It smelled of blood and piss and looked about as bad. The room was dark and the wallpaper was peeling from the walls, rot eaten boards displayed beneath like the fading ribs of the great skeleton that housed them. The light overhead flickered and swayed when the rickety door flew open and slammed shut. It cast light and shadow over a man slumped in a wooden chair with fading green paint. The concrete floor around him was strewn with rubble, dust and teeth. His sandy hair was matted to his forehead from the sweat and cuts that had dried and caked a layer of red over the side of his face. His right eye was swollen shut, his lip enlarged and scabbed over and his white shirt was stained with his lunch from the day before. He stirred when a man approached.

His vision was fading, starting with the very edges. Everything looked so indistinct, except that man. That man was tall. The man was strong and cruel. On his forehead, his neck and down his arms were black lines, tattoos that made no sense to this poor, beaten fellow's addled mind. His eyes were black and the color of metal, a mixture of dark blue and gray. His hair was dark and cut short, his jaw covered with fine stubble that would soon grow into a full beard if he didn't shave. He tugged weakly at the ropes that bound him to the chair and tried to plead but was slapped in the face with the back of this cold individual's hand. His head jerked back and he felt his lip bust again as his teeth dug into it for what had to be the hundredth time.

"Don't beg," the voice that spoke was perfectly smooth, even and infinitely calm. "It's unseemly," the man had done this before, kidnapped, tortured and killed many men before this one. He seemed the sort who liked to keep count, too. What did he say his name was" Did he ever" He couldn't remember; it was all just blood and pain. Knives hung from the man's belt in neat little slips of black leather. A gun was holstered on the opposite hip. One hand held a long machete; the blade gleamed in the flickering of the light overhead.

"Jorah, right?" the man brought the machete up beneath his chin, pressing the point into the hollow of his throat to make him look up. He dared the smallest of nods in answer. "I'm going to kill you, Jorah. You should know that. I'm going to bleed you dry, cut you up, and then toss your body over the city. You'll be in the river, the garbage, sewers'do you understand?" he began to sob. The sudden tears cleaned some of the blood, sweat and grime from his cheeks. "Stop," the machete twisted and flicked to the right to draw a bright red line of blood along his neck. "Stop. You can save yourself."

"All you have to do, Jorah, is answer my questions. You know the ones, don't you? Where is he" Where is he hiding?"

Jorah drew in a deep breath to steady himself, squeezing his one good eye shut to try and stop the well of tears. "He-" he stopped, his voice was raspy and coarse. It hurt to speak. "Rhy"Din. He w-"He went to Rhy"Din. T-that's all I k-know. P-please don't hurt m-me anymore."

"Jorah, didn't I tell you that begging is unseemly?? the man rose and drew the machete along Jorah's throat. His skin split and his trachea opened to flood with the blood that now poured freely from his throat. The poor man gurgled and choked on the thick red ichors of his life and went into a spasm in the chair that ended with him toppling over. He smelled like sh*t, piss and death. The man left the room and returned with a plastic can full of gasoline, pouring it over the dying man and using it to draw a line toward the door and down the dark hallway leading out.

He tossed the can away and twisted around to walk out the door into an alleyway. Buildings rose up around him, all old, derelict and abandoned by all but the lowliest of scum the big cities had to offer. He lit a match and flicked it behind him before walking away as fire roared in the background.

"My escape was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. I f*cking dove through a window and had to do a rooftop chase. Who does sh*t like that anymore" The damn guards wouldn't let up which I thought was funny considering the bastard they were supposed to protect was hanging from a rail with a bullet in his skull. I didn't have time to muse on the idea, though. I had a small army of pissed of men with guns who wanted really bad to shoot me. I had to get the f*ck out of there." ~ Alexander Domen " The Assassination of Aleks Skoldron, Judak City

All around him the walls exploded in a hail of gunfire. Glass shattered and flew through the air like sharp flakes of snow and drops of water. It crunched under the boots that sheathed his feet as he ran to the left where the stairs led up into the third floor. Behind him hung a man from the metal railing with a rope around his neck and a hole in his head. The bastard Aleks Skoldron had been dead for a few minutes now and Domen was the unofficial public enemy number one of Judak City. He took the steps two at a time and brought the suppressed gun in his hand up to fire at the window that was rapidly growing closer as he came to the next floor.

The hole in the glass weakened its integrity and he lunged through with an arm lifted to cover his face. It overlooked a second, smaller building with only the distance of an alleyway to jump. He flew through the air with shards of glass all around him and hit the rooftop hard with a grunt and a heavy thud. Voices carried on the wind and as he rolled to his feet and looked behind him Domen saw four men all clad in black suits bunched up at the broken remains of the window he had dived through with guns trained on him. He had to dive to the side to avoid the bullets that ripped through the air, the bang of each gunshot echoed over the city.

He ended up behind a raised part of the building that housed the door that led down from the roof. He tried the knob but found it locked. Rather than waste a bullet blasting through the lock he pressed his back against the brick wall and leaned over to get a glimpse of the men who were chasing him. More had flooded the hallway he had left and a couple was trying to climb out and jump over to his side of the building. To his right was a pot with some dead plant, he picked it up and threw it at the men as they tried their luck at jumping and blasted it away in midair. The soil and dirt flew out in great clumps and surprised, the men lost their footing and slipped into the alleyway below. Their cries were cut short when they died from the impact of the fall.

More gunshots echoed over the rooftops as Domen turned and started running. He leapt the next alleyway but came up short, fingers scraping bloody against the wall in an attempt to slow his fall. Luck had it that he landed in an open dumpster overflowing with garbage and tumbled back into the alleyway. He had to crawl back to his feet and wipe his bloodied hands on his shirt before he found his gun in the pile of trash, tucked it into the holster under his coat and turned toward the street to hail a cab.