#mobsiders

The passage of time seeps by at a disjointed rhythm when you can’t see. It seems only minutes ago you were trekking through the murky fog from your tiny, jerry-built apartment to the community centre near Fifth to collect your weekly rations. A small slip of card had been clutched protectively against your chest. On it, in little black writing was a short, unimaginative list.

'Bacon.'

'Milk.'

'Cheese.'

'Eggs.'

'Water.'

Two years since the Great Waking has seen Humanity still struggling to cobble their lives back together, and although supplies aren't nearly as sparse as they were in those first few months of chaos and disorder, people are still being careful with what little they have.

You'd been fantasising about how soon you'd see the word 'chocolate' appear on the list when, from out of nowhere, there was a loud squeal of tyres on tarmac, and something came careening to a halt behind you.

Strangely, it took you a moment to register what you were hearing.

When it eventually clicked, the first thought that sprang to mind was, ‘Who the Hell has a working car?’ Your second thought came moments later when you wheeled around just in time to see two, suited men plunge a sack down over your head and heave you bodily into an old, rusty car.

In the struggle you dropped your precious ration card.

The jolt of panic that shot up your spine was so potent, you almost managed to lurch right out of their grasp.

They weren’t expecting you to put up a fight, you suppose.

But how could they not? One of the cruellest aspects of the Great Waking was that humanity didn’t come back as new-born souls who had no recollection of their past lives. Instead, in a sick twist of fate, everyone, yourself included, can still recall how they died.

It sure as Hell made you want to avoid meeting a similar fate ever again.

Which is partly why you’d all but exploded into action when you were grabbed, thrashing your limbs, kicking, lurching sideways, gnashing your teeth to try and catch the burlap between them and tear your way out from the inside if you had to.

With all the ceremony of tossing out a bag of rubbish, you were flung, yowling like a terrified bearcat, and the hands left you for all of a blessed second before your back hit a stiff, leathery surface that punched the wind right out of you.

You can still remember the morbid satisfaction of kicking out and striking something solid that went ‘crunch!’ when it connected with the heel of your shoe.

It wasn’t as satisfying moments later when you were slugged so hard in the cheek, your head snapped back and your vision exploded into colourful speckles of light.

An engine had rumbled to life underneath you as car doors slammed shut, and through the ringing in your ears and swimming head, you caught snippets of conversation, mostly revolving around a broken nose and a call for tissues.

You have no idea how long you were in that car for. All you remember is just how peculiar it was to be in one again. Even more peculiar to realise it had been over a century since you sat on a leather seat with an engine purring against your spine.

You still fought, of course.

Borrowing strength from your fear, you struggled furiously against a weight settled on your legs and a pair of hands that kept your flailing wrists in their vice-like grip.

In hindsight, you regret fighting so hard in the car.

Now that you’re on your feet again, stumbling blindly through an unknowable building with half a chance at running away, you’re exhausted, mouth hoarse and dry from shrieking and limbs that tremble with terror and fatigue.

Your throat aches now, thick with emotions, and your cheek isn’t faring any better either, throbbing like it has its own heartbeat.

Even without the tears clinging to your lashes and muddying your view, the path ahead is still obscured from sight by your scratchy, unconventional headgear.

You’re inside a building. You can deduce that much.

And from the sounds of dress shoes clacking hurriedly on the floor below you, it’s either somewhere that’s been newly built, or a place that had remained miraculously untouched during the stretch of time between Humanity’s extinction and their resurrection.

The surface below you is perfectly and unusually smooth from what you can tell as you’re dragged along by two unknown thugs, neither of whom seem hindered by your stubborn efforts to dig the heels of your plimsolls into the floor, hoping to trip on a notch or bump.

It’s only been two years since the Great Waking, and all the buildings in Haven City have one thing in common that this place doesn’t.

Structurally, every single one of them is as rickety and unstable as a two-legged horse.

Yet this place has no creaky floorboards, no potholes left over from where the ground was blasted apart by a falling meteorite, no dip, sag, scoop or pocket to trip yourself up on and shake your kidnappers loose.

