Chapter Text
Something’s not right, I think to my myself, but it’s not worth bringing up. I can’t put my finger on it. Ash hacks past the security code with practiced ease, and soon we’re filing into the lobby of the building.
“See you guys on the roof,” Ash tells the others as he signals me to follow him. Our paths diverge when Corey, Tony and Mark approach different doors.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited. In the sliver of time it takes for the elevator doors to shut, I catch Corey’s black and white gaze down the hall and she nods in reassurance. The elevator’s mechanical hum fills the silence and jerks us upwards. Aimless reflection strikes me for a few seconds. Mark attends our evenings like it’s his job - dutiful but enthusiastic. Tony’s honestly blitzed as shit half the time (speedball…? Whatever the hell he brings to our hideout. I don’t touch the hard stuff), but at least he has a good time. Ash orchestrates everything and Corey, Corey’s just there. Well, Corey comes, Corey’s here because—
The elevator slows to a thud, a soft ding indicating our arrival at the floor. I stare dumbly at the crack between the doors for a few seconds, and when they don’t part I notice Ash has his thumb jammed on the button to keep them closed.
“Not yet,” Ash says. “Don’t you need to get ready?”
“Oh please,” I snort. “I was practically fluttering on the way here.”
I punctuate it with a laugh, for good measure (c’mon let’s get on with it ).
“Fair enough,” he exhales. “Three… two…”
“ One .” I swat his hand away from the button, and in a final protest of impatience I jab at the other button that opens them.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited. The elevator doors recede slowly like curtains, strip of fluorescent light spilling into the lift. We’re exposed. Widening my stance, I grip the starter rope of my chainsaw - thirty pounds of monstrous steel - and jerk it back with a whip of upper body. The messy, deep roar of motor feels like a purr to me now. Something warm starts to move with my blood, something aching deeper than bone.
Ash, as always, let’s me go first. I practically leap into the open, gut growling hungry for something other than dumb euphoria.
Everything is so intimately loud and dangerously close - I'm alive. I'm reborn.
The rush is numbing but at the same time I've become hypersensitive. I'm acutely aware of every impact a stomp makes on the floor while oblivious to the blossoming bruises on my body from bad dodges. It doesn't keep me from missing a beat though, it never does. Charging at what I think is the last guy in the room, I thrust my weight forward from cover for a bodily slam and full entry into the mobster's chest down to the floor. To be dramatic (which I'll come to regret), I straddle him, driving the saw downwards to take in the snaps of rib. His lungs become pulp in the cavity of his decimated rib cage, bits of it flinging out onto the surrounding floor. I think he was screaming. But really, it's kind of hard to hear anything nowadays with the constant hum of motor in the background. My ears are ringing by the time I finish.
This... copper vapor in the air drives me nuts. I inhale in the catharsis of watching sprays of blood seep into his fine white suit. He's definitely still got some internal contractions going on, because it looks like he's giving a retch and then a mouthful of rich blood spills from his lips. I hear a distorted look out.
Holy shit, I'm an idiot. I'm a fucking dumbass, chainsaw hilt-deep in some asshole's chest (maybe even into the floor) without enough time to tear it out before another dick from behind the corner makes the ten meter dash to put a knife in my back. I’m tugging frantically at the handles, the teeth of the chainsaw still too fucking deep. Deep enough to have me slashed up and dead by the time it comes out.
I turn in the last seconds. Where I’m expecting, hoping that he just all makes this fast, easy, painless... I see the fucker a yard away buckle over and crumple to the ground in front of me. Red pooling from both sides of his head.
Ash lowers his silencer by the door frame, leaning against it with his arms crossed. He's fuming.
"What the fuck was that?"
"I thought he was the last one," I stutter.
"And what kind of finish was that even?! " I don't answer that. He's raising his voice. "You can't keep doing that, especially when I'm not behind you!"
Well not my fucking fault you're always jittering like, ten yards behind me, I don't say. I can almost feel his glare tighten behind his mask.
"We have to get out of these things alive. You almost died." Ash lowers his head and the next words are quieter. "...Can't lose you here."
I'm sorry. I care about you too. I fucked up- all words that I can't seen to get out. Instead, I can only nod. A slow motion, like my head is a hefty thing, an apologetic gesture that I know he'll understand the depth of.
