Countdown

by Michelle Rowen

  “Level five is an official death match. Only one pair shall go on to level six, the final level. Competitors, your countdown begins at thirty minutes. Kill or be killed. And to our Subscribers…enjoy!”

  At last the announcer’s voice left my head, leaving only the thudding of my heart and the dull noise of the crowbar hitting the ground to break the silence.

  “Mac,” I managed. “That’s the boy who gave you that scar?”

  He nodded. “Along with his pal, he attacked me in the middle of the night with a knife they smuggled in. Thought they might be able to extort some money from me or my father. When they realized he didn’t give a damn about me, they just tried to kill me. I fought for my life and almost lost. I was damned lucky. I never thought I’d see him again.”

  “And they teamed him up with somebody from Saradone. A real murderer.” I stared at the dark silhouettes. “Why are they just standing there?”

  “They’re waiting.”

  “Obviously. But for what? What do we do now?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Think fast.”

  “Hey, Rogan!” one of them called out. “Long time, no see. You’re mine now. And you know what? Thirty minutes is a long time. We can play with you and your girlfriend lots before the end of this level.”

  I didn’t want to know the details of what he planned to do to fill that time. I was willing to bet that it wasn’t reminiscing about the good old days over a beer and a plate of nachos.

  “How’s that plan coming along?” I asked.

  “Slower than I’d like.”

  “We’re going to be okay, Rogan. We’re going to make it.” I moved closer to him so I could feel the warmth of his body. “What are they waiting for?”

  The crowbar tapped a steady tattoo on the street ahead. Every five seconds without fail.

  Rogan didn’t take his watchful gaze away from them. “I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll do whatever it takes, but we don’t have any weapons.”

  “There is that handy crowbar from before.”

  He snorted. “Against a convicted murderer twice our size and a psychopathic teenage dickwad?”

  “Gee, don’t sound so confident.”

  I didn’t hear the tap anymore. I watched the shadowy figures warily.

  Suddenly, with a yell, they started running toward us as fast as they could.

  We had no weapon good enough to defend ourselves for very long. And no plan forming to get us through the next thirty minutes alive.

  Fight or f lee.

  I chose door number two.

  “Come on.” I grabbed a hold of Rogan’s arm. “We have to run. We have to run now!”

  HAPPILY, HE DIDN’T ARGUE WITH ME.

  We ran past the shifted sewer grate cover, and I snatched the crowbar off the ground. Rogan started toward a door to one of the surrounding buildings.

  “They’re all locked,” I told him. My ankle cried in pain with every step I took. My hand was sweating, but Rogan clutched it tightly in his as if he didn’t want to let go of me.

  “All of them?”

  “I don’t know. I—I thought I checked them all when I was looking for you!”

  Because of my twisted ankle, I wasn’t running as quickly as I could, and the other team was gaining on us. Fast. Their heavy boots slapped against the pavement as they ran.

  Rogan glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll hold them off. You hide.”

  “Bad plan.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The ninety-foot rule? You go too far away and our heads will explode, remember?”

  He swore under his breath, his expression tense. “You’re right.”

  “And besides, I’d rather not stand by and watch them beat the shit out of you.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “I could hold my own for a while.”

  “Yeah, a valiant battle before they cut your throat. No way. We’re in this together, no matter what.”

  He glared at me. “Give me the crowbar.”

  I decided not to argue and handed it to him just as my already injured foot hit a piece of gravel. I stumbled, and Rogan caught my arm before I hit the ground. We didn’t stop moving, but we slowed considerably as we turned the next corner. Another dark street with no cars. All concrete and cold stone and brick.

  There was the shadow of something in the middle of the road ahead, though. Something much larger than a piece of gravel. I met Rogan’s gaze before I picked it up, feeling the cold, black metal in my hand.

  It was a gun.

