The second journey into the Satine was a harried endeavour. What had stood up to its assault before had been utterly torn apart, a strange greenish fog wafting around our feets. Rife in the air was the stench of burnt corpses, the faint chorus of gunfire constantly far away from us. Javol and his team remained strong for a good long while, before the split corpse of one of Mengdi’s henchman with part of his head bitten off gruesomely forced some of them to stop and vomit.
“By Tuah. To think this could’ve happened to the hunter team down there.”
“My brother was there, thank the Gods they found him okay.”
Javol kept their chattering to a minimum, “Keep it down and control yourselves, we must keep moving. We don’t know what to expect,” then he addressed me, “unless you have anything to add, sir?”
“None that I’ve already provided. This form is unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
“Reassuring when the oldest hunter here doesn’t know shit about what we’re after.”
“Can it, Tessa. We gotta keep moving.”
Our journey continued. By the time we reached a large, thoroughly destroyed room, the wallpaper around us had been shredded by massive claw marks and bullets. Massive javelins, scorch marks and broken weapons had been scattered throughout our paths, alongside damaged bits and pieces of the Nightstalker’s armour. Mengdi’s men were truly getting desperate– enough so that they were hurting the thing.
“What in Tuah’s name was Mengdi packing? These aren’t weapons for criminals, they’re weapons for soldiers. How the hell did we not catch them with these?”
To the constable saying that, I pointed out the massive stairwell leading into the Satine’s bowels, “Is that the reason why?”
“The lady’s war room,” Javol said, “Makes sense she’d pop it open, there’s an emergency escape route outside of the city. I remembered the schematics for the place, perfectly planned as a slaughterhouse for her enemies.”
So she actually used it. TARN never calculated the possibility of her taking the easy way out. I could only imagine just how empty the war room’s chambers were of her wealth, filled with only the cruellest of traps and kill-zones for her walking nightmare. Even though most of the lights of the Satine had been extinguished and the stairwell illuminated by emergency lights, the stairwell’s atmosphere was positively foreboding. Aside from the sight of a mangled body, the fact that the entrance to her war room was right in the middle of her conference room, bearing all the hints of dereliction from scattered belongings, packed boxes and thrown-up dust felt ominously well placed even if you ignored the smells of death.
The practical side of my mind applauded Mengdi’s craftiness. The emotional side of me saw this stairwell, this entrance to her last ditch attempt to kill the damn thing, as an entrance to Hell. Fitting, I suppose.
When we went down the flight of steps, the thrumming of combat resumed, now echoing through the war room’s reinforced hallways. The sound escaped through the front entrance, where a once-mighty door stood. What remained of it was now on the floor, shrouded with mist and its pieces weakly illuminated by the flickering lights of the hallway.
“That door’s reinforced with dialite-carbide weaving from the guys at Brigid Industries. Not even a thermite bomb could crack it open,” Javol noted, “what’d you make of it, sir?”
I grimaced. “It’s getting stronger.”
“Say what now? The damn thing grew stronger?” Someone inquired nervously. They had all the rights to, “didn’t you just put the fucking thing down, mercenary?”
“I did,” I said, remembering my nightmare and the frozen green bolt, “but it’s also more vulnerable. Look ahead.”
There were broken spines and obsidian-coloured shell pieces on the floor, still glimmering with power, alongside splatters of black all over the place. It could not have belonged to anything but the target. I moved ahead wordlessly, leaving the beat cops behind as they tried to catch up with me. While my words seemed motivating, I deeply wished they’d stay back, that they never came. There was an unsettling certainty that their deaths would just be as violent as Mengdi’s henchmen. While there still was nobody undeserving of its fury in its path, its ever-growing power played right into TARN’s words; soon enough, we’d all be next.
My doubts had to be settled on the way to the end of this horrid night. Using the remains of the dead as a way to motivate myself was cruel, but effective. When my eyes finally caught a glimpse of the Nightstalker’s form– now equipped with a winding, twisted spiked cudgel for a tail– I immediately lined up a harpoon shot and unflinchingly pulled the trigger. The explosion missed it narrowly as it moved deeper into the building, a feral growl escaping its maw. Javol caught up to me as I was reloading, huffing all the way. The way he uttered his next few words in surprise at the target’s new form was all too indicative of his awe and terror.
“It’s got a tail now. The reports didn’t–”
“Any previous reports, by me or anyone else, is no longer valid, Constable,” I said, locking in the harpoon, “are there any other paths we can use to cut it off?”
“Several,” Javol said, “each chamber is redundantly linked by two or more corridors, in the case of collapse or invasion. There should be a bigger room up ahead, an emergency armoury. We can catch it there if Mengdi’s planning to kill it herself before leaving.”
