I'm so sorry this one took so long, folks! This is what happens when I'm juggling two writing projects, university and a mod project all at the same time.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

MAY 10th, 1989

MIAMI, FLORIDA

The twinkling lights of Miami Beach shimmered across the bay like so many golden stars. The waterfront extended far out from the edge of the parking lot, the off-white sand littered with beer bottles, soda cans and the various other refuse discarded by countless college students let out for the summer.

The beach probably looked a lot nicer in a resort city like the one Adrian was staring out at. He leaned up from where he reclined on the worn metal bench.

Litter aside, he found this spot as enjoyable as any to relax at. He had no fiancée to impress anymore, no partnering officer to rush back to the station with at this time of night; nothing but his thoughts, the salty breeze, the hum of the city traffic and the quiet chattering of the police scanner in the cruiser parked behind him. There was nobody to ask him questions, nobody to pry.

Adrian looked down at his wristwatch. If he left now, he might be able to return his vehicle and uniform at the station and make it home before midnight. Hell, maybe he could pay Samuel a visit on the way. As far as he could tell, the young man survived more on coffee than sleep.

As he stood up and stretched his back, Adrian gazed out at the towering buildings and stocky palm trees when something caught his ear: The police radio.

He snatched up his hat from the bench and began jogging over towards his cruiser. He broke out into a dash at the crystal-clear phrase of "all available officers."

Once he reached the vehicle's open window, he rushed into the driver's seat and perked his ears.

"Two-four-six, we have confirmed reports of an active shooter at a home on Fifth and Porter, over."

"Shit!" Adrian spat.

"Understood," came a gruff voice from another line, "Officer Lloyd reporting in, over."

Adrian put himself in gear, turned on his siren, and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. As he tore out from the barren parking lot onto the road, he spoke into his radio's handset. "Ten-four. Officer Lancaster reporting in. I'm on my way."

The street lights and palm trees lining the highway were little more than a dark smear against the skyline of Miami Beach as the cruiser roared down the freeway.

Adrian glared at the vacant seat beside him. Of all the days for his partner to call in sick...

The stitches in his forearm ached when he veered a hard right onto Porter Avenue, siren screaming into the night.

Ninth street, eighth, seventh, come on, damn it!

Adrian brought his vehicle to a screeching halt at its destination. The chipped white exterior of the grand house flashed red and blue against the siren lights from both his own cruiser and one that was hastily parked in front of him. His heart continued to race as he focused his eyes on the front door of the home—or what was left of it, anyway. Even from across the front yard, he could tell it had been blown right off its hinges.

Adrian whipped open the car door and started for the house, pistol in hand. As he approached, the distressingly familiar scent of death came to him, and it grew more pungent still as he broke into a run. The metallic stench seemed to waft right out of the doorway as the officer set foot onto the porch, placed the foyer in his pistol sights and announced his presence.

"Miami PD!"

There came no response. Adrian was practically huffing the putrid air in anticipation as he focused his eyes on the end of the hall. Between the white floor tiles spread dark trails of blood, and a spray covered the far window—clearly the work of a firearm. The officer marched forward and gripped his handgun as tightly as he could. Death and blood hung humidly in the air, now as overpowering as ever, near the end of the foyer. Adrian peeked around the corner on his right into a kitchen, never letting his pistol barrel stray from his line of sight. Another mural of blood was smeared across the white island countertop, nearly covering the entire surface. His eyes were guided by the gruesome stain to its owner—a man who had slid and collapsed onto the floor, clad in a bullet-riddled white suit jacket of the Russian mafia.

The copper air was making the policeman's eyes run. Adrian turned away and crossed the foyer once again. Tension refused to ease its grip on him as he leaned against the nearby staircase's newel post and looked on into the dining room on his left. At the foot of the mahogany dinner table, a balding man in a wrinkled mafia uniform leaned back limply in his chair with what looked like the end of a pool cue rammed into his chest. He averted his gaze and focused his attention on the staircase.

Before he could do so much as take the first step, a gunshot exploded from above him.

Adrian took off in a sprint up the stairs, stumbling over the landing in the process. He scrambled up the rest of the way and raised his gun, eyes scouring the room wildly.

In the lounge before him stood Miami PD officer David Lloyd. He remained collected in Adrian's sudden presence, his pistol barrel still smoking where it was pointed at the ground. Adrian could only stare, wide-eyed, at the figures strewn about the room behind him: several men, all clad in mafia attire, lay dead amongst their armaments and gaudy neon decor. One was collapsed face-down on a shattered glass coffee table, three more were slumped over against the bullet-riddled walls, torsos full of holes, and a fifth lay sprawled out on the floor, hunting knife sticking up from his exposed intestines.

"Put the bastard down." Lloyd cocked his square head at another prone figure on the floor before tucking his pistol into its holster.

Adrian followed his fellow officer's gaze to a corpse on the hardwood. It was a young man, lanky in stature, lying face-down with a bullet hole blasted clear through the back of his head. His blue track jacket had been soaked dark with blood, and the rubber hare mask clutched in Lloyd's hand made his identity clear. A golf club rested just out of the corpse's reach, dented and bloody.

So, some kid gets his brains blown out for following orders, Adrian thought grimly. Poor bastard.

"He came at me," Lloyd said coldly, "I had to take him out." Although the hat he wore obscured his eyes, Adrian found it hard to meet his gaze.

Without so much as a change of expression, Lloyd stepped over to the body and nudged it over onto its back with a stroke of the leg. The agent's head lolled over to face the window, revealing a face slick with blood and tears. His green eyes were empty and wide, harshly contrasted by the quarter-sized hole blasted between them.

