OOC- Okay, folks, we haven’t heard much from our old “shadow” so I think I’d like to give him a try. He’s your idea, welsh, so here’s an apology in advance if I butcher his character.
IC-
The sun had fallen from the sky by the time Gary Jones decided to call it a day. The young trader began the daily ritual of “closing up shop”, which involved a little bit more than locking up. He had to make an inventory on his “merchandise”.
Gary’s shop, The Populace, was located it the slum quarters of Tabis along with the seedy brothels and watering holes. The medium-sized shop was in better shape than the other businesses and Gary was making a healthy living. The trader could have branched out into the district quarters, where richer customers went, but Gary preferred the simple and overlooked niche he had made in the slums. His “trade” depended on discreetness.
Gary was no more than twenty years old but he had a good thing going for him. He had learned of the “Way” early on and had profited on it. Men who were decades older than him yearned for Gary’s prudence and knack in business. Gary was the sort of man who was envied; a man who has uncovered the formula of success at a young age.
But Gary Jones also had his share of secrets. The alchemical formula of success contained dire ingredients. He was only twenty but already his hair was thinning out and being replaced with gray. In truth, Gary Jones was a nervous wreck.
It was obvious that there was something strange about the young and successful trader. For one thing, he lived in the slums when his business could provide for a richer life. He also lived alone. A young man, and a rich one to boot, would be practically plagued by enterprising young ladies. But nevertheless, Gary’s home was an empty one. There was some talk about him fooling around on the wrong side of the bed but they were merely rumors. Gary Jones donated large sums of money to the community and he was a well-liked man, but oddly enough, he had no friends. Of course there would be a lot of talk behind his back.
Now, Gary began his ritual of “closing up shop”. The first part he called the “shutting down” process. He started turning off all of the shop’s fluorescent lights. The luxury of electric lights when lanterns were the norm was the only visible sign of Gary’s wealth. He flicked off the switches and the lights went off.
Then, Gary “checked his inventory”. His shop was like a miniature market. There were clothes, medicines, guns, tools, and whatever you needed. Gary’s brain was as reliable as a calculator and he began marking up his revenue as he checked today’s haul. He walked through the aisles of his shop, counting products and making a mental list in his mind. When all was done, he walked back to his cashier, counted up the money, and then made a minor notation in a black ledger he kept in his pant pockets. Just today, Gary had made over five thousand bucks.
The next part was the last and most excruciating part of the “closing up shop” ritual. Gary’s heart rate always increased at this point. His composed and calm demeanor fell away as his hands shock uncontrollably.
Trader Jones first made sure that none was watching. He pulled up the blinds around the windows that advertised his wares. He flipped the “Open” sign on his door to “Closed”. Then he pulled up the iron grating across the stores entrance and locked the door. He was just by himself now. No one could get in.
No one could get out.
With shaky hands, Gary returned to the front counter. Even though his store was locked up, he still locked behind his shoulder. The young trader had the feeling that someone was watching him.
Gary steeled himself for what came next. This was his dark secret. This was the hard part that he had to hide from everyone else in Tabis, the part of his life that had both made him profitable and prematurely old at the same time.
He dropped to his knees behind the counter. His hands felt around the wooden floor, probing and feeling for the indentation. Finally, he found the break along the floor. Gary looked up from the counter, looking around just for good measure, before pulling open the secret door in the floor of the shop. The false wooden panel pulled away, revealing a dark manhole with a ladder running down it.
Gary descended down to his own personal hell.
For beneath the shop was another type of business, an entirely different world than the one Gary had crafted to disguise himself. Gary climbed down the last wrung of the ladder and entered the “Factory”.
Any experienced eye would notice what the “Factory” was. They needed only to look at the chemistry set, vials, bubbling toxins, fey odors, and dripping solutions to know that it was a drug lab.
Set inside a hovel and surrounded by the earth, the “Factory” waited. It was a large and cavernous room, at least twice as large as the shop above it. A dozen tables filled with its own chemistry lab occupied the middle of the room. Racks containing raw materials lined the walls of the room. But what was even worse was what awaited in the other room adjoining the “Factory”.
