by Gary Denne
After what felt like the longest sixty seconds inside the Red Planet, chaos reigned, and the club was still packed full of people as the sheer volume of the venue and the speed of most—having had too much to drink or inject—didn’t help anyone get out at a fast rate. Bar staff stayed down behind the bars, listening to screams for help and women crying, fear going right through their bodies. A Red Planet server cowered down in the corner of the bar like a ball, speaking into a Quartz device as loud as she possibly could without making herself a target. Where the hell was MADDSEC and why hadn’t they responded?
As the crowd began to thin out and flee through the doors, Roberts reached the ground floor from the stairs and unloaded another blast at Sean, who somehow dived in the right direction, like he was catching a football pass, avoiding being hit. It was either fate or blind luck that saved him, but that certainly didn’t rub off onto those poor souls around him, who were sprayed with burning shotgun pellets. Bodies fell to the floor, the lack of clothing on some of the women in the club making their wounds look horrific, as blood splattered over their bodies and lead pellets ripped at their flesh.
Roberts, seething, cold and emotionless, threw the spent 12-gauge to the floor like a patron might an empty pack of matches, not caring an inch where it landed. Reaching down to his holsters, he pulled his two revolvers up and began firing off rapid shots towards Sean’s direction in the dim lighting, hitting more random innocent victims. Treating the moment like a shooting gallery, Roberts squeezed off shots, seemingly enjoying the carnage. Men and women were hit, bullets entering their bodies as they fell to the floor in agonizing screams. Roberts remained calm and calculated, with zero emotion towards people that were in his way.
After only a few minutes inside the Red Planet, a massacre had taken place. Outside on the street, screams could be heard as people ran in every direction from the front entrance doors. Rain was again falling heavily from the night sky above, soaking the road and sidewalk with a constant patter of drops. Sean raced outside behind the biker chick as fast as his legs could take him. He sprinted down the sidewalk after her, glancing behind him for the gunman. How he had gotten out of there unscathed, he did not know.
“Who the hell is that guy?” he gasped at her in panic.
She didn’t answer him. This stylized young woman with sheer determination etched across her face ran in front of him with great athleticism, her black leather biker pants wrapped closely to her thin legs and nicely-shaped bottom. She paid no attention to rain puddles as water splashed up on her. She ran like there was no tomorrow.
“In here,” she said back at him, turning into an alleyway and quickly disappearing from the street.
In the filthy and poorly lit crumbling alleyway, she did not wait for Sean to come around the corner. Instead, she moved behind the row of garbage dumpsters where an antique Harley Davidson motorbike was in waiting, camouflaged by a few large bags of piled trash. She quickly pulled the trash bags away from the bike and threw them back in the dumpsters. Sean arrived into the alley just as she lifted her leg over the bike and grabbed the handlebars.
“Get on,” she ordered.
“What the hell is going on? Who are you?” he exclaimed.
“Get the fuck on the bike,” she growled. Clearly this girl was no lady. But underneath her rough exterior, now that he could get a better look at the girl despite the dark alleyway, he could see she was a very attractive brunette with full-body flowing hair down the back of her leather jacket.
She snarled at Sean in a very intimidating tone.
“You’ve got five seconds to get on this bike with me or you’re on your own,” she told him as she revved the Harley’s engine and dug the heel of her boots into the torn-up ground, ready to get the hell out of there.
Sean hesitated for a split-second and then quickly jumped on the back of the bike with her. What choice did he have?
“Hold on,” she said, as she yanked at the throttle and they shot out the alleyway. Sean quickly put his arms around her small waist and held on tight with his hands.
As they pulled onto the street, Roberts was slowly walking out of the Red Planet doors, taking his time and in no rush to finish the job. No sooner had they got up speed did Roberts hear the bike’s loud exhaust coming down the street. His eye locked onto them. Having collected his trusty 12-gauge shotgun back up from the club’s floor, he raised it at them and took aim.
