On this fateful night, Marcus trudged through the forest; every step in this dreaded swamp was a constant reminder of his decision. The trees in the gloomy forest of Nathul were so tall that their branches attempted to block the radiant light from the scarlet and azure moons; they succeeded in that endeavor as the darkness made allies and enemies indistinguishable in its domain.
He believed the information he had sold contained only names and dates, and it was nothing private that would harm the syndicate. He felt guilty for betraying the syndicate; however, the money would permanently set his beloved Charlotte and Maria up for life. Being summoned to a meeting at midnight sent a sudden and acute dread through his body.
A tree moved with a flicker, but he dismissed it, his rational mind supplanted by paranoia. With his back to the tree, he made an intercall, giving an anonymous individual a rundown of the situation as it was at the moment.
After the intercall had ended, Marcus swiped over his Chronos S watch; he noted it was 23:30 with a notification from his wife Maria asking him to be back early the next day. Upon seeing the message, he felt guilt and fear washing over him for involving his family and taking that damning offer. However, he knew he could not turn back time.
Seeing as his watch showed signs of increased heart rate and cortisol levels, he adjusted his posture and calmed himself to maintain composure.
A ninth-generation Elysium sports car was parked at the assigned spot next to a circular table with two perfectly arranged chairs. With enough clicking fireflies to light the entire area, the grass field surrounding the chair and sports car was expertly leveled, creating a striking contrast with the rest of the forest.
A man with a well-defined physique and an athletic suit with black pinstripes sat in deep thought in one of the seats. His hair was so long it had to be tied in a bun to keep it off his back, and his serene smile never wavered. Marcus was shivering because of this, but he pulled himself together and greeted this strange man he had called the boss.
"Marcus," Leon said, his tone belying its calmness. With a wave of his hands, the well-dressed man motioned for the middle-aged man to sit across from him. Marcus opened his mouth to say something, but the glare of the man in the pinstriped suit made him finally sit down.
"Good evening, Boss Leon," Marcus said, composed and obediently. Leon was quite dissatisfied by this since he had already rendered his decision.
"You already know the rules. Beyond death, betrayal has a penalty: erasure. Your friends and family will be no more; there will be no remnants of you." He leaned forward and grinned like a shark under the moon. "That does not have to be the case, though. Tell me who you're working for, and maybe—just maybe—we can come to an arrangement."
"Boss, I have done no such thing," Marcus vehemently denied.
Leon proceeded to take the gun from the table, used his finger to pop the barrel, inserted the bullet, and began to roll the barrel of the gun, cocking it back into position. "I extended mercy to you, Marcus, and you rejected it." With a sigh, he let out an expression of regret.
With a hint of murderous intent, Leon remarked, "I will have to pay your dear Charlotte and Maria a visit since they will be expecting you tomorrow, which would not be possible, or what do you think?"
A cold sweat ran across his back as Marcus mustered every bit of courage to speak. "I beg of you, I didn't mean to betray you; this matter is between us; please don't involve them; they are not a part of this," said Marcus in a frightened tone.
"Innocent? When you pledged to uphold the syndicate's interests above all else, why would you think for a second that I would let them go when you failed to uphold your promise? Good riddance," Leon angrily roared these words before pointing the gun at Marcus. In a fit of rage and nervousness, Marcus took the gun and shot at Leon.
Instantly, a strange force twisted Marcus's arms in an anticlockwise direction, causing the bullet to deviate from its original course. A sigh came from Leon's mouth before murmuring, "Dogs that bite their master's hand should be put down."
At the same time, Marcus silently screamed due to his broken bone poking out of his flesh; Leon turned around, looking towards his shadow before uttering, "Article 5, Page 20 rule has been breached; carry out the necessary punishment."
A dark silhouette covered from head to toe in a dark cloak instantly emerged from Leon's shadow, approaching Marcus like a reaper guiding a lost soul to the underworld. With every step, the surrounding grass withered.
However, Marcus overcame the pain and decided to run for it, understanding that the boss was not supposed to have abilities as he was a negator. This meant that he had specially trained agents at his side at all times, which induced panic as his ability to detect anything present in the 20-meter radius did not alert him.