Those eyes were fearful, eyes of a desperate man with nothing left to lose.

Adrian turned and began storming down the stairs.

"Hey," Lloyd called after him, "where are you going? Come on, Lancaster!"

Adrian greeted the warm night with a shiver as he set foot out the front door to find the street abuzz: Pulled up the house were two ambulances and three more police cars, all flashing red and blue lights. Out in front of a nearby news van stood a young reporter speaking to her cameraman, and several police officers stood conversing together around their own vehicles. Adrian stepped aside to allow paramedics through, and he could hear one of them vomit at the scene inside. Cap low, he began walking in the direction of his vehicle when a voice from behind halted him.

"Hold up!" It was Lloyd, who rushed up to Adrian's side and grasped his shoulder. "Lan—Adrian—what's gotten you so bent out of shape?"

Adrian shoved the hand away. "What's it to you?"

"I mean, one look at a dead body and you're off like a bat out of hell? You saw those dead Russians on the ground floor, right? You're a cop, for Christ's sake."

Adrian continued to walk. "It's not about the Russians."

The policeman was swift to catch up. He sharply turned Adrian around, who did his best to not make eye contact. He scowled, and his blue eyes seemed to glisten with venom as he looked his fellow officer up and down.

"Don't tell me you feel sorry for that masked bastard."

"Excuse me?"

"I'd say it wouldn't surprise me, what with that Fifty Blessings conspiracy bullshit you've bought into, but this is just crazy."

"What the hell are you talking about? You're still holding me up to that?"

"Gentlemen!" An officer had approached from one of the cars whom Adrian recognized the face of—blond-haired, vaguely forty-or-so and aged by time and copious trips to the bar—but his name did not come to mind. "We'll take it from here."

Adrian let out a sigh and held the bandage on the bridge of his nose in an attempt to alleviate a sudden headache.

"I'm going home," he growled to Lloyd. "To hell with you."

Without waiting for a response, he ignored David's glowering and shouldered past him. Once he crossed the police tape in the front yard, he was stopped by the dark-haired reporter whom he had seen earlier.

"Excuse me," she said with an affirmative nod at the cameraman behind her, "I'm Abby Shackleton from FBC News. Can you describe to us what happened in there, officer?"

Adrian stared into the news camera apprehensively and gently pushed away the microphone held up to his mouth.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said tiredly, "I was just leaving. You can get your story from the officers behind me once—"

"I can speak for him." Lloyd was quick to follow up from behind Adrian. He reached out a hand to the reporter with a smile. "Officer Lloyd."

The reporter gladly shook his hand. "Abby Shackleton. Now, officer, can you describe for us what happened in that house?"

Adrian turned and sulked back towards his cruiser with his jaw set.

You've got to be kidding me...

When he saw the phone company van parked directly behind his cruiser, he resisted the urge to slam his fists against the driver's side door.

"Excuse me," he muttered as he knocked on the glass. With painful sluggishness, the window rolled down to reveal a blond-haired young repairman itching at his nose ring. "This is a crime scene, sir. I'm going to need you to leave."

The man smirked but said nothing. His icy blue eyes stared on from beneath his cap for several seconds before he rolled up the window. The van sputtered to life and belched up a puff of smoke before rolling off into the night.

Shoulders heavy, Adrian returned to the driver's seat of his police cruiser and stared down at the dashboard. He could still see the young agent's pale, deadened face—and only recognized himself.

He drove the thought away with a stern twist of the ignition key.

FRIDAY NIGHT

MAY 12th, 1989

MIAMI, FLORIDA

Samuel took a swig from his fifth cup of the night and dropped it into the wastebasket. Caffeine felt so artificial; the buzz he was getting was uncomfortable if anything, and his television was not helping things. He glanced over at the screen across the room to see what was on now, hoping for something interesting.

The middle-aged, balding reporter was still onscreen, but he at last wrapped up his speech with a monotonous "back to you, Daniel."

"Thank you, Patrick." The newscaster appeared onscreen once again, papers in hand against the FBC studio backdrop. He cleared his throat and glanced down at his notes. "Last night marks yet another bloody episode in the line of Killer Beast spree killings across southern Florida." Samuel could not help but smirk to himself as footage came on screen of police tape surrounding a high-end suburban property. "At 11:48 last night, locals reported gunfire coming from a house on southwest 104th street in Miami. Police arrived to find the home's twenty-three occupants dead. Security camera footage revealed a man in a chicken mask fleeing the scene."

Samuel turned away from the grainy CCTV footage on the screen when the phone began to ring.

"Who the hell calls at this hour?" he muttered as he pushed himself from his desk, switched off the television set and reached for the phone. "Hello?" he asked into the handset.

Please tell me who I think this is.

There were several seconds of silence before Adrian's voice came on the line.

"Oh, hey, Sam. I wasn't expecting you to actually pick up."

Samuel could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. "Hi, Adrian. What's up?"

"I know we haven't worked together in a while, but I need to have some 'last minute work' done down at the office that I could really use your help with. I've got the equipment I need, but could you come give me a hand?"

"Fuck yeah, man, say no more. I'm bored as hell anyways. Where's it at?"

There was another period of silence as Samuel grabbed a marker, rolled up his sleeve and held the phone against his shoulder.

"Meet me in an alley near northwest 16th street—"

"Uh-huh."

"—in Key West."

Samuel's writing hand began to shake. Damn coffee.

"Wh—what?" He stammered.

"Key West. I'm calling from a payphone."

"That's over three hours away, dude. What the hell are you—?"

"I—I, uh, got promoted, remember? Moved offices."

Samuel restrained a groan and tried to keep the code straight.

