Marquise Sees Everything.
CRACK!
The sound of a whip split the forest, echoing through the dead air.
The trees stood hollow and lifeless, their branches like blackened veins against a sky with no stars, no moon, only a flat, endless darkness.
A line of dim lamp posts was the only light within, cutting through the forest, stretching along a dirt trail that vanished into drifting mist.
The light didn’t bring comfort to the unending anxiety of the forest. It only made the fear easier to see.
CRACK!
Closer now.
Two silhouettes bled out of the haze.
The one standing looked wrong for a place like this. He wore sweatpants and a t-shirt, clothes meant for rest, not this.
CRACK!
The whipping was too close to ignore, too apparent to look away from.
The fabric of the first man’s clothing sagged with wear.
There were rips along the seams, holes at the edges, stains that had long since settled in.
And yet, nothing about him felt careless.
From behind, his posture held straight. Balanced. Every motion was controlled, measured.
His hair sat at his shoulders, not freshly cut, but maintained.
In his hand, a leather whip hung slack.
It looked ready to fall apart. Frayed strands. Cracked length. Like one more strike should’ve been its last.
It wasn’t.
CRACK!
In front of him, a man was tied to a tree.
What remained of him barely held together.
His skin was drawn tight over bone, scars layered without pattern, and dirt was grounded deep into his flesh. Where the other man was composed, this one was unraveling.
The whip fell still now.
The standing man stepped forward and crouched, tapping the other’s cheek.
“Hey now,” he said, almost gently. “You know we can’t have that.”
No response.
His hand snapped across the man’s face. Once. Twice. Efficient. Then water, thrown without hesitation. Food followed, forced in with the same practiced rhythm.
None of it was rushed. All of it was done in a controlled fashion, like a routine.
When he finished, he leaned in, pressing his ear to the man’s chest.
He listened.
Silence stretched,
Then.
Thump.
…Thump.
A breath left him, light and relieved.
He pulled back, a quiet chuckle slipping through.
“You had me worried there, Dom,” he said. “Thought you finally gave out on me.”
A slow, ragged breath answered him.
The man referred to as Dom lifted his head, just barely. His vision was unfocused, catching only fragments as the other man turned and walked toward a nearby stump.
His eyes then drifted past the man, out into the fog-choked trail, where the lamplight dissolved into nothing.
He scanned his surroundings with hope rather than confusion.
It was always like this. Always the same path. The same mist. The same return.
A loop with no edges.
Dom sagged against the bindings after seeing nothing had changed.
Still no escape.
The man sat on the tree stump, one leg crossing over the other, facing Dom with a patient smile.
A break, but for who?
His posture relaxed, almost refined as he watched Dom the way someone might study a painting.
Admiring.
Judging.
Waiting for something in it to change.
The smile lingered, then thinned the longer he analyzed.
His eyes narrowed, just slightly, as if realizing something.
When he spoke again, it was slower.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, an understanding chuckle as he lowered his head, shaking it slightly in disappointment.
“Trying to forget. Let it blur. Go numb.”
A pause, as if thinking about what to say next.
He looked up again with a sigh.
“But I won’t let you.”
His eyes lifted.
“You don’t get to forget what you did to my sister.”
A dry, broken wheeze escaped Dom, something between a cough and a laugh.
“I… don’t even know… your name…”
Each word scraped on the way out. His head dropped again, breath hitching, body giving what little it had left just to speak.
“It doesn’t matter,”
The man rose. Unhurried.
The whip dragged lightly behind him as he stepped forward, closing the distance.
He stopped just inches away, meeting Dom’s eyes without wavering.
“Do you even feel bad for what you’ve done?” he asked.
Dom’s breathing slowed.
The man’s eyes stayed steady, failing to blink even once. Hopeful of something, yet hungry for an answer.
And then—
Dom smiled.
It was small and weak. But it was real.
“I… would be…” he swallowed, breath catching, “ecstatic… to do it all again.”
A faint, broken wheeze of a laugh followed.
