The Planks of wood and rocks that fell into the sea only made enough room for one person to fit through. A dim candlelight in the bathroom shined through the opening in the floor. However, all was not well when a voice emerged as Baldwyn readied himself to head up. “What the fuck is going down there? Can you guys not do a simple job quietly?!”
Baldwyn looked back for a moment before squeezing himself into the opening. His face squeezed and considered going back, but he decided to still go up. Putting his weapons up first, Baldwyn crawled through as the other three shimmied up the beam as fast as they could. Cyril went up without much issue, which then left Anson. Taking one last look at the underside and the rustling waves under him, Anson was relieved that he was now leaving the aching sounds of the sea. Getting pulled up into the bathroom, he could hear the man who yelled walking down the stairs. He was almost there, and after they pulled up Deo through the opening, they hastily put on their masks, equipped their crossbows, and pulled out their knives.
The man who yelled was now downstairs, talking to another Sovan Triad member. They listened in the dimly lit bathroom as what seemed to be an older and higher-ranking Triad member scolded a young man in doing his job. “What was that noise?” the older man demanded.
“It’s probably just some repairs on the bridge,” nervously replied the other man.
Tapping Anson on the shoulder, Deo asked what they were waiting for. Anson didn’t actually know what they were waiting for, but something felt wrong rushing out of the bathroom at the moment. As if everything wasn’t in place yet. However, the situation had no patience for Anson’s hesitation. The older Sovan Triad member told the other one to start looking around, so without any more waiting, Anson stepped away and nodded to the group for them to smash the door open.
It turned out the two were having their conversation right outside the bathroom, as the two flew back in surprise as the bathroom door hit the older one as it opened. Anson immediately stabbed the younger one in the shoulder to immobilize him. The younger man fell backward unto the floor. He tried to yelp in pain, but Anson put his hand over his mouth as he softly placed him on the floor. The older man didn’t say a word, only quietly grimacing to himself while leaned up against a wall. He then moved to the front of the building, and after a short walk through a hallway, Anson entered the front of the building which was a nice open space with a giant semi-circular window in the front to let a lot of natural light in. There were about eight people inside, playing card games, chatting, or other activities, but as soon as they saw Anson, they scurried for their weapons. Some reached for bows, others for swords, and some even had a spear lying around.
Pointing his crossbow, Anson shot the ones with bows first, with the rest of the group right behind Anson to help shoot the others. Arrows flew passed Anson as he took cover behind a table. Two Sovan Triad members tried charging them, but Deo and Baldwyn were able to swipe at them with their knives before any damage could be done. Soon, in the blink of an eye, the fight was over with every Sovan Triad member on the ground. “Tie ‘em up!” Anson announced. Pointing at Cyril, but without saying his name, he instructed the young man to go to the third floor as that was where the 30,000 shares were supposed to be.
Looking outside, Anson saw two other men see the engagement from outside, but before Anson could engage, they got onto two horses and rode away in the direction of the Sovan Triad headquarters. “Alright, let’s get out of here as fast as we can.” Anson encourage as he checked his watch.
“Where are the other guards you saw inside?” Baldwyn asked, worried.
“Well, I don’t see them, so they must be in here.” He looked down at a Sovan triad member grabbing his shoulder in pain. “And no longer a threat.”
Though everything seemed to be accounted for at least known, something Anson had not seen was a man sitting in the corner, having a drink. “Yeah, I would try to leave as soon as possible too if I was you,” the young man said. Anson turned to face this mysterious person and saw a Kadon man around the same age as him.
“Who are you? Get on the ground!” Anson exclaimed as he pointed his crossbow at him.
“Alright, alright,” the man said as he placed down his drink and got on his knees. “Please, don’t shoot. I am not resisting.”
Anson continued pointing the crossbow at the man as Anson asked something that perplexed him. “Why is there a Kadon in a Sovan Triad building at four o’clock?”
“Do you not know who I am?” the man responded.
“What? No, of course I don’t.” Turning to Deo and Baldwyn, Anson asked if they knew this guy. Deo shook his head, but Baldwyn got a look of him before answering. “Wait a minute, that’s Zeki Onur.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me.” Anson replied.
