World of Anarchy/Chapter 43

This is a preview of chapter 43 of World of Anarchy entitled: Neither Here Nor There

Synopsis
David and Zelda’s investigation comes to a grinding halt when his attention is pulled into a new conflict, while Teresa begins digging deeper into the secrets of the safe-zone. Elsewhere, Deathstalker and Bi-Liang face off in the middle of the streets of the zone and confront each other about the past, and Null discovers something on the outskirts of the zone.

Chapter 43 - Neither Here Nor There
One punch.

All it took was one punch to send Bi-Liang flying into a parked car. Deathstalker smiled to himself as the hellfire engulfed his fists. Finally after what seemed close to an eternity of waiting he was going to avenge his wife and daughter’s deaths.

“Hikaru--!” Bi-Liang spat up blood as pulled himself out of the now dented car. The sun would be rising any minute now. People were also piling out in the streets attracted by the noise of their brawl.

“I told you!” The demon that was once called Hikaru Takeshi yelled as he stomped his foot down on his prey’s chest. “The man you knew as Hikaru is dead! He died the day his family did--All because of you!”

As he pulled out his kunai, ready to finish his old rival then and there, he made a mistake. He had forgotten that Bi-Liang was an Elemental. Before he could drive the kunai dagger into his foe, Bi-Liang managed to push him off of him and freeze most of his body.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” The Elemental said wiping blood off his chin.

This infuriated Deathstalker even more. “You’re the reason they’re dead! You were the one that broke into the Hidden Tower! The one who released those damn demons from their prison! You’re the whole reason Claudia and those damn Guardians banned magic! It was because of that I couldn’t save them from those monsters!” He shouted as his hellfire began to melt the ice that restricted his movement.

Remorse flashed across Bi-Liang’s face. “I’m sorry that happened.”

“Oh, you’re going to be sorry.” Deathstalker announced as he broke out of the ice and lunged.

Null began to hear a noise somewhere in front of him. He placed his book down and looked around. He had been taking a break and decided to read Lord of the Flies while doing so. Good book so far, but he hadn’t had much time to actually read it so he wasn’t too far into the book. The source of the noise was surprisingly a snake--one that was quite big.

He crept through the shadows before jumping forward a few feet toward the animal. His knife quickly dispatched of the struggling snake’s head. The zone provided him with enough food for his scouting but he had been outside the walls a little longer than usual so he had to improvise. His teeth sunk into the snake’s corpse as he looked, around making sure no infected was close by, tearing it apart piece by piece.

The mission the zone had given him was to find out where Spencer Jayden had went after abandoning them and report back. So here he was, in the streets of New Jersey searching for the defector. Truth be told, he didn’t agree to do it for the zone. He agreed to help because of David. In the year of memory he had, David had become one of the best people he knew.

He didn’t have any memories from before the group woke him from his slumber in HavenCorp. Just absolute nothingness. Of course this didn’t really matter to him. All that mattered to him was the present.

As he finished eating his snake he noticed movement somewhere off the his left. He drew his gun quick and scanned the area for what he had saw. There, beside a few abandoned cars was a small boy walking into a parking garage. He remained in a crouching position as he weaved in and out of cover to the garage.

Darkness filled the space in front of him as he made his way into the garage. Where was this kid going? Why was he alone? He lost sight of the kid once inside the parking structure.

Before he could search the area he heard a gun click behind his head. Turing, he saw five children, including the one he had been following, that were around ten or so pointing assault rifles at his head.

Null raised his hands to show he wasn’t going to attack. “Please lower your weapons. I mean no harm.”

The little girl to his right turned to the others. “Jackson isn’t going to like that he followed us. What should we do?”

The boy in the middle responded. “What do ya mean ‘what should we do’? We take him to Jackson and let decide.” He then turned to slightly taller boy to his left. “Tie him up.”

Null let them tie him up, deciding not to make a run or try and take them on. Five untrained kids with high power assault rifles could only end with all of them dead. Besides, he wanted to take these kids back to the zone alive and thought maybe he could convince this Jackson person. Just in case that failed though he activated his distress signal, that was conveniently placed on his phone, that alerted the zone that he needed help. He had promised to activate it when he found Jayden but now seemed like a better time.