Johnny took shallow breaths as he ran, his lungs and muscles craving fresh oxygen in order to keep working. Maybe he would have been faster, stronger, if he had taken more exercise but he was doing alright as he was. His criminal was on the run from him and he held the real power in this; the status, the uniform, the weapon – the knowledge that he would win. Johnny chased Mika along the makeshift corridor, noticing the angry, red burns on his hands and the way he kept putting a hand to his stomach, realising he had been injured in some way. That could be the weakness he was frantically searching for, but having been on the receiving end of Mika’s temper, he began to think that it might simply have made him angry and stronger.
Hopping onto a lower gantry, he ran the length of it, ran a third and turned into a proper corridor. It bore a few locked doors, each with a golden name plate nailed to it; Mika rushed past them and stopped when he had turned the next corner. He leant against the wall, taking breaths he didn’t really need – it hadn’t taken that much out of him – and resting his aching muscles, which were, like him, so tensed that he thought they might snap. Not hearing any sign of Johnny, or even his shadow, Mika walked back on himself slowly and tried not to think that he was probably waiting on the gantry for him. The half used gun in his jeans forgotten, Mika peered around the corner and saw Johnny leaning on the rail expecting him to come out of an opposite corridor.
Robyn hadn’t seen Mika for a while but could hear the sounds of a prolonged struggle out in the lobby. A long fight without an immediate kill was so much sweeter than a short fight with one – the suffering was so much richer when it had just a hint of hope, the blood all the more irresistible when it was tinged with faith. She was more than happy just wandering up and down the dimly lit corridors, in and out of the open offices. In and out of the closed ones too. There was nobody left in the building so Robyn didn’t have to worry about answering all of those pesky questions – not that stopped her from making up her own conversations. It seemed strange to her that no-one else in either of the buildings had been killed.
As she puzzled over this, Robyn sat down in an old and tattered computer chair and curled her legs beneath her, ready to move at a moments notice. Before her was a bank of monitors and switches that she reasoned were used by daytime security. They each showed a shot of an empty corridor but Robyn’s sharp eyes caught the movement of a very faint shadow. She also thought she could hear the sounds of a fight just out of shot, but couldn’t be sure if it was the surveillance or just very loud noise from the lobby. Sighing and frowning, she reached up and flicked the switch for the camera trained on the entrance hall. Flipping her hair over her shoulder Robyn sat back down, it not even occurring to her that the screens were running while the electrics were down.
“My boys. My foolish boys.” She spoke quietly even though there was no reason for her to do so. Mika ran ahead of Johnny and used his momentum to propel himself up the wall to land behind Johnny and Robyn clapped her hands in delight at how the tables had turned. “You don’t need to fight. We’re all on the same side.” Playing with her pendant in one hand and one of her thin plaits in the other, Robyn settled back to watch the show.
Mika twisted Johnny’s arm up behind his back and pushed him up against the wall roughly. “I’m getting tired of this.” He pushed the arm further up when Jihnny didn’t answer and he let out a scream, half muffled by the concrete wall his face was partly buried in. “I really am.”
“Getting tired of what?” Johnny panted.
“This game.” Mika whirled him round and gave chase as the guard ran down the grating. Mika hopped over the rail and landed soundlessly on the ground as Johnny sped down the loud metal stairs. “Of cat and mouse.” He punctuated each word with a solid kick or punch, finishing the sentence with a high fly-kick to the face, connecting with bone but not flooring him as Mika had hoped.
Robyn watched the grainy monitor in twisted joy as Johnny staggered back a few paces and felt his jaw, which he was pretty sure Mika had broken. She noticed, for the first time, that the action was relayed to the monitor in unclear black and white. It didn’t matter though – Robyn could well imagine the colours in the lobby; reds, blacks, purples. Leaning closer to the screen, she saw the two men fall into a stand-off, neither willing to make the first move but making some small talk. It was too quiet for Robyn to hear exactly what words were passing between them, so she got up from her seat and walked out of the door.
She sat on the metal grating and swung her legs to and fro as she looked down at the scene in the foyer. Mika had dropped into a fighting stance, just in case Johnny tried to rush him, and stared at him. Johnny was standing a few metres away, his gun raised. Watching as Johnny seemed to go for the trigger in slow motion, Mika turned on his heel and ran for the stairs where, instead of running to the top, he stopped just before he reached halfway, gripped the nearest vertical pole and swung his legs out and bashed them into Johnny’s already swollen and bruised body. The impact of the blow threw him across half the room and he managed to land on his knees.
Robyn clapped, still sitting on the grating, and giggled. “Look out!” she warned.
Mika looked over his shoulder and saw Johnny shakily getting to his feet. “Robyn, get out of here.”
“I want to watch the play.”
“I’m serious! This is going to be dangerous.”
“Mmm, I know.”
“Robyn! Get out of here!”
