"Haaa…" Nate let the breath out slowly, and it echoed off the bare walls of the empty classroom.
"That was anticlimactic. I can't believe he actually died in the end."
He pushed himself out of his seat, running a hand through his messy black hair. His blue eyes stayed unfocused, still lost somewhere in the story he'd just finished.
His uniform was crisp and neatly pressed, a stark contrast to the storm churning behind his ribs.
He slid his phone into his pocket, slung his bag over his shoulder, and stepped out into the hallway.
It was loud. Students streamed past in clusters, trading gossip and homework complaints, and Nate's gaze drifted over the faces as they went by.
"Yo, Nate!" A black-haired boy with brown eyes waved from across the corridor.
Nate lifted a hand in return and gave him a smile, polite and easy and about as warm as a glass of water left out overnight.
"See ya, Nate," someone else called. More waves followed, and he answered every one with the same smile, never letting his eyes rest on anyone long enough to be caught.
He was walking through the motions of a day he'd already decided to forget.
He pushed through the doors and stepped outside, and a girl was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps.
Her hair was a vivid red, and her eyes were full of worry. "Nate," she said softly.
The polite smile vanished. What replaced it was a cold, hard mask, so smooth it looked like it had been carved there. "What?"
Her throat bobbed. She opened her mouth, and for a moment nothing came out. Nate's stare didn't waver, and under it the words she had rehearsed seemed to dissolve.
"If you've got nothing to say, I'll be on my way."
He turned. He had taken maybe three steps when her voice caught him from behind, barely louder than a whisper.
"I'm… we're sorry. All of us. Even Mom and Dad."
His feet stopped. He turned back slowly, and his eyes were chips of ice. "It's too late for that."
He walked away. He didn't look back to see her standing alone on the steps, blinking against the tears.
The irritation followed him down the street like a stray dog. Her face kept surfacing in his mind, and behind hers came his parents', and he shoved all of them away with a clench of his jaw.
They weren't his family anymore. His grandparents were, and that was enough.
The sky had gone the color of old iron.
A sweet, heavy smell drifted down the street, the scent of rain on the verge of falling, and Nate squinted up at the clouds.
"Shit. The forecast said no rain today."
He picked up his pace, then broke into a jog. Five minutes later, he spotted the skeleton of an unfinished building, bare concrete and rusted rebar, and sprinted for it as the first fat drops began to burst on the pavement.
He ducked through the gap in the wall just as the downpour began, and stopped short.
A man was standing in the gloom. A hooded sweatshirt hid his face in shadow.
Every instinct Nate owned told him to turn and run.
But the rain was already coming down in sheets, drumming against the concrete so loudly that it filled the whole building with a dull, endless roar, and the street outside had turned into a river.
He stayed where he was. The man didn't move. The only sounds were the rain and Nate's own pulse, thudding in his ears.
"Hey, kid."
The voice was low and gravelly. A cold finger traced the length of Nate's spine as he turned.
"You got some cash on you?"
Nate nodded slowly. His mind was already racing through every ending to this conversation, and not a single one was good.
"Drop it on the ground," the man said. "Nice and slow."
Nate's eyes dropped to the man's hoodie. There was a hard, angular bulge under the fabric at his waist, the unmistakable outline of a gun.
Moving carefully, he slid his wallet out of his pocket and let it fall.
The man crouched to scoop it up, and the light from the doorway caught the front of his hoodie.
Dark stains marked the fabric, still wet. Nate's eyes followed a trail of the same dark drops across the dusty concrete, leading deeper into the building, toward something he could not see.
His heart sank like a stone.
I need to get out of here. Now.
The man started to rise, and Nate threw himself forward. His shoulder drove into the man's midsection, and both of them crashed to the ground, but the man was bigger and stronger and far more practiced at this.
A knee came up into Nate's ribs. Then Nate was on his back with a heavy weight pinning his arms, and the man's fists were coming down.
The first blow split his lip. The second rang through his skull like a bell. He heard the third before he felt it, a wet, sickening crunch that sent white light spiraling through his vision.
He threw up his forearms, but the punches found the gaps, one after another, each harder than the last.
'Not like this.'
His fingers scrabbled across the floor, hunting for anything, and closed around a chunk of broken concrete the size of his fist.
He swung with everything he had left.
The rock cracked against the side of the man's head, and the man reeled backward with a grunt of surprise.
Nate wriggled out from under him, snatched up the wallet, and lunged for the doorway, rain already glittering in the gap.
Something punched into the base of his neck.
It was a bright, ripping pain, so sudden that his legs tangled beneath him.
A heartbeat later, the crack of a gunshot rolled through the building, a thunderclap swallowed by the rain.
Nate stumbled and caught himself on a pillar, and his vision swam as he looked down.
There was a hole in his shirt, just beneath his collarbone. Red was spreading around it, soaking the white cotton.
Oh.
His knees gave out, and he went down onto the wet concrete. Footsteps echoed behind him, unhurried.
The man in the hoodie walked around to face him, the gun hanging easily from one hand, and pushed back his hood.
The left side of his face was a ruin of old burn scars, melted and shiny, pulling one corner of his mouth into a permanent twist.
But it was the grin that stopped Nate's breath. It was wide and happy and utterly empty.
The man held up something small and flat, and Nate realized with a spike of horror that it was his student ID.
"This is where you live, right?" The man tapped the address with a finger. "And you're a student. Which means you ain't living alone." He tilted his head.
"Maybe I'll pay your folks a visit. What do you think?"
Something hot and wild rose in Nate's chest. He heaved himself up and lunged at the man, but his body no longer listened.
His legs buckled halfway, and he pitched forward onto his hands.
The man laughed. The sound bounced between the bare concrete walls, ugly and delighted, as he grabbed Nate by the collar and dragged him deeper into the building.
The second shot came before Nate could draw another breath.
The world went black.
Rain kept hammering the rooftop outside, steady and indifferent.
Inside, a small orange flame caught on the corpse's clothing, and then the fire climbed, swallowing everything it touched.
The man in the hoodie stood watching it burn, the glow flickering across his scarred face, his grin still fixed in place.
"This is just the beginning," he whispered.