you mean, I can’t go up there? That was my house!” I said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but toxic fallout levels are too high. No one can approach.”
I started to reach out to strike him down, but instead I forced myself to take a deep breath. I had to tell myself several times that he wasn’t the bad guy before I could get it to stick. “What happened?” I demanded.
“We don’t know yet. Please, sir, just head over there and someone will be right with you.”
I looked again at the crater. There was truly nothing left. Everything I had built, every memory I had created with my family was gone. I would never again come home to my daughter running out to hug me, through the door I had built with my own two hands. My wife would never again sit in front of my mother’s mirror brushing out her hair. My daughter’s trophies, my wife’s art, everything we had built together—it was all gone.
I returned to my speed-cycle and sent a picture of the ruins to Agent Mikian, demanding an explanation, knowing it was unlikely he would have one for me.
“We’re sending agents to investigate,” came the response.
“Great!” Because that would make everything so much better.
I started to climb into my cycle when a police officer approached. “Sir, I need you to stay for questioning.”
“No, you don’t,” I said and continued to climb into my cycle.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The officer drew his weapon. “I do.”
I had had enough. I looked down the barrel of the officer’s gun and lashed out with my mental power. I forced into his mind the concept of nothingness; I drove all higher thoughts out of his mind, pushing him into a helpless trance. I had to force myself to break off before I drove even his lower thoughts from his mind, which would have shut down all of his body functions completely.
The officer’s eyes glazed over and he fell to the ground. Eventually his mind would reboot, and in a day or two he would be fine. But for now, he was safely incapacitated. Two other officers ran to assist, but before they could arrive I finished my preflight and took off. I sent a message to Agent Mikian telling him to deal with the police, and I headed to my old hideout.
Morning, Day Two: Back From The Dead
The next morning I woke early and sat at my terminal. It hadn’t been turned on in years. In fact, I had thought it would never be turned on again, and I hesitated to do it now. I had killed the old me for a reason, and the thought of his return scared me more than Samuel ever could.
My comm beeped insistently, telling me there was a message. It was a message left to the new me: the middle-class husband and father, the coach and teacher who lived a peaceful life in the mountains with his family.
I gave in to the comm’s persistence and played the message. “It’s a shame about your house, but at least your family wasn’t there. It would be a real pity if something happened to them. You should mind your own business if you want to prevent a tragedy.”
I recognized the voice. Samuel. A man I had once called friend and confidant. It was his voice, but there was something wrong with the words.
I called Agent Mikian, and before he could even get a greeting out, I asked, “Are they safe?” There was silence on the other end of the line. “They’re not, then.”
“Yes, they are,” he said. “But Samuel is on the move and has already destroyed a safe house where we’d planted a decoy.”
I cursed and said, “If they’re harmed, it’s on you!”
“The only way to ensure their safety now is for you to take down Samuel,” Mikian said quietly.
A rage burned inside me. “You intentionally let it leak that I was assigned to the case.” The government had complete control of the information that flowed through everyone’s implants. The only way information like this could get out is if someone deliberately allowed it.
“Of course not!” he insisted.
I knew he was lying. “After Samuel, you’re next.” I disconnected the channel.
I fired up my terminal and entered in the access codes necessary to wake the life I’d left behind. I took the datapad that Agent Mikian had given me and uploaded all its data into my system.
“Computer, search for maximum security prison breaks or related events in the last month,” I said.
“One record found,” responded the computer.
The news report showed the smoldering remains of the prison in the background as an attractive brunette reported, “It is not yet known what caused the explosion, but authorities believe that no one survived. The entire area has been quarantined due to the toxic levels of psionic fallout.”
“No, I think there was at least one survivor,” I said to the news reporter. I clicked off the report and started a search for similar explosions in the past month. Only two others matched: my house and a seemingly random house across town.
Samuel was dangerous, but there was no way he could have blown up that prison without help. He would have had no access to that kind of weapon in there, even if he’d somehow miraculously woken up by himself. No, there was only one person I knew who had access to those kinds of weapons—and too little sense to refuse to sell them.
