Quirky Row Chapter 52: Night of the Living Dead (Patreon)

Chapter 52: Night of the Living Dead

(Friday, March 23rd, 2124)

“When he is gonna make a move?” a Saint wondered in annoyance as he lounged on the roof of a building overlooking the industrial docks in the south of Stilwater, near the old cannery the Brotherhood had once used as a base. “He’s just sitting there!”

“Don’t know, but he’s gotta be here for a reason,” another Saint replied.

Neither of them were looking directly at their target, lest he notice them, but they were doing their best to spy on him. To do so, they had a mirror angled in such a way that its reflection showed what Ultor’s head of security was doing.

For the last two days, the Third Street Saints had been keeping an eye on Dex. The former Saint was smart, and did nothing to make himself seem suspicious. He went to work, clocking in at the Philips Building at 7:30 a.m. sharp. His day was spent coordinating the security forces in the various Ultor owned sites, and he took a break for lunch every day at noon that lasted for one hour. Some days he went to eat out, other times he brought his own food or had it delivered to his office. He then clocked out at five in the afternoon and went home to a modest penthouse in the gentrified Saints Row district, and owned by an Ultor reality company. He went clubbing on Fridays, and visited bars on Saturday.

From what they’d investigated, his routine had like this for five whole years, with few deviations. And most of those were dinner parties or events he had to attend as a high-ranking member of Ultor’s upper echelons.

One would think that with how routine his days were, it would be easy to notice when he broke it. Yet that was not the case. No matter how many times they tried to follow him, they never found a single thing wrong. He was, frankly, an upstanding citizen. Suspiciously so.

Right now, the two Saints were watching Dex sitting in his car while waiting for something to happen in an abandoned stretch of the city. But somehow, according to several other Saints, Dex was still partying it up in a club halfway across the city! But it was clearly wrong, as he was right there!

The answer was simple: a body double. That was how Dex had been able to get away with everything. Visiting clubs and bars were just excuses for him to swap places with his look-alike.

It was only pure happenstance that the two Saints had spotted Dex out there when they’d been on patrol in the area, and had taken it upon themselves to spy on him.

Finally, something occurred that caused the two Saints to sit up and pay attention to the mirror’s reflection. Two black vehicles, one an armored truck, the other a limousine, drove up, and Dex got out of his car with a briefcase in hand.

“Psst! Get your phone out and start recording!” one of the Saints urged in a low voice, and his companion nodded, fishing it out and aiming the camera at the mirror.

As he did so, the car and truck came to a stop, and four men stepped out, two from each. They were wearing suits with black masks stamped with a red, five-pointed star covering the faces. The emblem of the Morningstar gang, one of the major players in the Syndicate.

Dex gestured towards one of the warehouses, and three men walked over to it, while the last man approached the former Saint. Dex handed over the briefcase, which was opened, but due to the angle, neither Saint could see what it contained. Regardless of this, the man seemed pleased and closed it before shaking Dex’s hand.

A moment later, the three men returned with a trolly laden with big metal drums stamped with a radioactive warning symbol and began loading it into the back of their truck.

“Shit, he really is selling nuclear waste,” the Saint tsked.

“We ought to tell the boss,” his friend replied as he kept recording the scene.

“Yeah, he needs to know…” he began, before frowning. “Hey, what’s th-”

He never finished as something suddenly punched through his chest, spraying blood across the roof. The other Saint let out a shout of horror as a blood drenched specter dropped the gangster to the ground, letting him bleed out.

“Invisibility Quirk!” the survivor exclaimed, catching a glimpse of black skin and a throbbing, exposed brain, and immediately tried to run, but his legs stopped working due to a searing hot beam of light bisecting him at the waist.

As he fell apart into two pieces, the Saint held his phone close to his chest, using the last of life to use his own Quirk on it.

