"Interesting," the man said as he stood back and looked at the limp body of Maggie. "She never screamed out."
He
placed a couple of bloody tools on a palette and stood back to admire
the corpse he had just made. He reached for a camera and snapped off a photo
and smiled.
"What a subject," he said with such sadness. "Such a pity."
He
touched his hand to her chin and lifted up her head and stared at it
for a brief second before letting it fall limp. He thought about kissing
her lips but never acted on impulse.
He turned to his next victim and with a hand to his lackeys he said, "Dispose of her."
The man approached Max, who was strapped down on a steel slab. Metal bands strapped across his body to hold him from escaping.
"Your friend was an interesting subject," he said to Max. "I hope you fare as good as she did."
Max started to chuckle.
"What is funny?"
"Nothing much," Max said in a raspy voice. "Just that you have made a big mistake."
"What
do you mean?" the man said as he turned to see the latch come from from
Mags' limbs. And the lackeys began to remove her form. The man
snapped to attention as he saw Mags open up an eye.
"You don't know the level of pain that you have brought upon yourself," Max said.
The rain continued to fall and showed no sign of letting up soon. Max
could tell that morning was coming since the sky seemed to lighten up a
bit. There was a hint of a smile on his lips, another night gone by.
Max
raced through the bushes since time was of the essence now. Suki kept up
pace with him, constantly looking over her shoulder. She stumbled
a little and was about to fall but Max caught her arm and kept her
steady.
"I don't think I can run anymore," Suki said with so much exhaustion.
"Daylight is just moments away," Max told her. "Just for a few more minutes, kay."
Suki forced a smile and continued to run on numb legs.
"I hate this world," she muttered.
"Because of the vampires?" Max questioned.
"No," Suki replied. "It doesn't have a Timmy's."
Max's eyes flickered at the crisp blue sky overhead, where clouds
blocked and puffy floated overhead much akin to an old NES video game.
His
head pounded as if a small insect had crawled inside and now was
munching on his grey matter. His eyes hurt as if thousands of small
needles where being jammed into them.
"Where in the hell are we?" Angst asked. She sat up and glanced around. "Sure is pretty though."
"I
rightly don't know," Max answered truthfully. He was suffering from
what appeared to be jet lag and couldn't get his bearings.
"You okay Max?" Frank asked.
"Yeah," Max replied.
"You ever see that Disney flick Tron? I think this is something like that?" Frank stated.
"Tron?" Angst repeated. "What is that?"
"It's about a world of programs playing games to survive," Frank gave her the reader's digest version.
"You mean Reboot?" Angst asked. "I like that show with Bob, Dot and Mike the TV. Really hated that Enzo though."
Suki slid across the floor, her arm outreached grabbing for the
Godhammer. Around her bullets ate up the concrete, showering dust around
her. It was a hailstorm.
She reached the gun and continued to slide behind some cover, and that began to disintegrate as well. She went fetal as she felt the gun in her hand and she pressed the
trigger for it to charge up. Dust specks rained around her, turning her
black hair into silver.
She could hear the faint hum and the gun
began to give a faint glow like a distant star in the twilight sky.
Another few seconds and those bastards wouldn't know what hit them.
Madison Hall walked swiftly next to the orderly down the stone stairs.
She didn't know what to expect when she had received her new case. Madison
was glad to be given such a subject to study, it would be a definite
book or two, and she would probably do the talk-shows.
"He's down here," the orderly said. "This is where we keep our special cases."
"I know," Madison said matter-of-factly. "I've read his dossier."
"Let me tell you sister," the orderly said with a hint of a wry smile. "Reading and seeing are two different things."
Madison
thought the orderly was shining her on. With her being new to this
ward, they probably wanted to scare her with hidden bogeymen ready to spring out
and get you.
The orderly reached up and punched a set of keys and a buzzer sounded and the door unlocked.
"Is he kept alone?" she inquired.
"It's
hard to say," the orderly replied. He made sure that the door was shut
behind them and he hit the locking mechanism. "He might not even be
there."
"What do you mean?" Madison inquired. "Does he escape?"
"It's
hard for me to say," the orderly said. "Some times he goes for a few
days, but he always reappears here. Haven't you read his file?"
Madison stopped in her tracks. "You mean to say that he is gone physically? Not mentally?"
The orderly kept walking down the white corridor.
Madison
proceeded to walk in, analyzing the new data which the orderly was
telling her. She felt the orderly was pulling her leg, trying to get a
shine on the new face in the crowd.
The orderly approached the door at the end of the hall which was labelled: Project Cube.
Max looked up and smiled at the waitress as she walked away from the
table. She gave him a wink and he nodded his appreciation of not having
to call her for a cup of coffee.
"Still got the charm," Pretty said
as he slid into the seat. He was dripping in sweat and his long coat
seemed to be bulging with items. Though Max could see that Pretty was
pretty comfortable.
"Yep," Max replied, then he took a sip of coffee. "What have you got for me?"
