Strip Mall Outskirts
It was still a few blocks before he’d be able to cross and reach the bar, but at least he’d gained sight of it for a moment crossing the parking lot. Clancy took a detour, spotting an alleyway divided by a chainlink fence running between the two buildings that formed it.
Easy enough. Planting one foot against the pipework, he pushed himself off a wall fung and leapt for the midsection of the chainlink, tearing a handhold in a weaker section of the mesh, then pulled his small frame further up still until he could vault over the top.
When he dropped down to the other side,
she was there.
Shaquita Walker.Wearing a black trench coat, halfway unzipped to reveal a full body armor with several grenades and flashbangs and an ammo pouch hanging off the rig. She had on black cargo pants with some combat boots. In both of her hands was a frightening KS-23, and she stared at Clancy.
“... No breath, no heartbeat, no blood flow, no scent, you’re functionally a walking corpse,” Shaquita noted out loud. “Why are you harassing the old man? I know he’s annoying…” Shaquita menacingly racked the first shell…
To his credit, the kid threw up his arms, backing up against the chainlink, stuttering out an answer as best as he could.
”Lady, I don't know you or what you're talking about, b-but m-my dad's waiting around the corner for me.”“Well, you can introduce me to him,” Shaquita snorted. “I’d love to meet the father of the corpse of the poor kid you’re parading around, Apparition.”
That provoked a scowl from the boy,
”Yeah, well he'd tell you to get bent too, lady. Still wanna meet him?” “Confirmed. So…” Shaquita said, “... I have a nice car with some ice cream. You’re getting into it, and we’re rolling to one of our labs...”
”Is it a white van, too? I was taught not to walk off with strangers.”Shaquita leveled the shotgun at him-
“...
I wasn’t asking.”
-and pulled the trigger, losing a 6-gauge shell that sheared through Clancy's upper torso like tissue paper. The shot produced a thunderclap rippled through the alleyway, startling the pigeons nestled in the guttering overhead.
Shaquita didn't hesitate to work the action, racking another shell as her target crumpled into the fence behind him. Immediately, the damage was apparent: from shoulder to sternum, his shirt had been reduced to tattered shreds, the sections of pale white flesh beneath In equal ruin to expose an emaciated, skeletal shadow that seemed to form his inner anatomy.
That he wasn't twitching on the floor, dying of shock and blood loss, was all but the final confirmation she'd needed.
Clancy's fingers dug into the chainlink behind him, clenching hard enough that the links broke free and twisted, tearing away a section of the fencing and throwing it pulled hard, swinging the torn section of fencing in a curve towards the woman like a discuss.
However, the woman backpedaled as quickly as the kid could throw the fencing. Keeping a calm head, she braced the shotgun into her arm, squeezed off a second shell, racked another, fired, racked another, fired - a barrage which
literally blew out the kid's footing dropped him to his hands and knees.
Shaquita used the window to stand her ground, tugging another trio of shells from the carrier, quickly feeding them into the shotgun's magazine, racking the last shell, then reaching back to draw another for good measure. Just as she was ready to insert the fourth, Clancy had haphazardly pulled himself back to moving on all fours, lashing out at her footing with gnarled, shadowy digits, only for her to
gracefully backstep out of arm's reach before emptying a shell near-point into the boy's head.
The damage was enough that the
facade that made up scalp, hairline, eye and cheekbone had been torn away in an instant. Half of Clancy's face
gone, peeled back to expose the emaciated, featureless
silhouette of a skull, marked only by the inhuman maw that crept outward from where the boy’s mouth had been.
That was enough to put him down, if only for a moment; she used it to load another shell as a husking growl slipped through his half-lips,
”Who sent.. not sent by Nazis… obviously..” The connection was half forming when he lashed out again, jabbing the black, angular
shadow that constituted a foot into a nearby trash bin and kicking it into her path. Shaquita stepped forward and violently swung her fist at the trashcan and knocked it aside as the boy
drove himself back to footing.
Clancy pressed towards with a feral persistence, this time driving a palm upwards into the underside of the shotgun and clamping his fingers around the barrel, steering it upwards as she tried to lose another shell into him. Narrowly, it missed the remaining half of his face and instead managed to ruin the side of a dumpster and part of the brickwork next to them.
”You'll tell me who-” Shaquita didn't mince words, leveraging her weight to bash Clancy with the other end of the gun, slamming the grip into the black, featureless
shadow that made up half of his face with such force that he was
surprised to find she could throw down strength for strength. They grappled, he again tugging at the barrel, on the backfoot at how
strong she was for someone that seemed-
White hot agony. A blinding light.-Clancy felt what could only be described as the worst pain he'd
ever experienced in all memory, a hot knife that seared at his very being.
He looked down, and realised too late - she'd used the moment as a distraction, tuggee what looked like a pulsing, crystalline shard from her pouch and drove it deep into what
should've been his sternum, enough that the tip was barely an inch out of him.
He did not breathe, but he felt his chest tightening, non-existent lungs clamouring for air. For the first time in
years, he felt it, like the instinct of panic that set in when one was at the bottom of a lake and drowning.
Desperation.Still he clutched at the shotgun… and this time, Shaquita's strength overpowered his own, enough to steer the bore of the weapon back towards him and empty a shell at point-blank range through the side of his head, this time tearing away
more than just the facade of flesh and scalp.
Pain, and a
blinding disorientation washed over him as he felt his frame buckle out.
That was when Shaquita unloaded round after round into Clancy… Once the mag was dumped, Shaquita reached for another crystal…
Sirens wailed over in the distance. The cacophany of gunfire and trash being overturned had caught up to them. At the
other side of the fence, or what remained of it, a pauchy man in SPPD uniform had shoen up, pistol pointed ahead at Shaquita, another uniform in tow.
”On the gr-!”They couldn't even finish the sentence before
both spontaneously seized up and collapsed, courtesy of a fatal heart attack. Shaquita walked over to their dead bodies, knelt down, and crushed their bodycams underfoot. Then she stood up, pivoting to Clancy…
… and the boy was
gone.
The House on the Hill
The door burst open.
The tattered form of Clancy Patrick, barely standing, staggered through, a half-feral expression on the remaining third of his face as he collapsed against the wall, barely propped up by a shadowy
arm that bedded its sharp digits into the decor.
There was
little doubt that he wasn't a normal child. Not anymore.
His face was half-gone, bearing only his right eye, the corner of his jaw and a portion of his scalp to betray his identity as the boy Clancy had claimed he was. The rest of his
head could only be described as a third-dimensional
shadow outlining a skull, featureless save for the angular
impression of an inhumanly large mouth.
The rest of him was worse for wear; shoes, shirt and the lower half of his khaki pants were shredded, as though someone had run them through a blender, the skin beneath giving way to more of the
skeletal shadow that outlined his body.
And buried in the center of his chest, a pulsating, crystalline shard. He briefly touched at it with the hand that still bore flesh, only for his fingers to spasm and seize up as his fingertips grazed its surface and another
rumble of discomfort to escape out his lips, and then an almost
viscious mass of oily shadow spewed forth as he coughed up
something foreign.
The shadow withered on the floor and dissipated, leaving only a cluster of lead pellets behind.
A parting gift from the hitwoman.Whatever it was, the crystal was doubtless the cause of his troubles, every move eliciting an agonised murmur, until he again collapsed against the wall, slinking away from the loght bleeding in from the outside.
For all the inhumanity of his appearance, the voice that spoke - guttural and resonant as It was - was at a pleading
desperation.”I… help me.”
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