Johnny watched them under a bowed head as he struggled to his feet, and put one hand on a cool, concrete pillar as he tried to steady himself. He saw the girl in the purple coat stand up and disappear from his line of vision. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Yeah? Maybe not, but it was fun.” Before Mika had made sure that Robyn was well out of the way, he heard two shots being fired and began to turn to look. He hadn’t thought that Johnny would have the guts or chance to use the gun, but obviously he had been wrong. Maybe Johnny was only shooting because he was being controlled by the thing that was driving everyone else to extremes; maybe he was being very protective of the Crash Room disks because he knew what was on them; maybe Johnny was just a psycho.
Mika didn’t even have enough time to look for the bullets in the air before they buried themselves in his back – one just under his left shoulder, and the second in the centre of his back, an inch left of his spine. At first, it burnt as the bullets ripped through his skin and flesh to find their final resting place. The burning quickly dull to an ache as the bullets nestled into his back and sent shockwaves through his body. The dull burning spread through the whole of his back and he was in an unbelievable amount of pain. Mika shot a look of pure confusion and disbelief over his shoulder, then collapsed onto the steps in front of him, eyes closed tightly.
On unsteady legs, Johnny hurried over to him and looked down at Mika. Hooking the toe of one boot under him, he jerked his foot and sent Mika rolling to the floor. Just to make sure that Mika was dead, Johnny fired his weapon once more at his chest. Johnny was a little surprised that there wasn’t more blood but could see more on his t-shirt and beginning to come from his back wounds. Johnny looked down at the gun and stroked it, wondering how something so small could cause such devastation. The metal was cold to the touch – somehow, he had expected it to still be warm after being fired. The third shot had made its’ home deep in Mika’s chest.
After hearing the first two shots, Robyn backtracked a few steps and pressed herself tightly into a tiny alcove. She craned her neck until she could just about see the two men in the large, open lobby. She could smell gunpowder in the air and knew, even without looking closely, that Mika had been shot. She glanced behind her in the direction of the room with the banks of monitors and half-wished she could go back and watch in safety. But, no – she wouldn’t leave him while he needed her.
Mika rolled down the metal stairs and landed flat out on his back. Robyn hated to see Mik
a hurt so badly because she thought of him as invincible – he was her champion. She bit back tears as she watched the conclusion of the fight. Crying was an unusual action to her; an alien concept. “Please be okay, Mika,” she whispered, looking down at his lifeless body. She saw Johnny raise the gun once more and flinched, knowing exactly where the bullet would end up and hating the fact that she wouldn’t get there in time to stop it. So, instead, she stayed pressed into the corner and watched, praying that she wouldn’t be seen. She stared at the gun, transfixed, and squinted at Johnny’s hand as his finger squeezed the trigger, so slowly. A tiny bullet pushed its’ way out of the barrel and waded through air, thick with emotion. It seemed, to Robyn, to be happening very slowly as her enhanced senses picked up every tiny movement. The bullet hit Mika’s chest and Robyn wrinkled her nose at the stench of his sizzling flesh. She had to turn her her head away from this sight that she’d normally watch as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, but what made it unbearable was that it was somebody she loved so much; someone she would spend eternity with. The small, metal pellet sank into his chest and red blood immediately started pouring from the wound. Blood loss wasn’t a huge problem as the wound would start to close up and heal quite soon, but she couldn’t understand how something so miniscule and otherwise harmless as that bullet could cause so much damage. “Don’t do this to me,” she shuddered, wanting badly to cry over him.
Silently, she moved over to the rail and stood on top of it. Sinking into a half-crouch, Robyn took off and descended on top of Johnny as gracefully and fluidly as the bird of the same name. “What have you done to my Mika?!” she shrieked, hate and anger clouding the soft brown eyes, giving them a menacing and threatening look. She twisted around in the air and fell on her knees, inches in front of Johnny. “You shot him,” she muttered, flipping to her feet and looking him in the eye.
“So I have. Would you look at that?”
“Bad move.”
“Why? What are you going to do about it?” Johnny rose to his full height but Robyn simply stood on her tiptoes to match him at stared him straight in the eye. Johnny swallowed a knot of nerves that had formed in his throat and stared straight back at her, acknowledging the tension that had grown in the room. He felt the gun in his sweaty palm and stuck the end against her stomach, pressing it against her.
Robyn stretched her hand and closed it around the barrel of the gun. “Bad move,” she repeated, holding his gaze. If she looked away, even for a milli-second, Johnny would also look away and might not meet her gaze again if he realised that she had him locked in a stare-out on purpose, but luckily Robyn had had a lot of practice at… multi-tasking. Her hand firmly around the barrel, she shoved and Johnny went sprawling to his backside. She turned her back on a momentarily incapacitated Johnny and turned to Mika, tears now spilling over and onto the floor. “Mika, don’t leave me,” she pleaded, noticing that he was bleeding much more than was normal. Maybe that was part of the plan – to take everyone to the extreme of their physical and mental capabilities. “There’s so much more we need to do. So many people to hurt. We can do it together. Mika, why did you have to get shot?” She didn’t understand it. Mika had never let himself get hurt before tonight, so why was he being so..? It was hard to put into words but Robyn, in her glorious borderline insanity, knew what she meant. Was this also part of the plan – to make people feel things they were never meant to? Robyn smoothed Mika’s hair down, then immediately rustled it back up. It looked better like that.
