It was finally time. After purging Matchsticks till the brink of extinction, it was time for the killing blow.

Like usual in Richmond, the rain was thundering down on the scrap metal roof of the abandoned warehouse. It was their selected rendezvous point, and the best for their purposes; this won’t go down pretty. Like marbles on a plate, the rain pattered down deafeningly.

To some, it was relaxing.

To others, it marked the seconds down to the fight of their lives. The Fire Fighters— minus Arkie and Talia— were amongst the latter.

Nell stared down at the Blunderbuss in her hands. The metal glinted under the dim crimson lights menacingly.

In a past life, she might’ve felt that this was above her. There were better things to attend to! Money to be made, parties to attend, people to enjoy for the night– A director’s job was never finished, even when clocked out.

But now? Her new neural networks made her finger itch to fiddle with the trigger. All her cybernetics, now healed and fully functioning, made her feel things previously unheard of. Her senses now were honed to razor sharp precision to the point she could make out the difference between Erica and Harrison’s breathing patterns and how Harrison’s smelled like peanuts. She finally threw away her phone and the earbud Erica gave her as now she had an internal processor to tune into their comms channel.

Best of all, however, was her new ability in fights. Thanks to the adrenaline spikers, she saw the world in a whole new way. Everything now moved so fast, almost like foretelling the future; she could feel the whiz of a bullet about to blast right past her and just a second later, she could deftly duck out of the way. Her body moved with such swiftness, ferocity, and precision at an almost addictive level. Running through the present dashed away any need to think of the future or ponder the past; facing the music has never sounded so good.

A sharp whistle drew her out of her focus. Blinking, she looked up.

“Yoo-hoo, watch the trigger finger!” Harrison called with a crooked grin. Unbeknownst to her, the barrel of the Blunderbuss was pointing right at him from her lap, and her finger was just centimeters from shooting him dead.

“Oh, sorry.” Nell quickly pointed it down between her legs.

“Naw, I get it. Big gig coming up, so better to stay ready.”

“You’re never ready,” Sickle shot back. His blade was propped up on his knee while he sharpened it to a fine point.

“Eh, I prefer to roll with the punches.”

“That’s how you’re gonna end up tonight, you jackass.”

Harrison merely shrugged and slumped deeper into a worn down couch left to rot inside the warehouse.

“I swear, those two never stop,” Nell murmured to Erica beside her.

“Nothing new there.” As she said that, Erica produced a small carbon fiber case from her jacket pocket. Upon pressing a switch on the side, the top slid open vertically to expose slender cigarettes neatly packed inside. Three were missing. Erica removed the next one. Tucking the case away and lighting up the cigarette, she puffed out a slender sliver of smoke.

“Didn’t know you smoked,” Nell said with surprise. For such a fit woman like Erica, smoking should be out of the question. It was a better fit for a ghostly skeleton like herself.

“I don’t! It’s tradition, you know. We in the biz call it Fire Fighter’s last rites. They say that if you smoke before a big gig, when you die, you don’t taste your own blood since the tobacco corrodes your taste buds.”

“You think we’re gonna die?” Nell cautioned. Despite the subject matter, her nerves didn’t pick up the tempo– in fact, they rushed with excitement. That only raises the stakes.

Erica fiddled the cigarette between her steel fingers, thinking. “No,” she decided with a smile. “But thinkin’ you’re gonna die makes you fight better.” She then offered the cigarette to Nell. “Wanna cheers?”

And who was she to deny such a tempting vice? Nell rushed to take a drag, only to violently hack immediately after tasting it.

“Tastes like death!”

“Delicious, isn’t it?” Erica took the cigarette back. As she went to take another drag, the door of the warehouse began to clatter. The Fire Fighters shot to their feet at attention.

“They’re here,” Sickle announced. His visor flashed from red to orange. “Four total. They don’t look like typical rank and file . . .They have hair.”

“Remember, we’re here to try to talk first. They never wanted to rendezvous before this, which means they’re runnin’ teeth and we got the first play. Better to keep our bullets and their blood off our clothes if we can. Neon?”

“Neonnn,”

“Aye aye.”

“Understood.”

“Good. I’ll start it off.”

The rusted door finally got slid open, albeit after enraged punches flew to tear it almost clean off its frame. The Matchstick entered one after another, faces carefully neutral and eyes narrowed to suspicious glares. A sense of intelligence instead of crazed violence or fanaticism rested on their features. It was bizarre to see them in the same uniforms yet lacking scars and bearing hair after fighting so many lacking such features. At least to Nell, it was clear these were important people in the gang. It was almost fearful to see such cunning and more human people perpetuating such chaos, as if it would be better if it was simply a loose confederation of psychos. Nell’s thoughts disappeared as the final, most intimidating member entered.

He was giant, standing a solid foot above everyone else present and burdened by muscle. He wore simple pants held up by straining suspenders, exposing organic and steel-laced strength rippling under thick bushes of hair. His face matched his body in many ways; it was heavy-set into a look of perpetual anger framed by thick whiskers of a spiked out beard encompassing his whole jowl. Most impressive, although, was his bright red cybernetic arm. The tips of his fingers ended in sharpened claws he kept clenched in a tight fist. Two tanks were slung over his shoulder and clung to his steel. He was the one who stepped forward in front of his compatriots to face Erica.

