Episode 11: A Bridge Over the River Time (SEASON FINALE)

THE SEASON FINALE

"Five Deadly Rebels",  featuring music by Wu-Tang Clan producer, "Cilvaringz", is the kung fu cult classic film, "Five Deadly Venoms", meets the Gangster genre, meets Science Fiction, written by Goodreads acclaimed author, Ian Tuason, winner of a 2016 Watty Award, the world’s largest online writing competition. 

From the five boroughs come five rebels of society—the gangster, the hustler, the raider, the gambler, the corrupt—each gifted with superhuman powers, each mastering an ancient martial art discipline—judo, kendo, muay Thai, karate, kung fu—through a mysterious being from another reality, known only as “The Master”, who launches the five into a dangerous hunt for a golden crypto ledger hidden within the criminal underworld of New York City—a ledger holding wealth that can not only change each of their hard-boiled lives, but the order of the world.

Enter the "five chambers outside of time”, and into a war against reality–if there is such a thing.

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Transcript

Five Deadly Rebels, a Kung Fu Sci-Fi Scripted Podcast. Hosted by Ian Tuason. Music by Wu-Tang Clan producer, Cilvaringz. This is Episode 9, I Choose Violence.

“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666.”

The Book of Revelations 13:17-18


Chapter 33: Acts of Contrition

Buck stands face to face with the blue metal door of the storage unit bearing the number 555 as if it were his Pandora’s Box of either valuable secrets or a shitstorm brewing inside.

Creeping to the huge door, wary, he presses his ear onto its cold metal, gently listening for any sound at all, but nothing—only the sound of birds chirping around him as the night sky above lightens into a softer shade of deep blue—its stars dimming into faint specks of light.

Sucking in a deep breath, Buck slides the tire iron out from the door’s padlock loops with a metallic screech, curls his fingers under the door’s handle, then with a forceful yank, pulls the door up in one quick motion, feeling as if he’s tearing off a band-aid.

The sound of the door’s steel wheels scraping across metal tracks rips through the calm of the pre-dawn hour, then settles back into stillness and birds chirping as he peers into the unit. The light from outside cuts straight through the center of the darkened room, leaving its corners shrouded in shadow, and tracing the shady outlines of the doorway and stark silhouette of the Biker’s kneeling corpse on the unit’s back wall.

Buck eyes the Biker’s lifeless body at the center of the unit, his back slouched, his chin tucked into his chest, his knees dipping into a pool of blood spreading wider around him now. His horned helmet wades face-shield down in the red puddle, its border narrowing into a stream of thick blood flowing into a grated floor drain. The gentle sound of blood dripping down its hollow pipes fills the unit with a Feng Shui-like peace.  

Buck reaches around the inside wall and flicks the disabled light switch on and off, on and off. “Fam?” he calls out, trudging down the lighted path into the unit.

Buck stops at the edge of the Biker’s pool of blood, careful not to stain his boots. He stretches out his leg, pushing the Biker’s shoulder with a steel toe as the Biker’s dead body topples over onto its side, splashing lightly in the pond of crimson.

“Fam?” Buck’s eyes strain as he squints through the half-light of the unit, his gaze darting from corner to corner, each veiled in shadow.

Hesitant, he steps into the darkness of a back corner, canvasing the blackout with outstretched arms and open hands. “Fam, are you okay? I went to get help, fam, still.”

Buck’s fingers touch the cold steel of a support beam, thick as the barrel of a baseball bat. Then warmer steel hits his wrist, followed by a rapid series of ratcheting clicks. Buck jerks his arm back but it instantly jolts to a stop, locked onto the beam—the Biker’s handcuff chain clinking with every frantic tug of Buck’s arm.

“The fuck!” Buck leans back, trying to pry his hand through the metal cuff binding him, but it bites into his skin, almost breaking it.

“Fam as in family, init?” the Blinder’s voice rolls out from the shadows.

“Fam! Thank God you’re okay!” Buck’s eyes dart around, looking for a trace of the Blinder in the dark corner near him. “You injured? I went to get help, fam.”

