CHPT 2: A Somber Beginning….

Death…

It loomed over the alleyway in all it's pitch blackness, wrapping the inhabitants within in a blanket of soundless fear.

No words were shared in what followed. Only madness. The first few to flee brushed past Kane without hesitation, smashing into his shoulders and forcing him to move with the stampede as they all ran for their lives.

Time seemed to slow as the first array of ear splitting pops rang out through the alley like fireworks. As Kane ran he could feel the heat of stray bullets whistling past his ears and shoulders like tiny destructive fireballs that had already torn through a handful of fleeing gang members.

Less than two seconds passed when the runners at the front rounded the corner to escape the whistling spray of gunfire. They pushed and pulled, throwing trash bags and cans into the alley behind them in a selfish attempt to give the gunmen an easier time laying down the rest while they escaped.

The rain slicked pavement suddenly became littered with trash cans and unwanted paraphernalia that the runners tripped and fell over before being pinned to the floor permanently by a shower of bullets.

Along the way, something far less filthy and unwanted was thrown out into the alley. Two somethings– someone's, he connected eyes with them as he passed.

The young child and older woman. A mother protecting her child. In his time slowed run, he felt like he watched them for minutes, standing frozen in shock while the shower of bullets fell on the fleeing bodies around them. They would be next, and they knew it.

Something in Kane's brain snapped at the sight of them. Something on a very deep and basic level of what he was– what he believed. Something he pushed deep within himself as a means of survival and cure to his curse..

Maybe it was his simple urge to have no casualties in his line of work. Maybe that was all it was.

But then again, maybe it was something entirely different. Something even more simple. Maybe it was the simple sight of a mother and child who loved each-other that had him turning to face the bullets in his pursuit to get them out of the way.

Yes, a simple motive– but a motive nonetheless. For the first time in a long time, he saw light in his seemingly ending world of darkness. The urge to preserve it even in his demise was absolutely overwhelming. Maybe that's exactly why it was so overwhelming…

He could feel the large splashes his boots made in the watery pavement, feel the pained burn in his cancerous lungs that sent the taste of old blood into his mouth, but all he could hear were his own breaths and the spray of bullets.

Three seconds had passed. Only three people remained behind him. Another second passed, he was only a few feet away from them now and the three runners behind him lay in their own pools of blood.

"Nooo!" He roared as the gunmen aimed their smoking barrels at the three of them.

Time regained its regularity.

In a flash, he crashed into the mother and child, trying to shove them back behind the dumpster. He was too late. As he moved to place them out of harm's way, the hot stab of bullets pinched and nipped at him all over, ripping through the joints and tendons in his legs, puncturing his insides as they dug into his stomach and severed his spine.

He hit the ground in a bleeding pile of torn flesh and wet leather. For a moment, he lay still, feeling the blood pump out of his bullet riddled stomach and pool around him like spilled paint.

The gunmen– betrayers, had fled a while ago. Leaving him to wither away in the alley full of corpses…full of his failures. The alley where an innocent had died for no reason…..someone who had nothing to do with his work.

He laid beside her, staring into her lifeless eyes while the continuous rainfall wetted her brown hair and olive skin. He could almost hear the traumatized huffs of her son curled into a ball beside her behind the growing cry of sirens.

They wouldn't make it to them. It wouldn't matter anyway. He'd been dying long before he ever entered the alley. An added affliction to the voice– another curse. Cancer. It was decaying his body from the inside out as the voice tormented and twisted his mind. The voice that seemed to grow as all the progress he'd built leaked out of his grasp. Much like his blood that continued to spill.

He growled and coughed up a mouthful of spit and blood in anger. He was so close, closer than ever to reaching the apex...shutting up Kaitlyn– the voice, making them all fear him– satiating his paranoia...the voice was so close to leaving him.

He'd almost escaped her. And now, she was all he could hear. Even as the flashing blue and red lights of the sirens and police grew more intense, scanning over the brick walls and dark alley, he heard nothing...nothing but the voice, left to eat away at him as he faded.

"You are weak…..dying…."

"Shut up…." His mouth moved to make the words, nothing followed.

"They don't fear you….nobody is afraid….and now, you will die."

The words continued to flow endlessly while he looked up at the sky. Peering into the collection of stars that vaguely mocked the shape of pensive eyes. Almost as if the voice of his dead mother that plagued his mind had gained a physical presence.

He was too tired– too close to death to fully feel the horror that gripped his tattered insides. All he could do was watch the eyes study him while the voices continued, and the police entered the alley, stepping over his body carelessly unaware of his world fading and twisting into something else.

All they saw was a worthless thug. A murderer. And all he saw was the sky, it was shifting and moving. Churning– mixing, and being splashed with the colors of the screaming sirens like an angry colorful sea while the eyes continued to watch.

"This life is leaving you. Death is welcoming you, Kane."

The voice had changed. It wasn't the voice that plagued him regularly. This voice was larger, worlds larger as if every piece of him was hearing the imposing yet genderless voice that shook his insides.

"Death is often an assumed permanence…..never fully embraced as a gateway. Death welcomes you, Kane. But, nonexistence does not…..only change. I seek entertainment– I seek a show…..one I haven't yet seen."

The eyes in the sky had long since gained an undeniable physical form amidst the sea of black and glimmering stars. They leaned in and watched Kane's dying body with interest.

"You see Kane, the others…..they have grown to bore us. I seek change as you will experience it. I seek differences. You are different. The outlier. We need an outlier. We need you, Kane. I'm excited to see what you will bring with your difference. I shall see you in Death, Kane. You will be an interesting twist…..an interesting…..experiment."

The last thing he remembered seeing were the eyes. They swallowed his vision entirely, removing the alley, the innocents, the dead comrades, the sirens screams. All he saw was the sky and it's eyes….and then black. The voice of the sky continued to echo all the way into his death.

"You will be an interesting twist...an interesting…experiment."