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Boothill draws his gun. Shoots.
Another body drops, adds to the pile. Black armor, orange visor, red tie. Dan Heng feels like he's been watching him do this forever, from this strange impossible angle where his eyes swing and veer between blinks like a camera on a track.
The corpses fall atop each other, become indistinguishable. Black, streaked through with orange and red. Boothill draws his gun, shoots.
Black, orange, red.
The pile grows.
Dan Heng feels himself smear across the sky, lines blurring, edges bleary, vision like a cataract. There is black as far as he can see, Boothill’s fans whirring and churning as far as he can hear. His syrupy, soggy brain tells him he smells gunpowder, metal, steam. Boothill's voice is strangely silent between his sharp and steely teeth.
The pile surges.
It mixes, melds, roils, a rush-in like a crashing wave, an entire ocean of corpses and the blood of many catching Boothill in its current. It sticks to him, black-on-black, tangles in his spurs and claws its way up his legs as he fights against it. Tendrils of it twine upward, around the holster of his useless revolver, between the brass-knuckle joints of his hands. Boothill is overcome until he's submerged, torn at until he finally gives, swept away and straining just to keep his head above. The thickness of it is enough to suffocate.
The gallows awaits them.
Its presence looms heavy, ominous. Boothill is dragged up onto its wooden scaffold, kicking, thrashing, silent-screaming. His head is pulled under, again and again, breaking surface with desperate gasping breaths like a man drowning. The mass of black-orange-red crests, swells, the tide of it ties tight around his neck like a noose, Boothill is hauled up, up, up, forced onto precarious tiptoe, struggling to stay grounded until he's hanging, barely drawing air with every harsh and haggard breath-
Dan Heng jolts and flails, eyes unseeing as he frantically claws at the high collar of his sleepshirt until he feels scratch marks down his throat. His chest is heaving.
The slowing swing of metal boots haunts his vision until the ceiling of the archive comes into view, painted blue by the lit flooring beneath him. Dan Heng watches the waves until his heart stops its staccato, until his lungs ease their violent fluttering.
He rolls over as soon as he can stomach the motion, quick to unlock his phone. The chat he needs is still on the screen from the night before. There are no new messages.
Three months.
It's been three months since the sudden violent death of Oswaldo Schneider. Three months since Boothill's bounty nearly doubled, went from wanted alive posted in Pier Point and along all major trade routes, to wanted dead or alive on every single planet the IPC could flaunt their power over.
Three months since the last voice message, “I've got somethin’ I wanna tell ya…not like this, though. Face-to-face. I wanna do it right.” And then several seconds of silence that sound like an internal war.
“…I hope I'll find ya again after this all blows over.”
Dan Heng switches apps, pulls up the IPC's real-time most wanted list. Boothill's warrant sits pinned at the top. He's labeled still at large.
Still not captured. Hopefully, still alive.
Dan Heng fixes his collar, settles his quilt over his shoulders and tugs it up to his ears. Listens to the gentle whirring white noise of the archive and all of its mechanical equipment.
He doesn't take his eyes off the screen as he quietly waits for sleep to reclaim him.