Hangman Chapter 50

Chapter 50-

Before the sun broke over the horizon, Gideon’s eyes were open. Staring into the darkness that stuck to his ceiling, he took a deep breath and exhaled, his limbs sprawled outwards. Today was Foundation Day. He was out the door, dressed in uniform, in less than ten minutes, barely enough time to hydrate and eat.

President Cartwright rose from his bed and looked about his room in the Capitol Building. Dressing himself, he took a moment to gaze out the window at the city.

“Today is going to be a wonderful day,” he thought.

Gideon’s boots tromped down the sidewalk; his teeth chattered as the wind blew past him like icy daggers. It was too early for the trolley operators to be on-shift, and so he had to make the trek from his apartment on his own, in the dark of morning. Tucked beneath his heavy coat was his saber.

Janna awoke as the sun hit her face, a habit that had been drilled into her by Gallow’s own sleep patterns. Rising from the comfortable sheets of her bed, she looked about the room and realized that she was the only one present.

“Hm…” she pondered, trying to think up what, if anything, was going on that day. She felt the cold chill of the morning and held herself, grimacing as she threw herself back underneath her covers, the night’s warmth still secure.

“I should at least check around, just in case…” she told herself, forcing herself up once more.

“But the cold air is going to wake me up… Agh!” Janna left her bed, her naked feet touching down on the cold hardwood floor.

Looking about the room, she found a small scrap of paper laying atop an oakwood table. In scraggly handwriting it read: “Sonsee and I are in town. Don’t go to the speech today, listen on the radio if you need to.”

Janna cocked her head; it took her a solid fifteen seconds to read the note. In order of strangeness, the message itself was second.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gallow’s handwriting…” she muttered scratchily to herself, her voice still warming up. “If I had to predict it, I’d guess that that’s what it looks like, though… Hm… It’s barely legible…”

As soon as that was out of the way, her still sleepy brain thought more about what it meant.

“Why don’t they want me to go to the speech today?”

Suddenly, an anxious, knotting feeling took root in her stomach. It was out of character for the two of them to take off for the day with no prior warning, and to warn her against going somewhere completely innocuous, no less.

Janna set the note back down and dressed herself.

“It won’t be an issue as long as I don’t go to the speech,” she reasoned. “But there’s a difference between being at the speech and being nearby it…”

---

Noire rubbed his eyes; the mask was no more comfortable to wear, just more familiar. Their hideout was cold and usually damp, which didn’t help matters, either. He kept finding that even the spare sheets they’d found were too thin to keep the cold out, and living so near to the ravine meant that winds and condensation were especially common at their altitude. Behind him, Gruse fastened her shawl and slipped her boots on.

“Are you ready?” she posed the question absentmindedly.

Noire placed his hand on the wall beside him, looking out through a shattered window into the ravine. “Don’t ask me a question like that,” he responded stonily.

“Oh,” Gruse chuckled. “Are you being stoic now?” She planted her boot on the floor and looked up at him with a friendly grin.

Noire found, as he looked back at her, that he couldn’t bear to see her smile; it was like a spear piercing his chestplate.

“Don’t smile at me, either,” he stated with a restrained emotionality, strolling past her to the stairwell.

“Jeez,” Gruse touched her heart in an over dramatic pose. “Even for me?”

Already a few steps down, his hand on the bannister, Noire paused.

“We just need to focus on doing what we need to do right now; once this is over, everything will be alright.”

For a moment, Gruse understood what he felt.

“Alright, then,” she confirmed. “Let’s go.”

They descended into the dark, unlit room below.

---

“This time of year is bad for holidays,” Myst mused, watching the rock move past the elevator through the small glass porthole in the wall. “I suppose it’s not quite as bad as the middle of winter, though. I just like holidays where you can go outside.”

The car was crowded, and he stayed close to Mello until the doors opened, letting in a gust of chill breeze.

“You need to have holidays in the cold seasons, though, because if there weren’t any, then people would just be hopeless.”

