TW: Graphic violence, torture scene, dark themes.

— Chapter 86 —
Death by a Thousand Cuts

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N O A H

Chains drove his blood-covered fist into the ribs of a murderer.

Through Han's busted lips escaped a throaty groan. With his wrists zip-tied to the arms of a wooden chair and his ankles shackled to the legs, he was slumped over in his seat, splotched red with fresh bruises and bleeding through his ripped clothes.

"Quit bitching," Chains warned, knotting the ribbon of a bandage over his knuckles. "This is just the warm-up."

He tied up the cloth with his teeth before hammering another punch into Han's battered ribcage. A cough of blood dripped down the bastard's chin.

I was on the edge again.

Rays of moonlight slashed through the darkness of the empty warehouse, filtering in through the shutters and catching against the beads of sweat on Chains' exposed back. His sleeper build was marred with the faintest hints of scratches, bruises and scars—some of which I figured were Sage's handiwork, and others I knew were trophies from previous battles.

His fists slammed into Han. Over and over again, until the warehouse started to come alive with echoes of the bastard's pain.

You can't kill him! He needs our help!

Observing the onslaught with unblinking eyes, I was sitting in the shadows only a few feet behind them, making no movements aside from the occasional bouncing of my leg. A choking sense of anxiety had blossomed in my stomach like an invasive weed, and it'd spent the last three hours forcing its roots through my barren veins.

Would you please just listen to me!

I'd bitten cuts around the piercing in my tongue. My jaw ached from the burn of constantly grinding my teeth together. Chills raced up and down my spine, burning and freezing, breaking me into a cold sweat that I couldn't control. The cigarette that'd been sitting between my fingers had long been forgotten, only falling once the flames had gotten close enough to singe skin.

Haven't you hit enough lows for one night?

I wanted out of my own body.

Leave me alone.

Yanking a wallet out of Han's pocket, Chains soon got to turning its compartments inside-out.

"Ticket stubs," he listed, "loyalty cards, parking permits—" Tossing away stray licenses and IDs, he popped a callous smirk when he found the cash. "Two hundred dollars? You shouldn't have."

Pocketing the money, he soon turned his attention to Han's driver's license.

"Jesus," he remarked, squinting to read better. "No wonder you go by your last name. I can't even pronounce that."

Han managed a rutted scoff.

Here he fucking was. Bound up and trapped, after weeks of trying to hunt him down, quite literally sitting across the floor from death incarnate. The scumbag's head hung limply off rigid shoulders. A coat of sweat had drenched his paling neck and chest, darkening the fabric of his black shirt. He was going to make one ugly fucking corpse.

"Nineteen years old," Chains recited off the ID. "Apartment on Hillcrest Avenue, and... huh. This license says you're six feet tall." He smacked the wallet against the back of Han's head. "Motherfucker, you barely look over 5'9. No freaky face scar in this photo, though."

He tossed the rest of the belongings away. Fishing a fresh knife from his boot, Chains leaned down and snapped his fingers in Han's face. It was an attempt to search for some semblance of activity behind the kid's deserted eyes.

"You got any relatives?" he asked. "Parents? Cousins? Baby-mamas?"

"Parents," came a mutter. "Shanghai."

Chains scoffed disparagingly. "What, they shipped you off to America for boarding school or something?"

This time, nothing.

Displeased, the Stray Dog smacked the side of Han's face. "I'd get to talking. You know, while your teeth are still pretty." He gestured in my general direction. "The two of us need to know how big of a clean-up we'll have on our hands when we decide to slit your throat."

A weak groan and a spit of blood later, Han persisted in his silence.

Chains gritted his teeth. "What, now you don't got nothing to say?" The tip of his blade lined itself along Han's jaw. "No apologies to make to the people whose friend you murdered? Motherfuckers tend to say anything and everything when they've got a knife to their face." He grabbed a fistful of cropped, black hair. "I have to pass you some credit, at least. Most people in your shoes would be pissing themselves in tears by now. "

The biker's knife sliced a shallow wound through pale skin. Han winced, his bruised face scrunching and contorting against the pain. A thin stream of blood trickled down the veins that were jumping in his throat.

More silence.

"Really? Still nothing?" Chains tutted curtly. "This is starting to feel like a very one-sided conversation."

He was gearing up to cut him again, but a wheezy mumble stopped him.

Chains craned his head. "What was that?"

Han tilted his chin up against the shimmering blade. The scar over his eye strained menacingly against the blinding moonlight, his daring eyes filling with the silhouette of his bloodthirsty captor.

"I said," he slowly whispered, "that Midas' knives are sharper."

