“I don’t believe it was rage or malice that drove him. No, Alex was far too controlled to succumb to such vices. Personally, I think he did it because we needed him to. He wanted to show us that our world had changed. Our values and morals would need to be warped and shaped to adapt to the reality of our situation,” Simon held out his palms, weighing one idea against another, “Sure, it meant that none of us could go back. Sure, you might cynically say that it secured our allegiance. Indeed, maybe he actually did just need to vent in some way. Yet, I still maintain that he wanted more than anything to show us what we had to become in order to succeed. Right there and then, he demonstrated that, from that point onwards, we would be treading the line of right and wrong. To condemn killers, we must become killers. We would have to grow used to making these judgements, and we would have to make peace with the fact that our hands would never be clean again.

“Of course, none of us addressed any of this at the time. How could you? To talk about it then would have meant either to include ourselves, or exclude Alex,” Simon rocked his glass of water between thumb and finger, “So, we ignored it. We busied ourselves with the upcoming task. There was certainly enough to be done. We were but five, untrained, brothers, attempting to storm the fortress of a gang of murderers. I’m sure you can imagine how we felt,” he snorted, “That was back when I still felt anxiety, of course.

“We figured we had a couple of days to prepare. We gambled on the Gutter Vipers being too disinterested in Marks to notice his disappearance, but there was a limit to how far we were willing to push that. Still, any time we could win was a huge asset. It was a fine balancing act. Moving too quickly was reckless. Moving too slowly exposed us to doubt. Alex was especially concerned about the latter. Eventually, we picked an evening to strike. The week or so beforehand we used to equip ourselves, physically and mentally, for the challenge to come.”