There, Dom showed the man who he truly was.
Dominique Romero, Ursinnia’s T-Cell as they called him, could never be killed so easily.
The man inhaled slowly, closing his eyes.
His posture straightened.
When he opened them again, he cracked a smile of his own.
Not wide. Not wild.
Satisfied.
“Just what I wanted to hear.”
His arm drew back as he prepared another beating.
But it suddenly stopped.
The motion died in place.
He pulled again. Nothing.
A third time—
Still nothing.
Confused and anxious, he sharply turned to his arm.
“Who the fu—”
“Dominique Romero, right?”
The voice cut in clean, ignorant of the man’s existence and focusing only on Dom.
His voice was heavy, and stern; like he already knew the answer, but was required to ask.
His clothes wrapped around him like a dark shroud, not too tight to outline his figure but not too baggy to slow him down. It was Utilitarian in a way.
His eyes were tired, not like that of a hard working man, but a man who was constantly exposed to more than he should be exposed to. Those eyes told a story.
The stranger then released the man’s arm, dropping it like something that didn’t matter.
“Marquise sent me,” he continued. “Word is, that girl you killed was more important than people thought. So, your sentence changed from life to death.”
A small shrug.
He didn’t wait for his question to be verified, he continued with the procedure.
“You know how it goes. Consequences of your actions or some shit.”
Dominique lifted his head and laughed. It was a dry, ruined sound, clawing its way out of his chest.
“Marquise… sent you?” he wheezed. “If I could die right now… It would be from laughter.”
The stranger drew a pistol from his waistband. The motion was so swift, it was as if the gun spawned in his hand.
He pressed it against Dominique’s head, his attitude unchanged.
“How about you die from a bullet instead?”
“NO!”
The other man shoved him back, hard enough to break the aim and move him away from Dominique.
“YOU DON’T GET TO TAKE THIS FROM ME!”
The stranger recovered instantly, swinging the gun toward him next.
“Stay out of this,” he said flatly. “Or I’ll kill you too.”
The emptiness in his eyes made the threat feel practiced.
Real.
“YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!” The other snapped back, his voice echoing through the forest.
Something about the stranger shifted ever so slightly in that moment, but the others were too focused on their own goals to notice.
“That girl you spoke of? She was my sister, Samara Argine.”
Dominique’s eyes lit up upon hearing that.
Samara? Samara Argine?
Dominique thought to himself. The memories began to flood in. The plan, the shooting, her accidental death.
However, the stranger’s eyes felt more intense, albeit still empty of emotion. It was a clear sign that he didn’t care and his patience was running thin.
That, Caspian noticed.
“Listen, My name is Caspian Argine. I sent myself here so I could handle this fucker on my own. Just tell Marquise I’ll handle it,”
Dominique’s eyes opened slightly more than usual as he listened in.
Only for a second, his vision aligned and cleared, finally seeing the man that’s been torturing him to no end.
“So… that’s Caspian Argine… Another villain trying to play a hero.”
Dominique chuckled silently at his thoughts as he let the other two bicker.
“I know who you are. I know what you did. And I know, that was stupid.” he muttered. “I don’t have time to argue with you. I got a job to do and what Marquise says, goes. He has eyes all over this place, so I’m not leaving until my job is finished.”
He turned back to Dominique, lifting his gun once more.
BANG!
The shot tore through the forest. However, Dominique remained breathing.
Caspian had moved first.
The whip cracked across the stranger’s arm, throwing the shot wide.
Another gunshot answered instantly.
BANG!
No words, no warning, no chances.
Caspian dropped to the ground, whip falling from his hands as blood pooled from his lifeless body.
Dominique began laughing again.
“Seems like you’re the dumb one here… Marquise has eyes everywhere…right? Rogue…”
BANG!
Another shot rang.
There was silence.
Then cackling.
It spread quickly, twisting into laughter.
The stranger bent forward as it overtook him, breathless and uneven. The adrenaline hit all at once, hot, electric, overwhelming. Two bodies. Two kills.
