Adenfall Chapter 1

Flap, flap, flap, the wings of a female seagull flutter through the sky as she approaches an abandoned-looking warehouse in the port of Norfolk. The white plumage radiates in the sky as she gets ready to land on the rusted rooftop of the warehouse. She lands softly, hopping as she comes to a stop. She looks around the rusted roof and sees that holes are starting to form from the oxidation of the rust. She starts hearing a reverberating sound of metal on metal from below her inside the warehouse. Upon hearing this, her curiosity beckons her to look, and she hops over to a busted window in an old wooden skylight and peers into the abandoned warehouse. And as she does, the noise comes to a halt.

The hen sees a young-looking man in a blue pinstripe suit covered in blood standing in the middle of a group of others who are lying around him. The suit, needing more than dry cleaners, looks like a Jackson Pollock painting of blood and blue fabric. She can see the man is winded by taking deep breaths. The man’s tired face squints in pain as the hen sees a sword in his gut and a knife in his back. The hen sees a bloody hatchet in his left hand as his right-hand rests on his hip. The man lowers his face to the ground as he mumbles to himself.

The seagull, wanting a better look, shuffles her feet on the warehouse roof, causing noise to reverberate. The man pinpoints the noise from above, anxiously snaps his face up to the rafters, and makes eye contact with the seagull. The man’s eyes stare into what feels like the seagull’s soul. His unnatural, steely cobalt-blue irises cut through the soul as a red-hot knife cuts through warm-temperature butter. Meanwhile, the black pupils stare into the void that remains of the hen’s soul. The seagull, feeling uneasy, moves away from the broken skylight quickly, getting away from the man’s gaze. The hen starts to caw loudly for others in the area.

The man breaks eye contact with the wooden skylight, his stance becoming relaxed but still on edge as the adrenaline starts to wear off; his breath becomes ragged from the stabbing pain in his side and shoulder. His cobalt-blue eyes quickly dart between the bodies as he looks around; he ensures the others have been taken care of before his adrenaline wears off. Seeing that none of the bodies have moved, he lowers his face in repugnance as he looks at the concrete warehouse floor.

He takes another deep but ragged breath as he starts to look at his blooded-covered suit. He rolls his eyes and moves his blooded right hand to the suit’s lapel. He takes his free right hand and tries to wipe off the blood on the suit. He sighs, muttering, as he fruitlessly rubs his suit, trying to remove particles. Then suddenly, a sharp pain reemerges in his thoughts.


“Ow,” he winces and groans as he lowers his head again, his cobalt blues making eye contact with the sword that sticks out of his left side in the middle of his intestines from what feels like it has pierced his small and large intestines. Oh, Yeah, The man knows pulling out the sword is needed, but he also knows that it’s going to hurt, but he still taps it to see if any kind of movement is possible–

–Nope, nothing, Damn.

He tries to look beyond his right shoulder at the knife; he notices it is piercing several layers of muscle as the knife is deep within the shoulder, almost piercing the shoulder blade completely.

–That looks easy compared to the beast in the stomach–

Another three lacerations dot his body, drenching his blue pinstripe suit in blood; he shrugs. He continues to look at the suit and is shocked to see that the tie is still reasonably straight, and there’s not even a drop of blood on it. He smirks as the yellow tie shines, and early morning daylight comes through the skylight and the rafters.

Well, if I’m going to get moving, I need to clean this up; the ‘this’ he’s thinking about is a mortal wound. He sighs in annoyance, still holding a blood-soaked hatchet that helped him kill the ones lying on the concrete floor of the warehouse in his left hand, dripping in red crimson. Without looking down at the hatchet, he drops it. The hatchet hitting the ground makes a wet, bloody thoonk! as it lands on the concrete floor. He reaches with his left hand at the sword in his gut.

“Why does this always happen to me?” he rhetorically whines to an eerily quiet warehouse. He hears only the tiny footsteps of the female seagull as the hen continues to caw for her mates. The wind whips through the broken windows, moving the stale, salty, rusted air. The seagull’s caws become louder as she moves around the warehouse’s roof.

