Another morning, and another day of waking up tasting blood in my mouth. I blinked heavily and rubbed my aching head, but I wasn't at home. Where was I? I looked around me and felt pain coursing through my body. My legs felt like they've been broken into shards and my shoulder ached. I gritted my teeth and dragged myself into an upright position and found myself on a rooftop. The ambush from the night before came back to me. I realised that I hadn't made it home. No, I had chosen not to go home from fear that I was being followed. I remember hunkering down on this rooftop, thinking that I would just wait a while to see if I was being pursued or if there were any drones following me. I must have passed out. The sun was rising now, and my body felt like it had been put through a wood chipper. I couldn't even begin to fathom or untangle all the pain signals that were flooding into my brain from seemingly every inch and limb of my body. I wanted to cry, and to be honest with you, I might have been. My body felt so disconnected from my mind that I couldn't tell.

  I swallowed and spluttered, pulling the balaclava from my face, gulping in breath, feeling like I was on the verge of suffocating or drowning in my own blood. I turned my head and spat. My saliva was red and thick. I groaned again, which led to a coughing fit that made me feel like my chest was going to explode and my rib cage was going to splinter. I clutched my midsection, my body visibly quivering and shaking. After a few moments, I was able to get my breathing back under control, and then I leaned my head back, closing my eyes, sighing deeply.

  I needed to get home. The sun was rising; people would start leaving their houses soon to go to work, and I couldn't afford to be caught out here in the open dressed like I was and covered in blood. With a great effort born more of sheer stubbornness than anything else, I willed my body to rise, my legs quivering underneath me as I clutched the side of the building, slowly shuffling along until I felt like my legs could support my weight.

  Finally, I was able to get a read of where I was. I wasn't far from home. It took me 10 minutes of limping and shuffling and carefully climbing across buildings until I got back to my own building. I almost fell down the fire escape; my body was barely responding at this point, and my vision was starting to blur. I spat another mouthful of blood out my mouth and then finally made it to my window. Blurrily, I touched my hand to the seal, cursing as I waited for the ominous click. Finally, the seal sprung open, and I fell into my room with just enough time to pull the window shut behind me before I blacked out again.

  *

  When I woke, it was pitch black in my room. I must have slept the entire day; the sun had literally risen and set before I regained consciousness. As usual, I found myself laid out on the floor, and in agony. My muscles had all seized up, my neck was so stiff I couldn't turn my head, and my breathing was short and shallow because my ribs hurt so badly. But the worst pain came from my legs. Not only were the muscles tender and cramping, but I had taken so many heavy blows, I could feel them swelling, the skin tight around hematomas and lumps up and down my legs.

  I was starving, but more importantly, I was perhaps the thirstiest I had ever been in my life. My lips felt cracked and dry and my teeth had the texture of carpet. My throat was raw, and the taste of blood was vomit-inducing. It took me almost 20 minutes to worm my way off the floor. Sobbing, I pulled my leather jacket off and dropped it on the bed. As I did so, I noticed in the half-light of the street lamp outside my window that there were slits in it. I looked down at my jumper, tracing my fingers around my abdomen, and found a clean hole in it, and then another one, and then another. By the time I'd managed to wriggle out of my jumper and toss it onto the bed, I figured out I'd been stabbed no less than seven times, and if it wasn't for the Tank Beetle's carapace, I would have been dead.

  I was in so much pain, the thought barely registered, but it definitely sat somewhere deep in the back of my mind that I'd escaped death yet again. How many chances did someone have to brush that close to death before the grim reaper started to take it personally?

