Laurence made quick work of the body, setting fire to it with his inner flame and letting it burn until all that was left was ash. “Stupid man,” he said to no one in particular, “you were dead the moment you joined the Arrows”. He cleared away what was left, and moved out of the building. He had ten possible entry points that he knew would get him inside, and five that he could use purely for exit purposes.

The torture scenario would have been a lot harder for Laurence, had he not modified the mask Orwell had given him. Before it was the identifier of the most notorious and dangerous member of Spring Street, but now it had become a Saint tier artefact. Laurence had given it two special abilities, as well as a very simple defensive array. The first power was the reason why the captive man never wondered about the age of his captor, because it was a complete voice modulator, to the point where Laurence could even sound like a woman if he wished. The second ability was a lie detector, it would allow you to simply know if the person actually believed what they were saying. Simply knowing if something was the absolute truth was an impossibility for a Saint tier artefact, but knowing if someone believed something was a lot simpler.

The last part of the mask, the defensive array, was a very simple one. It used sound waves to destabilise the inner ears of everyone in its vicinity, rendering them helpless through complete lack of balance. Laurence had found that transforming the mask into a Saint tier tool was far easier than he was expecting. The mask seemed to both be a lot older than he had originally realised and made of an incredibly solid polymer, one that Laurence had never seen before, but he assumed it was a material called Archaic Ice Plastic. Made from refining Archaic Ice Oil, the plastic was an incredibly malleable tool for containing materials. It had an inbuilt resistance to corrosion and was a relatively valuable substance in Earth tier, so Laurence could not help but wonder why it was turned into a mask.

He walked down to the southern park in Rodah Vale, where his victim had informed him about an entrance into the Arrow’s base. There was a lot of foot traffic in the area, so Laurence had to be careful, even as late in the night as it was. Laurence was arrogant, to the point of naivety sometimes, but his loss against Alistair had made him realise something. He could be beaten, he could die. He looked back on the mass of now faceless people in his memory, all the lives he had taken on his journey so far. He needed to never be in the same situation as them. He needed to kill, but he also needed to be cautious.

He stood around five hundred metres away from the entrance and waited. With his hood up and mask off, he looked like any other young thief on the street; a common sight in the strip. He was looking for a group going the same direction as him, one that was big enough for him to seamlessly slip in and out of. It was surprisingly hard. Some groups were too small, some were full of girls, some were of much older people. He just needed a group of around five people who were of similar height to him to walk past.

Finally he got his chance, a team of seven boys from a gang he failed to recognise were walking in the same direction as him. He smirked and walked behind, quickly blending in and looking like one of their gang who was just lagging a little behind. He was ever so slightly tense the entire time. The only way this attack would work was if he caught the gang by surprise. He needed to be inside, because if the Arrow’s base was like that of Spring Street, they would have the ability to shut any single part of the base down from a central hub, through traps and cave-ins. Every gang used them in the case of invasion by the bobbies. It was not something that happened often, but it did mean the gang had managed to steal from someone they should not have.

As they approached the door, Laurence put on the mask and moved over to the entrance. His victim had told him of ten entrances and four exits to the base, so Laurence had picked the last exit that he had been informed about. He chose an exit over an endeavour because exits in a gang base were rarely manned. Most often they relied on a trick or an oddity in building design that meant it was impressive for a normal person to get in through that point, however one could still leave through it. This kind was a four metre drop.

In an overhanging section of a building with no entrance there was a hole through the floor that one could drop down through to leave. It was relatively near the wall, but far enough away that bar some feat of extreme acrobatics, only someone with a ladder could get in. Laurence smiled behind his mask and leapt up into the air, easily catching the ledge and pulling himself up. Looking around, Laurence saw no one. As he had hoped, the exit was not guarded and instead he was standing alone in an empty house. The building had been gutted and turned into a pathway. With no furniture or any kind of furnishing at all, Laurence could not help but think the place looked rather lonely. There were thousands of houses like the one he was in, devoid of life and care, all over the desolate strip and executioners pen, and none of the inhabitants knew why. At one point this place had been more than a busy slum, it had been a thriving set of districts in one of the greatest cities in the universe. He used the melancholy brought on by the thought of the house to suppress his urge, but he could tell, he was about to explode again. He felt thoroughly versuvian, and any moment he knew that if he let go of his control he would become the pyroclasm of his urge, killing everyone and everything in sight.

He moved out of the house and into the sewers. In most houses in the desolate strip there were manholes that lead to the sewer level of the city. It was the place that the gangs had first fought over, because it gave them unrestricted access to massive swathes of land, as long as they avoided the active tunnels. The sewer itself could become rather maze-like, but once a gang took control of a sewer region they would make sure that all paths eventually led towards their central sanctum regions, containing their mess hall and claimant hall.

Once Laurence got around twenty metres away from his entrance, he was plunged into a cloying darkness. He expected that he was supposed to have some sort of lantern, but he never carried one. Instead he drew inklight and wrapped the strip of rope around his fist. It looked like a florescent snake, binding his arm, but it gave off a comfortable glow that let Laurence see far beyond what he could beforehand. He moved off and followed the dust covered path, keeping his senses as active as possible to make sure he did not miss anything.

He walked and walked, listening to the sound of his heart, the trapping of his feet, and the echoing of the voice in his head. The closer he got to his target, the stronger the sound of the voice got. It wanted him to kill. It told him to kill. He had to kill. He knew that the moment he ended his first target, he would begin a murder spree the likes he had never gone on before. He wanted to keep control, but it was harder than anything he had ever done before.

After a five minute walk, he saw a young man, maybe sixteen years old, standing in the pathway. He seemed to be coming in Laurence’s direction to leave the area, but the moment he saw the young boy walk towards him, he could not help but put up his guard.

“Who are you?” He said. His eyes darted from the mask covering Laurence’s face to the hammer in his hand. He knew that the person in front of him was not a member of the Arrows, and if they took the symbol on their mask into account, they were not here for good reasons.

“I'm here to repay the damage you caused to my gang,” Laurence replied, mimicking Orwell’s voice. “It's time for you all to die.”

The pressure and killing intent Laurence was exuding made the man fall backwards. He wanted tokill. He needed to. “No!” He shouted in his own voice. He wanted control back. He could not let himself get consumed. Not yet. He hit himself in the side of the head, trying to force the voice out of his brain, but it would not work. It did not stop. He screamed out in his own voice, before the swinging his hammer and crushing the skull of the enemy in front of him.

His scream echoed through the halls, warping and twisting to the point where it was unrecognisably monstrous. Blood and brain matter spattered the halls, spraying Laurence with no small amount. It was time. It was time to kill them all. They would all die by his hand. They had to. They hurt him in a way he did not understand. He did not want it. He refused to allow the pain to exist anymore. All that was left was rage, and the inexhaustible desire to kill everything.