I headed to the back of my hideout and opened a closet that I had sworn I would never open again. In the back was a safe. I started to place my hand on the biometric-secured latch, then hesitated. A chill ran down my spine as I remembered the horrors I had witnessed in my past life.
I might have turned back then, but for my wife and daughter. “You can do this,” I said to myself. “You have to, for them.”
I activated the latch; the safe’s door slid up with a swoosh. Inside hung a pure black set of body armor, so black that all the light in the closet seemed to fall into it and get trapped. Hanging next to it was a backpack containing various tools of my former trade. Above it hung a set of pulse pistols and an assault rifle.
“You can do this,” I said to myself again. “Just one more time.” I knew I was lying, but it didn’t matter. I had no choice. I was the only one that could stop Samuel, and everyone knew it. The only question was, who could stop the monster I would become again?
I suited up in my armor and grabbed my equipment. Before heading out I looked at myself in the mirror, struggling again to see myself as others would. My military-issue armor was encoded with a special telepathic identification code, one that would instruct normal civilian implants to replace the image of the armor and weapons with something more benign. Something from their own memories, something fitting for the situation. Like Samuel, I had no implants, so I couldn’t see this camouflage effect, which meant I would never know if the camouflage ever failed.
I slid aside a fake panel in the side wall of the closet and walked through to an underground garage. Waiting for me was a high performance military assault cycle. It was illegal for civilians to own, but the law no longer mattered. My family’s lives were at stake. I climbed into the cycle and launched off into the rising sun.
• • •
It took an hour to reach the warehouse district where the less-than-respectable members of society conducted their business. It was in this district that I had once shopped for the kinds of supplies that gave me an edge over the competing bounty hunters, most of whom were unwilling to take the risks I took.
I landed my cycle near an abandoned-looking alleyway and swept the area with my visor for heat signatures. “Five of you? Really? I would have expected more.” They didn’t respond, but I hadn’t really expected them to.
Ignoring them, I walked up to a partly hidden door and kicked it in. Two men with pistols rushed forward to intercept me, but I had the jump on them and blasted the guns out of their hands. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to get the new password. Now, where’s Tony?”
They looked at each other and then lunged toward me. Before they could take two steps I had fired both guns. Their momentum carried their now-dead bodies past me and into the wall. “Fools.”
I wanted to feel remorse, but it wasn’t in my nature. Inside me was only coldness.
“Fine. I’ll just look around, then,” I said.
I headed toward the back, where Tony normally conducted business, and more men moved to intercept me. “Really?”
“How about you turn around and drop your weapons,” one of them said.
I stared him down. He was attempting to read my mind with his puny implants. That gave me enough time to focus on using my own powers.
“How about a taste of nothingness?”
I slowly eased some nothingness into his mind. His face went blank and he fell to the ground, limp.
“Anyone else?”
The others dropped their guns and fell back as I continued to build the nothingness around me. Their telepathic implants would pick it up and transmit it directly into their minds.
“It’s the Null!” shouted one.
“Run!” called out another.
They tripped and stumbled over each other as the fear overwhelmed them. I waited until the path to the door was clear, then I slowly relaxed my powers and retracted my field of power back into myself.
I heard scrambling sounds coming from behind the door as I approached. I kicked the door open and saw Tony making a break for a window.
I fired a blast from my pistols into the wall over his head. “Not so fast.”
Tony turned to face me, all the color drained from his face. His body was physically shaking as I approached. “But—but—you’re dead!”
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. He was a small man, easily handled. “Now, Tony… after all the business we’ve done, is that any way to greet me?”
“Sorry—” he stammered. “Had you called ahead—”
“You would have skipped town,” I said, and tossed him into a chair. “Now talk to me. Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked.
“You sold the dirty bombs that were used to free Samuel,” I said.
“No! I didn’t know! I swear!” he said.
“Samuel tried to use one on my wife. Did you know that?”
“I tell you, I didn’t know!” His bald head was covered in sweat, and he was struggling to control his breathing enough to speak. “Please, you have to believe me!”
I leaned in real close. “Who did you sell them to?”
“I didn’t get his name. I don’t keep records—you know that!”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten your last taste of nothingness?” I asked.
