No Sirens

  The smoke didn’t rise—it crawled. Black and thick, it slunk from the pines like a dying beast, stinking of kerosene and the kind of secrets that rot in unmarked graves. Northern British Columbia, summer of 1987, under a sky like a slashed throat, stars bleeding cold light onto St. Augustine Indian Residential School. The red-brick building squatted on stolen land, its walls a lie painted over with crosses and promises of salvation. They said it was a place to save souls. It was a butcher shop for kids, where priests in cassocks fed on innocence and called it divine.

  That night, the chapel burned first.

  Gasoline hit the altar like a curse, pooling around hymnals and candlesticks. The crucifix caught fast, flames chewing through wooden Jesus until his face melted into a scream. Stained-glass saints—Peter, Paul, their eyes hollow—blistered and shattered, shards glinting like broken teeth in the firelight. The blaze didn’t spread—it hunted, clawing through locked doors, licking at iron bolts until they glowed red. By the time it reached the boys’ dormitory, the screams weren’t from the fire. They were from kids—some barely six—chained to beds, their voices raw, splintered, as the heat closed in like a fist.

  Two boys got out.

  Hawk Greyson, thirteen, didn’t run. He stalked, barefoot over gravel that tore his soles bloody, hands blistered, one ear half-melted from a falling beam. His face was a war mask: blood streaking one side, ash caking the other. His eyes were dead, glassy, seeing nothing but the next step. He hadn’t spoken in two years—not since the first priest pinned him down and whispered “God loves you.” Silence wasn’t surrender. It was a vow.

  Isaiah Boucher, fourteen, walked out like he’d already killed God and taken His throne. His right hand was shattered—bones cracked from smashing a priest’s skull with a brass candlestick. He dragged a rosary, its beads fused into clumps, and a stuffed bear with a nail driven through its heart. His lips twitched, not a smile but a snarl, as he gripped a rusted crucifix, its edges biting into his palm. He didn’t cry. Didn’t shake. His eyes burned colder than the flames, holding a rage that felt ancient, biblical.

  They didn’t flee to safety.

  They vanished into the woods, two shadows carved from fire and violation, leaving behind a smoldering grave and a system that thought it could break them. The fire department arrived when the embers were cold, their hoses spitting useless water. The RCMP sifted through the rubble and found horrors: child-sized bones tangled with charred rosaries, teeth scattered like seeds in the prayer room, a belt—still buckled—looped around a bedframe in the girls’ wing. The priests? Vanished. Transferred to new parishes, their sins laundered by a church that moved predators like chess pieces.

  No arrests. No headlines. No survivors listed. Just a fire. Just a footnote.

  The world forgot. Hawk and Isaiah didn’t. They carried the inferno inside them, and thirty-one years later, they’re burning the city that let it happen.

  Flashback: 1987, St. Augustine. Fever-Dream Grain

  The dormitory smells of sweat, piss, and the sour wax of altar candles. Hawk, thirteen, lies pinned to a cot, a priest’s shadow swallowing him. The man’s breath is rancid, his cross swinging like a guillotine. Hawk’s eyes stay open, unblinking, memorizing the priest’s face—every wrinkle, every bead of sweat. The pain is a language he’s learned, sharp and fluent. You want power? it whispers. Take it. When it’s over, the priest mutters, “God forgives,” and shuffles out. Hawk doesn’t move. His hand slides under the mattress, fingers closing around a stolen kitchen knife. He doesn’t sleep. He plans.

  Across the hall, Isaiah kneels in the prayer room, a different priest’s hand heavy on his shoulder. The words are soft, coaxing—“You’re special, Isaiah”—but the grip is iron, bruising. Isaiah recites psalms, his voice steady, but his mind is a blade, slicing through the man’s weaknesses: pride, lust, the need to be worshipped. You think you own me? he thinks. I’m learning how to own you. The priest’s ring glints in the candlelight, gold and heavy. Isaiah will take it one day. Not yet. But soon.

  The fire comes later. Not an accident. A sacrament. Hawk pours the gasoline, his hands steady, his silence louder than any scream. Isaiah strikes the match, his snarl reflected in the flames. The priests’ screams are sweeter than any hymn, and the boys watch the chapel burn until the roof collapses, sealing their pact in ash.

  Thirty-One Years Later. East Hastings. Midnight.

