It has been three weeks since the start of the reclamation, the light licking against the glass of the building from the fires has not faltered since then, burning the sin from the land they stand upon. Our group has removed and replaced dozens of representatives from juries, councils, defense firms, and judges. Though we have done so much, it doesn’t feel as if any progress has been made, the city still rots as jobs continue to roll in. The sound of chaos and torment still floats over the air that rolls between the buildings, giving an eerie feeling of unsettling angst in those who roam the streets when the light dies off in the distance. The city itself is dying, I can feel it… we haven’t been doing enough, the roots of corruption still hold strong towards the center of the city, towards the largest buildings that break the skyline and peak over the horizon, the citadel.

The citadel is what controls the actions of the city, of its people. It is the tallest and largest building in the center, where the privileged governors sit on the top floors and decide the fate of those below them. What separates the oppressed from the hands that control them is a large metal wall that seems to inch slowly outwards every day much like metallic crab legs walking across barren sands, pushing through buildings and roads alike. As I stared at the monstrosity that pushed through the low-hanging clouds, I knew that the heart of our problem stood in one of those windows looking down on us ants as they slowly snuff us out.

I snapped back to reality, as a rapping of the door resonated throughout the office, a runner with a large envelope stepped through and laid it upon my desk as he then quickly excused himself back through the door. I already knew what this was, it was ordered for another set of targets, another set of pawns to move. I felt like we have gained no momentum and only driven the city further into madness, moving pieces that don’t change the big picture only clutter what is to be seen. No matter what I felt, I still had a job to do, while there was still some city left to save.

As I looked over the list, the names did not seem to follow the same pattern as the others. These names had criminal records attached to them, long ones that showed that these men and women have very deep roots in the cities ‘backroom empire’ or in layman’s terms they were criminals, kingpins, mobsters, the kind of people who started the corruption that now chews at the heart of the city. This makes them very important targets, but why we are going after them at this point doesn’t make sense due to our lack of concentrated forces in the underground of the city. This is going to make removing them extremely difficult and costly… which I don’t like but if I need to approach this task to make some progress then so be it.

Al had our squads targeting very specific members of different groups, low-level lackeys, and distributors, but we weren’t just targeting them we were removing them entirely. This went on for days, constant jobs kept coming through the offices, and squads were sent out in the middle of the night and came back bruised and confused about what happened once their job was done. Once we would finish a job, other people from Al’s organization would show up and round up workers, materials, and paraphernalia. These members wore very interesting uniforms compared to our combat plating; they seemed to wear some kind of black robes that hung on their back and necks, flowing around their torsos hiding weapons and tools underneath. They never spoke to us, they didn’t speak to one another when in our presence either, and they would give us an envelope containing our credit chips and disperse as quickly as they appeared. This went on for weeks and then all of a sudden, the jobs stopped, but the money kept coming into our accounts by delivering envelopes with the same chips. Our contractors had to start taking jobs on the side to keep themselves busy; soon we became known as mercenaries, brutes, enforcers… everything we never wanted to be.

We thought that over the next few weeks that our situation would have improved, but the surrounding city seemed to lurch over our shoulders bringing us down to its level, you could see it in the eyes of the men. The life seemed to be drained from them, their hope and pride in the work they used to have, now evaporated before them leaving them like armored husks, shells of soldiers that followed through their jobs habitually. They no longer cared about the outcome, the cost, or the rules of engagement; they only cared about the credits at the end. I tried to stay above the fall, keeping the spirit up of myself and the soldiers around me, but I found myself losing my grip on my humanity. Weeks became months, months became years as I saw my soldiers change in front of me as I felt the city eat away at our souls, and our minds; jobs became murders, thefts, kidnappings, and arson. It left scars on our minds and faces, if not physical sense but psychological, our eyes became sunken and dark, and our skin became dirty and stretched and scarred. As time passed, I saw soldiers that I had led through hell, being put back into the fires as they seek credits and something to keep their hands busy as retirement seemed to be too boring for them. But as they worked through their jobs, I could nothing but stand by as I saw them wither away, most of them died on the job, due to a mistake or a careless mind. These worthless deaths cut me deeper than those that I had witnessed firsthand, for I had helped keep these men from being eaten by the void but here I was leading them back into it, unsuspecting, unknowingly, unprepared. This caused the strain that I had on my mind to only worsen, and this leeched unto my squad mates, those that I had sworn to protect and lead. This caused my mind to fracture further, as the nightmares I used to have when I was younger of the massacre of the Vultures started to come back, waking up in a cold sweat became a habit as I felt my life starting to slip backward, falling back into what I felt after I had lost everything.

