In the Rise of Darkness

Detective Carlton Lassiter jumped out of the car, only a second after it´d stopped, and ran, over to the corner. He drew his gun, no conscious thought necessary, and flattened himself against the wall. His team gathered behind him – the few that were brave enough to keep up the force, even in these days.

Lassiter was proud of each and every one of them, even though he knew that for some of them, bravery was not the only reason to be here. For some – no, actually most of them – it was pure desperation. The simple fact that they had, like so many others, nothing else left than to do what they´d always believed to be the right thing. And it truly was something, that they still could believe that doing this job was the right thing.

Not everybody had been able to keep this conviction. Too many good men had stopped believing in this. They´d lost someone dear or they´d seen too much pain of others, cruelty that people seemed to do to each other these days as if it were a normal act of politeness.

Yes, Carlton could understand why people lost their faith. But he also knew that he couldn´t allow himself to give in to that pain, the way most of them did. He was one of the last and he had the damn responsibility to keep up the fight. This was his city and he wanted to be damned if he would allow it to drown in crime and violence. The law still existed and he would see to it being executed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around. Karen was crouching behind him. The dark purple lowlights in her bright blonde spiky hair confused his eyes for a moment. It was only afternoon but the sky was clouded and didn´t provide much light. And the corner where they were hiding was in the dark. But then Carlton´s eyes adjusted to the shady conditions and he saw her bright blue eyes. Awake and ready as always.

She nodded, nothing more, to let him know she´d be right behind him. Behind her, were his men, all of them ready to attack, as soon as he gave the signal. It was a good feeling to know that he could still count on them.

A cold breeze came up, blowing a curl of hair into his face. He wiped it away. It was overdue to cut it again, but so far he just hadn´t had the time for it. There were more pressing things to think about. And life had been cut short these last few years. Too short to worry about minor things like his haircut.

Again he threw a glance around the corner. He´d spotted the culprits on the other side of the square. It was hard to overlook them. One of the shops they´d busted was burning and they didn´t even try to be quiet. Probably didn´t expect anyone to get in their way. Well, this time they´d be wrong with that.

"We need to hurry." Carlton whispered. "We´ll attack from both sides. Karen. You lead your team over there. Wait for my signal."

"Okay." she answered, squeezing his shoulder one last time before she and three men left, to get to their position.

Carlton looked after them for a moment, hoping that it wouldn´t be the last time that he´d felt her hand. Everything was possible these days and they all knew it. But he needed to focus and so he fixed his gaze on the culprits. They were busy loading their booty on the truck.

Carlton narrowed his eyes, watching them. Keeping half of his attention on the surroundings, to check and make sure that, so far, really no one else was trying to disturb these guys.

"We need to hurry, before Spencer shows up." he whispered at his guys.

"Why?" one of them asked, boldly. "Shall he have them. Would spare us trouble."

Some of the others agreed with the speaker.

Carlton swirled around to the young officer, glaring at him. McNab was one of the few that had lost their families and had still decided to stay with him. Carlton respected that. A lot. That was the reason why he usually allowed him to speak freely to him while others had to ask for permission. Usually.

"You are here to shoot, McNab, not to think." he said.

"Yes, sir." was the short and hard answer.

Carlton knew he didn´t really discipline him with that, but for the moment it would have to do. He could take him aside and lecture him later. And he would. Being his right hand after Karen didn´t give Buzz the right to question him in front of the others.

Not that he couldn´t understand that particular question. But there was simply no way that he´d ever admit that. The law was the law and as long as he lived there was no one, not even Shawn Spencer, who´d be allowed to take it into his own hands. And Buzz knew that very damn well.

Carlton had just turned back to the square when he was already punished for his moment of inattention. Where there had been only the culprits a minute ago, there were now shots and shouting. Someone was attacking them and it wasn´t Karen and her team.

Carlton cursed and jumped up.

"Move in." he yelled, already on his way to cross the square. "S.B.P.D." he yelled on the top of his lungs. "Drop your weapons. You´re under arrest. Drop your weapons."

But the criminals didn´t even think of listening to him. The few of them who had the time to notice him and his orders, forgot their initial attacker and aimed at the police men instead. Carlton was forced to pull the trigger on one of them and McNab and the others did the same with the rest of the gang. It wasn´t even a minute after the whole thing had started and everything was already over. And even though Carlton was still hearing the sounds of gunfire he knew better than to confuse the sound of his own pounding heart with real shots. Experience had taught him to know the difference.