A malicious laugh left Chains' throat.

"Is that how you got the scar?" He tapped Han's cheek with the knife, just below the lacerated skin, but the bastard made no moves to reply. "You know, if you're trying to be smart, I'd shut the fuck up. The two of us have a lot of pent-up rage. Testing our patience is only going to make it worse for you."

I watched Han fidget in his chair and choke down a slow gulp.

Chains noticed too, huffing in petty amusement.

"Heh. Don't worry, kid," he reassured. "I'll keep you alive until morning. In the meantime, we'll have to be careful not to cut you too deep, isn't that right?" The words rumbled like thunder off his lips. "Slow and steady wins the fucking race."

With one effortless flick of his wrist, Chains nicked a wound at the bastard's collarbone. Death by a thousand cuts, I thought, relishing the idea, and subconsciously keeping count.

Nine hundred and ninety-three cuts left to go.

In a spare moment that he found amidst the torture, Han grunted under his breath, "I never should have put my faith in that stupid bartender."

I lurched up off my chair.

Chains managed to step out of my warpath in time for me to land a clean strike against the sorry motherfucker's nose. Han's coughing groans led into a series of wheezy gasps that ended with drips of scarlet spraying against the floor.

I forced his face into my merciless grip and stared him dead in the fucking eyes.

"That bartender is the only reason you're still breathing."

It was clear when hostility of my words had pierced through. Han's eyes quivered. The sight enraged me further. I wanted my hands covered in blood again.

I wanted to make him bleed.

"This doesn't make any fucking sense," I murmured, tugging the back of my hair. "I don't fucking get it."

Chains was more than willing to pass me his knife as I scraped my chair over to sit in front of Han. Colliding onto the seat, I snatched Han by strands of his hair, trying to subdue the rage that had every muscle in my body shaking.

He's playing me.

"This is all just a game to you, isn't it?" I asked. My expression was sinister, the tip of my blade biting into his eyelid. "You're trying to convince us that you've had a sudden change of heart—that you've switched sides—but you're wasting your fucking breath."

Han shuddered a slow gasp. I could feel him trembling; I could see the panic swirling in his eyes.

No Midas to protect you now.

"This is all another one of his tricks," I gritted out in mindless haste. "He's playing a game with us. That's it, isn't it? He's playing a fucking game. Midas is moving his pieces again, huh? What's he planning this time?"

Han squirmed in his chair as my knife pressed deeper into his skin, silent squeaks escaping his throat.

"What's your angle?"

A familiar heat of blood tickled a path down my nose before I got the chance to dig my blade into the prick's eye socket.

Another goddamn nosebleed. I tilted my head up and sighed harshly.

For fuck's sake.

Han's eyes widened as I went to smear the blood away, then slowly narrowed into a look of realization. I couldn't decipher what he was thinking—except that somehow, in that moment, I'd outed myself.

"You took it too," he spoke between us, and I knew immediately that he was talking about Blitz.

Let's hope I kill you before it fucking kills me.

With a violent screech, the metal door of the warehouse was pushed open on its rusted wheels. I moved off the chair in an instant; my eyes flicked to face our new arrival. It was James—in all his infuriating glory.

I didn't think it was possible, but his expression somehow fell lower at the sight of us.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted, storming towards us. "When I said I knew a place, I meant so that you'd have somewhere to keep him, not so you could beat him half to death!"

Chains grinned.

"Only half?" Stretching out his shoulder, he decided, "We need to start punching harder."

"You won't stand to benefit from killing him," James argued. Examining the damage, he sighed in frustration.

"I'd say that him being wiped from the face of the earth is a pretty fucking good benefit."

"You heard what Elliot said." James unfurled a tissue from his jacket pocket and wiped blood off of the kid's beaten face. "Midas is keeping his grandmother hostage."

I snarled back, "So this piece of shit kills the Chief, and Midas kills his grandmother. Blood for blood. Seems like a fair trade to me."

James gripped my arm before I could take another threatening step forward.

"This man needs our help," he stated. "That means we have leverage. If what you say is true, and he really is Midas' right hand, then there's an opportunity here to get answers." His eyes searched mine. "Don't tell me you wouldn't kill for a glimpse into his plans."

"I will not work with the man who murdered my uncle."

"Nobody is asking you to work with him," said James. "But don't make the mistake of killing him when there is so much you still don't know. There is no need to jump the gun here—we just need to have patience. This has to be played the right way."

I forced myself out of his grip and hissed, "The love of my life just stood between me and my worst enemy. Don't talk to me about patience."

