The Bullet Without a Name, page 10
Black Rock. Again. The name hammered at the walls of Janus’s amnesia. What protocol had he broken? What ‘interesting’ thing had happened? He pushed the frustration down, focusing on the immediate threat. “Seems Thorne’s protocols are failing all over,” Janus countered, nodding slightly towards the general decay and the memory of the failed core at Site Alpha. “His Folly at Silver Creek. The mountain falling in on itself. His network looks frayed.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Silas’s face, quickly masked. “Temporary setbacks. The Alchemist’s work pushes boundaries. Sometimes boundaries push back. Thorne understands acceptable losses.” He tilted his head. “Are you an acceptable loss, Janus? Or just... loose data to be purged?”
The dance had begun. Not just of potential movement, but of words, feints, psychological jabs. Silas was probing, trying to gauge Janus’s knowledge, his stability. Janus offered minimal reaction, keeping his focus sharp.
Suddenly, Silas moved. Not an attack, but a shift. He took two quick steps sideways, disappearing completely behind a tall, dilapidated cabinet leaning against the back wall. Simultaneously, a floorboard creaked loudly near the cold fireplace to Janus’s left.
A diversion. Janus didn’t hesitate. He fired two shots towards the cabinet where Silas had vanished, the bullets punching through the rotting wood, sending splinters flying. He ignored the sound from the fireplace – likely a deliberate noise made by Silas before moving, or even a pre-set distraction. He spun, dropping even lower, scrambling behind the overturned telegraph desk, the rusted metal offering flimsy but immediate cover.
A shot roared from the right side of the room, from behind a stack of crates Janus hadn't initially registered as solid cover. The bullet ripped through the air where Janus had been a second before, thudding into the floorboards. Silas hadn't gone left; he'd circled right while drawing Janus’s fire towards the cabinet. Fast. Deceptive.
Janus returned fire towards the crates, aiming low, hoping to ricochet a bullet or force Silas to move. He heard a grunt, followed by the scrape of boots on dusty wood. Silas was repositioning again.
This couldn't be a static firefight. The enclosed space, the multiple angles, Silas’s familiarity with the layout – it all favored the defender. Janus needed to press the attack, keep Silas off balance, close the distance where his own speed might make a difference.
He peered over the edge of the desk. He saw Silas darting between the crates and a fallen section of shelving near the far wall. Janus fired again, forcing Silas deeper into cover. Then, using the moment of suppression, Janus surged forward, vaulting over the telegraph desk, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
He moved through the cluttered room like smoke, weaving between obstacles, his eyes scanning, his Colt held ready. He glimpsed Silas behind the shelving unit, reloading his own weapon. Janus fired on the move, the shot going wide but forcing Silas to duck back down.
Janus closed the distance rapidly, reaching the edge of the shelving unit. He could hear Silas’s breathing, harsh and quick, just on the other side. He pressed himself against the rough wood, listening.
Silence stretched for a beat, two beats. Then, with explosive force, Silas kicked outwards, sending the unstable shelving unit crashing down directly towards Janus.
Janus reacted purely on instinct, throwing himself backwards, barely avoiding the cascade of splintered wood and debris. He hit the floor hard, the impact jarring his teeth, his Colt flying from his grasp, skittering across the dusty floorboards.
Silas emerged from the collapsing cover, his own gun leveled, stepping over the wreckage towards the disarmed Janus. The mocking smile was back, wider this time, touched with triumph.
“End of the line, Janus,” Silas said, taking deliberate aim. “Protocol Serpent initiated.”
Janus scrambled backwards on the floor, his eyes darting towards his lost Colt, lying several yards away near the wall. Too far. He braced himself for the final shot.
But as Silas’s finger tightened on the trigger, a sound from outside shattered the tension. The distinct, panicked whinny of a horse – Silas’s horse – followed by a muffled thud and the sharp crack of splintering wood near the station’s entrance.
Silas hesitated, his aim faltering for a fraction of a second, his head turning towards the unexpected noise. Distraction. Opportunity.
Janus didn’t think; he reacted. He launched himself forward, not towards his gun, but low, tackling Silas around the knees with brutal force. The unexpected attack, combined with Silas’s momentary distraction, sent both men crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Silas’s gun discharged harmlessly into the ceiling as they fell.
