An hour later we were on the other side of the city, a block away from the apartment building that Jonas Rentree was using to hide Welt while his minions caused chaos across the nation. We were checking our supplies and getting ready for a brutal close-range battle.

Veronica looked at me, concerned about the state I was in.

“Are you sure you’re ready to do this now?”

No, not really. My leg was killing me. Running around those woods had agitated my injury, and using my magic to pick off Jones’ demonic soldiers had drained my strength. The smart thing to do would have been to rest up for a few hours before launching our assault on the apartment he was hiding in.

We didn’t have that luxury though. I could imagine one of Jones’ men hurriedly rushing to report back about what happened at the party. Knowing that one of the outside contacts was dead, Welt would immediately move from one hiding place to another and render our efforts moot. I had to suck it up and keep going.

“If we miss this window of opportunity, then we may never get another one. Welt will move to a secure location and ensure that nobody knows where he is.”

Welt was here because he wanted to issue orders from the centre of the city, but he would willingly sacrifice expedience for safety if the circumstances changed. He wouldn’t live to see his grand design achieved if a bullet went between his eyes.

The moment the fighting started he would try to flee. It would have to be fast, which meant it was also going to be risky.

“Are you ready to do this?” I repeated back, “After all, you said all of this was for my sake.”

Veronica tried not to let any emotion shine through as she replied.

“I don’t know what to think about what you said, but there’s no reason for me to give up and go home now. I can reckon with the truth when there’s time to do so, and even if what you said was authentic, I still want to live in a Walser that isn’t ruled by this idiot and his toadies.”

Kicking the can down the road was about what I expected when I asked.

Frankfort was moving around the back of the building to make sure they couldn’t escape through the rear. She had every intention of taking Welt down even if it killed her in the process. Veronica and I would go through the front and try to get to him before she had to do that.

It was almost certain that there would be armed guards in the building. Given that Jonas Rentree owned it – it was likely that he had emptied all of the apartments inside. Welt was going to be in one of them, but the rest could house supplies, guards, or whatever else they needed for a long stay, including his servants.

It was the dead of night, ticking over towards three in the morning. It would only be a matter of time before news about Jones’ unfortunate death reached the building. They would have to locate his body first, and then pass the news along to Welt. We didn’t have a choice. It had to be now.

There was nobody around. We double-checked our weapons and ammo and headed down the road, slipping through a narrow alleyway and onto the opposite street. A heavy fog settled over the city, reducing visibility and applying a layer of moisture to everything it touched. Under the yellow streetlights we cut a pair of strange figures.

We found the front door to the block, numbered and signposted for our convenience. There was nobody there guarding it from the outside. I pulled out my lockpicking tools and tried to jostle it open as quietly as I could, only to give up when I discovered that Rentree hadn’t gone cheap on buying a decent lock.

I got down onto one knee for a closer look while Veronica tried to cover me from potentially prying eyes.

“Why did he have to buy a good lock for this door?” I complained in a whisper.

But a good lock wasn’t good enough to keep me out. They had a lot to learn when it came to devising devious machinery that made my traditional skills worthless. I used to only rely on lockpicking when breaking into industrial yards or other low-stakes areas because they always bought the first thing they found online. You get what you pay for, and those cheap padlocks weren’t worth the metal they were cast from - if they even were made from metal and not brittle plastic.

It gave way, although it held the distinction of being the toughest one I’d cracked since my arrival into the new world. I pocked the pick and drew my pistol, slowly opening the crack in the doorway and keeping it trained forward. The entry hallway was also empty. Veronica hustled in behind me and we closed it again.

Veronica whispered into my ear; “Third floor?”

“That’s what he said.”

There was a strange mood in the air. The building was mostly dark, with only a handful of lanterns and electric lights illuminating the key thoroughfares. Those patches of refuge were swallowed whole by open doors that led into pitch-black voids. They were using the entire building like it was one and not a series of segmented apartments.

Black and white tiles greeted us in the entryway. There were doors on either side, with another exit at the rear that led into the yard. Frankfort would be waiting there to cut off any potential escapes. I was shocked not to find at least one guard sitting on the wooden bench next to the door.

There were a dozen sets of shoes though. A combination of smart loafers and heavy, mud-stained work boots. It gave me a small hint as to how many guards were staying. The only problem was that there was no sign of them.

“What’s the play? We sneak to floor three, get Welt, and worry about the guards after?”