“Hey, Boss,” he started. With a blank expression, Mello turned his attention from the sidewalk to his companion.

“Do you think there should be more holidays in the winter than the summer?”

Mello gave him an odd look.

“What do you mean?” he asked dispassionately.

“I mean, if winter’s the most hopeless season, shouldn’t there be more holidays to make people feel better?”

“Why do you say that winter is hopeless?”

Myst took a moment; it wasn’t something he’d put much thought into before, just something he figured.

“Well, it’s freezing, and all the plants die. I’ve been in places that were really hot, but there’s something that’s especially lifeless about the cold. I’d think that here, it would be even worse; nothing grows in the city, and nothing grows in the winter; it’s like you’re living in winter forever.”

Mello threw his head back and laughed, his lilac hair falling messily into his eyes. Myst tilted his head away from him and found that his lips had parted in surprise; he’d never seen him laugh, or even chuckle. Mello would smirk or grin every now and again, but for the most part he was serene and focused. For some reason, the loose noise of laughter, of joy, was discordant compared to his typical demeanor, which was something like an intimidating bliss.

As he brushed his hair out of his face, Mello noted Myst’s unease at his show of emotion.

“That’s funny, Myst,” he complimented in a lighter tone of his usual voice. “I remember the first time I saw the city.”

“Yeah?”

“I hated it.”

---

The speech was scheduled for the afternoon, but setup and security needed to be in place at least five hours before. The event was to be held in Rosary Square, the most popular plaza in Hilltop’s northernmost section, The Head. It was a spacious location; a bronze statue commemorated Andeidra’s founders, wrapped on both sides by white stone staircases that curled upwards to an elevated base which brought one to the city hall. The current city hall was built atop the site of the original one, at the apex of the hill which served as the city’s namesake. President Cartwright would give his speech at the top of the steps, in the center where they met, and onlookers would gaze up from ground level. The sides of the base jutted outwards to where the stairs began from the ground, and their standing room would be used to accomodate guests such as Taylor Holmes.

Nearby, in the shadow behind an insurance firm, Myst and Mello leaned against a stripped brick wall. At the sound of footsteps approaching, Myst saw Gruse and noire in disguise. Mello didn’t feel the need to look up.

“Everything good?” Myst asked, partly as formality and partly in honesty. Maybe his own nerves would be quelled by his companions doing well.

“As good as I can,” Noire answered in a half-sullen voice.

“We’re good,” Gruse said with a little more enthusiasm, just a little.

“Good,” Myst took a breath and nodded, his hands on his hips. It did not quell his nerves.

“So, this is who we have, then?” Mello kept his eyes on the ground and suddenly, they were reminded of their losses. The air took a sharp turn, from nervousness to a heavy, grave feeling. How many did they have only a few weeks ago? Noire almost hated to admit it, but he was getting comfortable belonging to such a team of people. He looked to the stripped brick of the alleyway and considered how the seat of power in the country could also be home to such an ugly wall.

“Eroh has his own job, he knows what it is,” Mello finally raised his head and looked each of his agents in the eyes. “It’s up to you, now,” he confirmed in them. “I’m not going to get emotional with you three, because I think you understand what exactly is at stake.”

“Mello,” Myst broke his silence. “What happens if we fail.”

As if he had offended him, Mello looked into Myst’s eyes with cool, burning intent.

“I believe in you,” he said simply. “As long as you refuse to surrender, you haven’t lost.” He looked to Noire, who suddenly felt a well of pride bubble up in his heart.

“I want you to remember this,” he continued. “The world is not yours, the people who control it are never going to give it to you, nor will they ever try to stop putting you down. There is only one way to keep power: to stop others from taking it. There will always be something higher than you forcing you lower, and most people just give in to it. I believe in you because I know you; the only way to survive is to live against. I don’t care what it is, but you must live against.”

The three of them felt a strange burning in the pits of their stomachs.

---

“Excuse me, ma’am, do you know which way to go for the speech?”

Gallow leaned over from his spot on the park bench to an elderly woman sat beside him.