When the assassin kicked the body of the Saint over, it did not see a phone. Instead, all it found in his hands was a brick, which was promptly ignored. After a moment of scanning the area, searching for any other signs of recording devices and destroying the phone in the pocket of the man whose chest he’d perforated, the assassin leapt off the roof and returned to the side of its master, the masked man who’d been speaking with Dex.

It would be many hours before their bodies would be found. And by then, the mysterious men would be long gone.

111 &&&&& 111

(Saturday, March 24th, 2124)

“Did they have any family?” Playa asked as he stared down at the corpses that were laid out on cold, sterile mortuary slabs.

When the two Saints on patrol in the southern docks had failed to report in after their shift ended, Playa had immediately assumed the worse, and dispatched more gang members to search the area for them. They had been discovered on the roof of a building that had been near the place he’d fought Maero, and there’d been no trace of the ones responsible.

Rather than let the cops or some poor janitor stumble across them, the living gang members had cleaned up the scene and brought their bodies back to a morgue that paid protection to the Saints.

Then, Playa had been alerted, and he hurried over with Carlos, who had been their superior.

“Yeah, they did,” Carlos said quietly. “Pete had a wife and two kids, and Shen was taking care of his elderly parents.”

“Make sure they are taken care of, and receive proper compensation,” Playa ordered, before directing his attention to the phone in his hands.

It had been recovered from the scene of the crime, and had belonged to the man named Shen. According to what Playa had been told, the man’s Quirk was to make things look like bricks. Not even transforming them, it was just an illusion. An impressive one, as it could fool touch, smell, and of course sight, but it didn’t have a lot of applications beyond disguising small things.

However, in this situation, it’d been a blessing, as they’d found footprints from somebody else on the roof with them, and it was clear from the remnants of Pete’s phone that somebody hadn’t wanted any evidence to be left behind, and Shen’s Quirk had protected his phone from being destroyed to cover things up.

“The battery is dead,” Playa noted, trying to turn it on, before handing it over to Carlos. “Make sure Twenty-One can recover everything from it. If we’re lucky, they got a pic or video of their killer.”

“Yes, sir,” Carlos said grimly.

“What were they doing, Carlos?” Playa asked. “Why were they on the roof?”

“I was going to tell you this morning,” Carlos claimed. “Last night, I got a call from these two. They wanted to know about where Dex was.”

“And where was he at the time of the call?”

“At the Silver Serpent dance club,” Carlos responded. “He was there from six twenty-two till eleven seventeen in the evening. He drank four Mojitos and a single energy drink, danced with eight different women, received a blowjob from one of them, and got her number as well. Nothing else happened. Then he went home.”

“Why did they want to know about Dex’s location?” Playa wondered. “Also, TMI, Carlos.”

“I don’t know, they said they’d seen something and would get back to me latter,” the Hispanic lieutenant sighed.

Playa shook his head, silently hoping the phone would contain something useful before turning away and leaving the morgue.

It was still early in the morning, and as much as he wanted to just rush in and turn Dex’s face to guacamole for smuggling radioactive sludge and selling it to criminals, Playa resisted the urge and instead returned to the office to do some work.

‘Soon,’ he reassured himself. ‘We’ll have enough information on Dex to take him down soon.’

It was after lunch that his technology consultant came a-knocking, and the expression on her face told him he wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him.

“Were you able to get anything from Shen’s phone?” Playa asked hopefully.

“Oh, that? Yeah, it was really easy,” Twenty-One said. “Literally, all I had to do was plug it into a charger and then figure out his password. It was his birthday.”

“And what did you find?” Playa inquired, leaning in.

“It’s best you see it yourself,” she replied, and put the phone down in front of him. Playa picked it up, and investigated the most recent file, which was a two and half-hour video.

Pressing ‘Play,’ the boss of the Saints was soon watching a grainy video of a mirror. It was blurry and dark, but he could make out some vehicles.

“This is terrible quality,” Playa muttered.

“Keep watching,” Twenty-One urged, and so he did.

