aftermath; Cass
Apr 27, 2020 23:49:27 GMT -5
Post by charade on Apr 27, 2020 23:49:27 GMT -5
Sebastian Rothul
Already two years since Slate had come home in a box. If he closed his eyes he could still picture her crumpling to the ground after her arm had come flying off. Sebastian sighed. While he would never admit it to anyone, the younger members of The Pride were like his children. Weak! He reminded himself. Forming attachments like that got many a person killed.
You had to be tougher than that to survive in the grey-skied district that they called home. Still, he had to wonder why so many of them came to bad ends. Zanita, he thought, his chest tightening. He was certain that the rest of the original gang members were either dead in a ditch somewhere or rotting away in the detention center. And Slate—“
Sebastian grumbled. No use in dwelling on it. What was dead was dead. He was fairly certain that his number was going to up someday soon too. That’s just how district nine was; a small pond with too many fish and not enough food. The older he got the less sure he was that he was one of the sharks. There were younger faces now. Larger gangs, held together by the same threads that had once held him together. In fact, it seemed like they were springing up faster all the time.
Safe money put the bet on whatever poison was in the air.
He’d heard it said that people from district nine were more rough around the edges than most, and he believed it. Hardly a day went by without some kind of violence. Take the dilapidated warehouse he was currently nosing around in. There’d been a fight here. Word on the street said that it was the Seraphims and the Pride, which was something he found interesting, because as far as he knew, none of the Pride had been over here. If they had been, then he was going to have to crack a few skulls.
No unsanctioned rumbles, goddammit.
Not when the Capitol was cracking down, instituting a curfew because some jackass blew themselves up in another district.
Unfortunately, he found a bloody shirt with his mark. Fuck.
The inner circle knew better than to fuck around like this, but it seemed that there were some over-eager foot-soldiers around. He’d find them. He always did. Wouldn’t be too hard, considering the mess they’d made. Had any of them died here? If they hadn’t, he was going to finish the job himself, once he found them. Maybe ten people involved, he mused, surveying the damage. Here was a broken widow, there were some bloodstains that told him blades had seen some action.
Interestingly, it seemed like perhaps someone had been trying to clean. The tang of bleach was in the air. Sebastian paused and knelt, picking up and turning over a fragment of bone between his fingers. Chipped off a tooth. There was a noise and Sebastian straightened up instantly, his eyes quickly darting around. He hadn’t survived to the age of twenty-seven in district nine’s underground by taking stupid chances.
“You can come out,” he rumbled. “Don’t try anything stupid and you won’t get hurt.”
He wasn’t sure where they were, but he sensed someone, and he cursed himself for not paying more attention when he had entered. Who would it be? One of the Seraphims? A Pride footsoldier that needed a kick in the ass? Sebastian resisted the urge to pull out the blade he kept strapped to his boot and watched the shadows warily. There were more than a few places to hide, considering the rusting shelving and the old boxes and scraps of metal. The sun hadn’t set yet, but it was starting to dip just enough to make this a bad idea.
“I mean it,” he went on. “Be smart.”