You try to focus on the pounding of footsteps, not your heart, nor the abject terror that tries to sink its teeth into you every time those bruising hands clench all the tighter around your arms and heave you upright again when your legs yield underneath you.

Eyes pinched shut, you force a kerosene-drenched breath in through your mouth and choke it out again, blowing droplets of sweat and tears off your upper lip.

You nearly bite your damn tongue off when ahead of you, something unlatches – ‘a door?’ – and you’re readjusted in the men’s grasp, two hands on each arm, keeping you marching forwards.

The toes of your plimsolls squeak against the hard floor as you’re dragged over a small bump and onto a different surface entirely.

Softer. More giving. The footfalls are quieter…

Carpet, you surmise.

“Ah, finally!”

Your hammering heart seizes up at the sound of a booming, unexpected voice that filters in through the fibrous gaps in your burlap prison. You’d almost grown used to the grunts and curses of the men hauling you along, it’s odd to hear actual words for a change.

“Boss,” one of the men at your side speaks up, his clear, nasally tone confirming he isn’t the one you’d kicked in the face, “Got ‘er right here, Boss! Just like you said.”

The breath hitches in your chest and you wrack your brains to place the first voice as it speaks again.

“Oh for- C’mon, guys. The sack? Really?” a distinctly male voice complains.

Your ears catch the sound of metal clinking, heavy footsteps on the carpet as their wearer draws closer to you… He sounds big, weighty, far more so than either of the two who lugged you in here.

‘Shit…’ you think, breathing hard. And when nothing more helpful springs to mind…‘Fuck!’

Stealing an iota of adrenaline from somewhere deep inside your guts, you start to struggle in earnest again, lips stuffed together to stop yourself from letting out any pitiable whimpers of distress. You have an awful, awful suspicion about whose turf you’re on, and it has everything to do with the little, red notebook currently locked in the top drawer of your bedside table.

“Sorry, Boss,” the nasally man to your left responds, shifting on his feet, “Gave us a little more trouble than we was expectin’. Look what she did to poor Dimitri.”

There’s a pause, in which you assume he must finally see the extent of your efforts to escape the car.

“Yeah,” the stranger eventually says, “I noticed that… S’it bad?”

The man to your right – Dimitri, you infer – huffs out an acidic hiss through his teeth and starts to dig blunted fingernails into your sleeve, upping the pressure until you wince beneath the sack.

“Broke my fucken’ nose,” he sneers in a voice that’s thick and wet, as if he’s bunged up with a bad cold, “F’she knocked any teeth out, this little bitch’d be-“

“-HEY.”

It’s alarming how one simple word can crack across the room like a bolt of lightning, raising the hairs on the nape of your neck and causing Dimitri to choke on his tongue in his haste to fall silent. Instinctively, you flinch away from the shout, as far as the hands will allow, though you can’t help but notice that the men on either side of you do the same thing, each taking a quick, aborted step back before they seem to remember themselves and stop in their tracks.

Nobody says a word. You don’t because you’re loathe to draw that kind of wrath down on your own head, and the men don’t for much the same reason.

Another heavy boot falls to the carpet with a dull, metallic ‘clunk,’ far closer to you than it was before, and when its wearer draws in a breath, you can hear the creak and stretch of leather as it expands to compensate a prodigious chest.

… He’s standing directly in front of you…

“… I catch you usin’ that kind of language about this lady again,” the stranger growls, his once casual tone now deep and dark as a mineshaft, likely just as dangerous, “And I might just forget that you humans aren’t bulletproof.”

‘Humans…? Oh, God…’ Gulping audibly, you try to keep your breaths shallow and quiet; a difficult feat when the air around you is disturbed by the terribly familiar ‘click’ of a gun’s hammer locking into position.

From within the muffled pocket of your hood, the sound is almost deafening.

Throat closed around several, trapped sobs, you hold your breath and clench your eyes shut, expecting that at any moment, you’re going to hear a man die.

But then…

“Understood…” Dimitri says, hesitating for a second before he quickly adds, “Sir.”