“If we can find a good chokepoint to fight in,” Veronica concurred.

Any discord that had formed between us didn’t stop us from working like a well-oiled machine. Veronica stuck close to my back and covered my blind spots, whipping the barrel of her gun between entryways as we moved to the steps and started a slow and painful ascent. Every creak of the wooden boards made me wince internally.

I pointed my gun upwards and let Veronica push me from behind. We paused, hearing the sounds of hooves from outside. They came and went, and we continued with our exploration of the building. At the top of the first flight, we were met with an identical arrangement of doors, although some of them were closed.

“Guard quarters,” I muttered, “It must be.”

There were two chairs placed at either end of the corridor. I was starting to get the picture of how tight the security was during the day. A man at the front door, two more on the first floor, and even more as you got higher up. They’d sit there and keep watch at all hours of the day. There was an empty bottle of alcohol at the foot of one of the watchmen’s seats.

Boring job – at least until we showed up to throw a party.

I could hear something coming from the floor above. The first night guards were on the second floor. The turning of a page and the rustling of what I assumed was a newspaper. Waiting a minute yielded a cough from one of the two men, along with the sound of a bottle touching the floor.

There was no way to get through them without kicking off a fight. Luring one of them down to the second floor and picking them off was not an option. They would come pouring out of their rooms and overwhelm us with sheer numbers. Any kind of fight would wake someone up.

“Are you ready? I’ll get the farthest one, you get the one by the stairs.”

Veronica nodded.

The next flight of steps was even more agonizing than the last. I was fully aware of the presence of two awake and somewhat alert guards, and so every step had to be made with that in mind. Veronica’s hand against my back was invaluable in keeping me steady while I tiptoed up each miniature mountain.

We managed to reach the inflexion point without alerting either of them. It was time to make a lot of noise. Veronica followed behind, the speed increasing. I aimed my gun at the man sitting at the far end of the corridor by the window. Two bullets rocked his chest and a third went through his head, shattering the glass behind him with the shrapnel that breached him front-to-back.

Veronica neatly executed the other nearest to us with a single shot to the dome, splattering the fancy wallpaper with a shower of blood and brain matter. He slumped over in his chair before falling to the ground in an odd position.

“Up, up, up, up!” I chanted.

A cacophony of opening doors could be heard from below. We scurried up the steps and onto the third floor where Welt was supposed to be. Only two apartments were located on this floor – intended to be for wealthier clients who wanted more space. The man waiting there didn’t have time to fully draw his pistol before I gunned him down.

Veronica pulled the sawed-off shotgun she’d procured from beneath her coat and blasted the door’s handle and lock clean off. I kicked it through and charged inside. There was a kitchen to the left and a large dining room in front of us. Two guards upturned the heavy table and used it as cover. Veronica stepped through and unloaded the second shell through it, failing to hit either of them, before ditching it on the floor and returning to her pistol.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Come out now and we’ll make it fast for you, Welt!”

It had to be quick because the entire population of the city was barrelling up the stairs to try and stop us. Veronica unleashed a barrage of precise covering fire against the two men, and I took the chance to rush around their flank and finished them off with a hail of shots.

I reloaded my pistol but made sure to grab the revolver that one of them was using as a backup. Veronica followed me into the living space. A single maid cowered behind the sofa, with another two guards ready and waiting in the doorway to his private study.

The expensive penthouse quickly transformed into a brutal and extremely dangerous kill box, with bullets flying in every direction and shredding the thin walls to pieces, exposing even more angles from which to attack. A bullet almost turned my head into a fine mist, missing by inches and flying off somewhere into the kitchen. The maid ducked into one of the other rooms and got out of the way.

I rounded the corner again and unloaded the remaining four shots in the revolver, killing one of the men in an overly brutal fashion. He staggered back and through one of the unlocked doors, falling down and out of sight. Veronica dispatched the other man soon after.

We had to go from room to room looking for him. I started kicking open doors or using my magic to break the latches. Each one was a display of avarice and wealth – but there was no sign of the man we came to kill. It was a frenzy of activity, and we still hadn’t been followed by the men downstairs.

Library. Study. Smoking room.

Door number five had an unpleasant surprise waiting for me. I was confronted by the gaunt, pale visage of one of the mad mages he had created. He held out his palm and started to summon forth a spell before I could get away.

