Persona non Grata: Chapter 1

          I have abandoned my identity.  My past.  I have taken a new name.  I’ve given up any trace of anything and everything that would connect me to Kai. 

We have fled the complicated past and exchanged it for a simple existence in Belgium.  The only thread of connection I still have is purely electronic.  I keep vigilance over the doings of Gen-Tech.  It was as if I’ve always known that one day, they would come for Kai. 

          And when that day came, not even a year had passed. 

          The men who came were professionals.  They moved swiftly and without a sound.  I was in my study when I heard the front door crash.  I pulled out the two guns I kept in a safe box I’d installed below the lip of the desk.  My first thought was to reach Kai in his room.

           As soon as I stepped out of the study, two men in black with their A2s turned the corner in the hall.  I shot one.  The other retreated quickly back where he had come from.  In German, I heard him say, “He’s here.” 

          I ducked into the adjacent room, knowing the armed men would bottle neck the corner hall soon.  I locked the door and shoved a sofa against it before I left the room through a window.

          There were four black vans, unmarked and without plates, parked on the grass and barely hidden by the trees a quarter mile away.  There didn’t seem to be anyone left with the vans.  I crouched down and listened, counting footsteps and hushed voices speaking in German.  There were many.  I counted over a dozen and I knew there would be more.

          “Retrieve the subject first,” someone said.  “He doesn’t matter now.”

          I was near the bay window to the side of the house when I heard Kai.  He was protesting and calling my name.  Looking through the window quickly, I saw a large man, one of the few that didn’t wear a mask, pull him toward the front door.  He handled Kai easily, but was clearly annoyed.

          “He’s going to cause too much commotion,” he said.  “Need to bag him.”

          Another man nodded and left.  There were still five men in the living room.  I could hear the commotion from other parts of the house, furniture being toppled.  They no longer concealed their presence.  However, even after securing Kai, they appeared hesitant to leave.  They were waiting for something.  Someone.

          “He’s gone,” a man who had come into the living room said.  His point man was probably the one I had shot.  “No way we can track him in the dark and in terrain we don’t know.  Let’s cut the loss and go before the police get here.”

          One of the men holding onto Kai frowned.  His grip tightened on Kai’s arm enough to make him scream. 

          “FIND HIM! He will have our balls if he gets away, understand?”  His face flushed a dark shade of red as he yelled.  He looked at Kai and threw him on the floor.  It hurt him, even though Kai didn’t make a sound -- and unfortunately, triggered something inside me that made me shoot the overgrown piece of shit.

          It gave me a sense of overwhelming satisfaction when I shot him through the glass pane, shattering it.  Half his head exploded, painting the pale wall red before he collapsed forward, the look of anger still on his face.  He probably died before he realized he’d been hit. Then came regret, although I knew I hadn’t had a choice.  I decided to kill as many of them as I could.

          I stepped through the shattered window, firing the guns as I did so.  I counted the shots – I would be out of ammo soon.  Although it had been less than a full minute, I was stopped steps into the living room by a round that likely shattered my left shoulder.  I lost the grip on the gun in that hand.  Then the ammo ran out in the Glock on my right.  Three men tackled me, pinning me down. 

          In my peripheral vision I could see Kai crying, trying to crawl toward me.  He was stopped when a man stuck a syringe into the side of his neck.

          “Don’t fight us, pal,” a man who gripped the back of my neck said.  He had a distinct New York accent.  “You’re lucky not to have your gut swiss-cheesed after killing our guys.  Someone wants to see you before we put you down.”

          I didn’t have time to process what the man said nor even begin to understand his meaning.  The room had gone silent and all movement had ceased.  Someone else had entered the house – I could hear the thick heels of his boots clank on the wood flooring.  My head was turned and I couldn’t see him.

          “I took a pay cut to take this job when I learned you were the target,” a voice said.  It was rough, more coarse than I remembered, but distinct.  His name came to my mind as soon as he spoke.  The iron-like grip that pressed me down on the carpet only became stronger when I tried to turn my head slightly to look at him. 

          “Hello, brother,” he said.  The unique scent of Cuban cigars that he favored came with him. He stopped short, a step away.  All I could see was the brush-metal tips of his boots.    He crouched down.

