“Golden helmet,” I heard him say through the mist as he hung suspended on the brick wall, his face hidden behind the glow of the streetlight. His voice came out scratchy and chaotic, going from deep to high in pitch apparently without control.

“Golden helmet stops my Red knife.”

“Shane. I am Mec of the Gold Prophets. Under the guidance of the Sept, you are under my custody,” I said.

“Custody.” Shane rolled the word around as if it sounded funny on his lips. “Custody.” He giggled. “Custody, custody, custody. Custardy!”

Shane leapt across the narrow street to the opposite building, planting his curved knife into the brick wall. The screeching of him sliding down to a stop nearly shattered my nerves.

“I’m here to bring you back to Sevens, Shane,” I said, keeping my voice calm and unthreatening as possible. “The Sept wants to speak with you.”

“Do they? Want me to speak? Speak to the Sept. Tell the Sept about what I’ve done, eh? Tell the Sept,” Shane said.

“Come down, Shane.”

“This one doesn’t cut well.” He pointed at me through the dim light, barely visible. “This one didn’t look like a Gold.”

“I’m not going to be as easy a kill as you’re used to, Shane. And I’ll never stop hunting you so you might as well come down now.”

I lost him. For a brief moment I thought he’d jumped onto the rooftop and ran away. When he landed not a foot in front of me, his curved knife scraping the pavement and softening his fall, I nearly jumped back. Only the Gold Prophet training and the exposure to what I’d seen kept my mind clear enough to allow me to hold my ground and face Shane in the light.

“This one doesn’t die eee…” Shane said, and tilted his head, apparently losing concentration on what he’d been about to say. He stood before me, finally visible through the lighted mist.

He was bone thin, his clothes in tatters with a few layers he must have taken from his victims and hastily put on. His sunken face was covered in brown, dust and mud mixed with unwashed blood.

Shane paused, his head tilted as he inspected me.

“Don’t try it again, Shane. It won’t work,” I warned.

The rogue Red Prophet tilted his head the other direction as he inspected the tiny amount of blood he’d spilt on my shirt. He nodded and let out a long, agreeing noise I could only describe as a sigh.

“I’m going to call Garlan now. She’s a White. She’ll take us back to Sevens,” I said.

Shane’s eyes darted to the dead pimp, back and forth in quick succession for a few moments. “So much blood,” he said, looking down at the long, curved knife in his hands. It glowed a dim red along the single sharpened edge as his hand began to shake.

Shane was a Prosperite. In my research, I found he’d always been interested in Prosper’s ancient culture. In the more obscure past of the planet, he’d found a weapon called a seax, the curved knife he had blessed as his Red weapon. It was the only thing on him that was clean, despite having recently punctured my sternum.

“Can’t go,” Shane said, his eyes occasionally going back to the pimp. “Not finished.”

“That doesn’t matter, Shane,” I said. “You’ve done more harm than good on this planet. It’s time to go.”

On one side of his face, his expression of confusion and pain didn’t leave. On the other side, a wicked smile stretched to his ear and widened his eye. “Corn pudding.” Shane licked his lips.

“Excuse me?”

“Corn pudding. Left on the windowsill. Not for anyone else, not for a thief. Left for me.”

“Someone fed you?”

“Corn pudding.”

“How do you know it was for you?”

“Always for me!” Shane screamed. His eyes darted around and he twitchingly searched the echoing walls as if he hadn’t meant to shout.

“They feed me. I kill them. Even trade,” he said in a cautioned hush.

“So Donnegan was right,” I said, crossing my arms. “They really do like you.”

“Corn pudding.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You kill pimps and pushers, but you kill… you slaughter others as well. How can someone support that?”

“Corn pudding.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Yesterday was...” Shane tilted his head, thinking. “I forget.”

“Do you know how crazy you are?” I asked.

“Yes,” Shane replied, smiling on the other side of his face.

“Then you know why I’m here.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Too much blood.”

“Exactly.” I put my hand on Shane’s shoulder, barely holding back the part of my brain that screamed how horrible an idea that was. Shane looked at the hand with intense surprise. “There’s been too much blood, Shane.”

Shane shook his head, moving his shoulders to brush off my hand. I held my grip and he pretended he’d shaken me off. “I leave, too much blood. I stay, too much blood.” Then he looked me right in the eyes, a brief moment of clarity passing from him to me. “I have to stay.”

I shook my head. “You have to face your crimes, Shane. For the sake of the Prophets, you have to come with me.”

Shane squinted, as if trying to stare through me. “Not a threat. This isn’t a threat. This one cannot threat, not like the others.”

“I’m not here to kill you, Shane, I’m here to bring you back. And if Garlan and the others were more intelligent, they’d have given me easier access to a White.” I sighed and turned Shane around, reaching into my side pocket. I pulled out a pair of metal handcuffs, old ones I’d taken from Sevens before coming to Prosperity. Limply, Shane didn’t resist as I strapped a metal band around his empty left hand.

“As it is, I’ll just have to cuff you,” I said.

I reached for his right hand, the one still holding his seax, and Shane twisted and spun to face me.

“They tried to kill me!” Shane screamed as if it were a revelation for both of us. “But they stopped.” Shane noticed the cuff on his left hand and examined it, jingling the chain with a light chuckle.

“Shane. Put the knife down and put your hands behind your back,” I said. I approached Shane, reaching for the cuffs, and the man hopped away.

“They left without killing me. And I didn’t have to kill them.”