“Right,” says the Blinder, walking to the footlocker nestled in the corner, just a few feet away from Buck.

“What? You don’t trust me, fam?” Buck yanks at his handcuffs.

The Blinder bends at his knees, steadying himself on the cool cement floor, and crouches in front of the footlocker. 

“Fuck that, fam!” Buck’s tone turns accusing. “You the mans the mandem can’t trust! There ain’t no locker 1-5-5-5! That’s cap, fam!”

“No, it ain’t,” the Blinder’s fingers wrap around the chunky combination lock hanging from the footlocker’s lid, and lifts its heaviness in his hand. “1-5-5-5 was the locker number she told me,” he spins the dials of the combination lock with his thumb, then with a satisfying clack, he pops the lock open. “The unit number she told me was 5-5-5.”

“Eh?” Buck jerks his head back, confused, then realizes. “I knew it!” he yells, pride swelling in his chest. Good old gambler’s gut, he thinks to himself. You still got it.

The Blinder presses his palms against the lip of the footlocker’s bulky lid and hoists it open, revealing nothing but a thinly gold-plated crypto ledger lying dead center on the footlocker’s floor.

Buck hears the footlocker open and freezes, unable to move, the incessant rattling of his handcuffs replaced by the pounding in his chest. “What do you see, fam? Do you see it?” Buck’s voice trembles.

The Blinder pinches the thumb-sized, rectangular ledger and brings it closer to his thick eyepieces—its gold encasing shimmering in the shadows, only visible in the Blinder’s nocturnal sight. Its weight, barely lighter than a coin, astonishes the Blinder, knowing the immense wealth the tiny object could unlock. Yet, his eyes don’t glimmer with awe. There’s no quickening in his pulse, there’s just a flat gaze—his mind puzzled by the thought of the lives already lost and the lives potentially to be changed by this little trinket between his fingers.

Pulling open one side of his leather vest, shredded at its back, he casually drops the ledger in his inside pocket where he had kept the Master’s envelope for years.

“Yo, fam, we splitting it, right?” Buck’s handcuffs clink against the steel beam. “That was our deal, fam.”

“Nah, broski,” the Blinder rises to his feet. “You broke that deal. I didn’t.”

The Blinder saunters along the side wall, still shrouded in shadow, towards the Biker’s backpack on the floor.

“I was down for any deal, to be honest, as long as I got me half,” says the Blinder. Buck pivots around the beam, following the Blinder’s voice, his handcuffs rasping against metal. “I was even down to take out Number Five with ya. But you went at it alone, broski. That’s on you.”

“What? Nah, fam, you got it all wrong!” Buck whines. “I was finna find it quick, like, before some other mans did, and split it with you, fam, deadass!” 

Buck continues ranting as the Blinder squats over the Biker’s backpack, stuffing it with his red newsboy cap, his mask, his ski-mask, his torn vest holding the ledger, and his blood-stained long sleeve, then digs out a set of handcuff keys on a coiled ring. Standing back up, he slides both his bruised arms into the backpack’s straps as it hangs light over the back of his white wifebeater.

Mickey steps into the light, just beyond Buck’s reach, his blonde cornrows now loose and frizzled atop his head, dry blood crusting on his chin.

“Fam!” Buck yelps, relieved to see handcuff keys dangling from Mickey’s finger. “Thank God you’re aite! Give me them keys, fam, let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“Unlock your phone and give it to me,” Mickey reaches out his empty hand.

“Why?” Buck pouts.

“I’m gonna give you somethin’.”

“What?”

Mickey drops his hand to his side. “You fookin’ want it or not?”

Buck pauses, suspicious, then snatches his phone from his pants pocket, unlocks it, and tosses it at Mickey.

Mickey snags the phone from the air, types on its screen with his thumb, then flings it back at Buck who catches it against his chest.