He gathers himself before trying to pull the sword out of his side; he steadies his mind, preparing for the pain before attempting. On the first attempt, he grabs the blade’s hilt and tries to pull, but it doesn’t move as if it’s stuck. The only thing he accomplished was creating more pain for himself as he lets the hilt go and doubles over and gasps in pain. Damn, it; he annoyingly looks up at the bare support braces of the warehouse ceiling and shakes his head. He closes his cobalt-blue eyes and mutters something unintelligible to himself as he forcefully pulls the blade on the second attempt. This time, it goes better as the blade’s edge begins to loosen up around the skin. The blade still seems stuck but starts to move, but it still isn’t moving as much as he wants it to. He stops again and pulls his hand away from the sword, pausing before continuing—his hand twitches from the pain.

Let’s just get this over with; his hand returns to the hilt for a third time, “Ah..,” he winces again as he continues pulling on the blade, “Idiots! –I was just asking a–” as the last of the edge finally comes out of his gut. The wound begins pouring blood like a fountain, creating a pool of blood on the ground at his feet. He staggers as his knees become weak from the pain, almost falling to them in agony “–a damn question.” The tremble in his voice starts to disappear as he comes down from the pain, staggering to regain his balance.

After gathering his balance, he takes a deep breath and looks down at the blade with disgust with his cold blue eyes as the shimmer in the early morning light comes through the holes between the support wooden beams. That makes sense now; he realizes why it was so difficult to pull out. The sword has reversible barbs facing the hilt, causing them to catch inside a wound. He looks at the blade and sighs while rolling his eyes, shaking his head before tossing it away; the sword echoes across the abandoned warehouse, sliding on the ground before stopping. The warehouse returns to silence as more seagulls come to the roof to join with the female on the roof; he hears multiple sets of footprints on the roof now.

With his right hand, he reaches back and grabs the knife’s hilt in his right shoulder– It shouldn’t be as bad as the sword– and quickly pulls it out; he jerks from the sharp, penetrating pain.

But the knife comes out easier compared to the sword, which surprises the blood-soaked man. He looks at the knife, holding it to the early morning sun. It’s a Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife with a sickly green hue. The man brings the knife to his face and looks at it curiously as his ethereal, bright blue eyes try to analyze the knife. “Is that—” he quizzically asks the empty warehouse as he casually sniffs the weapon—“poison?”

The green hue knife has a pungent astringent scent; the man sniffs it and pulls his face away. He questionably looks it over as he turns it over in his hand. The blade looks thinner in some spots, almost like some chemical or poison has corrupted areas of the knife. He dismissively shrugs his non-injured shoulder and carelessly tosses it aside. The weakened knife flies throughout the warehouse, landing on its tip, and as it hits the ground, it shatters into several pieces, turning into dust, leaving only the hilt behind. The man feels a fast-acting poison starting to hit his system, which causes him to keel over– “Yep…poison–” he’s able to mutter before he collapses on his back; as the tetrodotoxin poison hits his body takes effect, he starts to close his eyes…

The crisp early morning sunlight turns to a bright afternoon blaze as the sun moves through the sky. The sun’s rays cascade on his face as the man lies with his eyes closed, listening to the building. The cracks and creaks from the wind coming from the ocean are like music to his ears. The ambient sounds flood his available senses as he enjoys the melody of the building’s ambiance. If he could smile, he would, but the poison is ravaging his body as the pain causes him to lie still. In the distance between the building creaking, he hears seagulls cawing as they circle overhead. The sound of crickets and frogs fills the rest of the ambiance sound as the afternoon comes along.

As the evening sun cascades on his face, he can finally open his eyes. He opens his ethereal cobalt blues and looks at the abandoned warehouse’s ceiling as the early evening sunlight comes through the skylight of the old roof of the warehouse, hitting him in the face. The sunlight makes him squint as he looks at the old braces and wonders, how long do you think they’ve been here? How many years, decades? And how long were the trees around before they got cut down to make these braces?