“Stay still and put your hands behind your back, Shane.” I tried to grab the cuffs again and the Red hopped away once more. “Stop it, Shane, you’re coming with me.”

“Not kill then. Different this time. Not kill. Talk, then leave. Golds and Whites and Reds, now a Gold again.”

I stood with my hands twitching, wondering if I was fast enough to grab the chains of the cuffs before he could leap away. Seeing the twisted smile on Shane’s face, I decided I wasn’t. “You’re talking about the other Prophets, I’m assuming.”

I walked away from Shane, slowly, facing him, and leaned against the brick wall of the nearest building. I made sure I was under a streetlight. The more he talked the more I might be able to get him calm, or so I thought.

“So tell me,” I said casually. “Why did the Prophets leave you here?”

Shane’s smile widened as he said, “They liked me.”

“They liked you.”

“They liked me!” Shane started twirling his knife, all of his concentration on the blade as he spun it from hand to shaking hand. Occasionally it clanked against the unattached other end of the handcuffs. “Give and take, give and take. Prophets help people, it’s what we do. Better here than not. Better few death than fear death.”

“You’re mumbling, Shane. I don’t know what those other Prophets were thinking but there’s no way I’m leaving this city without you, understand?”

“What Whitey and Goldy said. Wanted me dead. Till they hear about Borin.”

“Borin?” I said, thinking. The name struck a memory, something from my research of Prosperity. “He’s the Hensch gang’s leader, right? Harris Borin.”

Shane lifted his seax, put it to his lips, and licked along its dull edge, looking me right in the eye as he did. Had I not known this was a single-edged weapon, I’d have been sickened.

“So you killed him, then,” I said, impressed. Harris Borin would have been a well-protected and very tough target. Though he was a purely horrible man, it would have taken a lot of high-level talk for such an assassination to have been approved in the Sept. “Is that why you think people here love you, because you kill their criminals for them?”

“Corn pudding.”

I shook my head, not believing a word. “How can you love someone who kills murderers and pushers at the same moment he flays innocent civilians?”

“Flay?”

“Skin alive, Shane. It was in my report. What’s worse is that was civilized compared to what I saw at the power plant.”

Shane’s lip quivered for a moment.

“Oh, oh I see,” I said. “Even you’re sickened by that.”

Shane’s hand shook and he had to use both hands to hold his suddenly heavy knife.

“All the pain, the death,” I said as Shane dropped his blade. He scrambled to pick it up and held it out toward me in a fumbling half-threat.

A scraping clack against the wall on the other side of the street suddenly made Shane turn. There stood the bum, wetting himself with fright as he turned and ran. Screaming in panic, Shane leveled his seax to blast the fleeing man.

With a swing of my helmet, I shot a thin streak of gold-hued energy that barely struck the Red’s arm, deflecting his crimson blast into the black-stained brick as the man got away. Shane slashed at me and I deflected the blow, his knife ricocheting painfully away.

“You don’t plan what you do at all,” I said as Shane whimpered and held his wrist. “It’s not justice that drives you. It’s fear.”

Shane sucked at air like a drowning man and held his knife with a trembling hand.

“Too much,” Shane finally said through his panting. “Too much pain. All around. Watching, waiting, searching, trying to find weakness trying to find way to break trying to get more. Backstabs, stabs, shots, gangs, kills, rapes, thievesssss…” Shane’s words trailed off with a shiver in his throat, the words themselves choking away his courage. “Cccorn…. pppppu…”

“I’m sorry, Shane. The good you did is useless now. Your fear has driven you mad.”

With a flat face, almost pleading, he looked right at me and said, “Is it still insanity if I know it?” He bit his lip so hard he opened up old cracks in his skin, tasting a trickle of blood.

“Call it what you want, the man who did the things I saw in the power plant can never be considered sane. And I’ll never stop till I make sure he’s brought to justice.”

Shane shook his head. “Not your job, not your city, not yours.”

“It’s my job because the Sept gave it to me.”

“Sept sent others. Others approved. Go in peace.”

“I don’t care how much filth you get rid of in this city, it can never make up for the people you slaughter who don’t deserve it.”

“Corn pudding!” Shane shouted. His voice echoed throughout the courtyard as we stared at each other in silence. I leaned against the cool, wet brick wall with my arms crossed, my helmet once again casually placed on my brow. Shane began wobbling like he was standing on a rocking boat.

I waited long enough for the gears to start turning in Shane’s mind, gears that might have rusted from lack of use. His eyes darted from me to the pimp and to the ground.

“The people here may not realize it, Shane, but you are a liability for the Sevens Prophets. What would happen if all the planets found out that there was a rogue Prophet slaughtering people like you’ve been? We’d be banned from any civilized nation and you know it. I don’t care how much corn pudding they give you.”

“Need me. They need me.”

“They need the Prophets, Shane. And the Prophets won’t be able to be here anymore if you keep killing. You’ve become a shadow, Shane. Your name itself makes people think of death. I’m not the others, Shane. I won’t try to kill you and you won’t be able to convince me that the cost of a few innocent dead is worth killing as much evil as you have. That’s not how Prophets work, Shane. That’s not the image the Prophets can deal with, not even the Reds.”

The hand that held Shane’s knife could not stop shaking.

“Young. Idealist,” he said.

“You?” I asked.

“You. You are young and idealist. You don’t know yet that a few innocents is worth being able to stop what I’ve…” Shane lost his concentration and looked down at his cuffed hand, remembering it suddenly.

That was my chance.