“He’s a Knees player. Isn’t the final today?” Baldwyn asked the man.
“It is,” affirmed Zeki. “It sure is.” His voice dropped with the second sentence.
Anson was silent for a moment before telling Baldwyn to get back to tying up the other Triad members. “That doesn’t answer my question,” said Anson. “Why are you, a Kadon, in a Sovan Triad Local Chapter?”
“I’ve come here to plead my case,” responded Zeki, sounding disappointed. “The Triads and the Chairman has asked me to throw the final for my opponent. I’m here to convince the Triad to change their mind.”
“And how’d that go?” interjected Baldwyn.
“They said no.”
Anson smirked to himself. This poor man was screwed by the Chairman. “You won’t have to worry about your match any longer,” assured Anson. “We’ll see to it.”
“Really?” Zeki asked, skeptical. “And who the fuck are you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Anson replied as he grabbed Zeki’s arm and brought him over to the rest of the tied-up Triad members. Zeki wasn’t as heavy as he expected an athlete to be. His body type was that closer to a thief. “Just know that if this goes well, you won’t have to worry about the Chairman anymore.”
After he tied him up, Cyril came back downstairs, and told everyone to huddle up in the bathroom. Anson presumed that they were going to talk about the route to the dead drop, and obviously you wouldn’t want the Triad members to overhear that, but when they got to the bathroom, all they saw was a horrific sight. Cyril collected all the shares from upstairs and put them into a duffel bag. There were only 15,000 shares. “You looked everywhere?” Anson asked, trying to remain calm.
“Yeah,” the third floor looks like a rat’s nest. I smashed everything looking for the shares, but there was nothing.”
“And the third floor is that small?” asked Anson again.
Cyril nodded. Wiping his face, Anson told Baldwyn to keep watch while he and Cyril went to look at the second floor. How could this happen? Anson asked himself. It should have been here. It should have been where they were told it was supposed to be. There was no reason why the scouts would be wrong, but in the end they were. Were the estimates wrong? Was there money at the other local chapters? Nothing made sense, and Anson took a seat on the toilet to collect himself while the others stood there, trying to process what had just happened as well.
The only explanation that made sense was that they moved the money. But why would they move the money now? According to Baldwyn during the preparatory stages of the operation the money wasn’t due to be moved for another month. “Baldwyn, is there any scenario where the Sovan Triad would move their money early?”
“Normally, no. Nothing moves without the boss’ approval.”
It left Anson with one conclusion. It shouldn’t have made a difference, but it was the only way. “I suppose there was an unknown variable that we didn’t account for. For them to discover what we did earlier, alert headquarters, get more guards here, and move the money, a man must have discovered what happened mere minutes after we left.”
There was a brief moment of silence as everyone put their head down in shame. It was something so predictable but not stoppable. “There wasn’t much we could do,” tried to comfort Baldwyn. “That’s why we did this thing at three o’clock. Who is walking the streets at three?”
“I don’t know,” Anson responded. “But we have to find out who has the shares.”
“Anson,” Deo said quietly. “I think you have to agree that it would now be appropriate to interrogate some of the Triad members, right?” Anson paused for a moment before hesitantly nodding.
“Hey, did anyone die?” Anson asked everyone.
“Well, we sliced two of people’s collarbones, but they’ll live.” Deo informed.
“Okay, make sure you interrogate them first and patch them up the best you can, got that?” Anson asked, with Deo nodding.
“Also,” Anson said to Baldwyn while he was leaving the bathroom. “I saw two Triad members get on horseback. They’ll probably be here with back up, so keep an eye out.”
In the meantime, Anson headed to the third floor to check for himself. The stairs in the back were creaky and not well-maintained. It wasn’t likely but the thought of the stairs caving in did pass through Anson’s mind as he stepped on them. Reaching the third floor, Anson looked around in disappointment. Cyril was right. There was nothing of value here, only torn up clothing and other materials that were of little use to them.
