Act V – Chapter 14: "My Best Friend"
Leo, surrounded by his hundred still‑tense subordinates, stepped out of the massive complex, some of whose facades were smoking slightly.
He got into the back seat of the car.
"Get us far away from here quickly, before things degenerate," he said.
The driver started the engine.
Leo cast one last look at the building before the car pulled out onto the road.
Silence weighed for a few seconds, then the driver exploded:
"Fuck, this is going to be a war… What the hell did you do, Leo?"
Leo kept staring at the road flying by.
"It was necessary to reshuffle the cards of power," he replied calmly. "Yes, we're going to war. But the winner of this war will be at the head of the seven major families."
"We didn't need this!" the driver snapped.
"They're all smiling at each other while shooting each other in the foot; there's a lack of order," Leo retorted.
The driver gripped the steering wheel.
"From now on, nothing will ever be the same. Do you realize how big the shitstorm that's coming is?"
"Yes," Leo answered without hesitation. "They have their ego; we have Gwen."
The car kept going. The urban landscape rolled by, gray, metallic, saturated with neon signs.
Further on, traffic suddenly slowed down.
"Fuck… It's those NoName protests again," the driver growled.
The car got stuck in a dense traffic jam.
On both sides, signs rose above the crowd.
"TRUTH BEFORE ORDER"
"THE WORLD IS CHANGING AND YOU'RE HIDING THE TRUTH FROM US"
"ZERO PROGRAM EXISTS"
Slogans brandished by tired, angry faces. People who'd seen too much, or not understood enough.
The car advanced slowly through the compact mass, escorted by Leo's men's cars opening the way as best they could.
Leo glanced distractedly out the window, until his gaze caught a face.
A face he knew.
He straightened up, surprised.
"Stop the car."
"What?! We're in the middle of—"
The door opened.
"Keep your distance and wait for me," Leo said as he stepped out.
He closed the door without waiting for an answer.
The driver cursed, but obeyed. The car pulled over as soon as possible while Leo was already plunging into the crowd.
Leo pushed through the protesters, bumping little but moving fast, eyes fixed on the silhouette he'd spotted farther ahead.
The man was walking.
Leo started running.
"Hey!" he called.
No answer.
The silhouette turned the corner of a street, calmly, as if the chaos around didn't matter at all.
Leo accelerated, but every time he thought he was about to catch up, the man disappeared behind a wall corner, behind a van, into a group.
Then reappeared farther on.
Always at the same pace.
Always just as calm.
Leo fought his way out of the crowd, squeezed between two stuck cars, ran across a side alley. He finally spotted the man at the end of the street, heading toward a construction site surrounded by metal barriers.
He jumped over a slightly open barrier and entered the construction site himself.
Raw concrete pillars, scaffolding, half‑open floors.
Tarpaulins snapped in the wind.
Leo looked up.
All the way at the top, on the last level, a silhouette had just appeared at the edge of the void, perfectly straight, outlined against the gray sky.
He recognized him immediately.
It was a brunette man, in his twenties, maybe older. He wore an impeccable three‑piece suit. His confident gait made him look older than his face suggested.
This man… had no name.
Leo felt his heart accelerate.
He placed a hand on the concrete railing, looked up at him.
The Nameless Man was waiting for him.
Out of breath, Leo looked up at him.
"Are you done running?" he called out.
The Nameless Man shrugged, arms slightly open.
"Do you see any place for me to run to, here?" he replied, glancing at the bare concrete around them.
He was smiling. Leo wasn't smiling at all.
"I have questions for you," Leo said.
"I'm listening."
Leo clenched his jaw.
"When I was ten, at that train station…"
"Yes," the man confirmed, without waiting for the rest.
"I stole a gold watch from you," Leo continued. "You chased me until I took refuge at Maria's."
Silence.
Leo went on.
"She was sick. And, touched by her condition, you let us keep the watch."
"Yes. And?" the man asked, still calm.
"After you left, Maria seemed… revitalized," Leo said. "Did you heal her?"
The Nameless Man's smile faded.
"Yes."
"That mysterious mute girl with silver hair who appeared some time later," Leo went on. "Did you know Maria was going to take her in?"
"Yes."
Leo's voice began to tremble.
The Nameless Man lowered his head slightly, as if he already knew what question was coming.
"Maria still died of illness," Leo whispered. "You knew that too, right?"
The Nameless Man stayed silent.