“There,” says Mickey. “Now I have your wallet addy. I’m a send you a hundy racks. That’s a promise. It’s what you would’ve won if I threw that fight in Staten Island.”

“A hundy!” Buck cries. “That’s it?”

“I can give you shit if you want,” says Mickey.

“What? No,” Buck laments. “You already promised a hundy, fam!”

“Alright then,” Mickey turns to walk away.

“Wait! Where you going, fam?”

Mickey takes a couple of steps when a black cat with a red collar brushes against his leg.

“Hey, little broski,” Mickey says in a baby voice, stooping over to brush his fingers through the cat’s glossy fur. “How’d ya get here, oi?” 

“Fam, we good?” Buck pleads. “Toss me them keys, fam.”

The cat purrs, its tail flicking, as Mickey latches the handcuff keys to its red collar, then gives the cat a final brush on its head before rising and striding to the open doorway.

“Yo, fam, you can’t do me like this,” Buck starts to walk after Mickey by instinct, then jerks back with a loud clang, his handcuff chain pulled tight on the beam. “We’re family, fam! Fam? Fam! Bredren!”

Outside, across the horizon, a sliver of color appears—a thin line of orange, fiery red, and vibrant pink seeps into the dark blue above, pushing the night away, and Mickey walks into its warmth. Buck’s yelling fades softer in the distance as Mickey makes his way down the alley of storage locker doors.

Inside the unit, Buck kicks the steel beam that vibrates and hums, its ringing lingering in the air before fading away.

“Fam!” Buck yells, desperate, then looks down at the black cat sitting on the cement floor just out of his reach, staring up at him, curious.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Buck slinks lower to the ground, his handcuffs scraping down the steel beam. He extends his hand towards the cat, rubbing his thumb against his fingertips. “I gots treats in my pocket, fam, no cap.”

The cat tilts his little head to the side.

Buck lunges, his free hand swiping inches away from the cat before his handcuff chain abruptly pulls taught, slinging him backwards. The cat doesn’t move, tilting his head to the other side.

“Fuck!” Buck shouts. He presses his boot sole onto the steel beam and pushes forward, pulling his arm back, his hand squeezing into the metal cuff, turning it red. The cat near him, bored, stretches its front paws forward and lies on its stomach.

Buck drops his foot to the floor, fuming, and lets out a frustrated yell, shaking the concrete walls around him.

Settling himself, he turns his sights to the open doorway. “Fam!” he screams. “Fam!”

His voice echoes through the rows of storage units outside, but no one’s there to hear it. 

“You fucking wasteman!”

Chapter 34: A Bridge Over the River Time

Mickey’s Doc Marten boots clomp on the concrete of the south walkway of the George Washington Bridge heading straight towards the New York City skyline bathing under the first glimmers of dawn. Hues of orange and red seep through the jagged silhouettes of buildings, casting long shadows onto the shimmering water of the Hudson River below.

Mickey hooks his thumbs into the straps of the Biker’s backpack, resting his sore arms, when the sunrise breaks over the city skyline—its golden rays streaking between skyscrapers, spilling onto Mickey’s face. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. The crisp morning air tousles the loose strands of his blond hair freed from his tangled cornrows as he lets the sun beam warm on his skin.

A huge, purple bruise covers one side of Mickey’s neck. Blood dries dark on the front of his white tank top in the shape of a sweat stain crawling down from its low collar, but Mickey doesn’t care, the corners of his lips subtly curling into a smile.

Skylight filters through the bridge’s arching cables above as rushing traffic pulses on the other side of the sprawling steel barrier to Mickey’s left. A sturdy guardrail stretching across the walkway to Mickey’s right overlooks a miniature world of boats and ferries carving foamy trails through the dark waters twenty-five stories below.

Directly under the walkway runs the narrow girder beam that Mickey once balanced on, drunk, years ago, or perhaps decades ago, if Mickey considers his time in the Five Chambers outside of time.

