Chapter 45: What Needs to Be Done
No muzzle flash ever left the kid’s gun.
Mack’s revolver had already delivered judgment, the sound too large for the warehouse space and wrong in every way that mattered. Where Gerrick’s head used to be, all that remained was high-velocity trauma painted across the walls and shipping crates. Celdorne’s souped up revolver didn’t believe in half measures, and the geography of destruction stretched further than should have been possible for something that used to be human.
Cole still completed his draw, his nerves following through even though his brain had already done the math. The weapon felt pointless in his hand now, like bringing a fire extinguisher to smoldering rubble.
The body hit the ground with the gracelessness of something no longer inhabited. Whatever demon had been joyriding in Gerrick’s nervous system found itself suddenly homeless, evicted by the simple application of physics to possessed tissue. The fingers kept twitching for another second before accepting the new reality.
Mack stood frozen with his weapon still raised, staring at what he’d been forced to do. This was far from shock and possibly something worse – complete understanding of what he’d just done.
Cole knew the man’s file like the back of his hand, and more. He couldn’t count the times Mack had confided in him, sharing whatever he told the shrinks after each mission. To Cole, Mack had just saved his life. To Mack, it was just another dead kid added to the collection.
The radio cracked not long after the kid hit the ground. Miles’ voice came through tight in the same way people talked when they already knew the answer would be bad. “Y’all good up there?”
“Yeah.” Cole glanced at Mack, looking for signs of psychological fracture. He chose his next words carefully, settling on a euphemism that honestly just felt like a lie. “Possessed civilian neutralized.”
The pause on Miles’ end said he understood exactly what those sanitized words meant. “Copy. OTAC’s pullin’ up now. Just got outta their cars.”
“Copy.”
Cole moved into Mack’s line of sight and placed a hand on his shoulder, solid contact to anchor him to the present. He needed to guide Mack’s thoughts on a better path, but what would he say? What could he say?
Rationalization wasn’t the same as distraction, and as with all options, each had their own cost. And knowing Mack’s history, standard therapy-speak would be a minefield; telling him he wasn’t alone in this wouldn’t remove the guilt or bring back the lost.
Cole didn’t overthink it further. They were still on mission, and he needed to bring Mack back to Earth – at least for now.
“I saw the eyes too. He was already gone,” Cole stated the truth – the kid had been dead the moment he’d eaten from that can.
Mack’s jaw worked, but nothing came out. Some things didn’t have words.
“Help me document the scene,” Cole pivoted. “OTAC needs to know about the possession and the cargo.”
It sounded counterintuitive to have Mack kneel beside the kid he’d just killed, catalog the damage, note the evidence. Most people would call that cruel. But Cole had seen what happened when operators tried to walk away from their shots without processing them. The unexamined kill became a ghost, growing worse in memory than reality. And sometimes, it chipped away at their humanity until there was nothing left.
Better to make Mack look at it now, file it properly in the part of the brain that handled necessary violence, than let it fester in the shadows where trauma bred. Documentation forced integration – made it part of the job, part of the mission, part of the world where sometimes they had to delete children because demons existed and hunger killed as surely as bullets.
The revolver finally lowered and Mack moved like his body was on autopilot, muscle memory engaging while his consciousness took a sabbatical. He knelt by what remained, hands moving through evidence collection routines. Checking limb positions, tremor patterns, anything that wasn’t thinking about how this kid had been trying to lift crates too heavy for him just this morning.
He knelt by what remained and went through the motions of a tactical check. Mack cleared the kid’s revolver first – a lump of metal that looked like it had been fished out of the harbor and beaten back into barely working condition. Safety engaged, cylinder emptied, weapon secured.
Then came the pat-down, professional habit searching for weapons or intelligence. His hand found the can in Gerrick’s coat pocket, the metal still cold from the warehouse air. Kid must have grabbed it and saved it for later, probably planning to find somewhere private to eat. The other pocket held two silver coins – his morning’s wages for hauling crates that weighed more than he did.
