Chapter 9 | The Assailant

There are signs jutting out of the desert floor, mocking your ambition to go elsewhere. Fifteen hundred kilometers to that place in the south. Two thousand to the east. The west, a mere nine hundred, but what the sign neglects to mention are the pirates you're likely to encounter. There's no sign pointing east, to go that way you're lost to begin with. Best stay here and lay low, even with a bounty on your head. There's an art to the bounties. Some are insultingly low, as if to say, “we will get you, regardless.”

Ty sits on his motorbike, facing south. He's not one to stay and lay low. An independent operator, his strength lies in movement and stealth. He takes on many forms, blending just as easily into desert as sea. The Atlas beckons. Fifteen hundred kilometers to a place no one's been in twelve hundred years, where the earth's fabric’s ripped, where time ceases to exist and all things, including escape, are possible.

Though Independent, he's sponsored and well equipped for an unusual mission. The poison darts, in a satchel on his back, are there just in case. Certainly, he'll use them, but this mission is not an assassin’s quest. There are others, like Ty, at various locations, each with maps and supplies, each with an assignment, each with an insultingly low bounty on his head. None is known to any other, and you'd have to advance through several layers of authority to reach the one who’s aware of them all. Even at that level, you'd still be several layers beneath Pygmalion, though certainly, if pressed, he'd approve.

Ty studies the map and compares it with what he already knows, factoring in the price on his head and the cost of inaction. Duty is a key ingredient, as is the promise of a place in the pantheon of martyrs. He will not shame his family. Still, as an independent operator, loyalty is his most flexible asset. He could easily disappear into the Atlas, take refuge amongst the Berbers, build an army of his own, or a small band of pirates carving an empire out of the rocks. He could do many things other than rush into fate. The question, at least for now, remains open. He's got fifteen hundred kilometers ahead, and a multitude of jackals behind. Somebody will want to collect that insultingly low bounty, if only to prove themselves worthy.

Stay and lay low, or get the hell rolling. That part, at least, is clear.