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Caleb's approach was utterly silent. He didn't use the knife this time. A hardened sap, weighted with lead, appeared in his hand from his inventory. A short, powerful swing connected with the guard's temple. The man crumpled like a sack of flour.
Voices murmured from behind a closed door at the end of the hall, the doctor's study. Milton's, strained but authoritative, and the doctor's, nervous.
Caleb moved. He burst through the door not with a shout, but with terrifying speed.
The scene froze for a split second. Milton was half rising from a chair, a glass of brandy in his good hand, his eyes wide. The doctor stood by his desk, a medical bag open. The two remaining elite guards, who had been standing against the wall, were the fastest to react. Their hands flew to their gun belt, to their holstered revolvers.
They never cleared leather. The Litchfield repeater was in Caleb's hands, having seemingly in fast speed slung from across his back. The Deadeye ability immediately flare as a golden glow, where time seemed to slow down at a very slow rate, and his perception accelerating. Two shots, impossibly fast, immediately being ghost to the two mercenaries. Crack. Crack.
The first guard spun, a red blossom flowering on his chest. The second took his round square in the forehead, the back of his skull painting the floral wallpaper.
Milton meanwhile dropped the glass in his hand, reaching for a pistol inside his locket. Caleb was already moving, crossing the room in three strides.
A backhand swing of the Litchfield's stock combined with Caleb's strength shattered Milton's wrist with a sickening crunch. The agent cried out, collapsing back into the chair, clutching his arm.
The doctor screamed. Caleb turned, the fury of the violence sharp in his gaze. The scream died in the man's throat. Caleb stepped forward and delivered a precise, merciful fist to the doctor's jaw. He went down, unconscious, joining the memory of last night's encounter with a new, more vivid one.
Silence, broken only by Milton's ragged breathing and the distant clang of a trolley bell.
Caleb looked down at the filed commander of the Pinkerton agents. Fear, pain, and dawning recognition warred in Milton's eyes. He knew this wasn't a random Bronte thug. The precision, the silence, the terrifying efficiency, it was the ghost from the ambush tahy killed his partner Ross and caused hi mto be injured.
"You," Milton gasped.
"Me," Caleb agreed, his voice muffled by the sack cloth. He quickly and efficiently bound Milton's hand to each other with a leather cord from his pocket, gagged him with a clean handkerchief, and slung the barely conscious agent over his shoulder with a no effort whatsoever.
He spared a last glance at the room, a tableau of death and unconsciousness. He retrieved Milton's pistol and took a leather satchel from the floor, sling it across his own body.
Exiting the way he came, he loaded Milton's limp form onto Morgan's back behind the saddle, securing him with rope. He mounted up and urged Morgan into a steady, unhurried trot away from the trade district. He didn't flee, he departed. By the time anyone found the bodies, he would be in another world.
He rode northwest, out of the city's glow, into the brackish darkness of the Bayou Nwa. He found a place he remembered, an abandoned fisher's shack on stilts, half sunk into the murky water, surrounded by cypress knees and the chorus of frogs and insects. It stank of decay and stagnant water. Perfect.
He hauled Milton inside, dumping him into a rickety chair. He lit a single, shuttered lantern, its light creating a small, harsh pool in the overwhelming darkness. He removed Milton's gag.
Milton coughed, his eyes blazing with defiance and pain. "Bronte won't get away with this. The Agency will burn this city to the ground."
"This isn't for Bronte," Caleb said, his voice low and calm as he removed his mask. He let Milton see his face. The agent's eyes widened further, confusion mixing with the hate. "This is for me. You're going to tell me and give me everything you know about Angelo Bronte. His operations. His ledgers. His political connections. The names of every judge, every official, every police captain on his payroll. Then, you're going to tell me about your new backer. The one who met you at the government building."
Milton spat, the spittle tinged with blood. "Go to hell."
Caleb sighed, almost sadly. He put down the satchel he took and withdrew not a knife, but the doctor's medical kit. He laid out a scalpel, a probe, a bottle of iodine.
"Agent Milton," he said, his tone conversational, "you are a student of pressure. So am I. But where you use legal pressure, financial pressure, the pressure of institutions… I have a more direct approach. You have a gunshot wound. It's been treated. But wounds can be reopened. They can become infected. In a place like this, without a doctor, infection is a slow, feverish, rotting way to die."
He picked up the scalpel, the lantern light glinting on its steel. "You will talk. The only variable is how much of yourself you will have left when you do. Let's start with something simple. The bank. Where does Bronte keep his real ledgers and his moneys?"
Milton's bravado faltered, his eyes locked on the instrument in Caleb's hand. The chorus of the bayou seemed to grow louder, a symphony of indifferent nature waiting to swallow his screams. The harvest of information had begun.
Milton's eyes never left the scalpel.
The lantern light made the thin blade gleam as if it were breathing, rising and falling with the croak of frogs outside the shack. The agent swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing, and for a brief moment the mask of defiance cracked just enough for calculation to show through.
Then he smiled.
It was a strained thing, blood on his teeth, but it carried the familiar arrogance Caleb had come to associate with men who believed institutions would always protect them.
"You're making a very big mistake, Mr. McLaughlin," he said hoarsely. His gaze sharpened, studying Caleb's face now that the mask was gone. Recognition clicked fully into place.
Caleb paused, the scalpel hovering just above the edge of the medical kit.