Gary sighed as he unlocked the dungeon like door of the other room, the one he dubbed as the “Pen”. The trader, amidst his drug factory, pushed opened the door and revealed what waited inside.
The door cracked open and a dozen slaves, huddled together, blinked their eyes at the unaccustomed darkness. Some moaned but most were comatose and laying on the floor with drool dribbling from their mouths.
Yes, this was Gary Jones’ dark secret. He was not only the largest manufacturer and supplier of illegal drugs in the city of Tabis but a prominent member of the Slavers Guild. This was the true Gary Jones. This was how he made his money.
Gary walked over to a counter and picked up a brace of hypodermic needles. They were filled with a military designed amphetamine that increased strength. Super soldiers had used the drug during the war. While under its effects, the user would not only have super strength but he would also be engulfed in a world of euphoria. Someone could blow out their guts with a softpoint bullet at close ranges and the user wouldn’t feel a thing. But there were side effects. The drug was considered to have Pyrrhic effects. The user would be at the peak of his health until the drug wore off. Then they would crash and never recover.
Gary prepped three of these needles and injected the nearest slaves with the test drug. The slaves did not fight back. They were too weak and malnourished. The daily cocktails of drugs had distorted their symptoms. Gary did not worry about the super strength effects. All of the slaves were too stoned by other drugs. They only sighed as the chemical rushed through their system.
Gary threw away the hypos in a wastebin. He then started up all the Bunsen burners in his lab. A dozen of new chemicals boiled happily away. Gary turned on a fan that would carry the fumes to an exhaust pipe through the shop. Then he began the dangerous and careful work of making poisons.
That was Gary’s skill in life. Along with a meticulous organization, business sense, and intelligence, Gary had gravitated to chemistry. He was a natural. Hardcore depressants and amphetamines were equally under his reign. Gary Jones was simply a prodigal genius.
Soon Gary was enthralled in his work. The young trader/drug runner was consumed in concentration. He was so enchanted, in fact, that he didn’t hear the door of his shop slam open. And his ears must have overlooked the sound of footsteps declining the manhole.
Gary was in the middle of cutting a pure powder of cocaine when a gloved fist slammed down on the back of his head. The razor blade flew out from his hand and the precious dust of coke puffed up as Gary was pushed head long across the table he was formerly sitting next to. Lab equipment and beakers fell onto the ground as Gary crashed through them. He slid across the table and then dropped to the floor on top of broken shards of grass.
The young trader tried to scramble to his feet, his heart thumping inside his ribcage. He got up, digging his hands into the sharp pieces of glass, and managed to get up into a bent over position. Then a knee impacted into Gary’s side and he fell over onto his back again, cutting himself on the glass again.
Gary’s eyes lost focus as his attacker pressed their knee into his chest. The trader’s lungs burned for oxygen with his airflow cut off from him. He could only make out a dark outline of his attacker amidst a fog of blurriness in his vision. Gary stretched out his hands imploringly.
“Can’t…breath,” choked Gary.
“Oh you can’t, hmm? Poor boy.” The attacker’s voice sounded distant to Gary and the trader thought he would die of asphyxiation when his attacker finally lifted up their knee from his chest.
Gary took in a deep and gasping lungful of air. Still pinned to the glass-littered ground, he choked and sputtered, turning his face red. Gary had just gained his breath when he caught a full look of his attacker. Then the blood drained from his face.
Looming above Gary was a cold and collected killer. A taunt and corpse-pale face smiled down at Gary and the trader shuddered in revulsion. Shades covered the killer’s eyes but Gary could still feel the eyes hidden behind them peering into his soul. The hair on top of the skeletal head was slicked back and shiny with grease. The killer was dressed in a brand new business suit and he wore dark black gloves.
“Jonesy, Jonesy, Jonesy,” scolded the assassin in a disappointed tone. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Pinned down on the floor with his back grinding against the glass, Gary was still surprised. “What?” he cried, indignant.