"There are things I can't change…"
"You son of a bitch," Leo muttered.
He pulled out his gun, reloaded, and pointed it at him.
"Maria was a good woman…" he said, tears starting to stream down his cheeks. "You gave us that gold watch, and Maria never sold it. She made us believe she had, but that was false!"
The words crowded each other.
"All that food… it was her… My sister and I only found out too late. Only after her death. That watch… it was kept all this time right by her bedside!"
Silence fell like a heavy blanket.
"I'm sorry," the man replied softly.
"Sorry?" Leo exploded. "Are you fucking with me?!"
The Nameless Man looked up at him.
"Maria was happy to die while living with a family she could never have," he said calmly.
Leo hesitated, in tears, lost.
"How do you know that…?" he whispered.
"I was there, at her last moments…" the man answered. "I accompanied her until her last breath, just before the illness took her. She didn't feel the pain. I cut her pain before she left."
Leo screamed a tearing scream and frantically pulled the trigger.
Click.
Click.
Click.
He looked down at the gun, incredulous: the magazine was full.
The Nameless Man sighed.
"You can't get me with that, Leo."
Leo threw the gun to the ground and, with a howl, threw himself at him.
The Nameless Man dodged with a simple step to the side.
Leo crashed onto the concrete, instantly got up, grabbed a piece of debris and threw it with all his strength.
The other shifted, always without effort.
"Stop, Leo," he said.
Leo took a real fighting stance. Pure, clean MMA. A 1.93‑meter colossus, broad shoulders, trained by a former champion. Opposite him, a silhouette about 1.83 meters tall, in a suit, hands in his pockets.
Leo struck. Punches, low kicks, feints, clean combos.
The Nameless Man dodged everything. Simple movements, economical, slow on the surface, but untouchable.
With every blow, rage rose.
"You knew I'd keep that watch?!" Leo shot out between two attacks. "You knew Don Javier was going to shoot me! You knew all this was going to happen?!"
The other avoided every hit with a step, a tilt of the head, as if he'd seen the scene a hundred times before.
"Why do you have the same face?!" Leo screamed. "You haven't aged a day in ten years!"
The dodges continued. Leo accelerated even more.
"And Los Angeles! I saw you end that battle all by yourself! With all you can do, why didn't you intervene before?! How could you let those people die?!"
The Nameless Man's gaze turned melancholic, just for an instant.
That was the moment Leo's fist finally hit him.
The punch landed straight in the cheek, violent. The Nameless Man took it, stepped back, fell to his knees. Leo raised his arm to follow up, but stopped dead.
"You… are crying?" he said, surprised.
A tear was rolling down the Nameless Man's cheek, mixed with blood at the corner of his lip.
"I deserved that one," he said, slowly rising.
He wiped away the tear with the back of his hand, then continued, voice deeper:
"You're right about the watch. I knew what was going to happen."
A sad, broken smile passed over his face.
"I just wanted to save my partner."
Leo stared at him, not understanding.
"Your… what?"
"You've always been, for me, my best friend, and like an older brother," the Nameless Man said.
Leo shook his head.
"Older brother? Best friend? But I was ten when we met," he said. "You already had the same face as now."
The Nameless Man looked at him for a long time, with a brief nostalgic smile, without answering that.
"I'm here to warn you," the Nameless Man said in a low, almost soft voice.
"One day, Leo, you'll be confronted with a choice.
The future of humanity depends on it.
Make the right one."
Leo blinked, jaw clenched.
"What?" he asked, voice trembling. "Who's the enemy? Who are we fighting?"
The Nameless Man stared at him for a long time.
For the first time, his gaze was no longer warm, or sad, or mysterious.
It became glacial.
Silence fell, heavy, as if the air itself held its breath.
"Fate."
Then, without sound, without smoke, without flash, he disappeared.
Just… nothing. As if he had never been there.
Leo stayed alone amid the concrete, out of breath.
"It's not possible…" he murmured.
A terrible thought crossed his mind.
Could it be that you're…
Leo had had only one best friend.
A young boy from the Zero Program, thirteen years old at the Battle of Los Angeles. In love with his little sister. Joyful despite his past. Taken in after the purge by a man Leo admired like a god: Mike. His real name: Michael Darwin, an old MMA legend, who had taught him everything.
Mike had died at Los Angeles.
Leo's best friend, witness to his adoptive father's death, had also disappeared during the battle.
