2001 — Son of York
I was sitting in the back row, half-listening while the rest of the class lost its mind — kids shouting, tossing papers, arguing over tic-tac-toe. It was just another noisy day. Then the door opened, and everything froze.
The teacher stepped in, but she wasn't alone. A boy stood beside her. Small, quiet, looking down at the floor. He didn't move, didn't smile, didn't even try to meet anyone's eyes. There was something heavy about the way he stood — like he was somewhere else entirely.
Whispers started almost immediately. That kind of whisper that sounds like curiosity but hides something mean underneath. "He's from the orphanage," a girl muttered to her friends. "Easy target." They giggled. He didn't react. Just sat in the corner by the window, staring at nothing. I noticed how he blinked — quick, constant. Shock, maybe. Or habit.
When the bell rang, the class spilled out into the sun. I stayed back a while, leaning against the wall outside. The day was warm, bright. The kind of day that usually makes noise feel lighter. But then I saw him — sitting alone on a bench under the school tree. The others were running and laughing, a blur of color and sound. He was just still.
Then came two boys I knew too well. Big mouths, quick hands — the kind who liked to turn boredom into cruelty. They walked straight toward him, smirking like it was already decided.
I started moving before I even thought about it. As I got closer, I caught their voices.
"So, you're from that orphanage down the street?"
"No parents, huh? Must be lonely."
They were picking at him, trying to make him flinch. I could see it coming — one wrong word, and they'd pounce.
My mother's voice came to mind. "Justice is rare, Mike. But it matters. Share it wherever you go."
I reached the tree and placed my hands on their shoulders. They tensed up instantly.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, my tone calm but heavy.
"Nothing, man. Chill," one said quickly. "Right, kid?"
I looked at the boy. His eyes were wet. The tears weren't loud — they just fell, steady and quiet.
"Bastards," I muttered and shoved them both back. They stumbled, then ran off without another word.
I turned back to him. "Hey," I said, softer now. "You okay?"
He didn't answer. Just nodded slightly, eyes still glassy. For a moment, it was silent again — the kind of silence that tells you someone's been holding too much for too long.
He didn't say anything. He wiped his face once and walked away. Classes were over, he packed his bag, and left without a fuss. I didn't say anything either. He needed space — that much was obvious — so I followed at a distance.
The street was the same as always: people moving around like they had somewhere to prove they belonged, cars honking, shopkeepers calling out. He kept his head down and walked like the pavement might swallow him if he looked up. Then he stopped. He glanced to his right and froze at a large banner on the side of a building — a smiling family around a dinner table, the kind of advertisement that pretends family is simple.
I watched him from the corner. His eyes filled again. Maybe it was envy. Maybe it was memory. Either way, a kid who shouldn't have had to want that was watching a picture of what he'd missed.
Something clicked in me then. I'd always been big, easy to notice, the one who could stand in a doorway and not be bothered. But being strong didn't mean anything if the people who couldn't fight for themselves just got eaten alive. My mother's words — "Justice is rare, Mike. But it matters." — folded into that moment and became a decision. Not a speech, not an oath, just a small, hard resolve: I would do something.
The next day the scene repeated. Same bench, same bullies, same smirks. This time, when the first shove came, I stepped in. The boys were surprised; they hadn't expected anyone to do more than stare. After I shoved them off, they ran, muttering, and the yard felt a little quieter.
I sat down beside him. He looked paler than the day before, but his eyes were steadier. "Hey," I said. "You okay?"
He finally spoke. "Yeah... thanks."
"Name's Mike," I said, trying for a grin that felt like I'd borrowed it. "You?"
He gave me a side look, as if answering a question he didn't expect to be asked. "Me? It's John. Just John."
I tried to be casual about it, to make it sound like no big deal. "Alright, John — I saw how new you are. Everyone's picking on you. From now on, rely on me, okay?"
He looked at me for a long second. Then he said something quiet — so small I almost missed it, but it stuck in the air like a warning.
"I guess... I would be a burden. You would end up fighting those whom you are not supposed to because of me."