“Good. Assign two for each corridor. You’re with me, Constable.”
“What? Hold on, I should be–”
I glared daggers at him. The Constable’s demeanour instantly faded into sheepish understanding. Within a span of a few seconds, both me and Javol were left alone in the room. He voiced out his concerns about my strategy very promptly as we took off ourselves.
“Splitting ourselves up is going to get us killed, sir! If what you say is true, we should stick together.”
“Spreading ourselves up will minimise collateral damage,” I said, my voice unconsciously becoming cold and unfettered, “I’d rather one bloodpile than all of us in a big one.”
“With all due respect, these are my officers, my friends. Their lives are not yours to throw away.”
“If I was throwing away their lives, I’d ask them to move ahead first and be my meatshields, you know? We’ll get there before they do, keep its attention on us while they provide supporting fire. This is my hunt, Constable, and I’m putting myself first so that your officers don’t get shredded by it.”
“What if that doesn’t work out? What if it gets us first?”
I bit into my tongue, slowing down. Javol’s concerns were well-founded. These weren’t fighters of my calibur. They weren’t war machines like TARN, or even trained professionals like my son. They were cops meant to serve justice to criminals and gangs. Yet what choice did we truly have? Here we were in a maze fit for rats, the only outcome of tonight torn between the Nightstalker’s death or ours. These ideas nearly drove me to curse him out in a fit of rage, only tempered by deep breathing and a tighter grip on my axe. After that, I released the remaining anger into a clenched fist that sat on my chest before moving ahead. Javol said nothing else all the while. The tension between us was palpable and regrettable. I wished I had some tact in my words.
We reached Mengdi’s armoury not long after our discussion. Our first impression of the war-torn room was a few stray bullets nearly gutting us, forcing us into cover behind some wrecked pillars. Mengdi’s forces had entrenched themselves deeply on the far end of the room, sandbags and all, with several mounted machine guns saturating the Nightstalker. There were men with the same javelins as earlier moving about, most likely planning to skewer the beast. Where was this resolve and firepower earlier on?
I cast some rising doubts aside quickly before they could overwhelm me, choosing to focus on analysing the target’s ‘new’ abilities. For one, there were four massive scythe-like protrusions on its back now, each one lashing out at anyone or anything that approached it. It never stayed in one place for long, yet every attempt it made to breach the wall of guns was warded off by the henchmen, always accompanied by a distorted, feral scream. Javol and his team noted this, with him approaching me personally.
“There we go, none of that meat shield business, sir,” and he had said the last word with deliberate assurance, “looks like her men are dealing with it just fine. We’ll back them up, while you go in for the kill with that axe. Keep it pinned down with our grenades, yeah?”
Before I could even retort, a loud electric clicking echoed throughout the room, nearly drowning out the heavy gunfire. None of us had time to react as a gigantic thrum blasted the entrenchments, a wave of static travelling down our spines.
“What the–” Javol certainly felt that one, holding on to his helmet as he peeked out of cover. When I saw his face again, he looked absolutely pale and spoke with a stammer, “Oh Tuah. They’re all gone.”
Taking a look myself revealed that the entrenchments, as effective as they were in seemingly weakening its new form, were now smoking pieces of rubble. The glowing claws of the Nightstalker eventually dissipated from an ominous glow into its normal, burnt look. The creature looked momentarily astounded with its own power, staring at its hand, before charging deeper into the complex. That was when Javol, suddenly filled with confidence, shouted into his radio.
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“Open fire! Don’t let it escape!”
“Wait, constable, no!”
Too late. Another round of gunfire hit the beast. However, the reaction I feared would happen… didn’t. Instead, the Nightstalker roared, clearly in pain, smashed through another set of reinforced doors and left. The fact it noticed me trying to panickedly disarm Javol seemed strangely purposeful, its murmuring portholes glowering with a brighter hue than usual. It had me dead to rights and was ready to kill me earlier on. What was with the change of heart?
I racked my brain for an explanation for a good ten seconds. The moment the answer clicked in my head through the sight of a blinking, if broken, security camera above us, my hands were already gripping Javol’s shoulders and my teeth chattering with an urgent question, “How far are we from the emergency exit?”
“Not far. Just a few storage rooms, a firing range and some living quarters, then we’ll reach the exit. You thinkin’ it left us because…?”
“We’re not worth the trouble. Its main target is too close for it to stop now.”
“Not worth the trouble,” Javol spat, “we’ll fucking show that thing trouble. Echo team, let’s move, on the double! We have to put this thing down before we lose the HVT!”
