Death Smith - Book 2 - Chapter 2

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The art of negotiation

The following morning.

Mid-March, 14 AR.

United Kingdom, London, St Thomas' Hospital.

Flashes of pain ran through Lance’s body, feeling the constant icy sting at his side. Fear gripped his heart, yet not for his own safety. ‘I have to… I have to!’ Lance thought as his heart raced, feeling his hands tightening around the knife, gripping the hilt, and pulling it from its scarlet sheath. Pain, fatigue, and uncertainty threatened to consume him, though a singular need dwarfed it all. Gritting his teeth, Lance clutched the knife before throwing it, seeing it slide towards a man that was fighting for his life near him. “Lance! Use it!” He screamed, only to realise that it was Thomas’s voice that spoke those words.

A second later, Lance woke up, screaming the last part of his nightmare. His arms thrashed around him, fighting off the things that haunted him. A calming figure pressed a single hand on his chest, slowly pushing him back into his bed. Compared to Lance’s strength, this hand felt like an unmovable mountain.

“Easy there,” A calm voice said soothingly, triggering Lance’s memory by doing so. He recognised Dieter’s voice, sensing the man’s presence next to him in the dark room. Dieter’s hand kept pushing him back until Lance relaxed, his breathing gradually calming down. Slowly, Lance opened his eyelids, presenting two hazel orbs hidden beneath an intricate tapestry of lashes. He could see Dieter watching him for a few seconds before a large creature jumped up from the bed next to Lance, leaning against Lance.

“I… I felt… I saw…” Lance said, unsure how to even explain what he just experienced. He knew it was a dream, but at the same time it had felt so real, as if experiencing one of Thomas’s last moments. He had felt Thomas make the choice to pull out the knife to save his friend. Thomas had decided who was going to live in that moment.

“Just shadows and scars,” Dieter said, patting Lance’s chest, no doubt feeling the young man’s heartbeat slow down, no longer threatening to burst out of his chest. “Easy now. Just shadows and scars, nothing more,” He continued, as Lance felt Dieter’s hand slowly slide to the side, gripping Lance’s shoulder before he got up, opening the curtains to let the morning sun inside, vanquishing the demons of his dreams.

“Up,” Dieter said, crossing his arms and watching Lance slowly do so. “You have slept long enough. It is time we get something to eat and find a doctor to sign your discharge papers,” Dieter explained as he started to fold Lance’s clothes, only to lose patience and simply shove them all inside Lance’s bags.

A part of Lance hated it that Dieter was seeing him like this. Another part was glad he did. Ever since leaving the Rift, Lance occasionally experienced nightmares like this, always chaotic, always real. This night had been a bad one. That Dieter did not go into it and simply order Lance to get out of bed was reassuring. Lance usually felt shame whenever a nurse or doctor found him like that, seeing him so distraught and vulnerable.

“Sure,” Lance replied, pulling off his shirt and finding a fresh one. As he grabbed a clean shirt, he could feel Dieter’s gaze on his back. No doubt, Dieter could see the scars on Lance’s frame. Some were new, others older, and had started to fade. Although Lance had only been a Rifter for a relatively short while, he did not know many Rifters that did not have scars or other permanent wounds. Still, Lance had collected quite a few in his brief career as a Rifter. “I thought the Doctor would see me in the afternoon?” Lance asked, putting on his pants and sweater before sliding on his left shoe.

“And in the meantime, waste away in your bed?” Dieter asked, shaking his head as he pointed at little Hans and snapped his fingers, signalling to the large Rift-hound that he was to stop chewing on Lance’s right shoe and return it to him. “You had two weeks to do just that,” Dieter said, throwing Lance’s bags in his arms as he walked towards the door.

Lance was glad that Dieter had refused to leave him alone last night, instead opting to sleep in a chair in the same room. Still, Dieter’s excuse of ‘being too tired to go home’ was anything but convincing. A part of Lance felt at ease with Dieter. The man could make you step away from your problems for a while and focus on something minor, to get your bearings again. Dieter reminded him of Thomas. Those two were both quick to act and feel, knowing instinctively that some things needed time. In the end, Lance did as Dieter asked and put on his drool covered right shoe and made his way over to Dieter. Opening the door, Dieter led Lance and his four-legged friend out of the room towards a nearby office to find a doctor.

* * * * *

Two hours later, Lance was staring at the pictures on the wall, seeing dozens of news articles alongside photographs. Every one of them was a person who Dieter had saved over the years, including a picture of Lance and Thomas. It pained Lance to look at it, but Lance understood why Dieter kept them all on his wall.

