Opening the cage, the three of them made their way back to the office but not before Osman woke the guard up and fired him on the spot for falling asleep. As they passed through back hallways to avoid being seen by the general Kadon population, Osman asked Anson a question. “How was the underside?”
“What?” Anson asked, surprised at the question.
“The underside. You went down there to escape from me. How was it? Also, how did you get out.”
“What you would expect,” Anson replied. There wasn’t much of a reaction from Osman as he brushed it off and shook his head.
When they got back to the office, they found Yusuf to be in the middle of the room with a knife taped around his hand. The three of them stood in line in front of Yusuf as Osman began to explain to Yusuf what was happening. As Yusuf’s face began to grow angry, he shook his wheelchair, and rid himself of the knife in his hand.
Anson stood there trying to think of a way out of this, but he knew there was nothing. There were only four in the room, but the pressure of a thousand eyes fell upon him as they waited to commit murder. First a griffin and now a triad leader. After Osman finished explaining he turned to Anson and handed him another knife. “You can kill him any way you want. Just make sure it isn’t a clean kill. Don’t what people to think you had the upper hand.”
Anson remained silent as he held the knife in his hand. After a silent moment, Cyril spoke up. “Why wouldn’t we want it to seem like a clean kill? He’s in a wheelchair.”
“People don’t know that dumbass.” Osman replied.
Another moment of silence came as Cyril stepped aside looking at Anson as he looked down at the knife at up at the Yusuf. A minute passed as the men in the room waited for Anson to do the deed, but eventually Cyril began to squirm to himself, and Osman became annoyed. “You know… I can—” Cyril tried to offer, but Anson shut him down as fast as he offered.
“It will be me,” Anson said. “A man killing two people is better than two people killing one.”
Approaching the man, Anson tried to think about what parts of the body to hit. The wrists? The neck? Chest? What would he do? Moving the knife up and down, he continued to contemplate the options, but whatever he chose, it seemed as if there was pressure forcing him to choose another body part only for that cycle to repeat. Everything was wrong. This was wrong, he thought to himself. Even some of the less obvious things about murder began to consume his brain.
What would the blood spatter look like? Would it be believable? Who is going to discover the body? What if Osman betrayed us at the last second? I can’t be thinking about this stuff. Just do it. You already killed a griffin, so what is a man? Especially an old one. He’s already on his way out? But I shouldn’t be the one deciding that. Do it. Do it! Come one! Do it! Anson then pulled the knife back. He had no idea where he was going to hit, but that was probably for the best. He wouldn’t know either if it was an actual struggle.
But right before he swung the knife, Osman spoke up. “Hold on, this probably isn’t the best spot to kill him.” By now, Anson was fully committed and swung anyway, but made sure to miss. Afterward, he paced around the room. Who the fuck is this guy?! “What is wrong with you!” Tossing the knife across the room, Anson approached Osman. “Tell me that earlier! “What murder do you think you are—” But before he could get any closer, Osman reached forward and shoved Anson to the ground.
“Calm down, man!” Osman yelled back. “You want to complete the operation or not?”
Anson lay on the ground breathing heavily. His skin itched and wished to crawl off of his body because it was also too ashamed to be part of the same body as Anson’s brain. I’m right. I’m right. I’m right. But it doesn’t matter. I’m acting like a child. You are a mercenary, do the fucking deed!”
Standing up, Anson walked over to the knife as Osman prepared to move Yusuf, but as Anson reached the knife and picked it up and realized something. You can’t un-kill someone. So, turning back to face Yusuf he looked over to Cyril who stared back, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. He tried to shake his head to discourage the man, but Anson remained firm and marched over to Yusuf and Osman.
Too busy mocking Yusuf, Osman didn’t take much not of Anson marching over, and so didn’t do anything when Anson stood in front of Yusuf towering over the man. Staring down at the soon to be dead man, Yusuf’s eyes caught onto the message as well as he stared back with all the five stages of grief rolled into one. The handicapped man was now shaking in his chair, and by now, Osman figured out what was happening and tried to stop it before Anson acted too soon, but it was too late. By the time he reached out to grab the knife, Anson had already done the deed.
A knife was now lodged in Yusuf’s throat. Anson stood there with the knife stuck in his hand with only one thought in his head. The neck was softer than he thought. With Yusuf now choking on blood, he went limp after a couple of seconds.
Everyone became silent as they stared at the body. Anson stepped away and went over to the table without saying anything. Pulling out a chair, he sat down and planted his face in his hands. Osman, for his part, rolled Yusuf over to the spot that he wanted him, and dumped him on the floor. “What did you do that for?” Osman asked. “I said to do it dirty.”
Anson didn’t answer as he grinded his teeth and somehow tried to rationalize what he just did. Though, Cyril did answer. “Maybe people would be suspicious if a fully abled man couldn’t cleanly kill a guy in a wheelchair.”
