Chapter 18: No Mercy

  Crazy Joe limped along a broken pathway through the ruins, a crooked smile pulling at his lips.

  His battered boots kicked up puffs of gray dust with every step, dust that seemed to cling to him like ash.

  His stained coat fpped loosely around his thin frame, patched together with strips of leather and other fabrics.

  Beside him, a wiry man with a lean face, sallow skin, and a burned-out cigarette dangling from his lips ambled along, every few steps releasing a cloud of bitter-smelling smoke that twisted and disappeared into the gloom.

  Joe was in a good mood. The kind of mood that only came when opportunity smelled close.

  "You know," Joe said, voice gravelly and raw from too many years breathing bad air, "I think this one's gonna be the big one. Got a feeling about it."

  He chuckled to himself, rubbing his hands together like a starving man about to sit down at a feast.

  The smoking man grunted, uninterested.

  "You say that every time," he muttered, the cigarette bobbing between his lips as he spoke.

  "Nah, nah," Joe insisted, wagging a bony finger. "This time’s different. The st couple were just gutter rats. Empty pockets. Nothing special. But the kid we sent down today...he didn’t look like some regur slummer. Clean boots. Good coat. He was holding something valuable. Something we can really sell. Something that I doubt he knows how to use."

  The smoking man shrugged, then tapped the cloves of garlic tied to his belt with two fingers, a nervous habit.

  "Long as that thing worked," he muttered. "Painting didn’t trigger for the st one. Had to finish him off myself."

  Joe ughed, a hacking, broken sound that made the shadows around them seem thicker.

  "I'm sure it worked well this time," he said. "The old gutter rat we sent down here was barely alive.. And I know you know this because you, my friend, had the good sense to keep that garlic bag close. Smart thinking. Nasty little fucker hates the smell of it. Learned that the hard way, remember?"

  The smoking man grimaced, rubbing the faint scar across his forearm.

  "Don’t remind me."

  Joe kept moving, his boots clinking against broken tiles.

  "You ever think about it?" he asked suddenly, gncing sideways. "Where the hell did a thing like that even come from?"

  The smoking man shook his head quickly, his face tightening.

  "Don't care to. Don't wanna know. Things best left alone, Joe."

  Joe barked another ugh.

  "Whole damn world's things are left alone now, I don't want any issues with the Order, don't worry. Those bastards will make easy work of us. Besides, we are already in an area that I doubt they would be okay with us being in."

  The smoking man gave him a look that was hollow, skeptical, but said nothing.

  Their footsteps echoed down the ruins, stretching out into tunnels that had once been homes, maybe centuries ago. Shattered toys, rusted tools, broken remains of lives lost to time.

  Joe wasn’t worried.

  No one cared about Zone Nine or Ten. No one gave a damn what happened in the gutters.

  Especially not down here.

  "Pce is huge," Joe said after a while, voice quieter now. "Half of it colpsed. The other half's just... tunnels. Pipes. Holes leading everywhere. Some even say the old sewer networks still connect to deeper and darker things."

  The smoking man shivered slightly.

  "You think the Order knows?"

  Joe spat onto the ground.

  "Order doesn't give a rat’s ass about this pce. They got their Zones, their shiny buildings, their blessed pets. Down here? We’re rats. Dirt. Vermin, they don’t even see. Maybe they are aware, but they never seemed to care."

  He grinned, showing a mouth half-full of rotting teeth.

  "And rats survive."

  The smoking man nodded slowly, exhaling a long plume of smoke.

  They walked for a while in silence, their figures vanishing deeper into the byrinth, unaware that in the bckness ahead, something far sharper, far smarter, was already waiting for them.

  Sym crouched low behind the fractured wall, the cracked stone pressing cold against his back.

  He listened to the footsteps drawing closer, boots scraping against rubble, careless voices bantering about loot, money, easy prey.

  Their tone was casual. Arrogant. They thought they were walking toward a corpse.

  Sage’s voice hummed in his mind, crisp and steady.

  Sym smirked silently to himself.

  He shifted his grip on the greatsword, feeling its reassuring weight, the residual Boost aura faintly humming around his muscles even though it wasn’t fully active.

  The compass at his side vibrated once, a faint shudder, almost like it sensed something about the encounter to come.

  Sym ignored it.

  The two men rounded the corner, stepping into the ruined clearing where they expected to find Sym's body.

  Instead, they found Sym standing tall, bde in hand, watching them with cold amusement.

  Their faces twisted in surprise, their eyes widening, mouths opening slightly in reflexive shock.

  For a long heartbeat, neither of them moved.

  Sym's lips curled into a slow, deliberate smile.

  He could see it clearly now, despite the knives they fumbled to draw, despite the cocky sneers they tried to paint on their faces.

  They were scared.

  Sage confirmed it instantly:

  "Micro-tremors in hand muscles. Pulse spike detected. Pupil dition exceeding baseline stress levels. Subjects: terrified."

  Sym took a single step forward, letting the bloodstained bde catch the dim, flickering light.

  "I should kill you both," he said softly, voice carrying easily through the ruined space. "Teach you a real lesson."

  He watched the flicker of panic in their eyes, the way their bodies twitched between fight and flight, the primal survival instincts they couldn’t hide, no matter how hard they tried.

  The man with the smoking roll, the one who had been swaggering with false confidence, acted first.