“Son of a bitc-”

It felt like I was being hit with a brick wall moving at sixty miles an hour. My body flew back through the plaster wall, smashing it to bits and leaving me in a groaning heap. If he was any closer it would have broken my bones or done even worse.

Veronica didn’t sit back and let that attack go unpunished. She emerged from her hiding spot and unloaded two bullets into his chest and left arm. He turned to face her, but only received another shot to the head as a reward. He staggered back, somehow sustaining enough brain function to keep fighting.

Dazed and desperate – I took one of the broken legs from the table and charged at him, stabbing the sharpened end through his skull and wrenching it with all of my might. The combination of the bullet and the leverage snapped his neck, and he finally fell to the floor with his limbs twitching wildly.

“What the hell!” Veronica gasped, “I didn’t realize they were that tough!”

But it did explain why Welt had put so much effort into creating them. A small army of these people, who could resist a bullet to the brain and other grievous injuries, could exert more force than a larger, conspicuous group. Even while his brain was being turned to mush, he still tried to cast another spell and take one of us down with him.

“They’re in Welt’s apartment! Get ‘em!”

I twisted around and fired blindly towards the door, striking one of the men who was attempting to enter and intervene in the fight. His friends thought twice about following him and making a wall from their bodies to block the only entrance into the apartment.

“Where is this bastard?” I complained.

“I’ll watch the door!”

Veronica found a good spot to shoot from as I rotated through the rest of the rooms in the apartment. I kicked through the second to last door, only to find the man of the hour halfway through the open window in his robe and pyjamas. He did not wait for me to shoot. He dipped through and down onto an unseen roof below.

“Get back here you bastard!”

I ran over to try and get a shot on him, but Frankfort had caught on to his ploy and was already shooting from below. The windows cracked as two new bullet holes appeared in them from the stray attacks. She didn’t hit him. I climbed through after him.

Another rooftop was below the window, which sloped dangerously towards the back alley two floors beneath. Welt was surprisingly deft, able to move across the slippery mildew-soaked tiles without a pair of shoes on his feet. I kept one hand on the wall next to me and pursued him. He dipped down onto another floor and kept low so that I couldn’t shoot him, turning left and escaping from view.

“Get to the front!” I yelled to Frankfort, “He knows you’re there!”

She turned around and dashed out of the backlot as fast as her legs could carry her.

I almost slipped and fell. How the hell was Welt so good at slithering away when danger came calling? Pushing my body along using the wall and a lot of patience, I followed him to the point where he had disappeared a second earlier. There was a balcony at the front of the building for one of the apartments – and he had crawled through it.

I gave chase again. The guard who had let him back inside was still standing there with his back to the open window as he barked orders at him. I grabbed the guard by the collar and wrenched him back, using my leverage to tip him over and shunt him off of the roof and onto the street below with a bone-cracking thud.

Welt almost squealed and ran away. I slipped through and continued to pursue him like a bloodhound. None of the other guards were in this part of the building with us, but Welt made a straight-line dash to the exit so that he could find some more bodies to put between me and him.

When I came out onto the second-floor landing, I was greeted with a difficult decision. Welt was already down the stairs and heading for the nearest exit, while on the steps leading up a group of gunmen were trying to get to Veronica. I couldn’t afford to lose a valuable ally, so I swallowed my doubt and acted quickly.

I shot two of the men waiting on the stairs, their bodies seizing up and falling into a tangled pile at the bottom, before leaping over them and charging up to try and relieve their pressure. The moment I crested the top another guard charged at me and shoved me back into the wall with enough force to crack the plaster.

Rather than shoot me with the gun he was holding, he instead felt that throwing me back down the stairs to the bottom was the better play. He shoved me back and I fell, but the two men I had shot before cushioned my fall, although the one on top did not enjoy having the bullet in his back agitated by a teenage girl landing on him. He howled in pain and struggled to move out from under me.

I was already getting up and moving. The man at the top shot down at the pile, only succeeding in hitting his friend and putting him out of his misery. I kept a tight angle and stepped back into view, shooting back and killing him in retaliation. Another loud explosion rocked the building and the sound of a wall being demolished indicated that more demonic soldiers were trying to get Veronica.

I stormed up the stairs (again) on my injured leg and dealt with the last two normal men who were sitting near the door to cut off her escape route. The moment I did, Veronica dived through the gap in the outside-facing wall that the half-demon had created while I was busy below.