His thoughts are interrupted as he hears another sound inside the warehouse. The birds continue to make a ratchet, but he hears another unique sound moving inside the warehouse. The sound of tiny footpads starts approaching him. He tries to move his head toward the sound but cannot. The shadowy figure comes to his side. Then, one footpad and another, followed by two more, climb onto him. Still unable to decipher the creature, the bloodied, paralyzed man waits anxiously for the beast to make an appearance.

The beastly creature slowly climbs the man from his stomach to his face, blocking the sun like the shadowy figure. A slim figure sitting on the man’s chest lowers its head to the man’s as it completely blocks the sun in the man’s face, then suddenly–

–“Meow.”

As the man’s eyes adjust to the shadows, he sees that a black cat has climbed and now stands on his chest, looking down at him. The paralyzed man can feel the wisps of cat breath on his face as it stares at him. The cat’s wispy, ethereal, cobalt-blue eyes make contact with the man’s eyes, and they stay locked for a while, neither moving nor looking away. As the cat stands there, he starts to knead his chest.

Eventually, the cat stops kneading the man’s chest and breaks eye contact as it moves down to the man’s stomach just above the stab wound. The cat starts kneading above the injured stomach. After doing this for several minutes, he lays down above the wound and purrs before falling asleep. The paralyzed man can merely roll his eyes. Seriously! Every time!

The sun disappears from the warehouse roof as it starts to set; the feline decides it is time to get going and starts to stand. Looking rough from his nap, the black tabby cat stretches from the man’s torso to the ground. After the stretches, he places all his paws on the man’s torso and bathes himself. He looks up at the man in between licks and realizes the man still hasn’t moved.

The sun is on its last day of light before the cat stops his bath. He looks at the man who still hasn’t moved. The feline turns towards the man. A minute passes before the cat breaks eye contact; he stretches towards the man’s face. After elongating his slim body, the cat moves slowly towards the man’s face.

The black feline plops himself down on the man’s chest, lowering his face to the man’s, moving it side to side as he rubs his whiskers on his nose. The man’s nose flinches from the assault of the whiskers. The cat looks around the abandoned warehouse. He starts to sniff the man before saying, “Mreow.”

The impatient feline finishes his warehouse scan before turning towards the man again, “Mreow mew.” As the feline gets more impatient, the cat says to the man, “Meow.”

“Does it look like I can move?” the man rhetorically snaps at the cat as he lies unmoving.

“Meow!” The black tabby cat slaps his paw against the man’s chest several times.

“Yep, that fixed everything; I can get up now,” the paralyzed man sarcastically quips while rolling his eyes at the black feline, “I can’t get up, doofus,” he states. The cat dips his head to the side, his eyes tighten, and he bites the man’s nose.

The bite draws blood–“Ow!” The man squeals at the cat, raising his hand and trying to push the cat away, but to no avail; the feline doesn’t move. “That hurt you, little bastard. Okay, okay, I’ll get up!” The man screams at the cat.

The cat releases his nose and raises his head. The cat rubs his head all over the man’s face, as it seems happy that the man can move, and starts purring again. The man pivots his affection from pushing the cat away to petting him, “Mreow.”

“What?” the man eases up the petting and eventually tries to sit up. The cat jumps off him, landing on all fours beside him in a puddle of a random body’s blood. The cat looks down at his paws in disgust and grumbles as he moves out of the pool of blood.

The cat straightens itself up, looking at the man, “Mreow,” the cat repeats matter-of-factly. Standing there, he starts to clean his bloody paws with his tongue.

“What do you mean I’m ‘being lazy’?” The pinstripe-suited man defensibly says to the cat while checking his side where the stabbed wound was just a little while ago; seeing that the place has healed completely, not even a scar is left. “I just got stabbed several times because of you, and one was with a poisoned blade,” scratching at the newly grown skin. “Speaking of which, where the hells were you?”

“Mreow,” the black tabby sarcastically quips while cleaning his paws. The cat then turns his attention to his coat as he tends to his midsection. Every few strokes, he looks up at the man who’s just now sitting up and blinks his nebulous blue eyes at the man. After another tongue bath, the cat heads towards the warehouse’s opening, where no bodies are lying, and closer to the outside door. “Mreow, aeow,” he answers the man’s question.

