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CHAPTER 7: The First Name
publish date:
2026-10-29 18:29:34
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Taking out the general CHAPTER 8: First Blood
TAKING OUT THE GENERALFor three years, Nathan had killed Officer Kane in his dreams. In none of those dreams had his hands shaken.They were shaking now.Rain dripped from a broken gutter onto his neck. He remained motionless, watching through the back window. Inside, the tavern glowed with a yellow, smoky light. Men drank, laughed, and shouted over one another, their voices rising above the clatter of bottles.In the corner sat a broad-shouldered man hunched over a table, alone.Kane.Ashley's plan was simple. She had delivered it that morning on a second slip of paper, pushed beneath the door by a boy who disappeared before Nathan could catch him.Midnight. He always goes out the back to relieve himself. Do it there. Take his purse and his boots. Make it look like a robbery. Leave through the canal.Simple and Clean. Exactly the kind of plan Nathan would have made himself.That was what bothered him.Milo's voice echoed in his memory, calm and cold.Nobody is lucky around General V
Taking out the general CHAPTER 7: The First Name
TAKING OUT THE GENERAL surviving three years of hunger, a cruel foreman, and a landlord who treated poverty like a personal offenseAnything to avoid this envelope I don't want it open yetWhen he finally reached for it, his hand trembled so violently that Jace noticed."It's paper," Jace said. "It can't bite you.""It can," Nathan replied.He knew that handwriting. After three years of silence, a letter bearing those familiar, looping letters could only bring one of two things: a grave or a ghost.He tore it open.Nathan,I am alive. I'm sorry I didn't write sooner. I wasn't allowed. There's a public telephone at the end of Dock Seven, the green booth with the broken glass. Be there at midnight. I will call. Come alone. Please.A.Nathan read it once.Twice.Four times.Then the paper slipped from his fingers, and he sank to the floor because his legs had stopped working.Ashley.The girl who used to swing her feet against the wall behind his house. The girl who laughed whenever he
Taking out the general CHAPTER 6: Grayport
TAKING OUT THE GENERALThe rat had been eating Nathan's dinner for three nights, so on the fourth night, Nathan ate the rat.He made no speech about it as Jace watched from the mattress, his mouth hanging open. Milo, who rarely wasted words, simply turned his face toward the wall."Say something," Jace muttered at last.Nathan swallowed another bite. "It's meat."That was Grayport. Three years earlier, he had cried when his mother burned the rice. Now he could eat a rat and feel nothing at all.Grayport was a city in the same way a rotting fish was still a fish. Poverty was not an unfortunate condition in Grayport. It was a sentence handed down at birth.Rent was due every Friday. The landlord arrived on Thursday to remind you.Nathan was twenty years old. He shared a single room with his two cousins, one stove, and one window patched with cardboard. Their possessions amounted to little more than a few battered utensils, threadbare blankets, and a debt that grew faster than they coul
Taking out the general Chapter 5: The Only House They Didn't Enter
Three years passed.Nathan was now twenty.If you saw him on the street in Grayport, you would not recognize the boy from the well. His face was harder. A small scar marked his forehead where he had hit the brick. His arms were thicker from working at the dock, carrying bags of cement every day. His eyes were always tired, as if he never slept properly.And he never did. Every night he dreamed of the gap between the bricks, of his father's blood on the floor, of the boots.He still lived in the same zinc room with Jace and Milo. The room now had a wall.On that wall, Jace had nailed papers: names, photos, and handwritten notes stolen from Hills City.- First:Officer Kane – Hill Road – Dragged Grace Hills- Second:Officer Paul – Second Street – Hit Lily- Third:Sergeant Brant – Truck Driver – Threw furnitureFourth: General Varric – Hills Street Mansion – The GeneralSeven names. Seven men who had marched into his house that day.Every morning, Nathan looked at that wall before going t
Taking out the general Chapter 4: The Well
Nathan did not move.One minute became ten. Ten became thirty.Outside, on Hills Street, his father's body lay on the ground. His mother was wailing. His sister was screaming. And he was inside a hole in the ground, biting his hand and listening.He could hear Varric's voice inside his house."Take that chair out and burn it. No, not here. Take it to the truck. I don't want fire marks on my new floor.""That wall there, break it. I want an open kitchen.""This is well behind the house, cover it. Fill it with sand. I don't want a well in my mansion."Nathan's eyes widened in the dark.They were going to fill the well.If they filled it, he would be buried alive.He pressed his back harder against the cold bricks and tried to make himself smaller. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought the soldiers outside could hear it.A soldier walked into the backyard. Through the small gap between the bricks, Nathan saw his boots stop right beside the well.The soldier lifted the wooden pl
Taking out the general Chapter 3: The Man Who Thought He Could Bring Down the General
Nathan could not breathe in the well.It was only five feet deep: old bricks, dry dust, and the smell of water that had been gone for years. He sat with his knees pulled to his chest, his head bleeding where he had struck the brick when he fell.He had his hand over his mouth and was biting down so hard that his teeth left marks.If he screamed, they would hear him. And if they heard him, they would kill him too.Through a small gap between two bricks, he could see straight into his living room.His mother and sister were no longer inside. They had been dragged out to the street. He could hear his mother crying, and Lily shouting, "Daddy!"Only three people remained in the living room: his father, Thomas Hills, on his knees; General Varric, standing; and one soldier behind Varric, holding an iron rod.Thomas was in terrible shape. His shirt was torn open, and his chest was streaked with dust and blood. Blood ran from his nose, his mouth, and a cut on his forehead. One eye was almost s