McNab and the others wandered through the fallen culprits, checking if any of them were still alive. The odds were against this possibility though. Carlton cursed. This could have gone different. Why, for god´s sake?

He spotted a figure, coming out of the shadows farther ahead. Carlton knew at once who it was. The man in the dark coat was holding a machine gun. One that was obviously empty now, because he threw it to the ground as if it were a piece of garbage. As replacement for it he took out a normal handgun. Probably just because he wasn´t used to walk around without a weapon in his hands. Even he could see that all of the criminals were dead. He should know. He´d killed them.

"God dammit, Spencer!" Carlton shouted at him.

The reaction in the younger man´s face was minor. He looked at him but that was all.

"The famous three words." he said bored. "Nice to see you too, Lassie."

"I told you to stay away from my operations." Carlton kept shouting into this careless face of a man he´d once considered the greatest annoyance of all time.

"Guess I didn´t get the memo." was all Shawn would reply. "You´re welcome, by the way."

"This is not a game, Spencer. You just killed seven men in cold blood."

"Eight." Shawn corrected. "There´s one more in the back of that shop."

"This is not a police state." Carlton cried.

"Obviously not." Shawn replied with a twitch of his eyebrow and something that was probably meant as a cynical smirk.

Carlton lost his patience and pushed Shawn against the wall. "I should arrest you for multiple murder." he hissed at him.

The face before him was the same as before, not a single change in the features that once had looked younger than his own. Now they only looked less wrinkled. One more time Carlton couldn´t help but shivered over that change Shawn had gone through in such a technically short time. One year was not that long. But it had felt like a lifetime, for all of them. And when he looked into that face before him now, he could see every mark of that lifetime, standing out clearly.

The shadow on Shawn´s face was darker than it used to be and his eyes lay deep within their sockets. His hair was cut so short, it barely existed anymore. He almost looked like a skull.

The man Carlton had once known, didn´t look at him now. The man looking at him now was someone else. Someone who didn´t even remember the meaning of the word smile. Or life. The man he was looking at was dead inside. And the only thing left in his heart was hate.

"I´d like to see you try putting me in a cell." Shawn now said, without any kind emotional attachment.

Carlton was still too shaken to resist when Shawn pushed him back. For a moment they just stood there, looking at each other. The cop and the outlaw. Again Carlton wondered how they could have ended up in this place. Not just Shawn. All of them. He wondered and of course he knew the answer.

Eventually Shawn smirked, humorlessly. "Look at you." he said. "You´ve softened. You´re weak."

"You´re nothing better than these criminals you just shot." Carlton replied. "What do you think Juliet would say to that?"

"She agrees with me." Shawn told him.

Carlton just stared at him, in shock, and Shawn´s only reaction was a smile.

"What did you think?" he asked. "She´s the reason why I´m doing this. She´s always been the reason. Do you really think she´d want these assholes to terrorize the city? You don´t know her as good as you thought you´d do."

"Spencer."

"I do what she wants me to do."

"Spencer."

"I´m doing your job here. When will you finally realize that?"

"Shawn, stop it." Carlton cried. "You´ve got to stop. You´ve got to stop talking to them. Why are you doing this to yourself?"

For a moment Shawn looked at him, as if he didn´t even understand the question. "Because they are the only people that I´ve got left." he said at last.

"That´s not true." Carlton argued. "I´m still here. And Karen. I offered you to come and stay with us. This offer still stands."

"Stay with you?" Shawn repeated. "What for? To watch you, while you´re doing it? No thanks."

"Shawn."

"Excuse me." the other man said gruffly. "My family is waiting for me."

"Shawn. You shouldn´t live in that house any longer. It´s not save there."

"We´re doing good." Shawn told him, not looking back.

"It´s getting colder and colder each day." Carlton cried after him. "You don´t even have a heater."

This time Shawn turned around for a moment, but he kept walking away from him anyway. "So what?" he asked. "There´s a lot of wood that I can burn, isn´t there?"

"Shawn!"

"See ya later." he grumbled. "But honestly. I´m touched by your concern, detective."

