"Where is everyone?!"
He covered his gag back up. "Now, we are just going to be discussing business right now. Sevika is on the other table beside you. So is . . . eh."
Ekko saw Sevika and Heimerdinger also strapped up.
"Now, you see? I was trying to make plans to take down all those guards to get the primo spot. Thing is, that muscle wasn't enforcers that could be paid off. Made it tougher. But then, I start seeing all the pretty bugs flying around it, the muscles all gone, and I hear the big news. The Firelights are joining into the shimmer trade."
This guy loved to hear himself talk. Jinx isn't there. All he remembered was someone kicking the door open, laughing, some kind of gas, and then it was lights out. It got Sevika too.
"So I got this nice little contract here, to make things a lot easier for you."
"You are an absolute disgrace to us, Smeech!" Heimerdinger yelled.
Smeech. Oh yeah, he knew that name. He was supposed to have gone out with the other chembarons though. Just like Heimerdinger, somehow, he evaded death.
"I don't need anything from you, Dinger, I wouldn't involve yourself if I were you," he warned him before shoving the contract back in Ekko's face. "Now, here's a fun game. Your going to sign over your entire factory, and the Last Drop. And whatever hand you use, will be the arm you lose."
What? Ekko watched as a much bigger thug came with a gigantic axe. Fuck!
"Now, do you want to sign with your left hand, or your right hand?" he asked. "Or, you know what? Why don't you make it be Sevika? I kind of owe that bitch. What d'ya say? I'll give you a whole 24 hours to even move your stuff out of my businesses." He lowered his gag. "Which one? And no, it can't be the arm that's biomechanical. Or would you rather it be a leg?"
He held out a writing utensil and placed it in front of his face. "So you want your left, your right, or make Sevika lose her other arm?"
I am so stuck! There wasn't anything he could do. They were all bound and gagged. They were all probably going to die. Less than one day, and I'm already dead for choosing this. But it wasn't because of his choice, it was the damn shimmer factory. Any Firelights out there right now were probably even under fire.
"Come on, pick!" Smeech was getting impatient.
"You are so horrible!"
"You need to stop using magic to break free, they just strap you back!" Smeech yelled back at Heimerdinger. "Spirit of Piltover is nothing." He grinned at Ekko. "Spirit of Zaun though? There's a fighter. You want me to pick?"
Damn. "Left!"
"Really?" He sounded surprised. "You really don't want me to off Sevika's other arm? You want yours lopped off?"
"I don't want it lopped off, but I'm not gonna make someone else lose theirs!"
Smeech just shook his head. "Look little Firebug. It's not being brave time. You don't get bonus points for brave speeches."
Ekko tried to control his breathing as he saw the axe being raised above him.
"You'll realize it soon enough, once you've just got one arm. Now, sign. If you don't? I'll chop off the legs too. I'll chop off everything until you sign this contract, one by one."
Ekko felt his left arm getting free.
"Any last words before you lose that arm?" Smeech asked.
"You look like you lost this game four times."
Smeech didn't smile. "These were on purpose. Little shit. Nobody can take me on like this. You won't see me being easy prey like Dinger over there. By the way? Since we are chatting, and you are about to die, don't worry. I'm already making deals with your Firelights that were at my new factory purchase."
Damn! What did he do?!
"Don't worry, not many, but uh, I got the location of all my stuff, along with the location of where to find you, and the rest of your little bug crew. Man, people really do speak when you flash the right thing in front of them. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's maiming others until they speak. It's just, whatever. But hey, if it makes you feel better, one of them is singing like a songbird for everybody else's safety. Not a single bug's been squished yet. Of course, you know the life expectancy of a bug. Ready?"
He held the contract out. "Three second countdown. If you don't want to sign it, then I see a little green bug that's going to lose one of it's legs. One. Two."
Ekko moved his arm. The chances he was even going to get out of this alive was probably impossible, but getting butchered before he died would just be more painful. There was always a slim chance he could get out too.
Scar would inspect it tomorrow and find Jinx. Her future now was unknown too, but, it wouldn't be good. Heimerdinger. Sevika. They would be going down with him too. They were all going down.
They held up his left arm. He signed the damn paper. He took the deepest breath and closed his eyes, grunting and waiting for the pain that was about to hit! Shit, shit, shit!