Mickey leans over the guardrail and peers down at the inky water a dizzying distance under him, recalling that day trekking through the under skeleton of the bridge, heading in the opposite direction he’s heading now—the taste of alcohol on his breath, angst and contempt burning in his chest—all a distant memory now, of a past that no longer exists; the Master once taught him.

A pedestrian with sunglasses passes Mickey, walking the other way, unaware that he had just past a multi-billionaire.

A woman in a denim jumpsuit following far behind the pedestrian comes into Mickey’s sight. Pretty, Mickey thinks to himself. Mickey shoots her a smile as she approaches closer, glancing up at him, then lowers her head, hugging her purse closer to her side as she passes him. 

Mickey lifts his bruised arm to sniff his armpit. Not too bad, he thinks, shrugging.

After a few strides, he looks back at the woman who’s now shaking the hand of a man in a slick business suit, who must have been walking behind him this whole time, he thinks. She laughs and presses her hand on the man’s cashmere lapel.

Mickey turns back around and shakes his head, smiling.

He starts to recall all the rich fooks from East Bronx who discarded and treated him and his friends from the homeless shelter like shit, like the rich, fat fook who abandoned him and his mom, and how he used to hate them all. But they were just coded that way, he thinks now, and wouldn’t have earned their riches otherwise, driven by wealth or power or status or whatever—all striving to make millions, even billions if they could, even at the expense of others—to earn more than any one human needs, and then keep earning more and more after that.

But then, he wonders, what if there was a short line of code inside them that also compelled them to give, more, much more, beyond the limits of what’s expected, not out of force from the law or the IRS or any outside pressure, but out of choice, because they wanted to, like the charity workers who paid for his mom’s hospital bills when no one would, or the nurses who always brought his mom an extra serving of breakfast whenever Mickey would sleep by her side overnight. Or, he thinks, what if the compassionate, the unselfish, whose code destined them to dedicate their lives to others, like ER doctors and social workers and teachers, somehow, became the billionaires of the world? Maybe then, things would be different, Mickey imagines.

Mickey thinks back on Wassy from the shelter who used to hate the East Bronx yuppies more than him, and how he always spouted politics to anyone who would listen—that the yuppies should be taxed more, and shit like that. This was before he hung himself with a tent rope in Devanney Park because he couldn’t shake out the voices in his mind that no one else could hear. But it wasn’t the voices that killed him. It was just fear, Mickey thinks—fear and loneliness. And there were hundreds just like Wassy in South Bronx.

But to Mickey, politics didn't mean shit. He remembers having no doubt in his mind that if Wassy somehow came across a shitload of money, that he’d be the same as the rest of the yuppies they both hated.

And then there was Carl, who gave anything he had on him to the shelter kids younger than him, and he was poor as fook, Mickey recalls.

Mickey pulls the straps on his backpack tighter, its light weight betraying the wealth inside it. It would be years until the value of that little ledger skyrockets into the multi-trillions, he reminds himself. When Bitcoin becomes the gold of the new, digital world, destined to be. And he had plenty of time to mull over what to do with his half after fulfilling his promise to Number Two.

The first thing, he decides, is to visit the shelter, and then the hospital that cared for his mom, and then after that, who knows, maybe take it day by day, Mickey guesses. There is only today; there is only the now, Mickey remembers. A lesson he had learned in the Third Chamber that changed his life.

Looking up at the city skyline looming closer now, the sunrise reflecting warm and coppery off the windows of its highest buildings, Mickey thinks back to the first time seeing the skyline that day he crossed underneath the bridge into New Jersey, now behind him. He remembers how huge it seemed to him then—the biggest thing he’d ever seen. Now, it seems very small to Mickey. And the city seems small. And the apartment he grew up in with his mom, the buildings and townhouses he broke into, the mansions in Bergen County, and Buck, the Biker, the Samurai, the Slugger, the Master, and his mom—they all seem very small now, very distant, and even he somehow feels small, walking there on the bridge, in a reality too large to see everything. And Mickey thinks to himself, he really doesn’t know shit about shit, but he does know one thing for sure—that no matter what happens to him after this, he’ll never feel the same way about anything again.

