I decided that confident action was the key. We had very few leads to follow regarding Sloan and the rest – so sitting around and waiting for my other self to appear and illuminate us was a waste of time. I had to trust that I could take care of it once I looped back around to this point in time.
I took some of the supplies from our armoury and gave the others a brief farewell, before hitting the recall button on the watch and warping myself several days back in time to before the day we killed Welt. I felt a tad nauseous from the trip, however brief it was.
I was here to stop Welt from killing Marco Fisichella, since he was the one with the know-how and manpower to track down and destroy all of the warehouses that Welt wanted to use to support his demonic soldiers. Without those warehouses their long-war prospects would be severely hampered, slackening their military grip over the city.
Because of that, I wouldn’t have time to help myself take out Welt, not that I needed the help in the first place. It would be more effective to split my efforts and attack Welt from both angles. I knew Welt was going to die in a few days – so preventing his cronies from picking up the pieces was more important.
I had my weapons, I had a time and place, and Frankfort had filled me in on how the prison was usually secured. The only thing I could do was watch and wait for them to launch their attack. It gave me a lot of time to think about why they would target Marco specifically.
There may have been no high-minded idea behind the effort. Welt was a petty, self-obsessed man who believed that simply murdering every criminal he found was an effective strategy to stop crime in the urban centres across Walser. Even more so for Marco as he had personally crossed Welt at a time when he was attempting to clear Church Walk for redevelopment.
That goal never came to be for a variety of reasons – but he still saw him as a loose end to tie up. Any independent force who could pose a threat was something Welt concerned himself with. Marco wasn’t as good at paid hits as I was, but that was an accolade seldom achieved by anyone.
Marco and his gang could cause a lot of trouble. It only took one man with a death wish to kill someone stone dead. It was a similar conundrum that led to the creation of the mage register. There was a group of individuals who could exert deadly force anywhere at any time with no warning.
When that kind of thought was applied to a criminal gang the calculation changed. Marco could point the finger at Welt or any of his associates and reliably expect them to be shot dead if they ever made an appearance in public. Even the most paranoid nobles did not entertain a lifestyle that demanded eternal isolation.
I could manage it with enough visual novels, I think.
Marco was going to direct his ire elsewhere. Not at the men who he was hired to kill, but at the foundation they were trying to construct across the city. The list in my pocket was the key that would let him eke out some payback. As for what I’d do with him once he was finished – I didn’t know. I liked using Marco when he was convenient and not when he was getting in my way.
I waited and waited, occasionally sneaking into the safehouse and helping myself to some food and supplies while everyone was away, which was easy given that I knew exactly where they were and when they’d arrive. It took a lot of restraint not to cheer from my lookout spot when they finally arrived to try and murder the bloody guy.
I was huddled in the corner under my coat and hat like always, occasionally shifting to a new spot to keep the heat from building with the locals when a group of five men approached the back wall of the prison building and geared up for a fight. The pale skin was a dead giveaway that they were here on Welt’s orders.
The prison itself was not a high-security location. Marco was only being held in the city because his trial had been stalled in the midst of the ongoing government chaos, with judges being reassigned and forced to handle matters that the monarchists found the most important. The safety of the citizenry was not a concern to them.
Thus – Marco had been indicted, arraigned, and assigned a defence lawyer to handle the case, which was supposed to happen promptly due to the severity of the offence he was charged with. Instead, he had been left in legal limbo for weeks, with the police unwilling or unable to move him to a remote location where the security was tighter. They probably reassured themselves by imagining that none of his friends were ballsy enough to try and spring him out with a prison break. Their loyalty could only go so far.
Unlike his friends in the criminal underworld, these violent thugs had no issue with throwing their lives into a blender for Welt’s sake. The frontman held out his palm and charged a blast of magical energy. The wall exploded inwards as the force of the field pushed the bricks out of alignment, scattering them across the rear yard as deadly projectiles.
All five of the assassins piled in with the onlookers on the street screaming and running for cover. I waited several seconds before donning the mask and making my move across the street to follow them inside the perimeter. This was going to be tough, but somehow, my future self managed it.