James rolled his eyes. However, he made the wise choice of tabling our conversation for now.

He turned his attention to Han.

"Elliot said that Midas has your grandmother," he spoke, voice notably cold.

Han's lip curled.

James reminded him in a low growl, "The people behind me will stop at nothing to get what they're owed in blood. Me? I couldn't care less whether or not you die. But despite everything you've done to him, Elliot seemed to find some value in keeping you alive. For that, I'm willing to exercise my lenience." He leaned down, his tone pointed as he spoke. "I will hear what you have to say. Do not take that for granted."

"It doesn't matter," Han whispered. "It's too late."

"Explain."

James took a step back, as if to give him the space to speak, or room to breathe. I noticed the way his unfeeling eyes narrowed attentively.

Han caught his bleeding lower lip with red-stained teeth, making a poor attempt to hide the quiver in his chin. His shoulders shuddered. Shallow pants escaped him, and a muffled whine slipped through the air.

Chains frowned. "Is he... crying?"

My hands balled into fists.

Wet tears carved rivers through the thin slick of blood on Han's cheeks. It dripped onto his thighs and stained his clothes. His head hung low. He was trembling, shaking, less like somebody in pain and more like somebody in fear.

"What are you doing?" asked Chains.

I looked up to James again. He'd closed the gap between him and the kid. With his face marred by an unfamiliar look of concern, he seemed to have noticed something about the man chained up in zip ties. Gripping the back of Han's collar, he peeled back the fabric, unveiling the deep red mark that'd been peeking through on his shoulder.

Chains asked before I did. "What the hell is that?"

But the longer I stared at it, the clearer it became. It was a branding of some sort—burned into his body, leaving scar tissue in the shape of an M on his skin.

James let go immediately. It was as if he'd been electrocuted by the mere sight of it.

He spoke. "How long has he been making you warm his bed?"

Han's face crumpled into a sharp exhale.

For once, the silence that followed told volumes.

My fists fell slack. Nausea crawled up from my stomach and into my throat. Guilt itched the back of my neck, filling my head with scenes that I didn't want to picture. Everything Midas did, he did for his own pleasure—using people, abusing them, forcing them to do his bidding and punishing those who didn't.

But now it went further than baseless murder and violence. And James—had he experienced those horrors too? How did he know?

Disgust and anger.

Two emotions that spread like a virus within me whenever I recalled the ways that Midas had so crudely leered at Elliot. I'd always had my suspicions, senseless ideas that stemmed from chronic overthinking—but now that they'd been confirmed, I was vividly imagining all the ways I was going to rip Midas's ugly head off his fucking shoulders.

How many times did I let him come close to hurting my Elliot?

James was perhaps more rigid than any of us.

He stepped backward. His attention shot to us, suddenly remembering that Chains and I were also in the room.

"This man may have killed your uncle," he stammered, "but he is not the enemy. Midas has used him like a pawn the same way he uses everyone else. So kill Han or don't kill him, but I will not watch you put him through any more torture."

Chains looked to me for some kind of sign. Some order, some sort of hint as to what he wanted me to do now that we knew the grim reality of the situation.

I couldn't offer more than a nonplussed stare.

Thankfully, he took the reigns.

"Jesse, right?" Defeatedly crossing his arms, he muttered to Han, "How long has she been missing?"

Having gathered himself together enough to speak, Han tilted his head up and searched for us through blurry eyes. "A few days after I killed your friend."

"Why did Midas take her?"

"I... I started expressing doubts. About what I did to your Chief. About the things Midas was making me do. I never wanted to follow his orders, or be his lap dog. I never wanted to be a part of this." He then whispered, "I never wanted to be a murderer."

"Yeah," I said with a scoff. "It sure looked like that when you were putting that bullet in his back."

"You would have done it too," Han gritted out. "If it was your friend that Midas killed, if it was Elliot that was missing, if it was you that he was... he was..." He shivered for a breath. "You would do anything he asked from you."

I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped short.

His head shook. "It doesn't matter now, anyway. I have been gone too long. Midas will have noticed my absence by now, which means that my grandmother is already as good as dead."

"You don't know that yet."

Heads turned my way. Han's eyes widened momentarily.

Stupid fucking conscience, I thought bitterly, trying to squash the nagging itch of empathy that'd been gnawing on the back of my skull. The words I'd said were a glimmer of hope he'd never bothered to spare me. And as much as I hated Han—as much as I was desperate to clobber him to death with my bare hands and leave his corpse to rot in the gravel—I couldn't bring myself to ignore what was right just to focus on all his wrongs.

I thought of my father. I thought of what he would've done in this situation.