Osman opened his mouth to answer but seemed to agree with the rationale so closed it again before pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the blood spots on his clothing. The room remained still as everyone did what was most natural to them. Anson though, Cyril waited, and Osman questioned Anson and Cyril about their escape plan, though, there was no response.
After a moment, Osman stopped the conversation and walked over to the dead Yusuf. He put on some gloves and began to unwrap his uncle. Anson tried to figure out what to do to not think about the murder he just committed, while Cyril remained silent watching Osman. How in the world do I frame an escape? It was something Anson never considered before. Breaking in was always the main concern and when he got out, when would he ever not want to make the escape as quiet as possible?
Anson went through the list of the worst things that could happen during an escape. People surrounding the area? That couldn’t work. Getting injured? Too impractical. The building on fire? That could work. Taking another moment to think about the plan the next immediate steps he stood back up and walked over to Osman. “Not going to stab me too, are you?” Osman joked while he slowly unwrapped the arm bandages.
“I am going to light the building on fire.” Anson said. Though, when he saw the instant confusion from Osman, he specified. “I am going to set your office on fire. You don’t mind, do you?”
Osman was silent for a second before answering. “I guess I could use my old office. Why and how though?”
“I am not risking my life making a daring escape through the Kadon HQ. Plus, if your uncle over here is burnt to a crisp, you won’t have to come up with an explanation about why Yusuf fell down some stairs. In all, a nice fire provides many answers to ambiguous questions.” he said as he walked over to one of the lit candles by the desk. “What’s the most flammable thing in this room?”
Looking around Anson saw a couple of prime suspects. Curtains, wooden chairs, wooden tables, a human body, or even maybe the walls or floors. Taking a quick moment to decide, Anson walked over to the curtains with the candle in his hand he lit them up without saying anything. “Hey!” Osman called out. Anson stopped awaiting a response. “Let me unwrap him first.”
“I don’t have a lot of time. Also, I had to kill him so going faster is the least you can do. Now, do you have a backdoor?” Anson asked while he lit up more curtains.
“Yeah,” Osman replied. “That wall at the back right of the desk is a false door.”
Lighting up more fixtures of the room, there was little conversation as Cyril grabbed another candle to hurry up the process and soon, nearly every curtain, table, and chair was one fire. Together, Cyril and Anson approached the body with their candles and watched Osman take the last of the bandages off and throw them to one of the small fires brewing. “So, what’s the plan?” Osman asked the two.
Lighting Yusuf on fire, Anson said “What we told you earlier. If you didn’t remember, all you need to know is to let the Knees final play out fairly tonight. Make sure it doesn’t start before four hours to midnight as well.”
Osman nodded and reached out his hand. Fire and smoke now engulfed the room, and it was beginning to be hard to see and breathe. Anson looked at the hand and for a moment it looked like Yusuf’s hands from when Anson contemplated cutting them. Now the man was the floor dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. The only control he had over him was damage control, and so, Anson shook hands with the man who nearly killed him moments earlier.
#
The two left the side through the side of the building trying to hide their faces as best as possible. Osman was not far behind as he passed by them, not even giving a glance, as he walked across the street to a nearby tea shop presumably to set an alibi in case anyone asks any questions. Anson and Cyril stood leaning against the side of the building, waiting for their driver to circle around, but as they stood, a million eyes seemed to descend upon them.
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Though most were simple glances, they felt like stares, and every time some looked Anson moved his head away from them. Luckily, it seemed like no one noticed them so when the driver finally circled around, the two entered without hesitation and made their way back to the headquarters.
Right before they left the sight of the Kadon Triad Headquarters, Anson looked back out of the stagecoach. The building was still the same as it was, with no fire, and no problems for their escape, though it wouldn’t be the same when came back to their own headquarters. There were a lot more people in the surrounding area of the headquarters, including many more mercenaries who didn’t seem to be organized in any way.
Disembarking the stagecoach, Anson once again told the driver to circle, and the two men made their way to the building. Cyril also wondered why there were a lot more people as he asked the same question. Anson responded that he didn’t know, only certain that it meant there were more unknowns than there were before. Entering the building, it was the same as it was when they left, people all over the place, and Anson began to question if any work had even been done.
However, one more, bigger, question dominated his mind. What of the Bandit? Did Deo kill him? If so, how? Clean or dirty? As despicable as it seemed to him, a part of Anson wanted Deo to follow through on his promise. The Bandit being dead would just cut out a loose end and make the main goal, overthrowing Hektor Daniels, simpler. The thought corrupted his mind like everyone else in the world. Killing was became an easier option to him. Doing the right thing now seemed impossible.