"Right, I 'forgot,' sorry. How hard is this work of yours?"

Adrian swallowed loudly. His voice was wavering.

"I haven't been meeting deadlines, and this is a pretty hefty workload. My boss might fire me if I slack off any more."

Samuel began eyeing the bottom drawer of his desk across the room.

"Got it," he said, "I'll be there as soon as I can. See you."

He hung up before Samuel could voice any lingering second thoughts. Three hours' ride was definitely worth Adrian's peace of mind, surely.

Three hours...

Mom was right, he should have bought a helmet for that motorbike.

Samuel reached down into the bottom drawer of the desk and searched around. The first thing he pulled out was the wolf mask, but he set it aside and continued to dig. At last he discovered what he was searching for: a worn cougar mask. Its right eye hole was torn open down the middle; Samuel had forgotten how that happened, but he was sure it added to the intimidation factor.

He reached back into the drawer and pulled out his secret weapon to go along with his disguise: an eight-inch, stainless steel butterfly knife.

Oh, how he would love to carve up some commie bastards with this baby.

SATURDAY MORNING

MAY 13th, 1989

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

There came a few taps on the left window—how many, Adrian wasn't sure. He lifted his head up from where it rested on the steering wheel and squinted the blurriness from his vision. He sat gazing down at the dashboard for a moment before three more taps on the driver's side window, considerably harder, put him into his right mind. Shaking himself fully awake, he looked out to see a black leather glove knocking on the glass with exposed knuckles.

Samuel's voice registered before his equally tired face did.

"Come on, wake up."

Adrian hurriedly unlocked the car door and checked his wristwatch.

Damn it.

"I'm coming," the officer groaned as he opened the door and half-stumbled from the car into the pale orange glow of the alleyway's solitary floodlight. He gave his sore neck a rub and stood to face his friend. Judging by the reflection in Samuel's aviators, Adrian looked like hell. "Sorry, I needed to get some sleep before you got here."

He walked around the Mustang to the trunk and began tiredly sifting through his keyring.

"I don't blame you, man," Samuel said, "wish I could've gotten some shut-eye before riding out here. Got pretty sick of the palm trees and the ocean after three and-a-half hours. Well, more sick of 'em than usual, I mean."

Adrian at last got the trunk open and reached for the black duffel bag within. His heart sank once he zipped it open to find an assortment of firearms and remembered what he was doing in Key West in the first place.

"I appreciate you coming all the way out here for me," Adrian said, reaching into his Mustang's trunk with both hands. Gingerly, he pulled out a suppressed handgun and a walkie-talkie before holding them out to Samuel, who gladly received the gifts. "I've got these for you."

Samuel gripped the pistol firmly and inspected it in the dingy floodlight like a piece of fine art. He had forgotten how heavy a tiny handgun could be, it was as if he was handling a brick—a metallic, damn beautiful brick. He pulled the slide back with a satisfying click-clack and aimed it out towards the street to get a feel for it.

"Hey!" Adrian snapped, "take your finger off the trigger and don't point it at anything you don't want to kill. It's not a toy!" He heaved a shotgun from the car's trunk and began loading shells into the bottom. "And for Christ's sake, hold it upright."

Samuel slowly slid the pistol into his belt—taking care to not touch the trigger as instructed—and walked over to where Adrian was gearing up.

"Lighten up," he muttered as he watched his fellow patriot throw his weapon's sling over his shoulder.

The officer either ignored him or didn't hear what he said.

"You have a mask?" Adrian asked before closing his car's trunk and pulling the pump of his shotgun.

"Sure do."

"Good." He produced a mask of his own from inside his jacket and began walking westward. "This way."

For a short while, the moonlit alleyways were silent, save the heavy stomping of boots and the excited trotting of sneakers against the concrete. Samuel did his best to not get ahead, and regularly found himself having to slow down to match Adrian's lumbering pace. All that ammunition strapped to his denim jacket—to say nothing of the bulletproof vest Samuel noticed underneath it—was really doing a number on him.

Where the hell were they going, anyway?

Samuel was about to voice the question on his mind before Adrian finally came to a stop at the end of the alley. The young man removed his aviators and gaped at the sight of the building in front of them.

"We're here."

"Holy shit."

Before them stood a seven-floored behemoth of an office complex. Silhouettes in the windows of every floor paced, smoked and conversed with one another against drawn curtains, handling assault rifles and baseball bats. The frosted glass of the front doors shimmered with cold white fluorescent light, locked up tight beneath a lone security camera that swiveled slowly and methodically.

For the first time in a long time, Samuel could feel himself getting deeply uncomfortable over a hit. Jesus, he could barely imagine how Adrian was feeling. He placed an amicable hand on his partner's shoulder and put on the warmest smile he could.

"If you're not feeling up to it," he offered, "I could… go in for you."

"I'd appreciate it," Adrian said, nudging the hand away, "but this is a two-man job. You're not going in without me." Though his breathing was rapid and shallow, his voice was hard and his brown eyes burned with determination as they gazed into the light of the towering structure. He rolled up his sleeves, slipped a bald eagle mask down over his head and brought his shotgun to bear.

Samuel let out a breath and put his own mask on, jaw set. He couldn't quite tell if the sensation he was feeling was indeed anxiety or eager anticipation—this wasn't some seedy Miami strip club he was busting into; this was the real deal. Hesitantly, he brought his knife out and eyed the gangster standing inside with his back to the glass doors.

Adrian could only find the strength to move forward after his friend started sneaking across the road to the front of the building.

