“The hell did he run off to?!”

  “I saw ‘im go this way!”

  “Us three just came from there! We’d’ve seen ‘im if he did!”

  Elsewhere in the alleys of Stratford, the frantic chase had begun to peter out. Confusion ran rampant amidst Henry’s pursuers after several long minutes of constant misdirection, jumping at shadows, and –for some of the unluckier grunts – the occasional hamstringing. Frustration was mounting between the members of the Gentleman’s Club, as contradicting information forced them to run in circles chasing a target just beyond their reach.

  “Damn it, I can’t believe you let that scrawny bastard get past you lot! We almost had ‘im!”

  “OUR fault?! You all charged off on your own to chase him in the first place! We wouldn’t be split up nearly half as much if YOU had just stuck to the plan!”

  Unbeknownst to the arguers down below, however, their target was observing them from nearby, listening in silently as it played out. Or, rather, it would be more accurate to say targets.

  The duplicates had to imagine they had tipped their hand enough for them to figure out there was more than one of them, but to what extent they couldn’t say for certain.

  From the second story of a nearby building, they lie in wait in the darkness, the most recent of them still catching his breath from his narrow escape while the other two paid rapt attention to the fallout just outside the open window. By this point, the meltdown outside was slowly reaching a crescendo.

  “Hey! My mum is a lovely, upstanding woman, ya git! I have half a mind to smack ya right now for that!”

  The angry bickering picked up steam at a runaway pace from that point. It was all the three of them could do to repress a snicker at the antics of the crowd of hotheads they’d led on a wild goose chase.

  Then a howl cut through the night air, and the heated discussion outside screeched to an abrupt halt.

  “Hey, maybe we should take this inside for now…”, one of the previously vocal arguers said meekly.

  A few mutters and grunts of assent could be heard from the rest of the crowd, and the sound of their footsteps carried off into the distance towards their headquarters.

  And just like that, the world became silent once again. The three of them lie in wait for a short while longer, but when nothing changed in their vicinity they decided together that the coast was clear. One of them tore the activation tab off a disposable light talisman, and in the dim glow they reconvened to assess the development of the current situation.

  “Think that he pulled it off?”

  “Hm, hard to say,” the clone who had done the last bit of running surmised as his breathing relaxed. “At the very least, he hasn’t died yet, so we should be on track to reach Step 2 now.”

  “There’s no way it went exactly the way we hoped for, though, is there?” One of the others began the question, only to be followed up by the third. “If there’s anything that we can say for sure, it’s that the last thing that will ever happen is us catching a break.

  “Look, I’m in the dark as much as you guys are,” the runner said in response to the other two. “We’ve done our part for now. All we can do is wait to see what happens on his end of things.”

  “That, and get ready for what happens next, right?”

  “Well, naturally. Whether we hear from him again or not, we still have a few parts to play.”

  He rose to his feet and dusted himself off. Considering the huge quantity of long abandoned buildings in Hallow London, the attempt to self-clean was probably futile, but that had yet to stop any of them from breaking the habit so far.

  “We should start getting ready,” he announced. “We’ll have our answer by tonight, after all.”

  < -|- -|- >

  Henry was forced to squint his eyes shut as he went from total darkness to a singular, blinding light.

  The harsh white of the bulb was enough to get him to grunt in mild discomfort, and if his hands hadn’t been tied to the steel chair he was currently confined to, he’d be using both arms to shield his eyes right about now.

  The reality of his situation was much different than what he would wish for, unfortunately. With little else in the way of options, he resorted to rapidly blinking the spots out of his eyes as his vision adjusted to the windowless room around him.

  It was, truth be told, being held in little more than a poured concrete box. He was guessing some part of the building’s basement, or maybe somewhere in the parking garage that adjoined it, but he couldn’t say for certain. He was pretty sure, at least, that they had taken him to the abandoned offices after they’d knocked him out. Why wouldn’t they? He was right there at their base of operations, far closer than any other safehouse they might have squirreled away somewhere.

  This was either their jail cell or their interrogation room. Considering that the Gentlman’s Club were often notoriously alleged to cram as many unlucky sods into one cage as they could fit, his money was on the latter. Though he doubted anyone would take him on that bet. The card table, the one bright lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and the Harpy glowering at him from the corner were all pretty good indicators.

  Idly, he wondered how they’d entered, considering the size of the doorway. Navigating around inside had to be be a pain when you contended with a terrifyingly impressive set of steel wings strapped to you back 24/7.

  Must have to sidestep through every doorway. It’s the only way he could think to make it possible.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  It was a question he didn’t have a good answer to at the moment. Like many others that, currently, were more pressing. His vision finally cleared now that the shock of the bulb had worn off, he turned his head towards his jailer.

  “So, uh, my head’s still a little fuzzy,” he lied. “Remind me again why you didn’t just kill me outright like you very much intended to earlier?”

  No response came. Whether from being ignored or from not being heard, he couldn’t say. Both were equally likely.

  Both also had the same root cause. Something that Henry still felt a little guilty about.

  “Dear Lord…” Henry muttered. “He’s really done a number on you since last time, hasn’t he?”

  Again, no response came.

  To him, the lack of words was more damning than any retort he could have received. A multitude of emotions swirled under the surface, as he looked upon what had once been a person, slowly reduced further and further towards being a tool.

  Anger. Sadness. Self-loathing. Back to anger with a little bit of hatred mixed in. Anxiety as the silence began to creep on for several minutes. That last one was entirely his own fault. He’d had a bit of a habit of talking to himself even before the Shroud came down. That had only gotten worse when he became able to – quite literally – talk to himself, to the point where dead silence genuinely made him uncomfortable.

  He felt unclean. He was staring consequences of previous actions dead in the eye, and here he was upset that they’d gone quiet. Told you everything you needed to know about his priorities, didn’t it?

