Mathias approached the cloisters as though everything were normal. He wanted to keep his distance, but Nikki might grow suspicious if he lingered in the rain. He crossed over the earth in wet shoes.
He reached the stone-slab flooring of the cloisters.
“Stop right there!”
The voice wasn’t his. Nor was it Nikki’s. It had emanated from the corridor to the rear entrance that they had passed through.
Mathias’ head snapped up.
A soldier with close-cropped hair had his rifle raised. He looked young enough to still be a boy, younger than Mathias. And yet, he wore the uniform of a Garrison soldier. Perhaps he was just baby-faced.
The boy’s whole body was trembling. Mathias somehow sensed this even though they were over five meters apart.
The boy could only be seeing the scene as an encounter with some scoundrels who were robbing a wealthy family. How could he know that that was only half of the truth?
Mathias brought his shotgun up on reflex alone. The movement parted the front of his coat.
The weapon in his hands abruptly exploded.
What the…
No, he’d managed to pull the trigger by mistake. There was a sound up ahead like an egg cracking.
He heard Nikki gulping nearby.
Mathias looked up.
The boy from before was beginning to fall backwards. There was something wrong with his face.
Something had changed.
Something was missing.
Don’t tell me…
Mathias finally realized what. The right side of the boy’s head was gone, blown away.
Each passing second felt stretched out.
“Duccio?!”
It was a female voice that screamed this time.
A familiar voice. One that overflowed with vitality.
Except now, it was tinged with astonishment and despair.
In its wake a woman wearing the Garrison’s uniform came running into view. The voice had to be hers. A comrade or such of the boy whose head was half-gone.
A howl caught in her throat when she saw the boy in mid-fall. She raced over, reaching with her arms, but arrived a moment too late. The boy threw out his arms and legs on the stone-slab floor.
The insides of his head splattered out, plastering the woman’s legs and shoes.
She lifted her head.
Mathias had already guessed it. Of course, it had to be.
“Rita…”
They’d been reunited.
Her mouth was opening and closing as she gasped for air. “Why…”
A shot rang out next to Mathias. Fireworks sparked off the wall beside Rita. It took a moment for Mathias to work out what had happened. Nikki had fired her rifle.
“For now,” Nikki said, casual. She took Mathias by the scuff of his neck and dragged him with a strength that seemed to belie her build. All the while she kept firing rounds from her rifle with one hand, transforming the wall where Rita had been into a pockmarked mess. “Happens a lot,” she said, her voice perfectly absent of strain. The incredible force with which she hauled Mathias remained unchanged.
Why do I always let these people drag me around? Mathias reflected as though it concerned someone else.
Nikki was moving with brisk steps and was almost on the door that led to the corner room. She hurled her rifle down, opened the door, and threw Mathias in before following in behind him. It was dark, except for a square of pale light shining through the wall─a window.
Nikki tore the shotgun out of Mathias’ hands. She aimed the muzzle at the window and fired. Mathias was deafened by the thunderous report as the shutters exploded outwards from the middle.
The scene from moments ago replayed in his thoughts. The boy’s head, blown apart. Rita showing up, her eyes stretching wide in distress and horror. Her hand reaching for the body as it collapsed. Her eyes unbelieving as they turned towards Mathias. Rita actually asking him: “Why?” He hadn’t known how to respond.
Rita…
His hearing was slowly returning.
“Yup, yup. First we get out.”
Nikki lobbed the shotgun to one side and used both hands to grab Mathias by his clothes. She pulled him forwards, employing the momentum to catapult him into the wreckage of the shutters.
There was an impact, then a sudden jolt of pain. The sense of being airborne came next.
Mathias sailed into a narrow street together with the fragments of the shutters…and started to fall. Unable to bring himself around, he crashed down into the hard cobbled surface.
He was set upon by the rain and cold.
A grimy puddle of water splashed into his face. When he looked he saw that Nikki had landed soundlessly next to him. She took his collar and pulled him to his feet.
A part of his brain realized he was in a side street. Dark mansion walls towered on either side. It felt claustrophobic, as though they were bearing in on him. The sky was narrow and distant, but the rain came as though it was being tipped from a pot.
The same scene continued to play itself over and over. The boy soldier’s face, blown apart. Rita coming into view, running up to the boy. The turmoil of emotion in her eyes…
I’ll need to explain.
But how? What could he say that would make her understand? How could he possibly justify what he’d done?
“Hmm, that way?”
Nikki began to walk, dragging Mathias behind her. She hadn’t lost her composure. She was acting exactly as she usually did, humming an out-of-tune melody to herself, stroking the wall for no discernible reason. There didn’t seem to be any logic or continuity to anything she did.
Except─maybe that wasn’t true. As far as their survival was concerned, her actions hadn’t once strayed from the mark.
Nikki came to a stop and poked her head around the side of the building. She was checking the situation on the road.
“Ah, that’s what I call good timing.” She observed a while longer, then stepped forward without ceremony. Mathias was pulled into the road with her.
A wagon approached. One man was driving it, while another stood in the uncovered cart. Nikki strolled down the street with no apparent concern, her arm slung around Mathias’ shoulder.
They were, by now, completely soaked, and Mathias’ hair hung wetly over his forehead.
The wagon started to slow, eventually coming to a full stop beside them.
“Something wrong?” the driver said from under his hood. The voice belonged to Klaus.
“I think Bernhardt got detention,” Nikki shared, springing onto the wagon.
“Damn it,” Klaus swore.
The man on the cart─judging by his size, Jarratt─extended two bulky arms towards the road.
“It happens, I suppose,” the old man said. Taking hold of Mathias on both sides, he hoisted him lightly into the air and set him roughly down by his side. “We’ll need to get out of here, for now.”
“Agreed.”
Without a pause Klaus whipped the horse.
The wagon began to move, and the vibration rocked Mathias up and down. His joints ached from his earlier fall.
The farther they got from his childhood home, the more he felt like throwing up.
“Rita…”
Unable to bear it, Mathias leaned over the lip of the wagon and actually vomited a little.
The rain washed the juices from the street.
Things weren’t right.
They weren’t supposed to be this way.
CONTINUED IN PART 2