(OsiriumWrites) Death Smith - II - Chapter 2 (The art of negotiation)
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The following morning.
March, 14 AR.
England, London, St Lucas' Hospital.
Flashes of pain ran through Lance’s body as he felt the constant icy sting at his side. Fear gripped his heart, but not for his own safety. ‘Don’t think about it!… I have to!’ Lance thought as his heart raced. He felt his hand tightening around the knife as he gripped the hilt and pulled it from its scarlet sheath. Pain, fatigue, and uncertainty threatened to consume him, though a singular need dwarfed it all. As he gritted his teeth, he clutched the knife before he threw it, watching it slide towards a man that was fighting for his life near him. “Lance! Use it!” he screamed, only to realise that it was Thomas’ voice that spoke those words.
A second later, Lance woke up screaming, reliving the last moments of his nightmare. His arms thrashed around him, fighting off the things that haunted him. He felt a figure lay a hand on his chest while pushing him back into his bed. Compared to Lance’s strength, this hand felt like an unmovable mountain.
“Easy there,” a calm voice said soothingly, triggering Lance’s memory by doing so. He recognised Dieter’s voice, sensing the man next to him in the dark room. Dieter’s hand kept pushing him back until Lance relaxed and his breathing gradually calmed down. After opening his eyes, he could see Dieter watching him for a moment before a large creature jumped up from the bed next to Lance, leaning against him.
“I… I felt… I saw…” Lance said, unsure how to even explain what he just experienced. He thought it was a dream, but it had felt so real, as if he had experienced Thomas’ last moments. He had felt his friend make the choice to pull the knife out to save him. Thomas had decided who was going to live in that moment.
“Just shadows and scars,” Dieter said as he patted Lance’s chest. He could feel the young man’s heartbeat slow down, no longer threatening to burst out of his chest. “Easy now. Just shadows and scars, nothing more,” He continued, as Lance felt the man’s hand slowly slide to the side, gripping Lance’s shoulder before he got up. The tall German then opened the curtains to let the morning sun inside, vanquishing the remnants of nightmares.
“Up,” Dieter said, crossing his arms and watching the young man do so. “You’ve slept long enough. It is time we get something to eat and find a doctor to sign your discharge papers,” Dieter explained as he began folding Lance’s clothes, only to lose interest and simply shove them all inside Lance’s bags.
A part of Lance hated it that Dieter was seeing him like this. Another part was glad he did. Ever since leaving the Rift, Lance occasionally experienced nightmares like this, always chaotic, always real. This night had been a bad one. That Dieter didn’t go into what had happened and instead simply ordered him to get out of bed was reassuring. Lance usually felt shame whenever a nurse or doctor found him like that, seeing him so distraught and vulnerable.
“Sure,” Lance replied as he pulled off his shirt and found a fresh one. As he grabbed the shirt, he could feel Dieter’s gaze on his back. No doubt, Dieter could see the scars on Lance’s frame. Some were new, others older, and had started to fade. Although Lance had only been a Rifter for a short while, he didn’t know many Rifters that didn’t have scars or other permanent wounds. Still, he had collected quite a few in his brief career as a Rifter. “I thought the Doctor would see me in the afternoon?” Lance asked as he slid into his pants and sweater before fumbling with his left shoe.
“And in the meantime, you will waste away in bed?” Dieter asked as he shook his head as he pointed at little Hans. He snapped his fingers, signalling to the large Rift-hound that he was to stop chewing on Lance’s right shoe and return it to him. “You had two weeks to do just that,” he said, throwing Lance’s bags in his arms as he walked towards the door.
Lance was glad that Dieter had refused to leave him alone last night, instead opting to sleep in a chair in the same room while little Hans slept in a separate bed. Still, the man’s excuse of ‘being too tired to go home’ was anything but convincing. A part of Lance felt at ease with Dieter. The man could make you step away from your problems for a while and focus on something minor, to get your bearings again. He reminded him of Thomas. Those two were both quick to act and feel, knowing instinctively that some things needed time. In the end, Lance did as Dieter asked and put on his drool covered right shoe and made his way over to them.
Opening the door, Dieter led the young man and his four-legged friend out of the room towards a nearby office to find a doctor.
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Two hours later, Lance was staring at the pictures on the wall, seeing dozens of framed news articles alongside photographs. Every one of them was a person who Dieter had saved over the years, including a picture of Lance and Thomas. It pained Lance to look at it, but he understood why Dieter kept them all on his wall.
“Did most of them become Rifters?” Lance asked, tracing his fingers over several of the pictures, almost feeling what these people had felt when they survived their first Rift. The news article on the middle of the wall was of Dieter himself. Although it was in German, Lance figured out a few of the words, learning that it had happened several years ago.