“Okay, whatever. Don’t answer then,” the man responds. He is still sitting up, scratching at the newly grown skin.

The cat turns around to see the man still sitting, “Meow!” The cat yells irritably at the man, turns his slender body around, and sits with his tail wrapped around his paws, stewing.

Then the man grumbles as he rolls his eyes and dismissively waves at the cat as he starts to stand. At first, he gets on his knees before stumbling to his feet. He looks like a drunk trying to stand from an all-night bender and almost falls over before regaining his balance. He looks around to see if anybody is stirring awake, but then he realizes, Oh yeah, they’re all dead.

The six-foot-tall man takes his blood-covered hands around his neck and proceeds to crack it. Standing there, he stretches out his arms and snaps his elbows by extending them. His cobalt blues slowly scan the bodies as if he’s searching for something. Then the man sees it and starts to walk towards it, slowly stumbling, almost falling over as he walks, dragging one of his legs. The cat flicks its tail as the man starts walking in the general direction of some corpses.

As he gets closer, an eerie humming surrounds the immediate area. The weird, strange sound seems to be coming from the location of a corpse holding a black walking cane. The black walking cane is approximately 3 ½ feet long, and the top has a black onyx ball and a silver brace that covers ⅕ down from the ball towards the middle of the cane. The corpse has it in his cold, dead grasp; the cane looks slightly open, hiding something on the inside.

“There you are,” the pinstripe-suit man says as he smiles at nobody. He walks over to the corpse, pulls the cane away from its hands, and closes it shut; as he does, the eerie humming disappears. Compared to the other bodies, this corpse seems different, with no blood or visible wounds, but it’s dead like all the others. Almost as if the man has been emptied or hollowed out by an unknown force. The bloodied man shows no interest in the body and walks away after grabbing the cane, and he slowly starts heading toward the cat while steadily walking better as he uses the cane to walk.

The cat is still sitting with its flicking tail wrapped around its paws, his ears twitching as he waits on the man. The cat is indifferent to the scene in front of it. The feline sees the blood-covered, pinstriped-suited man walking towards him, using a black walking cane to help him move. The cat waits until the man passes, then follows him, raising his tail as he starts to strut.

The man sees the door to the warehouse where they had entered earlier.

Before reaching the door, the man realizes that he’s still missing something, damn it, he swings around to the warehouse. He sighs as he spins around towards the door again. I’m not looking for it.

“Hey ‘Zeke,’” the man asks the cat.

The cat, Zeke, looks at the man, “Meow?”

“Have you seen my hat?” The man stops and looks down anxiously at the cat as the cat looks up at him.

“Meow?” Ezekiel responds with a tremble in his voice.

The man rolls his eyes and hangs his head. “Great,” he sighs heavily, rubbing the back of his neck before continuing, “when we get to the shop, ‘Taylor’ won’t be happy.”

Zeke and the blood-covered man walk away from the warehouse in the moonlight on their backs. As they walk away from the warehouse, the blood-covered man takes a deep breath of the heavily salted perfumed sea air. A slight smirk comes across the man’s face as they walk. He even starts walking better as he picks up the cane and starts twirling it as a cheerleader would her baton in his right hand, switching between the hands occasionally as he walks.

Zeke, the cat, strolls behind the man with his tail up, but he keeps looking around as he would for trouble. His ears move independently, listening for strange or unusual sounds. The man closes his eyes as he walks, enjoying the salty air.

The bloodied man and the black tabby continue to walk away from the slums.
The area is in shambles as several of the warehouses are falling apart. As the cat and the blood-covered man walk, they can see that most of the surrounding warehouses are decrepit in their upkeep. These falling-apart warehouses are only suitable for housing the area’s immediate disenfranchised. Lighted 50-gallon metal drums are lit with trash to keep them warm as Zeke and the man walk away from these downtrodden buildings.

Some disheveled tents with dissidents walking around gathering items and scrap metal as they try to scavenge what they can to survive. As the man and Zeke walk past the homeless camp, Zeke keeps one of his cobalt blues on them as they pass.

