Sassan smacked the barrel of his gun hard, the sound it made as whatever had jammed came free, grating at his ears. The weapon had served him well in the ten years since he’d received it. Still, he couldn’t help but acknowledge it had grown too old and too worn, and still, he kept it. It was always what ended a personal feud. And it was about to end another.
Everyone he knew well enough had told him to do away with it. To abandon it because it wasn’t good for him. They’d always demanded he find a replacement for it. Not the fighting and the killing. No. That one he was good at and liked to think was good for him. They simply didn’t like the gun. They’d thought he’d be better if he got something less old world tech. If he just learned a few spells or one of those skill upgrades everyone keeps getting. Or better yet, get a magi-tech weapon.
“One of these days you’re going to need to kill someone before they kill you,” Javad had told him once. “Then that thing’s going to jam, and it’ll be the death of you.”
“Maybe,” he’d told his brother, standing over a man who had dared to cast a spell at him after a peaceful summit had gone south. Negotiations had taken a turn for the worse and blood had been spilled. The man was still alive, gasping for air as blood flowed from a bullet wound in his side. “But that day is not today, brother.”
Sassan had pulled the trigger, and sure enough, cracked a hole in the man’s head.
Ten years, he thought as he pulled a chair, positioning it before him. Ten years he’d been living this life of fighting and killing. Twenty, if he counted his time in the Afghan Intelligence. But for ten years he’d been building an empire on blood, death and carnage. On arms deals, espionage and assassinations. And it had only taken the last two of those years to bring his operation to its knees.
He inhaled deeply and let out a cool breath. He wasn’t out yet. He’d slowed down the assault once upon a time. He could survive it now. He had to.
Growing up all he’d ever wanted was to go to college in the United States. The land of dreams, they called it. He scoffed. He’d heard of the racism that plagued the country and had prepared himself mentally for what had been to come.
He had been wrong.
It had taken him three weeks to realize the error of his ways. They say it is easier to handle new experiences if one imagines themselves in such a scenario. He had imagined more than enough, but imaginations rarely did reality justice. The Americans were capable of much more than his mind could’ve possibly fathomed, and the news channels had grossly underemphasized the brutality they were capable of. So when they had come for him in his third session, he’d jumped at the recruitment offer. It hadn’t been much, but it had been something.
In two years KhAD had forged him into the weapon they needed him to be. Graduating at the top of his class, he’d left the compound assigned to head his own team. His platoon had been legendary, holding a perfect success rate. Regardless, he’d lost men. And each time, the organization replaced them. From quelling riots to carrying out clandestine operations, he had done them all. On more than one occasion his country had disavowed him and his team. Once, in Paris, another in New Delhi when they had been trespassing in pursuit of an illegal arms deal.
It hadn’t taken him long to realize his government wasn’t much different from the American’s. corporate espionage, assassinations, fraud, setups, they engaged in them all, leaving the citizens whom they swore an oath to protect to the oppression of the wars waged within their own territory. They were as much scum as the men who attacked women in dark of night. Only they were more organized, better dressed, and worked as a team to screw everyone up.
Or maybe he was exaggerating.
So when he had been met with an opportunity ten years ago, he’d taken it with as much hesitation as his recruitment. South Africa had come at a cost. His entire platoon. But he needed it and he had killed them without batting an eyelid. He’d built an empire out of it. Starting with assassinations, and evolving to arm deals, he made a name for himself in the underworld. And in time he had a base of operation in over ten countries.
He’d spent three years watching his people oppressed in the states. It was what had made him into the man he was today. But that was a lie he’d told himself at the time. Now, he was old enough to know it had only been sufficient to stoke the flame. He had always been this man.
Everything had been going well. Until two years ago.
When his operation in shanghai had been disrupted he’d thought it a simple case of poor management. Takashi was an amazing smuggler when he’d found him but he couldn’t deny the man’s discipline was more than lacking.
When his warehouse in Cuba was raided and his operation in South Africa shut down within two weeks, he’d concluded someone was out to get him. Learning the CIA had created a taskforce for the purpose of bringing him and his operation down, he cleaned house.
