Calm; Decay Volume 1: Who Killed Cock Robin?

9 - Popular Justice - 9

"Our organization is called Parabellum."

Ashra's thoughts spun. "This is your sales pitch? You tie up a guard and expect me to jump on board because I'm an accomplice to your hostage situation?"

"He's not a hostage," said Gash, arms crossed. Ashra noted for a second time how much larger than he the boss of this underground organization was, in every sense of the word.

"He's tied to a chair, Gash. That looks fairly hostage-esque to me."

"A hostage situation implies that we're prepared to give him back. That's something we're not precisely in a position to do," said Gash simply.

The eyes of the guard widened. Ashra imagined the same expression was dawning on his own face as truth settled around the dusty room.

"You're going to kill him."

"You're going to kill him," said Gash, walking in a looping circle to stand behind the man.

He looked a good deal less intimidating without his armor and pike. Ashra could still taste the bitter fear on his tongue from where this very member of the Royal Guard had chased him down, hunting him for his very life. He had been following orders, though, had lived a life entirely separate from the incident on the riverbank. Maybe he had kids or a wife back on the other side, just like Gash.

"I'm not killing him," said Ashra flatly.

"You killed two people only yesterday," said Gash.

"That was different, that was self-defense," Ashra replied. It did not feel like a lie when he compared it to the proposition before him. "And... there's something else. Something Jurou said about our innate nature, what comes from being from this side. It was my first time experiencing that—I was out of my mind. But this is not right. This man shouldn't be killed simply because we have the opportunity."

"I didn't take you for a bullshitter at first glance, have to say," said Gash, his voice cool.

Ashra studied Gash's face, realizing that he could not lie to someone like this. They had both crossed over the same invisible line—the parting between those who had and had not taken another's life. Ashra understood that Gash more than likely still wrestled with the same unanswerable questions for the lives he had taken, their faces visible every time he looked in a mirror.

He'd had a reason, though. He's been trying to make something.

So motive excuses execution?

That had been a poor choice of words. Ashra shook himself from the spiraling thoughts.

Gash shook his head, pulling Ashra back to the conversation by putting one hand on the shoulder of the prisoner. The man in the chair tensed — the tendons in his neck jutting from his sallow skin in stress. "You don't understand the situation you've put us in, Ashra. Agile brought him back along with you. That was a stupid move on his part, but he's soft, which is good, in its way. It didn't end up mattering, though." Gash patted the prisoner on his shoulder. "He knows where we are, so we can't let him go. That would mean putting every single life that I'm responsible for in jeopardy. That's a stupid thing to do in the name of cowardly righteousness, wouldn't you say?"

Ashra stared long and hard at the two men. One held all the power, one held none. It was a snapshot—a microcosm that could exist nowhere else. The world had been constructed for the past century to flow in the opposite direction. It ought to be the guard keeping watch over the captured criminal. Some deep part of Ashra believed that he ought to be the one in the chair. But he was not, and the paradigm shift left him without a sense of direction.