“I prayed every day for long, healthy life. But I would’ve never wished for such a thing if it meant burying my own son.”

The dark-eyed man listened from afar to Ethan and Mr. Cid’s conversation attentively. He leaned against the other side of the paper-thin walls. He was dressed in an all-black hoodie and dark grey cargo pants. A color that matched both his demeanor and his character.

“I have to return here to drop off some paperwork later tonight. Mr. Marksman needs to come in too, Mr. Cid,” Ethan said before the sounds of his footsteps faded from the man’s ears.

That was all he needed to know. After hearing the old man’s walker exit the deserted building, he left turned the corner and walked towards the gun that was tossed aside. He picked it up and wiped the dust off it with his hoodie. Examining the firearm, he slipped it back into the empty holster on his belt and left the building. His footsteps echoed through the hallway as he pulled his hood over his head so that only the lower half of his face could be seen.

The mid-day sun beat down on the man as his black hoodie warmed. Only a few drops of sweat rolled down his forehead and collected in his eyebrows. He jogged down the sidewalk and turned into an alley that provided some brief respite from the sun’s overbearing gaze. The alley was narrow and could barely fit a person through it. The figure had to slide through the alley sideways to fit his entire body through.

After a few meters of the narrow alley, it widened to the width of a residential street. The alley was no longer an alley. Rather, it led to a covered room that seemed to be a dead end. Only a few dumpsters lay against the wall at the back of the room. The man walked towards the dumpster and slowly extended his hand. It stopped inches in front of the object as if it had hit a brick wall.

The man glanced briefly behind him to ensure he wasn’t followed. A biometrics scanner formed before him as he placed his hand on the invisible wall. Not a moment after the scanner identified him, he vanished from sight without even a whiff of a trace.

Ethan arrived at his house and opened his front door. Without even a hint of hesitation, he dragged his feet to his room and collapsed like a dead corpse on his bed. He prayed for sleep to come and overtake him. He wanted it to take away all his problems even if it was only for a few moments.

These past days had been taxing on Ethan. Not even the most interesting topics of physics could clear his mind as it once did. He constantly dwelled on questions he hadn’t answered yet. They kept him awake at night and distracted him during the day. He couldn’t focus while he was training, nor could he think about anything else.

Did that thief deserve to receive the beating he did from Ethan? Should he have only subdued him and saved Sarah instead? Why did his memories of Asher resurface? What should he do about Marksman? All questions that required answers.

Ethan shut his eyes, closed his blinds, and turned off his lights. He swallowed two sleeping pills that would surely knock him out cold for a few hours even if he was on a sugar high. Hopefully, it would wear off and he’d wake up in time to deliver his documents to the court. Then he could finally be done with this mess and move on with his life. At least he hoped he’d be able to move on. People get over this all the time, right? That’s what the stats show, Ethan thought.

Six hours later.

Ethan opened the wide doors of the court building carrying a USB that had his documents filed. The room looked far less mundane at night when the chandelier hanging from the high ceiling in the main hall cast light down on the spotless tiles. At least the hallway looked presentable unlike the courtroom itself.

“Hi, I’m Ethan Rider. I’m here to submit some documents to the court,” Ethan stated politely to the secretary at the front desk.

“Do you have your court case number?” she asked pulling up the system.

“It’s case A207. The one about the assault of Wesley Cid” came a voice that sent a shiver of disgust down Ethan’s spine. Marksman walked up to Ethan and shot him a sly grin. Ethan politely returned the gesture, though dripping with annoyance.

The secretary searched through the records as the two men stood in dead silence neither one making eye contact with the other.

“Ah, yes. Room B7. Just go straight down this hallway, and the second door from the end is where you want to be. Once you’re done there, there’s a back exit you can use just to the right of the main corridor,” the secretary gestured.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Marksman said with a curt nod of his head.

The two walked in the single file even though the hallway was large enough for them to walk beside each other. They entered the room and dropped off their paperwork hurriedly before walking swiftly to the exit. Ethan delayed his exit so that he didn’t have to walk with Mr. Marksman any longer. Merely being in his presence made him want to vomit.

Ethan heard the door slam at the end of the hallway. That was his cue to leave. Marksman would have been long gone by the time he took a slow stroll to the exit. He walked to the exit but before he could open it, he heard Marksman pleading.

“Please, I’m begging you! Don’t kill me!”

Ethan swung the door open to find a whimpering Marksman laying helpless on the ground with a gun pointed at his head. A man dressed in full black and grey cargo pants towered above him. Ethan glanced at the hooded man. His cold eyes were filled with hate.

“You’re the man who walked out of the court case this morning,” said Ethan.

The man tilted his head ever so slightly towards him and then nodded before turning his attention back to Marksman.

“You did what you could, man. Now let me handle the rest,” he whispered.

“What do you mean by handle?” asked Ethan, already suspecting what the mysterious man would say.

“Avenge the innocent…A life…for a life…”

Ethan stood in his place not sure what to do. He, despite the condition Marksman, was in, didn’t pity him one bit. Ethan felt as if he’d been here before. He felt that this wasn’t the first time he was experiencing this.

“Keep walking, Ethan,” the man whispered.

Often Ethan’s mind and heart would contradict one another, but this was one of the rare times they were in perfect harmony. Ethan turned his face away from Marksman and began to slowly walk through the darkness of the night lit only by the full moon.

“Rider, please!” cried Marksman. A cry on deaf ears. “I have a family! I just want to see them again!”

Ethan stopped in his tracks for only a moment. Now he knew why he felt like he’d been here before.

“I just need some food for my family!” he begged.

Ethan lifted his foot and kept moving forward, not even paying Marksman a glance. He muttered under his breath a sentence that slipped from his tongue with venom. A manifestation of the truest form of hatred and disgust.

“So did Wesley.”

Bang! The gun’s bullet left its chamber and he collapsed to the ground. Another shot left the gun. The man scattered Marksman’s body with holes as he emptied the entire magazine into him. Ethan stopped when he heard the clicking of the empty gun. The man threw a canister on Marksman. The acid began to leak from it and his body dissolved within minutes. Ethan met the gaze of Marksman’s killer. He recalled the old man's words: "Words don't bring justice; actions do." With that final thought, Ethan turned a blind eye to the mysterious killer dissolving the body of Marksman. He disappeared into the silent night as the ring of the gunshots faded from Ethan's ears.

The dark-eyed man dropped the gun onto the dry bricks and walked away. He returned to the alley where he vanished earlier, sliding through the narrow space and into the large room. This time, his biometrics scan revealed a lone teleporter. He swiped the blank card he took out of his pocket as the teleporter started up. An error message displayed on the screen, and it began to flash red.

He vanished from sight and the teleporter cloaked itself once more. On the other side of the terminal, he rematerialized on the outskirts of a dead forest, and in front of him lay a small, barely stable shed. He drew on a suit of lightweight armor and a face mask to shield himself from the radiation.

The voice from the terminal announces, “Location: KZN Wastelands, abandoned regions, SEKT HQ. Recognized: Operative 0001, Sigvald Salacron, leader of SEKT.”