  He snarled, yanked the half-burned cigarette from his mouth, and hurled it at Sym, embers scattering into the air.

  A distraction.

  Before the embers had even settled, the smoking man drew a compact steam gun from beneath his coat and fired all five rounds in rapid succession.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Each shot struck Sym squarely, but the rounds bounced off harmlessly. The impact stung, but his awakened body made the attacks negligible.

  The man froze, his expression shifting from aggression to disbelief.

  "Awakened…" he muttered, voice trembling.

  Even Joe, who stood to the side, instinctively dropped to one knee, overcome by a primal sense of danger, like prey in the presence of something far beyond him.

  Without a word, the smoking man raised his knife.

  But Sym wasn’t just watching.

  Sage had already predicted the movement.

  "Trajectory locked. Predictive strike path identified. Counter recommended."

  Sym moved with terrifying precision, almost zy in his calm.

  He shifted his footing, raised the greatsword in a practiced arc, and swung.

  One clean stroke.

  The man’s body kept moving for half a second, and then his head separated from his shoulders with a wet, meaty crack.

  The body slumped forward onto the cracked ground, blood pouring in thick, sluggish streams.

  Sym didn’t flinch, he didn't blink, and he didn't pause.

  He took another slow step forward, letting the blood drip from the bde, each droplet pattering against the stones like a clock counting down.

  Only Crazy Joe remained.

  Joe stumbled back a step, the knife he had pulled earlier as his st act of defiance cttering to the ground, his mouth opening and closing uselessly like a dying fish.

  Sym leveled the sword casually, the bde still slick and gleaming.

  "You’re already dead," Sym said simply, voice quiet and final. "You just don’t know it yet."

  Joe shook, terror clear in his every trembling limb.

  The game had changed.

  And Sym was no one’s prey.

  The puddle formed at Crazy Joe’s feet almost immediately, the acrid stench cutting through the stagnant air.

  His whole body shook, from the loose folds of his stained coat to the trembling fingers clutching empty air.

  The knife he had dropped earlier y forgotten on the ground, useless now.

  He was trapped, boxed in by rubble, the heavy darkness of the ruins, and the blood-slicked greatsword that Sym wielded with casual ease. Even if he ran, there was no way to escape an awakened, especially with his physical condition

  Joe stammered, his voice high-pitched and desperate.

  “W—Wait, wait, wait! Listen—I can help you, yeah? You don’t gotta kill me!”

  Sym tilted his head slightly, almost curious.

  “Help me how?” he asked, voice low and bored, like he was talking about the weather.

  Joe’s eyes darted around, looking for an escape that didn’t exist. Finding none, he plowed ahead with his trembling words.

  “I—I got things! Information! Maps! Secrets 'bout this pce! You kill me, you lose all that!”

  Sym’s bde didn’t lower.

  He gave no sign of being impressed.

  Inside his mind, Sage’s voice whispered with cold crity:

  “Subject shows high probability of additional assets. Recommend continued psychological pressure. Maximum extraction potential not yet reached.”

  Sym smiled faintly.

  "Maps, huh?" he murmured. "Of what exactly?"

  Joe nodded frantically, sensing the thread of interest.

  "This—this pce, it’s bigger than you think! What you’ve seen? It’s just the surface!"

  He licked his cracked lips nervously.

  "There's a second yer down. Deeper. Older. Stuff even the Order probably forgot about!"

  Sym’s heart thudded once, sharp and cold.

  That was worth something.

  Very much worth something.

  But he didn’t move.

  He didn't lower the sword.

  He simply let the silence stretch, the weight of the moment pressing down harder with every heartbeat.

  Joe broke first, his voice cracking.

  "I can get you more!" he babbled. "Not just the map! Money, notes, a few thousand! Hidden away! Stuff stashed down here, things no one else knows about!"

  Still, Sym said nothing.

  The bde hung in the air.

  Joe’s words tumbled out faster, more frantic now, like a man dangling off a cliff.

  "And—and contacts! Rogue Awakened! Not everyone works for the Order, ya know? Some of 'em are real freencers! I—I can put you in touch, swear it!"

  That caught Sym’s attention.

  He kept his face neutral, but inside, a slow, burning calcution was beginning to form.

  Rogue Awakened. People who lived outside the Order’s grasp.

  People who had power, but no chains..

  Sage’s voice hummed again, colder now:

  "Probability of deceit: High. However, even a partial truth could yield a significant strategic advantage. Recommend controlled cooperation until full extraction is achieved."

  Sym finally shifted.

  He lowered the sword slightly, as a silent command:

  Keep talking.

  Joe sagged with visible relief, tears mixing with the sweat and filth on his face.

  "You let me live... I'll give you everything," he whispered hoarsely.

  Sym stared at him for a long, heavy moment.

  And he made his decision.

  This man had lied to him before; he was surely going to do it again. Besides, he knew where crazy joe resided, or at least his base of operations. Therefore, he could simply go there himself and take things.

  Sym looked at Joe, who at this point had snot and tears falling down his face. Sym thought of the countless bodies outside and how much death and pain this man had caused. Most importantly, attempting to fool him and kill him was irreparable damage that Sym couldn't overlook.

  Sym had made his decision.

  Quietly. Without regret.

  Because mercy was just another form of weakness in this world.

  And Sym was done being weak.