Maritsa considered that. Merc could feel the fear that gave her. How would they survive? There were few legitimate jobs to be had in town.
“Let’s get through the problem of the dad and daughter before worrying about what comes after. Things may just take care of themselves.”
Maritsa nodded and started to cry. She held a little towel to her face. “What can I say? You saved my Pablo again. Again you were where you needed to be for us. How is that possible? How can I ever thank you?”
“It’s not necessary.” He stood. “Thank you for breakfast. I’m going back to my room to sleep.” He told her where he was staying. “Come get me if I’m needed. Pablo, you need some sleep too.”
Pablo nodded, looking sullen. Merc knew his feelings were hurt because he couldn’t get anyone to believe him. Maybe the truth would come out one day. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Merc was rooting for the latter.
3
Merc kept himself hidden from the villagers as he walked around the meeting in the town square later that day. Two coffins were on display in the middle of the gathering. He took the pulse of the gathering. The residents were angry, sad, and afraid. They talked about how this crime would be added to the murals of all the other gang crimes since the newest group had put its thumb on the town. This heinous crime would be celebrated. They needed a way to defend themselves, but couldn’t without incurring the wrath of the gang. Even assembling in the square to mourn their two lost citizens would have repercussions.
He heard a comment as he passed the edge of the group that they should all be careful what they say around Señor Merc—he was likely one of the jawbreakers working for the mine.
Merc sighed. He was so much worse than that. If they only knew—even Maritsa would shun him.
He went to the jungle via a trail that led off the east side of town. He’d been avoiding the death pits ever since his return. While he hadn’t been back in years, he’d kept up with the town’s reclamation of them following the lengthy peace negotiations the Colombian government had conducted with area cartels, rebels, and guerrillas. Seven years ago, he’d reported the existence of the mass graves just a mile out of town, but the government hadn’t been able to deal with them until the peace settlements were finalized. It was late last year before experts had gotten in to clear out the big trenches. They’d even had to build a road to bring in the big equipment needed to do the job.
The path he was on widened. A sickly sweet smell teased his nose. The breeze stilled, intensifying the stink. This wasn’t the scent of decaying vegetation, a natural by-product of the jungle’s life cycles. No, he was near the death pits. And though the bodies were long gone, the stink could still be detected by a nose as sensitive as his.
He stepped out of the bush into a wide area devoid of plant growth that framed three deep trenches—the mass graves of Valle de Lágrimas. At least victims of the area’s violence, possibly hundreds of them from this location alone, had been exhumed. The remains taken from these and other mass graves in the region were being studied at various crime labs and universities in Colombia and elsewhere, fueling entire forensic careers as thousands of families waited to learn the fate of their loved ones lost in the decades-long conflict.
Merc shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the cavernous pits. While the veneer of civility once again reigned in the area, all the same illegal activity continued unabated—cocaine was still being processed in the jungle, gold was still being mined illegally, and females were still being sex-trafficked.
The peace agreements had been good for business.
At least, they had for Omni business.
After a while, he headed back to town. As he returned to his small rented room, he noticed another of those gang murals and paused to look at it. While he stood there, a girl and her kid brother passed him. The girl looked to be in her mid-teens, maybe the same age as Pablo’s friend Daniela was. Maybe she was the same age Pablo’s mother had been when she left town all those years ago.
This girl looked scared. Following on her heels was a man in his early twenties, taunting her, offering to give her what she really wanted.
Merc could feel the mounting tension that filled her as other men followed her into the alley. Maybe her home was near, and the alley was a shortcut to it. He hoped she’d make her way there before the storm broke.
Or maybe this was the day her luck ran out.
Liege’s constant admonishments to not interfere with the regulars, to not mess with their free will, whether of good or ill intent, to keep a low profile…all of that went from Merc’s mind as the men laughed and surrounded the girl. They ripped the bag of groceries she was carrying, spilling its contents across the dirt road. The girl shoved the little boy out of arm’s reach. He ducked his way around some of the men, who tried to catch him, as others pushed the girl into a nearby hovel.
Merc heard one scream from her. Only one. He followed the energy of that scream to its source, traveling astrally. The girl was being held on the filthy floor as the men tore at her clothes. The man who’d started the whole confrontation was kneeling between her legs, his jeans halfway down his thighs. His friends were urging him to hurry up so they’d all get their turns before they had to kill her father, who surely was coming for her.
Merc pulled his energy back into himself. He went to the house where the girl was held and stood in the doorway, feeling no emotion whatsoever for what he was about to do, though it violated the tenets of the Legion. What good was being a mutant if you couldn’t protect those who needed it?
Focusing on the guy crawling over the girl, Merc sent a kinetic wave of energy between his legs. The guy screamed and rolled off her. The others jumped back, startled and frightened. Merc froze them in place so that he could get the girl out of there.
Holding his hand out, he mentally urged the girl to come to him. She scrambled free, trying to hold her tattered clothes to her body. Merc was too loaded up with weapons to give her his shirt, so he ordered one of her would-be rapists to give up his. Merc pulled it over her, then sent her out. Her father was storming toward them.
“Gather your groceries,” Merc said. “Tell your father to leave this to me.”
Merc stepped outside as the girl ran to her father and spoke to him in an animated way, pointing toward Merc. Her dad ignored the warning and kept coming. A simple compulsion stopped him. Merc exchanged a long look with him before sending him to follow his daughter home.
Inside the hovel, the first guy was still screaming and clutching his balls. Merc focused on the rest of his crew. The mental freeze he’d put on the group was still in place. Some had their hands on their dicks; some had their hands up in the air, as they had when they’d urged their leader on. Even their faces were locked in the last expression they’d worn before Merc’s freeze took them over. Their eyes, though, were unrestricted and watched Merc with confusion and terror.
Their leader was now writhing on the floor in excruciating pain. His balls were red and swollen. Merc considered what to do with him and his men. He could compel them to attack each other. He could reach into their hearts and end them, quietly, one by one. He could issue an electromagnetic pulse that would fry their brains. The odd thing was—and it was a strange time to have this realization—Merc was tired of violence. Violence only made more violence. In a place as hostile as this, it was the one thing in great supply.