Grabbing my hair in frustration, I forced out a heated exhale.

"Look," I said, "I'm not fucking stupid." Forcing Han to face me, I spoke with baleful words, "I know there's a good chance that everything you've just said is complete and total bullshit. I'm not ignoring that risk. But—but, if somehow you really have been telling us the truth here, and you're truly so desperate for our help, then perhaps we can both do each other a favor."

Like a stunned deer, he didn't dare to move, listening intently as I continued.

"I want to know everything. From the day Midas met you to the night you killed my uncle. I want to know every conversation, every secret, every dirty little thing he's had you do on his orders. But right now, before anything else, I want to know where you took Elliot tonight, and everything you told him." My jaw flexed. "Make it good. Because it's taking me a lot of strength not to snap your fucking neck just looking at you."

Han's eyes quivered. He stumbled in the search for words, then slowly uttered into the air,

"I gave him what he needed to know."

Chains tried to probe for an answer that wasn't so vague. "That file he was holding. The one he wanted us to look at. What was in it?"

"The truth."

"What are you talking about?"

"We agreed on a trade," Han confessed softly. "I said that if he helped me, then I would tell him everything I knew. Your friend has spent the last six years walking around blind—I pulled back the curtains."

"And what did you tell him, exactly?" I growled, "What could be so goddamn important that he'd ignore all the shit you've put us through?"

Han lifted his fingers towards James. "Maybe you should ask him that question."

James tensed.

"I'm afraid I'm not following," he said firmly.

"Really?" asked Han, his breathy tone carrying a jagged edge. "I thought you of all people would know best. After all, you kept the secret. I am sure it must have been a great burden to you over all these years."

I passed James a glare. "What's he on about?"

What's the big fucking secret?

"I wonder if that guilt chews through you," Han continued to mumble. "If it keeps you awake at night. Especially now, when you have to look him in the eyes every day—does it kill you inside? Knowing what he does not? The weight of your betrayal?"

Chains huffed incredulously and muttered, "What the hell was in that file?"

Han lifted his head. "A medical record. Case studies. Documents from the first clinical trials of Blitz."

"I've changed my mind," James decided. "Kill him."

Why the sudden change of heart?

"I'm sure you've seen those files yourself." Chuckling lightly, Han suggested, "You must have read through them extensively. Perhaps even burned a few copies."

James moved forward and hissed, "Don't talk of things you don't understand."

Like a bucket of water out in the pouring rain, he was heading straight for an overflow. His limits had been reached. Han was testing his patience, and for once, I wanted James to boil over. I wanted to know firsthand the skeletons he had buried in that endless fucking closet of his.

"Patient number 24," Han recited from memory. "The most promising of all patients. Suffered from chronic stress, high blood pressure, migraines." After a breath, he continued, "Following three months of relative success with Blitz, she was admitted to hospital as the result of a sudden stroke."

Fire flared in James' eyes, and he snarled, "Close your fucking mouth."

I wondered how many times he'd glared at Elliot with that same kind of anger.

Han continued anyway.

"Patient 24 reported an ongoing inability to move muscles, increased fatigue, severe migraines, frequent sickness, and vomiting." Licking the blood off his lips, he concluded, "One year following commencement, the patient suffered a severe infection resulting in organ failure and death."

Chains moved forward. James had gone towards Han, casting darkness over him like an oversized shadow. The fire was raging now. He was ready to decimate anything in its path.

"You have no idea the things you're messing with," James warned, imbuing acid into his voice. "There are reasons why this information was kept quiet. If Elliot ever found out the truth—"

"The truth about what?" Chains complained. "Who the hell is Patient 24?"

My thoughts whirred.

Han scoffed. "Is it not obvious to you already?"

"Keep quiet!" roared James.

Only he didn't give Han the chance to obey, sending a nasty strike to the kid's swollen face. Chains shouted out and rushed to get arms around the situation. It didn't go particularly well.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Trying to pry the guy off, he protested, "If you want to kill him, take a ticket and get in the fucking line, yeah?"

A million possibilities crossed my mind—all of them as dark as the last.

I kept stumbling back toward Elliot's voice. To the things he'd said about his mother. She overworked herself; got sick often, he'd said to me. A weak immune system... colds, infections, illnesses that would come and go. Those words echoed over and over until I couldn't think of anything else.

It couldn't be possible.

It was too cruel of a coincidence. There was no way that Elliot wouldn't have known, even if it was true. And if somehow he didn't...

Dread consumed my insides. I looked towards Han and faltered.

"You're saying that Blitz killed Elliot's mother."