“Oh shit,” the biker chick said to herself as she spotted Roberts on the sidewalk.
She reached inside her jacket and pulled out a beat-up and weathered small caliber handgun, handing it quickly to Sean.
“Here,” she commanded.
The Harley swerved and darted across the road as the biker chick steered randomly as possible down the street past the Red Planet, trying to put off Robert’s aim at them. Revving the bike full throttle, they accelerated past him at high speed as Sean aimed the gun as best he could from the back of a motorbike. He squeezed the trigger, firing several, albeit puny, shots in Roberts’ direction, forcing him to take cover in the club’s doorway.
“Hold on,” the biker chick shouted over her shoulder as she tried to hold the Harley steady, not finding it the going easy at high speed on a wet road. They both leaned into the corner, the bike slanting over towards the road as they turned the corner and headed uptown.
Roberts calmly walked from the Red Planet doorway and raised the barrel of his shotgun, aiming at them as they moved further away from him. He squinted his eye. There was no shot. In the falling rain, they had quickly disappeared from sight. He held the barrel of his gun still for several seconds, slightly shaking with a dull tremor in his hands before he lowered his barrel in disgust. This time, he did not get his man.
In the distance, several MADDSEC-owned black Lincoln Continentals raced towards the club. Their red sirens wailed across the stormy night and were probably soothing sounds to the ears of club patrons. Roberts was aware of their imminent arrival on the scene and quietly slipped away into the darkness, leaving the Red Planet in chaos. Outside the venue, people slowly returned to search for lost friends through the madness of the crowds, trying to get to grips with what had just happened. The first of many MADDSEC personnel began dealing with the situation before them.
In the very same alleyway that his target had launched his escape from, Roberts was sitting on the ground behind the row of dumpsters, breathing rapidly and beginning to wheeze like an asthmatic. Although the rainfall had soaked both his clothes, cowboy hat and skin through to the bone, sweat had also dampened his wrinkled face and he was visibly overheating from the recent burst of exertion. He coughed and spluttered behind the dumpsters in the alleyway, sounding like a homeless vagrant clutching at his final moments of life.
He reached into his coat. Fumbling as he coughed, he pulled out a syringe of Pump and removed its cap. He used what little strength he had and jammed the needle into his leathery arm, injecting the ink blue liquid into his body. When he was done, he dropped the syringe to the ground and put his head back against the ally wall. Slowly but surely, the Pump began to work. His breathing went from weak and wheezing to deep and aggressive. He let out a brief grunt as the drug surged through him like ice-cold water. Slowly, he lifted his head up off the ally wall and reached for his 12-gauge shotgun, grabbing it tightly in his hand as the rain pelted down from above...
In the pouring rain, the Harley Davidson sped through the streets of Manhattan at high speed. It was alone and had the entire road to itself. Through the Village streets, the biker chick drove in any direction she could, as long as it was away from the Red Planet. Scattered souls on sidewalks twisted their necks at the sound of the Harley and watched as the couple tore past them, through the soaked city streets in a hurry.
“Who the fuck was that and what the hell is going on?” Sean shouted hysterically from the back of the bike, as the wind gushed over his face, neither of them wearing helmets.
“I don’t know,” she yelled over th
e bike’s engine. “I’ve never seen that guy before.”
“Are you okay?” she asked him. “Did you get hit? Are you bleeding?”
Sean thought about it for a moment. “If I am ... right now ... I don’t feel a thing.”
And they raced away into the night.
Violet
From inside a messy and cluttered one-bedroom apartment, a key was inserted into one of three bolted locks on the front door. A set of keys jangled from behind the door as each lock was unbolted, one after the other. Finally, the door swung open in haste and the raven-haired girl rushed into the darkened space, ushering Sean in quickly behind her. A worried Sean stepped carefully into the apartment, scanning around briefly. It was a well lived in space with a somewhat high-tech motif. It was hard not to instantly notice the setup; a multitude of laptops, Quartz tablets, cabling along the floor and ceiling, cameras, surveillance equipment, network routers blinking rapidly, and at least half a dozen displays scattered over multiple desks. This was some serious tech. If it weren’t for the personal touches one would expert to find in a home, it could’ve easily been mistaken for some kind of monitoring station. But alongside the tech equipment were used plates and cups, collectibles, photo frames filled with people dear to the homeowner, empty food containers, and dirty clothes lying all over the place.