Epilogue

The billionaire’s cellphone vibrates on the nightstand next to his plush, king-size bed in the center of his spacious bedroom—so spacious that its distant walls are lost in shadow despite the soft light flooding in from the floor-to-ceiling window, spilling onto his wife beside him, fast asleep on her Egyptian cotton pillow and under their heavy duvet stuffed with eiderdown feathers hand-collected from the nests of eider ducks.

He quietly slides his legs over the edge of the bed and sits upright in his pure silk pajamas woven from the cocoons of rare silkworms and dyed in a rich, lavender hue.

He lets out a drawn-out, nervous sigh and wipes his hand down his face before snatching his phone from the nightstand. Turning to check on his wife, still asleep, her purple sleep mask covering her eyes and a bottle of lorazepam sitting on the nightstand beside her, he answers his phone.

“Hello?”

“The numbers came in.” The caller is talking about how much the billionaire’s Big Pharma company is expected to spend in one year, settling lawsuits from the families of customers who purchased and ate his miracle hair growth drug, that, in rare cases, causes an allergic reaction that swells the brain, killing instantly—an allergic reaction that the Food and Drug Administration failed to detect.

“Okay,” the billionaire exhales. “What are they?”

“In the four hundred range. Won’t top five hundred, though.”

“How much is a recall?”

“Five hundred and eighty million.”

The billionaire looks down at his lap for what feels like a long time.

“So, what’s the word, chief?”

“Hold off on the recall,” the billionaire says, sternly. “Get them to do another analysis in one year.”

“Roger that.”

The call ends.

The billionaire doesn’t move, still holding his phone to his ear, his eyes glazing over. He rattles his head, shaking his thoughts out, then gently lays his phone screen-side down on the nightstand, careful not to wake his wife.

A sharp click slices through the silence, and the reading lamp over his Italian leather armchair, a few feet in front of him, turns on.

A scream brews inside the billionaire as he looks up to see the Blinder sitting there, holding a Beretta lying on its side on his knee, aimed at the billionaire’s chest. The Blinder’s other hand is pressing an index finger over the mouthguard of his dark, thermoplastic mask, and the billionaire swallows the scream down. 

“Five hundred M’s,” the Blinder whispers, then lets out a soft whistle. “How many lawsuits is that?” the lamplight over the Blinder’s red newsboy cap casts a long shadow of its bill down his masked face, his eyepieces shrouded in shade.

The billionaire, still frozen in shock, forces the words out of his mouth. “A thousand, give or take,” the billionaire rasps.

“Hmm,” the Blinder tilts his head. “Sorry, broski, I ain’t too good at math. How much ya savin’ for keepin’ that shit on the shelves?”

“Eighty million?” says the billionaire nervously, like he’s asking a question instead of answering one. 

“Hmm,” the Blinder continues. “Like I said, I ain’t too good at math, but I’m guessing that’s like, what, eighty racks per body?” the Blinder’s head straightens. “Is that how much a life is worth to you?”

Waves of iciness spread up and down the billionaire’s spine. “Who are you?” the billionaire sputters. 

“Don’t worry, broski. I don’t judge. It’s how you were coded,” says the Blinder, when suddenly, the billionaire’s orange cat jumps onto the Blinder’s lap. Never breaking his gaze at the billionaire, he runs his fingers through the long fur on the cat’s back. “But I gotta say, this is gonna make me feel a lot better when I walk outta here tonight.”

“I can call him back, get the recall started tomorrow.” Cold sweat seeps through the pores of the billionaire’s scalp, wetting his thin hair.

“Oh, most def, you doin’ that for sure, but that’s not why I’m here. I didn’t even know until now that you were mullin’ over the lives of a thousand people—give or take.”

“I have cash; ten million in the safe,” the billionaire tries to lift an arm to point in the safe’s direction but can’t—paralyzed.

“I don’t want your bags, broski,” the Blinder’s voice drops, serious. “I want your tribute.”

