3. Cornered animal

The Jackal.

The Jackal hated art. He'd never loved it. He couldn't understand why people would waste their time on it, but the hate for it came from the person who did it. He was in her office and the walls were shrouded with them. Some of them new and pungent, others relics from thirty years ago. She wasn't here yet, and he enjoyed that. Whenever she was around he had to fight down the urge to snap her neck. Which would be easy enough for him, he'd done it multiple times. But the last time he did it, it was his best friend.

He rubbed his hands together like he was washing them. He hadn't killed since then, how many years ago, now? Around five. He had planned on killing his dad, but someone had gotten to him first. That had frustrated him, but he saw how his brother had looked at his dad's killer, and he'd thought otherwise. After all, all Fallows looked at the woman they liked the same way. Even that drunk in the ground looked at his mother and step mother like that.

Some things just don't change.

"Hunter," Grace said. Her voice grated him. "You're already here." She washed the paint off her hands, no, not paint. The red was too watery. She'd been at it again with her experiments and vasectomies.

He folded his arms. "I've been here."

"It's twelve," she said and stood at the window facing the Gray, "Stop scowling."

"Sorry. You just have that effect on me."

"Good. I'd hate to be charming to a Fallow."

"And I'd hate pleasing the Founder's granddaughter."

She smirked. "Hate is still fresh between our two families." She wiped her hands on a cloth. "Some things just don't change."

"Good thing we both want the same thing," she said. She offered him alcohol but he declined – he stopped drinking when he saw what it had done to his father. He had idolized him as a child, and now he was in the ground because of it.

She nodded and slammed back a shot glass. "Mm, this is really good. But yes, good thing that we both want the Gray. It's my land, considering grandfather sacrificed our family's wealth on it."

"And my dad and his dad sacrificed themselves for it." And he and his brother had too. Some things just don't change. Hopefully they did one day.

"Money is worth more than blood, Hunter," she said and smiled. "You should know that."

He matched her little smile and said, "Maybe we should test that theory."

She chuckled. "God, I hate you so much. Good thing you're useful. But you weren't useful last night."

He sat down on the couch and folded his arms. His silver desert eagle bit into his back. It bit with a promise and the sharp edges. He'd never fired it, it wasn't his gun to fire.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," she drawled. "That you let those two girls come and go from my Island like a bunch of tourists." She leaned towards him and snorted. "Do we look like a tourist destination?"

"Depends," he whispered. "You've changed this city so much it almost looks like a clown had puked all over it."

He saw the minute movements of her hands. The buildup of tension in her shoulder and the twitch of her eyes. He slapped away her right hand and grabbed her left before she could plunge her blade like fingernails into his gut.

"To answer your question." He let go of her hands and she stood up. "They were just kids. Came from the Gray and I told them to go back."

"I know that Hera uses children." She went back to the window and eyed his reflection. "So don't give me that shit." She turned towards him. "Don't forget your position. Remember Hunter, I can control the Unit, so unless you want me to send your brother off of the top of my building…then you should stop your little bravado act."

When he was a boy he wouldn't have accepted this. He'd beaten people into the emergency room when he was younger because people laughed at him because of where his brother had come from. From little kids, teenagers, adults and even the elderly. But he'd been taught how to play chess, and chess is a patience game. You have to plan ahead. He was still trying to figure out how to get the Unit to switch off without it killing his brother, which was his only bind to Grace. The Gray could come later, he wasn't going to leave his brother alone again like he had last time.

He held up his hands in mock defeat. "It's my bad that I didn't think about that."

She was about to speak but her attention snapped around. Hunter turned towards the window, the Gray was a sprawling utopia of colorful lights and towering skyscrapers. But plumes of smoke were billowing from the north side of the city, all of them twisting and turning in the West Coast's warm wind – they formed a rainbow that faded into the stars.

Grace clapped her hands. "Look! It's starting."

Hunter came to the window and grimaced as more plumes of smoke billowed.

"What do you think," she murmured, her voice on the edge of excitement. Her short rapid breaths fogging up the window. "Cutting off their food supply. I created a chemical that reacts to saliva, and then…" She mimed an explosion with her hands. "Art. That's what it is. Oh, look! That one was a canary yellow. My favorite."

His stomach flipped. Those plumes of smoke weren't buildings burning, they were from people exploding. He had heard about the Founder's street massacre and what his father had done. He had heard about the Gray being painted red, and now Grace was painting it. Whenever he was around her she would remind him of how different their families were and always spoke down on his. But here she was, doing the exact same thing his father had.