Six months ago he’d finally activated his mole when, by a stroke of luck, she’d been added to the task force. Although, knowing her, the chances of luck having played a part in it were very slim. She was manipulative, vindictive, focused, and the most determined female he’d ever met. And he would know; he’d raised her.
She collected intel on the taskforce, passing it to him through means whose security he had utmost faith in. It had helped him survive for four months where his operations should have ended in the another month or two. She had been the most productive asset. Until a month ago.
Her reports had grown complex, sometimes even almost incoherent, and he suspected they were being monitored. Last week her report had come in form of one a tale from the Norse mythology. The story of Memory and Thought. Encoded in it was the information he required. He doubted she’d known it then. But he was certain to tell her now.
He sat down, effortless. The heat in the tent was heavy but he wasn’t sweating yet. It would take nothing to get a fan in here—there was enough space for one—but the temperature was part of the tent’s appeal. Still, he could not help the thought. In the green tent, wide enough to house enough men to make a tactical plan, he could put a fan just there, to the right, between the iron cabinet and the weapons cache of faded green they’d stolen from a military truck on its way to Tulsa a few months back. Or they could mount one of those rotating table top fans on the table where they made their plans.
He pulled himself from the momentary distraction and to the hot embrace of reality’s failure.
After her last report, he’d done his own investigation. He always believed humans were the consequences of their actions, that every moment was a result of every decision made. And the decision he had resolved to make a week ago led him to this point.
He shook his head knowing his brother would have mocked him had he still been alive to see this. Anousheh, you, stupid girl.
“Now,” he began, thumbing back the hammer on his Beretta m9. “Tell me, Anousheh. What have you done?”
Anousheh raised her once beautiful face from where she had been staring at the blood on her laps. Sassan had to fight a grimace at the sight of her.
When his men had brought her in, he’d stayed in his room knowing a simple interrogation wouldn’t get the information they needed from her. The grunts came barely thirty minutes in and he knew his men had understood conversations held no productivity. So here they were.
She watched him now. Busted lips, swollen eyes, and a face covered in cuts and blood looking back at him, and he made a decision to put one of his men in the ground for taking things too far before calling him out. Her lips parted and blood dripped to her thighs. Yet, she said no words.
“Speak to me, Anousheh,” he pleaded, hating the hope in his voice. A hope he’d thought he’d crushed when he’d heard the news. “Tell me what you’ve told them and I can still make all of this disappear.”
When she said nothing, he barked a short derisory laugh. It seemed the loving father act wasn’t going to work on her. No surprise there, the girl had always been able to smell falsehood from a mile away. Not that this was entirely false. There was a part of him that wished he could salvage what they had, bring her back to his side of things.
Alas, he was no fool.
“Do you know how I found out, child?” he asked. Then he tapped the side of his temple. “The chip in our pretty little head may not transmit emotions but we both know it’s not a simple messaging system. State of the art magic-engineering may not be very advanced yet, but it’s good enough to pick up mental inconsistencies. And you tend to tell stories when you lie.” Now he leaned back, effecting calm. “I’ve known you most of your life, Anousheh. I wouldn’t sit back and let this happen to you, but you have to give me something. You have to help me save you.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Her eyes wavered and he saw within them the battle she fought. Drawing his chair closer, he leaned in, hoping to motivate her, to help the part of her that wanted to speak win the battle. He didn’t wait long before she spoke.
Her voice came out husky and he knew his men had crushed her wind pipe. A knowledge that only served to increase the bodies he was going to have to drop. They’d simply been following his instructions. Still, he had certain principles that dictated they be punished.
“Take your time, my child,” he guided her. “Let the breath come to you.”
She exhaled gently but painfully and leaned in. “My name,” she drawled weakly, “is Evelyn Brown, first lady to the Berserker. And he will come for me.”
His face contorted in rage. Furious, he got up, tossing his chair aside. It smashed into the cabinet at the end of the military styled tent. All the while Anousheh mumbled the same line over again. It was a message to him and a mantra to her.