  Rain hammers Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside like it’s trying to drown the city’s sins and gave up halfway. The street is a neon-soaked nightmare—flickering signs bleeding red and green, junkies twitching in doorways, the air thick with rot, fentanyl, and the chemical stink of despair. Gutters choke on gray water and discarded needles. This is a warzone where the bodies don’t get counted, and the predators wear human skin.

  Hawk Greyson moves through it like a plague given form. He’s forty-four now, harder than the gravel he once bled on, his face a jagged cliff of scars and hate. A gash across his jaw looks like someone tried to carve him open and lost their nerve. His denim jacket is stained with blood, motor oil, and the ghosts of men he’s killed. His boots crunch glass, each step a promise of violence. His eyes—dark, unblinking—only soften when there’s blood on his hands, like killing is the one prayer he still believes in.

  Inside a butcher shop that’s been dead since the ‘80s, a man hangs from a meat hook driven through his collarbone. Vietnamese, mid-40s, his silk shirt shredded, his Rolex ticking through a sheen of blood. His breaths are wet, gurgling, each one a step closer to nothing. The room smells of copper, sawdust, and the faint tang of old meat.

  Hawk lights a cigarette with a Zippo etched with “GET FUCKED” in gouged brass. Smoke curls around his busted nose, mixing with the stench of fear. He tosses a blood-slick shop towel onto the counter, its fibers reeking of rust and regret.

  “You’re cutting fentanyl with drywall,” he says, voice like gravel under a bootheel. “Kids are dying. Lungs collapsing. You call that business?”

  The man whimpers, his jaw wired shut from Hawk’s last visit. His left eye’s a purple ruin, his right darting like a cornered rat. He mumbles, blood bubbling from his lips like a broken faucet.

  Hawk leans in, close enough to taste the man’s panic. “I’ve seen it. Girl last week, sixteen, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Her mom’s still screaming her name. You don’t get to walk away from that.”

  He grabs a cleaver from a rusted rack, its edge nicked but starving. No theatrics, no waving it around. Just a swing, clean and final.

  THUNK.

  The man’s pinky hits the floor, skittering into a pile of sawdust. A scream chokes in his throat, muffled by pain and wire.

  “Name,” Hawk says, calm as a gravedigger. “Or I carve your face into a fucking altar.”

  “Frost…” the man gurgles, blood dripping onto his Gucci loafers. “Surrey… warehouse… Saturday…”

  Hawk tilts his head, eyes narrowing to slits. “Frost.” He studies the man, deciding if he’s worth more alive or dead. The room is silent except for the drip of blood and the buzz of a dying fluorescent bulb.

  Then he nods, almost gentle. “Good boy.”

  BOOM.

  The gunshot rips through the freezer, loud enough to shake the walls. Brains splatter across the tiles like spilled paint, red and gray and final. The body swings, lifeless, the hook creaking. Hawk carves a cross into the man’s chest—slow, deliberate, a message to the streets. Then he drops the cleaver and steps into the rain, lighting another cigarette. The flame catches his face for a moment—hard, unyielding, but cracked with something like grief. He inhales, letting the nicotine burn away the taste of blood.

  The city doesn’t flinch. It’s seen worse.

  Flashback: 1990, Prince George. Basement. Scratched Film Grain.

  Hawk, sixteen, stands over a man tied to a chair—a dealer who used to slip whiskey and cash to St. Augustine’s priests for their silence. The room smells of mold, piss, and the man’s fear. Hawk’s hands are steady, holding a hunting knife, its blade chipped but sharp. The man begs, offers money, names, anything. Hawk doesn’t care. This isn’t about information. It’s about power. He carves slow, deliberate—crosses, thorns, eyes, symbols from the chapel. The man’s screams are a hymn, and Hawk’s face is blank, his silence louder than the blade. When he’s done, the body’s a canvas, a warning to anyone who thinks they can touch what’s his. He leaves it displayed in an alley, the first entry in his ledger—a list of names, some still breathing. Not for long.

  Across Town. Waterfront Penthouse.

  Isaiah Boucher works a fundraiser like a wolf in a priest’s collar, his smile a blade that cuts deeper than steel. The condo smells of crisp champagne, overpriced perfume, and the quiet rot of ambition. The Vancouver skyline glitters outside floor-to-ceiling windows, a polished lie of glass and steel that hides the city’s scars. Suits and dresses swirl around Isaiah, their laughter hollow, their eyes greedy for influence. His suit is midnight blue, tailored to kill, every seam screaming control. His teeth are white, his handshake a contract signed in blood.

