Swift and Black Dog

Chapter 5

Finch didn't take him directly to his apartment, but first pushed him past a group of female workers chatting loudly after get off work, and into a lively small restaurant.

The golden light of the afternoon shone in through the narrow windows, coloring the smog and swirls of steam that hung in the air.

The sound of crackling oil in the pot, the smell of cheap wine, the sound of cheerful conversation and the clear news broadcast on the radio swept over Jack.Finch shuttled among the crowded tables and busy waitresses. Although his machine gun was always close to his side, no one here seemed to pay much attention.He knew the place well, everyone here knew him.

Jack waited, absently listening to Finch talking to a thin old woman leaning against the dilapidated cash register, watching the customers come and go.

Most of the people here are working-class people, but judging by the missing fingers, legs, eyes and ears of the visitors, Jack thinks that most of the restaurant's customers should be veterans of the Revolutionary era.At one of the tables, several women in their 40s, with weather-stained faces, shared fried onion rings and fried rice, and were discussing enthusiastically whether the various hooks and tongs used to replace their own hands were any good.

Not far from Jack, two men were sitting together, sorting out political leaflets while drinking. The younger man between the two raised his milky white eyes injured by magic and glanced at Jack. The elder beside him He was massaging his bare knee due to the amputation of his right calf. The black prosthetic limb under his knee was shiny and protruding out of the tablecloth. A low-level prank.

"No one has come to inquire about it yet." The gray-haired old woman behind the cashier said to Finch, her tone was gentle, but her eyes were still scanning the entire restaurant shrewdly.Bad luck, Jack thought, if any idiot tried to eat a king's meal here.Despite her advanced age, the old woman was still almost as tall as Finch, and looked so unfriendly that she could knock a mule down with her bare hands.

She scratched the long gray scar on her chin.In addition to this one, Jack also found another scar protruding from the back of the woman's flower-carved choker necklace.Even with delicate wedding rings and prayer bracelets adorning her fingers and wrists, her folded arms look strong and powerful.

Her sharp nails were as bright as red razors.

Years before, a woman who looked like this woman had tended his wounds and had hidden him from the tyrant's Pho Guards.So despite Finch's landlady's fierce eyes, Jack slowly developed a good impression of her.

And she was not so friendly, just glanced at Jack over Finch's shoulder, and showed an expression of seeing trouble coming in.Her gray eyebrows frowned for a moment, and then stretched out again, forming a cold and hard line with her tightly pursed thin lips.

"Thank you, Linda, for keeping an eye out for me," Finch said.

"You're welcome." As long as the old woman faced Finch, her complexion became much gentler.

"Are you sure you have time next week to help collect signatures for the Redington petition?"

"Of course," Finch replied, with a smile that warmed Jack's eyes.It was obvious from a glance that he admired the strong gray-haired old woman, and that the woman loved Finch very much.

"Then I'll get you two some beer and dinner later?"

The woman's scrutiny eyes fell on Jack again.This time he's sure she recognizes him, but she doesn't tell, talking intently to Finch. "Remember to offer incense before going up."

"It will," Finch said.Then he beckoned to Jack to follow, and together they followed the woman through an iron gate to the busy kitchen behind.Jack walked against the hot air, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of chili oil and onions.

Six burly chefs in aprons, bare arms, and woven sandals sweated over the old-fashioned coal-fired stoves and steamers.

The chef was talking nonsense while laughing, and the fire occasionally swished up into the large frying pan, causing a cloud of oil stars to startle.At the other end of the sink, a young man with long hands and feet was tinkling to clean the dinner plates and soup pots in the bubbling muddy water.Only two chefs greeted Finch as he passed by, and the whole kitchen hardly had time to pay attention to him and Jack.

At the end of the kitchen there is an iron staircase that leads down to the dark basement and up to the second floor of the dining room.At the back of the stairs is a small stained table, standing in front of three tacky yellow bronze incense burners. On the wall behind the burners is an old revolutionary propaganda poster. When the revolutionary period just ended, This simple poster is printed and distributed in many places.

Warriors fight bloody

only for freedom

The bold capital letters in the center of the poster had faded to a blur of gray, and the brownish-yellow kitchen fumes had stained the rough white paper yellow.As they approached, Jack saw twelve photographs framed in red around the fuzzy lettering, and he recognized the people in them.