A few seconds later, Playa saw Dex meet up with men in masks with red star symbols, and nuclear waste barrels being loaded up into the back of an armored truck.

“Shit!” he hissed.

Then things got worse when Pete died with a fist bursting through his chest, and a God Damned Nomu appeared in front of him as an Invisibility Quirk stopped working. The video then got shakier as he tried to escape, but a bright flash caused Shen and his phone to tumble to the ground.

A moment later, Shen was kicked onto his back, and the phone’s camera got a good look of the Nomu as it looked down on him. The creature moved on after a few seconds, and the microphone picked up the crunch of metal and glass as Pete’s phone was destroyed.

“The phone kept filming afterwards before running out of power, but the important stuff has already been seen,” the tech expert explained as he fast forwarded through the video to the end.

“I couldn’t be sure, but that was Dex, wasn’t it?” Playa asked after a moment. “And their killer… it was a Nomu.”

“Seems like it,” Twenty-One nodded. “I downloaded the video already and have a guy working on cleaning it up. Try and give it better definition, clear up things a little, and zoom in on the scene to see what’s happening. But yeah, based on what we’ve seen, that was Dex.”

“How could he be in two places at once?” Playa wondered. “A body double? Or a new Quirk?”

“Since the Syndicate, or at least the Morningstar gang, seems to be working with the guy who can steal Quirks and make those Nomu critters, I suppose the latter is possible,” Twenty-One shrugged. “Though I don’t think Dex is directly working with the Quirk stealing boogeyman.”

“Hmm. Maybe. We’ll keep digging, then. See if anyone around him has a cloning or disguise Quirk,” Playa instructed.

“Gotcha,” Twenty-One saluted.

“One more thing,” Playa said. “Tell Johnny to start gearing up for a fight and Jean-Paul to start training the new recruits up to our standards. Dex needs to die, and we need to be ready to move out to take him on the moment we have a window of opportunity.”

“I’ll pass it on,” she replied.

Playa nodded at that. It was almost time for that traitor to get his comeuppance!

(Thursday, March 29th, 2124)

“So, what do you have for me, Johnny?” Playa said, folding his hands in front of him. His desk was, for once, not strewn with paperwork. Most of it had been taken care of already earlier in the day. In front of him, Johnny lounged in his seat, pulling out a photograph of a blonde-haired woman.

“This is Sandra Kirwin. Dex’s sexy secretary. But don’t let the blonde hair and low-cut cleavage fool ya, she’s a sharp cookie. Coulda gone hero, but flunked out of the sidekick program here in Stilwater. Not entirely sure why, but seeing as she was assigned to Monorail… well, Mr. Supersonic Groper wasn’t known for his feminism, if you catch my drift.”

“So, it’s her, then? The one making all the illusions?” Playa demanded, caring less about her past job history and more about her current one.

“Seems like it. She can create illusions that cover her body that look and feel real. So she can turn into a black man like ol’ Dex and nobody can tell the difference,” Johnny stated.

“Good for disguises, and creating alibis,” Playa said with a nod. “I can see it now.”

“She’s loyal to Dex, too, and trusted by him as well if everything Carlos and Shaundi managed to dig up is true,” Johnny continued. “She knows about the nuclear waste smuggling business, or at the very least is aware of something shady going on, and is still helping cover it up.”

“Then she dies, too,” Playa said simply. “If she really is loyal to Dex himself and not his money or position in Ultor, then she’d probably have a sort of deadman switch to leak everything to the press when we off Dex.”

“Yeah, good point,” Johnny muttered, glancing at the photo. “Don’t like killing women, but if I have to…”

“You won’t,” Playa said firmly. “I’ll do. I’ll kill both of them if I have to.”

Johnny looked at his friend before nodding. “Thanks, boss. But I wanna paint Dex’s brains all over his fancy car. He’s ruining our good name by dealing with fucking terrorists!”