Cole pushed down his emotions; he couldn’t let Mack see. He took the items, analyzing them for himself – and keeping Mack from dwelling on them.
The radio crackled again. “Hostages are gettin’ antsy. Askin’ ‘bout the gunshot. What do I tell ‘em?”
“Tell them the threat’s neutralized. They’ll be safe with OTAC.”
Cole returned to his work, joining Mack in silence.
There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make it worse.
Blood pooled and spread, finding every crack in the concrete floor, mapping the warehouse in red. Fragments of skull had embedded themselves in nearby crates. One piece had traveled far enough to seem physically impossible, like the universe wanted to emphasize just how thoroughly dead the kid was.
Clearing things out seemed more like CSI work – shit they’d normally leave to whatever teams came after them, but right now, it was the only thing keeping Mack stable until the next task.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long. The sound of boots on pavement and orders being shouted outside meant the cavalry had arrived, for whatever that was worth.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Cole moved to the window and watched the choreographed efficiency below. There were about a dozen slayers setting up perimeters, securing exits, doing all the things that would’ve been useful twenty minutes ago.
One figure stood out from the uniformed coordination – tall, lean, moving with the kind of languid authority that suggested he owned whatever ground he walked on. Even from three floors up, his unhurried confidence was obvious. Cole could tell that this was a methodical man, someone who’d learned that rushing meant missing details that mattered.
“OTAC’s heading up now,” Ethan reported.
“Copy.” Cole turned to Mack. “Mack. Let’s hand it off to them.”
They walked over to the main cargo stairs and waited. The footsteps ascending carried that same unhurried rhythm, but now Cole could hear the careful placement – whoever this was, he was picking his way through the carnage below without breaking stride. Not squeamish, but precise.
The man who appeared at the top of the stairs looked like he’d stepped out of a recruitment poster – early forties, sharp features, uniform immaculate despite having just navigated a battlefield. His first action wasn’t to survey the room but to check his boots. A quick glance down to ensure no blood had tagged along for the ride. The gesture was automatic – common to those who’d walked through enough crime scenes to develop habits around them.
“Gideon Vale, interrogator, Slayer Elite,” he introduced.
Cole recognized the name in the same way people knew which neighborhoods to avoid after dark – reputation by rumor, respect mixed with something that wasn’t quite fear. Hearing that he introduced himself first as interrogator before ‘Slayer Elite’, maybe those rumors meant something.
Cole knew from experience that interrogation specialists came in flavors. And it seemed Vale’s particular brand had earned him the kind of reputation that made other Slayers change the subject when his name came up.
The face he made as he surveyed the bloodshed only confirmed why his reputation preceded him. Vale didn’t bother to hide his contempt, apparent hatred for the cultists oozing out. His expression changed only when his eyes settled on what remained of Gerrick.
The transformation was instant. All that languid control and disgust crystallized into something harder. He crossed to the body in three quick strides, careful placement forgotten.
“So it is true. They’ve used a child in their devil’s work.”
It technically wasn’t, but Cole knew better than to correct him. The cultists hadn’t fed Gerrick anything – the kid had just been hungry at the wrong time and grabbed a can. But watching Vale’s hands clench into fists, it was painfully obvious that this wasn’t about an accurate sequence of events. In Vale’s world, cultists were guilty of every consequence their actions enabled. They’d brought the poison where children worked, and that was enough for him to paint it as deliberate.
“Captain Mercer.” Vale’s eyes hadn’t moved from Gerrick’s remains. “I trust the boy’s end was swift, at the very least?”
The body alone answered the question – what Vale needed must have been confirmation. Finality. So Cole gave it. “Instantaneous. One shot. I don’t think he was possessed for more than thirty minutes.”
The fury on Vale’s face was nothing like Mack’s hollow stare. Mack saw a child he’d failed to save. Vale saw evidence that confirmed his hatred – Mack’s possible future, if they weren’t careful in handling the trauma. Well, if they could handle it at all.