The assassin backhanded him across the mouth and Gary felt his lips crack open. There’s a knuckle-duster in his fist, thought Gary.
“Did you think you could get away with it, Jonesy?” asked the assassin patiently. “Didja think you had the balls to get away with it?” The blacksuited killer had his hand cocked back just in case Gary made a wrong answer.
“What do you mean?”
Wrong answer. The assassin slammed his loaded fist across Gary’s mouth again. The trader spat out teeth and blood.
“I mean you pissed off some very high up people, Jonesy,” answered the assassin. He looked around the lab and nodded his head. “You’ve got a pretty good deal set up here. A damn good deal.”
“And so what? I make all the products and keep all the profits. Its mine by right.” Gary flinched back as he finished these words, thinking that he would receive another backhand.
But the assassin merely shook his head. “And that’s just the thing, Jonesy. You kept all the profits. Never sharing with anyone else.”
“I didn’t see anyone helping me out,” retorted Gary. This time he did get a punch across the face, a hard enough one to make him see birds.
“On the contrary, Jonesy! You sold your shit on the streets, on an open market. And those streets belong to McKinner.” The assassin smiled his fish belly grin.
Shit. Gary knew this would be coming. McKinner was obviously becoming corrupt. This was pure extortion, even if Gary’s business wasn’t exactly legal.
“Okay! Fine!” shouted Gary. He knew what the assassin and his employers wanted. “Fifty, sixty percent? McKinner can have whatever he wants!” Gary threw up his hands in disgust.
But the assassin only shook his head. “This isn’t about McKinner anymore. McKinner’s dead, Jonesy. He’s been worm food for a while now.”
“Then what do you want?” whispered Gary, his eyes reflecting true fright. Suddenly, the trader had lost his bargaining chit.
“Information,” replied the killer. “I need some facts on a few of your special friends.” He slipped the brass knuckles into the folds of his suit and took out a mean looking knife.
Gary’s eyes widened at the sight of the knife. “Alright. Anything! I’ll tell you anything!” He cringed and gasped as the assassin rested the tip of the knife against the fleshy part of Gary’s throat. “What do you want to know?”
The assassin’s eyes gleaned in delight. “I know you’re one the Slaver Guild’s dickhole, Jonesy. This whole setup was probably funded by them.”
“So what?”
“So, I know you also got some high place among those butchers. I want to know where to meet them.”
Gary’s expression turned into curiosity. “Why?” he asked, helpless of asking despite himself.
The assassin grinned and pushed the tip of the knife closer to Gary’s neck. “It ain’t your place to ask questions, Jonesy. But, hell, I think I’ll tell you anyways.” The smile slipped from the assassin’s face, replaced with pure hate. “As I understand it, your guild has acquired some fresh meat. Blades to be exact. I want them. There’s a certain tough customer I’ve got to finish some business with.”
The words quickly spat out of Gary’s mouth. “I don’t know nothing about any Blades but I can tell you where to met up with some slavers. There’s always one of their representatives hanging out at that seedy bar around here.”
“You mean the bar with that bastard Horus muscling for it? The owner’s younger brother?”
Gary nodded, ever mindful of the knife at his throat.
The assassin smiled. He got up and carefully dusted off his suit. “Thanks a lot, Jonesy.” He turned around to leave.
Gary Jones let out a relieved sigh. He stood up and brushed the fragments of glass off his back. “You’re most welco—urgh!”
The rest of Gary’s words were drowned out as the assassin’s knife flew across the air and embedded into the young trader’s throat. The rest of Gary’s short life ended in a gasping struggle as he tried to force air into a pierced windpipe.
The assassin Mandrake merely laughed a dark, sickly bellow as he knocked over the lab equipment and dropped the Bunsen burners. He climbed up the ladder as the volatile toxins exploded into a fire.
As Gary Jones shop and secret life exploded into a plume of flame, Doctor Mandrake faded into the shadows.