Cyril had even taken out a couple of floorboards, but as Anson rubbed his eyes, he didn’t see anything in them. He even bent down next to them, put his head into the hole in the floor, and looked around. There was nothing. Taking his head out of the hole, Anson headed back downstairs.
As he was heading down, Baldwyn called up to him. “About that thing you said. They’re here.” Anson paused for a moment before running back down in haste.
Anson shot back to the front and heard the ticking sound rush back into his head as he saw about two-dozen city guards and Sovan Triad members standing in front of the only entrance to the building. Cyril and Deo now joined the two in the front and stared as the groups inside and outside the building waited for the other to act first.
Tapping Deo on the shoulder, Anson decided to move first. “Keep doing what I told you but remember to blind and cover the Triad peoples’ mouths before you interrogate, I don’t want them talking to each other.”
Deo excitedly went back to his job, while Anson turned to Cyril and asked him if there were any windows on the second or third floor that faced the front. “Yeah, I think so,” Cyril said.
“Okay then,” Anson said as dozens of ideas on how to proceed next swirled his mind. “You two stay here and barricade the door, while I go up and try to stall them.”
“How?” Cyril asked.
“Through the upstairs windows.”
Without any response from Cyril, Baldwyn turned back and forth from Anson back to the front. “Sir,” Baldwyn said.
“Yeah? What is it?” But before Baldwyn could answer, Anson realized what Baldwyn was talking about. “We are going to need a second solution.” Anson realized. “How would you barricade a giant glass wall? God, I’m an idiot.” Looking around for a solution he found a potential remedy. Or rather a potential person. “How famous would you say Zeki Onur is?” Anson asked Baldwyn.
“Pretty famous, I suppose,” responded Baldwyn. “Pretty new player but people know him.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I need you to be more specific. Would the city or country care if he died?” Anson asked again. There was a moment of silence as Baldwyn shook his head in shock and disapproval.
“What exactly are you planning?” Baldwyn asked.
“We are going to open the door and stall them as long as possible while Deo figures out where the shares are.”
“And how do we stop them from barging in?”
“Hold a knife to his throat,” Anson responded while pointing at Zeki.
Separating the Knees player from the rest of the pile, Anson took off Zeki’s blindfold and stared into the man’s eyes as he grabbed his face. “Whatever you do, don’t move. You will die. Understand?”
“Wait, do I die if I move or die if I don’t, you didn’t really make that clear.” Zeki said.
Anson just gave him a blank look and brought him to the front with a knife to Zeki’s throat.
The crowd outside the door held up their spears, swords, and bows proudly in the air as they waited for Anson to step outside as if there was a timer for him to do so. Opening the door, he made sure to present how he was holding a knife to what was, according to Baldwyn, a famous up and coming Knees player. “You see?!” Anson asked the crowd of Triad members and city guards. “We leave this building without what we want, he dies. You got it?”
Watching their reaction, he saw what he presumed to be a high-ranking Sovan Tirad member in front visibly surprised that he was laying eyes on Zeki. Turning around he nodded to someone, and shortly after a man in full steel armor approach holding a sword to a girl’s throat. Anson stood there confused thinking that why the Sovan Triad would think a group of robbers would be guilt tripped into a prisoner exchange. However, he quickly found out why as when Anson turned to see Baldwyn’s reaction, he saw a horrified face, which left him with only one conclusion.
“We’ll think about your proposal!” Anson offered as he backed up into the building.
“You go do that,” the man in front responded. Anson grumbled as he didn’t like the confident attitude and look of the man. However, there was a bigger issue now as Baldwyn grabbed Anson’s shoulder and begged him to do something. Anson shut him up until they were in the bathroom, so the people outside couldn’t see their panic.
Leaving Zeki with the rest of the hostages, Anson told Baldwyn to go get Cyril from upstairs while they were about to enter the bathroom. When Anson did, he saw Deo shouting at a hostage while planting his face through the hole in the ground. “Get him out of here, we need to talk.” Anson tried calmly saying.
“But he is he about to break,” Deo rebutted.
“Now, please. I don’t want to ask again.” Anson continued, now sounding out of breath.