The girl swiftly closed the front door behind her now Sean was inside. She locked the three deadbolts; high, low and middle on the door. A small black cat jumped from the apartment floor to the kitchen table, greeting her owner with a sad meow of ‘feed me’. She quickly walked to the table and placed her keys down, ignored the cat, and instead wasted no time ripping her leather jacket off, throwing it over the sofa, revealing only a thin white tank top underneath.
“Sit down,” she told Sean, as she grabbed a cigarette lighter from the table and made a few stops at strategically placed candles in the living space, lighting each one. Her boots clunked on the apartment’s hardwood floors.
Distracted by the view, Sean ignored her directions and instead walked over to the apartment’s windows, looking out at the city before him. Skyscrapers lit up the night, as rain poured down and thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance. From this high up, he caught his first glimpse of the seawall surrounding the island. He hadn’t seen it from the inside. Its thick black panels looked rock hard and stronger than anything he’d laid his eyes upon; a seemingly impenetrable barrier, deterring even the most optimistic and determined enemy. On the very top of the wall there was a soft, rounded edge. Absent was any kind of physical hazard such as razor wire or jagged glass. This wall was visually passive in its defense. It was smooth and rounded, almost like it had been built as an art piece than for physical obstruction. Floodlights at its base lit up large black panels, stitched and riveted together with re-enforced steel. Every few seconds, rows of red lights flashed in sequential order from its top to its bottom, alerting anyone to its presence. Sean stood there for a moment, gazing out the window. Perhaps needing a pinch to wake up from a dream. Viewing a barricaded and locked-down city from high up a Manhattan skyscraper was a far cry from what he knew to be home. In fact it was foreign to anything he had seen with his own eyes before.
“I said sit down!” she growled at him.
Sean turned around, waking from his daze. In the candlelight, he could see her arms were heavily tattooed with a flowing design that continued underneath her top. He also couldn’t avoid noticing her heavy bust line that had obviously been well concealed in the tight-fitting leather jacket. Her breasts were screaming to break out of her tank top, but as much as they were a nice visual, Sean wasn’t going to let a girl boss him around.
“Hey, do you wanna stop giving me orders for a second and tell me what the fuck is going on?” he barked back at her.
She paused for a moment, and her cat meowed again. She moved to it and paid the feline some attention, rubbing its head affectionately before turning back to him, a calm look on her face. “Mind your language,” she said softly. “And sit down...”
Reluctantly, Sean walked to the sofa and crashed down onto it with a non-verbal protest. He watched her quickly walk to the bathroom. For a moment, she looked at herself in the mirror, as if she was asking for an extra burst of inner strength or silently praying. She returned carrying with her some kind of tube of ointment and a roll of black gaffe tape. She came close to Sean and crouched down on the hardwood floor in front of him. She didn’t bother to ask. She just helped herself to lifting his jean leg up, exposing his right calf muscle.
“What are you doing?” Sean asked.
She didn’t answer.
She grabbed the tube of ointment, squeezing hard and extracting a large gooey blob into her hand. Reaching down, she rubbed the blob onto his skin, liberally covering his calf muscle and surrounding area.
“What the hell’s that?”
“He was tracking you,” she said, matter-of-factly, as she kept rubbing it in.
“But what is it?” Sean said, a little worried.
“Anal lube,” she said, pausing to glance up at him, annoyed at the distraction. “And this ... this is gaffe tape. Now can you just let me finish while we’ve still got time?”