“What are you, stupid?” she croaked, rising from the bench on her cain.

“I- what?” Gallow watched her hobble away and slumped back in his seat. Moments later, Sonsee returned and sat down to join him, holding a paper bag.

“Are you alright?” she asked, taking note of his discontent expression.

“The people in this city are so rude…” he muttered.

“Hm? What?” she strained her ears, trying to make out what he was complaining about.

“Every time I try to ask for directions…” Gallow rubbed his temple before turning up suddenly, jerking himself out of annoyance. “Hey, whaddya’ get?”

Sonsee opened the bag and reached inside, pulling out a small roll of bread.

“Here!” she exclaimed, watching for his reaction.

“You got… a single roll of bread?” he said with a deadpan voice.

“No, don’t worry,” she assured him, reaching into the bag with her other hand. “I got two! So we don’t have to share!”

Gallow blinked lifelessly at the food.

“You don’t like it?” Sonsee suddenly felt her heart drop.

“Was that all we could afford?” he tried to hide his disappointment.

“Yes…” she spoke in a small voice, as if to shrink the amount of herself to be angry at.

“Okay,” Gallow sighed in as neutral a way as possible, and took the roll from one of her hands. “At least it’s still hot…” he afforded it.

He took a bite and looked out at the grass.

“Oh my God…” he whispered.

“Hm?” she asked again, gnawing on her roll.

“Sonsee,” he began. “Where did you get this?”

“The bakery over there,” she pointed at a building just on the other side of the street. “It smelled really good, so I-”

“It does?!” Gallow couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, he turned around and leaned himself over the back of the bench; pressing a finger to one nostril at a time, he blew thick wads of snot out of his nose. Close by, a mother pushing a stroller furrowed her brow and creased her mouth.

“Gallow…?” Sonsee did not know what she’d done.

Gallow put his nose to the roll and breathed in.

“Oh my God…” He looked to her with blazing intensity. “Sonsee, this is the best bread I’ve ever eaten.” His eyes were dead serious, perhaps more serious than she’d ever seen him. “What is this called?”

“Eh, well…” she leaned away from him, intimidated by his sheer enthusiasm. “I couldn’t really pronounce it very well…”

“What is it??”

“I think it’s called… sour-dof?”

“Sour-?” he crunched the numbers in his head at lightning speeds. “Sourdough!”

“It’s- it’s said ‘doe’??” Sonsee realized that maybe the country would just run smoother if they used a language that made sense, like Atamape.

“I’ve always heard of sourdough bread,” he spoke very quickly, like his mouth was a two-lane highway and his thoughts were cars driven by hundreds of people who had slept in late. “But I’ve never tasted it; I always hear the name and thought ‘ew, gross, bread that’s sour? What is this, a lemon?’ But this-- whew! Whew-hoo! This is amazing!”

“Was your nose…?”

“Yeah, I think I got a cold from the mountains, but it’s alright, it only lasted a few days and I’m just working the phlegm out of my system. Man, I think if I had an infinite supply of these hot everyday I’d recover in no time- no, I think I’d exchange being sick for the rest of my life if I could eat this every day. It’s cool though, I read in a paper the other day that some health place--I don’t know-- came out with this food pyramid, and apparently bread is, like, one of the best things you can eat. So I think I’ll just do that, I think I’ll just eat this sourdough bread for the rest of my life every day.”

“It’s…” Sonsee couldn’t speak. “Yeah, it’s good.” She returned to patiently gnawing on her roll.

When their lunch was done, Gallow splayed his limbs out indecently and relaxed his head against the back of the bench.

“Woo, man, that was great.”

Sonsee was only halfway done with her roll when she glanced at him

“Well, I’m glad that you’re not nervous anymore.”

“Oh, of course I’m nervous,” Gallow replied. “I’m just trying to convert it into excitement, or something like that. I don’t know what’s going to happen today, Sonsee.” His tone was suddenly quite solemn and honest.

“Are you scared?” she picked a piece off and put it between her teeth.