They grappled fiercely on the dusty floorboards, dust swirling around them, illuminated by the slanting shafts of light. Silas was strong, wiry, fighting with cold, efficient rage. Janus fought with the desperation of survival and the raw fury of a betrayed tool turning on its master. Fists flew, landing with dull thuds. They rolled, crashed into debris, each man trying to gain leverage, trying to reach the guns knocked aside in the struggle.
It wasn’t about skill now; it was about brute force, endurance, and sheer will. Two ghosts conjured by Thorne, locked in a primal struggle in the dust and decay of a forgotten world, the outcome hanging precariously in the balance.
Chapter 24: Dust and Disengagement
The world narrowed to dust, sweat, and the straining grunt of the man trying to kill him. Janus grappled with Silas on the filthy floorboards, the initial fury giving way to a grim, attritional struggle. Silas fought with economical brutality, targeting eyes, throat, joints – techniques designed to incapacitate quickly, lethally. Janus countered with raw strength and desperation, fuelled by the surge of adrenaline and the cold rage that had finally found a focus.
They rolled across the floor, crashing into overturned furniture, the impacts jarring through bone. Dust filled Janus’s nostrils, coated his tongue, stung his eyes. He landed a solid blow to Silas’s ribs, rewarded by a sharp intake of breath, but Silas immediately drove an elbow into Janus’s jaw, making stars explode behind his eyes.
Janus twisted, trying to break Silas’s grip, his hand scrabbling blindly across the floor for his lost Colt. His fingers brushed against something hard – not the gun, but a thick piece of splintered wood from the shattered shelving unit. He gripped it, a crude, makeshift weapon.
Silas, sensing the shift, pressed his advantage, driving a knee towards Janus’s groin. Janus deflected it desperately with his forearm, the impact sending jolts of pain up his arm, and simultaneously swung the piece of wood in a vicious arc. It connected solidly with the side of Silas’s head, just above the temple.
Silas grunted, his eyes glazing over for a fraction of a second, his grip loosening momentarily. It was the opening Janus needed. He surged upwards, breaking free, scrambling away from Silas who lay momentarily stunned on the floorboards, shaking his head to clear it.
Janus lunged for his Colt, lying near the wall where it had skittered earlier. His fingers closed around the familiar checkered grip just as Silas recovered, pushing himself up, his own gun still lost somewhere in the debris. Silas didn’t hesitate; he launched himself at Janus again, tackling him before he could bring the Colt fully to bear.
They slammed against the rough adobe wall, the impact knocking the wind out of Janus. Silas clawed at Janus’s gun hand, trying to wrench the weapon free or turn it against him. Janus fought desperately to maintain control, smashing the butt of the Colt against Silas’s forearm, trying to break his grip.
Suddenly, the external noise came again, louder this time. A frantic scrambling sound from near the doorway, followed by a loud crash and the distinct tearing of rotten wood. Both men froze for a split second, their struggle paused by the intrusion.
Silas used the momentary lapse. With a sudden, explosive movement, he drove his boot heel hard into Janus’s knee. Pain, sharp and blinding, shot up Janus’s leg. His knee buckled, his grip on the Colt faltering. Silas twisted free, shoving Janus hard against the wall again.
Instead of continuing the physical assault, Silas darted backwards, his eyes scanning the floor. He spotted his own Colt near the overturned telegraph desk. He moved towards it.
Janus, fighting through the wave of pain in his knee, raised his Colt, bringing it to bear on Silas’s back. "Hold it, Silas!" he grated out.
Silas froze, halfway to his weapon. He slowly turned, his face expressionless, though a thin trickle of blood ran from the wound on his temple where the wood had struck him. His eyes were cold, calculating, assessing the situation.
"Impasse, Janus?" Silas asked softly. "Or just delaying the inevitable?"
"What was Black Rock?" Janus demanded, the question tearing itself from his throat, raw with the need for answers despite the precarious standoff.
Silas actually smiled then, a thin, bloodless curve of the lips. "Black Rock was where you earned your name, Janus. Where you showed Thorne both your value... and your flaw." He took a small, almost imperceptible step sideways, closer to the debris field near the wall. "You couldn't follow the final protocol, could you? Faced with... it... you hesitated. Tried to contain it your way. Always thinking you knew better."
