Chapter 54: The Door
Some people were inside the place, putting corpses into bags and hanging them from the ceiling like the others. They kept at it for almost an hour before everyone finally started to leave.
Each went their own way.
Evan, who had already returned to his room at the inn, continued to monitor everything through Shadow’s eyes. As soon as he saw that they had all left, he began following several of them, trailing them until they reached their homes.
Some went to night bars still open, others went straight home, while a few chose to spend time in more private places. But Evan wasn’t interested in any of them. One by one, he ignored those who weren’t suitable for his objective, until he finally found one.
A heavyset man, unawakened, bald, with a face that suggested life hadn’t been particularly kind to him. He had been one of the ones helping load the corpses.
One of Shadow’s summons tailed him, giving Evan a clear view of the man’s situation. He lived on the outskirts of the city, in an old, run, down house that looked like no one had cleaned it in years. Empty bottles on the tables and floor, scraps of food left out and forgotten, torn paper scattered around. Half a junkyard in miniature, but the man didn’t seem to notice or care.
He walked in, grabbed a bottle that was still half full, dropped himself onto what appeared to be a couch that had seen better decades, and prepared to drink himself into unconsciousness.
Evan had been watching long enough to confirm nobody else lived there.
He gave the command.
Shadow swapped positions with the summon that had been keeping watch, a new ability, [Shadow Exchange], which allowed him to trade places with any of his summons. Useful in more ways than one, though it didn’t work on himself.
The man, bottle halfway to his lips, froze.
A figure had materialized from the shadows directly in front of him, and for a moment he nearly went into cardiac arrest, but before the scream could form, the figure’s hand closed around his throat and pulled him close.
"From this moment on, you speak only when I tell you to." The voice was low and unhurried—the kind that didn’t need to rise to carry weight. "Try to be clever, or make a single sound I haven’t asked for, and you will regret it."
A chill ran down the man’s spine. He forgot even how to scream, his body going rigid as he nodded frantically, not daring to utter a single word.
The next several minutes were spent with Evan, through his clone, conducting a thorough interrogation.
The man panicked. He tried to lie. Evan made sure he couldn’t.
By the time it was over, Evan had what he needed, and disposed of him.
He dismissed most of Shadow’s summons, but left a few stationed near the old building above, and one in the underground area where the bodies had been kept. Shadow exchanged places with that one, reappearing beneath the earth, looking out across the rows of corpses hanging from the ceiling like cuts of meat kept in cold storage.
His eyes flickered intensely, a certain intelligence visible within them.
Evan controlled the clone as he observed the scene, something that, until a month ago, would have horrified him. Now, it only gave him a sense of nausea, nothing more.
Not even Reiner’s death seemed to affect him much, which surprised him a little. They weren’t close or anything, just acquaintances at best, yet aside from a bit of pity for the man and his fate, he didn’t seem to feel much else.
’Haa. This damned world. Whether you’re inside the settlements or out in the wild, it seems there are beasts everywhere,’ he thought, turning over what the man had told him.
The man had been a local thug, part of a small group that, like many others, had been tasked with procuring materials, mainly human corpses.
Fresh ones. Recently dead. And in large quantities.
Evan had asked why. The man didn’t know. Whoever had hired them gave orders and paid. They did the work, targeting loners, vagrants, the homeless, anyone whose disappearance wouldn’t raise immediate alarm.
The operation had apparently been running for some time, though in the beginning it had been far more controlled, a few victims per week, carefully chosen. In recent weeks it had escalated dramatically. Daily kills. And today, dozens in a single day, on direct orders from above.
Evan asked who was behind it all.
The Mad Jackals.
The same gang Berthold and the others he had eliminated belonged to.
’Guess I’ll have to deal with the rest of them too,’ he thought, unwilling to leave things unfinished.
The group had already provoked him before and paid the price, but he had left it at that. Now, knowing there were more of them, and that they were behind all this, was more than enough reason for him to take care of the rest.
There was one problem, though, the gang leader of the Mad Jackals. No one knew where he lived, and he hadn’t been seen for the past two days. Orders were being relayed through intermediaries, but aside from that, no one knew where he had gone.
’Tch... this will be troublesome,’ Evan thought, slightly frustrated. For now, however, he set the issue aside and focused on something more immediate.
Shadow’s eyes had stopped moving across the hanging corpses. Instead, they traveled along the length of the underground space until they settled on the far wall, the one opposite the tunnel entrance.
There was a door.
Metal, sealed, with faint traces of magic threading through rune formations carved into its surface and carefully concealed, easy to miss if you weren’t looking, impossible to ignore if you were.
Whatever was being done with the corpses, it was happening beyond that door.
The man had told him that every end of the week the space was cleared out, the bodies taken through that door. Where the door led, he didn’t know. He was just the labor.
Evan, still in Shadow’s body, looked at the door for a long moment. Then he melted into the floor as shadow and slipped away, leaving a single summon hidden in a dark corner to keep watch.
The end of the week was two days away. If what the man said was accurate, that was when he would see what was on the other side.
In the meantime, the only option was to wait. Forcing the door would put him in the crosshairs of whoever was running this operation, and he had no idea who that was, or how strong they were. Evan didn’t act recklessly. Not when he didn’t know what he was walking into.
’And there goes my peaceful stay in this city,’ he thought, already sensing that whatever was coming next was going to cause him problems he hadn’t asked for.
Whether it was the beast tide or whatever lay behind that door, he didn’t know. What he did know was that the only thing he could do for now was stay ready for either.