The nightmares had come back once again, causing me to wake in a startled state, covered in a sickly layer of cold, dried sweat. The images, the smells, and the sounds, all haunted me since the decline of our unit became solidified in our psychosis. It was now year three of my employment as our absent commander, following the directions in the plans that were set for us. The city has fallen deeper into chaos, our actions only adding gasoline to the fire, causing the outer districts to burn in rebellions and riots throughout the hours of the night, as you could see the light from the fires that burned at their hands. As I sat and looked over the skyline of the city, my mind raced and thought back to what I joined this unit for, the reason I had accepted this devil-borne deal. To avenge the dead, to allow those who had fallen to be buried in peace, to make sure that those who had died had not fallen in vain, but specifically to find out how my friend had died as his life had begun. My fear and worry were soon replaced by anger and hate, my focus switching from these endless and worthless jobs to the starting point of my strife. I gathered my gear and my weapons and took a silent VTOL ride to a ruined precinct near the gates of this cursed city.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I stepped off the VTOL towards the doors of the building, glass and metal pieces crunching under my feet. I approached the door and when I reached for the tarnished brass handle, the door was jerked open from the inside and the bright muzzle of a pistol came through the shadows of the threshold and orientated itself towards my head. I immediately reached through the door and grabbed where the gun attached itself to the person and yanked it into the open pavement, a shaking man dressed in dirty police uniform pieces fell onto the ground fumbling with the pistol. This man was a squatter, which didn’t bode well for the state of this precinct. I reopened the door, leaving the man to bode for himself, as I stepped through the threshold and entered the building, I saw that there were still officers present but they were not very alive to assist me in my search. Squatters had ransacked the building and taken everything that wasn’t nailed down, old offices had become bunkrooms and the bullpen had become a makeshift mess hall, it was as disgusting as I would have imagined it. The detective’s quarters were abandoned, turned over, and scoured for materials and sellable goods, I spent time looking through the garbage to find details or a clue of where this particular person had moved to. I found nothing but old scraps of reports, burned papers in the trash bin, boards covered in pictures connected with red wires, and busted whiteboards with faded marker lines. It seemed like a dead end, the leads didn’t show where I should go and I was left in a dark office questioning what I was doing with my actions. It was three years too late for my friend to be killed in cold blood, now the only man who had the answers I sought was either dead or lost to the city.

I followed dead trails and broken stories for days, camping in buildings and broken apartments as I followed scraps of conversations across the slums of the city. Whispers led to rumors, which led to conversations in alleys, which led to documents being ‘lost’ outside of the building for me to pick up as I would walk by. Eventually, I found directions to a specific precinct and barracks that hoped to hold a few interesting people I wanted to have an aggressive conversation with. As I moved closer into the district, I saw that the people had already started to loot and riot in this part as well, following suit of the rest of the city. Fires fell out of windows and glass covered the ruined street as people walked in soot-covered jackets and ruined clothes, looking for supplies and pieces of lost gear to help them survive the next day among the looters and marauders in the district. I moved quickly through the streets and into the alleyways, avoiding as much contact as possible so people would not recognize my patches and uniform so that I don’t draw any unnecessary attention. The spotlights at the top of the towers surrounding the barracks and precinct gave away its position and allowed me to gauge the correct distance for a vantage point. I found the broken doors to a ruined apartment complex that seemed to be mostly empty, contents of rooms, and broken items scattered the hallways as I found my way upstairs towards the top floor of the building. I made it to the sixth floor, towards a broken door at the end of the hallway where the contents were spread amongst the halls. I stepped into it and was hit with the smell of decaying flesh; dead bodies of the old tenants lay in the corner with matching gunshot wounds spilling their brains into their laps and walls. I walked into the small secondary room on my left to find a shattered window overlooking the enforcer’s barracks and precinct. From here I could see guard movements and basic routines that those inside followed through with instinctually. I pulled a chair towards the window and sat there for a few hours, watching through a scope as I tried to see if the men, I was looking for appeared in the courtyard. The hours grew longer as time seemed to creep slowly by, countless people crossed into the courtyard but none matched the descriptions I was given. After the eighth hour, one of the men stepped out of one of the barracks and motioned for someone to follow him out, as the other stepped out I froze in place because the man following him was one of the black-robed commanders that Al has under his thumb. This changes what I have to do; I have to accelerate my schedule if I am to catch my targets before something happens to them. I gathered my gear and made my way back down the buildings, pushing past scavengers and hoodlums alike. As I walked towards where the enforcers were located, I crafted a grungy cloak out of strewn materials and dirty clothes to allow me to get closer to the compound without being recognized and approached the gate slowly. As I approached the gate, the black-robed man and the officer were moving towards the precinct building where I recognized the inspector walking towards them, guards had started to approach me, but I ignored them as I tried to listen to their conversation. If I knew what was going to happen next I would have stepped in sooner, but as I watched the inspector draw closer to the pair and the conversation halted I could see why they stopped talking so quickly. The black-robed man had pulled the inspector in and pushed a silenced pistol against the man’s ribs and pulled the trigger causing the man to sputter and stop moving. The officer next to him started to react but soon found a knife in his neck silencing his screams. As the officers surrounding them started to react, you could see shapes moving in the shadows and as they emerged you could tell that they were also the black-robed soldiers and they began murdering the officers with whispering weapons. As the guards moving towards me turned to assist, I threw off my cloak, drew my rifle, and started towards the downed inspector amongst the chaos. I knocked the assailant to the ground and snapped his neck with efficiency; I then crouched near the inspector who recognized my face even through his pain. He chuckled a bit as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position; he then grunted from the bleeding wound in his abdomen as he looked at me and asked why I was there. I questioned his motives, why he stopped looking for me and stopped trying to throw me in prison in the first place, he just looked at me with a dark expression and told me that I was cleared after I left with Al, that the evidence didn’t show me killing him but before he could finish his thought, his forehead exploded into my face as a round entered his skull. I looked up towards the shooter and it was another officer who brought a finger to his lips as he leveled his pistol at me and pulled the trigger. The round landed on my chest breaking the ceramic plate in my vest and knocking me to the ground where a black-robed man walked over and brought his boot up and as it impacted my head the world went black.