She grabbed the gaffe tape and unraveled a long single piece, tearing at it with her hands to break it off the roll before resorting to her teeth without any fuss or hesitation. With one hand, she felt around Sean’s calf, searching for a particular spot. Once she found what she was looking for, she began to wrap the tape around his leg, covering the exact spot in three or four revolutions. She pressed the tape down hard and ensured it was sealed in place.
Sean remained quiet. He finally realized she was helping him.
Pulling herself up off the floor, she walked to a laptop computer at one of the desks, sat down in a chair, and started furiously tapping at its keys. She watched a map of city blocks scroll and zoom on the screen, and waited for the laptop to report back on her query. After a few seconds, she typed what seemed like an essay’s worth of keystrokes and then paused a second, checking the code before hitting ‘Enter’ on the keyboard. She carefully read the screen for the results of her keystrokes and then turned back to Sean.
“The signal’s weak now. You can only be pinpointed to a few city blocks.”
She looked relieved.
Sean looked down at his calf wrapped in black gaffe tape. The idea of the MET token inside his leg giving his location away made him feel a little nauseous.
And it seemed to be catching. Sitting in the black leather chair, the girl swung away from the desk and placed her head in her hands. She caught her breath. Whatever it was she had been trying to accomplish, she had succeeded, and now the events of the night were catching up to her. For what seemed like an eternity, they both sat there in silence with soft rumbles of thunder rolling in from the distance. A calm came over the apartment and the previous tension between them was gone.
“Why was that guy trying to kill me?” Sean softly said to her.
She let his question linger for a moment and then pulled her head up from her hands. She had lost a little of her intimidation. Not all of it, just a little. She seemed calmer now. A little less hostile.
“You were selected for the game. I saw activity logs for PUMP start to get busy on my screen. But I’ve never seen it happen that way before. It was quick. It was different from the others. They’re always planned well in advance,” she said, almost to herself, puzzled by the events.
“Oh, right, ‘cos if a guy’s trying to kill me and it’s planned, that doesn’t seem so bad,” Sean sarcastically replied. “Who the hell was he?”
“I don’t know. He seemed different.”
“What do you mean?”
“From the others. He was sharper, harder, really jacked up on the stuff.”
“You mean Pump?” Sean asked.
She nodded. “It’s what makes them want to kill. They feel invincible, powerful, omnipotent.”
“So he’s just going
to keep coming after me?” Sean asked.
She gestured to his leg. “That’ll stop him for now. After tonight, I don’t know. This seems different from other games. I can’t figure it out.”
“So you mean to tell me the day I get to this city, I’m the guy they choose for this ... this PUMP thing? They told me it was a million to one! They told me I’d have years here before it was ever an option. What the hell am I meant to do now? I need to talk to someone. I need to call the Government. There’s gotta be some kind of mistake. This is insane,” Sean exclaimed, raising himself into a frightful panic.
“Hey!” the girl said sharply. “Calm down. Drawing attention to yourself is only going to get you killed. Let me figure this out.”
Sean sat there on the couch, a look of protest on his face. The cat gently strolled over to him and brushed up against his legs, meowing.
The girl was surprised.
“She likes you,” she remarked. “She doesn’t usually like anyone.”
The girl stretched her hand out and the cat came to her. She patted it with affection and it lapped up the attention, closing its eyes and purring in pleasure.
“I don’t even know your name,” Sean said, feeling defeated.
“It’s Violet,” she said, looking up at him from puss.
“Who are you?” he continued.
“I’m a nobody,” she said, dismissing him. “In fact,” she pondered to herself, “I don’t even know why I got involved. It was a stupid risk.”
There was an awkward pause.
“You really have a way with words, don’t you?” he finally said, annoyed at her apparent disregard for what would’ve happened had she not showed up.
Sean replayed the night in his head. “I can’t believe any of it. He slaughtered them. He didn’t hesitate for a second. I saw people crash to the floor, their blood splatter over the walls. I can still hear the cries out in horror. And the blonde ... we were just talking. We were just having a drink. I can’t believe she’s dead.”