Deo complied and about a minute later the four of them were huddled in the bathroom. “What happened?” Cyril asked.
Looking at Baldwyn, Anson let him explain. “They have my daughter.” Baldwyn said. It seemed as if there was a lump in his throat that prevented him from talking any further.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” Anson added on. “They probably want a prisoner exchange, but we can’t do that.”
Baldwyn stared at Anson as he said this. “Why not?! That’s my daughter!”
“How did they find your daughter?” Deo demanded.
“You know,” Cyril tried to explain. “It could be because one of those guys heard Baldwyn talk, recognize the voice, and then also knew where Baldwyn lived.”
“That’s exactly it,” Anson agreed. “But if we do the prisoner exchange without an escape plan or knowing where the other shares are—”
“Why do we even need to know where the other shares are? We can just get more when we stick up the Chairman.” Deo suggested. “At this point we should just kill him.”
Anson snapped his head at Deo. “Absolutely not. Even if you could kill the man, getting to the rest of his shares is impossible. It was hard enough to be able to find a moment when six percent of his shares were out in the open. If they sniff anything, that thing is locked up, and we die.”
“Please tell me again, why we need his shares if he is dead?” Deo asked. “If he is dead, we can just take over the country.”
“You’re not listening, Deo. The reason why we are doing this and not killing him is the same reason why you don’t kill a king and place a non-royal on the throne afterward. It’s because it doesn’t make sense! We kill the Chairman and don’t buy it, everyone then knows about the coup, which means the Mercenary Triad is not recognized as legitimate and then Teoland and Libo rush into the country invoking their ‘right to intervene,’ and then we got a continental war on our hands.” He was out of breath by the end of that explanation.
Everyone paused as Anson tried to calm down. “We need a plan. Once we find out where the money is, we escape…somehow.”
“What do you mean somehow?” Deo asked. “There’s an escape route right under us.”
“I’m not going back down there,” responded Anson as he rubbed his neck. “Too dangerous.”
“Bullshit!”
“Hey, you can go down there, but I am not. I am going somewhere else.”
“And I’m not leaving without knowing my daughter is safe,” added on Baldwyn.
“Well, we can’t all go different directions,” reasoned Deo.
“Not exactly,” interjected Cyril. Everyone looked at the skinny man as he continued. “Deo and I will go under, Baldwyn can get arrested in exchange for his daughter’s safety, and—”
“No,” Anson rejected. “We are not getting arrested. We are going to have to stall while we think of other solutions.”
“Anson,” Baldwyn pleaded. “I don’t want to escape without my daughter. They’ll kill her. You have to understand how hard—”
“I know exactly how hard it is!” Anson rejected. Everyone fell silent again before Anson continued. “No one is dying or getting captured. Including Baldwyn’s daughter. We just have to think of a plan, but for now we’ve spent too much time in the bathroom, and we have to go back out to stall again, understand?” Everyone reluctantly agreed. “Everyone keep doing what you were doing except Cyril. You try to find an escape method without having to go underground.”
They stepped out of the bathroom once more, and Anson grabbed Zeki by the arm and he and Baldwyn made sure the hostages were blindfolded with their ears plugged as they looked at the front of the building. It was now five o’clock, which was not quite sunrise, but it was definitely lighter than before as sunrise was only about an hour from now. Dragging Zeki to the brightest part of the room, he made sure that the people outside saw this, and began to yell at Zeki. In reality he wasn’t threating Zeki, but the plan was that the people outside didn’t know this. “I said that you won’t have to worry about the Chairman any longer!” Anson yelled. “But that might not be exactly true!”
“Why are you yelling?” Zeki asked, squirming his face.
“Just go with it and pretend you’re scared!” Anson said before continuing. “How badly do you want the Chairman problem to go away?!”
Zeki paused for a moment before answering. “I was meeting up with the Sovan Triad knowing the risk of getting killed the moment I stepped into this building. What do you think?”
“Good, so what I need you to do is tell me if you saw people move a large number of shares out of the building!”