A disenfranchised man approaches the bloodied man, who still has his eyes closed as he walks. “Hey, do you have—” the disenfranchised man starts talking but suddenly stops as he looks over the man; he realizes that the bloodied man looks worse than he does with his blood-covered suit. “Hey, man, are you good?” the homeless man genuinely asks the bloodied man.

Unaware of the homeless man talking to him at first, the bloodied man opens his cobalt blues and looks at the homeless man. “Hmm?” The ethereal blue eyes send a shudder through the homeless man’s soul. Even before the bloodied man can respond, the homeless man disappears into the shadow of the building from which he appeared.

The bloodied man and the black tabby walk away from the salty slums and the homeless camps without further incident. As they walk, they start chatting about nothing of note as they move. The man talks to the cat like a person, and it responds like a person would during a conversation. Eventually, after a while of traveling, the cat jumps on the man’s shoulder and wraps his tail around the bloodied man’s neck as the cat nuzzles with the man. The pinstripe-suited man takes his free hand and pets the cat as he starts to purr. They travel for some time, leaving the slums entirely behind them. The warehouses are figures on the horizon now as they make their way.

After several hours of walking, they reach an abandoned field filled with tall grass and weeds. They stand in the field strangely, waiting for something to happen. Zeke falls asleep on the man’s shoulder as they wait, and the bloodied man continues to pet the sleeping kitty. After waiting a few minutes, a purple door materializes from nothing. The man nudges the kitty awake; Zeke yawns and drops to the ground as he begins to stretch. Zeke approaches the door with the bloodied man in tow; the man reaches the door, opens it, and allows Zeke to go through it first as he steps through.

As they exit the door’s entryway, the area changes from Norfolk’s slums to a downtown suburb of Chicago. The smell causes the bloodied man’s nose to scrunch up from the vastly different smells of salty sea air to exhaust fumes-filled side streets. Still nighttime but now surrounded by lights, the man shades his eyes from the harsh neon streetlights. The pleasant ocean sounds are now a bustling street. Cars honking and engines heard revving in the distance as the bloodied man sighs as he walks from the side ally to the main street. Zeke, still leading the man, stops and looks around the area.

They come out of the alleyway to a downtown part of Chicago surrounded by tall buildings and walk into a crowd of people; even though it’s the middle of the night, the town is still alive and action-packed. Even though his suit is torn and covered in blood, the other people pay him no mind as he walks through the streets with a cat ahead of him. Zeke occasionally looks back at the bloodied man who is keeping up. They eventually end up where they are going.

After a few seconds on the main street. They come to a little shop surrounded by massive buildings called:

24/7 Tailoring
We Are Always Open

As they walk up towards the shop, Zeke looks back; he sheepishly lets out a tiny meow. The bloodied man looks down at the kitty and sighs deeply before approaching the door, “I know this won’t go well,” the man fearfully says to Zeke, the cat.

They walk under the sign as they approach the main door of the tailoring shop. The bloodied man opens the door, and Zeke runs through before the man can fully open the door—ding ding chimes above the door as the bloodied, pinstriped-suited man walks through.

Ding, ding, the door chimes again as it closes behind the man. The man raises a hand to his face and rubs his eyes as if he’s getting sleep crust out of them. His other hand holds the cane, which he places on a wall beside an over-plush chair.

Zeke struts through, acting like he owns the place, jumping on the counter and flopping into a ball. The man looks over at the cat and smirks. The man sees nobody at the counter as the cat falls asleep, suggesting he’s been there for many days.

The man gathers by taking a deep sigh as he reaches the over-plush chair; he turns around and drops in it like a tree breaking off and hitting a river as it floats down the stream. The blood-covered man sitting in the overstuffed plush chair grabs the cane from the wall beside him, places it between his legs, and decides to close his eyes…

“I will be there in a second!” a woman from the back room cheerfully shouts at the front of the store. This startles the man, and he quickly opens his eyes. Then suddenly, a young-looking, short-cropped, blonde-haired woman in a 1950s floral-printed dress comes through the back wearing immaculate light makeup—all while wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night inside a building.

