Brad was still up by the time James got home. “What happened?” he asked, as James threw overshirt on the couch.

“Enough,” James replied.

“Is he… dead?” Brad waited for an answer. Silence was all he received. Brad repeated his question.

“…No.”

“Heh, you wanted to kill him, didn’t you…?”

James turned and walked to the window. “More than anything.”

“What stopped you?” Again, silence was all Brad received.

James sighed. As he bumped past Brad, he offered, “my heart,” before slamming the door.

James woke up early the next morning. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed. “Typical,” he then muttered. He had been forced to resign yesterday, and only now did he have the ability to get to work on time. “Well, just four more days ‘til I hand in my resignation… Better make the most of it.”

Sighing, he chose not to wear his usual business-like attire, and instead dressed in black denim pants, a white undershirt and a black over-shirt, the very same with the blue flames covering it.

Sliding into the car-park, James smiled as he realised was the first to arrive at school. Glancing at his watch, he guessed that not many teachers in their right mind would be at school at six-thirty in the morning. Just to really feel superior, he pulled his car across three spaces; not only would he really piss off some teachers, but he was under no threat of losing his job, either.

“I’m only running on two hours of sleep, but I feel great!” James had this theory that a decent night’s sleep was eight to twelve hours. Less than four hours was secondary energy systems, in which his body overcompensated, and ended up making him really energetic. Between the two was the really bad section. For this reason, he was whistling joyfully, energetically jumping into walls and bouncing off them, generally being a larrikin, as usual. He soon stopped, though, as he heard sobs coming from nearby.

“The world seeks equilibrium,” James smiled. His face soon turned to that of concern as he learned the source of the crying. Naomi was sitting behind one of the classrooms, head buried in arms and body shivering ever so slightly. “Oh no…” He rushed up to her and wrapped his arm around her. James gasped as he touched her skin; she was freezing. He quickly wrapped her up in his over-shirt, and even then she still hadn’t acknowledged his presence.

“What happened?” he asked. Naomi slowly lifted her head. Her left eye was heavily bruised, as was her cheek, and there was a cut along the side of her face. James merely stared at her, his hand twitching above where his gun was usually located. “Get up,” he ordered.

Naomi, still in tears, slowly looked into his eyes. James’ face indicated it was a serious matter; she shifted her weight to her hands and rose to her feet, stumbling as she tried to regain her balance.

James stormed to his car, with Naomi struggling to keep up. He ripped open the door of his car. “Get in.”

Naomi silently obeyed. James sped out of the car-park, ignoring the look of surprise from the Headmaster as he nearly clipped his car. Grateful that there weren’t many other cars on the road, he ran a few red lights and every speed limit sign. For any other driver, it would be a suicide run, but James had so much control over his car that even as the accelerator hit the floor, he was driving perfectly. He slowed down as he neared his destination, but still applied the brakes heavily to pull up outside Naomi’s house.

Without a word, he pulled his gun from beneath his seat. “Stay here,” he advised Naomi. Ripping the car door open, he stormed up to the house. With a quick flick of his wrist and a foot to the front door, his path was open. Purely out of rage, he kicked the trip-wire to the bell; Naomi’s father was surely alerted to his presence.

As Greg rounded the corner to greet James, a bullet was promptly fired to his leg. Before he could react, another bullet penetrated his other leg. Stumbling in pain, he fell forward. James mercilessly grabbed him by the throat and threw him against the wall. Placing his gun against Greg’s torso, James fired in the one location where no vitals were in danger; a shot designed entirely for maximum pain.

James grabbed Greg again, slamming him against the wall. “You were warned,” he whispered, as he pulled the trigger one last time. The bullet from his gun burst from the chamber, striking through the man’s flesh and driving into his lung. Greg would not die of blood loss. He would suffer a slow, painful death, drowning in his own blood.

James turned to Greg’s wife, who was shocked by the scene before her. “Feel free to start living your life.” With that, James turned and walked away, ignoring the looks of dread aimed at him via Naomi as he climbed into the car and threw some clothes at her.

The two drove around for well over an hour. James felt no remorse; he felt liberated and justified in his actions. Turning to Naomi, he asked if she was hungry. Upon confirmation, they pulled up at the ‘Fisher’s Delight’, a local fish-and-chip shop by the boardwalk.

James ordered a large sum of chips and a few pieces of fish, whilst Naomi headed to the bathroom to get changed.

“I don’t eat fish…” Naomi pointed out as James revealed their breakfast.

“That’s okay, neither do I,” James smiled as he tossed the pieces of fish to the seagulls. “Hey, look!” he pointed. “They’re like the teachers when a promotion’s thrown up!”

Naomi laughed. She knew, as well as everyone, of the situation James was in with regards to the rest of the teachers, and often found humour in his badgering of them.

