1. Nitro

ONE

NITRO

There's a lot to say about brothers who kill together. Most would call it insane, and that we need to be put away, but yet we walk the nights as the ghosts, killing the people the police let walk free.

The ones who have money, power, and control over the government don't control us.

No one does. Not anymore.

For as long as I can remember, I've lived alone in a windowless room, with no-one but myself for company.

You soon realize the only person who will protect you is yourself; until one day, the bastards who held me threw three boys into my room and told me to get used to my new roommates. I saw the same look I had in my eyes staring back at me. Darkness.

Those three boys became my brothers, my lifeline. They were the ones who stood by me through everything.

Today, the four of us are tighter, stronger than any family out there.

No one will break us, and no one will get between us. Ever.

We hear the stories about us, and from all the ones I've heard, not one of them is close to the truth. Yet they always make us laugh, some of them are just weird.

When the four of us created the Ghosts, we kept ourselves hidden from the world. Only to reveal who we are when the time is right, and only when the four of us agree to it. We set ourselves rules, which all of us agreed on. It's to protect us. Since we did, we've been unstoppable, and we have no plan to stop until the ones who took us are all dead.

One family down, three more to find, and the man they call Death.

We killed one family. They were the family of my brother's girl. When they first met, we didn't know who her family was. By the time we found out, Ares had fallen hard for her, but still wanted to end them, no matter what.

Esha wasn't going to stand in his way, and I know if it had been one of us, we would have killed our girls' family too. The organization took our lives and played with them like they were toys. Not one of us will let them walk away. They will die, no matter what it takes.

For Ares, he was ready to let Esha walk away, he was ready to never see her again for the cause, but she had fallen a lot harder for him, to the point where she can't live without him.

She chose Ares over her family, and it made us respect her so much more. Esha's living with the men who killed her family. You can see it on her face sometimes; it eats at her, the guilt of knowing the truth. Not for one second do the four of us think she will leave and tell the cops who we are, she's in love with Ares, and she'd never hurt him.

It took her almost two months to finally start coming to the pub with us again. She's able to sit at the table with us now, and know she has a family who will protect her from the World if we have to.

I look over at Ares and Nyx standing by the dining table looking through all the notebooks we found at Esha's house before burning it down.

There were boxes and boxes, with over two hundred notebook. Nyx and Ares are working through them methodically putting them in date order. Only then will they start looking through them. They need to have them in order so they know which one to pick up for answers. We have questions and we know they are in those notebooks.

There is only one answer I want.

Who are my parents?

I know I shouldn't care; they might have sold me to those assholes. Maybe I was taken, and they tried to looked for me. I need answers, and I know my brothers won't rest until they get them for me. That's the kind of bond we have.

I take a drag of my joint and turn to Tic who is laughing at some episode of Tom and Jerry. Esha told him to start watching it, because it's funny like Scooby Doo, which is a show the guy has watched on repeat for years. I'm thankful he's watching something different instead, it was getting to the point even I knew the episodes word for word.

"Which...which one do you like?" Tic asks me, pointing to the phone. I lean towards the table, and blunt out my joint, before lighting up another one, and smile at Tic.

"Jerry. Tom gets the crap kicked out of him," I reply with a chuckle, which makes Tic laugh.

"Me...me...too." Tic cracks his neck, and I take a moment to watch him.

He's so carefree. He doesn't care about anything but the four of us. Although he seems to have a soft spot for Esha, which I think grew when he almost stabbed her. Thankfully, Ares was there to protect her. Tic can be happy one second, and go crazy the next. We might not always be there to protect the next person.

"When do you want to start on the third floor?" I shout over to Ares, and Nyx.

Adding a whole floor to the house just so Ares can give his girl a fucking Pilates room is fucking crazy. The plan is to make three rooms out of the space upstairs, the other two rooms will be empty, for now. If someone as dead and cold hearted as Ares can get a girl, who knows about the rest of us.

"I want to get these in order before we start that," Ares replies, and you can hear how pissed off he is about the notebooks.

"You want me to make a start on it?" I ask. I need something to take my mind off waiting for them to find answers.

The more I watch them, the more I want to ask what they have found out about the year I was born.

That makes me laugh as I have no fucking idea which year I was born. None of us do. Nyx was the oldest when he was thrown in the room, and we know Tic was a few years younger than him, so we worked our ages around that.

