NOVEL NEXT Orders Are
Orders Are
I learned very quickly that Obiah's warning was entirely accurate, which added a solid ten minutes to every time nature sent its call. Fortunately, while the pitch black sludge smelled like something wretched had crawled inside my liver, died, and gone to Hell so expressly it left a lingering stench straight from the unholy gates, it didn't actually hurt to pass. It did earn me a few mocking jokes around the base (none of which truly bothered me, but I made note of those who seemed a little too genuinely malicious for later reference regardless), but the gang had fostered enough new cultivators for most to just shrug it off.
The day after I learned the basics of cultivating without killing myself, Baldy tapped me on the shoulder just after we finished a meal. "Bossman wants to talk with you, amongst others. Not sure exactly what's up, but I've heard he wants to make a few… preemptive maneuvers before this little war of ours really kicks off."
I nodded in acquiescence, seeing no reason (or excuse) not to immediately heed Markus' beckoning. I felt a small twinge of annoyance at the presumption I could be called like a dog, but I'm not so prideful as to think myself immune to the consequences of my place in the local hierarchy. I could dislike it all I wanted, I was a member of this gang and that membership came with costs; one such being an at least nominal level of obedience to superiors that I would have to play along with if I didn't want the only group I could tentatively label as allies to turn on me. For now, anyway.
Baldy and I made our way to Markus' office, our path joined by about twenty other thugs– most of them, very notably, wearing the orange bandanas of the stealth corp. It seems the higher ups are looking to do some clandestine operations, perhaps unsurprisingly. Our now at least twenty strong crowd of killers quietly shuffled into what I only then realized was not actually Markus's office but a larger meeting room nearby.
Markus wasn't alone in the room, with each of the gang's executives sitting (or lying half folded over the table in Korin's case) around the far end of a long table. Rokharth's chair leaned on its back legs precariously, allowing his upper body to hide in a shadowy corner even as he rested his crossed heels on the table. Cerikon sat neatly, back ramrod straight and an open notebook the only thing laying before him. Korin was, as previously mentioned, passed out on the table, snoring loudly into a spilled glass of wine that had stained her pale face and hair dark red long before we walked in.
Markus' goggle-veiled eyes swept over the midsized congregation gathered before him, taking each of us in for a moment before he spoke. "I'm sure you've all heard the rumors, felt the tension in the air. Well, most of them are fairly well true, at least in part." He paused, taking a slow and deliberate sip of something in a wine glass that smelled vaguely of overly-sweet bourbon to me before continuing, "No one has officially come out and declared war just yet, but after the recent aggression and incursions into our territory, the "official" Burnpike policy as of this moment is that we are actively at war with our rivals."
"In that vein, I have work for particularly antisocial individuals of your caliber." So saying, he pulled a small stack of papers out from beneath the table (where I could only assume he had them sitting on his lap to enable this dramatic reveal) and tossed them gently before him. Given the solid coloured nature of my eyes I'm fairly certain no one could tell when I rolled my eyes at the gang boss's theatrics, but I couldn't help the faint chill that went down my spine when Rokharth's shadowed smile grew in sync with my rolling eyeballs.
Markus, uncaring of any audience reactions, spread the papers apart to reveal very well done sketches of what I could only presume were rival gang members, each with a few paragraphs of writing beneath them. "Before things really kick off, we want to make sure a few dangerous elements are removed from play." He waved a hand over the pile of makeshift bounty posters, "Each person represented here is an asset to our enemies, and the less of them that are in play when the fires really rise the less of your comrades will bleed out in a dirty alley in the near future. So pick a few that call out to you and go kill them, quietly; things may be about to erupt into open conflict, but it would be best if none of this got back to us."
He tapped the table a few times, pulling a cigar from his breast pocket as he did. "On that note," he paused briefly to bite the head off his cigar, his teeth seeming to spark as they clicked together, lighting the bundle of questionable herbs in the process as he chewed up and swallowed the excess. "Don't wear your colours, don't tag the scene, and don't use anything too distinctive. We want these killings to look like random, untargeted violence at worst, and point fingers at our rivals at best."
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Hmm, some proper black-ops wetwork, eh? I'd been wondering when he was going to have me do something properly sneaky. I joined the crowd of sneaky stabbers in looking over the pile of profiles, seeing a pool of unfamiliar and occasionally inhuman faces staring up at me. I wasn't surprised not to recognize any of them, regardless of their standing in their respective gangs, I simply hadn't been outside Burnpike HQ enough to have seen much of the local enemy faction members.
What I was surprised not to see was the face of the one high ranking enemy I would recognize; there was a notable lack of any profile for Olixander Merthoux sitting on the table. I couldn't quite keep a hum to myself as I pondered why we wouldn't want to make an example out of him; perhaps Markus wanted someone in particular to take him out (Rokharth, most likely) or perhaps he simply wasn't confident in any of us being able to take him out in a deniable fashion.
Rokharth, seemingly in response to my quiet hum, raised a hairless brow, "Something you'd like to ask, Bruce?"
I blinked, taking a quarter second to register the name Markus had dubbed me with before slowly nodding. "I don't see Olixander Merthoux on this hit list, are we not going to try to knock off some enemy higher ups before the conflict gets started in earnest?"
That drew a chuckle from the old monster, with Markus shaking his head as he took a long sip of his wine-adjacent drink. "Oh we certainly do have their leadership in our sites, but what we don't have is any confidence in killing them without it being obvious we did it." Markus nodded along as the man-shaped predator spoke, "I'm certain we could successfully relieve them of their lives, I'm even sure I'm not the only one who could pull it off quietly, but killing them without pointing the finger straight at ourselves is a much harder task."
I nodded as my thoughts were more or less confirmed (though that just made me suspect some underlying motive I hadn't sussed out), turning my gaze to Markus as he sighed out a cloud of smoke before leaning forward, "Optimally, we'd wipe out every single mover and shaker in our rivals' networks overnight and crush their remnants in the morning." He took a long drag, swirling the deep red whiskey-wine in his glass, "Unfortunately, we do not live in a world full of optimal conditions; thus, we must make do with what we have."
The red head's goggled eyes seemed to follow some unseen pattern in the dancing smoke for a moment before his attention snapped back to us, "Each of the targets arrayed before you are important enough to be worthy targeting, but also –very importantly– within our capabilities to reach at short notice." He downed the rest of his drink in one gulp, slammed the empty glass down, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood up. "You all understand what's at stake, I should hope. We've been attacked in our own territory by multiple gangs, when this war kicks off in earnest we are likely to be assailed on multiple fronts."
He waved his cigar-wielding hand over the pile of sketches, leaving a thin trail of smoke swirling over the table. "Everyone pictured here represents an asset that will be used against us, a weapon in the enemies' arsenals." He leant over to half-slap half-tap the table with his spread fingers, each jab causing the papers to jump slightly with an audible bang, "Every face on this table steals their breath from you brothers' lungs! So go kill them, and don't get caught."
His piece said, the gangboss took a deep breath, grabbed Korin by the hair, and strode from the room with the passed out lieutenant still snoring as he dragged her along behind him. Rokharth snorted at the scene, chuckling to himself as he seemed to fade into the darkness around his seat and disappeared. Cerikon, seemingly only then realizing he'd been left as the only ranking officer in the room, glanced around, nodded as if he'd contributed anything to this discussion, and quickly got up to follow after Markus.
With the leadership gone, the rest of us thugs shared a few glances before shrugging our shoulders and getting back to looking over the various profiles, trying to decide who we were going to risk our lives to assassinate tonight.