“Please, don’t. All I know is a man came in claiming to be an agent of the government. Told me he’d shut me down if I didn’t give him my entire stockpile. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Your entire stockpile?”
“Well, I only gave him some of it. He didn’t seem to know how much I really had,” he said.
“How many?”
“A dozen.”
“You better tell me everything you remember. Dates, times, locations, everything.” There had been three blasts so far. The one at the prison was probably two or three bombs of the size Tony normally carried, which meant Samuel had maybe seven or eight more bombs.
“Look, I had my guys deliver them to Mockingbird Industries on Thirteenth Street. I don’t know what happened to the bombs after that.”
I picked him back up. “If I find out you lied to me, I will be back,” I said. I threw him to the side and headed out the way I’d come in.
As I exited the building, I saw three men standing by my cycle. “You best back away from that.”
They pulled out knives and clubs. “Nah. I think we’re going to take this bike, mister.”
“That would not be wise,” I said.
“Yeah, well, no one ever accused me of being real smart,” said one of the men. “Get him, boys!”
I felt coldness pass through my body as my conditioning took hold of me yet again. There was no logic in that coldness, just a pure desire to kill.
His two partners charged and I waited for them to close in. Once they were in reach, I spun and launched a kick into the closest thug’s throat, collapsing his windpipe. I continued my spin, and as I came around again I slammed the toe of my boot into the other’s temple. He fell to the ground next to his choking partner and didn’t move.
“Now,” I said to the remaining thug. “Run and tell everyone you know: the Null has returned.”
“The Null?” he gasped and sprinted off, leaving his buddies on the ground at my feet.
I sighed as I climbed back on the cycle and closed the canopy over my head. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and already I was struggling to control the monster that lived inside my heart and had threatened to consume me once before.
Afternoon, Day Two: To Kill Or Not To Kill
I forced myself back to my hideout to eat lunch and attempt to regain some self-control. For the first time since my marriage I had killed, and I had done it without remorse. This was why I’d retired in the first place. A cold-blooded monster like me doesn’t belong on the streets.
I leaned back in my chair, holding the picture of my beautiful wife and sweet daughter. My daughter was in her soccer uniform, covered in mud and grass stains. They had just won their championship game; I could still remember the pride we’d all felt that day. Now both of them were in some prison somewhere on my account. I wiped away a tear and choked down the last of my meal.
Forcing myself to focus on the task at hand I pulled up the records on Mockingbird Industries. Mockingbird was a multi-national corporation that manufactured weapons for all the major militaries in the quadrant.
“Why would they need to buy bombs?” I asked myself. Getting answers from them would be a lot harder than roughing up some small-time arms dealer. I searched all my records, looking for anything that would connect them to Samuel, but came up empty.
Something didn’t make sense here. Dirty bombs weren’t Samuel’s style. I went back to the records of the prison break and checked them again. Sneaking bombs in and detonating them was one thing, but freeing Samuel was a whole different ball game.
My comm rang, but this time it was my secure line, the one no one should know about. I picked it up slowly. “Hello?”
“Null, I think you know who this is. You’re being played. Meet me at the Point after dark.” And then Samuel hung up.
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a trap, “ I said with a chuckle. “Not at all.”
I grabbed my gear and headed to the Point. I wanted to be there long before dark to prepare.
As I flew there, a nagging thought kept coming back to me: Samuel never used dirty bombs, and he’d never threatened anyone before. It just wasn’t his style. If he had wanted me to stop pursuing him, he would have just killed me without warning.
Tony had said that a government agent had purchased the bombs, and that he’d had them delivered to a major government weapons contractor. There was no way that Samuel would ever willingly work with government agents. The story just wasn’t adding up.
The Point was a tourist trap on Rahar Mountain. The mountain was named for a woman who freaked out, thinking aliens were after her, and ran off the edge trying to get away from them. Her body was never found, but presumably she died in the five-thousand-foot fall. Many legends claim she still haunts the mountains—which helps keep the place relatively empty after dark.
I hid my cycle near the meeting point and moved to scout it out. With a few hours of light yet to go it was still pretty busy. There were families milling around taking pictures and kids playing precariously close to the edge. With so many people around I couldn’t fully search the place without drawing undue attention. Instead I found a place to hide and wait.