That line landed somewhere I didn't know how to answer then. I shrugged it off with a joke and a promise — "I'm cut out for this" — but I heard him. It was the sort of thing that echoes. From that day on, I carried a new attitude: not just a big kid who could throw a punch, but someone who would actually stand up for the ones who couldn't.
Just like that, we became friends. We never said, "Will you be my friend?" It just happened.
We sat together in class, went to the cafeteria side by side, walked home on the same route. Every time someone tried to mess with him, I stepped in — and every time, he stood a little taller next to me.
Bit by bit, John started showing who he really was. Talkative. Energetic. Curious in a way that made everything seem new again.
One afternoon, we were sitting on the same bench under that old tree. I wasn't thinking, and I let the wrong question slip out.
"So… how was life before you came here?"
The second the words left my mouth, I regretted them. "Sorry, man. I didn't mean to—"
He cut me off, his voice quiet but steady. "It's okay. I trust you."
He looked straight ahead as he spoke.
"Life back then… it was nice. We lived in a small village — me, my dad, my mom. Two years ago, my dad left one morning and never came back. We waited… for weeks, months. Then one day, a man in a hood came to our door. He gave my mom a book. She read a few pages, then tore it apart and threw it in my dad's workroom. After that, she locked the door.
"She got sick not long after. Fever, cough, everything at once. I tried to help, but I was just a kid. Two years after Dad disappeared, she…" He paused, his hands tightening on his knees. "She died. I still remember her voice — coughing, calling for Dad over and over. And then nothing. Just silence."
He drew a shaky breath. "Mr. Ben, our neighbor — he came running when I called. He wanted to adopt me, but they said no. Said a man with a record couldn't raise a kid. So they sent me to the orphanage."
John's eyes drifted toward the playground. "I miss Lara so much."
"Who's Lara?" I asked gently.
He didn't look at me. "Mr. Ben's daughter. My best friend. We used to play together every day." A faint smile tugged at his lips — small enough to miss if you weren't looking for it.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The sound of kids laughing nearby felt distant, almost unreal.
He really is lonely, I thought.
He turned to me slowly and asked, "What about you?"
"Me?" I startled, because I hadn't expected the question to hang in the air like that.
"Oh—I'm… I'm okay." I lied. We live on the western side of the city; the apartment has a decent view of Son of York's great walls. That part was true. The rest I wrapped in the kind of neat, small lies people tell to keep the world from smelling like rot. "My dad's not home right now. He left for another state to make money—for the family, for my mother's medicines. Mom's sick. Not… terminal. She just needs her pills." My voice tried to sound casual. It didn't quite manage. "I work part time delivering food. That's how I get her pills."
"Isn't your dad sending money?" he asked, and for a second the world narrowed to the space between his eyebrows.
"No." Heat rose in my chest. "But we're sure he will come back rich." I said it like I wanted to believe it.
John looked away. The words came quiet and slow. "I hope he comes back."
Who was I kidding? My mother was worse than I let on. My father had left years ago—promised work, said he'd write. He never did. I'd come to understand the truth, but I kept feeding my mother the fiction: I'd go out, buy her the pills, tell her her husband had sent the money. She slept easier that way. So did I.
"Hey," I tried to lift the mood, because the city had light and small sins to hide behind. "I'll invite you to my place sometime. You can't live between school and the orphanage forever, right?"
He looked down and gave a faint, hopeful smile. "That'd be great."
An idea brightened my chest. The city had corners that felt like presents if you knew how to unwrap them. "John—let's go for a walk," I said. The hope in it was small and private.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Of course. Come on." I tapped his shoulder and we set off.
I showed him the streets—the four Cyntera Corp towers that pricked the sky, the blackened husk of the Evans mansion, alleyways that smelled like old fires and new deals. He watched everything like a person cataloging good things for later. He smiled in a way that made my ribs ache—honest, unpracticed joy. It felt good to give that to him.
We climbed to a rooftop that had a narrow gap to the next building, exactly the kind of stupidly tempting gap parkour videos made five minutes of fame from. We stood on the edge together.
