Raywick sat back against the wall with his revolver drawn as all the sound in the world was drowned out by gunfire. The door to Freeman’s office had become a gateway to hell, haunted by the barkeep’s body. Raywick’s boot stuck to a yellow stain on the floor that smelled like urine. Not his, fortunately, or that’s what he told himself anyway. He could separate sharp cracks of expensive auto-loading rifles from the clanky blunderbuss booms of the rebels. Screams from the wounded clawed at the inside of Raywick’s ears as the hopeless men fought on. The rebels had no chance in this fight, but they also didn’t have an honest chance at life either. The angel of death has no bearing in the realm of the damned, so they say.

Something shattered the rest of the window in Freeman’s office and landed at his feet. A smooth metal sphere with a blinking red light. Something nibbled at the back of his mind, then a memory washed over him like a bucket of cold water.

They had just moved to New Dawn. His father said it would be safe here, but men in black uniforms were marching into the town busting out windows and taking people away from their families. Raywick cried and his father told him to be quiet for the tenth time.

“Don’t say another word Ray, the officers will move on if we don’t cause any trouble. They just want to intimidate us before the vote,” his father said.

A young Raywick sat against the wall hiding on the opposite side of his parent’s bedroom as his mother and father. He heard the glass break and was petrified. His father held his mother close against his chest in the dim light, but he kept his eyes on Raywick watching over him from afar. Father didn’t notice the blinking red light a few strides to his right. Raywick didn’t know what the light was, only that it must have come in from the window. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t say a word. The blinking got faster until the light went solid red. He didn’t understand until it was too late. All these years later he could never forget. Never again.

The sphere lay at his feet no longer blinking. Solid red. Raywick grabbed the explosive and desperately threw it out the broken window. He was immediately thrown back from the explosion. A wave of heat burned his face as he heard screams from outside.

Raywick got to his feet wincing at the pain in his bad knee.

You cannot let these people capture you, Ray, they are worse than you could ever imagine, the voice said.

In the middle of all this chaos, with no friends or family, the voice was all he had left. Showing him compassion while simultaneously eating away at his sanity. She had a lot in common with Tessa in that regard.

“You’re always saying my name, but you’ve never told me yours,” Raywick said.

She did not answer.

The roar of gunfire died in the bar room as the Company claimed its inevitable victory. The corpse of Jack the barkeep stared up at him from the doorway with one eye opposite the gaping bullet hole. Raywick had faced a lot of bad odds and tight situations since he had been a vagrant. There had been a lot of times he thought maybe he wouldn’t make it out. There was no maybe here. Coming to Nowhere would be his last mistake.

He heard a stern voice come from an older man in the bar.

“Search that room in the back. I will not tolerate survivors disappearing into the barrens like cockroaches. Find Freeman!”

Raywick the window! You have to escape, the voice said.

She was right. He couldn’t give up now and be captured like some rebel with nothing to live for. All the rebels ever did was fight and die, with brief periods of alcoholism in between. The math never works out in the end. With new hope, Raywick got to his feet and jumped through the broken window frame. He was immediately blinded by the unobstructed sunlight.

As his eyes adjusted, he noticed the bodies of three compliance officers around a small, blackened crater. Raywick blinked. No, there weren’t three bodies. The third was a young man still alive and holding one of the dead. The kid was tall and lean with the first stubble of black that boys are always too proud to shave off. Raywick raised his revolver as he took in the aftermath of the explosive he had tossed back. He thought back to New Dawn and how he held his mother not unlike how this young officer held his friend. One squeeze of the trigger and he could run to the Skyblade and freedom. After all, they threw the damn thing through the window in the first place.

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Raywick closed one eye and lowered the tiny bead at the end of his barrel until it lined up with the middle of the officer’s head. The kid wasn’t even looking at him, just sitting there covered in his friend’s blood mumbling as he rocked her back and forth.

“It’s my fault. I thought the compliance office would be safer for us than the mines. It’s my fault…”

Raywick wanted the voice to tell him to pull the trigger so he could blame the guilt on his sickness. She was silent. If he just ran now the kid would surely tell the other officers and they would follow. And then he realized, with how long he had been standing here, shooting would draw the officers too.