Playa nodded, accepting that. If Johnny wanted to pump Dex full of lead, who was he to stop him?

“Knock knock!” Shaundi called out as she barged into the office. “Sup, Johnny.”

“Shaundi,” Playa said. “What’s up?”

“Hey, boss. Sorry to interrupt, but I got something for ya. It’s a letter,” Shaundi said, surprised.

“A letter? Like, paper, envelope, and stamp?” Playa asked.

“Yup,” she nodded. “Doesn’t look like it’s a government form or anything, either.”

“Who uses handwritten letters these days besides the government?” Johnny wondered.

“Dunno. But the return address is what made me bring it to you.”

“From the way you said that, I have the feeling I’m not gonna like it,” the boss of the Saints muttered.

“You must be psychic,” Shaundi drawled before flicking the letter at him. Catching it out of the air, he stared at it in disbelief.

“It came from our old base?” Playa uttered. Indeed, the address was the old church the Third Street Saints had operated in Saints Rows, before everything went to shit and Ultor bought it all up. Johnny perked up, and Shaundi had a perplexed look on her face.

“What even happened to the place after Ultor bought it, anyways?” Playa wondered. He’d been too busy to check it out these past few months.

“They demolished it and built a brand-new church on the site,” Johnny replied. “Well, ‘Mega-Church’ is more appropriate. And it’s also used as a bit of Ultor propaganda. Kinda like a set-piece showing off how nice things are with them in charge. Even got before and after photos in the front area!”

“Damn, how scummy,” Playa grunted, before opening the envelope up and reading the letter within. His eyes widened, then narrowed, before he finished and put it down with a grunt.

“It’s from Julius. He wants to talk,” he revealed to Shaundi and Johnny when the two of them looked at him with a curious expression. Johnny's eyes widened in disbelief at hearing their old boss wanted to talk.

“He does?” Shaundi inquired, surprised.

“Tomorrow evening, 9 pm, at the church,” Playa stated. “I don’t like this. Julius is working with Dex on something, and the moment we start investigating the latter, the former reaches out to us?”

“Reeks of a trap,” Shaundi claimed, which had her boyfriend nodding.

“Damn straight it does. But if we know it’s a trap, we can spring it,” Playa replied, getting up. “Looks like you’re getting that chance to use those weapons of yours soon.”

“Finally!” Johnny said, cracking his neck. “Let’s see how his pre-cognition works against a rocket launcher!”

“You don’t actually have a rocket launcher… do you?” Shaundi asked him nervously. He just smirked at her.

“That does not answer my question!” she shouted at him, which only caused Johnny to laugh.

111 &&& 111

(Friday, March 30th, 2124)

“Shit, this place really has changed,” Playa muttered as he stared up at the new church of Saint’s Row. It was big. Shiny. Made of marble and designed to evoke the classical Greco-Roman styles with a bit of a Gothic flair thanks to its big pointy steeple. And it was nothing like the cozy old church he’d grown up with.

Walking up, Playa went over the plan in his head. Julius Little had wanted to meet Playa alone, so he’d driven over in an unmarked car. However, several Saints, including Johnny, were gathered nearby, watching the scene closely for any signs of trickery. Playa was also wearing a wire, so his companions could listen in and know when to strike if necessary.

‘The moment Julius does something shady, I try to lure him over to one of the big stained-glass windows on the western side so Johnny can snipe him,’ Playa thought to himself.

He walked inside, grimacing a little as he saw a few golden plaques on the walls showing off the names of ‘generous patrons who’d donated to the restoration of the historic site.’

‘More like greedy corpo scumbags who helped turn the neighborhood into their own personal playground,’ Playa thought bitterly.

Sure, Saint’s Row was now nice and shiny with nary a trace of trash, graffiti, or prostitutes anywhere in sight, but its soul had been sucked out, replaced with corporate greed. Good people had once lived and worked in the area and been forced out, and many had ended up in Shivington or the Docks, where they’d been preyed on by the Sons of Samedi and Brotherhood when they took over those areas.

