At first, it felt like a cold, pressure-less touch. When he heard the voice, he had raised his hands on instinct like some frightened animal.
It was only after he saw the flash of white, after he felt the cold slice, and after he saw his fingers falling from his hand—the white bone, pink flesh, veins and arteries visible—did the pain finally kick in.
"Gah!" Rhett screamed as his nerves shouted out to his brain, like fireworks were going off in his bloodstream.
He had died plenty of times before, had experienced suffering no person, innocent or guilty of any number of crimes should go through, but that didn't mean that he had developed a pain tolerance. A stab to the side still hurts. A stubbed toe still hurts.
So his severed fingers still hurt as the wound burned, velvet blood pulsing out of the wounds in sync with his heart beat.
"What are... No. Who are you?" A new voice said, not the smaller, younger voice Rhett heard earlier. This one was older. More feminine. And huskier.
"Damn... you." Rhett forced out as he bit his lip so hard blood started pouring, just so he wouldn't collapse on the floor screaming.
He pressed his intact right hand against the stumps of his left to stem the blood flow, but it was obviously no use. His synapses felt like they were on fire. His vision tunneled on his missing fingers, laying motionless on the dark, grimy floor—the ring and pinky that would never move again.
Even after dying multiple times, the human part of him couldn't believe that his fingers were no longer part of his arm. What was he going to do without them? He picked them up, knowing it was useless, unless he had a cooler of ice to preserve them like he had seen in the movies, or someone with a healing quirk was around.
"Answer my question." The voice repeated, and Rhett heard a faint whooshing sound, like a blade slicing through the air over their heads. The attack repeated, but its aim was clearly to threaten rather than maim, as she had done to Rhett.
"So what is it? Did Grand send you here? Wanted to try and steal my tribute?"
Rhett looked up as piercing velvet eyes cut through the darkness of whatever room they had stumbled into. The speaker's voice dropped several octaves lower as seething seeped into it. "Or are you here to use me for my services without paying?"
"We are not here for any of that." Henrik said as he stepped in front of Rhett, who was still clutching his dismembered fingers. Henrik did something Rhett never expected the boy to do.
He dropped his weapons.
His blade and stolen rifle unfused and clattered on the floor as Henrik raised his arms into the air—a sign of surrender.
Despite his pain, Rhett found himself slack-jawed. Henrik had never been the kind to surrender. Every time they faced a new threat, like during the Natos and Daimon squabble, and when they met the squatter in the ravaged hotel, Rhett always tried deescalating the situation—which never worked—and Henrik stepped in, decisively firing the first shot once peaceful dialogue was not an option.
Now Henrik was the one taking his position. With all his weapons on the floor and his arms raised, he was completely defenseless. Their attacker could probably kill him with a single move, just as she had cut off Rhett's fingers.
"We're not here to steal, hurt or use you." Henrik spoke, surprisingly calm and diplomatic. "We're not your enemies, even though that might be hard to believe, so please, let us—"
Before Henrik could finish, hard knocking resounded on the door of the apartment. The woman, still cloaked in shadow, twisted her head to the door, her eyes becoming tense.
She turned her head back to the two boys—Rhett still clutching his fingers in pain, Henrik's arms still in the air. Rhett could almost see the gears turning in her head.
Who was at the door? What should I do to these intruders? Do I kill them?
The knocking came again. Louder, as Rhett heard the door shaking in its frame. Whoever was on the other side wanted to get in no matter what.
"Stay absolutely fucking put." The woman said as she turned around to face her determined visitor. "Make the wrong sound and you'll get yourselves killed. Got it?"
Henrik nodded. "Thank you."
The woman's eyes narrowed as she sighed and moved toward the door, but it refused to click shut with the frame, hanging slightly ajar.
"Fuck..." Rhett groaned as quietly as he could as the pain gnawed at his consciousness. He needed to wrap the wound, to stop blood from flowing. Could he die from the blood loss of losing two fingers? He wasn't sure he wanted to find out. "Give me something to wrap around this shit, Henrik."
Henrik nodded and moved silently in the darkness, tearing off a part of his cloak and helping Rhett tie the strip of cloth around his mangled hand.
Rhett stifled himself as Henrik worked. There was no high-tension chase where adrenaline overwhelmed the consciousness-threatening pain. No uber-octane fight scene. No cunning plan they had to execute. Only hide.
Rhett almost couldn't believe that two days ago this was the same guy that tortured and mutilated him so he could use him as bait. And now here they were. Working as comrades. As a team.
Yet, something felt wrong with Henrik. He felt different ever since his... 'near-death experience.' He was more quiet. He was somehow even calmer and more willing to negotiate and be diplomatic, not like the decisive, violent Henrik Rhett had met previously.
"You good, Henrik?" Rhett found himself whispering once Henrik finished tying the cloth over the wound. It still hurt like hell and it felt like his brain was on fire, but he still struggled to keep his personality.
Henrik didn't respond. Instead, he went to the door, making sure to be quiet as he peeked through to see what the woman was doing.
Rhett crawled, groping through the darkness, which was only barely illuminated by the dim light from the main room. The room they were in seemed to be some sort of unused toilet. The ground was dry and dusty, and Rhett felt his hands against the smooth white surface of the ceramic toilet.
Through the crack in the door, Rhett finally had a good look at the woman who had attacked him. She moved toward the apartment's entrance, illuminated by the dim overhead orange light that cast harsh shadows across her angular face.
