Eddie had long since lost any sense of time, being down here. Payton never let a permanent pattern form in his visits, so using them to count the days was impossible.
Hanging by his wrists, on the verge of losing consciousness, he wasn't sure if Ruffles was gone five minutes or an hour. But eventually, the door opened again, and the engineer was back.
"You... you got what I told you to get?"
"Yeah," Ruffles replied. "But first thing's first, I gotta get those chains off ya."
"You said you had a way of doing that, but I don't see a buzz saw or a blowtorch..." he shook his head to clear the fug. It didn't help. "...or anything like that."
"Oh, ye of little faith," Ruffles replied. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a small silver object."
"You're gonna cut me down from here... with a fucking pen?"
"*****, please." Ruffles crossed over to him, and got to work. What Eddie had assumed to be a pen was actually a small plasma laser he'd developed. At this size, it didn't have much battery, but it was handy to have when he was tinkering. It took several minutes just to work through the thickly cast chains, and Ruffles became worried the cell would deplete before he could free Eddie's other arm, but in the end, he managed it.
Dropping the spent mini laser, he dropped to his knees to catch Eddie as he fell limply to the floor. Despite the weight he had shed in his months of captivity, he was still a heavy son of a *****.
"Jesus, you're duct tape and fumes at this point, aren't you? We'll think of something else, man. I ain't a doctor, but what I got here's gonna fucking kill you."
Ruffles made to push the items he'd retrieved away, but Eddie clamped a hand on his wrist. Ruffles looked down, and the metal plate on the back of Eddie's left hand glinted up at him. "Y'know I heard stories about you. They all said you were dead."
"Rumours of my death, something, something." Eddie muttered.
"Y'know, I heard about a guy named Metal who had a hand like this," Ruffles continued. "Then suddenly that asshole breaks my ship. Killed one of my crewmates, too."
"Well your crewmate was about to start throwing dynamite around in your precious ship," Eddie snapped. "So yeah, I shot him. He forced my hand." He gestured to the things Ruffles had deposited on the floor to unchain him. "Now fucking
do it. We're out of options."
Ruffles sighed. "Your wish is my command, for some reason." He reached for the first item. A shot of adrenaline in a blister pack. Tearing it open, he pulled off the cap. "You know how this works?"
"Obviously," Eddie replied, shuffling backwards to lean against the concrete wall. Ruffles sighed again and stabbed the syringe into Eddie's chest, jamming the plunger down. Discomfort was visible on Eddie's face, but being stabbed in the cartilage of his chest must have felt like a tickle after everything else. He didn't make a sound. As the adrenaline hit him, he gasped and bucked. Ruffles hastily withdrew the needle and pinned Eddie down until he stopped convulsing.
The bounty hunter sat up, eyes wide and got to his feet. "You got the blue?"
"Yeah, it was there, like you said. What's Payton want with this shit, anyway? Don't tell me he's a closet stoner."
"Some people use it as a solution base for some kinds of medicine. Payton prides himself on having everything you could possibly need in everything he does."
Ruffles passed him the glass vial of blue powder. "And you want it for..."
"When the adrenaline wears off."
"Shit."
The two men charged out into the corridor, where a loud thudding could be heard. "Oh yeah," Ruffles said. "Forgot to mention, they're here and they're pissed. Managed to block the door at the bottom of the stairs with crap from that infirmary though."
"Ain't gonna hold long, and that's the way we're going," Eddie said. As if to prove him right, the door splintered out of its frame, and men in Wilkes-Vines suits started breaking through the barricade of gurneys and chairs Ruffles had put up.
"I got this," Ruffles said, and pulled out a beaker of clear liquid stoppered with a rag. "Found some ethanol in there, too," he said, lighting the rag and throwing the molotov at the ruins of the barricade. The first men through the breach were greeted with a huge roaring fireball. As the smoke cleared, Ruffles pulled his gun and advanced, emptying a clip through the door frame to discourage anyone from poking their heads out.
As they reached the doorway, Eddie seized the nearest man still standing bodily, and slammed him against the wall, while Ruffles put the burning men out of their misery. Eddie straightened up with a looted pistol, and the two made their way up the concrete stairs. Getting back to the bookcase was the easy part. Getting out of Payton's office was somewhat more difficult.
Eddie's head was swimming, but he was moving on pure instinct. Ruffles was nothing short of amazed. Eddie's marksmanship was sloppier than his own, with his grip made shaky by exhaustion and pain, but he was still hitting targets, and when he got close enough, flooring his opponents with brutal, artless strikes before staggering on.
Now that he was standing behind him, Ruffles saw that huge strips of skin had been flayed from Eddie's back. Some of the wounds were still glistening, while others were masses of dried blood and half formed scar tissue. "Fucking gross," he muttered, laying down covering fire.
They were in the entrance hall now, trading fire with grunts on the stairs and landing above. Throwing himself into an alcove to reload, Eddie's gaze found the windows by the huge double doors. "We've got company," he yelled.
"Well, that way's out," Ruffles called back. "Any bright ideas?"
Eddie sprinted across to where Ruffles was in cover, skidding to a halt and nearly overbalancing. He was starting to feel
really faint now. "East side lounge on the second floor," he said. "We'll go out the window, land in the bushes."
"This was supposed to be my day off!" Ruffles yelled as they broke cover and charged up the stairs. Most of the opposition was behind them now, mostly the fresh forces that were coming in through the double doors from outside. They sprinted down the second floor landing, with Ruffles slamming every door he could behind them to slow Payton's men.
"I knew this was a terrible idea," he said as Eddie staggered along next to him, occasionally having to catch himself on the wall to keep balance. They were feet from the penultimate door before the lounge when he spun out and crashed to the floor. His chest was heaving and his skin was glistening with sweat.
