Dismantled

8:42 PM Shiva

My anxiety grew as I neared the safe house up the snaking road in an aging hatchback. I was truly torn between my loyalty to the league and my personal honor, and I was unsure what decision I was going to make: kill the boy and avoid Wayne like I was ordered or keep the boy and engage Wayne as my honor demanded?

If I obeyed, I would have to live with dishonor. However, if I disobeyed, I would be excommunicated and marked for death by the Demon.

I could see the cottage nestled at the top of the hill, bordered on two sides by rising terrain. The lights were off except for a single flickering light on the porch. Unusual—flickering lights tended to draw attention...

The lonely road ended at a circular driveway in the front of a spartan stone edifice with a barren tree at the focus of the circle. Two equally aged vehicles were parked at the top of the circle near a stone wall that bordered the walkway to the porch and front door. The wall was not much higher than a man was tall, and it had a fist-sized spout through which rainwater was fed to a barren garden. To the right of the wall and the garden was the porch with flickering light, casting a ring of dull, flashing yellow on a red door and dusty cement, making the darkness around the porch seem impenetrable with my eyes constantly attempting to adjust to the strobe.

The house was dead silent; in fact, no one came outside to check my vehicle's approach. I had a most terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my heart pounded against my ribcage. I started a breathing protocol to calm my nerves.

As I neared the porch, I noticed the door was slightly ajar and hanging from a single hinge. The porch was blanketed with splinters and sawdust, too. Then, I saw bullet holes in the door, roughly ten. There had been a firefight, although I didn't see casings outside.

I peeked in before I pushed the door open, and I was hit by an acrid chemical smell—tear gas or what was left over. I blinked hard several times to clear my eyes and spotted a bat-shaped blade jutting from the door frame. Wayne had been here, and he had already dismantled the intel team. Anger swelled in the space where anxiety evaporated.

Bullet casings, weapons, bodies, and blood littered the room. The walls looked like sponges with the number of holes in them; the team fired in all directions. Wayne had had the drop on them, impaired their senses, drove them into a panic, forced them to waste their ammunition, and then took them apart.

He strung two operatives from the ceiling; they swayed slowly in the stillness, creaking rhythmically. He crumpled one in the corner, leaving the operative with a nasty, compound, open fracture. He slumped another over a shattered piece of furniture. And, he left several sprawled on the floor in heaps beneath debris. No one's wounds were lethal.

I shook my head and flipped a light switch, but the light did not illuminate. I went to a nearby lamp and realized that it was missing the bulb. He did not even spare the lamps. Wayne was nothing if not thorough.

I rummaged through nearby tool bags where I found a flashlight finally and turned it on, scanning the room. Wayne tore the place apart and absconded the team's hard drives and cellular devices. He compromised an entire League intelligence team. All the preparation, planning, training, and finances that go into intelligence team—poof, wrecked in a matter of minutes by Wayne.

The Demon will have a fit when he finds out and will surely initiate a purge of malevolent proportions.

Then, there was a cough and a groan. Startled, I snapped the flashlight in the direction of the sound. An operative stirred as he regained consciousness.

The stir angered me. The operative should be dead, but Wayne didn't have it in him to kill. He never did. How could the Demon covet a man with such a weakness? The scene was all a ruse, a stage play, made to look like a setting from a horror theater production. It was a disgrace.

I would do what Wayne could not. I picked up a pistol and placed it against the forehead of the operative who slowly regained consciousness. He looked at me with foggy, distant eyes, and I pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened.

I pulled the trigger again.

Click.

I checked it: a round was chambered, and the magazine was properly set. The weapon was clean too. Nothing seemed wrong. I tried one more time.

Click.

"Bah!" I belched, tossing the weapon away and scooping up another. I pressed the barrel into the operative's temple and mashed the trigger.

Click.

I growled and threw it against the wall, and I picked up a rifle and pulled the trigger. Still, nothing happened. Furious, I opened the weapon's receiver and noticed that it was missing its firing pin.

Unreal.

I checked another. Its firing pin was also missing.

And, another. Same.

And, another.

Wayne was detestable! He had removed the firing pin from every weapon in the house! He even pulled the pins on the team's flashbangs and smoke grenades!

He thought he could prevent deaths by disabling the weapons. Oh, he was so very mistaken. I didn't need a gun to finish the job. No, I was a weapon.

As the operative tried to sit up, I smashed his face with the handle of the gun. Blood splattered. Then I grabbed his head and jerked it an unholy direction until it snapped. The operative's death rattle didn't make me feel any better and, I suspected eliminating the rest wouldn't either. Only closure with Wayne could do it.

I had come to a decision: I would disobey and deal with the consequences.