The Unknown Ch. 1

I am one of the masked vigilantes of Ariadne, the most crime-filled city in the country. One can not even walk out on the streets of Ariadne without hearing the police sirens blaring and gunshots being fired. My name is The Unknown, well that is the name the media knows me by, my true identity must remain a secret, unfortunately.
I would not call myself a hero-I started life out on the streets of Ariadne, an orphan who resorted to stealing and charity for survival. At 12 years old I was recruited into the local gang, the Westsiders, and at 12 and a half I killed a person for the first time, a late-night convenient store worker who pulled a shotgun on me; I ended up with the shotgun and he ended up dead, I used that same shotgun until I left that life behind. When I was 15 our gang was dominated by the city's corporate big-shot who apparently not only dominated the business world but the streets as well. Andre "Predator" Peligro, the corporate big-shot, was basically an under-the-table version of a tyrannical dictator; like Castro without the headlines. Everything we did ended up as a profit for him.

When I turned 16 we were told to pull a bank heist, Andre himself chose the participants and said that if we pulled off this job we were going to be his "Recovery Squad," another name for slaves that do the dirtier of the dirty work. I was chosen along with four other guys that were all at age 20 or 21, our leader was Timmy Sparks, a guy who lived in the moment when he did not have an assignment but when the time was right he had this demanding presence over everyone. He was a natural born leader, with strategies always ready and a plan always in action. I always looked up to Timmy, he was my role model, and he liked me, he taught me everything I know about hand to hand combat as well as guns, explosives, and every possible strategy for every possible occasion. The other three guys in the group were a lot alike: large, smelly, stupid, and smiled if a gun went off, really just cronies.

The heist was a breeze, the break-in was easy enough and we even had an inside guy in the bank who left the security system rigged so it would not go off. The getaway was an entirely different story. We had a van waiting outback which exploded when we walked out the door killing one of our cronies, we had no time for investigations because the explosion attracted cops, and since we were sitting outside a bank with duffel bags filled with cash next to an exploded car it was safe to say that we were going to get into quite a bit of trouble. Timmy lead us down a couple of alleyways and we found ourselves in the middle of a trap that apparently Timmy knew all about. He turned around said, "sorry guys, now put down the pieces," and aimed his gun at straight at me. We had been betrayed by the one closest to me and I wanted revenge.

I was lucky I still had two cronies left because they proved fairly useful. They both decided they were not going down without a fight and started beating the crap out of the nearest enemy which happened to be Timmy, one was shot down before he reached Timmy but the other was just fast enough to lay in a couple of hits before being tackled by three other cops. I took advantage of the situation and grabbed my pump-action shotty turned to Timmy and said, "sorry" in a sarcastic manner and blasted Timmy back ten feet and watched as he slammed against the hood of one of the squad cars.

I then ran as fast as I could the direction we had come before I heard shouts behind me, followed by the whizzing of bullets by my head. I still have no idea how I made it through that night alive,I guessed at the time that I was just lucky. When I reached Peligro's office building the cops gave up-obviously even Ariadne's finest were no match for the Predator. Peligro just greeted me with a smile and said "I expected this much of you, congratulations you passed."