  He paces in front of the glass, voice smooth but edged with venom. “You want to talk crime? Let’s talk about the developers buying up shelters to build towers. Let’s talk about the cops who pocket bribes while kids overdose in alleys. Let’s talk about a system that profits off pain and calls it progress.”

  The crowd claps—some too eagerly, others with tight lips, their guilt squirming under his words. An old man in a corner, face like crumpled leather, mutters, “He’s dangerous.” Isaiah hears it. His smile widens, all teeth, no warmth, a predator’s grin.

  He takes a champagne flute from a passing tray but doesn’t drink. Bubbles are lies—pretty, fleeting, gone. His fingers curl around the stem, and for a moment, his eyes flicker to the skyline, to the city he’s vowed to carve open. His phone buzzes in his pocket. One word from Hawk: Frost. Saturday.

  The smile turns real, a slash of hunger. He slips the phone away, already crafting the speech he’ll deliver Monday—a policy to choke Frost’s supply chain, dressed up as reform but sharp as a guillotine. In his bedroom, a locked box waits: photos, a priest’s ring, a collar stained with blood. Sometimes he opens it, not to mourn but to feel the rage again, to remember who he’s fighting for.

  Flashback: 1995, Calgary. Motel Room. Flickering Static.

  Isaiah, twenty-two, sits across from a city councilor, a man who signed off on St. Augustine’s funding back in the day. The room is dim, lit by a buzzing lamp that throws shadows like claw marks. The councilor’s drunk, sweating, thinking he’s about to get lucky. Isaiah’s voice is honey, his eyes cold as permafrost. He slides a Polaroid across the table—taken years ago, in the school’s basement. The councilor’s face, younger, leering over a boy who could be Isaiah. The man freezes, his glass trembling. Isaiah doesn’t threaten. He doesn’t need to. By morning, the councilor’s resigned, and Isaiah’s got his first foothold in politics. The photo goes into the locked box, next to the ring and the collar. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t need to.

  Rooftop. Parking Garage. 3 a.m.

  Rain hisses on concrete, the harbor below glittering like a trap set for fools. Hawk and Isaiah meet thirty floors up, where the city can’t touch them. No greetings, no warmth—just two monsters standing in the mist, carved from the same fire, bound by a pact sealed in ash.

  Hawk smells of gunpowder, wet leather, and the faint tang of blood. A cigarette dangles from his lips, its ember the only light in his eyes. Isaiah smells of cologne and old Catholic guilt, his suit pristine despite the rain. They don’t look at each other—too much history, too many ghosts clawing at the edges of their vision.

  “Another body?” Isaiah asks, voice light but mocking, a blade wrapped in silk.

  “Another speech?” Hawk snaps, exhaling smoke like a dragon’s warning.

  A beat. Then a grin—crooked, feral, shared. Two predators circling the same prey, their laughter a low growl that the rain can’t drown.

  “Saturday,” Hawk says, flicking ash into the wind. “Surrey. Frost’s moving weight. Warehouse by the bridge.”

  Isaiah’s eyes glint, sharp as a switchblade. “Make it ugly.”

  “Always is.”

  “I’ll push the policy Monday. Cut his suppliers off at the knees.”

  Hawk grunts, maybe a laugh, maybe a curse. “Words don’t kill.”

  Isaiah’s smile is a guillotine, slow and final. “Mine do.”

  They’re not men anymore. They’re the fire that burned St. Augustine, given form, given purpose. Hawk rules the underworld, his crew worshipping him like a war god, terrified of the ledger he keeps—names of priests, enablers, and now dealers like Frost, each one crossed off in blood. His kills are rituals, carved with symbols from the chapel, left displayed like altars to a god he doesn’t believe in. Isaiah commands the surface, a political messiah whose every law is a trap, every handshake a noose. His speeches are weapons, his policies knives disguised as progress. They learned manipulation from the worst—priests who used love as a leash, pain as a lesson. Now they wield those tools like surgeons, carving a new world from the corpse of the old.

  Frost is just the next name. A cog in a machine that’s been grinding down the weak for centuries. Hawk will leave his body carved, a message to the streets that no one’s untouchable. Isaiah will bury his empire in red tape and raids, his smile never wavering as the news calls it “reform.” Together, they’ll make the city scream, not for mercy but for answers it doesn’t want to hear.

  They turn away, shadows melting into the rain. Saturday’s coming, and with it, a reckoning that smells like gasoline and tastes like ash. The city doesn’t know it yet, but it’s already burning.