How he managed to speak without his voice quaking, you’ll never know.

With bated breath, you wait for his Boss’s verdict.

When it comes, the stranger’s voice bounces back to its jocular lilt in a turnaround violent enough to leave you with whiplash.

“Good!” he announces promptly, “Can’t have her thinkin’ we’re a bunch of monsters.”

His tone shifts again as he aims it at you.

“Now then...”

Gentle, amicable, friendliness wrapped in a cloak of deception. You know how loud his voice can be, so this unexpected softness means nothing to you.

“Let’s get you outta there, n’ see that pretty face up close…”

Oh, if only you could will yourself to dematerialise and sink through the floorboards like you’ve seen so many demons do on a whim.

Finding your voice, you shake your head, eyes wild behind the sack as they flit from side to side. “Please,” you croak, fruitlessly trying to peel your arms away from the hands rooting you to the spot, “I-I haven’t seen your face, I don’t know who you are, just-!”

Enormous, unnaturally cool fingers brush against the bottom of the sack, wriggling under the twine and tugging the knot loose. In an instant, you reel backwards, throwing your head as far away from the touch as you can, chest heaving hysterically when the man simply follows your motions.

“Just let me go home!” you sob, realising that maybe you aren’t cut out for this, after all.

A reporter. You could spit at the idea now. What the Hell were you thinking? You could have taken up with the group who left to build farmlands outside the city. You could be relaxing on a maker-built porch right now after a hard day of planting those precious seeds an angel found in Svalbard.

You could have picked up a hammer and set to work patching the holes in a shelter's roof, or jumped in a wagon that trundles around the city, distributing supplies and medical aid.

There are no jobs anymore. People are too busy focusing on the rebuilding effort, trying to restore an entire world and its civilisation to something functional once again. Nearly everyone wants to help, in their own way.

And what did you decide to do, to help? You thought it would be a grand idea to pick up a pen and a notebook and chase down information, scribbling out newsletters from the rickety desk in your apartment and distributing them around the city by hand.

And that foolish decision has led you here, to your doom. You'd grown too cocky, thought nobody would pay attention to one, little human trying to track down the sources of rumours that people are being sold off-world as slaves.

A mellow chuckle rolls from a throat high above your head and resonates inside your ribcage. “Easy, sweetheart,” the stranger coos, gripping the sack and raising it carefully up over your face, adjusting easily to the way you twist your neck from side to side, “You’re all right.”

When the burlap finally pulls free of your eyes, you can’t keep yourself from squinting against the sudden intrusion of light, blinking rapidly to clear your vision.

“There you are,” the voice says, quiet with barely contained wonder.

Keeping your head locked straight ahead of you, you finally manage to peel your eyelids apart and free the tears that were trapped behind them. Little tracks roll down the curves of your cheeks and gather on your chin as the body in front of you comes into focus.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Fuck. And shit.

You’ve been flying too close to the sun, haven’t you, Icarus? Now you’re going to die, and what came of it? What was it all for? Exposing a corrupt family to the world. A world who could do nothing to fight back even if you armed them with knowledge?

There’s nowhere you can look that isn’t absolutely covered by armour. You can't even see the room beyond it.

A vast torso stretches across your field of view, protected entirely by segments of silver armour. Each interlocking part connects with another seamlessly to fit over the swollen muscles of a body built solely for destruction.

Every inch of it is marred with a constellation of scratches, welts, and age-old scorch marks tarnishing the silver black in places, and from waist to chest span three, distinct gouges that have torn through the armour entirely, leaving thin lines through the metal and giving you an uninterrupted glimpse of black, skin-tight leather beneath.

Something big had left those marks, and still he'd come out the victor.

Everything your bulging eyes take in attests to a life lived in battle, and a survivor of all that have made an attempt on his life.

You don’t want to look up. You’ve heard a rumour that to meet his eyes is akin to slapping a hungry bear on its snout. Your eyes can’t see high enough to glimpse the mask you suspect is tilted down at you anyway.

You know what you’ll see if you do. You know the man standing in front of you, perhaps not personally, perhaps more than you should, perhaps not at all. His name is scribbled on almost every page in your notebook.

