The Torchbearer ✓

Chapter 1

4 years later...

The room was a state of decay reminiscent of the current condition of the man's brain who lay sprawled over his desk fast asleep and snoring tonelessly.

The bed was little more than a small dirty mattress that was covered in a varying collection of literature that included newspapers, biographies, educational textbooks and notebooks of cover-to-cover scribblings. Food wrappers and dirty plates littered the floor, the sole window high up the wall above the bed had a large impact crack in the bottom left corner and a flimsy half-open wardrobe had been pushed across the door to the room which displayed its bare innards. 

The man asleep at the desk wore a pair of faded combat trousers and nothing else, which displayed a tattoo of a coiled viper on his back that seem to writhe every time he breathed.

John Russo would not have been unfriendly on the eye had he lived a normal lived and applied a few universal grooming techniques to his appearance, such as shaving or getting a haircut more often than every 2 or 3 years. 

However, he laid unconscious at his desk sporting brown matted hair down far beyond his shoulders, and an unruly beard and moustache beyond the realms of any form of fashion. On the remainder of desk unoccupied by Russo's head and arms, rested fourteen empty bottles of Duvel, a dated Nokia mobile phone and two neat lines of cocaine.

The dying sunlight shone down through the window in a golden ray that blanketed half of the man and a section of desk, on which rested the phone that now buzzed to signal an incoming text.

The man sprung explosively out of his dreamy state, swiped the phone up and glared at the tiny screen with heavily bloodshot brown eyes, sending bottles flying in the process.

It wasn't that Russo was a light sleeper; it was solely his honed and uncanny ability to leap from such depths at lightning speed to confront the stimulus responsible for his wakening with frightful clarity. This time it was a mobile phone, but it wasn't always something so harmless.

16:41

Unknown – Text Message

5343'20.6"N 137'27.1"W

0450

Russo put the phone back down and let out a sigh.

His gut ached and it felt as through nails were being drilled through his temples. As he lifted his fingers to press against this pressure point he almost swiped away his lines. Almost forgot about you two. He grinned to himself despite his ailing condition.

He felt he had read somewhere that drug addictions masked the symptoms of physical neglect to feed a ravenous brain until the person eventually fell too ill to ever recover. 

A croak or two of laughter exited his mouth as he bent over the only form of organisation in the whole room. The room was situated inside of in an isolated and abandoned farmer's hut deep in the Scottish Highlands. Keep calling it an issue, I won't lose this camouflage of weakness I wear.

The two lines vanished up Russo's accustomed nostrils in quick succession. He let out a loud groan and reeled in his wooden desk chair. 

At the point where he seemed to fall back asleep, his eyes burst open and he pounded the desk with his fist until it went numb and all the remaining bottles had scattered. His focus then moved abruptly to his austere pile of books, charts and papers to which he scurried and began searching feverishly. Let's get this one done and maybe I'll start clearing this up – maybe I'll get my act together – maybe I'll get a job – maybe I'll...

Maybe I'll not. He had paused and raised his face to the intruding beam of light while having this thought, which warmed his mottled skin and illuminated a slender nose and plump, chapped lips. But after this short interlude, he continued his rabid search.

Such was the mind of John Russo, divided until it was torn apart and ruled ultimately by his demons, yet the angels still made brief appearances. 

However, for all of its good intention, the small part of his brain that wasn't utterly pessimistic could never account for the atrocities committed at the hands of this man. A touch of DIY, a few dead civilians and one target deceased, Russo thought evilly. 

"Easy peasy," he muttered, in the manner of a father who had just demonstrated how to tie shoe laces to his young child.  

He continued to leaf through his collection.

Ah, here we are. He held his chosen book up to the weakening light. 'Ordnance Survey map of Great Britain'. Flicking straight to the index he looked up the coordinates he had received by text. West Yorkshire, he thought musingly and raised his bushy eyebrows for a moment, drawing his finger across the page. It travelled south into England, along The Pennine Hills to Leeds, before slowing down just south of the suburb of Morley.

"Here."

He tapped the railway line and smiled sadly, yet there was no sadness in his glittering, feral eyes.

"See you soon," Russo said to his battered and worn map.