“Been a while,” he said.

          The hands that held me down only let up slightly.  I was able to look up at him.  I hadn’t seen him in over ten years and I couldn’t say if he had changed. Physically, he had.  His dark hair was cropped short, framing the sharp contours of his skull.  There were scars on his face.  The one on his left cheek – made more evident by his darkened skin --  had been there when I knew him, made by one of the men who had tried to haze him when he joined the outfit.  That man had been found gutted in the field three days later.  Two other scars – one, a jagged cut over his right eye and the other, a long scar that extended from his left temple into his hairline, were new.  Nothing else seemed changed.  He had always looked predatory.  With the scars, the monstrosity in him appeared emphasized -- something he had always been proud of. 

          “You wouldn’t have let any of these men corner you ten years ago,” he said as he peeled off his thick leather gloves.  “You’ve lost your touch.”

          “What do you want?” I asked.  It was hard to speak with a  heavy knee that had probably most of the weight of a man leaning into my spine. 

          “Came to fetch the toy,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Kai.  Whatever drug they had given him had knocked him out.  Two men had wrapped black straps around him, pinning his arms to his sides and his knees and ankles together.  Another one unzipped a white body bag.

          “And to get rid of you,” he said, looking back at me.  “I am not sure if I should be pissed or pleased that you only shot four of my men.”

          I cursed at him.  A flush of adrenaline went through me at the moment when they slipped Kai’s body into the bag and zipped it up.  I bucked the man who had me pinned and had the grip around my neck.  Before I could get up, Bianchi kicked me hard on one side of my head.  The steel tip caught my cheek and cut it.  I could feel the blood rush down, collecting at the collar of my shirt.  For a moment, I was disoriented.  He kicked me again, harder.  His boot caught me at my mid-section.  From the flare of sharp pain and the stinging that didn’t subside, I figured he had broken a rib or two. 

          “Stay down,” he growled, his foot coming down hard and strong on the back of my neck, replacing the grip that had been there.  “If you try to get up again, I’ll fucking snap your neck.”

          His voice rose a few octaves as he yelled at his men.

          “Why isn’t he cuffed?! He killed four of you useless fuckers and you just sit on him?”  To accentuate his anger, his foot pressed down harder.  My Adam’s apple was crushed against the flooring – choking me.  He cursed as my wrists were wrenched back and cuffed.  It was then his boot was lifted and I was allowed to breathe again.

          “Take the merchandise out and have Team November get on the road with it.”

          I was only able to watch peripherally as one of the men carrying the white body bag in his arms left the house.  The three men left shoved dead men’s bodies into black body bags.

          “I’m rather surprised that this is what has become of you,” Bianchi said.  The anger in his voice had disappeared.  He was smiling again.  “I used to be scared of you.  A monster that loved blood and killing….”

          He chuckled. 

          “But then…that’s why I admired you.  I wanted to be just like you.”

          He took off his gun belt.  A vintage Winchester that used to be mine hung on the left while a HK hung on the right with two cartridges. 

          “I kept it.  I always carry it,” he said, looking at the .45.  “Though it’s kind of a dead weight.  I’ve kept it loaded for the day.  Like today.”

          “So you’re going to shoot me with a gun I gave you,” I said.  “How appropriate that you became a goddamn poet.”

          He laughed.  The men that had gathered the bodies into the body bags had finished and had dragged them outside.  Pools of blood had thickened  in the area rugs, blackening them.  Two of the men returned. 

          “I would never send you off in such a vulgar manner,” he said.  He shoved his gun belt into one of the men’s arms.  “Outside.  This is personal,” he told them.  The men nodded and left.  I could hear them outside, their vehicle doors slamming closed.

          Bianchi pulled up an armchair from across the room and left it a few feet away.  He sat down, crossing one leg over the other.

          “You were so much more than just a colleague.  So much more than a brother to me.  I’ve never been as enthralled by anyone else.”

          “Did Gen-Tech send you?” I asked, though it wasn’t a question.  His lack of interest in what I said confirmed it.