"You´re not the only one who lost someone, Shawn!" Carlton shouted after him. But this time his words weren´t answered anymore. The last thing he heard was the engine of Shawn´s motorcycle roaring up, quickly fading away in the distance.

...

It was getting darker while Shawn rode his bike back home. Not because of the night coming, that was still some hours ahead, but because of the snow that would come falling down very soon. It was snowing like that almost every day now. Times were getting colder and so was the weather. And it wasn´t the freaking global warming that had caused this change. God, no. But global it was. The news were not lying about that. Last time they´d heard something, it had said that it was even snowing in Africa by now. And it was getting worse each week as it seemed.

Shawn couldn´t care less. Should the end come, he didn´t care. There was nothing they could do anyway. So why bother?

The streets lay abandoned, at least the one he was driving right now. He took a turn and had to hit the brakes, when two crashed cars suddenly blocked the road. Somehow he managed it to stop without crashing into them himself. It was close though. Just a few inches closer and he´d been Shawn Sushi. One more close death he´d escaped. Whatever.

While he looked around to decide how to drive on, he heard screams. A girl and some guy. The girl was gasping, obviously not okay with what the guy was doing. Shawn didn´t need to see them to know what was going on. The sounds were coming from an allay not far away. He dismounted his bike and walked over to the place.

Inside of that alley, he found the guy busy pressing the girl against the wall, trying to open his pants with one hand. She was maybe nineteen years old, had dark blonde hair and the most desperate eyes a girl could have, even in this world.

Shawn didn´t call out for the guy to stop but walked right up to him. On his way, he grabbed an iron bar from a heap of junk. He could have taken his gun but for some reason this wouldn´t be right. Not for him. The sucker was so busy with the girl, he didn´t even hear him coming … until Shawn wagged the bar over his head, ending his party with that.

The girl shrieked and backed off immediately. Her eyes were big with fear and uncertainty if Shawn was her savior or just another guy who wanted her for himself. Shawn looked at her for a moment and then turned to the bastard on the ground. When he looked up at him, angry and ready to pay him back that strike, Shawn dropped the bar.

For a moment the raper was puzzled. Why should a guy like Shawn, who was probably only half as big as he was, drop a perfectly suitable weapon, when he had to know that he was about to get his ass kicked? But he shouldn´t ask himself that question for too long. A second later Shawn was already at him, had grabbed his ears and pulled him up. The man screamed when the pain seemed to rip his ears off his head. A moment later this very head was smashed down to the ground and he stopped screaming.

Good, Shawn thought. There´s nothing you could win with your screaming anyway. He brought his head down to the ground once again. And again. And again. Until he heard the cracking sound of bones crushing and the wet sound that followed when he hit the broken head to the ground one more time.

Shawn was panting. Now he felt better. This guy would think twice before he tried to rape another girl. Or maybe he wouldn´t.

Slowly he got up, the dead guy lying beneath him like a deformed roadkill. When Shawn looked ahead he saw the girl. She was still standing there, staring at him wide eyed. He didn´t say anything, just looked back at her. Eventually she started to back off and ran away.

"You´re welcome." Shawn murmured into the empty street.

He turned around and slowly made his way back to his bike. He´d just reached the end of the alley when he heard a sound. Was that asshole still alive after all? But when he turned around he learned that it was only two kids, who probably had been hiding somewhere. They were sneaking over to the dead guy to check his pockets.

When they noticed that Shawn had seen them, they halted in their actions. But since Shawn didn´t do anything, either calling out or coming back for them, they went on with their business of robbing the dead guy.

Shawn watched them for a while. A life was worth so little these days. Eventually he turned around and left. It was time for him to get home.

...

When he reached his father´s house, it had already started snowing. Driving sleet was blowing into his face the last few streets before he finally got there. He parked the bike at the curbside and walked through the garden to the back door. The front door was no use, it was buried under rubble just like the garage and most of the front half of the house. The garden looked still the same – if Henry would have let it rot all along, the way it was rotting for over a year now.

Shawn opened the door. It wasn´t locked, there was no sense in locking the door of a house that had been smashed like this. People were avoiding those houses if they could, as if they were haunted or something. Shawn didn´t believe that. And even if they would be, he wouldn´t care. This was his father´s house and if he should die in it because it was "haunted", so be it.

"I´m home!" he cried out, stepping in. He was greeted by the same silence that greeted him every day. He shivered a little. "Gosh, dad, ever thought about a new insolation?"