As witnessed from the withering grass, there might be more than two agents, one erasing presence and the other with decaying properties. Suddenly, he stopped, observing his surroundings. Yet he did not move forward, fearing an ambush.
"Shadow, prepare the base for the attack on Hound Warehouse after the initiation and tell Dean to prepare a detailed account of this month's expenses. And I need the information on the veiled individual soon," Leon said calmly as he wiped the blood off his gun before handing it to another agent and walking to his car, finally driving off to his favorite bar.
"Alice, safeguard the briefcase and also give this note to Lady Anastasia; also, relay the information that Marcus has gone rogue to Charlie, and he will know what to do from there," said Shadow before preemptively disappearing.
While Marcus continued navigating out of the forest, the azure and crimson moons in the sky no longer emitted their radiant light at that section of the forest. Without a moment to think, his wrists and feet were disconnected from the rest of his body without bleeding due to the cauterizing effect of the slice.
Marcus despaired, yet he kept crawling and struggling to escape this god-forsaken forest, screaming, "Maria... Charlotte..." he chanted this mantra, "I am coming home," hypnotizing himself to push forward. Eventually, he felt the damp soil, and his will reignited as a river surrounded the forest entrance.
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Marcus kept crawling; then, a cackle resounded in the zone of darkness. A foot swiftly landed on his back. In an act of desperation, Marcus twisted his body at an awkward angle to bite the ankle of the cloaked individual. Unfortunately, he missed as the man rapidly kicked him, and before he could utter a word, he was knocked out; his body was placed in a perforated body bag before both disappeared into the night.
At Marcus's Residence
An Echo Pulse edition sports car drove slowly, parking on the house's porch. A man in a white suit, black tie, and a diamond-crusted watch exited the vehicle. He had an iconic smile and a neatly done fade that screamed mega-rich, but his smile carried a humble persona contrary to his outfit.
After arriving, he gently walked towards the door and knocked.
Thud, Thud, Thud.
"Charlotte, go open the door," Maria gently asked. Charlotte quickly went and opened the door, and after opening the door, she suddenly looked up to see the man, who was a solid 6'2". However, instead of a scared expression, Charlotte was overjoyed as the man carefully looked her up.
"Mama, it's Uncle Charlie." A woman in her late 40s briskly walked towards the door to welcome the guest, but Charlie stopped her midway before hanging his suit off the coat hanger and going to the sitting room. While sitting opposite her, he looked sad before saying, "Sorry Maria, boss's orders," as they collapsed.
While driving on the highway in the Elysium 9th-generation sports car, the road was dimly illuminated by suspended lamps that decorated the sidesteps; the environment gave the street a brim feeling of elegance and history, and seeing how much this slum had evolved to such an ordered pathway brought an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.
Leon thought of going to his favorite bar to get his mind relaxed and plan his next course of action. "It is shocking how much one can accomplish in three years, and even with all this, I'm still far away from overwriting the affairs of this state," said Leon as his face expressed both bitterness and sorrow as he reminisced about himself and a silhouette of the past he called family.
Clearing his mind, he focused on who could have coerced Marcus into betraying the syndicate; all evidence pointed directly to the Bloodhound's gang. However, he learned over the years that nothing was as it seemed.
The more he drove down the highway, the more intense the crime became. The strangeness of this event was that, to the outside world, it was an ordinary trading street, but to those well attuned to the life of crime, it was a public black market. At every inch of this merchandise trading block, each criminal's eyes reflected envy, greed, fear, respect, and reverence.
This was where he first met a partner he could call brother; Leon could not hold in his laughter whenever he remembered how Charlie tried scamming him through sending bait to steal from him and acted as a good Samaritan who would help one find the thief while asking for a sum of money in return for finding the thief since he knew the slum the best and would run away with the money.
"I think it was that moment I saw his potential in human relations and persuaded him into becoming my first comrade, and he is the closest thing I would call a brother," reminisced Leon as a gentle smirk crept upon his previous bittersweet expression.
Across the highway, a plump man with a trimmed mustache in a white shirt lifted his hands to alert the car to slow down. Leon immediately stepped on the brakes slightly, bringing the vehicle to a halt. The car window surface switched from tinted to transparent, allowing for easy see-through.
