I gingerly crack the door to my parent’s upstairs apartment, it’s thankfully well-oiled hinges don’t make a sound, allowing for me to remain silent and listen for any hints as to what in the hell is going on downstairs. Beyond the eerie crackle of broken glass nary a sound is to be heard, and it stays that way.
“What’s going on?” I hear my father whisper loudly to my mother behind me.
“I don’t know!” she breathes in response.
As if on cue, the ominous sound of hoof on broken glass resonates in percussive bursts up the stairwell from below, slow and deliberate. There’s a faint chuckle, and whoever it is below begins to whistle—I’m taken aback at the outlandishly jolly tune. After only a few seconds of that, the whistling stops, replaced again by silence. Then the intruder speaks in a familiar gravelly drawl. “You damn griffons may be able to see a rat from half a mile away, but you can’t hear worth that rat’s ass.” There’s another pause as I come to a startling realization; the familiar voice is a dead ringer of the pony Barrel dealt with the in the abandoned warehouse last night. “Still nothing,” he comments with another chuckle. “It’s almost like you’re avoiding me,” he laughs. “Peter? Svenja?” He calls my parent’s names in a near-shout. “Oh, you can come down with them, Nadia.”
I freeze, almost literally—an icy tingle runs down my spine, and I can feel its chill spreading through my veins. How could he have known I was here?
“It’s him,” my mother hisses. “That’s the pony who wants our money.”
“No, really. Please, all three of you, make your way down here. Believe me when I say you don’t want me to come up to find you,” the pony growls. He’s sounding impatient. “Don’t make me start counting,” he calls. I can practically feel the malice coming from the evil grin he’s wearing from all the way upstairs.
My father had eased up behind my mother and I, still standing by the barely opened door. “We had better go down there,” he says. My mom looks at him like he had just grown an extra wing. “Whatever’s going on, I bet we’d be better off if we don’t piss him off,” he finishes, returning her look in kind.
I know what’s going on— the pony had been watching me from the moment I’d landed. I don’t know how, but he had seen me. My observation during the sweep for surveillance had been true—and for the worse—the pony watching had been professional. Whatever he has planned, I can’t picture it being good. We can’t go downstairs; we have to escape.
“Five…four…” the errand pony begins his count.
“Dad, we can’t go downstairs. We have to go, now.”
“…Three…”
“Nadia, he’ll kill us if we don’t go down there.”
“He’ll kill us if we do!”
“Listen to her, Peter! She’s right!”
“…Two…”
“Go open a window, mom, we’ll fly out the back!”
“You two need to calm down—surely we can talk our way out of this.”
“…One.”
Not a millisecond after the pony utters what should have been the second-to-last digit in his slow countdown, the door is enveloped in a crimson glow and is immediately ripped open before our eyes, slamming against the wall behind it with enough force to shake practically the whole building. The three of us stand like tombstones in the doorway staring at the pony positioned on the other side, his face twisted into a malevolent smirk as his horn’s glow fades, his cloak rippling in the draft created by the window he’d broken downstairs.
“Oops. It looks like I cheated,” he laughs. “Now, let’s see…I do believe we have a little business to discuss?”
We’re all still frozen; nary a feather moves on any of us. I know I’m still stuck in indecision—my fight or flight instinct coupled with a sudden burst of frightened adrenaline is halting and completely clouding over any rational thought that would have otherwise entered my mind, and judging by the looks of it, both of my parents are stuck in the same mental vapor lock.
The pony standing in the doorway snorts loudly after the pause, glancing at the three of us with a bemused look. “Before we begin,” he breathes loudly, walking through the doorway and past us uninvited, a cold wind blowing in after him from downstairs. The pony trots casually over to the table, and pulls out a chair. “Why don’t you three come have a seat?” He asks with a frighteningly calm smile. After several more instants of pure motionlessness from the three of us, he drops his smile as quickly as he had put it on. “I didn’t mean next week,” He growls menacingly.
My father takes the first step forward, cautiously walking over, eyeing the stallion warily as he takes a seat. Mother follows suit, but with double the caution and half the speed, and a look of pure poison directed at the pony who’s eyeing her back with a subtle look of derision. As for me—I’m not sure why, but I still haven’t moved. I can’t consciously follow the thug’s command—I’m still clinging to hope of escape, even though the practical side of me is screaming for me to comply.
The pony’s smile returns as he turns his gaze to me. “Nadia, Nadia.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “How should I have known you’d be the problem? Of course, I’ve known you’d be the problem from the beginning. You—you’re not like your parents. They may have gotten themselves involved with the wrong sort—” He lets out a full laugh, looking at me like he expects me to reciprocate. I make sure he doesn’t get that pleasure. “—but you…you’re trouble. I can see it in your eyes, girl. Why don’t you come sit down so we can discuss what’s going to happen like rational adults?”
