A Story of Cinders: From the Ashes

Chapter 42: The End of Illusion

 "I should have known better," Will said to the laughing man on the other end. His hands were shaking. His spirit deflated. "This was way too easy."

"You fool. All these years, and you still play into my hand," the laughing voice replies.

Karlov is still alive.

"What's wrong?" Nox asks.

"That's not him!" Will screams, pointing at the corpse. "It's a fucking body double!"

"Of course it was..." Nox stares at the body for a couple seconds, before drawing his pistol again, unloading the rest of the magazine into the corpse.

"You never left the Kremlin, did you?" Will asks.

"Oh no, no, no... I'm not in Moscow. I'm where you want to be, but don't want me to be."

Will's eyes widen in shock. His hand drops to his side. "No... You can't be."

"Like I said, you keep playing into my hand. And you keep making the same mistakes. Just like Dublin, you've left your home base undefended. Anybody could have walked in and taken it. So I did just that."

"You bastard... I'm walking back into my city," he grumbles. "And if I see you or any of your soldiers there, I will wring your fucking neck like a goddamn wash rag!" Now he is screaming, blood rushing to his face.

"No, Spillane. It is mine now. Now go. Run. Find a new city. Let me take it from you again."

Will pulls the comlink out of his ear, then shoots it, screaming more profanities in Gaelic.

"Of all the fucking things I should've thought about, why wasn't it to leave somebody behind to be in charge?!" Will screamed to the heavens.

"We aren't done yet..." Nox muttered, looking at the dead body double. "We have to go back. He's waiting there."

"And he has all my weapons and my soldiers in the palm of his hand. How the fuck to you plan to take care of him there?"

"He doesn't have all of them. We have our A-Team."

"We don't fucking know that. Because we can't fucking talk to them!"

"They'll have made it out of this."

"Cool. So we have an army of... let me count this... six, at best! Six fighters against a fucking legion!"

"Seven. Don't forget about Anastasia."

"Because one more makes so much of a difference!" Nox went silent, thinking about how to reply to Will. Then it hit him. "We were making a plan before this situation. About pulling a militia from the neighboring free towns."

Will turned his head back to Nox, a smile now on his face. "That's right, we were! Let's do that again!"

"And the A-Team?"

"We find somewhere to hold out until our coms come back online. Then we meet up with them again and tell 'em about this. If they're still alive..."

The front doors open. A handful of soldiers greet the four with a barrage of gunfire. John shoots back with his handgun, trying to put the soldiers back under cover. The three eye a transport. Without a word, they all agree that's their escape to the craft. There's no way they could drag Louis across town there. They throw the slumbering behemoth in the back, and Red hops in to monitor him. John takes the keys from a fallen soldier, and he and Charlie jump in the cab.