"Shit!" Ruffles yelled. "C'mon, get up man, you can do it." It didn't matter if he could though, really. They weren't out of the house yet, and Eddie was at his limit.
"Plan B," Eddie muttered. Pulling out the vial of blue, he popped the stopper with an overgrown thumbnail and upended it into his nose, snorting hard. Ruffles helped him through the next door and slammed it behind them. Taking a painting down from the wall, he jammed it under the door's handle and returned to Eddie. "How're you holding up?"
"Like six tonnes of goddamn carbon," Eddie said, straightening up. His pupils were hugely dilated, to the point where Ruffles could barely see the edges of grey around the black. He looked around to see Ruffles kicking open the doors on either side of the hallway. It was a good idea. Their best bet would be to find some cover and try to thin the herd a little before going for the lounge window.
The room they ended up in was a guest bedroom. Slamming the door shut, Ruffles began dragging the chest of drawers in front of it. Eddie, meanwhile, was looking around. There was a wardrobe built into the far wall. He opened it and began sweeping aside hangers to clear the back.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Ruffles asked. He, meanwhile, was opening the window to see if they could escape through it. He was greeted by the sound of gunfire and jumped back.
"This place might look like some kinda fancy mansion, but it's a fortress," Eddie replied. "There are emergency weapons caches all over, and I've found one I remember." Stepping into the wardrobe, he kicked in its back, which turned out to be cunningly painted plywood. It shattered with ease, and he reached inside, producing a shotgun, a box of cartridges, and a box of grenades.
"Gimme those grenades," Ruffles said. Eddie threw them to him, and he knelt down, pulling the lace from one of his boots. Threading it through the pins of several grenades, he carried them to the window, and waved them hard by the string. The pins popped out and half a dozen grenades dropped on the Wilkes-Vines men below.
The door had been ripped apart, and the only things keeping their attackers from pouring through were the chest of drawers, and Eddie, firing the shotgun every time someone was brave enough to try. Tipping out the remaining grenades, Ruffles started throwing them through the doorway. That was enough to push the enemy back, and so they made a move to get back out into the hall, leaping over the various holes Ruffles had made in the floor.
Eddie got out first, sprinting for the door to the east side lounge. Ruffles began to follow, but was hauled back by a hand on his collar. Tearing away from his assailant, he turned to see it was Fargo. The bastard had climbed in through the window Ruffles had opened.
Bringing up his pistol, he fired, but Fargo swayed out of the path of the bullet and stepped around Ruffles, catching his arm and twisting until the gun fell to the floor. "Payton sure would be pissed if his prize engineer got killed," he said and punched Ruffles in the temple, knocking him out cold.
Eddie hadn't heard the disturbance, too busy emptying the shotgun into the men stupid enough to get out of his way. The Blue was really hitting him now, and his blood lust was up.
============================================================================
Payton Wilkes-Vines had been the head of a major crime syndicate, of whom he was the founder, for a number of decades. Conflict with the Bejics in the North was only the most recent of the many major turf wars he had presided over in his time. When he started, he was a man whom nobody knew, and who held no sway in the world. By the time he had reached his apex, dozens of smaller factions and a number of fairly large ones cowered under his shadow. Payton Wilkes-Vines was not a man who scared easily.
The violent thudding hadn?t been going on very long before the door flew from its hinges. The man responsible filled the space where it had been. Eddie stood tall, despite bleeding from nearly a dozen different wounds. There were deep circles around his eyes, and where his hair had been completely brown before, after months of hellish captivity, was now streaked with grey at the temples. His eyes bore lines that had not been there when Whiskey sunk a bullet into his gut.
After so long shut in the dark, chained to a wall. After so long being made to sit and wait for the pain to come. After being made to grieve for the death of his daughter at the hands of the man he had at last cornered, Eddie watched hungrily. Despite captivity having burned much of the muscle from him, Eddie was still overbearingly tall and broad, and running on pure rage, adrenaline, and pure narcotics. Despite everything holding him back, Eddie Canton began to run. Occasionally, he dipped and weaved, and the bullets Payton fired from Mendez? ancient revolver found only air as Eddie hurtled across the lounge like the bastard son of a cheetah and a fighter jet, vaulting a pool table as he went.
Payton Wilkes-Vines was not a man who scared easily. But as he watched his former right hand general coming at him with shotgun held like a club in one hand and a blood splattered hunk of metal fused to the back of the other, like a man possessed, Payton was at least quite unnerved. When, several feet away, Eddie leaped into the air, bringing both his feet up at the height of the jump for a two pronged jump kick, Payton Wilkes-Vines was certainly scared then.
Eddie?s feet collided firmly with Payton?s chest, and the crime lord was lifted from his own by the force of it, as his head whiplashed forwards. He flew, sailing backwards threw the air, and hit the far wall hard enough not only to visibly bounce from it as he fell, but hard enough to shatter the section of plaster he hit. The revolver spun from his hand, smashing through the window. Payton came to rest in a crumpled heap, lying on his chest as crumbling lumps of plaster rained down onto the back of his white work shirt.
Eddie stood over him, panting. The sounds of violence behind him had died down. Turning, he saw a familiar goggled face. He sunk into a defensive stance, watching Fargo with a snarl on his face.
Fargo sighed. "Come back when you're not half dead." Reaching behind the door, he pulled up a shotgun, aimed roughly, and fired. The rubber riot round slammed into Eddie's gut, and Fargo came after it, pivoting around Eddie and roundhouse kicking him in the temple. The life flooded out of Eddie as he was pitched onto his side. He tried to move, but the strength had left his limbs. Darkness crept in as unconsciousness claimed him.