“No, only a few of them became Rifters,” Dieter said, his voice echoing from his kitchen. Every few seconds, Lance heard a loud whining noise as little Hans kept begging the German for food, even throwing his empty bowl at Dieter’s shin to get the message across. The two of them were perfectly in sync on the battlefield, but they obviously had conflicting ideas about proper food portions back on Earth.
Lance stepped away from the pictures and towards a small cabinet that contained things from inside a Rift, ranging from Rift-shards, mana stones, to more unique ores or dried up exotic plants. Lance noticed a few broken or dented weapons in the cabinet next to it. They were either older weapons Daniel had used or collected as trophies. His gaze fell upon the many nicks, dents, and signs of wear that adorned these items. Lance quickly moved away from them after remembering a broken shield that had a permanent position on his couch back in his apartment.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“It smells good,” Lance said as his heightened Perception skill picked up on the ingredients Dieter was using.
“It will taste even better.”
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Lance said, stepping into the kitchen and seeing Dieter hard at work, preparing sizable portions of sausages, eggs, bread rolls, cheese, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and two glasses filled with orange juice.
“What has Daniel been telling you about me?” Dieter said while shaking his head as he turned off the stove. Afterwards, he placed little Hans’s filled bowl on the floor before he sat down on a barstool and handed Lance a plate. “Despite what Daniel might’ve been telling you guys, I used to be quite normal, and I enjoyed cooking. I was a senior salesperson in a local carpet shop and was living a quiet life until a Rift happened to me,” he explained before he bit into his bread roll.
“It is hard to picture you and Daniel as anything else but gods of war. How could I not after how you two saved us back then,” Lance stated, remembering the way Dieter and Daniel had cut through ranks of Lizardlings to save him and the other people inside the hospital.
“Bah, that’s far from reality. You know, I used to have a lovely, boring life. My biggest stress in life was whether I preferred a winter or summer vacation. Same for Daniel. He used to run a small bakery with his wife before his life changed,” Dieter explained as he covertly slid a small piece of bacon off his plate by ‘accident’ and heard a satisfying grunt coming down from below.
Lance smiled honestly, imagining Daniel baking bread or Dieter selling someone a new carpet. It was easier to imagine Dieter bashing in a monster’s skull with his mace than to picture him wearing a suit and tie. The two of them continued to eat in silence afterwards, with a large snout occasionally bumping into Lance’s knee, trying to persuade the young man to spare some bits of bacon. When Lance offered a bit of lettuce, he could’ve sworn that he heard little Hans let out a dissatisfied snort.
Lance focused on the Rift-hound, remembering all that he had read about animals that had survived a Rift and the Rifters that bonded with them. Whereas humans could actively distribute points to certain areas and grow stronger, Rift-animals simply grew organically in the direction that made the most sense. Little Hans had started off as a large English mastiff, but he had grown a lot since then. Ropes of muscle adorned his legs and Lance remembered how the animal had used its teeth to rip apart the thick Lizardmen scales.
“I did the cooking. The two of you are on clean-up duty,” Dieter said as he patted his stomach before making his way over to the living room to watch some television.
With no choice but to do so, Lance cleaned up, letting the Rift-hound lick up the scraps from each plate before placing them in the dishwasher. Lance closed the dishwasher with a sigh when he had cleared the table and little Hans had finally licked the last plate clean.
Ever since his escape from the Rift, a notification of his status screen had irritated him. Lance could ignore it for a while, but it always popped back up after a few hours. He had refused to interact with it because of the guilt he had felt at surviving the Rift, let alone the torrent of other emotions that ravaged him. With Thomas’ funeral being tomorrow, Lance knew it was only a matter of time before he came face to face with the reason for his guilt and the item that was now stored in his inventory. So, he opened his status screen, deciding it was better to deal with it now rather than break down during the funeral because of a notification.
[You have unspent attribute points.]
He had gotten three Attribute points after he had survived the last Rift. These points taunted him for a while with what they represented. He ignored how they made him feel as he focused on how to spend them. His Endurance was currently his highest attribute, with Strength and Agility being tied in second place. Perception was in third place and Wisdom and Luck were in last place.
It tempted Lance to put those three points into Endurance. After all, it had been a vital part of how he had survived the hazardous and rock-filled underground river and his fast exit from the Rift. Strength and Agility had been useless then, same for Wisdom and Perception. ‘The fact that I survived at all had been pure chance,’ Lance thought as he shook his head. Some Rifters considered the Luck attribute a waste, while others swore by it. The Attribute helped nearly every action, increased the chances of a good item drop, and could be the difference between a normal hit or a potentially critical one.