  The show provided what we needed to finish a level. Just like the crowbar earlier. I stif led a feeling of gratitude toward whomever had left it there for us to find, which helped to manage some of the fear. At least now I wasn’t helpless.

  I stood clutching the gun with both hands, Rogan at my back holding the crowbar, as Mac and Kurtis caught up to us. I saw their shadowy faces, the hiss of breath hitting the cold night air. Just like us, they were also wearing the ridiculous new black Countdown uniform—or just like Rogan, anyway. I was the only one of the four of us that looked like a slutty superhero.

  “That didn’t take long at all,” the older one, Kurtis, said. He had a shaved head and thick eyebrows that met between his eyes. “Damn, she’s even prettier up close than she is on camera. Almost prettier than you are, Rogan.”

  He held a short-bladed knife while the younger one, Mac, had the crowbar. Mac was tall and wiry with sharp features and greasy blond hair tied back in a ponytail. I was surprised that he didn’t look any older than me, but there was a hard edge to his gaze, and a coldness to his grin that chilled me. They walked in a slow circle around us, still keeping some distance between us—for now. Rogan and I stayed back to back as we turned, keeping an eye on the two murderers.

  “I don’t think my old friend has anything to say to us,” Mac said with a smirk. “Is that right, Rogan? You got nothing to say?”

  “Nothing comes immediately to mind,” Rogan growled.

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Obviously, I must have missed you if you’re still breathing. But I promise I won’t miss again.”

  My arms already ached from trying to hold the heavy gun steady. “Look, guys. We’re all in this together. We don’t have to fight each other. Maybe we can get out of this if we work together.”

  Kurtis laughed hard at that. So hard that he had to put his hands on his knees to support himself. “That’s hilarious. Where did they find this chick? I thought Sesame Street went off the air decades ago.”

  My jaw clenched. Okay, so much for trying to make friends with the enemy.

  The convicted murderer eyed me slowly, from the toes of my combat boots up my thigh-high black stockings to the embarrassing amount of bare thigh on view, and the too-short black skirt barely covering my ass. He licked his lips and focused his attention on the skirt.

  “Give me five minutes with you, baby,” he murmured. “Just five minutes.”

  “Lay one finger on her and you’ll be spending the rest of the level searching the city for it,” Rogan snarled.

  I refused to show that Kurtis’s taunts were getting to me. I kept my chin up, my gaze guarded but steady. I’d shoot off more than his finger if he tried to touch me.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” I said. “But I do have a gun. See?” I waved it. “Why don’t I shoot the both of you and we end this level right now?”

  Mac’s beady eyes scanned the length of me. “Kira, right? Yeah, during a rest period, the show let us tune in to you and Rogan getting to know each other a bit better. Feel free to get naked again anytime.”

  I felt bile rise in the back of my throat at the thought that he’d been watching, but I tried to focus myself.

  Unfortunately, while his taunts weren’t doing much more to me than making me physically ill, they seemed to be working on Rogan.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he snarled. “Both of you.”

  Kurtis snorted. “You can try.”


  “Rogan, try to stay calm,” I said.

  “Yeah, Rogan,” Mac said. “Listen to your girlfriend. She’ll protect you from us.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.” I raised the gun a little and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the wall just over his right shoulder. His eyes widened and he took a shaky step backward.

  “Didn’t think I’d do it?” I snapped at him. “I’ll do it. I’ll shoot both of you in the head. I’m thinking it’s no big loss for humanity.”

  “There are twenty-five minutes remaining for this level of Countdown.”

  “She’s got some spirit to her.” Kurtis’s eyes glittered in the darkness surrounding us. “That why you like her, Rogan? Does she remind you of the pretty little girls you killed?”

  “That was a lie,” I said. “He’s innocent.”

  “Is that the lie that got you into bed earlier? Did he convince you he was wrongfully convicted?” Kurtis snorted. “Yeah, we’re all innocent here, aren’t we? That’s why we’re playing this game.”

