Age of Darkness (28 page)

What are these thoughts that I’m having?
I can’t kill bystanders. I would never stoop so low. Two innocent elderly in
their own home … I can’t do that! I would be just as bad as the Faar soldiers
who broke into my home and killed my mother.
His
hand relaxed at his side, and he gulped, reaching up and taking off his mask.
The mask detached from his skin at his touch, and he held it in his hand,
sucking in fresh air as he looked over the two elderly. “How do you know my
name?”

“Because of me,” a boy said, descending a set
of winding wooden stairs that led down from the upper floors. He seemed to be
several years older than Keimaro with a head of curly brown hair that shined as
he raised an eyebrow, smiling playfully at the assassin. He was wearing
tattered clothing that was torn to the point where it looked like they had been
lacerated by a bear. He scratched the back of his neck with a chuckle. “Where
are my manners? My name is Edward, and I’m the one who’s somewhat overseeing
the mission. In fact, it’s lucky that you are here because we need to discuss
the many flaws that occurred during your….” A whirring sound filled the air as
a bright blue glow shined from upstairs. “Ah, it looks like they’re coming to
scold you themselves.”

Gavin and Aladdin descended down the stairs
behind Edward, having teleported from Zylon’s mansion. Aladdin had a rather
nervous look on his face, while Gavin’s was smug. “You almost—”

“Yeah,” Keimaro said with a sigh as he shook
his head. “I got it. I messed up. I lost control.” His hands were shaking at
his sides, and he closed his eyes. He had wanted to tear the king apart at that
moment. What was this feeling that he was having? It was overcoming all of his
common sense! He shouldn’t have bolted forward so suddenly or allowed himself
to be provoked like that. “Who’s that?” he said, pointing over his shoulder at Edward.

“He’s one of the assassins who will be
helping us in our operations. You’re only too lucky that you waltzed straight
into his house by chance,” Gavin muttered. “Aladdin, take him back to the
mansion. I’ll make sure to try to calm things down outside.” Keimaro realized
that Gavin was wearing his guard uniform. He intended to pose as a soldier and control
the crowd or lead the guards away. “Edward, we can use that teleporting pad
upstairs?”

“It’s a small one, but yeah.”

“Send Keimaro and Aladdin back.”

“What?” Keimaro snapped. “We are done with
the mission?”

“It was a success, as far as I’m concerned.
You scared the crap out of the people and made quite a scene. Far more of a
scene than I could’ve imagined because you almost killed the king,” Gavin said,
glancing at Keimaro from the corner of his eye as he took a step forward toward
the door, adjusting the iron helmet upon his head.

Gavin exhaled. “However, you would have
cost your friends their lives if they didn’t escape. You put too much faith in
them, assuming that they would be able to escape. What if the Bount
organization appeared and captured one of them? With everyone on the run and
everything all chaotic, no one would even notice that someone had been captured
until we all arrived at the mansion to do a head count,” Gavin said, pausing. “You
have to take these factors into consideration. You created too much risk. I
just hope that everyone gets back safely. That’s all.”

“You’re saying … I could’ve gotten someone
killed?”

“Yes!” Gavin growled, turning to face
Keimaro now, clearly annoyed. “You completely lost control out there today! It
just shows us how much self-control you actually have. You left the plan and
almost got everyone—”

“And you’re the one to lecture me? The
person who wanted to go down into that stupid laboratory only to have Noah
captured?” Keimaro yelled, his eyes dark and filled with anger. “He could be
dead as well for all we know!”

Gavin’s eyes were wide, and his lips were
quivering as if he wanted to cry. His hands were shivering at his side. He
broke eye contact and moved to the door, throwing it open and standing in the
doorway for a moment. “At least I admit my faults, whereas you believe that you
did nothing wrong,” he said, closing the door behind him.

Keimaro stared at the door for a moment,
his heart pounding against his chest.
Why am I rejecting the fact that I
messed up? I know I messed up.
He turned to Aladdin, who shrugged and began
to follow Edward up the stairs. He turned to the elderly couple in the house
and bowed his head lightly before he followed them back up the stairway. At the
top of the stairs was a small room with a bed pushed to the side and a blue
platform placed in the very center. It was small, much smaller than the one
that was installed at the mansion, but it could still fit two people. Probably.

Aladdin was waiting on it, and Keimaro
stepped onto it reluctantly. He feared the moment that he would arrive back at
the mansion. By now, no doubt the entire crew of assassins knew his mistakes.
It was inevitable. Information flowed so freely in the mansion. He closed his
eyes as he felt his skin tingling once more and sighed.
What was going
through my mind back then?

