Silence Read Free Page A

for. This had to be the dumbest idea he’d ever
come up with.
    His eyes dropped, as though
despairing, and pierced the darkness for any hints of motion. As
the group of men gasped into view, Sheikoh dropped his
electroblade, raising his hands in surrender. The weapon clattered
against the floor.
    “ Got me cornered fair and
square!” Sheikoh called. “You beat me, and I’m not ashamed to admit
it.”
    Indigo pointed Sheikoh’s own pistol at
his chest. The ganglord’s eyes glittered with malice.
    “ I’m unarmed!” Sheikoh went
on hurriedly. “And I’m truly, honestly considering that one
proposition you put to me before. You know, about joining Legacy?
Not a bad idea at all now that I’ve had some time to wrap my little
head around it. What do you say, Indi?” Sheikoh smiled winningly.
“Ten speed?”
    Indigo’s face arranged itself into a
snarl. He raised the plasma pistol, aiming it at Sheikoh’s
face.
    “ You
see, Silence ,” Indigo told him, his face dark with vengeance. “I can’t
take you on now. Those men you killed had families, you know. You
ask me, you owe them closure.”
    Sheikoh smiled sadly, unaffected by
Indigo’s words. His hands were still raised as though he didn’t
believe the ganglord was really about to shoot him. A few
straggling gangsters joined the group behind Indigo.
    “ It is sad, isn’t it? Those poor families. It must be really hard to tell them
that a gangster got shot, huh?” said Sheikoh in a high clear voice.
His eyes sparkled, and he couldn’t resist adding;
    “ Still… I
would hate to have to be the one to drop that on them.”
    Before the gangsters realized what had
happened, Sheikoh’s wrist flicked a shotgun from behind one of his
raised arms. A glaring, red jet of plasma hissed straight through a
link of the rusted chain overhead, and the crate that it’d been
holding came rushing downwards. Indigo was the only one to react.
He leaped to the side firing bursts at Sheikoh. Sheikoh threw
himself in the opposite direction, skidding against a wall, as the
rotten crate smashed into the ground with a sickening
crunch.
    A wave of splinters exploded outwards,
pelting Sheikoh’s skin painlessly as he bounded through the rubble
and limp bodies, agile as a breath of wind. Somehow, his plan had
worked. His hands throbbed; he’d scratched his palms raw when he’d
thrown himself against the wall, but better bleeding hands then a
smoldering plasma hole in his face. He abandoned the abandoned
Toshiyama Factory and then sprinted down two blocks of winding grey
streets, beneath a full moon. Buoyed by adrenaline and the purpose,
Sheikoh felt invincible. He was on top of the world.
    He slowed to a measured trot and took
stock of things.
    “ Well,” he told himself
lightly, “Probably shouldn’t head back home looking half dead.
Don’t want to scare Dorothi.”
    A giggle escaped his lips
and seconds later he found himself clutching his sides and laughing
hysterically. He let himself fall back against a concrete wall and
slide to the ground coughing and sputtering in amusement as the
sharp pain all over made its way through the haze of adrenaline. A
few moments later, Sheikoh got up, brushed himself off and made his
way over to his favorite thinking spot; a walled garden that
everyone in Interium seemed to ignore.
    He shivered at the knowledge what he’d
just survived. Goosebumps tingled up his neck, carrying with them a
sense of destiny. Sheikoh couldn’t believe he’d evaded death again.
He believed that he had made his peace with dying, what he imagined
as the final retirement. A back way world free from the ravages of
hatred and pain. Some nights, when his body ached with exhaustion,
he’d lie in bed with the secret wish he didn’t have to wake up the
next morning. He knew Dorothi needed him, and he’d do anything for
that sweet little girl. She was his only family left in all the
world.
    Nevertheless, every moment of
unrelenting action wore him down a little