They were already breaking through the rear door when I stepped through the hole. I stayed back and allowed them to open an escape route for me and Marco. There was no need to intervene when I could use their new exits to exfiltrate with my mark. I had to take care of all five of them before grabbing Marco and making our escape.
While they were trained and knowledgeable about the prison to some extent it quickly became obvious that they didn’t know which cell Marco was being kept in, as they split into a pair of smaller groups, with the big man at the front barking orders and telling them to find him.
Amazingly, none of them had looked behind them during that entire process. I was peering around the corner behind them and wondering when one of them was going to do it on instinct, but they never did. They were laser-focused on finding Marco and killing him as soon as possible.
Frankfort’s account of the prison was rough at best, so I didn’t know where he was either. I could take the time to search for him after I killed the goons Welt had sent to kill him off. The building was separated into a main lobby, the offices connected to it, a pair of small courtrooms for pre-trial proceedings and other legal niceties, and two different cell blocks that could hold around two hundred inmates in a pinch. They’d have to share the cells, but it was technically possible, if not advised given the problems that posed for the guards.
Now the guards were worrying about something deadlier than overcrowding and fistfights between inmates. I wasn’t fast enough to protect them from this marauding group of assassins. They pulled their guns and shot a pair of them down in a hail of bullets, leaving them in a bloodied, hole-filled heap against the front desk. Most of the civilians had already fled once the explosion happened, with the guards remaining behind to try and keep a prison break from occurring.
One man kicked aside the wooden benches in front of the desk and waved his gun in the air, while the second ripped his way through the door to the back area and stepped through. I kept low and followed him inside. He was too busy menacing a poor woman cowering on the ground to notice me coming from behind.
There was no time to waste. I annihilated his back by placing my hand against it. I could barely keep a hold of his shirt as he lost the strength in his legs and fell forward. I used all of my strength to keep him from hitting the ground and alerting the second man.
The receptionist covered her mouth in shock. I held a finger to my mouth and mimed shushing her. I slowly let him down onto the ground and retrieved his gun, emptying the magazine and tossing it aside in case, against all odds, he got back up after having his spine severed with magic.
I slid across the counter and beneath the glass that was used to keep the adults at bay when they visited. The other man was trying to barricade the front door using whatever furniture he could get his hands on. He finally turned around and caught sight of me.
“Who the hell are you?”
I wasn’t close enough to sever his neck. Instead, I used my power to vaporize the mechanism inside of his gun. He pulled the trigger but the entire thing locked up and trapped the shell in place. A follow-up heat spell ignited the gunpowder inside of the cartridge and detonated it in his hands.
His natural reaction was to flinch away even though for him it was a minor injury at best. A few splinters of shrapnel might have gotten into the skin of his palms and fingers, but that was not going to put him down and keep him down.
If I didn’t have that bullet still agitating my leg, I might have been able to close the gap and wrap my hands around his neck before he recovered. Instead – he swung at me using the wooden butt of his shotgun. I barely blocked the blow by holding up my forearm, but it was enough to send me spiralling onto the ground.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
I used all of my concentration and ability to focus my magical senses. I knew he was going to try and turn me into a red splatter using brute force, so I struck him with an electrical bolt that seized his muscles, locked his arms into place and caused him to fall to one knee.
I charged at him again, leaping over his second swipe and getting behind him. I locked an arm around his neck and pulled back. He tried to push me back-first into the door and shake me loose, but it was too late for that. Another wave of energy eviscerated the nerves and bones in his neck and killed him instantly. His fall on the way down almost dragged me with him.
Two down, three to go.
It was possible that they head the sound of the fight. I hustled back the way I came and towards the cell block, only to come face-to-face with a third man walking down the corridor outside. I ducked for cover. He chose to fire at me with his gun instead of using a magic attack. So much for subtlety.
The assassin put on his big boy pants and elected to walk towards me instead of dragging out the fight. Ironically, this idiotic strategy was the best thing he could have done. In an exchange of fire, I would always come out the loser. They could survive multiple bullets to the head whilst I could not.
But knowing where all of the assassins were was to my advantage. With no risk of being flanked by one of them, I could take up a cover position that allowed me to relocate without him even knowing I was gone. I moved back around the corner and dipped into one of the offices.