Her hand is casually against the wall, “Hello,” she says with a cheerful smile. “How can I he–” Then she stops while lightly sniffing the air, and her nose crinkles from a musky and copper smell–

—“‘Adenfall,’ is that you?” The young-looking seamstress says to the bloodied, suited man.

“Where have you been?” The woman approaches the pinstripe-suit man, Adenfall, placing her hand on the counter away from the feline, who’s still asleep. “What took you so long?” Her attitude changes as she approaches Adenfall’s seat. “Why are you covered in blood, and where is my hat?!” She starts shouting accusations at him.

“You know what happened, ‘Taylor,’” Adenfall, the bloodied pinstriped-suited man, rolling his eyes at Taylor, the light olive skin-toned man sitting in the overstuffed plush chair in a blooded suit, stares at the ceiling. He takes a deep breath before answering her accusations, “I was asking some questions; actually, it was just one question, and then there was a fight. I stabbed one,” thinking it out loud and counting on his hand while putting it in the air, “two, three, four, five, six, no, wait five times.” The young blonde puts her hands on her hips, despondently shaking her head.

“Were you able to learn anything, at least?” She lowers her voice but is still genuinely upset.

“No,” Aden, or Adenfall, dejectedly states as he closes his eyes.

“Is ‘Ezekiel’ okay?” Taylor worriedly asks, not paying attention to the cat on the counter behind her.

“Mreow,” the Zeke, or Ezekiel, pipes up from behind Taylor.

Taylor swings around, surprised by Zeke’s presence. She reaches out with her hand, trying to pet him, but she doesn’t reach him. So, Ezekiel stretches out with his front paws, bringing her closer. As Taylor gets closer, she starts rubbing Zeke with two hands, and a smile comes across the worried young face of the seamstress. “My good boy,” Taylor says in a baby voice, “I am glad you are okay.”

Then she turns her voice back towards the exhausted man in the plush chair. “So, Aden, what happened? Do you have any promising leads, at least?” she softly asks as she calms down while petting the purring kitty.

“Short or the long answer?” Adenfall asks.

“Start with the short, then go with the long,” Taylor continues, petting Ezekiel.

“No,” Adenfall says, still looking at the ceiling. He puts his hands behind his head before continuing, “Nothing, zip, nada.”

“Really?” Taylor, genuinely shocked by Aden’s answer, turns towards his direction.

“We thought we had a good lead on the Caster in what city, Zeke?” Adenfall looks over Ezekiel’s direction as he gets patted by the young-looking tailor.

“Pureow,” He says through the pets and purrs.

“Yeah, you’re right, Zeke, Norfolk.” Adenfall takes a deep breath before continuing, “We got directed to this warehouse; it seemed straightforward enough.” He straightens up in the chair, puts his elbows on his knees, and bends forward, rubbing his short brown hair, “but we later realized it was a trap rather quickly.”

Aden brings his hands from the back of his head to his face and starts rubbing his tired-looking face, “Zeke went inside to scout, and he was taking too long. So you know I’m impatient when it comes to him, so I went inside. And that’s when I saw what looked like to be Cult members trying to take Zeke,” the feline has now rolled over onto his back, letting the young-looking seamstress pet his black belly, “and you know I won’t let anything happen to him, so I rushed in.”

“But that’s when I realized we were caught in the trap because two of them were already behind me. One of the soldiers stabbed me in the right shoulder, which caused me to drop the cane,” Aden says while caressing the black walking cane between his legs.

“After dropping the cane, the guy tried to pick ole blacky here and went to open it, and we know what happens after that. So, I pulled away from him and chased the other; he was holding a hatchet. I was able to wrestle it from him eventually,” Adenfall takes his left hand as he pinches the bridge of his nose while rubbing away what looks to be rheum again from his eyes and continues.

Taylor, who doesn’t like discussing violence, is half listening to him as she pets Ezekiel, “and I used it–to… take care of him.” He talks very vaguely to her because he knows her very well, “Then another three rushed me, I...disposed of—” Adenfall starts to rub the back of his neck again— “of them quickly, I got stabbed by one of them. Then others showed up, and that’s when things got messy. One of the others gave me a nasty stab in the gut—.” Aden accidentally goes too far and does not realize it.