Jack saw Rachel's photo at the top of the circle of photos at a glance, and when he found Pete's arrogant face, his eyes immediately filled with anger.Pete has blond hair and is agile. Like Emilia, he has a prominent background, but he hates rejecting his relatives more than Emilia. His biological parents even wanted to suffocate him with pillows.Jake wonders if Pete's nature has been twisted since he killed his biological father and escaped from bondage, and none of them have ever realized it.

He has never had anything to do with gentleness, but his psychic powers are also sharp gold thorns and silver blades, which can absorb the soul and life of the enemy, showing the dark side of his personality to the fullest.

His goal was to spread terror, and he succeeded.The tyrant's henchmen looked down on him, saying he was nothing more than a mosquito, because his six-foot-tall body was so soft, and his limbs were slender, that he would suck people dry, and the people who died under his hands generally could only scream and be pierced by long needles .

But he was not as ruthless as he is now.

Jack remembered hearing Pete retching and sobbing one night, just after a series of brutal and bloody assassinations.

Pete always felt nauseous after he killed a woman, but that night, he didn't just vomit, he cried until he died.Bidol sneaked into the smelly broken toilet to comfort him.

In order to calm Pete down, Bidol told him how he had withdrawn from the pain of the undead after killing the mages and devouring their psychic power.

Jack clearly remembered that he put his ear on the thin door panel and listened to Bidor whisper all his experiences to Pete.Bidor told Pete about his past of digging psychic powers, telling him that he used to hide his real body in the mirror when the men played with his thin body in the brothel.He said that one day, he found that he could not only hide himself in the mirror, but also trap those beasts in the mirror, punish them and even kill them.He confesses to Pete that he stole his bone-forging psychic power from another mage, the first person he got trapped in the mirror at the brothel.Bidol jokes that he can use Pete's reflection in the toilet water to trap him, which finally makes Pete laugh.

Since then, Jack has determined that Pete's heart is full of Bidor.He was sure that every time Pete looked at Bidol intentionally or unintentionally, there was always a naked fascination on his face.

He was really wrong... so wrong.

Looking at the photos of himself when he was young, Jack showed a contemptuous look at his flamboyant smile.He was an asshole at the time, he was ashamed to see his portrait being tributed on this altar, he didn't fight for the freedom of all people at all, he was just a cynical and war-loving brat.

Then he found other people in this pile of battered photos: Quickit, Moon, Timmy, Emilia, Haddad, Pip, Fitz, Grant...they all looked very young in the photos .

His memory of most of his comrades-in-arms stayed at the moment of their tragic death, and he was so sorry for them.He remembered Mu En's death most clearly.The tyrant released several footage of Moon's brutal torture and slow death as a news video, which played twice a day for months in movie theaters across the country.Jack stared at the 14-year-old Munn in the old photos, seeing her drooping thick braids covering her small face, and the shy smile on her face. He just wanted to remember her like this, not the execution She was naked and bleeding to death on the stage.

Then he saw Bidol.He held a mask in his slender black hands, and the camera only showed half of the mask, but Jack still remembered that Bidor would wear a smooth and elegant human bone mask, and examine the world through the mask.The printed photo was very flat, his face was very rigid, and he froze at the moment of the photo, so Bidol looked far from Jack's memory of him.He looked much thinner than his impression, and also a little more angry than his impression.

Obviously, Bidol is unwilling to expose his true face to the camera.If he doesn't use a mask, he probably prefers to become a comrade-in-arms—or merge everyone's image.He is really happy when he does this, he will make his body as strong as Haddad, full of body hair, and then conjure up Emilia's delicate and beautiful face, Bidol likes to use transformation most To amuse everyone.

There are even times when Bidor plays Jack Swift better than Jack himself.

Finch, standing aside, picked up a board of used paper matches and lit a few pieces of amber resin. After a while, fragrant blue smoke rose slowly from the copper burner, intertwined and wrung each other. Into strands of light ribbons.Jack rubbed his eyes, pretending they were wet and red from the smoke.

"Sorry..." Finch's calm and deep voice interrupted Jack's sad thoughts.

"What the hell are you apologizing for?" Jack snapped at him.

Finch didn't answer, just looked at Jack's face for a moment, then handed him the match.

"Thanks," Jack said awkwardly, feeling that his tantrum just now was unreasonable.

Jack ignited three other sticks of resin, and when the fragrant smoke coiled around his fingers, he didn't hold it, but let the smoke be swept away by the slowly rotating fan on the ceiling.

Then, Jack followed Finch and followed him up the iron ladder.

-TBC-