  The minutes stretched on, and so did the quiet. Not even the wind from outside or the occasional wolf call in the distance that he’d grown accustomed to hearing made its way to them. All that was left was to stare at each other, and wait. The unblinking nature of the Harpy’s eye lens felt like it was boring a hole into his very being with each passing moment. Like each second longer that it stared, a single drop of vitriol dropped into a bucket labeled after his life’s mistakes.

  He imagined it must be near to overflowing, by this point.

  The Harpy stiffened its muscles, seemingly at random to an outside observer. Henry knew better.

  The man responsible for the other Devil’s condition was close enough to have finer control over his leash.

  Without much beating around the bush, Guillaume entered the dingy holding area. Same cheap suit he remembered him wearing last time, same even cheaper cologne that seemed to follow him like a cloud wherever he went. Old. Past his prime – at least in the physical sense. He still had those sharp-looking eyes, sunken behind an even sharper-looking hook of a nose. Balding up top, but the goatee was still going strong. Somehow.

  What did surprise Henry, however, was the fact that the mob boss in all but name didn’t arrive alone. As a matter of fact, it appeared that he had brought along the very same thug that had trapped them both in that floor trap about… an hour ago? The time difference was a little hazy, between being knocked out and unable to check his watch.

  Guillaume spared a glance towards Henry, looking down his nose with an ever-present sneer at his captive. He spoke with few words, the barest hints of that infuriating French accent slipping in just enough to make him want to grit his teeth.

  “I’ll deal with you in a moment,” he growled before returning his attention to the man accompanying him.

  “I must congratulate you on your successful catch of this… miscreant that has caused me such trouble, Monsieur…”

  “Ah, Halsey, sir,” the previously nameless man mumbled. “And, uh, I’m really glad for getting such high praise from someone such as yourself, but surely you must be very busy-”

  He was very obviously trying to walk on eggshells with his boss. His entire posture screamed that he wanted to be anywhere but in the room that had both the man he’d pledged himself to, and the winged murder-borg brooding in the corner. Guillaume had other ideas.

  “Silence,” the old man commanded, holding up his palm in a gesture that brooked no argument. On the knuckles, the digits 0008 were visible – strangely oriented so that Henry could read them without any issues, the exact opposite of what they should have been from this angle.

  The man’s – Halsey’s – breath hitched in his throat, looking like he was about to agree before realizing he was supposed to stay quiet.

  “Now,” Guillaume continued. “There is one more matter that you must attend to. As you may have gathered, there was a bit of a faux pas that happened between you and my right hand man, oui? And, as chairman of our little organization, it falls to me to mediate this small internal dispute.”

  He reached into the inner pocket of his suit, removing from within a small, fake leather container roughly the size of a glasses case. He passed it to Halsey, who looked at it puzzled a moment before opening it up.

  The contents slid out onto the card table he was standing by, right in front of Henry and beneath the blindingly white light. On the table, a single-edged blade similar in design to a paring knife lay on one side, shadow-less on account of the bulb directly above it.

  “It is a small transgression, all considered…” the crime lord spoke in a low tone to his subordinate. “I believe the last digit on your pinky finger would be enough to cover your debts, non?”

  Halsey’s eyes widened as the man broke out in a cold sweat near instantly. His eyes flitted between Guillaume, then to the Harpy, then down to the knife, and finally back to Guillaume. Licking his lips nervously, he forced his gaze back to the knife, hands trembling as he gripped the handle between his fingers and his palm.

  His breathing came shaky as he tried to psych himself up to finish the job. The blade pressed against the joint, a tiny crease of blood pooling at the edge where metal broke through the skin. Halsey took several quick, sharp breaths in and out, a last ditch effort to push past the self-preservation instinct that kept one from mutilating themselves.

  “I…” he stammered, coming to a terrifying conclusion. “I c-can’t do it, s-s-s-sir…”

  Guillaume let out a huff of frustration. “So be it.”

  The digits on the back of the old man’s hand wavered ever so slightly as he raised his hand, splaying the fingers outward. Halsey froze completely, breathing forcibly shallowed as the tremors in his body subsided.

  His movements were no longer his own. The crime lord left him with a few parting words.

  “You, mon ami, are a subordinate who has no sense of sacrifice...”

  Guillaume twisted his outstretched wrist slowly, and Halsey unflinchingly brought the blade of the knife to his own neck. He did not panic. He was past the point of even being physically capable of that. Knowing that was enough to make Henry’s blood boil.

  “A man such as that lacks potential. Something I cannot abide by in my own organization.”

  The blade sliced across his neck with a single, swift motion. Blood fountained below his chin as the life-giving arteries were cleanly severed.

  “Such a man can never be a Gentleman. You have no place with us.”

  Halsey’s body fell to the floor in a heap. It was all Henry could do to choke down the vomit that threatened to rise up out of his throat. Guillaume stared him down as the still warm body bled on the floor, scouring his microexpressions for a reaction.

  “Now,” the living grease stain said to him. “Why, exactly, do I find you at my doorstep, starting a fight with my men?”

  A cold, hardened gaze met Henry’s own. Deep down, he was once again sickened by the man’s actions. Once again, he needed to keep those feelings bottled up for the sake of living to see another day.

  His position was tenuous, at best. The home team advantage lay squarely with the literal cutthroat across from him. If he failed now… well, he himself wouldn’t have to worry about it for much longer, but his duplicates would be stuck high and dry without him.

  Henry let out a shallow exhale, putting on the same facade of calm that had seen him through his last encounter with the man. They both knew it was total bull, but maintaining appearances held high value to the shady Frenchman.

  “I’m here to cut a deal,” he stated plainly. “I need a favor. From one Devil to another.”