GUN SALAD

Smoke curled from the tip of Luca’s gunbarrel, rising up to join the swirling cloud of soot above.

Is this real life?

It didn’t feel right. He’d never had much of a taste for violence, so why had he shot that poor woman so many times? Why did he even have a gun?

The echoes of each muzzle flash played at the edges of his vision, inducing a kind of paralysis. Time seemed to slow, and in that uncomfortable middle-space between action and consequence, the worst kind of memories began to emerge.

Did I… Plan for this?

For years, his morning routine had been the same. Get up. Wash. Get dressed. Eat, if he was hungry. But, in the clarity of the moment, he recalled the extra steps–the ones his mind rejected so strongly that they passed beneath his notice.

Grab the gun from the night table. Check the chamber. Stow it in the left inside pocket.

Tell Sniffer to stop whimpering, already. Trust me. It’s nothing.

Just a favor for a friend.

“Don’t think too hard about it, Luca.”

That voice…

“It’s nothing.”

…No!

“Just a favor for a friend.”

All at once, the details came spilling back. He’d been on his way home late one night when a pair of powerful arms seized around his neck, choking the breath from his lungs. Next thing he knew, he was strapped to a chair with a gun to his head.

It fired. The flash was intense. And with it came oblivion… But not the kind he’d been expecting.

“Luca Benelli. You’re a hard man to find.”

The voice was calm. Measured. Gloating. Luca remembered straining to answer it–to shout his defiance, to cry for help, anything–but something stopped him short. His mind was active but sluggish, as if some kind of heady drug was coursing through his veins.

“Now that I have you, though, things should proceed much more smoothly…”

The man in red circled him for what felt like an eternity, whispering sinister suggestions in his ear. He wanted Luca and his fellow freedom fighters gone. He wanted them wiped from the face of Cal Vontra.

He wanted his brainchild, the Guardians of Prosperity, to continue unopposed.

“Forget your resistance friends. But remember their faces,” he’d said. “Carry a loaded pistol at all times. And should they come before you…”

WHAM

Pain exploded in his gut, jolting him back to the present moment. He sprawled to the ground, gun falling from his hands.

“...Just a favor for a friend.”

Luca writhed in the dirt, struggling to cope with the intensity of it all. He sucked in a breath, and almost managed another before the heel of a boot came down on his face.

“FUCKER! PSYCHO!!”

He looked up to see Mimi readying another kick, her pretty eyes flaring with hatred. Before she could lay into him again, though, someone grabbed him by the collar and heaved him partway off the ground.

Roulette.

“Luca?! What the hell?!” she spat. “I thought we were friends! That was my mother, you piece of shit!!”

There was no time for words. She tossed him to the ground in disgust, then turned her back on him, rushing to her mother’s side. Mimi kicked away the fallen gun and went along with her, shooting him one last venomous glare before striding from his field of vision.

How… How could I let this happen…?

Sniffer loosed a whine from its place on his hip. It knew as well as he did that there was no coming back from this. In a matter of seconds, he had burned every bridge; he had betrayed the trust of his closest friends.

He had allowed himself to be made into a living weapon.

Luca could hear them crying and shouting, trying to breathe life back into the woman he’d shot. Joan. He remembered now–she’d been their contact on the inside. Their plant among the Niners. Thanks to her, he and Morgan had been able to track Gunn’s activities and the passage of weapons shipments across the range.

“I-It’s not working!” he heard Beretta say. “Drizzle is almost out!”

He couldn’t bring himself to look. Instead, he lay there as the burbling of blood-filled lungs filled the air, desperately wishing he was someone else. The woman’s last gasp came a short time later. It was official.

He had killed someone.

After that, all he heard was grief. Roulette sobbed uncontrollably, and the rest did their best to comfort her. Luca knew better than most that no possible word or gesture could put her at ease. Not after this. Now she had lost both her parents.

And it was all his fault.

The guilt was debilitating. He wanted to stay–wanted to join the others in working to mend her broken heart. But there was no place for him now among her friends. It would be best if he just… Disappeared.

Luca rolled over, propped himself up on his elbows, and concentrated on crawling away. He didn’t expect to succeed–it was hard not to notice a man in a bright red coat crawling across the flattest part of the western wastes, after all–but to stay there, lying perfectly still as he meditated on the harm he’d caused, seemed infinitely worse than the alternative.

So he carried on, dragging his aching belly across the ground, until something caught his eye:

The sight of two imposing figures crossing the plain toward him.

Each was dressed like the railway porters he’d seen aboard the Armature Express, but they walked with a kind of predatory swagger that Luca couldn’t ignore. He blinked, squinting against the sunlight in his efforts to get a better look… Only to find that the second man had disappeared.

What is going on here?

“Hey!” he shouted, turning back to face Roulette and the others, “Someone’s coming!”

They looked up from Joan’s body reluctantly. Mimi, in particular, fixed him with a glare that could peel paint. But as more of them glanced beyond him, toward the approaching stranger, they began to stand.

“Mr. DeVipersmuth…” Beretta breathed. “What is he doing out here?”

The big man beside her cocked a brow. “A friend of yours?”

“No.” She took his hand and gave it an anxious squeeze. “He is a liar.”

Apparently, that was all the mustachioed Truvelan needed to hear. He stooped down to kiss her on the forehead and left her side, advancing toward the train attendant with a grim look on his face. Then, stopping several feet ahead of everyone else, he stood with his arms crossed until their visitor drew near.

“You…” he growled as the “liar” came within earshot, “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” the man replied. His eyes flicked between each of them in turn, as if probing for weaknesses. “And it looks like it’ll be an easy one this time. What happened to your guns?”

“I can field that one!” a woman called from behind the long, shaded desk that spanned the enclave’s gate. She looked professional enough, but she was watching the situation unfold with the same kind of amused detachment a theatergoer might reserve for a Sunday matinee. “They have been disarmed until they can accomplish the tasks I’ve assigned them.”

The man chuckled to himself. “I see. And if they weren’t able to complete those tasks on account of being killed, you would…”

“...Not really care,” she finished. “Do what you want with them.”

He grinned, rubbing his hands together with glee. “Oh yeah! Viper’s day has finally come,” he laughed, his gaze shifting toward Joan’s unmoving form. “Who’s the dead broad? Anyone important?”

“No,” the woman replied.

“My mother,” Roulette hissed, glancing between them with defiance in her eyes. At that, Viper’s smile only seemed to widen.

“Well, look who it is! The only intelligence specialist who’s ever bested the great Hard Viper. I’d bug you for a rematch, but it’d be a waste of time: the fact that I got the drop on you today proves my superiority better than any mere training exercise ever could.”

“You are such a loser,” she countered, “and maybe the last person I ever wanted to see today. Do us all a favor and get gone.”

“No can do.” He smirked and sunk into an exaggerated fighting stance, his shoes shuffling loudly in the dirt. “I could just shoot you all, but where’s the fun in that? Send forth your best fighter. I’ll send him crying to his mommy–unless she’s dead like yours, that is.”

Roulette’s eyes flashed. “Marka? Kill him.”

“With pleasure!” he roared, cocking back his fist in anticipation of a bone-shattering blow. His knuckles barrelled toward the shorter man’s torso, right on course to shatter every rib… But at the very last second, Viper dodged, slipping aside as if he’d been training for this moment all his life.

“Dummy! You actually fell for it!” he cried, looking groundward as their shadows crossed.

And then, before anyone could possibly intervene, a hand reached out from the patch of shade and dragged Marka into the earth.