“A little,” his voice went up as he spoke. “I’m trying to figure out this thing that Gideon told me one time.”

“When you knew him?”

Gallow chuckled and closed his eyes for a second before they opened again.

“I don’t think I ever did know him, but yeah, what you mean,” he joked. “He was always on and on about ‘resolve.’ I never had enough ‘resolve,’ or something; I always figured it was something he’d made up just to hold over me, you know? To keep me down?”

“I think I know what you mean,” Sonsee followed along.

“But I don’t know if that’s the case anymore,” he continued. “I’ve just been thinking about stuff recently… I think I was lost for a long time, I didn’t know where to go, you know? I was just wandering around, and then when I came to Sigrit, and I became the sheriff and all that, I think that gave me something to think of myself as, or at least, it was something to do, you know?” He began to absentmindedly run his fingers through his hair, twirling it therapeutically.

“But when I saw Warren again, I felt like I had something to do, and it-” his breath gave out as he tried to get the next words out. “It didn’t work out. I think this whole trip has been a good thing for me,” he smiled and touched his stomach, where the scar from the mountains still was. “Even if-” he laughed warmly. “Even if we were a little worse for wear. I guess that’s what I mean; I think that when Gideon said ‘resolve,’ he meant that he had something to live for.”

Sonsee tossed the last piece of bread in her mouth.

“You don’t think you’ve had anything to live for?”

Gallow paused for a second.

“Not that I realized,” he looked at the ground, where a squirrel ran past their feet.

Sonsee found a small smile curling at one end of her mouth as she looked softly at him. He really did look different from when she’d first met him, when he was just a wanderer in the desert she’d put her faith in to lead her to the Spring. He’d had this quality to him that hadn’t changed, though; there was some shard deep in his eyes that believed everything would work out. That was why she’d put that faith in him; now, it was as if the man around that shard had grown up.

“What do you think you’re living for?” he asked of her, taking away her soft expression and replacing it with mild surprise.

“Me?”

“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly.

Sonsee thought a moment and answered, “I think I’m living to see Janna be happy.”

“Is that it?”

She was taken aback.

“What?”

“I mean, I love her too, but that’s one person; do you think you could live for one person?”

A quiet hung between them as she contemplated his words.

“Maybe, I just want to make things right again.” She stared at the air in front of her before glancing back at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

Gallow held eye contact with her for a moment.

“Yeah, I think I do.”

In the distance, a few car horns went off. Above them, a blue jay landed in its nest to feed its young. People bustled about around them, but there wasn’t a terrible amount of noise.

…

……

………

“Well,” Sonsee clasped her hands and stood up, stretching. “The speech is going to start soon, let’s at least start heading over to watch.”

“Yeah,” Gallow agreed, joining her. “Let’s.

---

Gideon was exceedingly calm, considering his responsibility. He had informed his contacts in the government that he’d managed to lock down the date of the speech as being important to the Fang Team, but they were unable to call off or delay the event due to the president himself.

When President Cartwright learned of this intel, he was asked whether or not he wanted to alter their schedule, a suggestion met with an emphatic, “No, no! What, are you crazy?!”

“He said what?!” Gideon had replied upon hearing this. His contact had given him a dejected explanation.

“The President believes that this is an opportunity to finally apprehend the Fang Team; he only requests that security be tightened up slightly to prevent his death.”

“Slightly?!”

Gideon had arranged with the security staff to place the President lower to the ground and further away from the crowd, as well as maintaining control of every building within a block’s radius. This, of course, had strained the local police force, and they were forced to call in the locally based military to lend added support. This setup should have been able to minimize the threat of an assassination on President Cartwright, although it had been a last-minute alteration which had done none too well to ease the minds of those behind the scenes.

“If everything goes well, then we have a great day. If it doesn’t, then we hopefully put an end to the most urgent domestic terrorist threat and leave with a living President; doesn’t this sound like a good idea when you put it like that?”