“Did they all become Rifters?” Lance asked, tracing his fingers over several of the pictures, almost feeling what these people had felt when they survived their first Rift. The news article on the middle of the wall was of Dieter himself. Although it was in German, Lance figured out a few of the words, learning that it had happened several years ago.

“No, only a few of them became Rifters,” Dieter said, his voice echoing from his kitchen. Every few seconds, Lance heard a loud whining noise as little Hans kept begging Dieter for food, even throwing his empty bowl at Dieter’s shin to get the message across. The two of them were perfectly in synch on the battlefield, but they obviously had conflicting ideas about proper food portions.

Lance stepped away from the pictures and towards a small cabinet that contained things from inside a Rift, ranging from Rift-shards to mana stones, to more unique ores or dried up exotic plants. Lance noticed a few broken or dented weapons in the cabinet next to it. They were either older weapons Daniel had used or found and collected as trophies. His gaze fell upon the many nicks, dents, and signs of wear that adorned these items. Lance quickly moved away from it after remembering a broken shield that had a permanent position on his couch back in Lance’s apartment.

“It smells good. I did not know you could cook,” Lance said, stepping into the kitchen and seeing Dieter hard at work, preparing sizable portions of sausages, eggs, bread rolls, cheese, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and two glasses filled with orange juice.

“What has Daniel been telling you about me?” Dieter said, shaking his head as he turned off the stove and placed little Hans’s filled bowl on the floor before Dieter sat down on a barstool and handed Lance a plate. “Despite what Daniel might have been telling you guys, I used to be quite normal. I was a senior salesman in a local carpet shop and was living a quiet life until a Rift happened to me,” Dieter explained before he bit into his bread roll.

“It is hard to picture you and Daniel as anything else but gods of war. How could I not after how you two saved us back then,” Lance stated, remembering the way Dieter and Daniel had cut through ranks of Lizardlings to save him and the other survivors.

“Bah, it is far from reality. You know, I used to have a lovely, boring life. My biggest stress in life was whether I preferred a winter or summer vacation. Same for Daniel. He used to run a small bakery with his wife before his life changed,” Dieter explained as he covertly slid a small piece of bacon off his plate by ‘accident’ and heard a satisfying grunt coming down from below.

Lance smiled briefly, imagining Daniel baking bread or Dieter selling someone a new carpet. It was easier to imagine Dieter bashing in a monster’s skull with his mace than to picture him wearing a suit and tie. The two of them continued to eat in silence afterwards, with a large snout occasionally bumping into Lance’s knee, trying to persuade the young man to spare some bits of bacon. When Lance offered a bit of lettuce, he could have sworn that he heard little Hans let out a dissatisfied snort.

Lance let his mind be preoccupied with the Rift-hound, remembering all that he had read about animals that had survived a Rift and the Rifters that bonded with them. Whereas humans actively could distribute points to certain areas and grow stronger, Rift-animals simply grew organically in the direction that made sense. Little Hans had started off as a rather large English mastiff, but he had grown much since that. Ropes of muscles adorned his legs and Lance could have sworn that he had seen its teeth rip apart thick Lizardmen scale.

“I did the cooking. The two of you are on clean-up duty,” Dieter said as he patted his stomach before making his way over to the living room to watch some television. With no choice but to do so, Lance cleaned up, letting the Rift-hound lick up the scraps from each plate before placing them in the dishwasher. When little Hans had finally licked the last plate clean and Lance had cleared the table, he closed the dishwasher with a sigh.

Ever since his escape from the Rift, a notification of his status screen had irritated him. Lance could ignore it for a while, but it always popped back up after a few hours. He had placed it on hold because of the guilt he had felt at surviving the Rift, let alone the torrent of other emotions that ravaged him. With Thomas’s funeral being tomorrow, Lance knew it was only a matter of time before he came face to face with the reason for his guilt and the item that was now stored in his inventory. Lance opened his status screen, deciding it was better to focus on this issue rather than break down during the funeral because of a notification.

[You have unspent attribute points.]

The points taunted him for a while as he pondered where to put them. His Endurance was currently his highest attribute, with Strength and Agility being tied in second place. Perception was in third place and Wisdom and Luck were in last place. It tempted Lance to put those three points into Endurance. After all, it had been a vital part of how he had survived the hazardous and rock-filled underground river, or his exit from the Rift. Strength and Agility had been useless then, same for Wisdom and Perception. ‘The fact that I survived at all had been pure chance,’ Lance thought as he shook his head. Some Rifters considered the Luck attribute a waste, while others swore by it, seeing as it helped nearly every action, increased the chances of a good item being dropped or found, not to mention be the difference between a normal hit or a critical one.