“I killed your boyfriend, now I’m gonna kill you,” a voice said behind her. “No mercy.”
The gun was pointed right at the back of her skull and, if fired, would most certainly blow her brains out. “Mika, don’t let him hurt me.” But he lay, unmoving, spread-eagled on the floor. Why did she love him so damn much? “Try it,” she uttered, so low that Johnny didn’t really hear it. At that same moment, Robyn leapt into a flying spin-kick, knocking the gun clean out of his hand and skidding across the floor. Johnny retaliated by grabbing her by the arm and twisting until she was caught in a very painful strong-hold with both arms pushed up against her back. “Ooh, that hurts!” she gasped and giggled silently.
“What’s so funny?” Johnny demanded, holding her arms tightly. He turned her around to face him and received a vicious headbutt for his trouble. For a split second, Johnny loosed his grip and Robyn wriggled away.
“’Cos you’ve lost your weapon. Whereas me… I am a weapon.”
She ran around the room and eventually took a flying leap from where she was standing and flung her arms out to catch the section of metal railing there. Her feet dangled down and she pushed against the air in her attempt to climb up, and Johnny jumped up, hoping to catch hold of one ankle and pull her down. But that was never going to work and they both knew it, so as Robyn found her feet and ran around to the other side of the grating to get some distance Johnny realised the futility of what he was doing and made a dash towards the stairs. Robyn looked down at a still bleeding Mika and then up at Johnny who had just started his run to her.
Johnny reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket as he reached the same gantry as Robyn and stared at her delicate red head. How could he even contemplate hurting this innocent, young girl? Like this. Johnny aimed his own, bigger, handgun at her and planted his feet. “Turn around.”
The pain was excruciating, yet bearable. A weird mix of feelings but bleeding and near-fatally wounded Mika had no time to worry about what he was feeling. The bullet embedded in his chest felt as if he had just drunk acid or holy water; like he was being burnt from the inside out. Sleeping the sleep of the undead brought on by a wound – or three – that would have killed any ordinary man, he began to dream things that made no sense. Dreams that broke every rule he had ever known and understood.
He dreamed that he could walk in the sun. Something he hadn’t been able to do since he was 26 years old, several lifetimes ago. Only being able to go outside in the darkness, where he would be hidden from view, had never really bothered him before as he would not be persecuted if no-one knew what he was. But now he wanted to know what it felt like to walk out in the day. Just to let everyone know who he was and not have to hide all the time.
He dreamed that he could enter a church and not feel like he was about to explode. Religion had never been part of his upbringing, even as a child, but now he longed to be able to just explore it. Mika’s mere existence rejected all laws of God and nature. In the eyes of any religion, he was a lost cause; too soulless and hungry for the kill to ever be returned to humanity. If he could just touch a cross without it searing into his flesh and hold a Bible without burning his hands.
He dreamed he could step inside someone’s home without having to be explicitly invited. He dreamed that he could wear his true face in public and not have people running away, screaming in fear. Mika dreamed many things whilst unconscious but still maintained enough presence of mind to realise one thing – not once did he wish that he was still human.
Now drifting in and out of consciousness brought on by some unidentified mental trigger, Mika grunted softly and threw a heavy arm over his painful chest. The shots in his back seemed to shift as he moved and he gritted his teeth against the pain. Something in the air still agitated him and he completely forgot about the pain All the while he was on the floor, he was unable to shake one feeling. “Something isn’t right here…”
Robyn, wide-eyed and, for the first time, a little scared, turned to face the gun-crazed security guard, horrified at what she saw. Not the fact that she was staring down the barrel of a powerful automatic handgun but the lack of anything other than the thrill of the fight in his eyes. Under more normal circumstances, she would have put him down as an adrenaline junkie. Not tonight. Because tonight she could hear the stars crying. Calling out desperately for her help.
“Look at me.” Robyn looked at him, calmly, and
refused to show him any of the fear he was hoping for. This was more like it – how Johnny had hoped this gun would work for him. It was giving him the power he so craved tonight. Making people do exactly what he told them to do because they knew that their life could be decided in that instant in which he pulled that trigger.
“I can hear them all,” moaned Robyn, the pull of the stars too strong for her to resist this time. “They’re shouting and screaming because they’re dying. And you’re helping them to die.”
“Shut up!” Johnny ordered, not knowing that it was nigh on impossible for anybody but Mika to stop Robyn in mid-flow.
“They don’t know what’s going on, or why you’re hurting them. Soon, there’ll be nothing left. They need our help. Why won’t you help them?” Robyn looked at him coolly, all anger gone from her eyes and replaced with confusion and a longing to know why. “You’re killing them.”