"Let's jump," I said, thrill in my voice.
He shut his eyes and shook his head. "No. I'm scared."
"Scared of what?" I asked, because the city taught you to ask the obvious.
He didn't answer at first. When he did, it landed heavy. "Of dying." His words hit me like a fist. He'd seen someone die before—seen the way life unspooled in another person—and the memory had made a rent in him. For some people, grief yanked the rope loose and left them watching the fall.
My mother used to tell stories about people who were constantly afraid. She said they didn't need confidence to live—they needed something else, some blind faith in fate to make decisions on their behalf. "Hmph," I said, half to her memory, half to the rooftop wind. "Everyone's scared sometimes. But you've gotta have faith in your fate. Commit to it. Let go."
I smiled and gripped his shoulder, warm and steady. "Commit. The leap of faith." It sounded cleaner than it felt, but it was honest enough. When he still hesitated, I didn't argue. I led him down the fire stairs instead, laughing to cover the small tremor in my own hands.
At the orphanage gates I couldn't go in—the rules were as iron as the bars—so I stayed outside and waved until his face disappeared. My chest felt lighter than it had in days.
On the walk home a pair of familiar shadows bent together in a dark alleyway, two of the boys who'd shoved John on his first day. "Tomorrow I'll call my bros and you call yours," one was saying. "We'll beat that wimpy kid and Mike so hard they'll know their place."
Something cold and animal rose in me. I stepped into the alley before they had a chance to notice me, gripped the back of a neck, and dragged them to the pavement. They tasted like cheap tobacco. I landed the first blow because someone had to teach them that hands had consequences. Their noses bled. They squealed. I kept going until the edge of the fight blurred and the world narrowed again, until footsteps sounded from the mouth of the alley and everything stopped.
A cluster of people stood where the light met the dark. The two boys wriggled free and slipped through the crowd like scared rodents. I turned and shouted, "What do you want?" expecting the faces of acquaintances, looking for allies. Instead a tall man stepped forward—bandana over his head, black jacket, like a shadow that had learned to speak. He walked up to me without hurry and asked, "What's your name, kid?"
"Mike," I said, rage still humming in my bones. "What's your business?"
"What's my business? Boy, you've got nerve, you know that?" He smiled like he had patience for trouble. Then, out of nowhere, he struck me—hard—a punch to the belly that knocked the food I'd been chewing into the dust. Pain flared and then settled into a bruise that would bloom for days. He studied me, amused. "Your endurance's good. You fight well. You need money?"
The words fell heavy. Everyone needed money. His gang needed fighters. They had pay; they had work. The city had a hundred ways to break a person, and some of them paid well for a steady hand and a ready temper. I knew the rumors—gangs that killed to protect territory, that burned people for sport—but the ache for pills, for my mother's calm breathing, outweighed my fear.
"I need time," I said.
"Take it. Come here tomorrow if you want in." He climbed onto a motorcycle and left with his men.
I walked the last block home, buying a few of my mother's pills on the way. My stomach's pain had already settled—an ugly, honest bruise—and I liked how easy it would be to hide. The city had given me another choice tonight, and the choice tasted like coins and smoke and the faint, dangerous possibility of a clean bed for my mother.
I climbed the stairwell and found the apartment door with a practiced hand. The lock clicked like an old habit; I eased it open and stepped into the small world my mother kept immaculate. Mopping lines still shone on the floor. A faint steam-sweet smell threaded the air.
"Mom! I'm home!" I called, softer than usual.
A humming voice answered from the kitchen. "Oh? Mike! Come, come."
She stood by the stove with her hair loose and black as spilled ink, wearing the plain white dress she liked for evenings. She was ladling soup into a bowl, smiling as if the act of pouring could steady everything else. When she saw me, the smile widened with that domestic pride that had nothing to do with money.
"How was your day?" she asked.
I sat at the kitchen table and let the room tell me the truth before my words did. The aroma of broth filled the small space and made the apartment feel less like a container for debts and more like a shelter.
"It was all right," I said. "Smells good. You cooking?"
