One Problem Worse Than Another

"This is wrong! I don't go out at night, sir!" Zac insisted on the lie. "Haven't you confused me? Caleb is a lot like me and goes out a lot."

"Caleb?" The men heard that name and didn't understand who it was.

"Caleb is a resident of the building where I live. He's about my age. He's a little taller and stronger, but you might get us mixed up depending on what he's wearing." Zac quickly came up with this lie.

There really was someone like that. And even if he didn't look that much like Caleb, in the dark of the night in a poorly lit area of the city, it wouldn't be that hard to make a mistake like that.

The man who had watched him until that afternoon hadn't made a mistake, but he didn't believe that Zac could deal with Dario.

Besides, he remembered that the person he had seen leaving the building where Zac lived that day hadn't returned until the early morning when Zac had gone to school.

Thinking about it, he couldn't help but consider the possibility that he had made a mistake.

'Did I make a mistake?'

The others looked at the man in silence while Zac made expressions of pain.

The three moved away from him, and one of them asked. "Could you have made a mistake that day?"

The man responsible for watching Zac said in an uncertain tone. "It is possible. I was sure I saw him that day, but it was dark, and he didn't return after he left. Yet, he left for school early in the morning, but I assure you that no one entered the building that night. I watched the area all night."

"Why didn't you follow him?"

"I did, but I lost sight of him a few minutes after he left. I don't know what happened. Anyway, I got back to the front of the building just before Dario was beaten up and robbed."

One of the three understood what this person meant. "Even if he were the one who left that day, he would have returned before you, which means he couldn't have acted against Dario that day."

"Yes, that's what I think."

"What about what happened yesterday?" The third man asked in a low voice.

"He might be telling the truth, but there's no way to be sure. We can only check if he's really working as a tutor," Zac's observer said.

"So what do we do with him? It looks like he's innocent, at least for now."

"Let's release him somewhere. He hasn't seen our faces, so he won't come after us."

"What if he goes to the police?"

"There's nothing we can do. The boss made it very clear that we shouldn't cross the line with him. In any case, the officers in our group are prepared to deal with reports of kidnappings in the next few hours. We'll be fine." The leader said to his two buddies over there.

"But he'll remember this..." The observer commented, sensing that this action would have consequences one way or another.

"Let him remember. It will teach him to respect those he should not mess with!"

With that decided, they returned to Zac, and one of them once again electrocuted the blond young man.

...

Forty minutes later...

A white van pulled up next to a poor neighborhood in Walney where robberies and crimes were common, even in broad daylight.

The place was so bad that it had streets with open sewers, unpaved roads, and several clandestine electricity connections.

The moment the side door of that van opened, the men there threw Zac's "unconscious" body out of their vehicle before the driver drove away.

Zac lay there for a moment, pretending to be unconscious, as the vehicle disappeared over the horizon.

As a vagrant approached him to check his belongings, Zac opened his eyes and stood up suddenly, avoiding the theft that was about to take place.

Several people were looking in his direction, so he didn't do anything about the tramp. "Thanks for worrying about me, but I'm fine." He said aloud.

The man immediately moved away from Zac while other people in the area looked at him curiously.

But no one there was really shocked to see a man being thrown out of a van. That happened almost every week in such a place!

Zac tried to figure out where he was while checking what he still had with him and soon spotted some shirtless, grim-faced men with guns in their hands staring at him.

"Shit! I'm in Lower South Smis!" He realized at the sight of armed men in broad daylight in the middle of a public street.

Lower South Smis was definitely the worst place in Walney to live or be. It was extremely poor and practically forgotten by the local government.

Bandits wanted by the police hid there, drug dealers operated freely in this place, and the police didn't enter this area casually.

This place was a stronghold of human scum, where lived whores who sold their bodies for 10, 20 Lunar Pennies, a place so bad that even someone as poor as Zac couldn't help but feel disgusted.

But that wasn't what worried him the most. Lower South Smis was the kind of place strangers should never enter!

Once abandoned there, it wouldn't be easy to get out safely!

He saw some armed thugs approaching him, obviously curious to know who had abandoned him there and what he had done to deserve it.

"Boy, who are you? Why did your 'friends' leave you here?" Asked a man with several tattoos all over his body, shirtless, armed with a rifle, smiling, and showing his gold teeth.

"That... I don't know." He said uncertainly, afraid of getting into more trouble today. "I was kidnapped, and then they threw me in here. I don't know who these people are."

"Oh? I doubt it." A man with tear tattoos on his face said as he pointed his gun at Zac.

"Are you with The Hogs?" The shaven-headed individual asked.

The Hogs were a rival faction to the dominant faction in Lower South Smis. If a member of either faction entered the other's territory, he or she had a 100% chance of being killed!

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just a student!" He shouted as people in the area entered their homes or businesses.

"We'll find out!" One of them said as he ordered his fellows to pick up Zac and take him to a suitable place for them to talk.

'Fuck!' Zac cursed those men from before, now in a much worse situation than before!