Nyx and Ares being the oldest at twenty-nine or thirty now, and Tic and I at twenty-seven or eight. We had new ID's made for us thanks to Wesley. So, we go by our own made up birthdays.

Even if they get to the year when I think I was born, there might not be anything in there about me. I know Ares, he won't tell me anything until he's one hundred percent sure about the information he's found.

"We need to put the flooring down and work on what we are using to build the walls, brick or wood beams," Nyx answers as Ares is distracted by a notebook he is reading.

"I'll have a look around for what will be best to use" I stop talking when my cell rings and I see Wesley's name flash on the screen. It's never good when Wesley calls. "Hello?"

"Got a job," Wesley begins, I get up, kick Tic and nod my head letting him know to follow me to the table. Placing the phone on the table, I hit the speaker button so we can all hear him.

"We're all here," I say, waiting for him to tell us where we need to go.

"I've got a girl in the morgue, with the same tattoo. I put her prints through the system, she's been missing for about fifteen years." Wesley goes quiet, and I look up at my brothers. What does this have to do with us? We kill the people who do these things, but there is nothing we can do for the ones that we're too late to save.

"Wesley?" Nyx is the first to speak.

"Sorry." He clears his throat. "I called the parents and they said they never had a daughter. They never reported anyone missing. I have no idea where this girl is from, but the doctor found something and I've told him not to touch it because I have someone to look at it."

Something sounds off with Wesley tonight, what the hell is going on. "The doors will be unlocked, the cameras will be switched off, be the ghosts, do not take your masks off. Check her eyes," Wesley whispers, letting us know someone is close to him. Before he can say anything else the line goes dead, and we just wait for him to send us the address of where we need to go.

"Check the eyes, what the hell does that mean?" Ares asks the question we all want to know the answer to.

"Fuck knows, but one thing we need to remember is do not take off the masks." Nyx looks at each of us, and we all nod back. This can't be anything good.

Putting the phone back into my pocket, Ares walks away from the table to call Esha to let her know we are going out. He suggests she can stay over at Jaya's as we don't know what time we will be back tonight. We don't even know what we're walking into.

On the drive to the morgue the only thing I've kept thinking about was the comment Wesley made about her eyes.

When Nyx stops the car, we slip our masks on. What does having our mask on have to do with anything? We know that the way Wesley was talking, its for the best to listen to him and not take them off, even if we want to.

Wesley has always had our back; he is the one who helped us become who we are today. Yes, we are still broken to the bone and fucked up in the head, but now we have a business, we have new IDs, we have a home and that's because of him.

When we had no one, he was the one who let four strange lads into his house, helped them learn the way of life; the life we should have had from the start.

Wesley knows what we do, he wants to end the organisation, called the Gatekeepers, as much as we do. They took his wife from him, and he won't rest until he ends them. So, we know to listen to what he has to say.

"Masks on, voice box on, gloves on," Nyx goes through the check list, but we've been doing this so long now, we can do it in our sleep.

After exiting the car, we take a quick look around and walk into the building which is full of dead bodies. We know it's something a lot of people wouldn't be doing at two o'clock in the morning, but we don't have a care in the World.

"You think one of them will wake up like they do in the movies?" Ares asks, making us all laugh.

I hear Nyx in front of us. "It would be pretty cool if that happened, we could send a video to Wes, to shit him up a bit." Nyx laughs, and I join him.

"Party time if it happens. That would be a pretty good Halloween theme party this year. Hire people to play dead and wake up randomly," I add my thoughts on it.

We have a Halloween party every year in the building over the road from the shop, and each year it gets bigger. I mean no one knows it's us four who throw the party, they all come thinking the ghost will appear.

A couple of years ago, we got fed up with the shit Halloween parties happening around the area, and the ghost stories started to make their way around people. So, we thought why not have a party, which the ghost would throw, and each year it's got bigger and bigger, to the point we have to sell tickets to enter now. One year it got so full the police shut it down because there were too many people in the building.

I have to admit we throw a fucking great party, we go without the masks, and enjoy the night.

"That's not for a while yet, but I like your way of thinking." Ares pats my back, and Tic looks over to me.

"Haunted house," Tic snaps his head to the right a few times.

"Extreme haunted house," I add, as we stop in front of the door to the room Wesley told us to go into.

"No names." Nyx pushes the door open, and we take a quick look around to make sure no one is around. There's no-one in there. Ares and I walk around to make sure there are no cameras, Tic looks for mics, and Nyx walks to find the body.

