Chapter Twenty-six

Edward couldn’t feel his eyelids opening, so it looked to him like a sun had suddenly exploded in the middle of the dark. He tried lurching backwards to get away from it, but his back met a hard, flat surface. For that moment, he thought that with no way out, he would be swallowed by the sun’s incoming flames.

Instead, being engulfed by the light felt like a wave of cold. From through the white, shadows and colours began to form. It all twisted together and became clearer like sediment dissolving into a swirling pond. A ridged brown splotch morphed into a wooden kitchen cabinet before his eyes, inches in front of his face. Faint grid lines emerged from the white lining the side of his vision, transforming it into a tiled floor. All throughout, white flashes of light danced along the outside of his vision. A long while went by while he lay there, waiting for more to become recognizable. The lack of shape in front of him was disheartening before he realized what he was staring at was a kitchen wall.

The Spartans had a series of outposts on the fringes of the river that were all disguised as regular, furnished houses. There could be a stash of illegal drugs and guns being stored out of sight all around him, but immediately in his line of vision as he began to stand up and turn around was a small glass bottle. He picked it up and brought it up to his face until it almost touched his nose to read the label. It still wasn’t clear, but the outline of the word would suggest ‘Ketalar’, which nearly made him smile. It just confirmed the predictability of the Spartans and how well his plan had worked.

The flashing light next to the bottle seemed irrelevant until his eyes had focused enough to recognize it as a phone. Making out words was easier than it was just seconds before. A message had been left from an unknown number. With shaking fingers that felt like plastic glued onto his hands, he pressed the screen and turned the volume high enough for the sound to become audible.

“Hi, Ed,” said a disguised, electronic voice that he knew was Fay’s. “I just had to do a thing and couldn’t have you interfering. Hope Aries kept you alive for me. The door shouldn’t be locked. Be on your way, and I’ll see you soon.”

Edward started leaving as soon as he heard that the door wasn’t locked. It occurred to him that the guns that were most likely stored in the walls could be useful, but he was too excited to see the aftermath of his plan.

He pushed the door open and bounded out.

Ketalar was by far the most accessible knockout drug in Hillborough, which was why his plan hinged on the Spartans using it. A normal dosage would only last around ten minutes to an hour, and driving too quickly in that part of the city would arouse unnecessary suspicion, so wherever the Spartans were taking him would have to be relatively close to where they were. They needed to hide him while he was knocked out since the cops finding him and putting him in prison again would ruin Fay’s plans. The houses on the outskirts were perfect.

He put up the hood of his jacket as he sped towards the highway.

The bar he sat in was cordoned off by concrete roadblocks. The machinery required to move them would create noise and signal Aries too early, so the vehicle they used would have to be inside of the barriers and the roadblocks would be moved after he had been knocked out. It was also predictable that Aries would want to have a conversation with him to play with him first, given his relationship with Fay and his statement about wanting to have a drink.

He looked up and started surveying the highway, looking for any signs of smoke or damage.

So the Spartans’ plan was to erect roadblocks to cut off any cars other than theirs, have Aries meet him in the bar, have the rest of the Spartans enter a car that was already within the boundaries and drive to them, knock him out, and then move the roadblocks to drive him to a stash house. It was the only plan that would guarantee them his location and mitigate the possibility for a trap, as well as leave him alive for Fay. There were just a few things that they forgot. They obviously paid the bartender to be on their side, but they forgot that the Hell-Chasers were an anarchist gang. Instead, the bartender was more than happy to help Edward knowing his plan would end in destruction.

Halfway along the highway, he heard police sirens. He tried concealing more of his face with his hood, but if his plan worked, they would have other things to worry about.

Within the boundaries around the bar, there were three likely possibilities for which vehicle they’d use to transport him; a delivery truck for a catering company that was well-known as owned by the Spartans, and two other pedestrian cars that hadn’t been cleared out. The delivery truck was the most likely given that Spartans liked travelling in groups and that was confirmed by how many appeared in the bar, so Edward made his preparations to that one and popped the tires of the other two just in case. After he did, he handed the bartender a detonator.

Edward had bankrupted himself pulling it all off. The bomb in the delivery truck was hidden below it attached to the bottom and was timed to go off forty minutes after the detonator was activated. Forty minutes was just enough time for them to drop Edward off at the stash house and be on their way to return it to where it was, which was a predictable habit he always remembered. Pluto liked things in order. Even if they did suddenly change their habits, it wasn’t likely they’d leave it at the edge of town, at which there weren’t any other convenient rides back to the city. The bartender had a detonator that he was instructed to press if Edward didn’t push the second one in his pocket in time, but Edward wanted to have the honour of pushing the button first. Of all the plans Edward had prepared for, the Spartans had went with the simplest one under the assumption that Edward wouldn’t be daring enough to break the law. The only thing he couldn’t predict was exactly what would be happening when the bomb went off. He was experiencing a planned possibility, in which he was dropped off in time to escape the blast. He was happy about that. It was also possible that he would still be in the truck when it exploded, but he would still win. With Aries dead by his hand, Pluto would want revenge against the gang member that got him involved. Fay was the reason they couldn’t just kill Edward. As long as his plan ended in Aries’ death, the Spartans would turn on Fay and kill her. She would once again be ripped away from her family and hunted down.

Sitting in the middle of the highway with police cars swarming around it like flies around a dead rabbit, the empty husk of the delivery truck sent flames into the air. Bits of metal and glass lay strewn around the road, all surrounded by cops putting up yellow tape. Aries had been sitting there in the driver’s seat, laughing about how well his plan had gone. He had hurt and killed so many people. It felt like a weight had been lifted off the world with him gone.