“Okay, okay, enough said,” Taylor cuts Aden off, knowing that if he went any further, she would’ve gotten sick listening to him. She raises her hands away from Zeke, who decides to roll back over, jump away from Taylor, and come over to Adenfall.

While leaning against the counter now and still facing away, Taylor asks, “And you were unable to get any information from those members?” Zeke starts to rub Aden’s legs. Adenfall, knowing what he wants, leans back; Zeke immediately jumps in his lap, and then Adenfall starts petting him.

“No,” Adenfall regretfully says as he pets Zeke, “they were smart, knowing if they said anything, I would’ve used it.”

“Dammit,” Taylor says under her breath.

Aden sighs, “Yep,” and continues petting the cat.

“Meow,” Zeke stretches out over Aden’s lap, his blue eyes staring at a spot on the carpet. He tilts his head while looking at the place, his back paws on one side of his legs and his front feet over the other.

“Aden,” Taylor, still facing the counter, turns around towards Aden, “we should get the others involved.”

“No,” Adenfall utters, “I don’t want to get them involved. They’re busy handling their problems.”


“You know they will help us; all we have to do is ask,” Taylor pleaded with Adenfall, “let me call Julius in; he is an hour away. It would be quicker if the shop let him jump here. They call us whenever they need help, so let us call them.”

“No,” Adenfall says more assertively, still petting Zeke, “the Caster hasn’t been missing for that long; we’ll find it.” He dismisses Taylor.

“It has been missing for weeks, Aden! Weeks! It is different for humans. To them, weeks can feel like a long time.” Taylor is irritated by Aden’s refusal and does not see it as an immediate problem.

“Even if they were here, what would we tell them?” Aden looks up at the seamstress and pulls his hand away from Zeke, who looks up at the blood-covered man and grumbles.

“What do you mean?” Taylor is wondering where Aden is going with this.

“What would we tell them? A couple of weeks ago, the Caster went missing when I was dealing with some stalkers. I didn’t drop it or see it go missing. I came back to the shop, and then I realized it was gone. I backtracked all the spots I was in and found no evidence of it.” Still looking up at Aden, Zeke climbs on the chair’s left armrest and lies spread out. The cat looks pleased with himself as he lies on the armrest. Zeke starts staring at a spot on the carpet and begins to zone out as he looks at the area.

“Taylor,” Adenfall became argumentative with her, “I don’t even know if that was when it went missing. I was gone for almost two months searching for Magall; I’ve been looking for him in Washington, DC, Portland, Austin, and Mongolia, to name a few. I’ve been running around in circles trying to find him.” Adenfall leans forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees and rubbing his face. “And only after finding him I realized the Caster was missing.” Aden stops speaking; then he lowers his face, staring at the same spot the cat was looking at earlier.

“I–I don’t want to get them involved until I know more. I’m not wasting their time, at least not yet.” Adenfall tilts his head, still looking at the dirt spot on the carpet. It’s the exact shape of Washington, DC. He leans forward, rubbing his finger across the area. After rubbing the place, he leans back in the chair and crosses his legs while putting a hand on Zeke.

I wonder why the shop didn’t clean it. Hmm, nothing’s changed. As the bloodied man sits, he notices that the place hasn’t changed since the last time he was here, even though it’s only been days. The store looks like your typical dry cleaners/alternations store: a large counter that comes out about 5 feet cut with an ‘L’ sitting behind this counter is a sewing dock with a speed pedal. An old-timey cash register sits on the counter and everything Taylor needs to run her business. There is one plush chair that Aden is seated in and two doorways—one for the outside and the other for the back of the shop. Nothing remarkable, just the way that Adenfall and Taylor want it.

Aden looks at Zeke as he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out as he yawns and looks at Aden. Aden starts lightly stroking the feline, “I’ll make you a deal with you—“

Taylor raises her hand, interrupting him, and starts to chuckle—“What are you trying to be, Luce?”

Adenfall chuckles at this, “Ha, funny you. If we get a reliable lead, I’ll call them myself.”