The crowds had already begun to gather, and people of all sorts were coming together. It really amazed Gideon how so many different backgrounds and classes were able to live together in one city. Then again, there was an argument to be made that they couldn’t. For one day of the year, however, they may have at least been able to find common ground as Andeidrans.

This somewhat uplifting thought was cut short when he saw two familiar faces in the crowd. Gideon made eye contact with Gallow and remembered why he was here. He’d told Gallow that he could come to the speech, but he couldn’t guarantee his safety, and the moment they made eye contact, he felt a dark sensation swirling in his heart. Something was going to happen, he knew it. Gallow’s presence invited trouble, never from him, but those he seemed to attract to him. Still, his worries were put somewhat at ease knowing that Isaiah and Angelique were in the crowd as well.

Gideon felt a tap on his right shoulder, prompting him to snap his attention towards someone he was expecting.

“Oh,” he smiled. “Ambassador Holmes.”

Before him was standing Taylor Holmes, the Ambassador from New Hopeland to Andeidra, dressed in a clean-looking, black and blue pinstriped suit. At his side was an equally well-dressed man, taller and with broader shoulders.

“Good to see you, Captain Gideon,” Ambassador Holmes extended his gloved hand in a polite gesture. Gideon took the offer and shook it, exchanging a smile and a “Good to see you as well, sir.”

Gideon looked over at the man standing beside Holmes, checking back and forth between them.

“Sorry, who is this?” he asked.

Holmes glanced at the man in question and back to Gideon as if he didn’t understand the question.

“This is my personal bodyguard,” he said in a self-explanatory tone of voice.

“Oh, of course,” Gideon kicked himself; it was obvious from the tight and stoic way the man held himself. “You can find your spot right over there,” he pointed over at the space reserved for important guests.

“Thank you, Captain.”

Noire and Myst assembled themselves by the other guests, a few local politicians and important donors to President Cartwright’s campaign.

The ambassador turned to one such guest and politely posed the question, “How soon does the speech start? Sorry, I’ve forgotten my watch today.”

The man he’d asked, the Hilltop City treasurer, gave him a short but courteous, “About ten minutes.”

Those next ten minutes were spent in anxiety for a select few of those in attendance. Gallow and Sonsee kept watch using spirit vision to detect any potential Vocation users, and Gideon nervously checked his watch every now and again, comparing it against the large clock placed in the crest of the City Hall building. Gruse found her place close to the police line, shimmying up and through the throngs of people.

In the distance, the clock tower rang.

*Gong*

*Gong*

*Gong*

*Gong*

Exactly four o’clock. As soon as the tones were silent, the audience found itself wrapt in anticipation. The quiet seemed to blanket them, they all shared in a singular, group intent. The doors of the City Hall were thrown open, and President Cartwright strode out, decked out in his trademark red polka-dotted suit and accompanied by two large men in indistinct clothing. As abruptly as the silence had fallen over them, the crowd cast it off, and they erupted into applause. Whooping and hollering seemed to fill the entire city, until there seemed to be nobody left who may have disliked the administration. Andeidran flags, brilliant standards of red, blue, and yellow, bearing their ribboned crest in the center.

At once, Myst, Gruse, and Noire all felt their stomachs twist and wrangle; the hour had come.

Cartwright stepped to the podium with the two men at his side, each of which watched the audience cautiously. He brought his fist to his lips, clearing his throat; he straightened his tie and placed his hands firmly on the lectern. With bright eyes, he began to speak.

“People of Andeidra, her children and friends,” he gestured to the audience. “Exactly one hundred years ago, a boat touched shore on this continent, searching for passage through the Bertrude Strait. That boat was manned by humble tradesmen and their families; a hundred years later, and the nation they built is larger and greater than ever…”

A hush overtook the crowd; Gallow felt his heart pump adrenaline as he scanned the area.

“There’s nothing yet…” His nerves rattled, made worse somehow by how quiet everyone was. Sonsee paid little attention to the speech itself, she didn’t care very much for what the President had to say.