The sound of three swift gunshots filled the air. Ekko opened his eyes at that sound and watched as the guy with the axe fell down with a hole in his head.
"Ah, fuck, it's you!" Smeech turned around.
Ekko couldn't see well, but he could hear it.
"Mmm, I was thinking the same thing. I mean, there's better ways to spend the day then dealing with you."
Jinx! How? Sevika didn't explain a letter. She didn't become PJ. She knew to come there, to an old chem-baron that shouldn't even exist anymore?
"And threat of limbs? You don't get more old-fashioned than that. Where's the imagination, the lure?"
He heard a gun pop off a couple times again, each one being fed with a gurgle or sound of someone dying. She was making every shot. It's what she did. She was an assassin.
"You're starting to piss me off!" Smeech yelled. "You don't want to challenge me, it's going to take more than one shot, blue-haired freak."
Damn. Ekko could see the chem-baron's biochemical arm turn into some kind of half grating, half whipping device.
"Hiding around my walls too? You aren't going to strike me long range, Baby Blue."
This time, he could see a bullet in his frame of view come close to Smeech. Smeech backed away more, getting ready with his own weapon. "You have no idea who you are dealing with! I am running this joint now. I've got fifty guys out here to take you on."
"Forty-five."
Ekko heard three more gunshots.
"Forty-two."
Then there was a round house of shooting Ekko could hear, they were shooting back at her. Ekko tried to follow what was happening, until his eyes set on . . . his own Firelight. One of the people that were at the village. They were exchanging fire too. No, two. He spotted two Firelights.
He could see Sevika standing now but running for cover with Heimerdinger. That's when he realized his chains had been snapped off too. He moved underneath the table he had been on, to avoid the fire.
While doing that, he bumped into her.
Her look. Half dead, half alive. Just like the Jinx he remembered from that time. She just looked away.
Sevika lied, there was a weapon in that stack of stuff. But? If there hadn't been, they'd all be gone by now. "He knows where my village is at." He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't.
Jinx looked back toward him. "You want me to kill everyone here then, Boss?"
Boss. Yeah, she found that letter on her own somehow. If she did turn to PJ first, she must have figured out things. He heard a bullet too close for comfort. "There are so many innocent people at my village." She could . . . "Can you maim them?"
"Are you serious?" she answered back dully. "That's a half-hearted way to do things. If even one makes it out and shares information, the place is toast. Everyone's dead. You failed." The look in her eye. "If it was someone else, I'd already say it was too late, but Smeech talks his ass off, he can never hold anything back about future cards. No one's struck yet." She started to shoot toward her left, killing two more people that were shooting the closest to Sevika and Heimerdinger. "Probably."
"That was close!" A relieved Heimerdinger yelled.
"We need to go!" Sevika yelled.
Jinx just looked at him.
Waiting. Waiting for his answer. "There are 42 people out there," he whispered. Like a bad dream, any of them could share information out there about his village. He even saw two of his Firelights out there.
"Thirty eight," she whispered correctly to him.
What was he supposed to say? Go out and kill 38 people for him? If he didn't and they left, they could attack his village though. The safety of so many. Last time she protected the village, she just did it. Took her mercenaries and just did it. She was going to make him say it. "Why do I have to give the order?"
"Because you're the boss?" she said confused.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Smeech chanted.
Jinx didn't move.
"You aren't going to defeat me, Baby Blue," he teased her more. "One little girl. A lot of people to take out. This isn't it either, I've got more, lots more! I've been slowly taking this all over. I've even made my way into Piltover itself. From drugs to meds, doesn't matter. It's already mine."
Jinx still didn't say anything back.
"Why are you even involved? Nobody's got a use for you. Silco's been dead for two years."
While he went on talking, Ekko tried to think. What would be the best way to handle this? I only ever killed in self defense. Gunning everyone down is not self defense. I've gotta think! Jinx is the vaccine to shimmer, if I let anything happen to her, that's it. If I just get her and us out, then my home is gonna get attacked. He didn't want the Firelights to pay.
Although, Smeech said one of the Firelights was 'singing like a bug', but he saw two there. So was he saying one but meant two, or did one of them betray him? Or were there more than one, did he bring them to the factory?
"I'm rrrreeeeally not good at reading minds," Jinx warned him.