[Luck:] [20] (+3)
In the end, Lance placed all three points into his Luck. Not because of any strategy, but more so as a statement to himself. Afterwards, he made his way over to Dieter to watch some television, eager to distract himself from what he had just done.
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“I’m fine,” Lance lied as he watched Dieter and Daniel linger at his door later that evening, holding it open. Lance loved them for it but wanted nothing more than to have some time for himself in his apartment. Lance had spent most of his day with Dieter. They had watched a movie together, done some grocery shopping, had Lance’s GRRO identification updated at the London branch, and afterwards made their way over to Lance’s apartment. The updated ID now listed Lance as a veteran.
The GRRO listed new Rifters as Survivors until they reached level ten and gained their class. After that, they would get the rank of Veteran until they reached level one-hundred. Some agencies relied on proof of Rank, where a Rifter had to prove that they had indeed reached a certain level. Other nations relied on complex scanners that used exotic elements found in a Rift to measure the radiation emitted from a Rift-shard. The greater the output, the higher the level.
GRRO simply kept testing as optional for the lower-ranked Rifters such as veterans, allowing a Rifter to update it when they felt it necessary. The higher a Rifter’s level, the more job opportunities they usually had. When Lance had seen his new credentials, having read the word ‘veteran’, he nearly chucked it in a bin. He felt far from a veteran during the Rift or every day since then.
Lance and Dieter had cleaned up his apartment earlier, with Dieter having explained that Daniel would join them later. When Daniel arrived, the mood had instantly soured. It seemed like good news at first. Daniel had explained he had visited R.A.M. to negotiate the outstanding loans Thomas and Lance still had with the company. They had been standard loans for equipment, a backpack, and tools. Because of the rarity of Rift-materials, it was worth several thousand pounds. Daniel had explained that he had gotten R.A.M. to drop the loans for Thomas and only charge Lance a third for the damages and loss of the equipment he had borrowed. In return, Lance had to sign a document not to go to the press about the ‘incident’.
It had hurt Lance to sign it, but he knew that in the end, it meant thousands of pounds didn’t suddenly burden Thomas’ family or put them in debt. He knew how often Thomas had chipped in, even back when he had still been a Nurse. It had been Thomas’ way of supporting his father after the man’s medical discharge from the military because of a back injury. Signing the document had felt both nauseating and right at the same time for Lance. In doing so, he hoped it would bring the Walkers some rest.
After signing the document, Lance had expected the tension to go away, but Daniel surprised him when the man placed a large folder on the table in front of him. Daniel had hesitated a moment before he had let go of the folder, explaining that he had spoken to Samuel Jones. Upon hearing the full details of the investigation, the near immunity of Connor, the shaky testimony from Louis, and the bloody enigma that was Kira, Lance had wanted to rip the document in half.
He wasn’t sure what he felt at that moment. There was rage, fear, guilt, and despair. Everything hit him at once, numbing him again, like how he had been for the last two weeks. Lance felt like nothing had changed.
“Lance, you know, we could always stay the night. It might be easier to drive to the funeral together, right?” Daniel asked, as Dieter gave an encouraging nod. They had no illusions of what this news meant to Lance and the Walkers. It meant that everyone worth their salt could see that something was wrong, but the GRRO wouldn’t gather any further evidence or chase down leads.
“I’m fine,” Lance lied again, flashing them a broken smile. “I think I expected this. I… want some time by myself… for now, at least. I’ll see you two in the morning,” he said finally, before he slowly closed the door. His heightened senses could hear them on the other side of the room, hearing the shifting of weight on the floorboards until they finally moved away from his door and left the complex.
The young man then waited a few minutes in silence before he steeled himself and opened his Inventory, bringing forth the reason for most of his guilt and self-hatred.
[You have combined and retrieved two items]
Lance watched the pale figure appear in the seat in front of him, dressed in a torn R.A.M uniform. The figure stared through Lance with empty eyes. A dullish grey Rift-shard embedded in the centre of a grey chest. Lance braced himself as he looked at the figure, at the pale man that looked so much like Thomas.
Lance forced himself to remember every detail about him, permanently engraving it in his memory before he opened the folder again and slid three pictures in between the two of them. Three pictures of the people that had wronged them. Lance slid each picture towards the pale man, seeing the grey gaze shift downwards and look at what Lance was offering him. Remembering his oath to Thomas, Lance broke the silence.
“I’ll keep my promise, Thomas, even if it means I have to get it for you on my own.”
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Author: Osirium
Copyright: OsiriumWrites