Vale sighed, finally turning away to face Cole and Mack. “You did the boy a considerable mercy. Nothing of the child remained in that shell.”
Mack didn’t respond, but the acknowledgement landed.
“And what of the cultists responsible for this abomination? I trust you’ve secured some for questioning?”
“All dead. Building’s secured, cargo’s contained.” Cole kept it simple. “We got their ship’s captain alive – shoulders are fucked, but he’s breathing. They mentioned heading for Auber Port before things got loud.”
“Dead?” Vale tasted the word like wine that had turned to vinegar. Whatever bothered him, it sure as hell wasn’t just loss of intel. “Pity. Their leader would have been most illuminating under proper questioning. These devils never work alone; behind every cell stands another puppeteer who fancies himself clever, keeping his hands clean whilst others court damnation in his stead.”
His expression softened into something that may have been solace if it weren’t for the coldness in his eyes. “Yet… a ship’s captain shall serve admirably for my purposes. A man who sails to collect such cargo must know its origins – where in the Wastes these devils make their nest.”
He flashed a smile so sinister it would have chilled a confessor. “The Wastes may be vast, but every hideout requires supply lines, and every captain knows the charts he follows.”
Vale's team moved in to process the scene while he focused on what actually mattered – the living who could still talk. “And I see you’ve a man chained to a desk. Not a cultist, I presume?”
Cole glanced over. “Yeah, that’s the distributor. Conway. Scared shitless but should be cooperative.”
Vale responded almost dismissively, as if Conway should’ve known better. “A merchant caught in waters too deep for his understanding. Such men know only bills of lading and profit margins – useful for tracking shipments perhaps, but ignorant of the devils who pay their fees.”
He paused at Gerrick’s body again, brows furrowed. “How old was the boy?”
This wasn’t useful intel, and definitely didn’t lead anywhere pretty, but Cole answered anyway. “Fourteen, maybe fifteen. One of the dock workers might know for sure.”
Vale tensed his muscles, not relaxing one bit even as he spoke. “Children. They grow bolder with each season, these devils. First, the desperate and forgotten. Now, the innocent.”
His gaze drifted to the body of the leader. Without warning, he walked over and delivered a sharp, physically-enhanced stomp to the ribs. The corpse’s chest caved with a crunch.
“Waste.” Another stomp, just as hard. “Every one of these bastard devils.”
Cole had seen this before. Al-Jadira, after an IED took out half a squad – he’d borne witness to a staff sergeant kicking the shit out of a dead JNI fighter until his platoon leader pulled him off. Same thing in Mexico, with contractors who’d lost friends to cartel torture taking it out on corpses – and sometimes even live captives – when no one was looking.
The UCMJ usually kept that shit locked down, but here? As progressive as King Alexander was, he’d never instated such regulations for his kingdom. He’d gone as far as laying down the law when it came to treatment of POWs and general conduct, but nothing that would’ve condemned Vale. Certainly nothing that would’ve deterred him; his badge said he could punt corpses all day if it meant OTAC could keep their best interrogator at peak performance.
Now, the concerning part wasn’t Vale working out his demons on actual demons – or their cultists. It was Mack watching it happen, taking in someone else’s coping mechanism. He could see his eyes, drawn like moths to a flame. Was this the endgame?
Trade guilt for rage, find new targets to blame because the original weight was too much to carry? Vale had turned his trauma into a profession. Mack was still deciding what to do with his.
After a third stomp, Vale settled down and fixed his uniform. He smoothed out the wrinkles, adjusted the belt, and wiped the gore off his boots by using a barrier like a squeegee. “My team shall see to the remainder of this operation. Director Fernal awaits your report. I’d advise against keeping him waiting overlong.”
Vale extended his hand. The shake was firm, but a clear tremor of rage still ran underneath.
Cole could tell right away: whatever had driven Gideon Vale to make interrogation an art had begun with a loss like this. And that loss had left him with enough fury to burn the world down if aimed accordingly. God help any cultist who fell into his hands – if there was anything left to save.