Gritting your teeth, you swallow thickly and instead, allow your gaze to creep lower, away from the eyes burning a hole into the top of your head.

You regret looking down almost immediately when your stare lands on the butt of an enormous, silver revolver jutting from a holster strapped to his hips, so large that it would make any ordinary man who wields it look like a toddler trying to play with a cannon.

An audible whimper falls through your teeth as you flick your gaze sideways and see the second gun you already knew was there.

You swear you can feel several pints of blood drain from your face.

These guns are about as infamous as their wielder. And you’re standing within spitting distance of all three.

“O-oh, shit,” you stutter through buzzing teeth. And really, what else is there to say?

You’re in the den of one of the most dangerous beings in the Universe. One of four, in fact.

You’ve heard so many names accredited to him.

Endless Spirit of Timeless Unrest is your personal favourite for nothing else but the sheer pageantry of it.

He’s a killer, a monster, spreading desolation and terror everywhere he goes…

Worse still, before the End War and Earth’s downfall, you and everyone else assumed he was nothing more than a fairy-tale written into the pages of an old, allegorical book.

After all, a Horseman of the Apocalypse? It was always such an outlandish idea.

Until it wasn’t. Until he wasn’t.

“Hah…”

You give a start at the soft chuckle rumbling above your head.

“Not the reaction I was hopin’ for, but beggars can’t be choosers…”

You try to keep your tear-blurred vision on the armoured torso in front of you, but the decision to of inaction is stolen from you seconds later when a gargantuan, metal gauntlet rises up in front of your face.

Startling, you buck against the goons pinning you in place as he extends a finger and slips it underneath your chin.

You cram your lips together, fighting to stop that impossibly strong hand from tilting your head back.

Eyes rolling with fright, your face crumples and you let out a wheezing sob that catches in your throat as your gaze is forced up past a monstrous, armoured chest, then over a thick neck until finally, when you can hardly muster up the courage to draw in a rattling breath… there he is, staring down at you with eyes that exude all the qualities of a predator. Bright and yellow like melted gold, illuminating the silver helm that conceals every other feature from view.

Thick spikes of hair jut from the back of it, and you're reminded more of sharp, ebony horns belonging to that of a demon, rather than anything human.

Above you looms the man who holds Haven City and all the world in the palm of his unforgiving hand.

Of their own accord, your quivering lips peel apart and release his name into the air like a curse, uttered in terrified reverence.

You might have been naïve once, but then the world ended, and it was a stark lesson in mortality.

You could die.

You did die.

The world seemed a lot more dangerous after that…

And there are few things that remind you more of how dangerous the world can be than one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

You almost want to curse that young, bright-eyed version of yourself who asked for something exciting to happen to her. She should have been more specific.

This, you could definitely do without.

You can’t tear your eyes off that horrific, avian visor canting towards you, no matter how badly you’d love to screw them shut and pretend this is all just a vivid yet harmless nightmare.

But there’s just something about not seeing the monster that’s far more terrifying than being able to see it.

So, you stare, unblinking at the metal space below those incandescent, amber eyes, disinclined to find out if the rumours about meeting the gaze of a Horseman are true.

Broad as a train, standing taller than any human you’ve ever encountered, Strife still isn’t the largest of his ilk, as you’re only too aware of now that you’ve got an up-close and too-personal view of him.

Strife, in contrast, seems determined that you make eye contact with him. It’s hard not to when he’s keeping your chin pinned between a thumb and forefinger, deceptively gentle despite his size and his unyielding grasp.

“That’s better,” a low hum emerges from behind his silvery visor, sounding a little too pleased for your liking, “Shouldn’t hide eyes like yours under a-…”

You’re rather glad he doesn’t finish his sentence, instead trailing off into a stark, tangible silence.

Even from your peripheral vision, it’s hard to tell where he’s looking without any damn pupils to give you some indication.

Suddenly, your heart gives a lurch and you jolt, letting out a strangled squeak as the titanic brute leans down and pushes his visor right up to your face, eyes narrowed to slim, dangerous slats of light.