He kept shooting until he was around that corner himself – only to discover that he had been wasting his ammo the entire time.
“Hey! Someone’s over here!” he called out.
Rather than waiting for his friend to join him to launch a pincer attack, he blindly walked past my hiding place without even checking the other rooms. I snuck out behind him and applied a generous dose of reality-fracturing atrophy to the base of his neck before he could react.
There was a revolver in a second holster at the foot of his spine. The man he called out to rushed around the corner to try and locate me, not realizing that I’d already killed him. I pulled the revolver loose and shot him straight between the eyes, snapping his head back and forcing him to stagger.
Taking my chance, I fired every bullet in the cylinder. The recoil forced my arm up into the air with every attempt. Each hit ripped away more flesh and shattered bone until his head was a grisly mockery of a human head. Five shots hit the target. Blood and brain fluid leaked from the holes – and it was too much for his demonic enhancements to take.
I tossed the revolver away and hopped over, making sure not to step in his blood.
There was only one man left. I knew that he was across the yard in one of the cell block buildings, which was why he didn’t choose to come and join the party. He was only after Marco. I ran as fast as my bum leg could carry me and crossed the small outside space between the buildings. The giant hole in the wall made it obvious where my target had fled to.
I could hear voices talking. Prisoners rattled their bars and cried out for the guards to no avail. I quickly jogged past the cells and took a right, and was greeted with another destroyed wall and the last assassin looming large over a prone Marco.
“Bastard!” Marco cried.
“We’re here to clean up your mess.”
“Who are you? Here for revenge? Did I kill one of your little friends before?”
The man grabbed the back of his prison uniform and forced him to face him.
“Not yet, but Welt sends his regards to another former thorn in his side.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do than pick off a crook who’s already in prison?”
Watching this entire discussion play out was interesting, but I was ultimately here to rescue Marco, not watch him give his final defiant stand in the face of certain death. I swept across the hallway and approached the man from behind, holding my palm to the back of his neck and sending a surge of energy through his spinal column.
“Hello, Marco.”
The man tumbled over and landed in a heap next to Marco. Despite his confusion, the gears were already turning in his mind. The emotional rollercoaster he was enduring must have been a forceful one. He was saying his prayers just then – but now he had been saved out of the blue by a figure he felt was inherently untrustworthy.
“Maria?”
He caught on to my identity within a second of my heroic rescue.
I laughed, “You’re being let out on bail. I suggest you come with me before the guards notice that your heavy-set friend ripped a hole in the back wall of the prison.”
“What? Why the hell are you here?”
“We need you for an important task. I suggest you come with me.”
He mulled over my offer for a second but there was never any real choice. It was come with me or die. There was little doubt in his mind that a second wave of killers was already descending on the building to have another go.
“Fine! This better not be a trick.”
“I’ve been nothing but forthcoming with you.”
Honestly, I may have pushed Marco around once or twice - but I never directly lied to him about what was going on. In our line of business that was about as good as it got! He climbed back to his feet and grumbled inaudibly about being rescued by me.
“Do you have a gun for me?”
“I could give you one – but why do you think I did not attempt to shoot that man at your feet?”
He shrugged, “Why?”
“They’re very durable. Any gunshot wounds close within seconds of being dealt, and even hitting them in the head is no guarantee. He may have killed you before I had the chance to finish him that way.”
Now that I mentioned it, he recalled the inciting incident that pulled him into this mess. He’d already met one of these guys before when they attacked his house. Marco glanced at his body and noted his pale skin, “Shit. So that’s what the big man upstairs has been working on this whole time?
“I can give you the details once we’re out of here. I take it that you have a place to hide?”
“I do.”
I led him out through the convenient holes the assassins had left for us. Amazingly there were no guards or police officers at the scene on the road outside. We had a clear shot out of the prison and into the alleyway across the street. It was going to be a long game of cat and mouse.
“I have a good route we can use,” Marco said, “Let me take the lead.”
I nodded and stepped aside. It was time for Marco to show his credentials.
The police weren’t able to keep up with us once we found the alleyways. We slipped away into the urban maze and out of sight, keeping our heads down and moving towards Marco’s safe house on the edge of the city. We’d be good to have that discussion he wanted once we were there.