Once Samuel reached the sidewalk, he turned around to his partner and pointed up at the camera. Adrian acknowledged it with a nod and brought his weapon's sights up to the doors with the intent of breaching from a safe distance, hoping beyond hope that whoever was posted in the security office was not paying too much attention. Not that that would matter for long—he was about to alert everyone from here to the nearest police precinct of his presence. Gingerly, he pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the doors and placed his finger on the trigger.

The mobster behind the glass began to turn around, golf club in hand.

A deafening boom reverberated around the surrounding buildings and the glass doors imploded, sending a shower of twinkling shards down onto the stunned man as he stumbled back and clutched the bleeding buckshot wounds lining his torso. The cougar was swift to go in for the kill: the mobster was grabbed by the collar and his attacker's butterfly knife was thrust into the side of his throat. He was then shoved to the ground, groping at his neck and choking to death on the blood spurting out from his severed jugular.

"Come on," Adrian could hear his partner growl through the ringing in his ears, "let's move."

He clutched his Spas-12 with a viselike grip as he looked up from the man in his death throes to Samuel, whose eyes stared on savagely from behind the mask's snarling, blood-spattered visage. The image made him shudder; it was as if he was staring down an actual wild animal.

He had to force himself to oblige. With all the strength he could muster on three hours' sleep, he barreled into the second set of doors at the end of the vestibule. Once through the doors and inside the lobby, he put the nearest pastel suit in his sights and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The two armed men at the sides of the doors could hardly react in time when the head of the man between them exploded and plastered itself against the support columns.

The eagle pumped the expended shell from his weapon and fired it into the abdomen of the rightmost gangster, messily eviscerating him against the tile floor. Beside him, he saw the cougar shank the remaining man below the sternum and open fire on a small group of suits advancing with lead pipes and knives of their own.

A gangster emerging from a nearby break room drew the eagle's attention and a buckshot shell to the chest. The weapon's pump was pulled again, and its owner turned to another man in white and pulled the trigger. All too quickly, the cycle had repeated itself several more times before the squeeze of the trigger elicited nothing but a dull click. Even the man standing before the barrel was taken by surprise, but it did not matter: The Russian turned to the masked figure behind him. Samuel, now spattered with blood, punched him square in the face and went in for the kill. As the gangster dazedly clutched his broken nose, the cougar gripped him by the sides of his bald head and—with strength and ferocity Adrian had never seen from the lanky young man before—slammed it against the floor until it split open with a nauseating crack. Blood began oozing out between the once pristine white tiles as the body went limp.

Adrian could feel his bowels turn to ice as he watched the cougar stand up from his kill and inspect his handiwork across the lobby. Russian mobsters, nearly a dozen of them, lay dead—slashed to pieces, stabbed, disemboweled, shot, bludgeoned, and otherwise mutilated—with their white suits and blue shirts all turned red.

Adrian recounted.

Eleven—no, thirteen mobsters—all killed in the space of what must have been twenty seconds by one man.

Adrian resisted the urge to remove his mask and vomit, security cameras be damned.

"We're clear." The cougar stood before a nearby elevator, Makarov in hand, and pressed the call button, leaving behind a gruesome red handprint against the metal and polished marble. "Come on, man," he said, waving a bloodied hand, "are we going or what?"

Adrian kept his eyes glued to the elevator doors as he approached his partner's side, impeded substantially by his protective vest and overall fatigue.

"Awesome job back there," Samuel said, "this place is just crawling with Russkies, huh?"

Adrian could feel a subtle wrongness tug at his stomach when his friend said those words. Here Samuel was, holding a stolen pistol in white-knuckled hands and positively covered in blood after committing more murders than any self-respecting lawyer would defend—and he was speaking with the casualty of a college student stepping off a theme park ride.

Adrian could not bring himself to force his musings aside once the elevator doors opened. Once he was inside, he removed his mask and sighed before leaning back against the mirror spanning the wall across from the closed doors.

"What's up?" Samuel asked.

Adrian continued to stare up at the bulbous white lamp on the ceiling and spoke with great difficulty.

"Let's wait a minute." He looked over at his partner and hesitated in saying anything more. "Take that thing off, would you?"

With a confused look from behind his disguise, Samuel slowly removed his blood-spattered mask.

What Adrian assumed would calm his nerves only brought him a pang of sorrow. Aside from the dark bags developing under his eyes, Samuel had not aged a day; this was the same young mechanic the police officer had met two years ago when he sent in his car for repairs, and the same one he pulled over for speeding only a few days afterward. Those days he was little more than an adrenaline junkie—or a thrill seeker, as he preferred to be called—with a love for his country.

Adrian could only stare mortified at what he had since become.

A word came to mind for only a moment—one as simple as it was horrifying in its implications—but Adrian lost it once Samuel's fist slammed the button for sub-level parking and the elevator began its descent.

"Let's get a move on before the cops decide to show up." The young man donned his mask once again and any semblance of humanity left his eyes in an instant. "I'll take the basement, you can take the top floor and we'll meet somewhere in the middle. Think you can handle that?"

Adrian shook himself from his trance and grabbed the two-way radio in his pocket, bringing it out for his partner to see.

"Uh, s—sure, sounds good. Don't forget this; we'll keep each other updated on our progress."

The cougar nodded in agreement and brought his handgun to bear as the elevator reached its destination. He gave his partner a salute before setting foot into the small room beyond.

From both sides of the doors outside came Russian shouts and curses.

Adrian slammed on the button to close the elevator doors before he could hear a gunshot and a frightened cry. With everything he could muster, he pressed the button for the top floor, clutching his shotgun more tightly than ever. As he had feared, the nap he took in his car did nothing for him—his legs threatened to give way and his brain was locked in a crushing vise. He silenced any second thoughts about his mission as he watched the LCD counter above the elevator controls tick upwards.