"Of course." She laughed lightly. "My boy and his father are working so hard… of course I should try my best to take care of you." She plated another bowl and pushed it toward me. She was careful, gentle—the way someone arranges the world so it will not collapse under the weight of absent things.
Watching her, something sharpened in me. She still believed my father was faithful. I could see it in the way she ladled soup, in the way she set the bowl as if ritual could hold him whole. Six weeks after he left, he'd called—said he wouldn't be coming back and told me to take care of her. I had folded that call into a corner of my head and carried on pretending otherwise. It was easier; for her, the fiction kept sleep honest.
If I joined the gang, would it fix anything? Could I earn enough to buy health instead of promises? Could I find my father and make him pay? The questions crowded like rats beneath a floorboard: dangerous, insistent. Gangs meant work that cut against the law. If the police caught me—if I went away—who would feed my mother? The apartment would be spotless, and no one would be there to notice.
She set a steaming bowl before me and took another for herself. "Happy meal, son," she said, and sipped slowly.
Then she began to cough—first a small rasp, then a sudden, convulsing fit that stole the color from her face. She stumbled back and sat on the linoleum, the spoon clattering against porcelain. My heart stuttered. I'd seen this before; I knew the rhythm like a well-rehearsed fear. Still, fear hit me raw.
I grabbed my backpack without thinking, fingers fumbling until they found the small bottle. Hands that had handled delivery bags and scraps of change moved faster now. I filled a glass, forced the pill past her teeth. She swallowed, breathed, and the light returned to her eyes like someone turning a dimmer back up.
"Thanks, son," she said, voice small and grateful. She leaned on me as if I were a wall, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and helped her to her feet. I walked her to the bedroom, tucked the blanket up around her like a promise, and sat on the bed feeding her the rest of the soup she couldn't hold.
Every spoonful was a calculation. If I joined the gang, I told myself, it would be for this—to buy more pills, to buy another day. The city offered only sharp instruments: work that cut your hands or work that cut your soul. I weighed them in the dark.
When the bowl was empty she smiled at me with that tired, perfect gratitude. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
I kissed her forehead, smoothed the blanket, and left the room. The clock on the wall had crawled toward two in the morning. I lay in bed long after the house fell into the steady quiet of small clocks and shallow breathing. The city's noises filtered in—sirens like distant gulls, an engine's hum—and beneath them the steady claim of my choice formed itself.
"For your sake," I told the ceiling, the words more answer than question. "For your sake, I'll do it."
Sleep came like a debt paid in full and I drifted into it with the vow still bitter on my tongue.
Morning moved like a hand through water—school, classes, the small rituals that make a day ordinary. But something sat under my ribs all day: a steady ache of warning, a small animal pacing the cage. After the last bell, John and I sat by the lake behind the school, flicking rocks and listening to them kiss the water.
"Hey, John… I wanted to tell you something," I began. The words crowded my mouth: the gang, the offer, the way my life might bend if I said yes. Before I could shape them, footsteps cut through the thin air. Seven of them—big, loose-shouldered boys—came toward us, and behind their bulk I saw the two I'd thumped in the alley yesterday. So those were their brothers.
We stood up slow. I stepped in front of John without thinking; his small shape fit easy under my shoulder. One upperclassman—jacket, loose tie, eyes that made it feel like they could measure you—stared right into me. He smelled like stale smoke and the kind of cruelty that rehearses itself. "So you're the troublemaker, huh? You look pretty tough for your age." I remember thinking, I was just eleven then. The kid's voice was a flat warning. "We'll beat you up…and leave the weaker one alone. He didn't do anything wrong. You heard that?"
"Yes. We won't touch him," one of the smaller boys called behind the crowd, and the threat shifted into performance. Then the first blow came—knee from below, blocked with my palms, then fists from above. Pain carved across my face; my nose burst hot. My head dipped and I went down into the lake with half my body soaked and winter-shocked. He dove after me and kept hitting, each strike a punctuation mark driven into the wet.
