THE car came to its death like a dying animal, wounded and wheezing. Its metal shell groaning as it scraped the wet concrete. Bullet holes riddled the doors and hood like a plague and steam hissed from the cracked radiator in sharp bursts. The headlights flickered, coughing their final breath before the vehicle jerked forward and slammed, spine-first, into a brick wall.
A radio buzzed with a feminine voice reporting, "Looks like the storm had passed. Though it's gone, we request people to stay at home and don't come out in the city till the flood gets out completely."
Then silence erupted but it's not the kind of silence, one finds in peace or stillness, but a deeper, colder silence, the kind that follows gunfire and screams, the kind of silence that tastes like metal and death. A moment passed of the car staying there.
Then the driver's door creaked open and a person .didn't step out–he fell.
Archer Creed stumbled from the wreckage like a revenant. His right hand clutched the doorframe, knuckles white with his veins trembling beneath bruised skin. The wind slapped at his coat, soaked through and torn at the seams. His suit, once sharply pressed, tailored in black was now painted in blood, clinging to his body like a second ruined skin.
Blood poured from a ragged gash above his right eyebrow, thick and dark that was slipping into his eye and down the curve of his cheek. He didn't wipe it away because he didn't seem to notice. The world spun around him, a carousel of fractured light and far-off sirens.
And yet, his hand didn't reach for his wounds. It reached inside his coat.
Slowly. Shaking. Deliberate.
His fingers found what they searched for. It was cold, heavy and most importantly it was real.
THE REVOLVER.
A custom-built six-shooter. Black steel, pearl grip, silver filigree that caught the streetlight like a whisper from another time. A weapon of balance, not rage. A weapon that was passed down. His father's last gift. The last piece of blood-stitched memory he had.
He stared at it through half-lidded eyes. Rain ran down his forehead, mixed with sweat and blood. He brought the revolver close, his thumb brushed over the engraved name near the barrel like a man reading scripture.
And then He smiled. It was not a grin, not joy, bitter and neither a broken smirk. The kind that a dying man wears when he realizes the war never left him. It just slept waiting.
His legs gave way and then he collapsed to his knees, then falls forward, his palms smacked the pavement with a wet slap. The revolver clattered beside him, spinning once before lying still. The city watched in silence.
Rain tapped against his back like a funeral drum. His breath came in short bursts, sharp and shallow. The sound of approaching sirens crawled over the rooftops like ghosts made of red and blue.
Archer Creed lay there, blood in his mouth, metal in his hand, rage in his heart.
***
Laughter. Not the kind of laughter that echoes in smoky bars or hollow alleyways. Not the cruel kind that follows spilled blood. This laughter was pure, sun-warmed and innocent.
A younger Archer, eight, perhaps nine,ran barefoot through a golden field, his chest rising with joy, not pain. His small hand was gripped tight in a larger one that was rough, calloused, but gentle. It was his father's hand.
James Creed wasn't a man of many words. He wasn't loud or warm in the way television fathers were. But there was a steadiness to him. A presence that filled the earth around him. When he laughed, it came from deep within his chest, like thunder cracking in the distance.
He lifted the boy high into the air, arms outstretched like wings. The boy squealed with his legs kicking wildly as the world spun around him.
"Faster, Dad, Faster!" he cried, breathless. James chuckled, slowing only slightly. "One day, you'll be too big for this."
"Never!" Archer beamed, catching the sun in his teeth. "Not ever!" The field seemed endless. The sky even more so and for that one fleeting moment, it felt like time didn't exist.
Just laughter, wind, and the unbreakable bond between father and son. The memory vanished like smoke in the cold. Archer's eyes shot open.
The sky above him was no longer blue. It was dark, soaked in rain and neon and rot. His breath rasped, it was labored and shallow. His chest ached with every inhale, ribs straining against pain he couldn't name.
The pavement beneath him was wet with more than water. His own blood pooled around him, thick and warm, slowly cooling with the night. But his hand still clutched the revolver. It wasn't instinct because it was something deeper, It was remembrance.
The metal of the gun pressed into his palm like a brand, anchoring him to a time when life meant more than survival. The same revolver James Creed had spent years forging. A weapon built not just for war, but for legacy, for his legacy.
The world around Archer began to return, piece by chaotic piece. Distant shouting with a dog barking and the howl of sirens drawing nearer with sounds of tires hissing on wet roads.
But in his mind, there was only fire. It burned in his chest, it burned in his eyes, it burned behind his teeth and it will burn until he got it completely.
But honor, memory and bloodline. Someone out there had pay for it because the hunt had not ended.
A R C H E R C R E E D