Just get the job done, he thought less adamantly than he would have liked as he slipped on his mask, don't look back. I'm fearless.

You're a coward.

He turned to the mirror beside him to see a pair of brown eyes staring into themselves from behind the stoic visage of a bald eagle. The man they belonged to stood shaking in his denim jacket, pointing a blood-spattered shotgun at the elevator doors and itching to pull the trigger again.

You're doing what you wouldn't do back in '85.

Risking my life for my country? Who's a coward?

You'd rather be massacring thugs under your government's nose for some shady hoodlums calling themselves patriots than taking a rifle to Hawaii like any self-respecting American would?

"Fearless," Adrian repeated, looking up at the counter. Floor five and counting. "I'm no coward."

You couldn't even pull off that laundromat hit alone. You had to get Sam to go in with you. Look at him, he's fearless.

There came that word again in the back of Adrian's fatigued mind—so nebulous, so frightening.

The elevator doors opened with a quiet chime.

The eagle did not give the gangster on the outside a chance to turn around. He shoved the barrel of his firearm between the opening doors and blasted his mullet right off, sending the corpse to the cyan carpet with a thud. A man across the hall screamed something—Russian or English, Adrian was unable to tell with the tinnitus shrieking in his ears—and drew a handgun. A bullet slammed into Adrian's ballistic vest before he could pump and fire again, blasting the man's arm to shreds and sending a gruesome spray of blood against the windows spanning the right wall.

I'm no coward, Adrian thought with a spirited thrust of the pump. Come at me, Red bastards.

This was what it was like to be truly alive.

The cougar stood up from where he was perched beside a shiny black sports car. The dull throbbing against the inside of his skull kept pace with the racing beat of his heart as he snatched a vodka bottle from the vehicle's open top and smashed it open against the hood.

The mobster before him clutched the welt on the side of his bald head, gripping a worn golf club in his free hand and glaring his adversary down through his sunglasses. He bared his bloody, jagged teeth like a warped set of fangs as he spoke.

"Bring it on, bitch!"

The masked man inwardly commended his opponent's boldness as he dodged the club and rammed the broken bottle into his neck.

As the mobster lay sputtering and choking to death on the parking garage's dusty floor, the predator removed his mask and flipped up his hood.

Samuel could feel the sweet adrenaline wane with each breath he took as he leaned up against a blood-spattered Lamborghini. Around him lay a dozen Russians dead, sprawled out against the concrete and leaning up against sports cars with smashed skulls and perforated torsos. With a smirk of self-congratulation, the proud patriot glanced up at a nearby CCTV camera and extended his middle finger at it. Not that anyone would notice the gesture; the guard in the security office was slumped over his keyboard with a slashed throat.

He leaned down to the corpse at his feet and unbuttoned its bloodstained jacket, reaching inside and grimacing at the pungent combination of blood and vodka that wafted up from the body. At last, he found a small handgun and tucked it into his belt.

The walkie-talkie in his pocket crackled to life as if to scold him. Adrian spoke with an authoritative bite that only a police officer could possess.

"Top floor clear, over."

Samuel snatched up the handset and quickly distanced himself from the corpse.

"Parking garage clear. Moving up to floor two. Uh, over."

"Good to hear. Let's—before—"

Adrian's voice devolved into a low garble before the connection dropped. Samuel's pulse picked up once again as he tried to garner a response.

"A—Adrian? Are you still there? Hello?"

Something vague and unpleasant began roiling up inside of him as he approached the elevator in which he had arrived, stepping over the bodies of two more mobsters and doing away with his plans of inspecting them as well.

He pressed the call button with a restless palm. The elevator remained closed, and he summoned it another four times.

"What the hell is taking this thing?"

His gaze travelled up the sleek metal frame and over to the right elevator. While the lights signifying the floors above the left doorway began to slowly tick down from seven, those on the right were moving upwards.

The light continued to climb higher as Samuel hammered the call button again.

"Come on, move."

By the time the left elevator's doors opened, the opposite light had reached the number seven.

The eagle tossed aside his empty M16 and did his best to tune out the gasping and panting of the last man, who was quickly bleeding out onto a nearby conference table from the bullet wounds in his chest and stomach.

What was once a dull throb of a headache had graduated into a full-blown migraine, and it was only intensified by the sickly reek of blood against Adrian's rubber mask. Gripping his head, he sat down in a nearby leather armchair and gazed out the window across the room. He could hardly see the city of Key West past the room's bright reflection, but the full moon shone in all its glory between his exhausted form and the doorway behind him.

I did it. Who's a coward now?

The mobster on the conference table had gone still, and the only answer Adrian received was silence. The officer looked over his shoulder into the hallway and frowned.

Only three floors down.

Sluggishly, Adrian pulled himself up from the chair before snatching his handheld radio from his jacket.

"Top floor clear, over."

Adrian stepped out of the bullet-stricken doorway and into the hall. It took a moment for Samuel to respond.

"Parking garage clear. Moving up to floor two. Uh, over."

Adrian cast a fatigue-glazed eye towards the pair of elevators across the corridor.

"Good to hear," he said. "Let's move along before law enforcement arrives. Over and out."

At the curious absence of static or feedback of any kind, he shoved the radio back into his pocket.

Knew I should have gotten new batteries for the damned thing.

As he traversed the hall on legs like rubber, Adrian looked over the panoramic window on his left, which was blemished by the pockmarks of small arms fire and a large spray of dried blood. Bullet holes riddled the opposite wall, as did collapsed picture frames, small palm plants that sagged in their square pots, and a devastated CCTV camera that hung limply from a bundle of wires above the elevator door frames. Four corpses littered the hall, their deep scarlet blood staining the cyan carpeting, the white walls and even Adrian's own clothing in some places.