"Buzzkill, how are you doing? I just saw you heading downtown and wanted to check up on you," the plump man remarked. He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "Lately, there have been some more than usual suspicious activities in the neighborhood. I did some digging and found out that the advert crudis are doing some labor hiring," whispered the plump man to Leon.
Leon's forehead slightly creased as he processed this information, and gradually, he came to a realization. "Thanks, Ricardo, for the information. When will you ever do away with that nickname? It's been two years, and you still haven't dropped it. About the advert crudis, we lately had a peace treaty between each other to trade and move within turfs, but hiring laborers in this district is indeed quite suspicious."
Smoothly changing the topic, Leon questions, "How's both the day and night business performing these days?" Upon hearing Leon's question, Ricardo's mouth tilted slightly upwards, giving him a mischievous look.
"I see everything is going well. Send the report to syndicate for review, and it was nice seeing you, Ricardo," said Leon before storming off to the distance to continue his journey...
Meanwhile, in the Syndicate Base Accounting Department
"Really, like, come on, this workload isn't getting smaller," mumbled a young man looking no older than twenty. His complaint was quickly met with a newspaper to the head by a cigar-wielding middle-aged lady with a black ponytail with streaks of grey hair found at the sides.
"Damn, old lady, always scolding me for the slightest mistake; why did I even get myself into this job?" said the skinny young man.
"Dean, Leon told me to mold you to be a competent accountant," was the ashy smell from her mouth.
"Boss Leon this, Boss Leon that, Lady Anastasia, you sure speak of him with so much pride. Are you sure you aren't in love with the boss?" Dean teasingly said before roaring into laughter. His glee was cut short with a smack to the head with a bunch of files.
Just then, a young lady entered the accounting department, holding a briefcase; she carried no scent as she briskly walked into the room without as much sound as her presence was void; she approached Lady Anastasia and handed her the letter before greeting her with hand signs: "My greeting, Miss Anastasia, these are our next of action." Immediately, her presence dissipated.
Anastasia grew a complicated expression after the interaction; however, she quickly moved over it and opened the letter. "Someone is out there trying to make a profit by igniting a conflict between the syndicate and the hounds!" written with a bold red marker on the parchment. She gently removed her glove, and with a slight touch, the parchment turned to ashes.
She promptly tilted her neck before waving her hand towards Dean immediately. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and he immediately went straight to work with no grumble in this distance.
In an empty room underground in the facility...
A body bag was slammed into the white room. The only sound emerging out of the interaction was that of a man coughing out blood; he squirmed out of the bag, bloodied all around and with rage-filled eyes. The shadowy figure approached him, "Don't you fucking touch them, they had nothing to do with this, please forgive me, no, no spare them. I will do whatever you want; just don't harm them!" as the middle-aged man pleaded with his mangled jaw.
Shadow kicked him to the left as he coldly spoke, "If you feared for your family's life so darn much, you wouldn't have betrayed us. Or is it because you thought we weren't as cruel as the hounds who sent you after us? So foolish; how do you think we've survived this long? Why, in your opinion, have not the Hounds themselves acted to stop us? Let me clue you in: they fear what happened to Deviants will happen to them. We treated you right out of respect for being in the family, yet you spat on our name and disgraced us. As you spat on boss Leon's respect, we shall spit on the desecrated corpse of your wife and daughter. You, the whole syndicate, and I will have a standing ovation on what it means to cross the Syndicate."
Suddenly, a ferocious yet high-pitched scream echoed as images of Marcus's wife being tortured echoed on a screen.
In the initiation conference...
Members of the syndicate sitting in an auditorium watched as Marcus was driven to insanity; he dug his fingers into his eyes to see no evil, pierced his ear to hear no evil, and ripped his fingers to do no evil. As the scene unfolded, Shadow shouted, "Chant the Anthem!"
Almost all the initiating members watched the scenery enthusiastically, and tears of reverence filled their eyes. Those who so ever did not hold reverence to such beauty were gunned down as they had no resolve to uphold the family values.
After viewing this event through a holographic lens, Leon entered the run-down bar with a contradictory expression.
NB: The city is called Xerxes, while the whole state is called Corinth.