“Yes—aren’t you worried about them hearing?” Zeki asked, looking at the tied up Sovan Triad members.
“They earplugged and even then, they’ll probably figure it out anyway.” He reasoned. “Baldwyn, get a pen and paper!” Anson said as he turned. Bringing his attention back to Zeki, he told the Knees player to write down if he overheard where they were bringing it. “We are going to cross check it with someone else to make sure you are telling the truth.” Anson was done yelling at this point as Baldwyn brought the supplies, and Zeki began writing. When he finished, Anson told him to flip the paper over and write: “Don’t come in, I will take care of them.”
Zeki was in the middle of flipping the paper when Anson shot his hand down. “Not yet, it’s got to look you did it behind our back. Make sure the people outside see. It’ll buy us some time.”
Zeki paused for a moment before speaking again. “Suppose everything goes right, then what happens?”
“We get out of here, continue on our way, and then if everything goes to plan afterward, we pay you off, and you get a private moment with the Chairman telling him whatever you want. After that, you can go back to playing that weird sport and touch as many knees as you want.”
Zeki nodded and Anson told him to commence with the plan. In the meantime, Anson told Baldwyn to come with him in the back. “Why?” Baldwyn asked.
“We need Zeki to do his thing, now to the second floor with me.” Anson responded, but before he went up, he told Deo the plan before going to the second floor. Going up the steps and opening a creaky door, they found themselves in a poorly lit sleeping quarter. This entire time, Anson could hear ticking from his watch, so he threw off his watch, placed it on a nearby nightstand and collapsed onto a bed.
Confused, Baldwyn asked. “What is going on?”
“Just sit for a second. We need to wait for Zeki to play his part.” Anson responded as he wiped his face. Baldwyn took a seat on the next bed over. “Does your daughter have a mom?” Anson asked.
Baldwyn shook his head. “No, she died during the Kato Kanali siege.” Taking a deep breath, he continued. “A rogue cannon ball tore through our house.”
Anson was silent for a moment before responding. “Was it quick?”
“I would like to think so. They couldn’t find her head before they buried her.” Baldwyn squeezed his hands as he talked.
“What type of burial did they give her?”
“Aquatic.”
“You know anyone else that died during the war?” Anson asked as he sat up to face Baldwyn. He shook his head, so Anson took a deep breath, and told the only man who could maybe understand and benefit from the situation a story about what happened to an old friend during the war. “I won’t pretend to know the pain of losing a person who had a child with, but I at least we shared certain experiences together.” Anson explained.
“I joined the mercenaries with a friend named Ahmet. He was Kadon, but you could have probably guessed that from the name, and we joined around the third or fourth day of the war. I don’t remember, and I don’t care to find out. When did you join?”
“I joined the first day. I was already a captain beforehand.” Baldwyn responded.
“At least you didn’t have a choice,” responded Anson, with his eyes turning from bloodshot to glassy. “We were foolish. Ahmet tried to get me into the triad business years before, but I always said no. Finding odd jobs here and there, we survived and were sometimes comfortable, but it was never the same.”
Baldwyn turned his head at that last line, but before he could say anything, Anson elaborated. “Both our parents died in the same fire. As I sat on the mud-covered curb, staring into the four-story blaze that burned my parents, there was another thirteen-year-old boy next to me, crying. It was Ahmet, and though we did not understand each other, we quickly learned each other’s language and got to talking. We talked for years. Sometimes we would be the only people we would talk to on days on end as we work 60-hour shifts in blacksmith shops, merchant assistants, or even guarding some random person’s property as they went away on a trip. Then…Then we joined the war.”
Anson felt his mouth dry up and looked around for some liquid. There was a small glass near Baldwyn and asked him to tell him what liquid was inside. “It’s juice.” Baldwyn responded.
Anson was relieved hearing this and asked if he could have a drink before continuing. As he drank, Anson pulled something from the inside of his clothing and took it out. Putting the drink away, he held the small medal that he earned from his service and showed it to Baldwyn. “Is that?” Baldwyn asked, shocked.