Taylor smiles in Aden’s direction, “Deal.” But her smile changes to a serious tone: “I will call them if we do not get any leads, and do not pull a ‘you’ and let this drag out; I am serious, Aden. We need to find the Caster before something happens.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Adenfall pipes up.

“So,” Taylor says as she approaches Aden, “what do we know?” She reaches him and sits on Zeke’s opposite armrest of the chair.

“The Cult is trying to use or copy the Caster as we speak. And yes, I thought the same thing before you even said it, but I know they won’t be able to. It’s impossible, or at least I think it is. Even if they could, good luck trying to find the ammunition for it, ’cause there are, what, three or four people left who can make any?”

Adenfall raises a hand from Zeke and places his other hand on Taylor’s back. He starts to rub her back. “Do you know what worries me the most?” He asks Taylor rhetorically.

Adenfall continues, “What happens if they try to take it apart? Could the gun repair itself? We know it has a self-repairing feature.”

“But is it possible to make another gun out of these spare parts? Can you imagine if they could assemble another one, make copies, and then find a way to acquire the ammo? That would be disastrous! Even if they could only get one shot off with a copy.”

“It could still cause major damage, especially if they had certain shells. I mean, what if they got hold of a #13?! I don’t even want to imagine they could start another World War, do you? WW1 sucked, WW2 was horrible for all of us, and we don’t even talk about WW3…” He stops himself, not even wanting to finish the thought.

Aden stops massaging Taylor’s back, stands up, puts his hands on his back, and stretches. Zeke glances at Aden disgruntled, then jumps onto where Aden is sitting, “Oew,” the cat says as he yawns and flops over, then begins to snore softly.

“I wish it were that easy, buddy,” said Aden, reaching down and beginning to pet Zeke again. He starts to purr as he drifts to sleep, dreaming of food as his back paws twitch.

“What did Zeke say?” Still sitting on the armrest, Taylor tries to stand, but she struggles, and Aden stops immediately, petting Zeke and helping her.

“He said that ‘they know we’re after them this time,’” Aden says as he helps Taylor up. Taylor grabs Aden’s hand, “It’s not the usual where we’re running from them or trying to hide. It’s been at least 100 years since I went on a warpath against them. And you know why that happened.” Aden matter-of-factly states as Taylor looks away from him in shame.

Aden looks at her, guilty and ashamed, “Hey, don’t be like that. It wasn’t your fault; it’s theirs. Hells, blame me for saving Samuel.”

Taylor’s face eases, but Adenfall can tell she felt what he said; her grip tightens on Aden’s hand, “I don’t blame you; I blame them for everything. WW3 was them, and they even had their hands in WW2. I just wished we could find something or someone to help us.” Taylor releases her grip on Aden, and he pulls away.

“Mreow,” Zeke pipes up from his dream of food.

Adenfall dismisses Zeke’s statement, “That wouldn’t work,” as he turns away from Zeke and Taylor.

“—Mreow mew meow,” Zeke debates with Adenfall as he yawns.

“I haven’t seen him in almost 50 years,” Adenfall turns around, “and you know that.” He dismisses the cat’s words again.

“Mew,” Zeke responds to Aden as Aden rolls his eyes.

` “I hate it when you guys do this,” Taylor says annoyingly. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘You should go see, Warren.’” Aden translates.

“Why would Zeke say that? He knows that you don’t like him. Hells, even Zeke does not even like him.” Taylor states.

“Meow mew,” Ezekiel says thoughtfully.

“You’re right,” Aden says candidly.

Taylor turns her head towards Aden again.

“He said, ‘It’s time to bury the proverbial hatchet and sit down with him,’” Aden translates.

“Do you remember what happened the last time you saw each other?” Taylor quizzically reminds Aden.

“Yes,” Adenfall begrudgingly says, “I yelled at him, saying, ‘You killed your parents, my daughter, my son-in-law. I can prove it!’”

“Yes, Aden, trusting is not your strong suit,” Taylor says, “but he seems to have righted his ways.”

“Yeah, that’s what it seems,” Aden looks away to nowhere, “but we both know the truth.”

“Aden,” Taylor says sharply, “He is President of the New United States now!”