The sentence was quiet, disbelieving, as if to wish the very idea out of existence. But when Han said nothing, when he didn't reject my conclusion, the entire planet and everything in it shifted on its axis.

"No," whispered James, dragging his hands down his face and grabbing fistfuls of his hair. "No, no, no."

"That's what was so important," I realized, my thoughts flashing back to the beach. "You asked Elliot for our help, and in return, you gave him the evidence he needed to find out how his mother really died."

So when I pushed him away, I...

Oh, no.

Pacing back and forth in a panic, James stressed himself out, looking about as horrified as I felt. "This isn't happening."

Chains asked, "Where is Elliot now?"

"I don't know," Han said.

"Bullshit!" snarled James, snatching him by the hair.

"I don't know," Han repeated desperately. "All I did was give him the file. Perhaps he hasn't even read it yet. Or perhaps he's gone to find answers himself."

The buzzing of a phone interrupted us.

James ignored it. "You son of a—" Lunging for him again, he shouted, "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

His arm reared back for another punch.

Chains rushed to stop him. "Woah, woah, wait!"

He wasn't quick enough. James had Han gripped by the collar, delivering blow after blow to his face whilst the ringtone continued to blare and Chains continued to shout. It was a senseless roaring of noise that put me further on edge.

Elliot had no idea.

He had no fucking idea that Blitz had killed his mother. He'd spent the last six years after her death trying to guess why she was always so sick, finding ways to blame himself for it, wishing that he'd spent more time with her while she was alive. And all the while, James had known the truth.

"Hey, get your hands off!"

How could he keep something like that a secret? Whether Midas had threatened him or not, he had no right to deprive Elliot of that knowledge. And now that Elliot had the evidence, what was he going to do once he figured out the truth?

"That's enough! Jesus fuck, you're going to kill him!"

He was never going to recover from this. Not Alley Cat, whose heart was so big that it needed to be guarded up by a million walls just to be kept safe. Not my Elliot, who squirmed at the idea of violence, who had already experienced enough abuse to fill a terrible lifetime.

Not my darling heart, who deserved less pain in his life than more of it.

This was going to kill him.

"For God's sake!" I exploded over the noise, "Somebody answer that fucking phone!"

The tone of my voice caught James off guard long enough for Chains to pry him away. He seethed through flared nostrils and moved himself backward, visibly cringing at the contact.

Chains patted down his pockets first, but it wasn't his phone. It sure as shit wasn't mine either, not with that loud and grating sound.

James was the last to check, fishing the phone out of his jacket and staring down at the screen with piercing eyes.

He answered the call and put the phone to his ear.

"How did you get this number?" he managed to speak, after a long moment of uninterrupted quiet. The other person took their time to reply. Then, he said, "Fine."

He pressed a button on his phone and held the device out towards us. "You're on speaker."

Angela's voice shot through the air.

"Why the fuck do I always end up on voicemail when I call you two bastards?!"

By 'two bastards', I assumed she was referring to Chains and me.

"We're in the middle of something right now, Angela," he clarified, failing miserably at attempts to conceal his amusement.

"Well, I thought you'd want to know," she said with a huff. "Elliot was just here, at the hospital."

That got my attention. "The hospital?"

"It's bad, Edge," she murmured carefully. "I can't explain it, but you should have seen him. He looked dreadful. I've never seen anything like it."

I took the phone off of James.

"Did he say anything to you?" I asked into the call. "What did he want?"

She stuttered. "I—I don't know exactly, but he came to the reception and started demanding his mother's medical records. He wouldn't take no for an answer. And thank god he ran into me and not one of the other staff, because—"

"How long ago did he leave?"

"A few minutes ago, but—"

"But what?"

"There's something else. Elliot..." She sucked in a nervous breath. "He had a gun with him."

Silence engulfed the room. My heart stopped beating.

"Edge, you there?"

I barely managed to communicate a short 'thank you' before finishing the call. Shoving the phone into James' possession, I turned to every living soul in the warehouse and spoke with a tone so deadly that it could've cut diamonds.

"Nobody is leaving this goddamn warehouse until I know everything. You and Han—get fucking talking."

=||A/N||=

I'm so sorry that this chapter took so long! Things have been so hectic in these last few weeks; sometimes I've had seven different things happening at once ;_;

But in other news, I recently set up a Ko-Fi for my Wattpad page (cue shameless plug). It was suggested to me by one of my readers since I currently have no other way of making an income through my writing, so I thought it might be a good idea if you would like to support me directly. You can find it on my profile :) Either way, thank you so much for sticking around!

The next few chapters will be in Elliot's POV.