"Contain what?" Janus pressed, ignoring the throbbing pain in his knee, keeping the gun steady.
Silas’s smile faded. "Knowledge is a burden, Janus. Especially for damaged goods." He reached slowly towards his belt with his left hand.
"Don't," Janus warned, tensing.
Silas ignored him. His fingers fumbled for a moment at a small pouch. With blurring speed, he pulled out a small, metallic sphere, no bigger than a walnut, and crushed it in his palm.
There was no explosion, no flash. Instead, a wave of intense, localized darkness erupted from Silas’s hand, accompanied by a high-frequency whine that pierced Janus’s skull. It wasn't smoke; it was deeper, an absolute negation of light that swallowed the ambient illumination in the room, plunging everything into pitch blackness for several agonizing seconds. Simultaneously, the whine induced a wave of vertigo, making the floor seem to tilt beneath Janus’s feet.
Alchemist tech. A disengagement tool.
Janus fired blindly into the swirling darkness where Silas had stood, the muzzle flash momentarily illuminating nothing but swirling, deeper black. He stumbled backwards, disoriented by the whine and the sudden sensory deprivation, his injured knee screaming in protest.
When the darkness dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, barely three seconds later, the room was empty. Silas was gone. His Colt still lay on the floor near the telegraph desk. He hadn’t retrieved it. He had simply vanished into the unnatural darkness and out through... where?
Janus limped towards the doorway, his Colt sweeping the empty room. The source of the earlier noise was clear now. The entire doorframe was splintered and sagging inwards. Silas’s horse, panicked by the initial Sharps blast or the subsequent close-quarters gunfire, must have reared or bolted against its tether, smashing against the weak structure in its terror. Silas had likely slipped out through the damaged opening, or perhaps another window, under cover of the Alchemist's device.
He stepped cautiously outside into the blazing sunlight, blinking against the sudden brightness. Silas’s horse was gone. Hoofprints led away from the station at a frantic gallop, heading west across the flats. Silas hadn’t waited for his horse; he’d likely sprinted away on foot initially, vanishing into the terrain while Janus was disoriented, leaving his horse to bolt on its own later or perhaps cutting it loose himself. He traveled light and moved fast.
Janus leaned against the bullet-scarred adobe wall, the adrenaline starting to ebb, leaving behind exhaustion and sharp, throbbing pain. His knee was swelling rapidly. His head ached from Silas’s blow. Cuts and bruises were beginning to make themselves known.
He had survived. He had driven Silas off, disrupted his transmission. But Silas had escaped, armed with the knowledge that Janus was alive, remembering fragments, and actively hunting for answers. He had also confirmed Janus’s connection to Black Rock, his ‘flaw’, his failure to follow protocol.
Janus retrieved Silas’s Colt from the station floor – a well-maintained Peacemaker, nearly identical to his own. An extra gun was always useful. He limped back to where his roan waited patiently in the arroyo, the horse skittish but unharmed.
He needed to rest, tend to his injuries, examine the terrain for Silas’s trail on foot. Pursuing immediately on horseback with his damaged knee seemed unwise. Silas had the advantage of surprise now, knowing Janus was wounded.
He sank down into the shade of the arroyo bank, pulling out his canteen. The silence returned, but it felt different now. Not pregnant with imminent violence, but echoing with the ghost of it, and heavy with the weight of unanswered questions. Black Rock. The Alchemist. Thorne. His own flawed past. Silas was gone, but the confrontation had only sharpened the focus, hardened the resolve. The dance wasn't over; it had merely paused, awaiting the next deadly measure.
Chapter 25: Reckoning in the Arroyo
Pain lanced through Janus’s knee as he put weight on it, sharp and insistent. He leaned against the crumbling bank of the arroyo, tearing strips from his already ragged bandana to fashion a crude compression bandage. The flesh around the kneecap was swollen, bruised, protesting violently against the abuse it had suffered during the fight with Silas. He worked with detached efficiency, his hands steady despite the tremor of exhaustion running through his limbs. The dust, the stale air, the lingering scent of ozone – it all seemed secondary to the immediate, grinding reality of his injury. Silas had left his mark.