What a scene for Key West PD to come back to, he mused grimly.

He reached his destination at last. As his heart sank at the thought of more bloodshed, the right elevator chimed before he could press a button.

He froze. His holster was empty.

"There he is!"

Shit!

He scrambled back to see four suited men emerge from the door, all glares and bared teeth. Before he could even look around the floor for a suitable weapon, the frontmost mobster brought back his bat and swung.

Adrian found himself on the ground, bleary-eyed. He thought he was on the ground, at least; he could hardly tell which way was up. There was nothing but dazzling white lights stinging his eyes and ringing in his ears. He brought a hand up to the side of his head—his mask was no longer on, but what he could feel was hot and sticky.

A voice, sharp as a blade, cut through the tinnitus.

"Dukov, you fucking weakling! He is not even dead!"

Two pairs of figures emerged from the light, and searing pain came with them: in front, a rather lanky-looking mobster stood above Adrian with an aluminum bat in his hands—presumably Dukov. The other man in front, the one who was speaking, glared down at Adrian with piercing gray eyes. He readied a rifle and took aim at his victim's face.

"I will finish him off myself," he growled.

Adrian stared down the barrel of the gun in exhaustion and resignation. He could recall the eyes of the Fifty Blessings cohort he witnessed on Fifth and Porter—a bullet to the skull felt appropriate indeed.

There was a soft sound, something like a bell chime.

Then came the gunshot.

Adrian's eyes opened and the throbbing pain against the side of his head swept over him in full force. The man with the rifle had collapsed on top of him, his shaved head marked by a bullet hole. He heaved the body off his chest and leaned up to see what was happening.

Standing at the elevator doors was Samuel, smoking pistol in hand. The mobsters beside Dukov ran forward, daggers drawn. Adrian watched with morbid fascination as one was shot twice through the chest and the other was pistol whipped across the face and blasted in the neck. Dukov, now trembling, held his bat in a white-knuckled hand as the cougar tossed his weapon aside, spreading his arms out as if to invite the remaining gangster to his fate. The bold Russian charged forward and reared his weapon back. With the man in the way, Adrian had a hard time seeing what exactly happened afterwards, though that mattered little: Dukov, now disarmed, was gripped by the suit collar and heaved around.

The panoramic window shattered spectacularly as Dukov was thrown into it. Countless twinkling shards were formed from the bullet-weakened glass and were sucked from the room by the howling winds. His screaming came to an abrupt end shortly after impact, leaving nothing but the cold, gusty air and Samuel's exhilarated panting. Adrian could only stare wide-eyed at the void that was once glass.

The cougar approached and reached out a bloody hand. When Adrian hesitated in reacting, Samuel removed his mask.

"You all right, man?"

Even without the face of the cougar, his eyes harbored no humanity. Something posing as concern crossed his face as Adrian's gaze flicked between his friend and the shattered window, mouth agape.

Adrian tentatively took the hand and was pulled to his feet, careful not to trip. Once he was let go, however, he immediately stumbled and had to lean against a nearby wall for support. The wind whipping across his bloodied face did nothing to help his coordination as he held himself still and closed his eyes.

"I'm..." The words were raw in Adrian's throat and his head refused to stop spinning. "I think... I think I've got a concussion."

"We've still got floors to clear out."

"To hell with that." Adrian turned to face his partner, but his eyes became fixated on something new in his hand—something he dreaded he saw properly. "Wait, what's that?"

Samuel tried to hide it behind his back, but Adrian snatched it up. His heart seized up once he realized what it was.

He found himself holding a small black wallet, one that was decidedly not Samuel's. He opened it up in jittery hands to find an ID card displaying the photo of a narrow-shouldered man with the name Vitaly Dukov. The top pocket was completely empty.

That enigmatic word finally came to his mind: Sociopath.

Adrian stared down at the wallet in his hands for several of the longest and most painstaking seconds of the night. His once pallid face began to redden until it nearly blended in with the blood covering the right side of his head.

His voice began as a nearly inaudible rasp.

"What is this?"

He threw the wallet to the ground, nearly losing his balance, and stabbed his finger down at it as his tone escalated to a roar.

"What the fuck is this?!"

"I... it..."

Samuel could hardly raise his voice above a choked murmur. His partner gripped his hoodie's collar tightly and continued in a voice that was lower in volume but no less volatile, eyes narrow and dark.

"They're just Russians, are they? You son of a bitch, you know why I dragged your ass down here? You know why I kill these fucking Russians? It's because my ass is on the line; because if I don't, I'll have some masked bastard come into my home and put a bullet in my head, or I'll be found dead in some torched car out in the sticks, that's fucking why!" He released Samuel's collar to retrieve the wallet from the floor, which he held up to his face as he spoke through clenched teeth. "And look at you. You treat this like it's some kind of fucking game, you think this is fun. You think it's fun to put on a mask and take out some bad guys in your spare time, do you?" Samuel shook his head in reply, a gesture more for himself than for Adrian. "This isn't a game, and it never was. How about you keep that in mind before looting the bastard you decide to throw from the top of a fucking building?"

He tossed the wallet to the floor and took up his nearby eagle mask from the carpet, which he wadded up and threw out onto the wind and into the dark streets below.

As his partner stalked off towards the elevator with clenched fists, Samuel stared out into the vast ocean horizon with heavy shoulders. The discarded eagle mask, a white leaf in the breeze, swayed gracefully on its way to the concrete somewhere far below. With a slow hand, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a recently-acquired wad of dollar bills. He held the money out, three hundred dollars of American and Russian currency in all, and bid it a bitter farewell as he released it into the night. There came the barely-audible wail of distant police sirens over the fierce wind as the cash fluttered down into oblivion.