Me and the constable were in agreement. Burning plastic and steel we left behind, the odorous, vile scent of melting limbs trailing off into nothing as we dashed through the next few rooms. All the while, I held some admiration for his renewed sense of duty, perhaps emboldened by the display of eldritch power that the quarry held. Nothing motivates a man into risking death more than seeing his own kin being annihilated by monsters, even if they were on the other side of the law, it seemed. Good, I would need this motivation for the fight ahead.
Through rooms in disarray and triggered traps, we finally came upon the very last stop before the emergency exit. It was a massive and elaborate escape chamber that Mengdi seemed to have a hand in planning herself,considering its wreaths and decorations in shades of rich velvet and prosperous gold. What exorbitant displays of her own wealth, however, was secondary to the battle that was unfolding before us. With the staggering scale of the chamber and her even more thorough defences, the sight easily put me at pause.
Then I saw her. Tahsa Mengdi, in the flesh once more, underneath a suit of armour that sat above her flowing robes. In her hand was a sharpened dao, almost as long as her arm, its tip bathed in an orange shimmer. There she stood, that sharpened blade at her side staring down the Nightstalker, midway through a fierce declaration.
“All your killings, you savage, and for what? Your own view of ‘justice’? I see it in your eyes! I see it, that idea that you’re saving my workers! No, none of that! You’re only depriving them of what they truly need to survive, just because you had one bloody look too close!”
Javol wanted to open fire immediately, or at least set up a firing line quietly. While I let him do so, I made sure that we waited until Mengdi was done through her ravings. That was the best way to call her words. I could see it in her eyes, as small as they were from this distance. Two canyons filled with empty satisfaction. The hand holding her dao shook violently, with open skin mottled and veiny; clear signs of drug abuse. If the Nightstalker didn’t kill her here and now, she would be dead very soon, a fact she made clear to it.
“You see me, Nightstalker? You see- all of this? They’re all because of you. I gave that little wretch a home, a job, everything under the sun!”
Wretch? This was new.
“Yes, I know about her, I know where you started, who you are!. I see it, hate, rage, anger in your eyes, all the things that brought you on your blind fucking crusade, uncaring of consequences! You kill me, you destroy this empire for good, where will she go, huh?! Answer me!”
The Nightstalker, for the first time in its mortal existence, chuckled. The voice that answered Mengdi was the same entity I heard in the void, demonic and domineering.
“It does not matter. Only that everyone dies tonight.”
Those two sentences were the keys my conflicted mind needed. As Mengdi and Javol both shouted for their sides to fire upon the beast, I leapt over my cover and pulled the trigger on my axe. Without even looking, the beast used its tail to block the harpoon. Through smoke, I saw the trails of its eye darting about, and heard a chortle mocking me.
“Not this time.”
The next few minutes were spent wordlessly flowing and ebbing in battle, both defending and hacking away at its gradually diminishing armour. I took every opportunity to deny the one true advantage it had over us, its electric blasts, with carefully placed tackles and concussive hits. Mengdi quickly picked up on what I was trying to do, joining me wordlessly in my assaults save for one, hateful sentence.
“Yet again, you fail me.”
I ignored her words, choosing to instead give her help by slicing one of the Nightstalker’s back nails in half when they shot straight for her. They had no weight, especially in the light of her ravings, and I wanted nothing to do with her after this.
Now faced with a thoroughly coordinated assault from both police and criminal, working in tandem through loud shouting, spare magazines, and lending of heavy artillery, the monster grew more desperate in its attacks. Every hit now felt increasingly heavier and brutal, until a crucial misstep led to my badly chipped axe flying across the room. With a swift spin of its tail, my world tumbled. I laid buried under furniture dazed, and saw the blurry shadow of death charge towards me.
Just as it was about to slam down on me, a large man and one of Javol’s compatriots slammed into the thing, one with a riot shield and the other with a mighty spear. I wasn’t sure who offered their hand shortly after, only that I grabbed onto it immediately.
“Hunter! You good?”
“Fucked, but alive,” I said, “where’s my axe?”
“Over there, by the pillar. Quick, we’ll cover you!”
A frenetic dash ensued. My ears were still ringing when I reached the axe, though they could clearly make out the Nightstalker’s footfalls as it tried to get me once more. My reflexes kicked in and, with a mighty upwards swing and a half-drunk roar, I lopped its right arm off in a spray of blood and metal. Its screeching nearly did me in, but the rest of the room immediately capitalised on its loss before it could attack me.