  I unclipped the carapace armor and ducked out of it, unable to raise my arms. The pressure release from undoing the snug armor sent fresh waves of pain radiating through my body. I dropped it onto the floor, then turned and looked in the mirror. My entire upper body was one big contusion. There were so many bruises and lacerations and lumps that I couldn't even tell which ones happened last night and which ones were old wounds. I shuddered to think what the state of my back was, and then I looked down at my legs.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I grimaced and undid the belt of my trousers, letting them fall around my ankles, and looked down; the sight made my head swim. My legs were covered in bloody knots. There was a lump on my thigh the size of my fist filled with blood and my entire quadricep muscle was one big bruise. There were similar harder lumps on my shins, on both legs. I blinked heavily, struggled out of my boots, and then stood there in just my boxer shorts, skinny, pale, and beaten to a bloody pulp. Now that I could see the wounds, it was like my brain was finally registering them properly, and the pain almost drove me mad. I wanted to bite down on something and scream as loud as I could. Instead, I limped to the kitchen, avoiding eye contact with my Grandad's picture, and I took maybe three times the recommended dose of painkillers. I wasn't sure; it was just a handful. My hands were so swollen and aching that I couldn't grip a cup, so I settled for the large water dispensing jug instead. I drank enough water to make me feel sick, filling up jug after jug and glugging it, spilling it across the floor as I did. I put it down, belched, felt light-headed, and then opened the freezer and pulled out as many ice packs as I had. Limping back into my room, I sat down on the floor with my back to the wall, and gingerly laid all of the ice packs across my thighs and legs, wincing, gasping, and then crying out with pain as the ice packs' weight pressed against my lumps. I laid my head back and felt tears trickling down my cheeks.

  Well, that was embarrassing. How did I not see it coming?

  It was obviously a trap, and yet I was so caught up in vengeance and meting out punishment, I didn't even see it coming. I didn't comprehend that they'd want to get back at me or want to stop me. They almost did. If it wasn't for a bit of blind luck and stupidity on the part of the goons, I would never have gotten away. If they were experienced killers, they would have finished me off much quicker. And to be fair to them, they did try; those holes in my jacket were a testament to that.

  I gritted my teeth and waited for the painkillers to settle in. Fortunately, the ice had a wonderful numbing effect. That gave me a chance to figure out if my ribs were broken. I pressed against them gently, winced, and realized I didn't have a clue how to figure out if they were broken. So instead, I fell back into a half-passed-out trance, staring up at my ceiling until the chime of my WristPod brought me back to reality.

  I looked around in the near darkness of my room and saw the thing chiming just out of reach. I lurched, bent, and stretched painfully until I managed to get my fingertips to it and drag it closer to me. I opened up the holographic screen and saw there was a message from Marilyn. I groaned, remembering the way I'd spoken to her and feeling shitty about the fact that I hadn't reached out to apologize yet. I tapped the display, opened her message, and saw it was a video file. Blinking my eyes and trying to get them to focus properly, I opened the video, and my heart went cold.

  It was footage of last night. Someone had filmed from within their flat by the looks of it, and there I was, surrounded by goons. A Bang Rock exploded, and then I took off running, and the video ended. Another one began playing, this one was of me fleeing through the alleyways, jumping over that car. The next video looked like CCTV of me in the alleyway, fighting desperately for my life. I felt my heart rate quicken as I watched, my mouth running dry. There I was, going hand to hand with the goons, punching, kicking, and being hit from every angle. My balaclava was still in place and my hood was still up, so it was impossible to tell it was me. But the whole thing had been caught on camera, several different cameras by the looks of it.

  Even though there was a social media blackout in the Boroughs, people still passed around videos the old ways, through private messaging groups, and those eventually found their way online onto the most popular video-sharing websites. The video ended, and I looked at the title: "The Vigilante of the Mulberry Estate: Who is he?" Out of habit, I opened the comments and scrolled down. Dozens of people in a group chat I'd never even heard of were all asking the same question, writing messages like "Who is this lunatic?" or "I can't believe what I'm watching." Another said, "Good on him; I hope he kills all of them thugs." And another one read, "This is lawlessness and absolute thuggery at its peak. How do we even know this vigilante isn't just another criminal trying to muscle their way in on the estate?"

  The arguments in the comments went back and forth. There were hundreds of them, and it looked like they weren't even all residents from the Estate, because people from all over the city were debating, arguing, questioning who I was, what I wanted, and even a few asking how I did the things that I did. Then I saw Marilyn’s message from the original message that she had sent me:

  "Have you seen this?" she asked.

  What could I say to that?