His internal monologue was halted when he spotted Julius himself standing in front of the altar, looking up at the fancy gold crucifix. The former leader of the Third Street Saints had aged poorly. His hair was all grey, lines and wrinkles marred his face, and there was a sense of bone-deep weariness in his posture.

“I still can’t believe it,” Julius said, eyes still locked onto the cross.

“Yeah, it’s hard to believe how badly everything got fucked up when I got put into a coma,” Playa said, walking up beside Julius.

“Isn’t this what we wanted, though, Phil?” Julius asked, glancing over at him. “Clean, safe streets? Buildings that aren’t at risk of condemnation? Apartments with working power and water?”

“Where are the people who used to live in said apartments, Julius?” Playa demanded. “Where are the mom and pop businesses? Where’s the little Vietnamese noodle shop with the kind old granny who always gave us free spring rolls? Where’s the Community Center run by Ted and Rupert who organized rummage sales and helped out whenever somebody needed a warm and safe place to spend the night? Where the fuck is our old church and Father Gregorio, Julius? Where is everyone that made Saint’s Row Saint’s fucking Row?”

“I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting Ultor to swoop in and grab everything for themselves. Or for the city to bungle things so badly that three new gangs managed to move in and carve up the place,” Julius admitted. “But surely you can see that things are better now?”

“Yeah, because of me and the rest of the Third Street Saints,” Playa stated, folding his arms. “Something I had to do twice, after all. If that isn’t a condemnation of Stilwater’s law enforcement, then I don’t know what is.”

Playa then glared at Julius. “Speaking of which… why’d you do it? Why did you plant a bomb on the yacht and blow it up when I was still on it?”

“Whatever could you mean?” Julius asked, playing dumb.

“Who else would be able to sneak an explosive big enough to blow the whole boat up but you, Julius? You and your shrinking Quirk could let you shrink a big, mean bomb and waltz in, plant it, then leave, only bothering to unshrink it when it was time. No way anybody could notice until it was too late if you hid it properly,” Playa claimed. “After all, that was your modus operandi back when you were in charge of the Saints. Your Quirk helped us smuggle weapons and shit into Stilwater, so why couldn’t you use it for more destructive purposes?”

Playa had long had suspicions about what had happened on the yacht that night, and about who was responsible. For a while, he’d believed, like Johnny, that Troy had been behind the bombing. But that didn’t make sense for the undercover cop. There were only a few other people who could have pulled it off.

“Hmph. You were always quick on the uptake,” Julius snorted. “Suppose there’s no reason to keep hiding it. Yes, I was the one who hid the bomb.”

“Why, Julius? Why did you betray me and the Saints? Why didn’t you come back?” Playa asked.

“Why did I do it? Because you were becoming the very thing we swore to destroy!” Julius shouted angrily. “We were supposed to be vigilantes, putting things in order, but you turned on those ideals! You began to shake down businesses and demand higher cuts of the protection money, you started pushing harder drugs, and you began to act just like the Vice Kings, but purple! How could I sit back and let that happen?!”

“You… you absolute idiot!” Playa shouted back. “You thought that was me?! That I was doing all of that because I wanted to?!”

“I wasn’t!” Playa grabbed Julius’s shirt. “I was being threatened to do that!”

“What?” Julius uttered in bewilderment.

“Hughes, Monroe, Monorail… they were holding your life over our heads! Threatening to make it so you’d ‘have an accident’ and die in prison! Everything I did after taking down the Big Three was all on their orders!”

“You… that’s… but they said…” Julius said, looking uncertain.

“Fuck! Didn’t you even try to find out about the truth?!”

“But, Dex told me…”

“Dex? Dex?! He was in contact with you?!” Playa demanded.