Evelyn Brown had been her name when he’d found her at the age of four in a burned down refugee camp. She had been just a small girl with innocent blue eyes, rose stained cheeks and blonde hair. She’d grown into a beautiful woman in eighteen years. But there was no trace of that woman sitting hands bound behind her on the chair before him.
He’d allowed her the alias when he’d sent her to Quantico. But he had made sure she never forgot the name he’d given her; a name that had been his mother’s. Or so he’d thought. When news reached him of one of the men she worked with calling her by the name when they were alone, he’d lost it. And now, here she was, bloodied, and refusing to answer her name. Telling him bullshit of Evelyn Brown…
…First Lady to the Berserker...
His eyes grew wide and he froze.
He pulled her hair back, forcing her to look up to him and she groaned in pain. “The Berserker is here?”
She grinned despite the pain. “My name,” she groaned, “is Evelyn Brown, first Lady to the Berserker. And he will come for me.”
Letting her go, he slapped her with the back of his hand. Ignoring her blood on his skin he ran a worried hand through his greying hair.
He knew of the Berserker. The man was an African nobody. An urban legend. A ruthless, merciless, beast of a man who had single handedly laid waste to a Taliban encampment in the east ten months ago. In Paris, Nobel, a reputable weapons specialist had brought down an entire building trying to kill him. He’d walked out of the building alive, and hunted Nobel all through France, killing every man under his employ. When the Berserker had found him, he’d beaten the man to death. Sassan had been in France at the time and had had the displeasure of seeing the man’s work. It was from that event that the berserker had garnered another title: Le Concierge de la Mort.
An explosion erupted somewhere in the compound and it shook the ground beneath him. Thirty seconds ago and he would have wondered who had dared it. Now, as the sounds of gunshots outside the tent rend the air with the screams of his men, he only wondered why it had taken so long. And he had no faith in his men to keep the enemy from him.
In his prime, he would’ve believed himself capable of taking the Berserker. However, at fifty he could only hope to survive. He turned to Anousheh, all hope and love gone from his heart. She had brought him ruin. She had brought the Berserker to his compound. His sanctuary. Whatever whisper of fatherly love he’d developed for her was gone. A daughter did not bring ruin to her father.
“Sir!” One of his men bellowed running into the tent. “We must lea—” His head whipped forward and he grew silent, falling with a thud. An axe embedded in the base of his skull.
“He’s here,” Anousheh said and he heard the grin in her voice. “My name is Evelyn Brown, first lady to the Berserker and he will come for—”
He put a bullet in her head without ceremony and she fell silent. Her head lolled to the side, a messy hole in its side from where blood now spilled.
When Sassan returned his attention to the entrance a man stood over his dead soldier. Eyes fixed on Anousheh’s corpse, he seethed with rage. Sassan placed him no more than five feet and eight inches but there was no doubt he was a man who knew war.
He stood at the entrance, a ruined Kevlar dangling from his torso. His black long-sleeved polo and black trouser torn all over and stained with blood from vivid injuries revealed a bullet wound in his left arm. Still, his body heaved with each breath, jaw tight as his eyes snapped to Sassan and he knew without doubt the berserker had come for him.
Sassan lifted his gun, firing three quick shots. The berserker dipped to the side in evasion. A grunt escaping his lips as a bullet nicked his ear, he charged forward. The second shot missed, tearing a hole in the tent and the man raised his uninjured arm against the last. Scripts of blue light lit up in a spiral, glowing through his sleeve and the last shot ricocheted off the air as if striking an invisible wall. A force shield. It could have been magi-tech or simply magic, but he didn’t care to know. The rumors already claim he had relationship with both the mages and the government magic engineers.
Sassan took aim at the man’s head as the glow in his arm died and fired another shot and braced for the recoil. Rather, he was met with a disappointing click as the barrel jammed.
“Shit!”
He abandoned the thought of another shot and hands rose and came down in a blur. His opponent weaved to the side, evading his strike, and rounded him. Then he felt arms wrap around him. The man grunted behind him lifting once without success.
Sassan smirked. His opponent could no doubt handle himself. But at six feet and three inches he was well above two hundred pounds of meat. He wouldn’t be an easy lift for just anyone.