[Luck:] [20] (+3)

In the end, Lance simply placed all three points into his Luck attribute, not so much as a strategy, but more so as a statement to himself. Afterwards, he made his way over to Dieter to watch some television.

* * * * *

“I am fine,” Lance lied, seeing Dieter and Daniel linger at his door later that day, holding it open. Lance loved them for it, but at the same time wanted nothing more than to have some time to himself in his apartment. Lance had spent most of his time in the hospital after surviving the Rift, and afterwards with Dieter. The two of them did some grocery shopping, had Lance’s GRRO identification updated at the London branch, and afterwards made their way over to Lance’s apartment. The updated ID now listed Lance as a veteran.

The GRRO listed new Rifters as Survivors until they reached level 10 and gained their class. Upon reaching that, they would get the rank of Veteran until they reached level 100. Some agencies relied on proof of veterancy, where a Rifter had to prove that they had indeed reached a certain level. Other nations relied on complex scanners that used exotic elements found in a Rift to measure the radiation emitted from a Rift-shard. The greater the output, the higher the level. GRRO simply kept testing as optional for the lower-ranked Rifters such as veterans, allowing a Rifter to update it when they felt it necessary. The higher your level, the more jobs were usually offered to you. When Lance had seen his new credentials, having read the word ‘veteran’, he nearly chucked it in a bin. He felt far from a veteran during the Rift or every day since then.

Lance and Dieter had cleaned up Lance’s apartment earlier, with Dieter having explained that Daniel would join them later. When Daniel arrived, the mood had instantly soured. As Daniel began talking, it had seemed good news at first. Daniel explained he had visited R.A.M. to negotiate the outstanding loans Thomas and Lance had agreed upon before. They had been standard loans for equipment, a backpack, and tools. Because of the rarity of Rift-materials, it was worth several thousand pounds. Daniel had explained that he had gotten R.A.M. to drop the loans for Thomas and only charge Lance a third for the damages and loss of the equipment Lance had borrowed. In return, Lance had to sign a document not to go to the press about the ‘incident’.

It had hurt him to sign it, but Lance knew that in the end, it meant thousands of pounds did not suddenly burden Thomas’s family or put them in debt. Lance knew how often Thomas had chipped in, even back when he was a Nurse. It had been Thomas’s way of supporting his father after the man’s retirement from the army because of a back injury. Signing the document had felt both nauseating and right at the same time for Lance. In doing so, he hoped it would bring the Walkers some rest.

After signing the document, Lance had expected the tension to go away, but Daniel surprised him when the man placed a large folder on the table in front of Lance. Daniel had hesitated a moment before he had let go of the folder, explaining that he had spoken to Samuel Jones. Upon hearing the full details of the investigation, the near immunity of Connor, the shaky testimony from Louis, and the bloody enigma that was Kira, Lance had wanted to rip the document in half.

Lance wasn’t sure what he had felt at that moment. There was rage, fear, guilt, and despair. Everything hit him at once, numbing him again to a point, like how he had been two weeks ago. Lance felt like nothing had changed.

“Lance, you know, we could always stay the night. Might be easier to drive to the funeral together, right?” Daniel said, asking Dieter and seeing the man agree with an encouraging nod. They had no illusions of what this news meant to Lance and the Walkers. It meant that everyone worth his salt could see that something was wrong, yet the GRRO could explore no further evidence or chase down leads.

“I am fine,” Lance lied again, flashing them a broken smile. “I somewhat expected this. I… I think I want some time by myself… for now, at least. I’ll see you two in the morning,” Lance said finally, nodding to them and slowly closing the door. His heightened senses could hear them on the other side of the room, hearing the shifting of weight on the floorboards until they finally moved away from his door and exit the complex.

Lance then waited a few minutes in silence before he steeled himself and opened his inventory, bringing forth the reason for his guilt and self-hatred.

[You have combined and retrieved two items from the inventory.]

Lance watched the pale figure appear in the seat in front of him, dressed in a torn R.A.M uniform. He stared through Lance with empty eyes. A dullish grey Rift-shard positioned in the centre of a grey chest. Lance steeled himself as he looked at the figure, at the pale man that looked so like Thomas. Lance forced himself to rem-ember every detail about him, permanently engraving it in his memory before he opened the folder again and slid three pictures in between the two of them. Three pictures of the people that had wronged them. Lance slid each picture towards the pale man, seeing the man’s gaze shift downwards and look at what Lance was offering him. Remembering his oath to Thomas, Lance broke the silence.

“I’ll keep my promise, Thomas, even if it means I have to get it for you on my own.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Author: Osirium

Copyright: 2022 OsiriumWrites

Released: 2022