Luke Henry is cursed to live for (aneternity) wrote in rooms,
Re: Queens: Wren & Saint.
Wren didn't want him to come, but she should have known he would have.
See, Luke knew something was wrong even before the phone call that told him Wren wasn't where she should be. It was a feeling; he'd been getting a lot of those lately. Bad feelings and more of the dead, and he could tell, now, which places were safe and which weren't based on how many were around. The less, the better. He divided them into two groups, innocent and guilty, those who hadn't deserved their deaths and those who had. Because of them, he didn't trust. He didn't trust Wren to be safe. He didn't trust her reassurances. She always, always got into trouble when he wasn't around, and maybe a rational person would have explained that as paranoia, but he didn't care. He knew. And so it was a very, very good thing he'd installed that tracking device in her phone, wasn't it? Otherwise, he might not have been able to find her in time. He wasn't crazy. He just knew all about trouble and bad things, and he was right; she wasn't safe. Because she wasn't where she was supposed to be, but he knew where she was, and that was where he went. Follow the signal.
He didn't go in with sirens blaring. No badge, no uniform. The gun he carried was unregistered. Black clothes, black smudged around his eyes like an echo of the mask he once wore, fabric wound around his knuckles and palms like a boxer or, maybe, someone who didn't want to leave behind evidence. His path led him into streets that reminded him of long ago, of a time drowned in blood, and as he ventured into the dimness with the light of day at his back the dead followed. Past and present overlapped, but he didn't falter. Prowling along the sides of buildings and scaling fences, closer, closer, until he reached the door.
A warehouse.
The men inside had no idea what was coming for them. If only they'd let her go.
An ordinary man shouldn't have been able to come through that door like he did, but then, Luke was no ordinary man. Not anymore. Time seemed to slow as he took in the scene, as he saw Wren there, on her knees, and things started to get fuzzy. Hands bound behind her back and he knew, he knew what the men would do. He knew. And he was aware of other things, too; another bound person on their (his) knees. Children. Six men at the table, two close by the corner. They began to react, to realize, and Luke raised his gun.
His hands didn't shake anymore. He pulled the trigger with chilling accuracy, but he aimed low. The pistol was shot out of the first man's hand. Agonized scream. Then, his kneecaps. Where ankle met foot. And when the second man reached for his gun, the same thing happened to him. The dead couldn't feel pain, but the living could.
He had a fleeting thought amidst their cries and curses, a regret, that the children shouldn't see, but it was too late for that. The two men met the ground in pain, blood spreading slow, and those at the table finally shook off their surprise and roused to action-- angry words, threats, reaching for weapons like the cowards that they were. Luke turned and decided not to shoot but to charge, toward instead of away, and everything was a blur but sound, yes, sound filtered through.
The table was overturned. Gunshots. One came close to his ear. Bricks of white went every which way, chairs clattered, men stumbled. He fought with a mix of skill and the brutality that the pulse had given him, bones crunching and snapping, fists on flesh, and if any blows met their mark on him he didn't know; he felt no pain.