His voice was a low growl edged in smoke. “Let’s get down to biz. You’re the ones trying to term my gang.”

“We are,” Erica replied matter-of-factly. She tossed her cigarette to the ground and snuffed it under her boot. “And we’ll let the rest of you live if you quit burnin’ down this city.”

“As fucking IF!” he snarled. “I won’t suck your dick just so I can get fucked! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t feed you your own heart! I have you all right here on my doorstep.”

“C’mon, man, that’s a gummed out idea,” Harrison added. He lazily examined his nails. “If you wanted to, you woulda done it already.”

“He’s right, for once,” Erica shot back. “You barely have a gang left, and you ask me, you didn’t have a gang to begin with. Like, c’mon, took us a month and a half to really clean up shop? Really? We wiped the floor with ‘em, so who’s to say we can’t with you?”

“You get out alive. What else could you want?” Sickle hissed.

“I’d wanna get out alive and rich. I’ll quit if you can get whichever fuck hiring you to give us each three hundred thousand. Consider it paying for . . . lost revenue.”

“That’s our income that he’s already payin’ us to kill you, but we’re so generous we’re instead tellin’ you to fuck off. Why would he pay more of that to keep you kickin’?”

The leader ground his teeth and flexed his balled up hands. His lieutenants started to mumble behind him, some slipping their hands behind their jackets already or creeping towards the door. Unfortunately for him, the Fire Fighters were well-versed in this type of negotiation. He looked at each one with increasing weariness.

Stolen story; please report.

“Shit . . . I–”

He locked eyes with Nell, quiet and wearily watching. The entire time she begged he wouldn’t notice.

She recognized the inflamed fury engulfing his eyes the moment he realized it was her. His anger flared back to a pyre.

“NELL! YOU PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!”

He charged forward with speed uncalled for such a hulking man. She tried to dip out of his path, but his reach was so long he still managed to get her. He wrapped his massive talons around her throat and slammed her against the concrete wall. The sheer size of his cold metal knuckle pressed against her cheek to choke the air out of her lungs. Gunfire ensued behind them.

“A-Adam. . . !” She croaked. She desperately clawed at his hand for fruitless results.

“Nell motherfucking Miller! You should’ve died in a back alley six months ago!”

The concrete cracked as he pressed her further in.

“Adam, please—“

“Don’t ADAM ME! You ruined my life and got a pretty little chicken shit gig for it!”

“I—“

“I’ll skin you for this shit!”

Nell had to get out.

Due to the way Adam had her locked against the wall, it left her legs hanging limply below her– the perfect escape plan. She kicked both her feet up and out at Adam’s face. Her heels locked sharply with his jaw, earning a snarl and a loosened grip around her throat. The fresh gasp of air rejuvenated her enough to wriggle freely and to take the chance to wretch her pistol out from her coat. She squeezed the trigger. The bullet firmly planted itself in Adam’s shoulder.

His grip disappeared, causing her to slide against the wall and drop to the ground. “You bitch!” he growled. He reeled his arm back to land a solid blow to her skull. Nell deftly ducked out of the way and rolled between his legs. Now facing his back, she shot off two more bullets, each one earning bellows of pain and leaking blood from his back. Adam spun to face her.

“Please, Adam, we don’t have to do this!” Nell begged. He had to have some kind of reason in him! Their argument was so many years ago, how can he still not be over it?

“Oh, but Nell, we HAVE TO. As long as you’re still alive, I don’t give a flying FUCK!”

He lifted his cybernetic arm, yet with his fist curled down. Two plates on the top of his hand split open and a barrel lifted over top. Instead of gunfire, as Nell expected, flames shot out. Nell’s eyes widened and just barely managed to weave out of the way of the flames. She could feel the heat barely tagging the back of her neck.

The bold flames caught onto part of the wall of the warehouse and soon began to eat up the entire building. The marvels of modern chemistry caused the fire to easily brave the strength of stone as well as rain that started to leak inside.

“Holy shit! Warehouse’s on fire! How the hell did that happen?!” Harrison cried over the channel.

“It’s the boss. He did it.” Sickle retorted.

“End this soon! We can’t sustain this type of fight!” Erica demanded.

“Adam, we can talk about it! It’s been so long, surely we can move past it!” Nell tried again. Yet, despite that, she kept her pistol trained squarely on his head.

“You wanna talk, but you’re ready to off me! As fucking IF!” He fired off another spurt of flames, driving Nell away. She took the chance to shoot, but Adam lifted his cybernetic arm in enough time to bat the bullet away, causing it to ricochet away. As she fumbled to reload, he slammed his knee into her gut and knocked her back. Nell furiously gasped for air only to earn another blow square in the nose. She could taste the stark bitterness of iron on her lips.

Yet, her cybernetics still kept her moving. Even with all the hits and her lungs running on empty her boosted adrenaline kept her bouncing on her feet.

She still was in the fight.