"Something
new and exciting," Pretty said as he put a cloth bag on the table. He
pushed it towards Max. "Got it from a fallen LEGACY cell team. Got
there before the blue boys could make the scene."
Max didn't bother on opening the bag just yet. He had good judgement in Pretty's observational technique.
"You
let me know how it works," George said as he slid out of the seat.
"Sorry to make this quick but I got a deal going on the other side of
the river."
"Thanks, Pretty," Max said.
Twip.
The sentry didn't know what hit him as the bullet entered his skull and mushroomed out the side of his head.
He fell over faster than the cigarette that tumbled from his mouth.
"One down and about a million more to go," Mags announced over the headset. She changed targets to the next sentry.
"Stick to the game plan." The Professor's voice was crisp and clear. "No deviations at this point. Stay focused."
"Don't you ever sleep?" Mags asked the Professor.
"I
don't think he ever does," Angst said. She was dressed in black like
Mags, in a skin-tight spandex suit, which made her look more like an
X-man than a cheerleader. "I think he should switch to decaf."
Mags chuckled a little.
"Quit the static." The Professor's voice had an severe edge to it. "You know what this mission means."
"Must be that time of month for him," Angst replied to Mags.
"Rise and shine Max," Frank's voice seemed to echo from a distant tunnel,
rousing Max from his sleep. Fleeting memories of what was happening
disappeared like ripples in a water.
Max opened his eyes and looked around the subway car. He checked his watch and to his amazement he had slept six hours.
"You've been sawing logs for a while," Frank said.
"What's going on?" Max asked.
"Not
too sure at the moment, the others are gone out to scout things around,"
Frank replied. "Tried to get you up earlier but you were in a deep
sleep."
Suki was what they called “wisely innocent”, a soul
who presented as rather young but in reality, was ages beyond others.
It’s just that she would come across as naïve.
Max never felt sorry for
her, but wanted to protect her. That was hard because she had her own
little chaos and Max was chaos personified. Some days. Most nights.
Suki and Max, at some star-crossed time, had this
mutual-protection-unspoken-pact between them that led them both to the
brink of destruction – well, while Suki tended to come to the edge
because of Max, Max led himself there rather often. They’d get to the
edge, get nearly destroyed, and then walk away, with some bruises and
cuts and scrapes, and maybe missing a limb.
Max would recover and get into some adventure again (more likely a
‘situation’) and Suki would rise to some other level of maturity or
development or awareness or consciousness or some something
self-aggrandizing like that. Except she would not really see herself
that way. But deep down in her versions, her selves, her plurealities,
she grew deeper and deeper, older and older, wiser and wiser.
To you and me, she was just Suki, someone to watch as she negotiated her
way through the stars, someone who was cute, but in that ‘little kid’
kind of way – maybe like a little sister – a little sister who could
just as easily pull an Uzi or furnish a switchblade to slit your
jugular.
How can you want to be near someone to protect them and yet at the same
time, be a little scared of them? That’s Suki. Cute and
Cutting.
Trump waited outside the door to the building. He was sitting there
waiting; soon as the door opened he would see who was coming out.
It
had been awhile since somebody stepped through the door, and he was
getting a tad impatient. It wasn't like he had anything else better to
do today.
He heard the splash of footsteps coming down the alley. He
glanced up and saw three teenaged girls running, giggling as they did so.
He
just sat there licking his paws and did a double-take as the girls
slowed down and began to draw weapons. He stopped what he was doing and
looked over the girls once again.
They all had stopped by the door and were positioning themselves for an ambush of sorts.
It's times like these I wish I had a cellphone, Trump thought.
"It's gone downhill since then," Frank replied. He pushed the coffee cup
towards the waitress. She flashed him a smile and he winked back as she
refilled his cup.
Goner was sipping his cola. He wasn't much of a
coffee drinker, and he couldn't fathom why anyone would drink oil from
beans to begin with.
"You mean you guys tanked out?" Goner asked.
"Not really," Frank replied after he took a sip from the coffee.
"Then what?" questioned Goner.
"Well,"
Frank said once the waitress was out of earshot. "It's just that it
just went bat-shit crazy from that point on. You know the weird stuff we
encountered in the Plaza Station?"
Goner nodded.
"Imagine that about tenfold," Frank said.
"No way," Goner said breathlessly.
The
doors chimed and Max entered. He spotted the two and went over to the
table. He didn't even have to signal the waitress for a coffee because
she was automatically pouring one. Goner looked up at Max and shook his head in disbelief.
"You told him?" Max asked of Frank as he slid into the booth alongside him.
"Well, just the basics," Frank replied. "I really didn't go into detail."
"You had to been there, Gondy" Max said.
Max let himself into his room and locked the door. He reached inside his shirt pocket and put a small item on the dresser. The item was like a small ball with a few small switches on it, and lettering that seemed very archaic.
He went to the window and glanced around before he pulled the curtains shut. There was no one in the parking lot.
He poured himself a drink and then sat down at the edge of the bed, looking at the item. He took a long sip and then picked up his cellphone and dialed a number.
"It's me," he said. "I have it."