While I knew that I’d survive all of this to save my own ass when Welt tried to escape, I was still acting in an abundance of caution. I kept one hand on my gun and my eyes peeled for any sign of funny business coming from Marco. He lifted up a planter by the door and obtained a spare key, letting us inside and quickly closing the curtains.
The very first thing that Marco did after escaping life in prison was walk over to one of the dust-covered cabinets and retrieve a bottle of whiskey from inside.
“Drinking already?”
He was already nose-deep in a shot glass. He downed the lot in one go and slammed it down on the table between us.
“They don’t offer luxuries like these behind bars. I have a keen eye for alcohol. I got it from my Father.”
“A self-declared connoisseur.”
“Yes, but he was a rotten no-good drunkard no matter how he tried to dress it.”
I sat down and drew my gun, notching the safety lever and placing it in front of me as a sign of sincerity. Marco took a deep breath and tried to slap himself back to wakefulness between shots of whiskey.
“I suppose we should hurry up and have that conversation.”
“We should. Why did you break me out of there? I tried to kill your uncle.”
“It’s water under the bridge. This Welt problem concerns not just us, but every reasonable person living in this country. They’ve taken over. The King has been deposed, they’ve revoked the Compromise, and they’re clearing house at WISA and in the courts. It’s nothing but trouble.”
Marco’s face fell, “Goddess help us. I daren’t imagine how much of a mess that fool is going to make if they let him call the shots.”
I placed the list on the table. He reached out and slid it over to his side, reading the list of addresses and stockpiles that the police had recorded in the near future.
“Where did you get this? This is a police document.”
“I’m a noble. I know the son of the police captain who’s handling the stalled Welt investigation. A kind word here and a favour there – and you can get your hands on police work product without much trouble.”
“And people wonder why Walser is rotten to the core,” he murmured.
“Welt’s killers need food, medicine, hallucinogenic drugs and weapons. These are the places where they hide and deploy when trouble needs to start. In return for the rescue, I want you to go with your men to these places and put the torch to them. Don’t stay and fight. They’re filled with angry mutants.”
Marco laughed and took another swig, clearing his throat with the harsh burn of the long-abandoned alcohol. He quickly turned sober despite that.
“Be serious. Most of the people I work with have already moved. I may be friends with some of them, but they have bills to pay and they weren’t going to wait for me being declared innocent against all odds. I always said don’t wait on me when times are tough, you have to look out for yourself.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”
I reached into my pocket and retrieved a wad of bills I’d taken from the safehouse. It was my ‘allowance,’ although it was truthfully much more than I normally received from my Father. I slammed it on the table between us. Marco’s eyes practically leapt out of their sockets.
“Suro padre cay! You were carrying this with you the whole time?” he exclaimed, swearing in his mother tongue. I believe it roughly translated to ‘son of a whore.’
“That’s my allowance. I could gather more than that if that’s what it takes.”
His eyes sharpened, “Is there a trick to this?”
“A trick? This is business – Marco. There’s nothing that motivates people like money. I’ll take a discount for the jailbreak, but I’m still willing to pay. I’m not expecting you to do this for nothing.”
Being rich really did have its perks. I could push people around or buy them off with little trouble. The family business generated eye-watering amounts of liquid money that my Father could use as he pleased, and by extension so could I. Marco caved on the spot. All of our prior interactions, good or bad, were nothing in the face of cold hard cash.
“You give me a couple of days. I’ll get the word out and see who’s available to cause trouble.”
I smiled. I already knew that Marco was good at keeping his word.
“Excellent. I’ll visit again in three days. We have a tight schedule to keep, but I know that we’ll be ready in time.”
Marco assumed I was being confident, and not that I had travelled from the future where all of this had played out once before. This was going to work. I simply had to keep an eye out for any bumps in the road and make sure it went smoothly. Seeing the outcome didn’t mean I could get reckless. There were still challenges to deal with to reach that goal.
I took my gun back and stood from the table, “And try not to get too drunk before we begin.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
No, he wouldn’t. He was going to celebrate being a free man come what may.