I can’t move. I’m frozen—to take the seat is to give in, to give up. I can’t.
Calmly, and in a smooth motion, he draws his pistol, just like he had back in the warehouse at Barrel, only this time the muzzle’s aimed squarely at my head. As I stare down the gaping metallic maw of the gun I feel my heart fly into my throat. Long ago, I’d briefly pondered what it would feel like if I were ever about to die—I’d always had the notion that I’d have that worn-out “life flashing before my eyes” cliché play itself out, but instead, all I feel is hatred for the twisted sonofabitch on the other side of the gun. “Don’t be stubborn, girl. Take a seat or your parents can clean you up off the floor.”
I hear my mother gasp and my father growl faintly, and look up to see them both drilling holes in the back of the pony’s head, and at that moment I’m certain that, between the three of us, there’s not a single creature alive that we hate more than the intruder, the assassin, that’s sitting at the breakfast table. There’s a split second (that I’m immediately ashamed of) in which I consider diving for the window and escaping into the night, never to return. It’s not but a second later I realize how cowardly that would be. Instead, I deflate entirely. I fight the thought of ripping the pony’s throat out as I slowly walk towards the table and, slowly, glaring all the while, take a seat.
The pony smiles, letting the muzzle of the pistol drift away from my face, and he sets it down on the table. “Good. Now, down to business.”
“Why are you here?” My mother bursts in a near shout, barely containing her anger.
“Ah ah, calm down, Svenja. It’s only business, after all. I’m here because I aim collect. You owe us your payment.”
“But you were here earlier today! You said you wanted the money tomorrow!” She yells, face contorting, fists clenched as she eyes the pony with fire in her eyes. Father watches her fearfully. He’s well aware, as am I, that she’s liable to explode.
“Really, dear, do you think there was any chance at all for you to collect that many bits over the course of twelve hours? Don’t fool yourself—your debt has become a serious thorn in our collective side,” He intones.
I watch mom’s eyes dilate in fury. “You set us up?! First you harassed us. Then you broke into our shop. Then you threaten us and point a gun at my daughter even though you already know we can’t pay? You bastard.”
“You might want to watch your words, dear,” the errand pony warns, putting a hoof back on his pistol as he glares at her. “The last pony who called me a bastard was in pain for a very long time.”
My father speaks up in a successful attempt to make the intruder turn his gaze away from mom. “Surely, sir, your organization can’t be hurting for money like this. Please, give us more time. We’ll repay the loan in time,” he pleads.
“You’re absolutely right, Peter. We’re not hurting for money. At its core, all this really isn’t about money; it’s about a lack of respect. The fact that you think we’ll just extend your loan, that we’ll just roll over and let you pay what you want when you want—that’s the real problem here. You see, we’ve been through all this before. You two have been asking for extensions and delays on payments since you got this loan. Do you have any idea what that sort of thing does to an organization like ours? It makes us look weak! Like we’re the sort of business that can be taken advantage of! The thing is—we won’t be taken advantage of. To be perfectly honest, that’s why I’m here. I’m not here for the money, I’m here to collect. Does it all make sense now?” His voice had been rising in volume throughout his monologue. He’s now looking furious, and nearly shouting. His drawling voice and booming timbre is terrifying in itself, not to mention his hoof, which is resting far too close for comfort to his pistol.
He turns his fury to me. “And you.” He shakes his head, exhaling deeply, his eyes locked on me in a glare befitting only a true psychopath. “Nadia. You’re your own problem…both for me and for yourself. If you hadn’t walked in that door tonight in whatever feeble attempt you were aiming for to save your parents, you could have come out of this considerably richer and with the respect and continued business from the most lucrative contractor in Equestria. You see, the bosses want you. They think you’re perfect. You’ve managed to make quite business out of yourself, and the bosses—they want to buy you out! Oh, but if they knew. If there’s one thing they hate, it’s when somepony working for them breaks a contract, and like I said, the instant you put your paw in the door to this place tonight, you did just that. But you know what? That makes me happy. Do you know why that makes me happy? Because you were competition, and I don’t like competition. Oh, but when I saw your name on the Boulder contract and saw your parents here on the list of deadbeats—it all fell together. No self-respecting griffon would dare risk losing the respect of their parents! It was too good. And you fell for it!” He leans back in his chair, his anger having rapidly and psychotically returned to a satisfied grin. “Perhaps I’m coming across too much like a stereotypical villain. Listen to this monologue I’ve started; you all must be thinking I just walked off the movie set. Let me summarize all of this: It’s only business. And we all know that in business, when you can kill three birds with one stone, you don’t turn a blind eye and let the opportunity pass.”