With the loss of one limb, the next few minutes were spent dwindling down the beast’s form until, at long last, it collapsed on one knee, drooling and disoriented. We had it right where we wanted. One chop, shot, or slash from any one of us and this whole dreadful night would be over. Javol seemed to think so, having resorted to threatening it with his baton.
“Holy shit. We got it.”
“Not yet,” said Mengdi, turning towards me. Her face was void of any enjoyment over seeing her greatest enemy on its knees. Even so, I understood what she wanted me to do. With a firm grip, I prepared to deliver the final blow, watched by everyone and their weapons.
Despite being on death’s door and kneeling in a pool of its own alien blood, the Nightstalker, like a cornered predator, refused to go down quietly. The room shuddered underneath its deep thrumming. Looking up at me with an unbroken glare, the target lunged for me just like before. This time, I was prepared.
One slash answered its attack. It crashed into the walls of the room, having taken a mighty slash to its snarling headpiece. I rested my arm and put the axe behind my shoulder.
“That’s– remind me not to fuck with you, sir. At least, in combat.” Javol said, nodding in awe. With what remained of his officers and Mengdi’s men, there only being three, all of us investigated the still corpse. It was time to find out if there was any truth to my concerns, and TARN’s interrupted correlations.
“Let me go first, you all,” I said, making it clear that I should be the first one to investigate the ‘corpse’, “It’ll be safer.”
Wordlessly, they agreed. Even the vengeful Mengdi, her armour torn up and covered in wounds, let me do so with the slightest hint of disapproval. I quietly walked through the dust and came to a stop just before its body. It had crashed into the wall face-first, with its estimated weight making it almost impossible to lift the thing up myself. Then, it started moving again. I levelled the axe towards it first, watching until it finally came to rest, staring at all of us.
Through a broken helmet, where my axe had cleanly smashed off, I saw something glowing through the darkness within. It was an iris full of stars, entrenched by a formless black sea, pulsating weakly. I took a closer look at the body, only to see it blink. From its mouth came words, words that were softer, terrified. That one eye looked at me pleadingly, dimming as it spoke one word.
“Father?”
I nearly dropped my weapon, staggering away. It continued to drone on, a broken, distorted mess of a voice that kept calling out to me, repeating that one word over and over again. Javol’s team too stood in silence, their weapons lowered. Monster or not, the fact that there was a clearly scared person inside, whose voice had just called me out as its ward, rattled them. The only one who didn’t seem rattled was Mengdi’s group, as expected.
“What are you waiting for?” Mengdi herself snarled, bloodied dao in hand and my shoulder above the other, “You’re the taker. You kill it. Then you get to walk away, money in your hands… whatever is left, anyway.”
I did nothing for the next few seconds. She walked slightly forward, her footfalls heavier than before, and looked into my eyes.
“Or are you afraid because of what it said?”
Suddenly, that dao was on my neck. Had that edge been superheated, there wouldn’t be much of a neck. I held back the urge to gulp. Clients betraying mercenaries were fairly infrequent. This betrayal felt very, very personal. Her next few words, a carefully selected damnation, made that clear.
“Father. Father. If there’s one thing I know about this thing, it’s that it doesn’t have the capacity for anything other than violence. It is an animal, a weakened one, ripe for the final blow, and nothing more. That means it also knows not about lying.”
Javol raised his guns immediately, so did the rest of his team. Mengdi’s own men did the same. Calling the situation tense was an understatement.
“Ma’am, what the hell are you doing? Drop the weapon now!”
“Silent, prole!” Mengdi shouted, then returned her attention to me, “and if you wish to keep your head, then honour the contract.”
“Tahsa, you don’t even know if it's trying to trick you,” I lied to her, “and you’re going to off me because you think I have something to do with this monster?”
“Yes. No truth can escape me. How do you think I’ve lived this long, Sir Junshi? All in the eyes, you know. Your eyes. Doubt. Confusion. Fear. Recognition. I see it all. You want to prove your worth to me, legend?”
She cut herself on my axe with one finger, licking the blood. By Tuah, there was sheer madness in her eyes. Between the helpless monster on the floor that sees me as its father and her, Mengdi seemed like the one I needed to kill.
“Then that blade cuts through that thing’s neck, or I kill you all for betraying me.”
“And then what?”
She snickered, then broke out in manic giggles, “Then– then I’ll just continue right where I was.”
I looked at three things. One was the Nightstalker, its eye darting around and seemingly entering a state of convulsion, the other was my axe, and the last being Javol’s team. All of it only told me of the one way this should end. Mengdi seemed elated when I raised my weapon.
“Do it… and the money is yours. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Perhaps. My answer, as was my answer to most things in this line of work, was one mighty swing and the taste of blood. It was like iron. Disgusting, bitter iron.