He threw his elbow behind him and felt it connect with the man’s head and the grip around his torso loosened and he twisted in escape. If he were ten years younger, he’d have escaped long ago. Now, he had to work harder to do the simple things.
His opponent’s grip tightened a second too early, cutting of his escape, and with another grunt he picked Sassan off his feet, tossing him back and into a table. His back met its edge and he tumbled, landing on the other side. Unconsciousness hovered at the end of his vision and he shook his head, forcing himself to his feet.
He found the berserker struggling to his feet as he stepped around the table. Weapon discarded, Sassan put up his fists. If the short fuck wanted a fist fight, he’d give him one.
The berserker came at him and he threw a jab, feeling the age in the strike. His opponent weaved beneath it and came up with a strike to the chin. Sassan fought against the pain as it connected then felt his legs leave the floor a second time today. A moment later his back came down hard against the table. It buckled beneath him and shattered under their combined weight. He came down with his opponent in a loud crash and snarled in pain as something stabbed into his side.
One of the things life had taught him was never to be the one under in a fight, and right now he was. He struck the berserker in a bid to force him off but the man didn’t budge. A fist came at his face, instead, and his head slid to the side, avoiding the blow. He dodged two more blows. Seeing his chance when the third blow came, he shoved his thumb into the berserker’s bullet wound.
The man bit down on his pain, brown eyes screaming his rage, and his next blow cracked against Sassan’s face. Sassan bit back his anger at the taste of iron on his lips as it tore. Anger would serve him poorly in this fight. His opponent was obviously better at channeling it than he was. Another blow came and he moved his head to the side. He was a second too late and it came down on him like a sledge hammer. His head bounced off the ground and a headache shot through his head. But he had greater worries as he caught sight of the another blow. Unable to dodge it, he closed his eyes and braced for the impact.
The blow struck him in the neck and he coughed up blood. His consciousness waned. The realization of what was about to happen dawning on him, panic set in. No, he scolded himself, gritting his teeth, you lose control and you die.
His vision focused for a fraction of a second and he watched another blow come down on him. He willed his head to the side. He caught sight of a second bullet hole in the berserker’s shoulder and his hand came up.
The blow swerved to the side and an elbow came down on him hard, then everything went dark.
The Berserker bashed Sassan’s face in a second time. Then a third. And continued till he lost count. Now the man laid unmoving beneath him, and sparing the crushed face, now more blood than face, he got up.
He teetered on his first step but caught himself before he fell. The only sounds that filled the air now were of burning cars and the occasional explosion of ammunitions subjected to severe heat.
He willed himself forward, feeling the adrenaline wearing off as all the pain he felt intensified. Anousheh sat on the chair, bound. Her face cast downward, she was unmoving.
It had been ten hours since they took her. He had disobeyed a direct order, broken at least five Afghan laws and killed eight men before he’d found the compound. And despite it all, he had been a second too late.
He squatted before her. Her face was so battered and bruised he could barely recognize her behind all the blood and swelling. But there she was, his Anousheh. Dead.
He reached out a hand and touched her face, reverently. A sob escaped his lips, and he sat back on the floor.
“Anousheh…”
He’d been late. He’d fulfilled his duty but he’d been late. Failure was never an easy pill to swallow. And no matter how advanced magic was becoming there was neither mage nor engineer that believed it would ever be able to bring the dead back.
As he stared at her, his mind refused to focus on the pain. As if in defiance, it wandered, retreated from reality.
“May the Valkyries guide you home,” he muttered.
Her body gave him no answer. And seated at her feet, he wept.
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Quest: [Memory and Thought]
Evelyn Brown [First Lady to The Berserker] has been taken against her will. Save her.
* Bonus Objective Complete: Defeat her captor 1/1.
* [Blood Wrath] has increased.
* Primary Objective Failed: Save The First Lady 0/1
* Evelyn Brown is dead.
Quest [Memory and Thought] Failed.
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The message faded slowly. Four hours later, The Berserker's team found him crumpled beside Anousheh, almost dead from blood loss.
The world went dark.
..................................................
Zed woke up with a searing pain in his shoulder and a barely restrained cry on his lips.