He walked over to the chimney and started to make a fire. It had been no joke when he´d told Lassiter that he´d have to burn some of the wood the house had been made of. So far he´d been able to economize but soon he´d run out of the roof truss. Whatever. He took a seat on the couch and leaned back, his eyes fixed on the three pictures that stood on the sill over the fireplace. The three most important people in his life. Juliet, Gus and his father.

"How was your day?" he asked in the silent room.

Juliet´s picture answered him with the same sweet smile he always got for an answer. He smiled back and nodded as if that was exactly what he´d expected.

"Same here." he said. "What? Oh, nothing special. Lassie sends his greetings by the way. He seems to do good. Repeated his offer again. I know. I know but … you know. I just can´t. I don´t know. Maybe …" he stopped himself and gazed at the picture of his father. "Don´t say it." he demanded. "I don´t wanna hear it. Don´t you think it´s a better idea that we´re not all in the same place, just in case? If you guys wouldn´t have been in the same place that day, maybe …"

He stopped once again, but this time not because he wanted to. This time it was because he couldn´t go on. He was choking. He didn´t want to cry, especially not in front of his dad. But in the end he couldn´t help it. God, he hated this.

Outside the sleet was getting heavier. A thin layer of whiteness covered the grass in front of his dad´s house. Sleet that would melt away again, just like always. Someday that might change, when the air would get even colder than it was already, but so far it was still melting the ice and snow that came falling down. In other places of the world they were not that lucky. It was funny but the end always seemed accompanied by coldness and darkness. It was total cliché but it was true.

When Shawn couldn´t stand the accusing gaze of his father any longer, he got up from the couch and walked to the window. For a while he just stood there and looked out.

After a while the driving sleet was getting thinner again and a few minutes after that, it stopped completely. The sky was even getting a little brighter again. The last few beams of daylight before night would settle down. Jules would have called it a sign of hope. Shawn was not so sure. Hope was a luxury he couldn´t afford anymore. Or maybe he just didn´t want to.

His eyes left the brightening sky and fell down to earth again, to the gate on the other side of his dad´s grass. Someone was standing there. A small guy with the stature of a cargo box and hanging shoulders. Shawn had no idea how long he´d been standing there or where he had come from. But this guy wasn´t here for sightseeing. Immediately Shawn went back to the chimney, to get his gun.

"I don´t know." he said, remaining next to his best friend´s picture for a moment. "Don´t worry, I´ll ask him. You just stay here. I´ll be right back."

With that he went to the door and opened it. The guy was halfway on the way to the door, when Shawn aimed his gun at him.

"That´s close enough." he said and the guy halted.

He was a Chinese guy, Shawn could see now. He was wearing spectacles and when he saw Shawn´s gun, he raised his hands and his eyes became as big as golf balls.

"Don´t shoot." he cried with a very high and very typical Chinese guy voice. He had a very strong accent. "I´m not a bad guy." he assured him.

Shawn looked him up and down. He didn´t think that the guy was dangerous but one could never be sure these days.

"Are you Shawn Spencer?" he asked him now, his hands still in the air.

"Who wants to know that?" Shawn asked back.

"My name is Hiro Nakamura." the Chinese guy introduced himself. "Dr. Suresh sent me to you."

"Suresh?" Shawn repeated. He´d been looking for him but had never found him. The geneticist had probably known what would happen if he should ever find him. "Where is he?" Shawn now asked the small man before him.

"He´s dead." was the sad answer. "I found him dying after some bad people attacked him."

Shawn narrowed his eyes. What a shame, he thought. "Happens." was all he said out loud. "Why did he send you to me?"

"He said you might be able to tell me what happened to the future." Hiro said with a tiny but hopeful voice. There was a very desperate and sad look in his eyes.

Shawn could only chuckle. "You´re some funny guy." he said. "Look around. There is no future."

The look in Hiro´s eyes didn´t change. "Why?" was all he asked.

Shawn aimed his gun at him for one more minute. Then he decided that the guy was probably harmless and lowered his gun. Hiro lowered his arms in response. He was still looking at him with those desperate and asking eyes. What happened to the future, he´d wanted to know. Shawn chuckled again. Well, if he needed to know so desperately, he could as well give him an answer.

"You ever heard the name Sylar?" he asked.