It wasn't personal so much as exacting. Revenge had a look: empty eyes, the satisfaction of a debt finally paid. I had to defend myself. I drove my boot into his shins; he toppled, gasping, toward the water. For a moment the lake held us both like a bad mirror. Then the others jumped in. The next stretch of minutes blurred—pain, the slap of water, the taste of iron. Embarrassment burned like a second wound. Eventually their momentum lessened; maybe their morals caught up, or maybe they were tired of the show. They edged away, one of them spitting out the last line: "You don't come near our little brother and we won't either. You got that?"
I said nothing. My chest heaved with a sound like a bell. John stood there, stunned and worried, his face a map I couldn't read. I wanted to tell him about the gang, to confess the choice that had been grinding at me, but the words drowned under the ringing in my ears. When they left, I shouted after them, not sure who I was trying to punish. "You'll pay for this!" The noise of it felt small against the dark city noise.
I walked John back to the orphanage in silence, and after I left him at the gate I kept moving until my feet found the alley where it had started. The place smelled of old smoke and trash. A single figure leaned against the wall, a dark jacket and a cigarette glowing like a small dare.
"Oh, you Mike?" the man asked without surprise.
"Yes," I said.
"Fine. Let's go." He nodded and moved like he owned the night. I climbed onto the back of his bike and crouched behind him; the engine's thrum vibrated through me. "Why the hell are you soaking wet?" he asked over his shoulder.
We rode until we reached the place everyone said was the gang's. Tonight there were fewer bodies than I imagined—just a skeleton of the crowd that probably showed up when business required it. The building door gave way to a large room stacked with wooden crates; the light inside smelled of oil and old wood. And there, leaning against one of the stacks like he belonged to the grain of the place, was the leader from yesterday.
"Oh! Mikey boy," he called, a smile that was warm and a little hungry. "Welcome—to the gang."
And just like that I became a gang member. School stopped being an option; the streets demanded full-time loyalty. I kept thinking about John, how he'd take the news if he knew I'd just vanished. I promised myself I'd tell him everything once things settled down.
The gang itself wasn't what I expected. They weren't monsters—at least not at first. Most were just people cornered by debt, bad luck, or hunger. The leader, the same man who'd punched me in the gut to "test" me, wasn't some thrill-seeker. He was tired—broke, desperate, and trapped in a cycle he couldn't break. His first crew had been made of friends. Now, most of them were names we whispered over drinks—dead or locked up.
Our days were mostly quiet: long rides through the streets on our bikes, pretending to be a force to be feared. But when real work came, it was chaos. Before I joined, they'd tried robbing a bank. It half-worked—money was taken, but so was a life. They lost a man, and that's when they brought me in.
Because I was young, I wasn't sent into heavy work. I ran small errands—pick pocketing, delivering warnings, collecting bits of Intel. But the city was a web, and the more I moved through it, the clearer I saw the pattern. There were six major gangs. Four were wiped out by the police in the span of a year, leaving only two—us and the Night Wolves.
The Wolves were ghosts. No colors, no noise. They worked off contracts—kill jobs, smuggling runs, extortion deals—all under the cover of night. They weren't after turf; they were after control. Their movements were quiet, surgical. Our leader said they were the kind of enemy you didn't see coming until your whole crew was gone. The Wolves didn't fight for money. They fought for order—their kind of order.
I saw them once, by accident, during a street clash. They moved like shadows—quick, clean, efficient. They scared me in a way guns never did. Our leader hated them. Said we'd either wipe them out or die trying.
Three years passed. By then, I was fourteen—taller, sharper, and harder. That's when they decided I was "ready." The job was simple on paper: break a captured member out of prison. I was put on lookout duty, guarding the tunnel we'd dug as our escape route.
When they came out—bloody, limping, shouting—the sirens were already screaming behind them. Then the shots came. In seconds, everything fell apart. The leader was hit. The freed member too. I ran because that's what survivors do. We made it back to our hideout, hearts beating too fast to count, and waited for silence.
The door didn't hold. A cop kicked it in. More shooting. More falling. By the time I could think, the others had tackled him. I was the only one with a gun. Someone yelled, "Shoot!"