However, pushing past people to where he left the man, the feeling of dread washed over him as it always did when he saw a dead man. The Bandit, along with the city guard that came with him had all their throat sliced open. At least it was clean. A fleeting mercy in a world of cruelty. Cyril soon found the bodies as well and watched Anson as he walked up and down the small line of dead men lined up against the wall. Looking at each one, Anson closed their eyes as if there were open and placed their hands on their lap. At least now, they look at peace.
Some of the other mercenaries also noticed and commented on it. Some positive and some negative, but Anson didn’t remember it for long as he made his way to Mercenary Commander Eros’ old office—or Anson’s new office—to see if any new information had been discovered. Behind him Cyril silently followed as the two stopped in front of the office where the blinds had been drawn. Before entering, Anson tried to listen to see if there was any unfiltered conversation happening without him, but all he heard was Baldwyn sighing.
Taking this as a good moment to enter, Anson knocked and announced his presence before opening the door. The first thing he saw was Baldwyn with his hands on his head behind the desk followed by Deo’s feet resting on the front of the desk. The rest of Deo’s body was sitting in chair while his arms sharpened a stick. “How’d it go?” Deo asked, looking up for a moment.
“He’s on our side.” Anson responded.
Baldwyn looked over. “What do you mean he?” Baldwyn asked in a concerned voice.
“Osman is in charge of the Kadon Triad. Yusuf is dead.” Anson put his head down as Cyril entered the room and closed the door. “It happened an hour ago.” He looked over to Cyril for some support.
“If anyone asks,” Cyril said. “Anson didn’t start the fire on purpose.”
Baldwyn and Deo looked at each other before the latter took his feet off the desk and looked Anson straight in the eyes. “What the hell did you do? What fire?”
“Osman, in exchange for his cooperation, wanted me help him create a nice excuse for him to take over the triad.” He then went onto explain Osman’s previous plan with the stairs. “An opportunity seemed to crop up that was cleaner and killed two birds with one stone. I stabbed the Yusuf in the throat.” Everyone fell silent as Anson nodded as he didn’t know what else to do.
“I assume you saw the dead men back,” Deo responded. “It had to be done.”
“Yeah,” Anson sighed before speaking back up. “However! Let’s try not to kill any more people. This operation is far gone from clean and quiet, so let’s at least try to remain further in the morally right than the guy we are trying to overthrow, okay?”
Everyone nodded along, but everyone, including Anson, had shaky faith in the statement. Anson then asked for updates and what was happening outside. “Mercenaries are talking to other mercenaries who weren’t in the building when he took control,” explained Baldwyn. “So, there might be a risk of mercenaries, wanting to keep the status quo, who might try to rebel against us, but we can’t really do anything about that right now. What we do know is the location of the rest of the shares. Some of the mercenaries were able to send them in on pigeons.”
Anson looked at Baldwyn with a pleasant surprise in eyes, to which Baldwyn saw and quickly clarified. “However, the location of the shares we need from Hektor is not confirmed as the pigeon that delivered it was not signed by a mercenary, it was blank, and it’s not in a good location.”
“Where is it?” Anson asked.
“Kato Arena.” Baldwyn answered. “And that building is going to be very busy tonight.”
“Where in the building did it say it was?” Cyril asked.
“In the Chairman’s suite. Under the floorboards.”
Anson immediately groaned at it. There wasn’t exactly a perfect location inside the arena during the Knees final that would be easy to steal the shares from, but the Chairman’s suite? The amount of city guard would be impossible to sneak through without the entire match being disrupted.
“We can cause a distraction?” Deo suggested.
“No,” Anson replied. “Zeki needs to win his game. If we have a distraction it needs to be after the final finishes.”
“Why? That will take ages and at that point it will be midnight. Word will get out to Libo and Teoland about a ‘current coup attempt’ instead of ‘a successful coup attempt.’ Wasn’t the whole point of doing the whole thing today to control the narrative?” Deo asked.
“That’s not the point,” said Anson. “I made a promise to Zeki. If I don’t keep that promise, what am I? I would ruin that man’s life. I don’t know what he could try to do to me.”
“Well then kill him.” Deo said. “Killing seems to be solving everything. It’s for the greater good. Better than letting the Chairman shut down our coup over a Knees game. Besides, what is this business about ‘keeping a promise?’ You just killed a man after making it very clear you wouldn’t kill anyone.”
Anson sighed. “If we interrupt a Knees game, how is that going to look to the public? Bad!”
“Bad?!” Deo joked. “It’s a coup attempt! It’s going to look bad no matter what! Do you think me beating up all those men in front of Vasos would look any differently if I killed them instead? Of course not!”
“Why didn’t you kill them, then?” Cyril asked.
