The dark pain was tearing me up deep inside. The desperate cries of a thousand children filled the void inside my head. My heart sank into a black pool of vengeance. But at the same time... I felt nothing. He was dead. And I was too late.



Dann and I had been working undercover for the past few years then, taking down mob bosses and cleaning out the worst scum from all around the city of New York. To be honest, I would have rather been doing a desk job. But the thrill of the ride kept me going. Our next case was on a man by the name of Joe Wallace, a big time drug lord running loose throughout the city. We had been on his tail for the past year. But every time we got any close, he managed to get away.

One night, we got a tip from a local junkie that Wallace and his men were moving heroin from a warehouse in Queens. This was the first lead we had gotten in months. I didn't like it. I had a bad feeling about it. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. But we went to check it out anyway.

Something was just not right that night. I could feel it in the air. The bitter coldness of the freezing wind and snow blowing past my head made everything look like a blur. It felt like a dream. The sweet aroma of the earlier morning had faded away. New York was a play pit just six feet above hell.

We arrived at the warehouse and waited outside for a while, scoping out the area before we made our move. Dann wanted to go in alone first. I was supposed to wait ten minutes and then go in after him. But I was stupid. I shouldn't have let him. I should have gone in there with him from the beginning. He was walking into a death trap... and I just let him go.

I sat there waiting. The snow storm was getting worse and worse. I fell into a deeper daze with every minute that passed. Then sudden gunshots came from the inside. It startled and stunned me still. The feeling numbed me in my seat... like I was paralyzed. And I couldn't get up. The continuous shots played over slowly in my head. It was like hearing the Devil's heartbeat. I snapped back into my right state of mind and realized what was going on. I got up out of the car and ran in as quickly as I could.

Inside the warehouse, it was cold and gloomy. The place looked like it was built over an old graveyard. The sound of death echoed throughout the shadows. Foreboding illuminated the darkness. Wallace was a ghost, nowhere to be found.

I went to look for Dann. I called out to him, but there was no answer. I couldn't help but think the worst. I went out of breath and felt a deep pain in the pit of my stomach. And then I found him... he was dead. Wallace and his men had killed him and fled the scene. I was too late. The reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks straight in the face. There was nothing I could do. So I reported back to the precinct and went home.



Everything had fallen apart in a New York minute. For days, I couldn't sleep. The sadistic laughter of a thousand demons filled the void inside my head. The need for revenge consumed me. I wanted to kill Joe Wallace. Dann was all I had and now he was dead.

I was working on the case now nonstop. I spent the next few weeks investigating, tracking down every known associate to Wallace that there was... and beating the living soul out of them until I got some answers. I got nothing. I was going after the wrong people. I'd have to go after the bigger fish if I wanted to find Wallace.

Days had passed. The storm went on continuously without stopping. There was no sunlight. The streets grew colder and weary, and were always deserted. The dark clouds hovering above isolated the city within its own madness. And Lady Liberty, watching over us like a goddess who had forsaken her people.

I started looking over old case files. I remembered a man named Jay Woden, someone who had many connections throughout the city. I had arrested him two years earlier for fraud and conspiracy. He was out now. And he was the only person I knew who was tied up with Joe Wallace. I had to go through him if I wanted to get any closer to Wallace.

I went out to get Woden, and I knew where I could find him. He owned an illegal brothel in the east side of the Bronx. It was fronted as a bar and gambler's hall. I walked in and found him at one of the tables. He recognized me, but before he could react, I hit across the face with a chair. His thugs didn't even try to mess with me.

I dragged him outside to an alley beside the building started questioning him. He didn't want to give me any answers... so I shot him once in the leg. I had show him I wasn't playing around. He then quickly squealed and I got what I wanted. He told me where Wallace was. He was hiding out in an abandoned hotel in Brooklyn. That was it. I was done with Woden. I left him there bleeding in the snow.

The time had come. I finally knew where Wallace was. The long painful nights were coming to an end. I was coming to take him down. It would be the last time Joe Wallace would be roaming around the cold, gritty streets of New York.



I found Wallace's hotel in Brooklyn. The place was a wretched dump. Broken liquor bottles and old dirty magazines were scattered throughout the hallway floors. Heroin fiends lay in the lobby sedated by the poison in their syringes. It wasn't a very beautiful sight.

I made my way upstairs. I was ready for Wallace. And then out of the shadows, one of Wallace's men jumped out and hit me right in the back of the head with a baseball bat. I fell to my knees and blacked out on the ground. Wallace had somehow known I was coming... I should have finished Woden off.

They took me to Wallace, all the way to the top floor. They drugged me and sat me right in front of him. He was right there... but I couldn't do anything. The effects of the drug made my head spin. They held me up against the wall and beat me multiple times until I fell unconscious.

I woke up hours later a bloody mess. The smell of burning drug money filled the air. A cloud of smoke came rushing in the room. They were burning the evidence... and torching the building. And they had planned for me to go down with it. I wasn't about to wind up dead in some hellhole.

I picked myself up and found my gun on the table. The drug was wearing off, but the side effects started kicking in. The severe headache made it hard to run. I hurried out of the room and moved as fast as I could through the hallways, blinded by the smoke. I had to get to Wallace before he could escape.

I started catching up to them. I spotted one of his men and shot him down, and the battle was on. I shot at them and they shot back. The fire was spreading down fast and the chaos increased. Continuous rounds were fired until I had taken down all of his men. And only Wallace was left.

I chased him down the stairway exchanging bullets. Him And I were both heavily wounded. The building was crumbling down and there wasn't much time left. He almost made it out, but I finally had gotten him. I shot him twice in the back and once in the throat. He wasn't going to slip away this time.

I left him there choking in a pool of his own blood and made it out at the last minute. The fire sparked a flame in my eye as I watched the building go down. The blaring of sirens emerged in the background. The nightmare was all over. Or at least I thought it was.