Poison City

 

Marcus had absolutely no idea what “Blood Rainbow” was, but his gut told him it was nothing good, as the mobs surrounding him got into a state of panic and started scattering all around the place at the mere mention of it. Even the man with a snake head tattooed on his left face, injured and weak as he was, still ran like hell.

 

Marcus looked up, against the complaints and protest from his neck muscles. The sky was coated in a bone chilling red, and almost right above the area of the docks, stood a blood-red arch. The body of the arch seemed to be made of thick, close to liquefied air, or some kind of slowly flowing steam, and the spine of it had most of the red - it was so concentrated that it became slightly dark, just like stains of blood after being left in the air for a while.

 

Only a moron would stay in the open like this, even if one might not know from what the others were trying to hide. Following the footsteps of a few of the mobsters, Marcus stumbled and crawled into a dark corner he could not see clearly, and as it turned out, it was a dark tunnel full of garbage and reeking of a foul smell. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, he had to muster up what was left of his energy and pushed himself in.

 

His phone was not lost during the fight, yet it was not intact either - the screen was cracked, and the body was bent. Its screen flickered as Marcus’ trembling fingers tried to dial the emergency number. 

 

Marcus tapped three pressure points near his abdomen using the last of his Qi to stop the dagger wound on his lower left waist from bleeding - he was not good at it, yet it worked. Probably it was because the wound was not that deep to begin with.

 

The numbness and chill from the toxins brought to him by those metal shards and whatever that dagger was coated with seemed to have crawled deeper into his body - he could even feel it in his stomach and his guts. There was no pain, which was probably more dangerous, he thought to himself. Maybe he could use some right now, to wake him up.

 

Marcus thought he was already at his wit and power’s end, yet he managed to drag himself deeper into the tunnel. He finally got all three digits of the emergency number, and he muttered to the phone, using it like a handheld radio: “This is Detective Marcus Cai from the 17th District, I am injured and currently hiding under a tunnel under the Mud River docks. Please come as soon as possible - ” The phone died before he could finish the sentence, and there was no way for him to know if the operator heard him.

 

“Fuck! I just heard something, did the cop follow us here?” A man’s voice came from the deeper parts of the tunnel. A flashlight flashed around from there as the man spoke.

 

“Go check it out then.” This was a wheezing man’s voice, sounded just like the man with a snake head tattooed on his left face, but Marcus could not be sure: “And see if my brother came.”

 

“Why? I mean - how?” The first man asked, with audible fear in his voice: “We - we should at least wait till the Blood Rainbow goes away - ”

 

“Get! Go now!” The wheezing man grunted.

 

“But - we only have one flashlight, and it’s completely dark here - ”

 

The wheezing man panted, then after a short moment he relented: “Fine. We’ll go out when the rainbow’s gone.”

 

Though Marcus had absolutely no intention of getting anywhere closer to these two, he was still too close to the entrance, and anyone, or anything, could instantly spot him just by looking in from outside the tunnel entrance. With one foot at a time and his hands clutching the wall and his muscles not wanting to listen or move, he moved a tiny bit deeper, and deeper. Eventually he found a concave spot in the tunnel, where he could sink his body in to better hide from anyone else in the tunnel with him.

 

The beam from the flashlight lit up the wall on the right side to Marcus, and he could see enlarged shadows of an elbow and a leg on the edge of the circle of light projected onto the wall. He was close enough to these two men, so close he could hear the heavy breathing from the man whom he injured during the fight, and the anxious pacing of another.

 

“I - how long do we have to wait?” The uninjured man asked.

 

“Patience, what are you so uppity about?” The other man scoffed: “You’re not the one with injuries here.”

 

“I’m more - more worried about the traitor, hate to see him die just so easily - ”

 

“He’s dead for sure.” The injured man said: “The cop was carrying him, so he must have got hit by my brother’s darts as well - even the cop full of Shaqi didn’t stand a chance against our concoction. So even if the darts didn’t kill him, the Blood Rainbow will.”

 

The other man went silent, then after a short moment, he asked: “Sir - how - how do we know it’ll stop? You know, when - ”

 

“Where - where are they?” A hoarse, shaking and gurgling female voice echoed in the tunnel. Marcus felt that the skin on his arms, back and face tightened immediately, all of his hairs on his exposed skin stood up straight, and his fingers lost all feeling for a moment because he was clenching the wall and pushing his body against it too hard.

 

“Who - who was there?” The uninjured man asked with a trembling voice, but his voice was way too weak that even Marcus had a bit of trouble hearing him clearly.

 

“Sssh!” The injured man immediately signaled his cohort to shut up. His hand waved in front of the flash light and caused the giant spot of light on the wall to flicker.

 

“Where are they?” The female crying voice echoed once more, seemingly getting closer to their position: “Where are they? I can’t find them…”

 

Marcus tried his hardest to push himself into the wall to minimize the chances of him being spotted. Something in his jacket felt warm, but he did not have the energy or heart to check. 

 

The sound of something dragging on the ground came from somewhere deeper in the tunnel, and the two men seemed to be holding their breath as well. “Fucking morons.” Marcus thought to himself while holding his own hand over his nose and mouth and staring at the giant spot of light on the wall: “Turn the light off! Turn it off!”

 

“Where are they?” The female voice came closer, seemingly right where the two men were. “Where are they? I can’t find them - where are they? My… my eyes… where are they?”

 

One of the men by the flashlight dropped onto the ground. A shadow flashed across the ring of light projected on the wall, with the rough shape of a hand and an arm. Then came the muffled screams of a struggling man. The scream became louder and more desperate, along with the sound of clothes, flesh and tendon being torn, and wet, soft objects falling onto the ground and into shallow water puddles.

 

Marcus’ gums and jaws became sore from his grinding and clenching his teeth, as he watched the shadows of spilled liquid and organs flashed in the ring of light.

 

“Where’s my eyes? My eyes?! Where’s my eyes? ” The female voice sounded like she was crying while in a desperate search for something: “My eyes - please… give me back my eyes…”

 

Just this moment, the injured man, for some reason, let out a whimper. Though extremely faint and barely audible, it still attracted whatever it was that silenced his cohort. He tried to make a hail mary attempt at an escape. But his body came only as far as the front of the flashlight, projecting his shadow on the wall.

 

But that was as far as he could go - the shadow of an entity with the shape of a long-haired upper half of a female body and two slender arms appeared on the edge of the ring of light and grappled on to the man, one of its long arms penetrated his abdomen and the other went into his throat through his mouth. His body twitched and shook, then fell onto the ground on his back, leaving only the entity’s shadow in the ring of light.

 

“My eyes - please, my eyes…” The female cry continued, as the entity pulled out different things from beneath it, held them up high and shook them in an attempt to sense and feel if something would drop from them.

 

Marcus could not move a muscle where he stood. His entire body froze, though soreness was burning in every part of his body, he could not even connect to any part of it. Luckily, his breathing was still light, and his lungs and throat seemed almost frozen as well that he could not make any sound even if he tried.

 

“My eyes … my eyes…” The sound of dragging occurred once again, the shadow of that entity moved out of the ring of light, and to Marcus’ relief away from the position of him.

 

The cries went further and further away, while Marcus remained where he was. And when he could not hear it anymore, he finally inhaled through his mouth to fill his empty lungs. It was at this moment, all the pent-up exhaustion, fatigue, soreness and pain hit him all at once.

 

When his bottom hit the dirty water, he saw someone walking toward him. For some reason, it looked just like Sitch.