“So that gimp seagull over there, is that you?” Naomi giggled.

“Hey, I’m no gimp! Nor is he! He’s just smart. See, look.” James then grabbed a handful of chips and hurled them over towards the limping gull. Although the bird didn’t have enough time to herd all of them, a fair share was grabbed before the creature darted off into the sky.

“Anyway, it’s time I got you to school.”

“Wait, just one thing first…” Naomi whispered. James looked at her in surprise. “Is… my mum okay?”

James smiled. “She’s fine. You two can live your own lives now…”

James pulled up into the car-park; again, he was late. “No way!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe I lost my space!”

Refusing to park on the side of the road, he double-parked over two cars. “You may have gotten here before me,” he smiled, “but you can’t leave ‘til I have.”

Turning to Naomi, he told her to go to class. He was going to try and sort things out with the Headmaster.

The Headmaster escorted James to his office the second he set foot in administration. Shutting the door, he moved to his seat before asking the obvious question: “what happened?”

“For your safety,” James spoke, “I suggest you don’t get involved.”

“Very well. Is… Naomi safe?”

“Fine. So is her mother.”

“I assume you are to make preparations to flee?”

“Not yet. These students mean a lot to me. They deserve the chance to say goodbye.”

“Even if it means the wrath of the law?”

“I knew the consequences when I got involved. I’m a gang member, specialising in the assassination of my enemies. This isn’t something that just happened in the last day.”

“James… what are you…?”

“A freedom fighter.” He then turned and left the office, returning to class without a word. There was no need for talk. He had broken the law, twice. He had lost his job. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, but he wouldn’t leave behind all those that looked up to him. In four days, he would take his leave, no sooner.

“What’s goin’ on, man? People are sayin’ you were forced to quit…”

“Yeah, I have ‘til the end of the week to hand in my resignation.”

Simon looked up at James. “Yeah, good one. Seriously though, what’s goin’ on?”

“You have until the end of the week to say goodbye. After that, you’ll never see me again.”

“Legal trouble?”

“There’s no trouble, escaping the law is a breeze.”

There was an uneasy silence for the rest of class. Nobody had suspected James would be running from the law. They all knew he disregarded rules, but still, they weren’t expecting him to seriously be against the law. Although James still felt he did what was necessary, he saw no reason to recount the events, or make any small chat at all, for that matter.

“James?” a student asked, bringing up her text-book.

“What!” he snapped. Realising how he had reacted, James offered an apology. “I don’t get much sleep anymore…” he explained.

The girl returned to her seat, and James collapsed on his desk. “I can’t take this anymore… I need to get out of here. I’m not a teacher; I’m a freedom fighter…” Sighing, James rose to his feet and walked out of the classroom.

“Melissa, can you take my class again?”

“Sure… what’s up?” Melissa asked in concern.

“Nothing, I’m just gonna go do something crazy to make me feel normal again.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno… skydiving or something.”

“Okay…” Melissa replied, still confused.

James sat in his car for over an hour. The occasional thought ticked over in his head, but he was not really thinking. He just sat there, staring into space, trying to figure out where his life was heading. Giving up, he started up his car and headed home. He no longer cared whether or not the men who had broken in returned. He couldn’t care less if the police arrived to arrest him. He’d given up, and wanted nothing but sleep.

James awoke in a cold sweat, shivering despite the warmth of the night. He breathed in slowly in an attempt to slow his beating heart, but it had no effect. He recalled the last moments of his dream. He was standing there, a smoking gun in his hand, and the bullet was slowly winding its way towards Naomi. He’d woken up just before it struck her, but he was too scared to close his eyes again. Knowing he would never get back to sleep, James dressed himself and made some breakfast.

Sitting down at his computer, he sighed as he remembered short-circuiting it. He asked himself how things had gotten so bad for him. In the past week, he’d lost his job, killed two men, fallen wanted by the federals, destroyed his computer, and dreamt of killing a young girl. He reminded himself that things could only get better, but he knew deep down that things were destined to become much worse.

James caught sight of something in the corner of his eye and swiftly turned, coming face-to-face with the child haunting his dreams, whom reminded him of his quest to kill Zephyr before slowly fading away.

“Great, and now I’m seeing things,” James muttered, knowing that the experience was quite real. He had no idea why he was being told to wipe out this guy, or how he was going to do it, but his life had gone so far downhill that he bit his lip and started packing. Taking no more than two pistols, plenty of ammo for them, his USB port and some clothes, James packed the car. Ripping up a floorboard from under his bed, he grabbed a wad of notes, pulling out two fifty dollar bills and slipping them into his wallet. The rest of the money went into a special compartment on the floor under the seat of his car. His main goal was to try and rejoin the military, so that he had access to a computer which held the majority of the information behind his arrest. The difficult part would be to forge a new identity so he could join the ranks again.