As dusk fell, another cycle pulled up with a lone driver. Tourists were thinning out quickly, and soon we were alone. I caught a quick glimpse of his face as he turned to check something on his cycle. It was Samuel.
I slowly took aim with my rifle. One shot and it would be over. I would get my family back, and the Null could die again. Samuel turned his back to me and leaned over the rail, seemingly admiring the scenery. I carefully lined up my sights with the back of his skull. One shot, and the greatest criminal mind of our era would be gone. My body knew what to do without me even thinking about it. I felt my breathing slow, steady. I wouldn’t risk a miss, not even by a millimeter.
A coldness came over me as I prepared to kill again. The crosshairs of my sight were perfectly centered on target, and I slowly started to pull the trigger back.
My mind flashed back to a dozen other men and women the government had ordered me to assassinate just like this. With a sigh I let my finger off the trigger and put the rifle down. I could not allow myself to become that monster again. Shooting a man in the back was wrong, even if it was Samuel.
I stepped out of my hiding spot and said, “Hello, Samuel.”
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot,” he said. “I was concerned for a moment.”
“Why did you call me out here?”
“I’m not your enemy, at least not today,” he said.
“What’s going on, then?”
“There’s an old expression that goes something like: the enemy of an enemy is my friend.”
“I’ve heard it. Are you implying we have a mutual enemy?”
“Agent Mikian blew up the prison, your house, and kidnapped your family. What do you think?”
“But—why?” I asked.
He turned and leaned back against the handrail. “To get you to kill me.”
“If he wanted you dead, he could have done that while you were in prison, in stasis,” I said.
“I was never in prison. No more than you were dead.”
“What?” That seemed impossible. I had visited his cryotube. I had seen his body and read the monitors that gave reports on his health.
“I faked that so that I could disappear, just as you did,” he explained. “They made us monsters, and now they’re hoping we’ll kill each other off and solve their problem.”
Samuel and I were products of a secret, selective breeding program. We both had natural psionic powers that the vast majority of the race couldn’t even dream of, not even with all the implants in the world. We were intended to be super-soldiers, and were trained to be killing machines, but both of us escaped the program. Samuel to a life of crime, I to vigilante justice.
“So you’re saying this whole thing was staged?”
“Is that so hard to believe? We represent a smear on their perfectly planned society, one they mean to be done with.” He took something out of his pocket and held it out to me.
I took it and felt a twinge on my heart when I saw it. “This is Mother’s locket.”
“Yes,” he said. “Keep it as a peace offering.”
“What about my family?”
“I doubt you’ll be permitted to see them again,” he said. “Now that they think they have a way to control you, your family will never be safe.”
I knew that was true, but I didn’t know what I could do about it. I joined him at the railing. “You and I had some good fights, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because your family is in danger. Stop chasing me and rescue them.”
“And you?”
“I plan to send a message to the agents never to bother me again,” he said. “It would be best if you and your family are clear when that happens.”
“Where are they being held?” I asked.
“Basement of Mockingbird Industries. But I should warn you, they have plenty more bombs and intend to use them all, if need be.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’re a hero, remember?” he said. “Heroes can be controlled by threats to innocents. Villains like myself suffer no such weakness.”
“Hence why they want you dead.”
“And you back under their control.”
“You still haven’t told me why you want to help me.”
He turned and looked into my eyes. “Brother, we are family. In times like this, that is reason enough.”
“That, and if I’m not trying to kill you, there’s no one that can stop you,” I said.
“Yes, that too. But, what is more important to you? Taking me down, or saving your family?”
“I could do both,” I said.
“Perhaps, but you know as well as I that if we’re working together there is no one that can stop us.”
I smiled. “True. When do you make your move?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll move on the capital building. That will draw all attention out there. Call in and tell them you’ll be along to assist, then make for Mockingbird Industries.”
“And when this is over?” I asked.
“We go our separate ways. The Null can return to the grave, and Samuel will be back in retirement.”
“Deal.”
I wasn’t sure I believed he would retire again, but I couldn’t see any other way out. I needed his help to rescue my family, and that was all that mattered.