Finally, he heard a voice. Just not the one he had hoped for.

“Feeling sentimental, are we?” the voice was a self-righteous baritone.

“Toss the revolver and get on the ground where you belong.”

Raywick followed the order and was quickly surrounded by Company men who bound his hands and shoved a gag in his mouth. An older man walked over to the traumatized officer holding his dead friend. The man had black and grey hair slicked back above the clean-shaven sides of his head. He was seasoned but sturdy and had two silver bars on the shoulder of his uniform. The commander kicked the kid in his chest hard enough to crack his ribs.

“Your friend is dead. Did you think the rebels would surrender peacefully? Stop whimpering and get up before I shoot you myself. I have no use for cowards,” the commander said.

“Yes, captain Zion,” the kid coughed out.

The Company men brought Raywick around to the front of the building where they had another survivor bound and gagged. It was one of the rebels Raywick had seen playing spin the dead man. Zion pulled the cloth from his mouth.

“I’m going to give you one shot at this. Where is Freeman?” Zion asked.

“I… I don’t know,” the rebel started.

The captain drew a pearl-handled revolver putting it to the man’s head and pulling back the hammer with a faint click.

“I don’t know! He comes and goes like a ghost. Nobody knows how he does it—”

The shot from Zion’s revolver was deafening. The captain’s mouth moved but Raywick couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears. The young compliance officer from before nodded and pulled the gag from his mouth.

For some reason, all Raywick could think about was the voice. She didn’t speak to him, even now at the end. It was a strange thing to cling onto, but all he wanted was someone—or something—to say goodbye to. Maybe he was wrong, and she really was some kind of spirit sent here to guide him. Was this how people used delusions to hide from their pain? It didn’t seem to work very well.

The captain’s mouth moved again, and sound came back to him.

“In case you cannot see your immediate future in the corpse lying next to you, I’ll ask again. Where is Freeman? Where is he headed? What is his plan?” Zion asked.

Raywick thought of Jack the barkeep. A shallow man unworthy of trust or friendship maybe, but a straightforward fellow, nonetheless. He knew Jack for five minutes, and probably wouldn’t know him any better had they spent a lifetime together. Raywick had nothing he could say to the Company zealot before him. He had no information or intelligence on Freeman’s plans. Hell, Freeman probably didn’t have intelligence on Freeman’s plans. So Raywick said what Jack would say.

“We’re all free here friend.”

A wave of pure hatred washed over captain Zion’s face. He’d heard the line before apparently. He raised the pearl-handled revolver to Raywick’s head with a look of unhinged murder in his eyes. And then he turned to the side confused mumbling something to himself that sounded like “What do you mean I can’t?”

Is everyone going mad in this realms forsaken world?

Zion turned to the traumatized young compliance officer that Raywick had spared moments ago.

“Shoot him. Prove your loyalty to the Company,” Zion said.

Oh. Fate is a fickle beast indeed.

The kid raised his rifle as a tear slid down his cheek washing a straight line through dried blood.

“Look, how about you don’t shoot me, and we’ll call it even,” Raywick said.

Something kicked him in the chest, and he fell like a rock from a sandstorm. Did the kid really shoot? He didn’t hear anything. And then the echo of a long rifle rang in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to pull in the air, but his lungs were just twitching with the effort.

“That’s for Mira,” the kid said lowering his rifle.

“Well done child, we might just make a compliance officer out of you yet. Everyone load up I hear there’s a cave of vagrants hiding not far from here,” Zion said.

No shame in falling as long as you die or get back up, Raywick thought.

“I… don’t think I’ll be getting up this time father.”

His vision was fading as all the warmth left his body. Funny thing, to be cold in the middle of a desert. He looked up at the bright starless sky and tried to imagine a world where, not pain, but love was the constant driving force of humanity. He saw the girl in the darkness of his fading vision. The same woman that he had seen his last night at Heathen’s Rest. With eyes like the moon and tears falling like shooting stars, the voice spoke.

My name is Syra, she said.