Alarmed, your hands clench into white-knuckled fists, and it takes everything in you not to lash out or try to push that leering mask away.

“What… the fuck… is this…?” Strife seethes through his teeth, all pretences of gentleness vanishing from his tone.

It’s impossible to repress the shudder that rolls through you from your toes to your fingertips.

In response to his question, the men to your left and right falter, their grips loosening by a fraction.

And then, you feel it; a ghost-like touch on the side of your face. The cool metal of Strife’s fingertip sweeps across your cheek and leaves a trail of goosebumps in its wake.

Aghast, you start to throw your head back to escape his touch, but the Horseman is quick to adjust his hold, sliding the fingers that grip your chin up until they encompass your entire jaw, keeping your head locked rigidly in place.

Without taking his eyes off your cheek, he lowers his voice and repeats, “What the fuck is this?”

The men share a nervous glance over the top of your head.

All of a sudden, at a speed that leaves you reeling, Strife drops his hand from your jaw and spins on his heel, stalking away from you as he raises the same hand to his mouthpiece and drags it down the length of his chin, sighing roughly.

You barely have time to breathe a sigh of relief at having his hands off you.

“Boss?” the nasally man ventures.

Without warning, Strife does a complete about-face, wheeling towards you once again, only this time, his entire body seems to billow and puff up like a bristling wolf, and his eyes are wide open, ablaze with a hellish fire that sends you ducking into your jacket’s hood.

Shit… You don’t know what you just did to set him off, but with a look like that raging across what little you can see of his features, you’re fairly sure that this is the moment you finally die.

“Do either of you wanna tell me,” he starts, huffing like a runaway steam train, “What the Hell that is on her face?!”

Again, you jerk as he throws a hand up and gestures towards you.

‘My face?’ Instinctively, you attempt to lift your hand and touch your cheek, but find your arms still locked in position by the men at your flanks.

As if to remind you of its presence, the swelling on your cheekbone gives a dull, uncomfortable throb, and you’re momentarily thrown by the absurd notion that he might be asking what a bruise is…

Doesn’t he know? Don’t Nephilim get bruises? Surely he’s come across them in his line of work, why would yours be so antagonising?

The strength of the humans beside you wavers. You can feel it happening as they noticeably lean away from you, as though you’re the catalyst to Strife’s sudden hostility.

“I-it’s just like we said, Boss!” the man to your left stutters, shifting his weight from side to side. You get the impression he'd rather be anywhere but here. “She was givin’ us trouble! Wouldn’t get in the car! Dimitri had’ta do somethin’ to shut her up!”

The speed at which Strife’s helm whips towards the guilty party is astonishing. And petrifying. Molten eyes lock onto their target with all the gravitas of a man aiming down the sights of his gun.

Suddenly recognising that he might be in serious trouble here, Dimitri sheds the last of his bravado and rips his hands off your arm, stumbling backwards.

You aren’t granted a moment to even think about trying to break loose before his partner wrestles both of your hands behind your back and pulls you against his chest, holding you there with no choice but to watch Dimitri retreat across the room, away from a posturing Horseman.

“Now, just – hold on a second-!” In his haste, he catches his hip on a drinks table and almost upends several glasses and bottles that look like they’re worth more than you could make in a lifetime. They rattle and clink together precariously for a second before settling again as the man continues his retreat.

With a predatory grace, Strife turns his body towards the fleeing goon and begins to stalk after him, covering more distance in a single stride than Dimitri manages in three.

Swallowing your spit, you cringe when the nasally man behind you hisses a curse under his breath, wafting stale, smoky air across the back of your neck.

“Tell me, Dimitri,” Strife utters, shoulders hunched as he saunters forwards, “Which leg?”

Sweat trickles from the man’s temple, and his face goes a few shades short of translucent. “Wh-what?”

“I said,” the Horseman repeats slowly, taking another step that rattles the glasses on their table, “Which. Leg?”