"Sam," Adrian called out, "get your ass over here. We're leaving now."

Samuel followed him along into the waiting elevator with his hands in his pockets.

The air within the elevator felt heavy as the two began their descent. Samuel made himself as comfortable as he could against the cold handrail on the wall opposite the doors as Adrian leaned back next to him, swaying from side to side with an assault rifle in hand. The cop kept the barrel trained on the doors as best he could, never breaking eye contact with the space beyond his iron sights. The back-right side of his head was barely recognizable now, nothing but blood and sticky, matted hair that was a well-groomed mullet not ten minutes earlier.

"You're not coming with me again." Adrian, stone-faced, was the first to break the thick silence. "Understand?"

Samuel bit his lip. "Yeah."

"We have never been affiliated beyond friendship, and you only understand Fifty Blessings on a superficial level."

"Right."

"And as soon as we're in Miami, you're giving me those masks back so I can torch them. Erase my phone messages and I'll move my things out of your garage." He received no reply at first. He glanced a bloodshot eye at his accomplice and scowled. "You hear me?"

Samuel gripped his mask in both hands. "Of course."

He glanced up at the LCD counter beside the door. Floor four and counting.

"Jesus." Adrian tore away the bandage across the bridge of his nose to reveal a scar. As deep as it was, the thing looked absolutely tame compared to the injuries sustained tonight. "I should've never gotten us into this shit."

The sudden chime of the elevator had both men's eyes fix themselves to the doors. Floor three. Adrian put his finger on the trigger while Samuel donned his mask and readied his fists.

As soon as the doors opened, a pair of gun-wielding gangsters awaiting their unwelcome guests was shredded apart by an ear-splitting salvo of gunfire. Adrian dropped his now empty rifle magazine and clutched at a new one on his munitions belt with a trembling hand.

"Let's... let's keep moving," he said breathlessly as he reached for the ground floor button.

"Wait!"

Samuel gripped his partner's wrist in one hand and held down the open door button with the opposite thumb.

"What?" Adrian asked sharply. He followed Samuel's gaze to where his own finger was ready to jab down: the buttons for floors one and two had lit up. Above them, more buttons—five, six, four—began to flick on.

"We've got company."

Samuel dashed from the elevator, retrieved a pistol from beside a mass of red flesh and hot, embedded metal that was once a man and put a bullet into the CCTV camera above the elevator doors.

"What the hell are you doing?" Adrian asked.

Before Samuel could say anything, there came something akin to a massive firecracker going off below him—a bang but not quite a gunshot—followed by several anguished cries and a few shotgun blasts which nearly shook the floor.

Samuel turned back to his accomplice and his stomach dropped. "I don't think that's the mob shooting at each other."

Adrian stood ramrod stiff at the elevator doors, his once narrow eyes wide with their pinkish whites in full view. "What do we do?"

Samuel gripped his handgun tightly as he crossed the vacant office foyer and gazed down a nearby corridor. Through the vertical windows at the end of the hall, red and blue lights were flashing menacingly against the building across the street.

"Follow me," he said as he began making his way down the hall. "We can't just waltz out the front door with the cops on our tail, and that elevator's bound to get called down real soon. Think we can get out through an office window from here?"

Adrian was incredulous and looked ready to speak, but was interrupted by another shotgun blast from downstairs. He followed his partner along with a staggering, disoriented gait as if he was drunk, the worn bulletproof vest beneath his jacket doing little to help his stance.

Samuel had rushed up to the vertical windows at the end of the hallway. Judging by their narrow width, he thought, he would hardly be able to make it through without getting cut open on all sides by jagged glass. That, and he could hardly see the ground; this room was too brightly lit, and he could only see his blood-soaked jeans reflecting from where the cement should have been. Who knew where he would be landing from this height?

"Too narrow," he said, "maybe the offices have wide enough windows."

Adrian was thinking the same thing, as Samuel found him kicking in a nearby door before he was even finished speaking.

"Who the hell?" Came a voice from within.

After barking a threat into the newly opened room, the cop waved his friend forward and stepped inside.

Samuel was about to move when a door opened a few dozen feet back down the hallway. He stared motionless at the door standing ajar beneath the faint green glow of a sign signifying the stairs, wielding his pistol in a hand of steel. However, no one came out, police or mafia; only a small object rolled forth, a cylinder no bigger than a water bottle.

Adrian smashed the door in with a viscera-stained boot and aimed through his blurry sights at a heavyset mobster sitting behind a desk in a dark suit, who muttered something in Russian.

"Don't move a goddamn muscle," he snarled, taking aim between the man's eyes. The mobster duly complied, rolling his chair back against the wall with his pudgy hands held high above his head.

The officer looked the office over. It was a small but tidy affair, with a light teal armchair set up beside a glass coffee table and desk adorned with a bouquet of flowers, an empty pistol magazine and what looked like a small packet of cocaine. Across the room, he was relieved to see, was a suitably wide window overlooking the alleyway he and Samuel had arrived from. With an air of caution, he crept across the room, footfalls silent against the carpet, and glanced down at the road. What he saw caused his heart to skip: there was not a single police cruiser pulled up to the building, but four SWAT vans.

A door opened out in the hall, and Adrian whipped around with his weapon at the ready.

Like a lightning bolt, down the corridor there came the return of the firework's bang, accompanied by a flash of light so intense that Adrian nearly stumbled in his concussed state; it hit him like a sledgehammer to the skull.