“I knew I didn’t have to kill them. However, if they got up again, I would have beaten them. Beaten them into the ground!” Standing up, he faced off against Anson, nearly going nose to nose. Cyril and Baldwyn looked to separate the two, but Anson waved them off. “I get results!” Deo announced. “While you were raising up an army you can’t control, I was doing the thing we set out to do in the first place! Stealing Shares!”
“The point was to take over the country!” Anson countered.
“The point was to make money for god’s sake!” Deo exclaimed. “What do you want? Money? Power? For the Chairman to suffer for eternity? What’s the point of keeping the Chairman alive? We already lost the moral high ground! Even then, we weren’t going to keep that promise in a million years. Did you think we could actually do this without killing people? Tell me. What the fuck did this Chairman do to you that the way we overthrow the country has become more important than actually doing it at all?”
Anson paused for a moment as he prepared to answer the question and tell the truth. Who is he to question me? He should know what Hektor took from me. But before he could, Baldwyn interjected. “We’ve all been through a lot, so—”
“Oh, sure,” Deo mocked. “We’re mercenaries! That’s a given. We kill and we make money doing it. We were never more. The only thing that made me more was that dumb piece of shit!” Deo was now pointing past the door toward the Bandit, screaming at the top of his lungs. “That piece of shit who ruined my life! Now look! I killed him.” Looking around the room, Deo was now the only man smiling. “I have no more earthly attachments. I want to live and the only way for me to do that is to make some fucking money.” Deo then took a couple of breaths before walking to the door. “If you need me, I’ll be burying that Bandit, so he doesn’t stink the building up.”
The three other men stood in silence as Deo slammed the door. They didn’t speak for a moment until Anson remembered why Baldwyn didn’t come with them to the Kadon Triad Headquarters. “Where’s Hera?” he asked.
“In the next room over,” responded Baldwyn. “She is close to fully up and running now. She’s got some toys that I found in this office, I guess Eros had a kid we didn’t know about, and she is having a grand old time.” Nodding his head, Baldwyn stared at nothing in particular, as if he was imagining what would happen to his daughter things didn’t go badly and couldn’t think of the present.
“At least she’s safe now,” Cyril added half-heartly. “Away from my dad.” Taking another moment to think, Cyril turned to Anson. “He’s probably contacted the Chairman by now. Next time we enter a stagecoach, we could be ambushed without knowing it.”
“You’re right,” Anson said. “But we don’t have enough time to fire him and somehow control all the drivers at the same time. The moment they hear their boss is fired, there is no guarantee many of them won’t just go home.”
“How hard can controlling some drivers be when we have an entire army?” Baldwyn asked.
“Maybe not too difficult, but we don’t have enough time. Even another hour or two we could do it, but now we can’t control them without sacrificing too much time for the operation. We need to move. Now.” Anson faced the door before turning back. “Maybe Deo was onto something. Not the killing part, but rather, the public perception part. We’re overthrowing the Chairman and there is no way around it. The public is going to have reservations no matter what.”
“Okay?” Baldwyn asked. “So, are you going to do something different?”
“I don’t know,” Anson responded. “I’m trying to think. I need to ramp up the operation, but if that was an option, I would have already done it.”
“I don’t get it,” interjected Cyril. “What is the Chairman doing?” Baldwyn and Anson looked at Cyril realizing that he was asking a valid question. “A fire at the Kadon Headquarters, multiple Sovan Local Chapters robbed, the stagecoaches acting strangely, the Kadons chasing you through the streets, mercenaries hanging around the headquarters, and he is just waiting. The Chairman can’t be just hanging around, right?”
Nodding, Anson knew Cyril was right, but what was he supposed to do about it? It wasn’t like he could go looking for the man. The only guaranteed way to get the Chairman to show up or at the very least make a statement was at the very end when they accumulated all the shares and neared buying the country.
“You don’t think he’ll be at the game?” Baldwyn asked.
“No.” Cyril responded. “I don’t think he would want to risk being in the open like that.”
However, Anson shook his head at Cyril’s reasoning. “The man’s ego is too big not to be there, besides, he’ll probably want to be near his shares if he feels threatened about how many shares we have. If he knows that, I don’t know, but we have to assume he does. This man declared war for the sole sake of winning it to increase the share prices! He’ll want everyone to think everything is under control.”
Though Anson said this as if he was sure of it, he truly had no idea, and by the faces of his comrades, they were even more unsure of it. “I don’t like it, but anyone else got other options?” Baldwyn asked. The other two remained silent. “Okay, we’ll assume he is there.”
“In that case,” Anson said. “We won’t have time to return the shares, and I don’t trust anyone else to do it, so the ones Deo stole shall stay here until the operation is done, alright? Now then, I suppose we should begin to plan how to rob the rest of the locations before the game tonight.” With everyone nodding, Anson said one more thing before getting to it. “I would just love that bastard to look at me as I rip the last majority shares out of his hands.”