Blurting out a nervous laugh, Dimitri finally backs up until his spine hits a bookcase on the far wall, cutting off his escape route. Shakily, he raises his hands, turning his palms towards the approaching Nephilim as if he means to placate a feral wolf. “Boss, c’mon, i-it’s just a bruise! Humans get bruises all the time, they ain’t so bad-!”

In the blink of an eye, Strife moves.

Too fast for you to track, he viciously tears Mercy from its holster and points all four of those dark, gaping barrels straight at the trembling man’s forehead, prompting you to let out a shriek of alarm which is swiftly drowned underneath the Horseman’s thunderous roar, “- I know what a bruise is, Dimitri! What I don't know is which fucking leg!?”

“Fuck! I-I don’t know!”

Eyes rolling in his skull like a spooked horse, Dimitri clutches at the bookshelf behind him, darting a helpless glance his partner still pinning you against his chest, and then, when he doesn’t find the solace he was evidently looking for, he even dares to dip a look in your direction.

The only thing you deign to offer him in return when his desperate gaze meets yours is your own wide-eyed stare of abject horror. For just a moment, he’s not the man who kidnapped you and gave you a smarting cheek. He’s human. You’re human. There’s some shared connection there, even if it’s buried deep under layers of animosity and hate and terror. And you can tell in that moment that for as tough as he’s been, this man is utterly and debilitatingly terrified of his own boss.

When faced with an immediate and undefeatable threat, it’s human nature to band together. A knee-jerk drive. You can’t help it any more than he can. You can see the apology written plain on his face now, though you’re sure it’s only there because he wants you to speak up and save his sorry hide.

If you were a better person, you might have said something to the Horseman, drawn his ire back towards you. You might have. Or maybe you want to believe you could.

But you can’t.

So, you look away, dropping your eyes to the floor and pretending for all the world that you’re smart enough to think of a way to save your own skin.

The man’s choked breath of despair cuts through you like a knife, damning and cold.

“Don’t be a coward now, Dimitri,” Strife admonishes, oblivious, “You gonna choose, or am I?”

“Shit – Fucken’, l-left!”

“Left?”

“Left!” Dimitri wails, “Goddammit, Left!”

“Left.” Nodding his helm once, Strife lowers his gun.

Then without warning, he raises his other arm and cocks it back, metal gauntlet curled into a fist. You don’t have time to wonder what he’s doing before he sends it forwards in a vicious jab, his knuckles colliding squarely with Dimitri’s already broken nose.

The nauseating ‘crack!’ threatens to make you lose your breakfast.

A howl of unquestionable agony tears itself from the man’s throat as he crumples to his knees and brings his hands up to cup gingerly over his nose, body wracked with uncontrollable spasms. Blood gushes from each nostril and spatters to the carpet below, some droplets even flying onto the metal boots of an absolutely livid Horseman.

“Not a fuckin’ scratch, I said!” Strife hollers between ragged breaths, towering over the whimpering human as he throws his gun back into its holster, “Not a goddamn hair on her head! You’re supposed to be professionals! The Hell’re we payin’ you for!?”

Shaking from head to toe, Dimitri hardly seems to be listening now, still hacking up breaths and coughs as his brain registers the excruciation.

Appalled, you sag weakly in the thug’s grasp, letting your mouth hang agape. If Strife is willing to do that to his own men… What chance do you have?

An already dangerous situation is getting wildly out of hand.

Heaving an enormous sigh, as if this is all one big, inconvenience to him, Strife wheels away from the man whimpering on his carpet and instead turns his attention back onto you, sending all the blood rushing to your head.

You hate that you can’t tell whether he’s looking at you or the nasally man holding you still.

Regardless, the Horseman peers in your direction for… far too long.

Squirming, you try to back up, but the man behind you seems to have locked his legs in position to become an immoveable wall, solid and ungiving at your spine. You can’t tell if the tremors running up and down your arms are from your own shaking, or his.

Gradually, as the titan of a Horseman continues to watch you, Strife’s shoulders start to slacken, and the raptorial tilt of his helm straightens out to something more human.