His words aren’t lost on any of us. I try my best to let out a deep sigh, but it’s wracked with my shaky breath. My nerves are starting to go haywire with fury. There’s no way this will end well tonight. “Then so that’s what you’re here for tonight. You’re here to kill us,” My mother says. There’s a sob from my father. I feel the rage that I’d been trying my best to suppress come boiling forth, quickly and visibly. My heart’s pumping, and I watch as the pony replies, a smug look of satisfaction on his face, but I can’t hear him. The sound of my blood rushing through my head is the only noise my brain is able to comprehend.
I can’t control it any longer. I lunge forward, watching practically as though it’s someone else acting, as my claw flies across the table, straight for the pony’s throat, all talons bared and bright against the darkness of the room. The pony hears the roar I release that I don’t even register as coming from me and ducks instinctively, my five claws finding purchase along his jawline and cheek rather than his jugular. At almost the same time as his recoiling motion, he throws himself to his hooves, sending the table and my parents spilling over onto the floor, and the pistol clattering to the floor as well. Before I can strike again, he sends a powerful forward kick in my direction, landing squarely in my chest and expelling every ounce of air from my lungs in an explosion of pain that causes my vision to darken momentarily. I gasp for air, losing my balance and falling to the floor as well. My parents struggle to stand and retaliate as the pony, gritting his teeth and bleeding heavily from his face, trots towards his pistol and picks it up in a glow of his magic, rearing onto his hind hooves to wield it.
I’m like a fish out of water, face mashed onto the floor as I struggle to gain my footing and even the faintest trace of air in my lungs. My ribs are on fire; with every gasping breath I take, I feel stabbing pain shoot throughout my chest. My vision is dim and blurred from impact, but it’s slowly regaining focus as I slowly swing my head about in search for the assassin in the room. The first fully focused image I see is the all-too-familiar view down the barrel of the stallion’s pistol. I look up at the pony; his face is ashen and locked in a pained and furious grimace, and I note with the faintest sense of satisfaction that the side of his face is torn open and dripping blood onto the floor beside me as he leans down to speak.
“I was going to make it quick for you,” He breathes in a jagged whisper. He withdraws and, seemingly in slow motion, pulls the trigger. My vision is immediately overloaded by the muzzle blast from the pistol and the shot is loud enough to render me entirely deaf, so much so that it takes a second for the searing pain of the bullet that’s just been launched through me to even register. When the pain hits, though, it’s as if every cell in my body is screaming, but it quickly localizes to my left half, a knife point twisting wildly in my shoulder.
As my vision returns, I look down to see the steadily growing pool of blood and, shaking, return to look at the assassin. My sight is dimming from pure pain, but I watch as the stallion turns around, still looking down at me from his hind hooves. “Now watch,” I see him mouth. He fires two more shots, and as my vision fades even further, I’m left with the knowledge of who his targets were.
The pain has numbed, what feels like an eternity later, and my vision still barely remains. I cling to my consciousness, as my delusionally dazed brain tells me there’s still hope for escape. The stallion trots slowly back to the center of the room after searching the apartment, a trash can full of newspaper and other loose-leaf stuffed inside in his magical grasp. He lets the trashcan full of kindling go and withdraws the pistol once more, dropping the magazine from the gun and emptying it of remaining bullets, dropping them into one of the pockets on his cloak. Slide locked open, he levitates the pistol to my side and lets it drop just out of reach. The noise it makes on impact with the old wood floor echoes dully through my blurred steam of conscious.
“Tsk, tsk.” I can barely hear him as he leans in to look at me closely once more. I can barely acknowledge that he’s standing on my wings. “What a shame. Whatever would cause a nice griffon to kill her estranged parents like this?”
I can’t keep my head upright any longer; I’m utterly drained of even the faintest mote of energy. My vision blurs into a fuzzy haze and I hear the dull thud of my head hitting the floor long before I feel it. My head lolls to one side, giving me a hazy view of the apartment, now bathed in the orange hue of flames. I watch the silhouette of the pony slowly walk across my vision and down the stairs without a look back.
***
For whatever reason, my hearing is the first to return: first a faint hiss, then an atonal, intense buzz. After that, there’s a deafening pop, and the bizarre artifacts of my returning consciousness are replaced by the deafening roar of flames. Shortly after, I realize I can’t breathe; I’m choking on a thick layer of smoke. My eyesight’s the next to return, and if it weren’t for the blurry memory of the horrors that had taken place what feels like ages ago, I’d swear I’m in hell. The apartment’s an inferno; everything in sight is either in flames or already smoldering, save for the small corner of the room I’m in. The smoke is enough to conceal anything beyond a yard in front of my face, and with every hot, cinder-filled breath I take, the pain from the bullet wound in my shoulder redoubles.
