A Man of Honor.

Chapter 68: Sic Vis Pacem Para Bellum

"Ask the man inside of you this: When you come face to face with destiny, do you want to be the bear or do you want to be the one holding the shotgun?" Commodore Louis Kaestner, Boardwalk Empire.

Neo and I reached into our pockets and pulled out our scrolls, activating the flashlight modes and shining the dark path in front of us with bright white light. We descended the steps together and with Tony leading the way in front of us holding a flashlight.

"What is this place?" Cardin asked from behind me.

"It's an old subway station." Tony answered. "The city was building them back in the day, they were going to be all over the city, but that shit at Mountain Glen put an end to it, the city canceled the contracts so we're left with these old unused tunnels."

"And no one comes down here?" I asked him.

"Most of the fucking city doesn't even know these fucking tunnels exist." Tony explained to me. "And most of the entrances were built over, I doubt anyone has been down here in a couple years."

"Roman - never - mentioned - these - to - me." Neo said, handing me her scroll to shine in front of us so we could see and she could use both hands to talk.

"Yeah this is the first I've been hearing about it too." I said to her. "I knew that the city almost built subways back in the day, I never knew they actually broke ground, and I certainly never knew that the Family had secret tunnels underneath the city."

"It's not as fancy as it sounds." Tony said to us. "None of the stations are even connected, hell they barely started any of these tunnels. And these places have always been a little something Roman and I only wanted to open up on a rainy day."

"We were at war not that long enough." I commented. "That's not enough rain for the two of you?"

"Well we didn't need all this, did we?" Tony asked in response. "We got through that shit just fine without reaching into this stash."

"Well how serious is it?" I asked him.

"I'll let you see for yourself." Tony said, approaching an old dust generator by the wall. He turned the engine on and moments later I shut off Neo's scroll and gave it back to her as the old underground station was filled with dim yellow light.

Down upon the dirty ground of the station were crates stacked on crates which seemed to have been made to carry construction equipment, but I didn't need to be told what they probably weren't filled with jackhammers or picks.

"Woah, are all of these packed with guns?" Cardin asked, approaching the closest crate. He inserted his crowbar and pried the lid open before pulling out a handful of straw padding that covered all of it.

Sure enough the box was lined with old submachine guns. I recognized the type, old steel and wood, Cardin had used one when he had come to rescue me from that fucking brick factory.

I picked it up and inspected it. The damn thing had to be almost a century old but a gun is a fucking gun. I grabbed and loaded in an empty drum magazine and pulled back the bolt testing it.

"These things aren't exactly in battle condition." I told Tony as I shouldered the weapon and looked down the sights.

"Well they've been here for a long fucking time." Tony told me. "But everything here is ready to go, they just need a little dusting and oil."

"Is this all you have, these old submachine guns?" I asked him.

"That's about most of what we got, a lot of this is the shit the Council gave us to fight the grimm in Mountain Glenn." Tony explained picking one of the guns up and grabbing another drum magazine to insert into the weapon. "I worked with these things a lot back in the day, we used to joke that we could write our names on walls with these things, we even called them Vale Typewriters."