"Room now!" Callum roared.
Aikio wasn't going to be told twice, she scrammed.
He quickly grabbed the revolver but Aikio knocked the table in her rush towards the room, scattering the bullets onto the floor.
"Shit."
Callum growled and grabbed the nearest two and dived behind the couch. The door to the room slammed shut.
"You don't have to do this 13." Callum called out, slipping the two rounds into the empty barrels. He cocked the hammer, feeling the chamber align with the barrel.
There was no response, just the sound of heavy boots against the creaking floorboards, crunching over splattered wood from the broken door.
"I love her." He said, casting a furtive glance at the door to make sure it was shut, "Is that so wrong?"
The footsteps stopped.
Callum looked around the dimly lit room where he had vision, clutching the gun harder in his sweaty hand when he didn't see any signs of life. He turned and pressed his back against the couch. 13 had to be behind the couch.
There was still no sound. Not even breathing aside from his own but he knew exactly where his intruder was, he just needed more bullets.
He peeked around the edge and saw four in front of the couch, hallway hidden by the newspaper he had swiped off earlier. Another flash of lightning lit the room up, casting a sleek iridescent glow on the surface of the golden bullets.
13 was probably just waiting for him to make the first move but while he had time to kill, Callum did not. If Aikio waited for too long she'd step out of the room trying to be a hero again and then they were both truly fucked.
With a deep breath he dove for the bullets.
When Aikio heard the first gunshot she flinched, burrowing deeper under the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering how any of this escalated so far. She just wanted to fix her mistake; that's all she wanted.
Now here she was cowering in fear under a bed while the love of her life was out there fighting a literal force of nature. Callum had warned her about him; they knew the consequences and yet it was worth it. They were happy but now their time had run out.
Another gunshot sliced through the air. She pressed her hands to her ears to stop the ringing sound that ensued. She heard the sound of wood breaking, followed by grunts and the sound of someone's fist meeting something hard. Aikio squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sounds and praying that Callum would walk through that door any moment now covered in blood and bruises but still alive.
She was struggling so hard to block out the fighting that she didn't realize how quiet it was now. In the silence of the night all she could hear was the constant droning of raindrops and her uneven breathing.
She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Why was it quiet? That could only mean-
Panic, fear and worry latched onto her. She crawled out from under the bed and rushed to the door. Twisting the doorknob, she ripped open the door to find a scene that made her freeze and her blood run cold.
Her eyes widened.
Callum was slumped against the white wall facing her. There was a piece of wood from the broken door lodged into his abdomen. Blood seeped out of his wound in a thick red gash.
The silver haired boy was facing Callum with his back to her. There was a peculiar glowing orb in his open palm. Streams of blue sparkling light were flittering from Callum's chest towards the ball as if 13 were sucking his very essence. The ball floated just above 13's pale palm, buzzing larger by the second with a thousand small dots of light that looked like fireflies burning into one ball of blue light.
Seeing Callum in this state petrified her. She screamed at herself to move, to do something. Yet her legs stayed glued in place. She couldn't even breathe.
Shockingly, the silver haired boy known as 13 scared her more than the image of her dying lover. There was something about him. The energy around him was like a buzzing electric shockwave; it stunned her in place.
Callum looked up at the boy and smiled, the corner of his lip trailing a line of blood to his chin. "It's ironic. You know you were the first thing I saw, and now you're the last."
"Sisyphus thanks you for your Service, 12." The silver haired boy said, his voice was oddly deep. "The forgotten will never forget you."
Callum smiled weakly, he looked genuinely content at those words.
Then the final trickle of light joined the ball. It glowed like a thousand bright stars clumped together, illuminating brighter and brighter until Aikio had to shield her face with her hands before the light burned her eye sockets.
When it dimmed down she lowered her hands and opened her eyes to find 13 leaning over Callum's body, gently closing his open eyes. Seeing him touch Callum after he had taken the life out of him snapped something in her. She clenched her jaw, her anger burning away her fear.
"Get away from him!" Aikio shrieked and rushed towards Callum.
He didn't make any move at all when she brushed straight past him and took Callum's cold, lifeless body in her arms.
She could only cradle his head and torso, crying silently as she touched his dull cheeks. She played with his dark hair and gently traced is thick eyebrows as her tears trickled onto his already pale face.
13 said nothing, her quiet sobs filling up the silence.
"It's not fair," she croaked, tasting her salty tears in her mouth.
She finally looked up and her glassy red rimmed eyes met his. There was no emotion on his face, as he stared down at her; silver hair sweeping over his startling blue eyes.
"We were happy. We can't love? Is that it?" Her voice cracked, "I'm just as human as you, maybe even more."
That was the first time she saw a flicker of emotion on his face, a hollow smile, a flash of sadness in his blue eyes.
"You're not human. You're just the memory of a dead girl."
Aikio's gaze dulled and she stared off into the distance, as if his words shattered a glass dome around her; pulling her back to reality. A reality where the man who was meant to kill her became her savior, a reality where she wasn't even a human, or a ghost; just the result of a dying girl's regret.
Salmon held his hand out and the (_) tattoo on his wrist glowed hot white. From the light a fuzzy shape materialized out of thin air in his hand. It glowed white, sharpening and morphing until it outlined the shape of a handgun. When it dulled down the white light peeled off of a obsedian black gun. It looked ordinary with no special barrel or casing. But the color was opaque, even in the dimness of the room it seemed to suck the light from around it.
He pointed it to her head.
She didn't even flinch.
Then he fired. An onyx black bullet launched from the barrel.
A tear rolled down her cheek and she hugged Callum to her chest.
The bullet landed between her eyes. For a moment there was silence as she stared off with glazed dull eyes. Then she started to fade in and out of existence; like a glitch in a video game, pieces of her body disappeared and reappeared as if struggling to remain tethered. Her skin blurred translucent, blending into the white wall behind her.
The curtains she pulled aside every morning changed from grey to baby blue, the couch she cuddled with Callum on murky days with morphed into a lime sleeper sofa, the bedroom behind Salmon changed at the seams, bedsheets blended into a different color, the clothes, pictures, books, and nick-nacks around the apartment vanished into thin air. Even the door went back into place, each shard and splinter of wood pulled itself off the ground and flew back into door until it stood agar and perfectly intact with it's hinges as if it were never broken in the first place, refurbished and in a fresh new coat of milky white paint.
Everything Aikio touched faded into nothing, everyone who'd ever come in contact with her forgot her existence; until she finally vanished with Callum in a single second.
Now all that was left before Salmon was a bare yellow wall inside a new empty apartment and the pitter patter of a slowing storm outside.