The knocking came again, to which she replied with, "I'm coming!" as she worked on the multiple locks on the door. Behind her, a child that Rhett hadn't noticed before—the one that most likely asked "Who are you guys?" when they got caught—followed behind her like a child to its mother.
She stepped back when she was done, and the door swung open. A tall figure bent his head just so he could make it past the doorframe.
"Could have sworn I heard shouting." The gruff voice rumbled out as the man scratched his large belly.
In fact, 'man' was the wrong word for this individual.
Standing at almost eight feet, he was most likely one of the guards evident with a large spiked hammer and cleaver knife hanging at his hips. But it wasn't his height or his weapons that made Rhett's breath catch in his throat.
It was how he looked.
He was so grotesque that at first, Rhett thought he was some kind of mutated creature from the BeastMaster, if he didn't speak normal English and act like a human being.
Instead of normal skin, his body was, from head to toe, a dirty shade of pink that neared brown, with short brown hair growing off his chest, legs and face. Instead of normal feet and toes, two huge curved hooves clacked against the wooden floor with smaller dew claws at the back as they struggled to sustain the mass that was this absolute unit of a man.
He was as large as a refrigerator, with a belly that testified to how much he undoubtedly ate. He wore nothing more than large brown dirty shorts and a white tank top which looked more like a sweat rag—stained with what looked like food, alcohol, dirt and blood.
His arms were wide, and his chest broad and massive. His arms as thick as logs, with biceps that Rhett was sure could crush his head if he was put in an arm lock.
And his head—instead of a nose, a large snout protruded with larger than normal ears and two small tusks at the sides of his lips.
Just because he was fat didn't mean he was weak. With every step he took that threatened to bring the floor crashing down, coils of thick muscle rippled underneath his dark pink skin. His humanoid hands were dark, thick and callused, and his eyes roved around with the vigor of a fighter—or at least a killer—as he walked into the room.
"Oh it's you. Swine." The woman said disinterestedly as she folded her arms against her chest.
Her deep red hair flowed down to her curved waist. She was wearing what simply looked like a sleeveless velvet robe with golden ornaments that revealed a large amount of cleavage Rhett hadn't noticed in the darkness. Once it made it past her midsection, it disappeared around her thighs, leaving a sash that extended from the middle of her body downwards, leaving little room for imagination.
"You didn't answer my question," the pig-man, Swine, said as he stood in front of the woman, almost twice her height. "You know Grand made it my job to make sure no one got hurt until the battles started. So, what happened, Scar?"
The woman, Scar, sighed as she kept her arms folded. "Nothing. One of those beasts has been crawling around. Found one and chased him out. That's all."
"Hmm." Swine grunted as his snout twitched. Then he blew a puff of steam. Even from here, Rhett could tell he reeked of booze and cheap liquor. "I smell blood too."
"Cut the rascal when I chased him out," Scar commented, staring Swine straight in the eyes despite his size and her lies.
Swine sniffed the air again, his mouth turning suspiciously in the direction Henrik and Rhett were hiding. "The blood smells human."
Shit, Rhett thought, the blood still dripping onto the floor in slow, rhythmic drops.
"Must have been one of the kids," Scar said, shrugging. "They're trying to make dinner, so maybe one of them nicked themselves. You have a really good nose if you could smell that from outside."
"You sure about that?" Swine said as he slowly began walking toward the door Henrik and Rhett were hiding behind. The man was built like a boulder, and that was something Rhett would prefer not to fight against—especially with two missing fingers.
"I'm sure." Scar said, walking in front of Swine, subtly blocking his path. Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks and her body moved in deliberate patterns. "Besides, we both know that's not the reason you came in here."
"That's not the only reason," Swine corrected as he let out a rumbling chuckle, shifting his weight. His lingering suspicions seemed to fade momentarily.
Suddenly, his grimy hand shot forward and wrapped around Scar's hips.
"Not in front of the kid." Scar warned as she motioned for the child to leave into another room. "Besides, you haven't even settled on my pay."
"C'mon, do I have to pay you?" Swine scoffed as he scratched his large belly. "We both know you enjoy it."
When Scar stared directly into Swine's eyes during the beat of silence, he sighed and relented.
"Fine. I want some head. Five coins good, right?"
"Fifteen." Scar replied, staring at Swine head-on without flinching.
"What?!" Swine roared, visibly bristling, his hand almost striking Scar. But she never flinched a muscle. "That's more than half of what I get fighting to the death in the arena and killing a man. You want me to waste all that on some washed-up whore?!"
He leaned in and clenched his fist threateningly. "I want more."
"Then you'll get more," Scar replied, arching an eyebrow. "Twenty-five."
"Twenty fucking—" Swine yelled, bringing his palm to his forehead. Then he lowered his hand and a savage smile crawled across his lips. "Fine then."
He placed his grimy fingers on Scar's exposed shoulder, not so gently, and pushed her forward into an empty room. "Let's go."
Scar walked silently without any complaint into the room, and once the door was locked behind them, Rhett finally let out a sigh of relief.
Finally, they were safe, for now.
But as Rhett observed the way the people in Grand's domain behaved—the way Swine casually mentioned killing a man for some money, and the way Scar was being treated like a commodity—Rhett had a sinking feeling that he was far from safe.
And so was everybody in this godforsaken district.