  I trained the gun on him. “Go to hell.”

  He cocked his head. “I heard the part when Jonathan told you Rogan killed your family.”

  I went cold inside. Of course there were cameras in the room with us then. There was no privacy in this game. Everything was fair game as entertainment for the Subscribers.

  “I don’t care what you heard.”

  “It’s funny, though. That convo made me remember something.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

  There was a grin on his ugly face. “Just before I went to prison a couple years ago I’d been hired to kill a little girl tagged with Psi abilities.”

  My stomach turned, but I fought to keep my face blank. “Fascinating.”

  “Psis are a dark stain on humanity—a mutation caused by the Plague. A lot of people think that. Some of them have the money to hire guys like me to help cleanse the world of filth like you.” His expression darkened. “Your daddy put up a good fight trying to protect you. I wasn’t going to kill him or your mother and sister, but I shot them all just for giving me a hard time. Had to bolt when I heard the police. What a coincidence, huh? Both of us here playing this game. It’s almost like they planned it that way.” He took a step closer and peered at me. “Got to say, I am curious. Can you read my mind, pretty girl? Can you see into my soul?”

  I squeezed the trigger, and he jerked backward. Blood f lowed from his shoulder wound, although it was barely noticeable against the black fabric that covered it. Lousy aim, though. I’d been targeting his heart.

  He yelled out and clamped a hand to his shoulder, his face contorted in anger and pain.

  Pure red fury filled my vision and pushed all other thought out of my head. “You’re the one? You killed my family? And they knew this?”

  “Those bastards know everything,” Rogan said from his back-to-back position with me.

  “I’m going to kill you!” I yelled, and I aimed and squeezed off another shot at the murderer.

  The chamber clicked empty. I pulled the trigger again and again, but there was nothing.

  Two enemies. Two bullets.

  The show had given us just enough to kill them and nothing more.

  I screamed and threw the gun at Kurtis who’d slumped down to his knees on the ground, staring at the blood that gushed out from between his fingers. Rogan’s crowbar made contact with Mac’s—I could hear the crash of metal against metal, and then a grunt of pain as Rogan managed to clobber Mac. Then he dragged me behind him as we began to run again as fast as we could, trying to put distance between us and our pursuers.

  I shook with fury. Kurtis had admitted what he’d done so freely, as if he was proud of it.

  “Here.” Rogan stopped running in front of a door, and I skidded to a halt next to him. The street lamp was angled so that its light was cast like a spotlight showing us the way. There was a chain across the door, and he whacked it a few times with the crowbar until it broke. When he tried the handle, it swung open. “Come on.”

  My cheeks were wet with tears of frustration and rage. I wasn’t sad; there was no time for that. I’d finished being sad a long time ago, and now there was only anger left behind.

  He took me by my shoulders. “Kira, I need you to focus right now. Can you do that?”

  “He killed my family.”

  “I know. And I’m so sorry. But I won’t let him kill you, too.”

  “How are we going to stop him? Stop both of them?”

  “There are fifteen minutes left in this level of Countdown.”

  Rogan’s jaw tensed. “Looks like we have fifteen minutes to figure that out.”

  We went into the building, and he shut the door behind us. There wasn’t much light inside, only a faint glow from a bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, but we could see that we were in a small foyer that led to a staircase. Rogan moved toward the door and slid the lock across about two seconds before there was a loud, resounding bang on it from the other side.

  “Come out, you little bitch!” Kurtis’s bellow held a tense, pained edge to it. He was hurting bad from that bullet.

  Good.

  There was a creak as the door gave a little with the last pounding.

  This space was too confined. And too dark. I couldn’t function here.

  I eyed the stairs. “We need to go up to the roof.”

  Rogan met my gaze for a tense moment, then he nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  He started taking the stairs two at a time until he remembered that I was hobbling around on an injured ankle, and he thundered back down to my side. He put an arm around my waist and helped support me as we went up f light after f light of stairs. I was in pretty good shape, but by the time we got to the top of thirty f lights, I was panting.