“H-he was the one who snuck me information about what you were doing while I was in Solitary Confinement,” Julius said. “I had no idea what was happening in Stilwater outside of that!”

“How did Dex even get into the prison in the first place?” Playa demanded. “And why didn’t he tell us he knew where you were… unless…”

Playa growled and released Julius. “Shit! Fuck! He was a plant this whole time! Like fucking Troy!”

“What are you talking about?” Julius asked.

“Dex! He pitted us against each other! He lied to you about what the Saints were doing while you were in prison, and then he was lying to us about not knowing your location!” Playa shouted, enraged by the betrayal. “Who the hell was he working for?! Hughes?! Or was he already in Ultor’s pocket?!”

“You catch on quick,” a mocking voice called out, and Playa and Julius spun around to face the entrance. Standing in the aisle facing the duo was none other than Dex himself, the bastard wearing a tracksuit and a smarmy smirk. At his side was a giant wearing a trench coat and hat, the brim tilted down to cover their face.

“And for the record, I was being paid by Alderman Hughes to keep an eye on ya. He had informants in all the gangs. So when he died, I had to hitch my horse to a new wagon. Thankfully, Ultor was expanding and needed a man with my expertise,” Dex continued, laying out the truth.

“You traitor!” Julius snarled.

“Blow it out your ass, old man,” Dex scoffed. “Man’s gotta look out for himself in this dog-eat-dog world, it wasn’t anything personal.”

“Don’t act like you have the moral high ground!” Playa snarled. “And what are you doing here, anyways?”

“That would be my fault,” Julius admitted with a grimace. “He convinced me to talk to you, and try to make you leave the Saints, since I thought you were still going off the deep-end.”

“That was a mistake,” Playa muttered, silently hoping Johnny was listening in and preparing to take the shot.

“You shouldn’t have spied on me and gotten involved in my shit, fucker,” Dex spat out at Playa. “And now you’re going to pay for it.”

“Oh? Big talk, asshole. Gonna get your Syndicate goon-friends to beat us up?” Playa demanded. He then glanced over at Julius. “Hey, did you know? This chuckle-fuck has been stealing nuclear waste from the power plant and selling it on the black market!”

“He’s doing what?!” Julius exclaimed, staring in horror at Dex.

“You know, I was gonna let Julius live, but now you’ve gone and forced my hand, Playa,” the traitorous ex-Saint said with a shake of his head.

“No, you weren’t,” Playa retorted. “You’re here with backup. You clearly planned on offing both of us. Make it look like we took each other out.”

“True,” Dex admitted, shrugging. “Well, time to finish you off and make it look like an accident.”

“So, your claim that you could bring Lin back to life… that was a lie, too?” Julius demanded, and Playa’s head snapped over to the older black man.

“What?” he asked, voice leaking anger.

“Dex said that the only way you would be willing to leave the Saints would be if you had a reason to do so. And since Lin’s death turned you into the Fog of War… it was obvious to me that Lin was the only way to help you,” Julius said.

“You can’t bring back the dead,” Playa spat out. “There’s no Quirk capable of such a thing.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Dex said, causing both men to turn their attention back to him. “Technically, it’s not one Quirk. It was a bunch of ‘em, as well as some real bleeding edge technology. Plus, a bunch of favors. But luckily, they seemed to like my idea and went along with it. And the results… well, they were worth it!”

He then snapped his fingers, and the hulking figure at his side took their hat off, revealing an exposed, pulsating brain throbbing ominously. But worse than that was the fact the pitch-black skinned giant looked disturbingly like Lin.

Playa could never forget her face, and he stared at the Nomu in horror. She stared back, eyes devoid of any recognition.

“You… what the fuck did you to?!” Playa screamed.

“I had Julius steal Lin’s brain from Stilwater U’s Medical Department storage room,” Dex replied simply. “They flash-cloned her a body and stuffed her brain inside the meat-suit, along with a few extra goodies.”