Keimaro was practically dragged off of the
platform the very moment he arrived in the mansion. Crowds of young assassins
were watching the spectacle as two strong, burly men threw Keimaro at the feet
of Yuri, who stood tall over the boy. He grunted, annoyed at the fact that he
was being looked down on. He tried to push himself to his feet, but Yuri put
his foot on Keimaro’s back, forcing him back down onto his knees. There was
silence as Yuri held his hand up into the air. Keimaro could see Yata standing
there in the front lines of the crowd, doing nothing. At the sight of the doubt
in his friend’s eyes, Keimaro looked away.

“You’re so obsessed with your revenge that
you left us, your comrades, to die,” Yuri snarled, lifting his foot from
Keimaro’s back. “I knew Z should’ve left you out of this. You are an untamed
beast from the wild, consumed by evil, and you have no compassion. I’ve seen
men like you. In fact, I used to be like you. Always craving that revenge. You
always want that man dead, the one person who took everything from you. It’s
all you can think about, right? Even in your dreams, it haunts you—”

“Stop talking like you know what you’re
saying!” Keimaro yelled, his voice silencing Yuri’s in an instant. It boomed
through the crowd, causing assassins to shift nervously. His eyes were glowing
bright red as he pushed himself to a standing position in front of Yuri. “My
entire life has been dedicated to revenge since the very moment my mother
perished! My life is void of meaning without my vengeance. I intend to avenge
my father, my mother, and my little sister. The fact that you think you
understand me is pathetic!”

He turned to the crowd, roaring, “Do you
even
understand
what it’s like? To lose everyone and everything that you’ve
ever known in a single instant? To see your own mother skewered by a blade as
your house burns. To watch your little sister be kidnapped while you lay there
with broken bones, powerless to do anything?” He turned back to Yuri and jammed
a finger into the werewolf’s chest. “I joined this organization to obtain my
revenge. Don’t think that there’s any other reason.”

Yuri raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I
thought that you came here because you believed and hoped that perhaps there
was a sliver of a chance that your little sister was alive.”

“She isn’t.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do!” Keimaro snarled. “Do you truly
believe that she survived even a single year with those Bounts? No, the king
himself confirmed it. He knew about Mai, meaning that the Bounts turned her
over to the empire. Those experiments that they were performing in the
underground lab used Hayashi DNA and transplants. My sister was used as a test
subject. A lab rat. At this point her fate is quite obvious to me. She’s dead.”
he choked.

“So, you’ll do the selfish thing and
abandon the mission, leaving us to die,” Yuri said. “Unlike you, we cannot create
walls of fire that generate enough heat to melt bullets. Once the volley of
projectiles comes at us, we are dead. In an instant, all of us could’ve been
lying on the ground in a heap of bodies. And then you would’ve been next. I don’t
think you understand that yet. I do believe that every human has self-control,”
he said. “Even I, at times, feel weak when I am provoked. I feel a tugging
sensation that makes me want to lose my humanity and become a beast. I want to
succumb to my instinct. But my mind is better. I know when to make the right
choices. Today, you didn’t make the right choice. Admit your mistake.”

“I won’t admit anything, you damn werewolf.”

The crowd gasped, and Yuri’s face darkened.
He whipped his fist around and slammed it solidly into Keimaro’s face before
the boy could even react. With a loud crack, Keimaro flew backward, smacking
against the platform painfully. He grabbed his face, screaming in agony as
blood streamed from his nose. His eyes glared through the cracks of his
fingers, red as his blood.

But in a single moment, Keimaro’s hostility
drained from him, and he lowered his hands, allowing the blood to freely stream
down his face. He stared in shock at Yuri.

Yuri had tears in his eyes, and his fist
was shaking, his knuckles covered with a fresh coat of Keimaro’s blood. He was
panting, his breath heavy, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He
was about to rush in and attack Keimaro again, but Yata and Aladdin leapt
forward, restraining him. “Lena is gone because of you! Where the hell do you
think she is?” he roared, struggling against the metallic Yata and Aladdin, his
eyes red with fury. “And you won’t even admit your fault!”

Keimaro hadn’t noticed her absence, and he
hated himself for that. His heart was pounding as he scanned the crowd, hoping
that he would prove Yuri wrong and find Lena there. But she wasn’t. This couldn’t
be. She couldn’t be gone. His hands were shaking, and his lips were quivering
with shock.
I know the other assassins look at you as an outsider, but it
shouldn’t matter! After all, you have us as your friends. They’ll come to know
you as one soon.
Her words echoed through his head, and he slowly pushed
himself to his feet.

Yuri limped forward, sobbing silently. Keimaro
could’ve never imagined the strong and independent leader crying. Yet here he
was.

“It’s my fault,” Keimaro said quietly, and
Yuri stopped crying almost immediately. “Lena was captured, wasn’t she? It’s my
fault that it happened. And I’ll get her back. Whatever condition she comes back
in, you can apply to me ten-fold,” he said, his eyes filled with confidence.
What
am I doing? Why do I care about any of these people? Aren’t they just tools to
get my revenge? I shouldn’t make a promise like that.
But his expression
didn’t change, and Yuri exhaled deeply.

