Foul Lady Fortune
: Chapter 48

The killer does not have a name. He has never had a name.

That is what his memory tells him. The dark road rushes ahead of him, and he stares out blankly, counting the streetlamps that fly by. Someone is driving the car—his mother. He knows that much, but he should not think of her as his mother anymore.

This is his controller: the one he must listen to and protect above all. Nothing else is more important. He should not allow urges of his own. He will not allow urges of his own. He only listens, only heeds commands.

The car brakes suddenly. In the distance, there are multiple dots of light, growing larger and larger. The headlights of other vehicles, fast approaching.

“Out.” His controller drops a pistol in his lap. “Fend them off.”

The killer gets out. When the other cars pull up, a host of soldiers pour onto the road, the blue and white of the Nationalist symbol stitched into their hats and their division numbers slapped above their olive-green chest pockets.

It is hard to identify faces in the dark. It is hard to identify faces at all, and every person before him now looks vaguely the same—features blurred and indistinct.

He charges forward. He lifts his pistol and starts to shoot, and it takes the soldiers some time before they scramble to combat him. It does not matter what they do or who tugs his weapon away from him. He hauls the arm that comes near and breaks it; he pulls at the grip that encircles his neck and throws the combatant to the ground as easily as he would fling aside a crumpled piece of paper.

Nothing tires him out.

When the car drives up from behind him and pulls to a stop, his controller’s expression is blank, peering at the damage that has been wrought.

“That’s enough. Get in.”

The rest of the soldiers have stopped trying to attack. They stand aside warily. They let him walk away. They watch him as he gets into the car and closes the door with a thud. This killer—this unthinking killer—wonders if he hears someone yelling, yelling a name. Perhaps he knows who it is; perhaps he knows whose name is being yelled into the night. But it all fizzles away before it reaches his ear, before he can really register what the words are saying.

The car drives away.