As much as I would like to take in the glory of the mangled mobster underneath me, we aren't done here. I'm sure Ash would love to join me in a relaxing bask in the copper sauna of the room as well. If they were here - Mark would get a kick out of it, Tony would laugh too. Corey'd usually find a way to make the mess more obscene, somehow. But we aren't done here. I stumble onto my feet and the saw comes out with a final heave, released from its deranged sheath. Stepping over bodies with completely inappropriate finesse, I make my way to the door while Ash lets out a snicker. Good, he's not mad anymore.
I peer past the door and into the hallway to size up what I see. Just enough to see the guy. To see the gun. To see the completely bewildered, crazy-eyed horror enveloping his expression as he stumbles backwards into the far wall. It’s a deep rumble, then a dry laugh that I cough up at the sight. It’s so cute . If I couldn’t feel my own overwhelming rising pulse clouding up behind my vision, maybe I would’ve gotten a better look.
This one’s different from the others. His face is soft and oval shaped, fey and pretty. Clear skin, dark hair like the rest, no scars and far too young to get caught up in shit like this. A terrible stance on top of his wildly trembling grip. Maybe it’s the assurance that comes from his shitty control over the revolver, or the fact that he’s scared out of his mind backed into the corner. Maybe it’s my complete disregard for risks in the adrenaline haze. Either way, something gives me the balls to take a wide step from cover into the hall to face the guy.
“Alex what the fuck are y-” Ash screams from cover behind me.
“Watch.”
One, two, three. He gets three potshots out that fly past me, each sharp bang more deliberate than the last. But still awful nonetheless. The futility of his concentration and beading sweat is kind of hilarious. See, the thing is, this guy expects me to act like a normal fucking person, maybe do so much as flinch when the fourth bullet whizzes past my head so close it leaves a ring in my ear. I don’t think he expects me to see each shot as a beckoning call, and he definitely doesn't expect me to give my saw a rev before I make my way closer. Ash is probably losing his goddamn mind - the fifth still misses, lands with with a shatter somewhere behind me.
I think he's out, actually. I know he's out because this baby lamb drops the gun to raise his arms in a blubbering surrender.
"Stop! You don't, you don't have to do this-" A stammering wail, like the cornered animal he is. Aww. I give my saw a few good and loud revs, just to see his face contort and his body recoil further, back melding into the wall. The hot feeling spreads through my veins again. I bring it closer to hover over his face, spinning chain of teeth and all and get this - he squeaks as he sinks to the floor and onto his heels.
"Please! My father, h-he, he works with the boss of this place, I can get you money, drugs, whatever you want," the coil in my gut is fucking swimming to see him beg, too see his life dangling under my hands and the big chaste tears that stream down his hiccuping face. What's the mileage I can get out of this guy.
"Yeah?" I finally say, muffled words all faux-sympathetic. "Where the fuck is he?"
He stares back at me all wide-eyed with realization. He's working himself onto his legs, still giddy, and the gasping relief is in his voice, in his expression. "Ooh, fuck, Thank god, thank you I... He's just right-"
I don’t give him the satisfaction of finishing. Practically throwing the weight of the saw down, it connects with his forehead. Then the bridge of his nose, then inside his head and I don't even want to blink just so I can take in the sight of it all. Cliché, I know, but it comes out like a fountain. Actually, it's more of a garden sprinkler sort of deal because the spinning teeth of the saw fling a spray of myriad blood specks everywhere. The wall behind him's stained, and my clothes and mask catch most of the mist. Sucking in a breath, I work my way downwards to finish splitting the skull. There's enough friction in the cut to feel the brittleness of the bone as the cracks resonate satisfyingly down the chain. Funny how naturally it comes when they don't put up a fight, I realize.
I finally step back. My chainsaw slides out wetly but what's left of the guy's head seems to chase it, leaving it hunched over in its lap. My heart pumps hotly, my breaths are heady things that catch in the mask as I admire my handiwork- it's beautiful. His hair got caught with the blade so it creeps in as a tangled black mass into the crevice of his skull. What's left of it is split wide open, chunks spilling from what would have been a respectable cross-section.
It takes the firm hand that grounds itself on my shoulder to snap out of it. It takes Ash's guiding fingers to lower the saw completely. Oh, I think, he had to watch the whole thing.
"...You freak," he mumbles. Fuck, I don't want to look him in the eye.
"He really was the last one, though," I murmur.
At least it gets the job done. When I turn to him, it's beyond me whether he's shocked, disappointed or impressed (it'd be just as hard to read without the mask on, really).
"Up," it's all he says. Then he jerks his chin up, gesturing at the ceiling.
"To the rooftop."