“If she’s dead—”

“She won’t be,” Keimaro said. “I’ll save
her and—”

“You won’t be doing anything of the sort.”
Z’s words echoed through the mansion as he walked forward, his footsteps
echoing loudly in the dead silence. His hands were crossed behind his back as
the crowds of assassins separated, clearing a pathway for him. He tilted his
head back as his eyes flickered from Yata and Yuri to Keimaro. “And what do you
think you’re doing? The mission was indeed a success.”

“Lena was captured,” Keimaro said, turning
to Z. “I wouldn’t call that a success.”

“And you intend to save her?”

“Of course,” he growled.

“I forbid you to do so,” Z said. “The key
around your neck is the most important object in the entire world right now. If
you go after her and it falls into the hands of the enemy, the world will be
doomed because you decided to go out there. Leave the key here; then you may go
and risk your life if you wish.”

“I’m not doing that,” Keimaro said simply. “I’m
going to go and save Lena and Noah. It’s peculiar that you’re so concentrated
on your goals that you don’t even care about your own subordinates. You don’t
even seem to care about the capture of your own son. You give me no reason to
trust you with this,” he said, reaching up and feeling the cool metal of the
key that pressed against his chest. “Not to mention, I don’t work for you. I
don’t have to listen to anything you say. We are only working toward a mutual
goal.”

“In that case….” Z nodded to the assassins,
who unsheathed their weapons, brandishing them at Keimaro. Glistening steel
flashed in Keimaro’s eyes, and his heart pounded as he stared in shock at the
opposition. “We cannot allow you to leave this establishment. Not to mention,
you call me heartless, yet I don’t recall you ever caring about anyone here
either. I can see it in your eyes. Your obsession with revenge is absolute.
Even with today’s actions, it is confirmed that you cannot control yourself.
You might go off and—”

“Old man,” Yuri snarled, stepping up beside
Keimaro. He cracked his knuckles as he stood against the blades of the rebels. “I
intend to go and save Lena as well. Don’t think that you’re stopping either of
us.”

“I’m going, too,” Yata muttered, taking a
step forward. “It’s my fault that Noah was captured. I need to make things
right.”

Z raised an eyebrow at the rebellion before
him. He scoffed, his eyes on Yuri. He grunted and slid his hands into his
pockets. As if it were a signal, all of the rebels sheathed their weapons and
stepped to the side. Z’s face was filled with frustration and annoyance that
his own subordinates weren’t listening to him. “Why do you want to save these
people, Keimaro? You have no connection to them. You’ve been with us only for a
few days. There’s no way that—”

“I feel that I have made a connection, a
rather small one,” Keimaro said with a sigh, scratching the back of his neck. “And
I’ll admit, it definitely is a drag to go out there and risk my life in order
to save someone while in enemy territory. However, something Lena said gave me a
new insight on everyone here.” He closed his eyes, remembering the words that
she had spoken to him right before they had performed the assassination. Her
words echoed in his head, and a small smile crossed his lips. “She treated me
as a friend, a comrade. She accepted me. If I were the one captured, she would
go out there and save me. And if I were sitting in the dark solitude of a jail
cell,” his eyes came up to meet Z’s, which widened as the boy spoke, “I would
want to grasp at the hope that maybe one day someone would come and rescue me.”

Yata smiled at Keimaro’s words and nodded
as Aladdin came behind the Hayashi boy and patted his shoulder, stepping in
line with Yuri, Yata, and Keimaro. Without a doubt, Keimaro was beginning to
see friendship in all of these people around him. Maybe communication with
people after all of these years had finally changed his insight on humanity.
Maybe not everyone was as cruel as he and Yata had thought after the Bakaara
massacre.

“I’m going to be the one to save Lena and
your son,” Keimaro declared, “and if you really want to spend your time
fighting me for trying to do you a favor, go on. I’m pretty sure you’d be
wasting your efforts when there’s an army of millions of soldiers out there
that we categorize as the enemy. Our plans for overthrowing this government and
assassinating the king aren’t over yet. Fight me, kill me, take this damn key
from my unmoving corpse then! See where that gets you. Because even if you
fight me,” his irises morphed from pitch-black to bright red, “I’ll take down
as many as I can with me.”

Z stood there for a moment, at a loss for
words. Then a smile spread across his face, a silly grin that grew from ear to
ear. He began to clap his hands and chuckle. “Very good. You have changed quite
a bit from the first moment I saw you. Though you are still consumed by
revenge, you have at least grasped the essence of friendship. Go on. Go save
Lena and my son. If you are captured or killed in the process, though, it is
the end of the world. I hope that you realize that.”

Keimaro smirked at the old man’s remarks. “I
won’t be captured. Don’t worry. And here’s the best part: I’ve got an idea for
saving them both.”