A trickle of sweat from the billionaire’s scalp drips down from his hairline into his eyebrow. 

“We ain’t no government with their loopholes and your inside friends,” the Blinder assures. “Didn’t Senator Beasley go to your wedding—give you and wifey a nice fat cheque in a sweet Hallmark card?” the Blinder shakes his head. “Naw, we ain’t them, broski. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no tax. We’re the kind of people that can walk in and out of your bedroom where your wife sleeps, invisible.”

The Blinder leans forward, closer. The billionaire lowers his eyes.

“Look at me,” the Blinder hushes.

The billionaire looks up into the Blinder’s masked face, veiled in shadow. 

“What we are, broski, is simple,” the Blinder says, coldly. “We are the wrath of righteous men,” he hisses. “We are the hateful vengeance upon the injustices of selfish men. And now, we are armed to the teeth, just like you. I may not look like much to you, sitting there in those fancy pajamas you got. But like you, I have the shit that can make shit happen—at me absolute will, and with zero resistance. And trust me, broski, we have no fookin’ remorse.”

The Blinder leans back into the armchair, its leather creaking.

The billionaire shifts his eyes anxiously to the nightstand next to him where a button is mounted on its underside.

“Go ahead. Press it. Call your private security company you’re payin’ three M’s a year to protect your rich ass,” the Blinder says, patting the cat’s head. “Or should I say, your former security company; they work for me now. And I know what you’re gonna be thinkin’ later—you’ll have to contract another company—a bigger one. But I’ll buy them, too. Money makes the world go round, right? It’s what makes your world go round, init? It’s what made you choose to wet one thousand lives on your one-minute phone call.”

“I’ll give you what you want,” the billionaire’s stiff fingers unconsciously curl into his pajama pants, scratching at its silk. “Tell me.”

“You have a net worth of forty billion,” the cat shuffles onto her back on the Blinder’s lap as he starts rubbing her belly. “But that ain’t in your company. It’s just sittin’ there in your international bank accounts and hedge funds and bougee mansions, like this one. You can burn half of everything in your name to ashes, and you would still be a fookin’ multi-billionaire, while people out there are choosin’ which fingers they can afford to surgically reattach to their hand after they accidentally got ’em sliced off in some minimum wage meat cutting job at a company owned by men like you. Tell me, if you only had ten racks to your name, and some doctor says that you can only afford to buy back your index finger, or fook your index finger and get back your pinky and ring finger instead, like some kind of two for one deal—what would you choose?”

The billionaire can’t help but look down at his sweaty hand pressed on his thigh.

“But again, I don’t judge the man. We all have our code.”

The cat on the Blinder’s lap starts purring, and the Blinder looks down at her, scratching under her chin.

“Did you know there’s only two thousand six hundred and forty billionaires in this world?” the Blinder looks back up at him. “Eight fookin’ billion people in this world and only two thousand six hundred and forty billionaires, can you believe that shit? People keep whinin’ about ninety percent of the world’s fookin’ wealth owned by one percent of the world’s fookin’ population. But I don’t give a shit about the one percent, to be honest. I ain’t no communist. I ain’t no socialist, neither. I’m thinkin’ ’bout the one percent of the one percent of the one percent. Ya feel me? You broskis make me wonder, sometimes.”

“Tell me…what to do,” the billionaire stammers.

“This is what’s gonna happen, broski,” the Blinder slides out a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his black, leather vest. “This here’s a list of twenty charities, legit ones, I made sure of that. You’re gonna donate one billion to each of ’em. That leaves you with twenty billion for your fookin’ self. One man with twenty billion, that don’t sound too bad, does it?”

The billionaire shakes his head side to side, fidgety.

“And don’t feel too shitty about doin’ this, oi? You got your list, now, and I got mines. Mines is two thousand six hundred names long. The forty broskis on the billionaire list that ain’t on my list are already doin’ the right thing, by their own choice. Sad, though, that the rest of ’em aren’t. And that’s most of ’em, to be honest. So, don’t you worry, broski, you ain’t alone. And neither am I,” the Blinder points a tip of the folded paper at the billionaire’s sleeping wife.

