Elias Valor
The smell of exhaust from the towering factory impaled Elias' nose like a sinister miasma, making his right cheek wriggle, his expression returning to normal in an instant.
Thunderous rain droplets hit his black leather overcoat as he stepped into the deserted alleyway that wound into the distance. The district was void of the living, but not the dead.
With each step, his feet made soft squelches as they sank into the wet ground, died in blood. His fingers stroked the sleek hand cannon strapped to his belt, not minding the flies that buzzed around his ears.
As he stepped on the wet corpses in his path, they lost their integrity, reduced to a pulp as yellow, rotten liquid oozed out of the dead bodies, coupled with intestines and bile that were no longer recognizable. The stench was terrible, but Elias didn't wince. However, someone did.
"Ugh!" Grey threw up, retching a few more times before falling to his knees.
"Curse the gods… why am I even on this mission?" Grey spat, pressing his inner elbow into his nose.
His youthful, round face looked even more childlike in his oversized coat that fell to his ankles, sweeping the muddy ground. At a first glance, one would mistake him for a mid-teen, but he was a few years above that category.
His hazel eyes were stuck on Elias, as they flicker with fluctuating emotions. Too bad, this hitman paid him no attention as he continued walking into the distance as though nothing could stop him.
He felt his stomach churn, wondering how he ended up on the same team as this insidious fellow on his first mission, just after joining the gang three days prior.
"Eyes on binoculars." Elias' flat voice rang in Grey's ears, making him tensed up, returning his gaze to the binoculars in his hands.
Elias, on the other hand, had only one thing on his mind. The mission.
In the middle of never-ending gang wars, organ trafficking was a lucrative job, a major source of income for the smaller gangs affiliated to the major Mafia groups in and outside the country.
And their mission today was simple. They were to harvest the organs of the dead, refugee children locked in a basement to rot away somewhere in this death zone. As for how the children got there and who ended them, Elias had no idea, and neither did he want to.
The rain fell with lesser intensity, but the cloud thickened, blending with the black exhaust from the factory before Elias. The two figures looked like dwarves around the abandoned, dilapidated buildings that tower into the sky, and their squelches against the bloodied water sent a soft, eerie ripple to the deserted street.
"C-curse… this can't be…" The binoculars fell from Grey's hands, splashing dirty water on his coat.
Elias readied his rifle, turning swiftly, his eyes narrowing with lethal observational skills as he shot Grey an indifferent glance.
"What?" Elias asked, his brows arched.
Grey gulped, pointing forward. His face drained of colour.
Looking toward Grey's finger, Elias retracted his gaze, picking the binoculars from the mud.
Glancing at Grey once again with a pray-I-don't-kill-you look — he squinted his eyes as he looked through the binoculars. Then his vision changed to a grey world of uneven curvatures.
Allowing his eyes to adjust to the new scenery, Elias saw something in the distance. It was walking, approaching them. On further look, he could discern the appearance of whatever it was. A little girl, who looked seven years old.
Not just any little girl, though… she was heavy. Maybe a few days to her labour, or perhaps hours.
Elias' grip on the binoculars tightened, and for the first time in a while, his expression actually fell apart. Sucking in a deep breath, he returned the binoculars to Grey as he advanced as though nothing happened.
His strides became shorter, slower, and heavier. The corpses parted a way for him as they released pus and rotten viscera into the stagnant, muddy ground. After a minute passed, Elias could see the girl silhouette at the horizon, just at the mouth of the oppressing alleyway.
Grey's footsteps seemed to falter behind him, but Elias didn't even spare him a glance. He kept walking as though he hadn't discovered the girl's existence — and then he moved.
His fingers manoeuvred around the hand cannon and then, with a tweak, he pulled the trigger. An explosion rang out, and the recoil force jerked him backwards, but he regained his balance swiftly, his eyes locked on his target with an impassive face.
"What the hell did you just do?" Grey barked, pulling Elias' arms, his olive skin turning red with imploding emotions.
Far in the distance, the lifeless body of the seven-year-old girl lay in the mud. The blast had ripped open her belly, scattering her viscera and the remains of an infant. Fresh blood mixed with rotten waters, and so did the body discharge of a mother to be flowed from her privates.
"I-" Grey froze, seeing Elias yank him off as he continued to move, approaching the new corpse — his strides steady.
"A few seconds later, and she would have pulled the trigger herself, leaving everything here in ruins." Elias clicked his tongue, wondering who could be so depraved as to impregnate a seven-year-old girl and then turn her into a suicide bomber.
'Not really my cup of tea that you were unlucky, poor thing.' Elias shrugged, giving a slight bow toward the girl.
Yet… just as he tried to raise his head, he found his body stiffened. He couldn't move.
The first thing he tried to do was grab his hand cannon, but his face creased, seeing that he couldn't even move a finger. Then came the pain that thundered in his mind.
"Argh.'' Elias fell into the black waters as his legs disintegrated. His flesh wriggled against each other as though they had come alive, and with every fleeting moment, his body continued to disintegrate.
'N-no way I'm dying.'
This was his thought, but he couldn't even mutter it aloud. He could only suffer the flesh-eating torture in silence as his vision eventually blanked off. He was no more.