“Don’t worry about him!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I was starting to run low on magical energy, even with my catalytic bracers equipped, so I followed her down the stairs and into the lobby, where we burst through the still-open front door and onto the fog-cloaked streets. We just caught sight of Frankfort giving chase down the road.

“He’s not a very quick runner,” I observed.

“But he still has a chance to get away.”

We didn’t stick around for the magician to catch up with us. I followed her closely, tail coats flapping in the wind. We finally joined Frankfort’s pursuit. Welt was desperate to keep himself out of our gunsights, ducking into alleyways and throwing whatever garbage he could find in our path to slow us down.

He was going somewhere specific, but it was not the direction of the nearest police station to try and have us arrested. It was only when we drew closer that the bluish fog turned a bright shade of yellow that we discovered the warehouse he was running to was already on fire when we arrived.

“It can’t be!” he cried, stumbling over the curb and onto the floor.

This must have been one of his warehouses.

Frankfort was mere moments away from pulling the trigger and killing him, but a bolt of energy from inside the wreckage caught her in the arm and sent her spinning onto the cobbles below. An enraged and severely burnt mutant leapt from the ashen timbers and charged at us, throwing spells in every direction he could.

I used the last dregs of my energy to put up a shield, blocking the electricity before it could hit us. I was about to black out from the exertion. All of this effort and we were about to fall at the last hurdle. Welt was in front of us – yet a single man he had injected with that damnable blood was stopping us from finishing the job.

I was so woozy that what happened next was confusing in the most extreme sense. I blinked and another figure stepped out from the alleyway next to the burning safehouse. She held her hand against his neck and killed him instantly. I dropped the shield and tried to focus on who was responsible.

There was another me standing before Welt.

He screamed and held out his hands in a useless effort to keep the inevitable from occurring.

“Wait, you can’t do this-”

‘I’ pulled the trigger several times in succession, brutally filling his body with new orifices and spilling blood into the air. Welt tried to remain standing as the force of each shot knocked him off-balance, but the strength in his legs quickly left him and he fell face-first to the floor, dead as dead could be.

There was no grand finale for Welt. For all of this world’s narrative conventions and conveniences, he died like many other people had died, suddenly. He didn’t have a chance to say his piece or justify his actions. He was already marked for execution by what he had done – and at that point, there was no time for negotiation about it.

My clone walked over and helped me back up. It was clearly me from the future. I took a deep breath and tried to regain some of my endurance. I noticed that several other yellow fires were occurring all across the city, dumping light and smoke into the early morning sky.

Veronica glanced between me and me.

“Why the hell are there two of you?”

I exhaled and tried to wash the taste of acid from my mouth; “Adrian gave me his watch. I suppose this means I have to go back and set all of this bullshit up in advance?”

The future me nodded and handed me a piece of paper with several locations, times and dates listed.

I explained myself, “Before you go back, you need to get the list of these forward bases from Claude’s father. They’re going to search the apartment for evidence and it’ll get buried in a case file if you don’t. Make sure you burn them all to the ground.”

“I can’t burn all of them down on my own.”

“That’s why it’s essential you go to the prison house at that time and stop them from murdering Marco Fisichella. Cash in that favour and have him and his men go on an arson spree.”

“And you can’t give me the list yourself?”

“I had this exact discussion with my future me, and she said the same thing. I didn’t give myself the list because it’s with Marco.”

So that information had to come from somewhere at some point in the loop. It didn’t spontaneously appear through the nature of me going back and revealing it to myself. That meant that trying to alter the course of history by neglecting that step was not an option, or at least it was too risky to try.

I had placed a time checkpoint at our secret base a few days ago. I’d have to get the list, go back, and save Marco so he and his gang could destroy Welt’s operation. It wouldn’t completely excise the threat, but it would make their life much harder without the guns, supplies and drugs needed to control them.

This all seemed too easy. There was no way that this was the end of this problem. There were more names who were supporting Welt, and Ekkehard was not going to give up his one shot at being King because he was out of the picture. There was also the man who Genta mentioned before, Sloan, who designed and distributed the demon blood that they used.

Frankfort and Veronica still looked very confused about why I was having a discussion with my doppelganger. Perhaps in Veronica’s mind, this was a preferable explanation to learning that her daughter had been possessed by the spirit of a murderous man from another world, but given that she had witnessed that copy kill two people anyway it was cold comfort.

“Let’s go back before the police show up,” Frankfort suggested.

“Good idea,” Future Maria concurred, “I can tell you what to do next.”