  Rogan pushed open the door at the top, and we burst out onto the roof. I sucked in fresh air until I got my breath back, then moved to the edge and looked over.

  “There’s a fire escape over here. I think we can climb down.”

  “Seven minutes remain in this level of Countdown,” the announcer said, loud and clear in my head.

  “What are we going to do then?” he asked. “We can keep running, but it won’t help either of our teams in seven more minutes. We’ll both be dead.”

  My heart raced. “But I shot Kurtis already. And you hit Mac really hard. You don’t suppose that counts, do you?”

  The roof access door swung open, and Mac emerged onto the roof. Kurtis glared at me from behind him, still holding his hand against his shoulder.

  “No,” Rogan said as he met my tense gaze, “looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  MAC BLED FROM A WOUND ON HIS TEMPLE, BUT he still held tightly to the crowbar.

  “Five minutes remain in this level of Countdown,” came the voice of the announcer.

  “How time f lies when you’re having fun,” Kurtis said, although the sound of his voice, raspy and out of breath, didn’t really fit the words. He clutched his left shoulder, dark red and shiny with blood from the bullet wound against his black game outfit.

  When he took a few steps closer, Rogan stepped in front of me.

  “Back off.”

  Mac laughed at that and drew closer. “You’re dead, rich boy. So dead.”

  Rogan’s eyes narrowed. “You first.”

  “Nah. You f irst.”

  Mac swung his heavy crowbar at Rogan’s head. At the last moment Rogan blocked the death blow with his own weapon. Metal crashed on metal.

  Mac’s fist made contact with Rogan’s jaw, and he went sprawling to the other side of the roof, his crowbar knocked out of his hand. He got to his feet quickly, stormed back toward Mac and grabbed hold of his black shirt.

  Fear for his safety distracted me long enough for Kurtis to move closer to me. Too close.

  “No weapons now, huh? Too bad.”

  I didn’t realize I was backing away from him until my legs hit the short barrier at the edge of the roof.


  “Three minutes remain in this level of Countdown.”

  His shoulder wound momentarily forgotten, he cracked his knuckles. “So, here’s how this is going to go, pretty girl. I’m going to put my hands around your neck, and I’m going to squeeze until I hear something pop. And then I’ll keep squeezing until your tongue rolls out of your mouth, until your eyes bug out from your face, and you go limp. Then I’m going to throw you off this roof and watch as your pretty red guts smear the pavement down there.”

  I felt the cold brick wall that pressed against my hands. The edge of it came up to the backs of my thighs. “Were you serious when you said that you killed my parents? Or were you told to tell me that to get a reaction for the cameras?”

  He smirked. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  He grabbed my wrist. I shrieked and tried to pull away, but he was too strong. “How ’bout I do you one favor before I kill you? If you’re really a Psi, why don’t you give me a read? Take a look at my soul and you tell me if I did it or not.”

  I searched his face for something to tell me that he wasn’t a horrible, evil man who’d ruined my life. He could be lying. For all I knew, they could be forcing him to say this. Like I said, I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  Still locked in hand-to-hand combat, Rogan looked over at me and shouted my name when he saw I’d been cornered. He tried to move toward me, but Mac stopped him, pushing him back, and swung his crowbar like a baseball bat. Rogan roared in pain and fury.

  “Two minutes remain in this level of Countdown.”

  My wrist was trapped in Kurtis’s grip. He was smiling at me, an amused smile, as if he were daring me to try to break away from him. My despair and confusion amused him.

  “Maybe you’re not a Psi, after all. Maybe you’re just another nobody. Can’t do it, can you?”

  I met his gaze full on. “Oh, yes, I can.”

  I closed my eyes, focused my mind and ripped into his.

  Funny, the more I did this, the easier it seemed to get.