Cookies And Cream

Dead Men Tell No Tales

He successfully managed to dodge the car that was speeding his way, but he couldn't escape the string of curses that flew out of the man's lips. He didn't care; his life was too important for curses from stupid drivers. He continued running, his speed never decreasing: he had to get to the subway quickly.

He listened closely to sounds around him and realised he wasn't being chased anymore. He made a mistake of slowing down to look behind him. Not a single soul was a chasing after him - until he noticed two sleek Yamaha motors suspiciously gaining on him. 'Well, shit,' he cursed and burst forward, willing all the power he had left in his body into his legs. He even ended up praying to the spirit of adrenaline to spare him a few gallons of it so he could escape.

He was close now and he dashed down the stairs into the station. As soon as he got to the landing he heard the rev of engines and judging by the screams that came after, he guessed the riders had come into the subway station with their motors.

"All passengers on board," the system blared and he ran like he had never ran before. "Please move away from the closing doors," came the voice over the speakers again and just as the doors were about to close, he jumped through them landing on the floor of the subway train. And like to answer his prayers, the train immediately began to move and picked up its speed almost immediately. He slowly sat up and looked out the window to see the two riders look intently at the carriage he was in. He ducked swiftly and placed his hand over his heart as if its rigorous beating would drag their attention to him. He calmly settled by the train's doors and, ignoring the looks of the people around him, closed his eyes and tried to focus on his day ahead as the train moved speedily. It was going to be torturous, he mused.

~

Bang! Bang! Two shots rang out and the man previously standing in front of him crumpled dead to the ground. The boss turned his gaze to the other man in front of him and he visibly flinched. "That was a warning shot. It was warning you. Now I'll ask just once, where is the boy?" "He ran away, sir," the man replied quickly - but not quick enough to ask for forgiveness - before he lay in a pool of blood; whether his or the man on the ground next to him, no one cared, two bullet holes in his head, just like the other man.

Immediately, two men walked into the room, picking up the bodies while another came to clean it up. The boss sat in the sofa behind him, rubbing his forehead to rid it of the tension behind his eyes. How was it that one person in the whole universe held such delicate information? How had he even come across it? And why was it his brother of all people?

He understood that Ryan had reasons for running of the way he did, but did he really need to go with so much valuable information? One that might cost his life at that. No, Stone had to find him without noting the other gangs.

The boss stood and walked out of his study straight to his bedroom: he needed a glass or couple of vodka to soothe his fatigued mind.

Slowly sipping from his glass, throat burning even as his mind became more sharp, he tried to comprehend the whole situation.

Ryan was adopted by Stone when both their parents died. Or rather, their dad and their different mothers died in a plunge after the car they were occupying skidded across the road, over a cliff, into the deep dark waters beneath. They had lived on their own until a mafia boss took Stone in and trained him. Ryan was left alone, Stone will have it no other way, and now, he was the mafia boss with Ryan on the run from his own brother. It would probably be fallible to catch him without hurting him, but those were his orders and everyone else had to obey. He sighed wearily, his brother needed to give himself up to be caught quickly.

~

Ryan absent-mindedly sipped on his cup of tea as he punched in a few more letters and his script began to roll. Well, not exactly his script because he wasn't going to read it, but he did write it, might as well just give himself credit for it.

Soon, it was time to wrap up and leave and as he crossed the busy street, the rev of an engine snapped out of the little daydream he was having. Carefully, he looked round him, but everyone was busy minding his own business and the motors that had started were long gone. He sighed, shaking his head as if to rid him of bad thoughts, standing underneath the traffic light that was green.

He thought that after a week of nothing funny happening, his brain would come to accept that he was no longer in danger, but it refused to. Outright refused. But, he thought to himself, there was no use in unnecessary paranoia because he wasn't important to the mafia. Or any of them for that matter. The chip he had sewn into his skin was proof of that.

The light turned red and he and others began to cross. He was still in his thoughts that he did not feel it when a woman, who was coming in the opposite direction, injected a serum into his arm. Her movement was so fluid it only took her to spin and the deed was done and the world continued like nothing had happened.
Just before he got to his house though, he suddenly felt lightheaded which was strange, considering the fact he had not had any strong drink in the past week, or today for that matter. Even as he stumbled to his porch stairs, his hazy thoughts were berating him for ever letting his guard down.

~

The boss looked at the limp body of the boy in front of with a slight tilt of his head. The boy was laying so still, he could be mistaken for dead if it wasn't for the acute rise and fall of his chest. Stone knew that one. He had taught Ryan immediately he joined the mafia group. Even though he knew they would never hurt Ryan, they had vowed, he still needed to learn a few tricks to keep him alive. He stood, nodding to one of his men, who grunted his understanding before roughly pulling the sack of the boy's head.

The boss stared into the eyes of a boy he had last seen fifteen years ago. Too long to witness the change from the boy he once knew to the man who sat on the floor in front of him now. But to Stone, he would always be a boy, no matter what.

Hardening his gaze, the boss lowered himself to the height of the man and asked calmly, "Where is the chip?" The man, in the same tone as the boss replied, "I do not know what you're talking about."

It could have been believable story, had the man used a believable story, had the man not used the tone which he did. All it did now was make this look like a cat-and-mouse game.

A punch the man's guts.

"Where is the chip? The one that got missing on the day the president's daughter decided to end her life. She was the previous owner of the chip and now it's missing. So, boy," he sneered in anger, "Where is the chip?" The calm was gone.
"Somewhere you wouldn't find it," the boy sneered back, deriding the seemingly hopeless mafia boss.

A punch to the face this time. And another just for emphasis.

"You know I might have to kill you, right? Because you failed to give me the information I need. So, how about your last prayers." He told the boy, man, in front of him coldly.

That seemed to put the man into a kind of shock and he visibly paled. "But why?" he asked, his voice tinged with sadness. "I'm your blood brother, Jack, why would you want to kill me, for a stupid chip at that?" he ended his question in a scream. "Why?" he sobbed. Fortunately, the other men in the room knew better than to make a reaction to the new found information. They might probably use it against the boss but he could care less.

Stone used the muzzle of the gun to lift the sobbing man's chin. "First off, I'm no longer Jack, Ryan. I'm now Stone."

He stood up and moved an arm's length away from the man as another sob of shock racked his body.

"Two," he continued, cocking his gun, "You have very powerful information in your hands. If I let you go, someone else might get it; and we don't want that now do we. And besides, it's safer this way for all of us: dead men tell no tales," and he pulled the trigger.

The mafia mansion, with everything and everyone in it, collapsed. All... dead.