The bullets were getting closer. They had to move. "Look?" How to explain. "I need you to keep yourself safe, but I don't want any of them to reach my village, but I also don't want you to massively kill all of them. I have two allies out there with the enemy, maybe more, with one trying to save the others, and another one that . . . I don't know, and I don't know the difference."
Jinx just stared at him. She held up her gun. He thought she'd aim it at him, but she didn't.
Hmm. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Jinx was still staring at him. "Finding myself in the Last Drop."
"No, I mean, from the last two years," he asked.
Her mouth twitched. "Vi. With an enforcer, of all things. Just like Sevika said. She was trying to explain, but I don't? Then, your group. Stealing Vi away from me. Maybe?" She looked toward her leg.
Right, the therapy notes. The only proof she had that she actually saw Vi, was a wound.
"Anything else?" he pressed.
She sighed. "Mission. Seeing Vi with an enforcer again. My new boss. Being done. Then, not being done." Her eyes were moving all around.
She knew Caitlyn's job? He knew about Vi being mad about the pick up, and now he could really see why that was a very seriously bad move. With Vi, back then, maybe they could have worked it out. But he worked with the info he had at the time, he couldn't apologize for that.
But, yeah, that would have seriously set her off. I mean, still, what kind of Zaunite . . . No, no, Ekko! That is the past. You know your spot in the present. Work it out later.
Right now, there was no gunfire. Everyone was playing quiet. It was like nothing was going to happen until he said it. A couple of annoying teases from Smeech, that was all that was happening.
"Are we killing everyone? Are we sneaking out? What's the plan?" she asked again.
"I already told you what I'm working with," he said. "Let me think."
"Boy oh boy!" Smeech was getting closer to where they were. "Don't you hate it when you are trying to smash a hiding bug, but they just won't make their annoying chirping so you can blast them? It takes forever to find them, but you do eventually find them. Aha! Ah, of course you're gone. Fine! If we have to keep playing smash the bug for hours, then we will! No one's leaving this room! You aren't, and neither are my people. We'll all just wait here for each other. We'll shit and we'll starve right here until somebody makes a move!"
Jinx started to dig into her pockets and lowered her hood. She started braiding her hair.
That would take forever, but it pointed out the point. Stalling wasn't going to work. He didn't even leave far with her, they were right underneath the table he was on top of. Nobody could see only because of a brown tarp over that table. Probably made clean up easier.
I have to pick some kind of choice. I have to make Jinx . . . He definitely did not want to say it, but they couldn't just hang around. So? "How did you know where to go?"
She glanced toward him as she continued braiding her hair. "I didn't, I just went to their favorite haunts, he was number two I went to."
Right. She wouldn't know that he died, she would just come straight to one of the old chem-baron's places. "Where'd you get the gun?"
Oh, she was definitely annoyed, but like Sevika said, she wasn't saying anything out of term. "It was in my hand, probably left by Sevika. It's Pow-Pow-Pow." She chuckled. "Pow 3. Gotta have a backup in this business." She switched to the other side of her head, to get started on her other braid.
Yep, Sevika snuck it in. What do I do? I don't want to use Jinx like that. It sounds like Sevika and Heimerdinger moved. No one's moving out of here, so at least the village is fine. For now, but he couldn't stay there forever either.
Should not, Ekko. I can't. He was supposed to be helping her, and making her take lives like Silco made her do, that wasn't right!
But? If I don't, someone is going to get to my village! And he couldn't kill all of these people, for all of his people. Even if he took a gun. Silco's weapon. I can't let her become mine, not the same way.
He looked back toward her. Hard to believe in her head, he had just clocked her with a pipe and beat the shit of her. She was just right next to him, fixing her hair. "You really got the whole boss thing?"
Still, there was her unhappy look at him. "Yeah. Silco says it, it's to be."
Ugh, he hated the way she said that. "No questions at all?"
"No." She dug into her pocket and started to add some kind of gear to her hair. Maybe to tighten the braid, or aesthetics. He didn't know.
At that moment, he didn't feel like he knew anything. Can't hide forever. Think, Ekko! Science was his bag, not this. We are all trapped inside. If we move wrong, we are dead. I don't know where Sevika and Heimerdinger are hiding. If I stick my head out, they'll see us and kill us. Even if we do get out, my village is now under fire. His best bet?
Was Jinx.
But.
If he gave that order to take out everyone there to her, what kind of person would that make him?