I look around the room, I expected to find the cabinets for other dead bodies, but there is nothing except a table which the girl on it in the room. Ares and I are disappointed we were hoping for lots of drawers with dead people in.

"Don't think we will be seeing anyone coming back from the dead tonight." Ares turns to face me, and we walk over to the body which Nyx is currently looking over.

"The tattoo." He has rolled her to her side and he points at her back. I take a picture, as Nyx lays her back down. While he looks over her body, I take a moment to look at her face. Sweet, innocent, little girl, who can't even be eighteen yet. What life did she have? What things did they do to her?

Nyx moves his hand up to her closed eyes, ready to open them. "Don't move." We have no idea what the fuck we are about to see, but it's the first time we've been careful when it comes to anything we do.

Opening her eyes, we don't see anything. The four of us are leaning over the table staring at her eyes and a set of brown eyes are looking back at us. What the fuck is going on? Wesley told us she had tattoos on her eyes.

"Nothing." Ares is the first to speak, taking a step away from the body, Nyx moves away to talk to Ares.

I move closer to her face and open her eyes again. There has to be something we're missing. Wesley wouldn't have said it if there wasn't a reason.

Moving closer to the eyes to get a better look. I take a quick step back in shock. "What the fuck is that?" I ask myself, but it gets my brother's attention. "Is there a magnifying glass in here?" I ask. I don't look up but hear them looking around the room to see if they can find it for me.

I look into the other eye to see if I'm seeing the same thing over there, but nothing. I don't see the glare, so I move my attention back to the left eye.

"Here." Nyx hands one over to me, and I open the girl's eye a little wider.

This can't be right, there is no way.

"What do you see?" Nyx asks, and I finally look at them all and see them watching me.

"Take a step back, she has a fucking camera in her eye," I tell them. They all look over at the girl, and then back to me.

"A mic?" Tic asks.

"No, just a camera from what I can see." No wonder Wesley didn't want us to take our mask off.

"Is it on now?" Ares asks.

"No idea, but if it is, they can see us. I've been in line of sight and so has Nyx. I don't know if the image is wide enough to see all of us."

"Then we need to take the camera out, so we can find out where the feed is coming from," Ares cuts me off. If anyone is going to say that its Ares.

"No. The poor girl has been through enough, without us ripping her eye out," I snap at him. There has to be a line even for us that we won't cross. For me it's hurting a little girl more than she's already been hurt.

"She's dead, she won't-"

"Fuck off, not happening. Think about what they did to her, think about how she cried every night. Don't you think her body has been through enough already?" Cutting him off, it's the first time in a while Ares has no reply. I know we have to get more information about the camera, but I'm not ripping her fucking eye out.

"Take her fingerprints and swab her mouth. Her mother said she never reported her missing, so something isn't right, we need to investigate that." Nyx nods at me. "For now, just the two of us were in sight of the camera, if they can see hopefully they think it's just two of us and not four," Nyx tells Tic and Ares, who walk to the other side of the room, hopefully they were never in the frame.

We all know one day we might get caught, and we have a plan in motion if that day ever come. We're always careful and look into everything before we make a move.

"I read somewhere that all cameras have a serial number engraved into the lens, it's a small lens and not sure if I will find anything, but who knows." I look over at Nyx, he's taking the girls' prints, and tells me to look.

I know he's pissed off; we all are. These fuckers seem to be doing any fucked up thing they can think of.

We need something, even a small part of the serial number will be a start. I open her eyes and take a better look at the pupil. I see there is a small cut at the edge of her pupil. Who is doing all of this crazy shit?

"They've lasered a contact lens to her eye, that's the camera," I tell my brothers, as I see if I can peel the contact lens off her eye. I start reading off a few of the numbers which I can make out, but they're so small it's hard to see anything at all.

I quickly take a step back, when I hear a fizzing sound. "What the fuck?" My brothers stand next to me as we watch the eye that we had removed the contact lens from burning up in flames.

"What the hell happened?" Nyx asks.

"I peeled the lens off the eye, and it must have triggered something." I hold the girl's hand and tell her I'm sorry for the pain she went through, and I will get justice for what happened to her.

Ares pats my back to indicate it's time to leave the room and head back home. The only thing we're left with tonight is more questions to add to the notebooks we already have at home.

Over two hundred notebooks, a fucking camera, and still no answers to find the organisation. We won't stop until they're all dead. I promise neither myself, nor my brothers will stop until we avenge every child they've hurt. They will all die.