“Yeah,” responded Anson, before putting it back in his pocket. “Weeks on end on the sea. Touching nothing dry within that entire time, pieces of skin from my foot would peel off, but I suppose I was lucky as I didn’t lose a limb or get seriously sick. It was stupid of me to join. I knew those things would happen.”
“Why did you then?” asked Baldwyn.
“Money, but more importantly, Ahmet was going to go no matter what. I couldn’t leave him in the sea by himself so the day he made his way to the mercenary headquarters I walked with him, and at the door, where I was supposed to stop, I look inside and saw men having fun at poker tables, drinking, and overall having a good time. There was a split second where I thought ‘maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.’
“When the time came, I had never felt such emptiness within my body. When I saw that griffin, two-dozen meters long crash onto our ship, I felt as if I had already died. Shooting cannons was no use, but most of us couldn’t stand there waiting so we shot anyways as some went scrambling for the greenwood poison. There was a good five minutes where Lucius tore people limb for limb and threw them in the ocean. He would leave our ship and attack another only to come back within two minutes of each other. At one point I fell and as my comrade’s blood and flesh fell onto my face, I saw the jar of greenwood poison lodged between two planks near the edge of the ship.” Anson paused before he continued as he took the medal out again and looked at it. It depicted a man stabbing a griffin while defending his family. “If the decision was that simple, I would feel differently about what I did, but such is life.”
Anson’s eyes went from glassy to watery as he thought of could have been. “There was a moment where I considered not grabbing the jar and throwing it over to Ahmet, who was fighting for his life as Lucius bit down on his spear. No one would have seen it, and we might have all died, but seeing your friend nearly dying from a griffin kind of makes the decision for you. I did what any frightened man would do, so I threw it over.” Biting his tongue, Anson shook his head. “I saw my friend open the jar, and with the help of other mercenaries, open the griffin’s mouth and help pour the poison in it. What cannons and spears couldn’t do to the griffin’s body; a simple liquid could do a hundred times over when poured in the right place.
“We knew what we had done. The entire jar went inside his mouth and Lucius flew away, screaming so loud that my ears rang a moment afterward.” Giving out a pitiful laugh, Anson said: “We won the war in that moment, but as everyone celebrated the hefty bonus and honors they would be receiving, I saw Ahmet on the floor with no right arm. Running over to him I tried to find a bandage to stop the bleeding, but he stopped me.” Anson forced the water in eyes back in as he continued talking. “You know what he said to me? He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He’s sorry?! He did nothing wrong. All I could was hold my friend as he died.
“The entire voyage back home, I had one question swirl in my head. What right did I have to kill a griffin? I seriously doubt that Lucius would have died if it was not for me. I don’t know why Mydrazan sent down nine prophets when he made this planet, but I do know they were supposed to be a league above us, so who was I to kill the last griffin? Do you think Mydrazan will forgive me for killing one of his prophets?”
Baldwyn sat there silently, shaking his head. Anson shook back. “I am a damned man. I’ve committed murder on behalf of a Chairman who declared a war for the sole sake of money. To boost the share price when we won the war, because he was too finically irresponsible to pay back debts, and too greedy to sell his majority share in the country.” Baldwyn watched as Anson clenched his hand into a fist and squeezed down, almost squashing his thumb. “I didn’t agree to this operation because I wanted the money, I wanted to look the Chairman in the eyes as I destroyed everything. He made the decision that led to the death of Ahmet, so when Chairman Hektor Daniels pinned this medal onto my pristine ceremonial uniform, it was not a reward. It was compensation.”
Anson stood up after that, drinking more juice, and moving over to Baldwyn’s bed. Grabbing his shoulder, he made sure Baldwyn looked at him. “No one has died so far, and no one shall on this operation. I realize what I said earlier couldn’t be true. No one captured or killed.” Anson shook his head. “We both know that can’t happen, so I have to choose one.” Anson put his hand on Baldwyn’s shoulder. “Your daughter will be safe, and even if the Mercenary Commander Eros gives us permission to kill, no one shall die. Understand?”
Baldwyn, seemingly still processing what Anson said, simply nodded. “Thank you,” he responded.