Leo felt his stomach twist.
How could the Nameless Man, who had ended the Battle of Los Angeles all by himself, and this best friend who had stood by his side, be present at the same moment?
No answer came.
Just a void, and the sound of the wind in the unfinished building.
Leo went back down the stairs, fists still clenched, head still saturated with the Nameless Man's words.
Fate.
He walked through the crowd of angry protesters. The signs beat the air, shouts rose, but he didn't really hear them anymore. He fought his way through like through a fog, until he reached the car waiting for him, parked a little farther away, engine running.
He opened the back door and got in.
"Let's go," he said. "Do it quickly."
The driver didn't answer right away.
Sitting in front, shoulders tense, he was staring at his phone with a shocked expression, eyes wide open. The blue light of the screen reflected on his pale face.
Leo looked at him.
"Fuck, what are you looking at?" he said, sharper.
The driver slowly lifted the phone.
"Listen… it's… everything… something insane just happened," he said, voice broken.
Leo leaned over, took the phone from the driver's hands.
On the screen, the news flashed in bold, with a red urgent banner:
SEPTEMBER 3, 2028 — COORDINATED ATTACKS ACROSS THE GLOBE
The very first lines jumped out:
The President of the United States killed.
The Vice President killed.
The Speaker of the House killed.
The President of the Senate killed.
The Secretary of State killed.
The Secretary of the Treasury killed.
All found dead in several coordinated attacks across the world.
A wave of blood, stones, explosions, shootings.
Lower down, a highlighted line:
— Secretary of Defense William Campbell, the sole survivor of these attacks, miraculously survived what appears to be a war crime against the United States.
Leo froze, phone in hand, out of breath.
The driver stared at him.
"Fuck… we're not going to get a plane for a while. Everything's locked down. Completely cut off. We'll have to do the whole trip on the ground. And… stay low."
Leo felt a cold rage rise in his chest.
The Seven Families, the war he'd just launched in New York…
And now the whole world had just collapsed in a few hours.
He clenched his teeth so hard his jaws cracked.
"Fuck," he muttered.
The car started heavily, pulled into blocked traffic, drowned under sirens, screams, smoke, and the metallic silence of a country that had just lost its entire elite in one day.
In Las Vegas, Enzo's car pulled up in front of the huge luxury hotel.
Gwen looked at the facade without much emotion, then opened the door.
"It's surprising you live in such a luxurious complex," Enzo commented as he cut the engine.
"Don't ask questions," she replied sharply.
He raised his hands in surrender.
"See you tomorrow, at 9 a.m."
Gwen sighed, rolled her eyes, then adopted a falsely dramatic voice as she turned toward him.
"A poor eighteen‑year‑old girl found herself, from her very first days, facing a massacre and a human trafficking ring. Marked by the events, I was forced to take a few days off… but as motivated as I am, I'll be back soon."
Enzo stared at her, exhausted.
"Fuck, Harper, how am I supposed to justify this? Being faced with this kind of thing is part of a cop's job. And fuck, you're the one who killed them."
Gwen turned her back on him, walking toward the hotel entrance, and gave him the finger without turning around.
"Figure it out yourself; I'm 'traumatized'. You're responsible for my training. It's the weekend, tomorrow. I'm not a workaholic like you."
"Fuck, that one…" Enzo grumbled.
She disappeared into the lobby, swallowed by marble and glass.
Enzo got back in his car. He'd barely turned the key when his phone rang.
"Alvarez, I'm listening."
"We're getting back to you regarding the analysis on the plushie from the warehouse," a voice said on the other end. "There were definitely fingerprints… but they're unknown in all databases."
"Really?" Enzo asked, frowning.
"Yes. And the plushie was definitely hand‑sewn."
"Try to look for blood traces in the seams," Enzo asked. "The owner must have pricked her fingers while making it."
"Understood. We'll do that. I'll get back to you as soon as we have the results."
"Copy."
He hung up.
For a moment, he stayed still, staring at the steering wheel. Then his thoughts chained themselves on their own:
*Fingerprints with no trace in the files…
A young woman able to kill a dozen men alone, survivor of the famous Zero Program…
Who lives in a luxury hotel…
A mysterious plushie found in a burning warehouse…
In an investigation linked to the mafia.*
He cast one last look at the hotel receding in his rearview mirror.
"What else are you hiding from me, Gwen…?"
To be continued.