Samuel, meanwhile, collapsed onto his back and clutched at his masked face.

"Fuck!" he screamed, "I can't see! I can't see!"

Faster than he thought his weak legs could carry him, Adrian rushed up to the door before slamming it shut, locking it, and pressing himself up firmly against it.

"It's the SWAT team!" he cried. He spurred his writhing partner with a kick to the side. "You just stared straight into a goddamn flash grenade! On your feet! Barricade the door with something, I'm breaking the window."

As Samuel slowly began to rise, panting and shuddering, Adrian aimed at the window and opened fire into it, holding the trigger down until his gun clicked dry.

More gunfire erupted from somewhere outside the door. Samuel was putting a chair in place below the doorknob, holding a hand steady above his mask's eyeholes to shield himself from the light.

The mobster sitting at the desk had ducked cowering behind it, eyes glued fearfully to the door.

Adrian turned back to the empty space that was once a window, tossed his gun aside and looked down. Between the sidewalk and the lawn lining the exterior of the building was a row of hedges, though it was only a few feet in width.

Even if he missed it wouldn't be too painful, he attempted to convince himself; his head already felt like it was split open. Something pounded against the door. Adrian looked down again and steeled himself.

"What the fuck are we waiting for?" Samuel was standing at his side now, fidgeting with what certainly wasn't epinephrine anymore.

"You tell me. Thirty feet's not so bad, right?"

The door was struck again, but along with it came the sounds of the lock breaking and the chair barricade hitting the floor.

Adrian did not look back as he flung himself over the short sill.

The next thing he could register was the feeling of cold asphalt against the side of his face. There was nothing before his eyes but fuzzy stars and blurry, strobing police lights. His entire body was aching now. With a groan, he rolled over onto his chest and tried to heave himself up, only for a surge of pain to shoot up through his left shoulder. A wince escaped him as he collapsed and looked up at the SWAT van looming over him like the shadow of death. Under the bottom of the vehicle Adrian could see the even row of shrubbery he had aimed for, along with a slender shape approaching from the other side.

Samuel's strained voice, muffled and faint, reached his ears.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh shit!"

A pair of blood-spattered tennis shoes entered Adrian's field of vision as hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him up. He wanted to say something about his aching left side, but all he could muster was a pained groan. He stood up on weak legs and had to grip Samuel's leaf-covered shoulders for support. The cougar continued to sport its vicious snarl, but the eyes beneath were flickering with deep unease.

"Jesus Christ, man!" he gasped, "you rolled right off the roof that van; I'm surprised you're not dead!"

So am I, Adrian would have said if he could bring himself to speak. Samuel took him by his good arm and started making his way towards the alleyway from where they had arrived.

As he tried to keep up, Adrian looked back at the compromised mob hideout through strained eyes: what was once a pair of glass doors was now little more than an obliterated metal frame. The vestibule inside was now in full view, dead body and all. Bursts of gunfire and dim muzzle flashes emanated from the lower floors, accompanied by sprays of bright red blood against the windows. It looked so imposing only a few minutes earlier, he thought, so magnificent.

He was ushered forward by a tug of the arm.

By the time he reached his Mustang, Adrian could do little more than stagger. Immediately, he unhooked his munitions belt and clumsily slipped off his bloodied jacket as quickly as he could with a swollen, painful shoulder. The ballistic vest was going to be a bitch, he thought sourly.

"Hey," he said to Samuel, who was approaching his motorbike and taking off his mask, "how's your vision?"

Samuel fished around in his pocket for his aviators and put them on. "It's doing better now, thanks for asking."

"Good. Get in the driver's seat here."

Samuel took pause. "What?"

"I need medical attention and I'm in no condition to drive. I need you to—"

"What about my bike, man?"

There came a shout from down the alley, towards the office complex.

"Your fucking bike doesn't have a dozen guns in the back. Leave it."

Another shout, clearer this time, was all it took to make Samuel spring into action:

"Police! Hands above your heads!"

Samuel produced his suppressed handgun from his belt and shot into the floodlight above him, sending a shower of sparks and glass onto his discarded motorbike and plunging him and Adrian in the cover of darkness. Adrian took the cue and dove into the passenger's side of his car. His partner sat himself in the driver's seat, fumbling a little with the stick shift at first, but before too long the car was speeding out from the dingy alleyway and into the streets of Key West proper with pistol fire ringing out behind it.

For several minutes, the two sat in silence. Samuel gripped the steering wheel with pale white knuckles, occasionally turning at corners and changing lanes with stiff, jerky movements. Adrian had managed to remove his vest now, and the open windows' breeze was ice cold against his bare arms. He looked down at his left shoulder to see a dark, swollen bulge and winced, and his reflection in the rear-view mirror elicited similar unease. He glanced down at the side-view mirror, fully expecting a police cruiser to begin trailing him with sirens blaring.

He and his friend remained in uncomfortable silence as he did his best to block the night's events from his mind. Christ, did his head feel hollow more than anything. He looked out at the palm trees lining the streets and scowled. He was sick of palm trees, sick of these muggy nights, sick of Florida.

What I'd give to be back in Dallas—hell, even Vancouver.

He turned a heavy eye to Samuel. The young man's haunting face in the elevator came to mind, fresh and disheartening as ever.

Even friendship?

Friendship with a man like this? A fervently patriotic, cold-hearted sociopath? Someone who would massacre a room full of men for some extra cash in the name of America without hesitation?

Adrian could feel his eyes turn heavy in their sockets as he struggled to come to an answer. He leaned forward over the dashboard as a cold fatigue overcame him. He needed to rest. He needed to think.