He took a seat and rubbed his hands again. He had hoped he'd have more time to work things out with the Unit, enough time at least for his brother to learn the truth and be able to cope with what he'd have to do. He had never been great at chess, he had always lost to her.

"So, Mr. Fallow," Grace said, a wild grin spreading over her face. "Please bring her Majesty from the Gray. I'd like to speak with her. Use as much force as you want, hell, paralyze her if need be. But just make sure she's here to listen, because I've been dying to meet her ever since we burnt down her house."

Hunter clenched his jaw and walked out of the room. He didn't have anything left to say to her.

He continued down the hall way, the walls plastered with even more art work. He didn't fit in, he wore all black, and everyone around him wore all white. Soldiers brushed past him, all of them striding to here or there. He went down the elevator and left the block of a building. He could almost hear the chaos resonating in the Gray. People stood in crowds and gawked at the Gray. None of them had ever been there, they were all brainwashed to think it was the worst place in the world because of Hera, and when he had tried to say otherwise, they'd get angry and storm away.

He weaved his way through the clumps of white. They all cheered every time another plume of smoke blew up. Some of them at an outdoor restaurant raised glasses and toasted, others cried and hugged each other. It was like Christmas to them, it wasn't called that here. Grace called it Gracegiving

He stomped up the large steps to the soldier's units. They acted like a barrier to the Gray, so that Hera couldn't attack them without slaughtering all these people. It wasn't a deterrent for Hera, it was to make her look like a monster if she ever attacked.

He burst through the entrance doors and passed the elderly receptionist who kept calling his name. He walked in between circles of people staring at TVs to people's dismay. But he didn't care, he needed to get to the Gray. Not because Grace had ordered him to, that certainly gave him a reason to leave, but to check on how things were going. Screw chess. He'd never been good, he was better at fighting and killing – and with the direction things had swung in favor of, he'd be putting on his mask again and becoming the name that the commanders at the recruitment tents had given him all those years ago.

He swung around the corner and continued down the hall. He stepped over sprawled out legs of young recruits playing games on their phones. He brushed against blushing boys coming from the girl's wing of the housing unit.

A hand caught his black sleeve and he stopped. A cute Japanese girl was smiling, her hair a deep contrast to her uniform.

He pulled away. "Tohka. What's up?"

She folded her arms. "I could ask you the same thing. Haven't you seen the news? We're finally going to start tearing the Gray away from the people who don't deserve it!"

A boy's head peeked out of a room door, his blonde curles bouncing with his nod. "I don't know about you, but I am SO stocked." He came out of the room, his uniform was buttoned wrong and he was fidgeting with rifle parts. "Wonder when we're getting sent in there."

Hunter faked a grin and tried to leave, Casper sprung into his path, blonde curls falling back as he looked up. "What about you, Mr. Limp Wrist? Aren't you excited?"

"War isn't fun."

"I thought you were the Jackal for a reason."

He pushed passed Casper. "War isn't fun. But the killing part is." And then in a whisper to himself, "Only when the right people are dying."

He continued despite Casper's jabs and insults. He went into his private room at the end of the corridor, not exactly a room, more like a storage space. He shared a room with his brother a few doors down the hall. His brother who was probably staring off into space, he did that a lot, especially after he woke up last year. He looked like he was searching for something on the ceiling, sometimes he'd start crying for no reason, other times he'd laugh to himself and squeeze his temples.

He had wanted to tell him the truth, but there's a time for everything, and it wasn't just yet.

And he wasn't the right person to do it. He had missed a majority of his life, he barely knew him, but he still loved him. He still saw that baby being cradled in his step mother's arms, his smile, his small fists grabbing his blonde hair, and those bright green eyes full of wonder and amusement.

Now his one green eye was full of nothing.

He grabbed his short combat axes and spare rings. He strapped the axes to his thighs and slid on the black rings. He tucked the silver cross with its golden chain into his shirt and brushed back his long hair. He clipped on his mask and took a deep breath, he always got jittery when he put on the mask, like it was laced with moon salts or Jupiter rocks.

But he was getting jittery for another reason entirely. He pulled two more rings from a small black box; one silver, and the other gold. He tucked them away in his trouser pockets and pressed the cross underneath his shirt. He felt it pulse and vibrate for a split second. Hopefully she still wore hers. Hopefully she was still alive.

He left the room and brushed past Casper again, who tried to touch his axes but received a not so gentle shove. He paused before he left and turned towards Tohka. "Check up on him."

"On Casper?"

Hunter laughed. "God no. On my brother."