I’m wracked with another wave of coughing; should I be lucky enough to survive, it will be a miracle if my lungs won’t be permanently blackened. As the force of my lungs starving for clean air doubles me over, I realize the size of the congealing pool of blood I’m lying in. Shit. Shitshitshit. I desperately need a deep breath to calm myself but the smoke would only reduce my already limited ability to breathe. I can’t afford to panic, I think, trying to drown the noise of the fire only a few hooves away. I try to hold my breath, and scoot my way forward. I can barely make out the stairs down into the store from here. I can make it out. Ignoring the pain is the hardest part, that and staying below the smoke, but I’m able to make it about a yard before I blindly run into the kitchen island shoulder first, causing me to cry out in pain and fall to the floor.
As I lay on the floor, gnashing my teeth and wheezing as my shoulder courses with pure pain, I spot more blood. Am I still bleeding? It’s too much to be mine. Oh Celestia. Whatever air left in my lungs is spent in choking back the deep sob that rises in my throat. I force myself to look away, my eyes watering not just from the heat, to see a metallic glimmer on the floor near where I had been lying. It’s the pistol the stallion had left.
Somewhere deep in my brain, something clicks. It’s no longer a matter of if I can make it out of this mess alive, it becomes a fact that I must. The pony that did this will pay dearly for what he’s done. I force myself back the opposite way, and grab the warm metal of the pistol’s frame and tuck it into the bag I’ve just remembered is still strapped to my entry vest.
There’s a crack as the char-weakened frame of the building shifts, causing the far wall to buckle several inches, the windows along it exploding from the new weight. Instinctually I hunker down to avoid the shower of glass and the burst of roiling flames that jet from the rafters.
“Shit!” I hear shouted from downstairs. I turn my head as quickly as I can towards the stairwell, utterly perplexed.
“Hello?” I call weakly, stifling a cough. I’m utterly perplexed, and attempt to climb to my feet. I hear sirens in the distance.
“Nadia?” the voice calls from downstairs. I recognize it instantly.
“Barrel?” I successfully gain my footing, and I crawl my way through the smoke to the doorway. The sirens are growing louder. Undoubtedly, they belong to the firefighters, surely somepony’s alerted them to the blaze that surrounds me.
“Nadia! We gotta get you out of there! Can you move?”
I cough loudly. “Yeah, I’m trying.” There’s another loud crack behind me, and just as I turn my head, one of the beams in the attic fails, falling through the ceiling and slamming to the floor, only inches from my rump. I jump forward and away out of instinct at the sudden movement just as the charred beam falls into my vision, ignoring the pain in my shoulder as I leap, and I ignore it further as I land hard, sliding forward into the stairwell and rolling torturously down about half of the stairs as the heavy plank slams into the floor, almost exactly where I had been standing. Barrel’s standing at the foot of the stairwell, staring at me like I’m a ghost.
“Are you okay?” he asks nervously.
I pant for several seconds before replying. The air is still hazy with smoke, but far less inundated than it had been in the apartment above. The sirens are growing close; I can see the flashing lights of their fire carts reflecting off the white faces of the buildings far up the street. “No,” I reply flatly. “What are you doing here, Barrel?”
“I put two and two together,” he says morosely, eyes watering from the smoke. “Shots fired on the police scanner at your exact address. I told you this wouldn’t end well.” He looks me up and down, focusing on my shoulder. “You’ve been shot,” he says. “We have to get you to a hospital.”
I grimace. The pain in my shoulder’s dulled to a numbing, pulsating heat. I heard the concern in Barrel’s voice, but my mind’s a million miles away from the state of my shoulder. To be honest, I’m not sure where it is. It feels like I can’t think; every thought that comes through is hollow and stripped to the bone, and all emotions are utterly void but a few, and none of them are good. I slowly stand, making my way out of the encroaching smoke and into the store. The air’s clear outside of the stairwell thanks to the hole in the plate glass window, blowing cool night air into the flame-heated room. I’m not sure what to think of the sirens as they draw closer; perhaps the firemen will take me to the hospital, but the time before their arrival is drawing short. “I know I need to go to the hospital.” I pause for a moment, watching the lights grow closer, and address the previous part of his statement. "Now’s not the time for ‘I told you so,’ Barrel.”
Barrel follows me as I step outside, through the hole in the window. The night has become damp and chilly, and Barrel is looking more worried than ever, possibly more so than a moment ago when I had fallen down the stairs as he continues to stare at me like I’m some sort of exhibit. “Nadia, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to the hospital, and then we’ll…” his voice fades as the fire carts round the corner, loaded with ponies in heavy gear hanging off the sides. “…we’ll figure out our next steps.”
The fire carts skid up to the building, ponies disembarking in all directions. Floodlights mounted in the cart beds flare to life and immediately swing—not to face the burning building—but Barrel and I. The light is blinding, and I feel my eyes strain and contract so to filter the intense beams, but to no avail.
“THIS IS THE PHILLYDELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT. WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESIST.”