He took a long pull from his canteen, the lukewarm water doing little to soothe his parched throat but momentarily clearing his head. He replayed the confrontation: Silas’s taunts, the deadly dance in the dim station, the Alchemist’s blinding darkness, the escape. Silas knew him. Knew about Black Rock, about his ‘flaw’ – the hesitation, the failure to follow protocol that had likely led to his memory wipe. Janus, the operative who couldn’t pull the trigger when faced with... it. What was it? The question hammered against the inside of his skull, unanswered, terrifying.
Knowing his designation, Janus, didn’t feel like reclaiming an identity. It felt like acknowledging a cage. He was a product, marked and recalled, now targeted for deletion. The cold fury solidified into something harder, colder – resolve. He wouldn't be purged like faulty data. He wouldn’t be an acceptable loss. Thorne, the Alchemist, Silas... they had created this ghost, and now this ghost would haunt them.
But first, survival. And Silas.
His knee throbbed relentlessly. Pursuing Silas directly, immediately, was foolhardy. Silas was likely uninjured, moving fast, expecting pursuit. He’d lead Janus into another trap, exploit his injury. Resting here, however, felt equally dangerous. How long before Silas reached a rendezvous? Sent word through other means? How long before Thorne’s network, alerted by the destruction of the telegraph device and Silas’s presumed report, converged on this area?
He needed information. He needed to know Silas’s immediate direction, his pace. Leaving the roan hidden, Janus pushed himself upright, leaning heavily on the Sharps rifle like a crutch. Pain shot through his leg, but he gritted his teeth against it. He began to move slowly, cautiously, out of the arroyo towards the derelict station, scanning the ground with meticulous care.
The dust held the story. He found the frantic hoofprints where Silas’s horse had bolted – heading west, riderless. Then, closer to the station, overlaying the general chaos, were the prints of Silas’s boots. They led away from the damaged doorway, moving west as well, but on foot. The stride was long, purposeful, eating up ground. Silas hadn't waited for his horse; he'd fled into the badlands alone. Janus knelt, ignoring the agony in his knee, examining the depth and spacing of the prints. Silas was moving fast, unburdened, likely carrying little beyond his sidearm (assuming he had a spare after leaving his Colt behind) and whatever small gear he had on his person.
Janus followed the tracks for a hundred yards, confirming the direction. Silas was heading directly into the vast, waterless expanse stretching towards the setting sun. A desperate move? Or was he heading towards a known cache? A hidden water source? A specific rendezvous point marked on maps Janus didn’t possess?
He limped back towards the arroyo, his mind working. He couldn't track Silas on foot for long, not with this knee. Direct pursuit on horseback would be faster but would also make him an easy target for an ambush, advertising his approach across the open flats. Silas would expect that.
He needed a different strategy. Not pursuit, but interception.
He retrieved the map fragment he’d taken from the dead surveyor near Silver Creek Gulch. It covered territory further east, useless now. He relied instead on the internal map, the landscape knowledge embedded in his instincts. Westward lay... nothing, according to conventional understanding. Barren flats, then broken hills, eventually leading towards the distant Rio Diablo. But Silas wasn't conventional. Thorne’s operations weren't conventional. There had to be something out there – another hidden site, a water source known only to Thorne’s network, a clandestine meeting point.
He considered Silas’s likely objective. Reporting the failure at Site Alpha, the destruction of the telegraph device, and the confirmation of Janus’s hostile survival. He’d need to reach someone, somewhere. Given his haste, he was likely heading for the nearest known point of contact or extraction.
Janus formulated a plan, born of necessity and instinct. He would use the horse, but not follow Silas’s tracks directly. He would swing south, then west, cutting a wide arc parallel to Silas’s presumed path. He’d use the terrain for cover, pushing the roan hard where possible, conserving energy where the ground was rough. He’d aim for logical choke points further west – a narrow pass through the broken hills shown on no map he consciously remembered but felt certain was there, or perhaps the rumored Bitter Springs, a place most travelers avoided but which might serve Thorne’s network. He would gamble on prediction, on understanding the mindset of the network he was once part of, rather than simply reacting.