Nighttime, Day Three: The Rescue
I had been staking out Mockingbird Industries all day and was merely waiting for Samuel to do his part. It seemed wrong to be teaming up with the mastermind behind the Ku Crisis, but he was right. So long as I let them think they could use my family, my family would never be safe.
From my hiding spot inside the main lobby I watched the newscast on the large monitors. Most of the employees were heading home for the night, and soon it would be just the guards and me in the building.
About an hour past dark, the lights in the building flickered, and on the screens I saw one of the capital buildings go up in flames. My portable comm went off: a message from Agent Mikian.
“Samuel spotted at the capital, please call in,” scrolled by on my screen.
Not wanting to speak and give away my position, I typed in a simple reply. “Samuel has acquired several psionic bombs and has stated he plans to use them tonight to teach you a lesson.” I then sent a similar message to the anonymous tip line for the local news.
I waited a bit longer, ignoring the frantic requests for more information on my comm until everyone in the building had their eyes on the monitors, watching the reports on the bomb threat and the emergency forces attempting to control the ensuing mass panic. The rumor I had started with my tip was growing out of control as only baseless rumors can.
I quietly slipped past the distracted guards and into the service elevator. None of their telepathic implants could read me, and so as long as they weren’t looking at me, I didn’t even exist.
I rode the elevator down into eerie silence. As the elevator cage came to a halt, I climbed to the top of it. The door slid open and two guards looked in. I leapt from my hiding place and knocked them both down.
Before they could get up I jumped to my feet and swept up their guns. As they looked up at me, fear passed across their faces. These days, no one seems to understand the concept of a poker face.
“Sorry,” I said, then touched their minds with a bit of nothingness. Not enough to kill, but enough to incapacitate them for a while, until their brains could recover from the shock.
I tossed their weapons aside and headed down the corridor. It wouldn’t be long before the guards were discovered, and I still had to locate the room where my family was being held.
I searched door after door until I came around a bend and saw six guards lined up in front of a door. They were lazily talking among themselves and hadn’t yet noticed me. I pulled out my rifle and quickly opened fire on their position.
A coldness passed over me as I marched forward, firing mercilessly into their number. They had made me a monster, and now they would have to deal with the consequences of their creation.
The door flew open and more guards poured out, running right into my line of fire. Some of them dove back into the room for cover, and I had to hold my fire. I couldn’t see into the room to know the position of my wife and daughter.
I sprinted down the corridor before they could recover enough to retaliate. As I approached the door, I risked pausing to focus my power, and let the aura of nothingness just barely precede me into the room. I heard the satisfying screams of mortal minds trying to cope with absolute nothing. Then I entered the room.
My wife and daughter were seated a few feet away. Agent Mikian stood behind them, holding a gun to my daughter’s head. “Back off!” he ordered.
I looked around me. All of his men were on the floor, either dead from my attack or incapacitated by the nothingness. “It’s over, Mikian. Let them go and you might live.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. If you don’t leave right now, I will kill her,” he said.
“No you won’t. Because then there will be nothing to stop me from unleashing my full power on you and everyone in this building,” I said.
His grip on the gun weakened and sweat poured down his face. “Maybe so. But she’ll still be dead.”
I continued to walk toward him. “No, she won’t. You care more about your life than hers, so you won’t kill her.” I wanted to reach out with my power, but he could easily kill her before I’d built up enough energy to neutralize him.
In a flash he swung his arm up to fire at me, but my daughter tipped back her chair and fell into him. His shot went wide, and I was on him before he could recover.
“My brother will be most disappointed if I kill you before he arrives,” I said.
Agent Mikian’s eyes went wide. “You’re working with him? How could you?”
“Because, as evil as he is, he did not go after my family.” I bound his arms and then freed my wife and daughter. Once they were free, I tied him to the chair he’d had my daughter in. “I’ll let him know you’re waiting for him.”
I led my family out of the building and up the service elevator. When we came out into the lobby, Samuel was waiting for us. The guards were all dead.
“I see you got them,” he said.
“Yes, and your friend is waiting for you below,” I said.
“Then we part ways?” he asked.
“For now.” I wasn’t sure if I was a hero or a monster, but my family was safe.
I could deal with Samuel another day.