          “We can be a team again,” he continued as he pulled out a black carbon jungle knife from the boot of his hooked leg.  He ran a thumb gently over the silver edge of the sharpened blade.  “You have a wonderful talent that has been wasted on chasing pittance bounties.”

          “You immoral piece of shit, what makes you think I would lower my standards to yours.”

          He shook his head, an exaggerated look of disappointment crossing his face.

          “What changed you?  You threw everything away and became nothing,” he said as he rose from his seat and moved up beside me again.  “That synthetic thing?”

          “That thing has more soul than you do.”

          He frowned.  It was genuine this time.  There was a changed look in his eyes.  He crouched down.

          “I wish I could carve that damn thing open in front of you.  Watch you suffer and listen to you beg as I slice that thing apart from its mouth down to its throat and through its belly.  Just to see what it looked like inside.  Then have my guys jerk off and cum into the opened guts.  Too bad my orders are to bring that thing back in one piece.”

          He slipped his fingers through my hair and closed on a handful of it.  He pulled my head up until I was at his eye level.

          “Goddamn, I want to hear you scream….”

          There was a brief pause, as if he were waiting for a reply.  When I said nothing, he slammed my head down hard.  My vision darkened for a moment as pain flared.  He did it again and again, I didn’t know how many times, but when he finally let go of my hair and rolled me onto my back I was bleeding from the cuts above my eyebrows and forehead.  The trails of blood had snaked downwards into my eyes, stinging them.  It was one more pain, added to the dull ache radiating from my shoulder.

          “It is unfortunate that our good-bye should come to this,” he said.  He sounded out of breath, but I couldn’t see him very well.  I blinked, trying to clear the blood from my eyes.  He stood in a haze between my ankles.  When my vision cleared for a few moments, he had a flushed, excited look.  I couldn’t even rise up on my elbows.  My cuffed wrists were pinned under my weight.  My head was spinning, and my mind wasn’t catching up with reality, not even when he staked the knife into the floor so he could use both hands to undo the buttons of my pants.

          It was instinct that made me kick.  I connected with his mid-section and made him stumble backwards.  He looked more annoyed than in pain.  He pulled out the staked knife and slashed at my chest.  The tip of the blade sliced through my shirt and into my skin.  It wasn’t deep but it hurt.  Soon, the front of my shirt that was once white, was stained bright red and plastered against my chest.

          “Just take it,” he said, raising his knife up to my eye level.  His breathing was quicker and his pupils were dilated, excited.  “You do something stupid again and I swear I will cut off your cock and shove it down your throat.  Then I’ll fuck you anyway.  Get it?”

          “You’d better kill me now…,” I said.  My voice was hoarse and I could barely get the words out.

          “Or what?” he asked with a smile.  He put the knife to the side again and continued to pull down my unbuttoned pants, then pulled my zipper down.  “You’ll kill me?”

          I flinched when he yanked on my underwear.  He didn’t bother pulling it off.  He cut it off instead then pressed the flat of his blade against my cock.

          “No matter what kind of weapon we make to hurt and kill each other,” he said, as he closed a fist around my shaft and wrung it roughly, “it’ll always come down to just this, right?”

          I took in a breath and held it, not letting a sound out of my mouth.  He was pulling on me hard, like a clumsy kid trying to wring out an erection.  The sharp tip of the knife glanced over my inner thighs and balls – over and over again, as if to remind me it was there so I wouldn’t think to fight him.

          “How a man can really own another…ruin his dignity and he’ll become nothing…just like that.”

          He laughed, thoroughly amused by the words he spoke to himself.  He placed the knife to the side again.  This time, he worked the buttons and zippers on his own pants. 

          “Someone like you probably has never been made into a woman before,” he said, pulling out his erection through the lowered zipper.  He was hard – the thick shaft stretching the foreskin thin.  I fantasized for a moment reaching for the knife and severing it.

          “I want to cum just at the thought that I’m the only one that’s ever done this to you….”

          He looked insane then, as he straddled me.  His knees were on either side of my chest.  While one of his hands continued to pull on his own cock, he undid my shirt buttons, a shirt that was wet with blood. 

          “I’d like to fuck you dry and let you feel everything, but I don’t personally favor the pain of going in dry,” he said. 