And he loved it.
His laughter climbed higher, cracking apart into something unstable.
Tears blurred his vision as he threw his head back, grinning wildly at the night sky above him.
Then he finally saw it.
Stone.
Not sky.
A jagged rocky ceiling loomed overhead, unmoving. Just high enough not to notice immediately.
The laughter died instantly.
His smile faltered.
His eyes slowly lowered from the ceiling, his breathing hitching as the panic began to set in.
He looked at his surroundings.
The trees. Too evenly spaced. Too perfect.
“shit…”
His gaze drifted toward the trail that cut through them too perfectly.
It looked maintained. Preserved.
Like something designed to look abandoned.
“Shit…”
His breathing worsened.
His eyes snapped upward again, tracing the smooth curves of the ceiling stone
Carved unnaturally. Artificial.
“SHIT!”
The pistol slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a dull clatter.
Nausea twisted through him hard enough to make him stumble.
He caught himself against a tree, pulse hammering as the world tilted sideways.
This wasn’t a forest.
It was a cage.
But his mission was completed. He could go home.
He staggered forward, boots dragging him down the path through instinct alone.
Leaves crunched beneath him.
Pebbles scattered into the dark.
And with every step, memories surfaced.
The orphanage.
The countless murders.
The door that locked him in this place.
He marched until his legs finally gave out, hitting the ground hard, and collapsing into the dying leaves.
The forest felt endless.
His stomach knotted tight as he stared upward at the cavern ceilings.
“Marquise has eyes everywhere…right? Rogue…”
The scene played on loop, overtaking his mind as he stared off into nothing.
“Rogue…”
The word played again and again.
“Rogue…”
It was too familiar. He had heard it spat at him before.
Then–
“Joshua. Report.”
It was Marquise. Even through the static, the impatience in his voice bled through clear as day.
“Joshua,” he said again, sharper now. “Report immediately, or face punishment.”
Joshua’s trembling hand rose slowly to his ear.
The communication device that he had forgotten was there.
He took a deep breath, forcing composure and pressed against it.
“T-This is Joshua. Reporting, Sir.”
He spoke cautiously, but at alert, like a soldier ready for duty.
“What’s going on down there, inmate?”
Joshua opened his mouth.
“I did the…”
His words died instantly.
Inmate. Rogue.
It all clicked. Like one full story.
The court trail.
Meeting Marquise and Frederick.
The facility.
The gun.
All Marquise’s doing.
Finally, he could feel the cold metal upon his neck again.
The collar that was placed on him when he arrived.
It was the same collar Dominique and Caspian wore.
So ordinary. So constant.
He had stopped noticing it entirely; forgetting what they were even for.
“You did what, inmate?”
Marquise’s tone changed. A tone he feared.
It sounded almost gentle—the kind of voice a snake might use before sinking its fangs in.
It reminded Joshua of why they wore the collars.
He knew what was coming.
He hoped it would be quick.
“...I did what you told me to–”
Beep.
BOOM!
The sound thundered through the cavern.
Then—
There was laughter.
Loud. Genuine.
Two men sat before a wall of monitors, the screens flickering with footage of the forest below.
They could see it all, the killings, the panic, the unraveled mind of the inmate painted on the ground.
One of them laughed so hard he nearly doubled over in his chair.
“Marquise,” Frederick wheezed, wiping at his eyes, “you’re one cold bastard.”
He patted the other man’s shoulder as he got up from his chair, leaving the room.
He still chuckled, even as he left, like he’d just witnessed something brilliant.
Something entertaining, even.
But Marquise didn’t react.
He sat motionless in his chair, face stripped of emotion, finger still resting against the detonator button.
Just above it read “RS 2234”.
Joshua’s identification number. His fate had been planned from the very beginning.
Slowly, Marquise released the button, leaning back with a long, exhausted sigh.
Detached. Distant.
He sat as if the room didn’t exist at all.
Staring off into the screens like they were mirrors.
However, Like clockwork—
The phone rang.