A stalemate ensues. You don’t say a word to him, he doesn’t say a word to you. The man behind you keeps letting out a string of almost inaudible swear words and huffs, his dress-shoes shuffling restlessly on the carpet.

You can hardly breathe for the ball of nerves clumped at the base of your throat, making every swallow ache and strain against the muscles of your neck.

Finally, with another, exaggerated exhale, Strife lays his hands on his hips and breaks the silence.

“Let her go,” he grumbles to the man behind you.

The grip on your arms relaxes, though only a little, not enough to pull yourself free. Not yet.

“Are you sure, Boss?” he swallows. There’s an air of feigned confidence in his tone, like he’s trying to pretend he didn’t just watch a Horseman of the Apoclypse destroy his partner’s face.

By the sound of Strife’s unamused chuckle, that was the wrong thing to ask.

Tipping his helm down, he puffs a breath at the floor before slowly raising his head to give the man a glower so dark, it seems to suck the light from the chandelier hanging overhead. “Question my orders again, and I really will shoot you. Maybe feed what’s left of you to my horse,” he utters, lifting his chin at you indicatively, “Let her go and get Dimitri outta here…”

When the man still hesitates, Strife jabs his hand sharply towards a door at the side of the room - different from the one you entered through - and shouts, “Go on! Get the fuck outta my sight. Both of you!”

Apparently deciding he’s pushed his luck as far as it’ll go, the man all but shoves you away from him, sending you stumbling a few feet towards the Horseman before you dig your heels in and come to a jarring halt, frantic eyes darting up to see the giant is still looking your way.

Hurrying past you, he gives Strife a wide berth until he reaches Dimitri and bends down, gathering the wretched man off the floor and slinging an arm across his shoulders as he hauls him upright.

With his blubbering, bleeding partner in tow, he shuffles towards the door, never once sparing you another, fleeting glance on his way.

Desperate, you shift your gaze to him and attempt to catch his eye, pleading in silence for him to take you along too, anything to get you out of this room with a Nephilim who has proven he has no qualms about hurting humans.

But it’s all for naught.

Neither of the men acknowledge you. So far as they’re aware, you’re just a dead woman walking. They’ve done their job – albeit badly – and they’d brought you before their boss. Now, they’re off to nurse their wounds and their pride, thinking nothing of the trembling woman they’ve left behind.

With his free hand, the man knocks on the wooden door, and a moment later, it swings open, revealing a long, well-lit hallway beyond. Grunting a hurried word of thanks, he drags the still whinging Dimitri over its threshold, and you’re given a brief glimpse of two more, suited people standing on either side of the doorway before it slams shut once more, sealing you inside with the inhuman equivalent of an unpredictable bear.

There goes that escape route…

“Idiots…”

Sucking in a wobbly breath, you toss your head back in Strife’s direction, fiercely admonishing yourself for taking your eyes off him, even for a moment.

‘Don’t lose focus,’ you remind yourself firmly, keeping your damp eyes glued to the Horseman’s armoured chest, ‘If you lose focus, you die…’

You may very well die even if you don't lose focus, but you’re clinging to any semblance of control you can maintain.

Strife’s posture, you can’t help but notice, has changed drastically in the few seconds you weren’t looking his way.

One of his massive hands sits draped across his hip, while his other arm has dropped to dangle lazily at his side. Those vivid, sweltering eyes seem brighter as they peer down at you, though nowhere near as charged.

In all, if you didn’t know any better, you’d say he looks downright, unapologetically relaxed.

‘Of course he’s relaxed,’ you nearly scoff aloud, ‘He does this sort of thing all the time, and I’m not exactly a huge threat.’

Not a threat at all, in fact.

You’re torn from your harried thoughts when the Horseman lifts his boot to take a step towards you, a move that sends you tensing up tighter than a coiled spring, muscles bunched beneath your clothes in preparation to flee.

To your shock, he seems to take note of your visceral stiffness and… hesitates.

Curious, his silver helm cocks to one side like a bird, and then in a slow, deliberate display, he places his boot back down in the same spot as before.

To say you’re thrown would be an understatement. Hesitation from a beast like him is… Well, it’s just unheard of.