Myst stood on the sidelines, at attention along with Noire and the rest of the guests. His breathing was steady, if a bit heavier, and his eyes were fixated on Cartwright. They were to his right, and one of the President’s bodyguards was blocking a clear shot to him. Myst took a subtle step to the left, positioning himself to make a straight line between him and the target.

“Be calm,” he told himself. “This is yours for the taking…”

And then the word crept back into his mind.

“But…”

“But what?”

“What if you miss?”

“Don’t think like that! You know that if you think about losing, you’ve already lost!”

He rubbed his thumb incessantly against his palm, feeling the sweat form. This insecurity-- this doubt-- it retched his heart around. How did he know? How did he know? What were the chances that he would miss?

“There is no such thing as the absolute--”

“There is no way to know anything--”

“There’s a thick layer of ice between me and the truth; I can almost see what it looks like, but the ice reflects my image back to me…”

“There is no way to know anything…”

Myst’s right hand slowly raised, kept close to his chest.

“But if I believe… There’s no need to know…”

Noire knew what was going to happen. The hand had an ugly scar that ran from his finger to his palm, like cracks in stone. His index fingernail began to glow a pure white.

From the crowd, Gallow and Sonsee could both feel something change, like the air pressure had shifted. They looked to each other, and in their eyes, they could both see that something was wrong.

Frantically, the two of them snapped their vision from point to point, until Sonsee caught a faint glimmer from up on the stage.

“Gallow,” she whispered fearfully, grabbing his hand. “The stage!”

He looked scanned the stage as well as the wings, and caught sight of Myst, standing among the guests of honor.

“No way…” he breathed in horror. There was a focus of spiritual force around the man’s hand-- no, was it his finger? From their place in the crowd, they were easily fifteen feet away; there was no way he could reach him with Navigator, it was well out of his effective range.

“Do I need to-?” Gallow felt his pistol beneath his jacket; his lips went dry.

“Sonsee, I can’t reach him,” he whispered. “Can you focus him with Vanishing Point??”

She clenched her fist for a moment, gathering strength, and lifted her arm.

“I guess it’s now or nothing…”

“[VANISHING POINT]!”

Myst swung his arm out, a white tongue of flame billowed off of his nail.

“It’s now or nothing!!!”

Suddenly, his world grew dark.

“Wha-?”

He felt like he’d been sucked into a void, into purgatory, before he experienced an intense rush of speed. It was like he was a bird flying through a mountain range at hypersonic speeds; his feet weren’t touching the ground, the wind was nearly sucked out of his lungs. As abruptly as it had happened, he was now several feet above the ground, suspended in the air for a moment before he felt himself fall, and below him was… the crowd?

“[NAVIGATOR]!!”

At once, Gallow’s spirit body burst from his form and into the air. Without missing a beat, its fist flew into Myst’s body and sent him flying backwards.

Speeds like lightning, blows like thunder!

Myst crashed into the people below, knocking bystanders to the ground. Clenching his fist, he stomped his boot into the back of someone beneath him, making a hard crunching noise. Lifting himself up, he stood in a vacuum, where the other citizens had dispersed in fear, right in the center of the audience. Noire stood back, readying himself for an all-out fight.

Shock ran through Gallow.

“How the hell can he take a full hit from Navigator and still be conscious?!”

Myst’s hand was still close to his waist as he staggered to his feet. One of his eyes was closed, and his muscles were shaky.

“Goddamn…” he snarled under his breath. He was barely in control of his movement after the hit from Navigator, but the flame of his fingernail still burnt.

Cartwright’s bodyguards tightened their formation around him, and Gideon ran to the stage from the left wing.

Anger filled Myst’s veins, like lit gasoline.

“This is not it!!” his mind howled. “Mello’s belief- I’ll- I’ll-!!!”

He stood up tall, shaking and wild.

“I’ll break through the ice!!!”

He swung his arm forward, straight at Cartwright. A spark leapt from his finger, and he roared.

“[DOME C]!!!”

A beam of light, as thin as a spider’s web, appeared instantly between his fingernail’s tip and Cartwright’s heart.

A moment later, President Cartwright’s chest evaporated.