She anticipated the next hit to her jaw and ducked out of the way. Nell honed her aim on one of the tanks on his shoulders. Her nerves twitched this way and that, precisely placing her arm in the hair-length difference needed for the bullet to land. Her finger pulled the trigger of its own accord.

The second tank exploded in a frightfully massive bloom, lapping the ceiling and engulfing its carrier. Adam was thrown into the ground while Nell managed to square herself against the blow, albeit with some shrapnel digging into her arm. Frantically, her eyes shot up. She could hear the warehouse roof creak and falter from the explosion.

“GUYS! Get the fuck out of here! It’s going down!” Nell shouted. She turned tail to run.

Instead, she was pulled into the ground by a steely grip around her ankle.

Nell swiveled to turn to face Adam. He was still in the fight, too.

“So be it! We’ll both fucking BURN!”

She lifted a foot to kick at his wrist, but organic meat was no match for unnatural metal. Adam grabbed her other foot and pinned her to the ground. She tried to wriggle towards the Blunderbuss just barely lying out of reach. Instead, it taunted her futile attempt. Adam crept forward until his full weight pressed into her back. She cried out from the pressure.

“We can still both live! C’mon, get off!”

“After how you fucked me? No, I don’t think so.” His growl of a voice turned even more hideous. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw flesh melting off his face in hideous scores from the explosion, revealing subdermal cybernetics still sustaining him. His grin drooped, lop-sided yet barely clinging onto its steel frame. The heat was getting overwhelming now as the fire fully roared and threatened to topple the building. It was moments away from the inevitable.

“It wasn’t that bad! It was only rent for the month! You were gone by then!”

“You were the one who was gone, Nell. While you were up in your ivory towers, getting rich off MY money, do you know what the landlord did?”

She shook her head frantically.

“He wanted to get his rent. He hunted me down, beat me within an inch of my life, and robbed me of the twenty fucking Mints I still had! You think I wanted all this steel? You think I could afford all this steel after THAT?! So I did what I had to do. I broke in, stole my fucking money back, burned that shit with him inside, and got my fucking check. You think I did that for kicks? Because I fucking wanted to? NO! I HAD TO LIVE WITH YOUR GREED!”

Nell helplessly watched on in horror. Not because of his disgusting disfigurement spitting in her face or the edge of death creeping up on her– but simply the result of her so-called “sacrifice.” She was glad to be rid of Adam’s life from her conscience the moment she hit it big; only a stepping stone to something greater. She didn’t spend another second wondering what might’ve happened after his money funded Waltaire. What was she supposed to assume? He went on, happy-go-lucky in life? She never expected him to almost die, go into debt, resort to arson and start a gang. She never wanted that! But . . .

She did it anyways. She couldn’t give less of a shit.

All that blood, sweat, and tears she preached weren’t hers– it was his. She didn’t deserve any shred of it.

Could she have done the same to all the rest . . ?

Tears welled up in her eyes. It was overwhelming to finally see beyond her own self-deprecation. “I’m sorry, ADAM! I’m so, so, so sorry! I-I-I should’ve never done that! I-I should’ve helped you! You got me there, you! You were so right!”

Adam hesitated. The anger in his eyes flickered in doubt.

“ . . . What?”

“You didn’t deserve any of it, any of this!”

“Now that you’re about to die, you confess to what you did? You’re just running teeth!”

“Adam, you have to believe me! I’d give anything to try again!” Nell sobbed. “If we could trade places, I would!”

“ . . .”

“Say something! Anything!”

“You wanna make up for it?”

Nell bobbed her head wildly.

“Then do it. Repent for your fucking sins. I know I’m not the only one, and I won’t ever forgive you until you do.”

His grip loosened. Nell was able to wriggle away and snatch up her gun.

“What about you?”

“I’ll get out, and I’ll be done with Richmond.”

“I can still help you!”

“I can help myself! Now go!” He barked. Nell wiped her tears away, nodded, and took off. She crashed through the doors and saw the rest of the Fire Fighters milling worriedly about the entrance. They all sighed in relief once they realized it was Nell. Erica immediately pulled her into a tight hug.

“Nell! What the hell was that about? We heard you on the comms,” Erica said. She tore away to look her in the eye. “You knew that guy?”

“I-It’s a long story . . . What about the others?”

“Gone,” Sickle hissed. “The gig is over.”

“They’re tough, though. Not gonna lie, was sweating for a bit,” Harrison huffed. “And not from the heat.”

“But still, you sounded pretty worked up. Were you cryin’?” Erica murmured. She pointed to the puffiness of Nell’s eyes.

“Um—, no, no. It’s from the smoke. Lets . . . Lets just go, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah sure. We all got pretty beat up, so Talia’ll take a look when we get back to The Basement. At least now we’re done huntin’ these gangoons and we can get paid!” She laughed. Erica always knew how to put a positive spin on things, and Nell gave a broken laugh herself.

The Fire Fighters loaded into Erica’s ride, soaking wet from the rain and rivers of blood spilled. Nell stared out the window at the burning building as the ceiling finally fell. It wasn’t with the crash or a yell, but a whisper like in a silent film while it ate itself from the inside out.

She didn’t see anybody escape. Her heart hung heavy in her throat from guilt.