DARF

Chapter 1 - Body Count

The streets are silent on this side of town. Widows of broken glass, now doorways to darkness that the homeowners can't afford to light up. Posters, always the same ones. Their text being the dark blue often associated with hospitals, on a white background that seems to never yellow with age. They are all branded with the same logo; a spyglass over a moth.

They advertise DARF. The Deformity And Reversal Facility. A lab or a daycare, it doesn't matter. It's a place to dump unwanted Formelds for a good cause.

The streets are silent on this side of town. But who silenced them? Poverty? The Formelds that inevitably went insane? If you look a little deeper, you might find traces of hospital blue, blinding white, and maybe if you look even closer, you might find a splash of blood red that someone has attempted to cover up.

A girl walks down the street, feeling small as she looks up at the buildings piled high—the largest being the orphanage overflowing with children despite its size.

The bang bang sounds more like a click click, a suppressor not entirely suppressing the gunshots. Bullets fly, and four kids, overcome with giddy laughter, leap from the rooftop. The first one begins to transform mid air, the wings of a gull folding out from her shoulder blades, flapping frantically as their half-human body weighs them down. The second yells and flips in the air, barely dodging the bullets as he shrinks and is blanketed in blue feathers, slowing his fall enough to allow time for the rest of the transformation. For the third, a beak is first to form. Then their eyes go dark, seeming to blind them as they continue falling. From down on the ground the girl watches innocently. She hears the snap of bone as their foot makes contact with the icy pavement, but their wings manage to scoop them into the air before further damage. She closes her eyes against the horror, wishing she could ignore these inhuman creatures, wishing that the pure insanity in the eyes of the fourth was only her imagination. The crash was not some cheeky kid dropping things, not just a bag of stones from the orphanage window. The bag was made of flesh, the stones just broken bones.

Three birds fly, silhouetted against the clouds, as well as two figures on the rooftop, with guns at their sides.

★★★

You know Javier is having fun when suddenly his mouth is spitting sarcasm. This is what Corvus thinks as he perches on the bare branch of a paper birch. His shiny talons grip the white bark, keen eyes noting the twitch of Javier's hand by his right jacket pocket, his ears taking in the words being exchanged between his friend and the nasty looking businessman.

Their target is a shady character with a knack for slithering out of trouble and a reputation for double-crossing the wrong people. He's a slick talker, but won't be much longer.

"Funny, I heard you had people who owed you favors. This town isn't the best place to start bargaining with strangers."

Pft. Whoever owes this guy a favor had chosen to dispose of him rather than repay him. Corvus breaks a small twig off the tree and flings it at Javier, trying to get him back on track.

Javier shoots a quick scowl up the tree in reply before turning back to the greasy money goblin. "Come, walk with me." He gestures to the snow lined path.

The man crosses his arms, his pale skin pulled into a frown. "You mentioned a business deal. You don't look much like the businessman I expected."

Indeed, Javier is dressed like the street rat he is. His boots—the best they could afford—have been worn down by their previous owner, the brown fur-lined jacket—stolen on one of their earliest missions—houses his favorite weapon in the right pocket.

Javier throws up his hands in a shrug. "This is Svarrow we're in, I dress to blend in." His accent gives the word a venomous edge. He starts walking down the road, keeping away from the side so the man can fill the gap. "Come, come. We'll talk... figures." He hesitates on the last word. With English being his second language, Corvus had needed to teach him some business lingo to draw in the businessman. "Don't you want that deal?"