“What?!” Playa uttered, turning towards Julius, hurt and betrayal etched onto his face.

“Lin was an organ donor!” Julius hastily explained. “Her body was donated to science! Her brain ended up being preserved and stored with the intent of teaching anatomy and biology shit to their students!”

“And there was enough DNA left inside her old think-meat to both make her a new body, and to replicate her Quirk. With some… modifications and extra additions,” Dex revealed.

Lin’s Quirk, Wink, could force people to blink or wink without their consent. It wasn’t that useful, but it could be used to temporarily blind or confuse somebody if they blinked fast and long enough.

However, there was no knowing what other Quirks had been given to her as a Nomu. This also confirmed the Syndicate was connected to All for One in some manner.

“Why? Why did you make me steal her brain if you were just going to do… do this to her?!” Julius demanded, his voice scratchy with regret.

“Because having Phil get killed by his old lover, the very same one he killed an entire gang over, is just poetic, don’t you think?” Dex retorted, a cruel grin on his face.

“I am going to enjoy killing you,” Playa declared, drawing his revolver.

“Good luck with that,” Dex scoffed.

“Take the shot,” Playa declared, and Dex blinked, only to flinch as a loud “BANG!” rang out, the beautiful stained-glass window exploding into rainbow splinters as a high-caliber sniper round rushed out to meet Dex’s head.

And yet the bullet never landed, as it suddenly changed direction and pierce a pew, leaving Dex untouched.

“Vector Control,” Dex said smugly, recovering quickly from his momentary bout of fear. “Neat Quirk, right? Had it installed inside of Lin specifically to counter Johnny-boy.”

“Dex… are you truly going to go down this path?” Julius demanded, trying one final time to get his former subordinate to see reason.

The ex-Saint said nothing and simply pulled up a worn and tarnished silver Fleur d’Lys. Playa and Julius immediately recognized it as the badge the Inner Circle had worn back in the first iteration of the Third Street Saints.

Dex then flipped it like a coin, only for Nomu-Lin to use her new Quirk to send the piece of metal shooting off at the altar like a bullet. Playa and Julius both leapt aside, but the improvised projectile hadn’t been aimed at either of them in the first.

Instead, Dex used the action as a smokescreen to immediately flee, like the cowardly rat he was, his Nomu at his side.

Johnny obviously didn’t like that, and began to open fire with his sniper rifle, several other Saints joining in and sending a hail of bullets from hidden spots outside the church. However, Nomu-Lin reacted quickly, deflecting all the bullets and causing them to veer off course.

“I thought you wanted to kill me, Dex!” Playa shouted after him.

“And I will! But it will be on my terms!” Dex sneered back before disappearing from the church.

“Chase after him!” Playa shouted into his hidden mic, hoping Johnny would be able to shoot out the wheels of any vehicle Dex was using at the very least.

For a moment Playa dared to hope there had been success, but a minute later the gunfire ceased, replaced by the whine of police sirens. It was clear to him that Johnny had failed.

“We need to leave,” Playa said, getting to his feet and looking around the busted up area.

“You go, I will stay,” Julius said, shoving Playa towards the back of the church.

“What are you planning?” Playa demanded suspiciously.

“I’m not a criminal or a Saint,” Julius replied. “I’m just a humble tour guide who moonlights as this church’s priest. They won’t dare arrest me when I was clearly the injured party.”

“Wait, you’re a priest?” Playa uttered incredulously.

Julius pulled out a clerical collar from his pocket and put it around his neck.

“According to the online course I took, I am,” Julius replied with a smirk. “Go. Take the door to the back and then follow the alleyway to the street. You can make a clean getaway if you do so.”

Playa grunted, before turning away and running off. He hadn’t forgiven Julius just yet, but if he could help, it’d go a long way towards fixing their relationship.

‘And now I have another person who wants to see Dex dead,’ he snorted. Yes, Dex had burned a lot of bridges tonight. One way or another, the traitor would die.