Milton exhaled through his nose, eyes narrowing as understanding settled into place. "I knew it. The ghost. Bronte's invisible knife. The bounty hunter he keeps off the books." He laughed weakly. "Do you have any idea what you are? To him?"
Caleb said nothing.
"We can work together," Milton continued quickly, words tumbling over each other now that he sensed an opening. "You don't need to do this. Bronte is a problem, for both of us. You help me cripple him, really cripple him, and the Agency can make all of this disappear."
"Ross—" His jaw tightened for a fraction of a second. "—what happened to Ross can be forgiven. I can forgive it. Hell, I will forgive it. The warrants that never quite made it through the right offices. I can bury them. I can forgive it all. You're useful, McLaughlin. You walk away clean. Rich and untouchable. Men like you don't belong as hired muscle for a petty tyrant like Bronte."
The bayou hummed around them, insects buzzing like static in the dark.
Caleb chuckled.
It was quiet, almost amused, and it cut through Milton's speech sharper than any blade.
"I might have believed you," Caleb said calmly, "if I didn't already know what you are."
Milton frowned. "Know me?"
"A Pinkerton," Caleb continued. "Not the story you sell. Not the badge and the rhetoric. The truth. How you operate. How you lie." He tilted his head slightly. "Especially you."
Milton's expression hardened again. "You think you know us?"
"I know the Pinkertons," Caleb replied. "I know how forgiveness works with men like you. It lasts exactly as long as it takes to put a bullet in someone's back once they stop being useful. I know how you turn allies into assets and assets into corpses the moment they stop being useful." His eyes hardened. "I also know you'd sell your own shadow if it bought you another week of relevance."
Milton's jaw tightened. "You're a fool."
The scalpel lowered, not toward Milton yet, but into Caleb's hand with finality.
"So no," Caleb said. "I don't believe you."
Milton clenched his jaw, the muscles standing out beneath bruised skin. "Then ask your questions and get it over with."
Caleb met his gaze. "I already did."
Silence stretched.
Milton's voice came out low and hard. "I'm not telling you anything. If you're not going to work with me, then stop pretending this is a negotiation. Do what you came here to do."
Caleb exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Suit yourself, Agent Milton."
He set the scalpel down for a moment, selecting instead the bottle of iodine. He spoke as he worked, his tone steady, almost instructional, as though explaining a concept rather than preparing to dismantle a man's resistance.
"I don't enjoy this," he said. "I don't need to. This isn't about anger. Or revenge. This is necessity."
Milton sneered, though there was fear in his eyes now. "You think this scares me? I've been in cells you wouldn't survive a night in."
Caleb nodded. "I'm sure you have. Now, you can still beg for forgiveness and answer my questions at any time. All you have to do is talk."
Then, he began.
He did not rage. He did not savage. He was a craftsman, his tools the scalpel, the probe, the iodine. He drew on his past memories, images burned into his mind from his life, his past world, films and stories. Techniques refined not to destroy flesh but to dominate the mind.
His Past Life Memory Skill surfaced those references with unsettling clarity, stripping them of fiction and leaving only function.
He recalled techniques not of brute mutilation, but of targeted, exquisite agony. He applied pressure to specific nerve clusters with the blunt end of the probe, causing waves of fire to cascade through Milton's body.
He used the scalpel to make precise, shallow incisions in areas rich with nerve endings, the webbing between fingers, the inner thigh, the soles of the feet, then applied the iodine, the antiseptic burn magnifying the pain a hundredfold into a white hot, screaming sensation.
The wounds were superficial. A battlefield surgeon would have dismissed them as trivial. But the pain was catastrophic, a tidal wave that drowned Milton's mind in pure, undiluted suffering. It was torture designed not to kill, not even to maim permanently, but to overwhelm the nervous system, to make existence itself untenable.
Caleb worked in silence, punctuated only by Milton's muffled screams against the gag, which Caleb periodically removed to let the sound out, letting the agent hear his own desperation echo in the rotten shack.
He reminded himself, again and again, that this was necessary. That this man would ruin countless lives without hesitation. This was a necessary, ugly mechanism to achieve a vital end. That information was a weapon, and this was the price of extracting it.
He did not enjoy this.
He never would.
But he did it anyway.
Hours bled together in the swamp's timeless gloom. Caleb's Persuasion skill wove through the pain, a constant, insidious whisper in Milton's ear between spasms. "It can stop. Just tell me. The pain is nothing. The information is everything. Give it to me, and the silence will be a blessing. You are strong, but this is not strength, it is waste."
His Acting skill projected a terrifying duality, the utterly calm, almost bored practitioner of agony, and the faint, flickering ghost of a man who could show mercy if only the right words were spoken. "You don't have to be brave," he told Milton quietly. "You don't have to protect anyone. They won't protect you."
...
Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 7/10
- Agility: 7/10
- Perception: 8/10
- Stamina: 7/10
- Charm: 7/10
- Luck: 8/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl 4)
- Rifle (Lvl 4)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl 4)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl 4)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl 1)
- Sneaking (Lvl 4)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl 4)
- Poker (Lvl 4)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl 4)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl 1)
- Dead Eye (Lvl 3)
- Bow (Lvl 2)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl 3)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl 2)
- Crafting ((Lvl 4)
- Persuasion (Lvl 4)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl 4)
- Teaching (Lvl 2)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 10x10x10)
- Acting (Lvl 4)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
Money: 3,471 dollars and 10 cents
Inventory: 77,892 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 65 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Braithwaites Land Deed, & 1 Broken Pirate Sword
Bank: -