          My shirt was brushed to the side, opened.  I cursed – the only sound I made as he slid his cock along the cut he had made on my chest.  He let out pleasure-filled whimpers as he continued to rub his erection against my chest, the tip of it tracing the arc of the slash.  It was hideous and horrific, as his hand and cock became wet and crimson with my blood.

          I let out a scream finally when he used his thumbnail to split the cut open deeper, to bleed out more blood. 

          “You look pretty damn good,” he said.  He was out of breath as he spoke.   “I want to cum right now….”

          His words didn’t make sense to me.  My head was spinning from the blood I was losing.  There was pain – one after another.  When he pressed himself into me, my body reacted before I felt it,.  His cock went in easily, slicked with blood.  It was tight.  And I could see his grimace -- it wasn’t comfortable for him either, but his maniacal grin remained as he pushed himself in up to the root.  The sensation of being torn open came when he started to move.

          “No shame in screaming,” he said, rolling in and out at a fast pace.  “No one will hear you but me.”

          I cursed at him again.  Replacing the screams that with curses that I hurled at him.  Every part of me felt it.  The intimate pain of being slit open...diminished all of the collected pain that radiated from my wounds and broken bones.  I also realized then that I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated Bianchi -- the pain had made me weak, made me feel so utterly helpless and hopeless.  The way his hard thrusting made my entire body move with him.

          “You understand now, Vincent?” he asked me.  He leaned over, propping himself up with his hands planted on either side of my head.  He was sweating – his face a glossy sheen from exertion.  He had slowed down, his cock still lodged inside.  I could feel it – the way it made me feel so full that I could almost feel it in my throat.  “I could have loved you as much as I hate you now.”

          Only his hips moved then; swaying from side to side.  He bent down and lapped at the cuts on my forehead with the tip of his tongue.  Gentle and tentative, as if he were  afraid to hurt me.

          “It’s still not too late,” he said.  His voice was gentle then, soft.  “This could just be part of your punishment for abandoning your past.  For abandoning me.”

          It was the last vestige of myself left.  I spat at him.  He didn’t seem to be fazed as he wiped my spittle from his cheek with the heel of his hand and picked up his knife.  He held it up against my throat.

          “I was sincere when I said I admired you,” he said.  He pressed the blade harder against my throat.  I could feel the razor bite through the skin, the hair-line pain.

          He renewed his furious thrusting, watching me while the knife remained pressed against my skin.  The jostling movements made shallow cuts against the column of my neck.

          I expected it, that the knife would be driven in and decapitate me at any moment.  At the point of his orgasm, he would be perverse enough to kill me that way.  Then, I could only think of Kai and how I had failed him.  And the life he would have that would be worse than my last living moments.  So much worse because it would never end for him.

          Bianchi started to howl, sounds of his peaking orgasm.  The knife was driven deeper through my skin, sawing at its surface enough to make it bleed.  His rough thrusting came to a sudden stop.  He stilled, his entire body drawn taut and then he shuddered as he emptied himself inside me.  He let out another moan before he pulled out. 

          He bent over again and planted a kiss on my cheek.

          “I love you, brother.  I’ll always remember you.”

          I felt the blade of the knife cut into my throat.  It was deep – I knew it was deep.  I swore I could taste the metal in the knife as it swept across, cutting my throat open.  I could only stare up at him as he stood up.  There was blood on his face where it had splattered as he cut me.  He wiped the bloodied knife on his sleeve and shoved it back into his boot.

          He tucked his half-hard cock back into his pants.  He had a sad look on his face.

          “I didn’t want to take your head off,” he said as he adjusted his uniform.  “I want you to spend the last few minutes of your life thinking about your death.  About what happened to you.  And about me.”

          His voice became distant.  Echo-like.  I felt suddenly drained then.  Cold crept over me.  I closed my eyes.  I did think of my life.  Although all I could do was repeat my apologies to Kai in my mind.  The wonderful memories of him replaced by the last images of him being put into the body bag.  What had happened to me was inconsequential.  I had expected to die.  I had expected violence to take my life, all my life.

          And that was my last thought, as I heard Bianchi say good-bye again as my world went black.

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