The billionaire turns to see a red laser streaking through the window and a red dot glowing steadily on her purple sleep mask.

“I give you my word,” the billionaire whips his head back to face the Blinder. “Tell your boss, it’ll be done.”

The Blinder shakes his head. “We don’t work for no one, broski.”

“Who are you then?” the billionaire finally raises his arm to wipe the sweat building up on his forehead. “I need reassurances, please.”

“We prefer to stay anonymous, if that’s all good with you. Is it?” the Blinder turns his Beretta upright, its hilt standing up on his knee, aimed at the billionaire.

The billionaire nods.

The Blinder leans forward again, slower, “You have one month to make all twenty donations. You can make it public, too, make a big fookin’ deal out of it. Even get a tax break or whatever the fook you business broskis do. Fook it, they’ll probably even write about you, too—a big fookin’ hero—the billionaire with a heart of gold. But I don’t give a shit about that, to be honest. Just pay the fookin’ tribute. That’ll be enough.”

The Blinder tilts the bill of his cap up with the nozzle of his Beretta, the lamplight now shining on his thick eyepieces, gleaming, piercing into the billionaire.

“After a month, if that don’t happen—let’s say you were too busy yachting in Asia instead, or maybe you moved to some fookin’ island you bought to roll with broskis packin’ AKs—or maybe you just disappeared off the face of the fookin’ earth, well, wherever you go, you will need to sleep, and that’s when I will come. One night, you’ll wake up feelin’ safe in your bed, just like you did tonight, and you’ll see me again, very close, just like this, but there will be no more words for you,” the Blinder cocks his Beretta, its metallic clack splitting the silence in two. “There will only be pain—and then you will know me name,” the Blinder says with an icy perfection.

The billionaire nods his head very, very clearly.

“Oh, and about that recall for that miracle drug of yours,” the Blinder’s tone turns jovial. “That happens tomorrow. And don’t you worry, you won’t miss those eighty M’s at all, as rich as you are, and shit. But you will miss those two balls of yours, though. How much they worth to you, oi? Forty M’s each I’m thinkin’, give or take.”

The bottom edges of the billionaire’s peripheral vision glows red, and he looks down at his pajama top to see a red laser beam shimmering of its silk, moving steadily down his belly, then stopping at his crotch, unwavering.

“And that’s a promise, broski.”

The billionaire swallows the saliva building up in his mouth, then looks back up at the Blinder who isn’t there anymore.

He shoots his eyes back down at the laser—gone. His head spins wildly, his eyes darting to every dark corner of the room, but only the gentle rasping of his wife’s breathing fills the empty silence.

On the armchair sits a folded piece of paper on its wide armrest, and the billionaire’s orange cat nestling on its cushioned seat, licking the back of her paws and cleaning her ears.



This ends season one of Five Deadly Rebels, a Kung Fu Sci-Fi Scripted Podcast, hosted by Ian Tuason, Music by Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz.  To support the making of season two of Five Deadly Rebels, please consider purchasing the ebook, hardcover or paperback version of Five Deadly Rebels, featuring original chapter artwork by comic book and anime artists, Warrick Wong, Jyothee Murali, and Andrew Gong, at fivedeadlyrebels.com. Or, purchase the complete audiobook of Five Deadly Rebels on Spotify Audiobooks, Audible, iTunes, or anywhere you get your audiobooks. For links and promo codes, visit five deadly rebels dot com. Thank you for listening. This has been a DimensionGate production. 

Dedication

To Mom—but more specifically, Mom in the month of March 2021, when her mind was barely there from Alzheimer’s, and her body was barely a body because of cancer, yet, she never forgot us, she never stopped smiling, and in that one month, I learned everything I know now about happiness, wisdom, sacrifice, courage and love—truths I didn’t even know I was oblivious to in all my years before.

To Mom in March 2021.