I didn't want to. My hands were shaking. The cop's face was terrified, human. I closed my eyes, pulled the trigger, and everything went quiet. That was my first kill. It didn't make me stronger. It hollowed me out.
After that, killing got easier—and that was the worst part. I told myself it was survival, but it was habit. Clearing evidence. Finishing fights. I climbed the ranks one cut at a time until people started looking at me the way I used to look at the leader: with a mix of respect and fear. Eventually, they gave me full control. I renamed it "Mike's Gang."
The money came steady for once. Enough to buy my mother's medicine, to fill her cupboards. She thought I'd landed an overseas job—something clean, something she could brag about to neighbors. I let her believe it. The truth would've broken her.
But every visit grew harder. The way she smiled when I walked through the door—it hurt more than any fight I'd ever been in. Her faith in me was so complete it felt cruel to stand in front of it. I'd sit at the table, nodding through her stories, watching her hands tremble as she poured tea, and feel my throat tighten until I could barely breathe.
Soon I started finding reasons not to go. First it was work, then distance, then silence. I told her the job kept me abroad, that it was impossible to come home often. She believed me, even thanked me for "sacrificing" so much. That word nearly undid me.
So I stopped visiting altogether. Shame made sure of it. I couldn't bear to see her eyes and know what they reflected—someone she thought was good, someone I'd killed off long ago. I sent money and medicine through postmen, pretending it was care when it was really cowardice. Each parcel was a confession I never signed.
Some nights, I'd sit on the rooftop of our hideout, looking down at the streetlights and thinking of John. I missed him more than I'd admit. So I wrote him a letter. Told him where I was, what I'd been doing, asked him to come. He never showed. Maybe he didn't get it. Maybe he didn't want to.
Years passed, and I turned the gang into something that looked almost legitimate—a nightclub, bar, and "business front." People came to drink, smoke, laugh, and forget. Behind the curtains, we sold whatever made forgetting easier. Then came drugs, guns and explosives. I tried to stay out of it, but money talks louder than morals.
The Night Wolves didn't disappear, either. They adapted. Word was they'd started targeting our suppliers. Some said they were moving toward something bigger—contracts that involved politics, explosions, and the kind of violence that rewrites cities. I should've seen the storm coming.
We couldn't ignore that. The Wolves had been ghosts for years, but that night they decided to remind us they were still watching. So I sent a crew to "talk." Talking turned into shouting, shouting into gunfire. By the time I arrived, the air already smelled of metal and smoke.
It wasn't a war, just a street fight gone too far. A dozen on each side, knives and pistols flashing under the flickering streetlights. The Wolves moved like they'd rehearsed it—quiet, precise. We had the numbers but not the rhythm. It ended in a stalemate: both sides bloodied, both realizing that another step forward meant someone's funeral.
Their leader—a tall guy with a scar across his jaw—a man named Robert called out through the noise, "This city's not big enough for both of us at once."
I told him, "Then we split it."
And that's what we did. Not by streets, but by time. We'd own the day; they'd rule the night. Neither side crossed the line. It wasn't respect, just exhaustion and practicality dressed as peace.
From then on, daylight belonged to Mike's Gang. Night belonged to the Wolves. The city learned to breathe between us—quietly, cautiously, like it knew it could only live while we weren't watching.
Then, just today, a man walked into my club. Saying he was John. We fought, I thought that it was an impostor or someone disguising himself as John. But when I finally understood… There was something cold in his eyes that wasn't there before. He said he needed explosives. No greeting, no explanation—just business.
For a moment, the noise around us died. I wanted to talk. To understand. To ask what happened to the kid who used to laugh at nothing and dream about everything. But he didn't want to talk.
"Clear this place up," he said.
And just like that, the past and present crashed together. I watched the crowd still drinking, smoking, pretending they were alive. I looked at the building I'd built from the ashes of my mistakes and felt the ache in my chest return.
How did it come to this? How did two kids who used to share a lunch table end up here—buried under guns, guilt, and smoke?
I don't know. But I know one thing.
I need to talk to him. I really do.