CHAPTER 1: Wake up, Pixel...
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Building Terrain
"Yeah?"
"Is everything in place?"
"You weren't supposed to relieve me."
"I know, but I felt like taking a shift."
"You like him, don't you? You like watching him?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"We're gonna kill him. You understand?"
"Cerberus believes he is the One."
"Do you?"
"It doesn't matter what I believe."
"You don't, do you?"
"Did you hear that?
"Hear what?"
"Are you sure this line is clean?"
"Yeah, of course I'm sure."
"I better go."
The police officer gave the signal to his other partners as they stalked into the dark and dusty hallway, guns held tightly in each of their hands. They congregated in front of a door in the hallway marked with the number "303". A police officer forcefully kicked down the door and rushed recklessly into the room. A woman sat alone at a table.
"Freeze! Police! Hands on your head!" the policemen shouted one after the other. The woman continued to defiantly sit in her chair. "Do it! Do it now!" one of the policemen warned. The woman slowly raised her hands into the air in front of her.
Outside the building, a myriad of cop cars rested with lights flashing and various police roaming around like bees to a hive. The lieutenant stood outside the door of one of the cars as a jet black vehicle pulled up ominously. Three figures in suits stepped out of the vehicle.
"Oh, shit," the lieutenant said begrudgingly.
"Lieutenant," the leading man from the car said in monotone, "you were given specific orders."
"Hey, man, I'm just doing my job," the lieutenant replied, "You give me that 'juris-my-dick-tion' crap; you can cram it right up your ass."
"I'm afraid you misunderstand me, Lieutenant. The orders were for your protection," the suited man said nonchalantly.
The lieutenant gave a hearty chuckle. "Protection? I think we can handle one little girl," the lieutenant said confidently. At that, the three men began to walk away. "I sent two units!" he called after them, "They're bringing her down now!"
"No lieutenant," the suited man said as his cohorts walked in front of him, "your men are already dead."
The woman stood with her hands behind her head. The policeman slowly walked into room 303 as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
As the policeman reached out to put the handcuffs on the woman's bare wrists, she immediately turned around and grabbed his hand and threw it back into his face with accelerated force. She then forcibly shoved her open palm into the man's face, making his nose bleed instantaneously. As the pathetic police officer cried out in pain, time seemed to slow down for an instant as the woman leapt into the air with her feet drawn upwards and kicked the police officer right in the face, instantly knocking him to the ground along with two other policemen that were standing behind him. No sooner had he hit the ground did the woman then kick her chair into the eyes of another policeman, rendering him unconscious. One officer, scared for his life, began shooting his pistol at the woman. The woman's reflexes were keen, however, as she began to defy gravity and run up the adjacent wall in order to dodge each shot fired by the policeman. As she landed on the ground, she instantly pounced at the officer who was shooting at her and punched him in the chest, and then grabbed his hand and began shooting the policeman's gun at another nearby. As that officer fell, it only took one more blow to the face for the final officer to fall to the ground in defeat. The woman stood defiantly in the room, arms raised as if expecting more. "Shit," she stated matter-of-factly as she heard the footsteps of more officers entering the building. She pulled out a cell phone, but didn't bother to dial a number. She began to speak.
"Cerberus, the line was traced. I don't know how-"
"I know," a man with a deep voice said calmly, "They cut the hard line. There's an outlet in the forest nearby."
"Are there any mobs?"
"Yes."
"Goddamn it."
"You can make it, Millennia. Go."
With that, Millennia began to run out of the room, but was instantly met by one of the suited men along with the dozens of police officers that had been waiting outside. She began to run in the opposite direction as the men followed in hot pursuit. She burst through the door which led to a stairwell outside, and saw another one of the suited men on the ground below. Millennia began to run up the stairs onto the roof of the building, the men still chasing after her. She began leaping from building to building in the city biome as the foolhardy policemen dropped like flies due to their lack of proficiency with leaping over gaps between buildings. The suited man, however, still continued after Millennia, and began to shoot at her as she ducked behind a nearby chimney. This was the last building before the cross into the forest biome, where her exit was supposedly waiting for her. An enormous gap between the last building and the first tall tree was all that stood in her way. She pushed off of the ground with immense force and flew gracefully through the air, landing safely on the branch on the other side. The suited man continued to follow, making the same seemingly insurmountable jump as two other policemen followed behind, out of breath.
"That's…impossible," one policeman said in awe.
Millennia ducked behind a nearby branch as the suited man landed on his feet, gun drawn. She noticed a massive tree with a hole in the shrubbery of the leaves. As she looked behind her one last time to see the suited man cocking his gun, she made another amazing leap for the hole, and landed on her back in the branches as she turned herself around and pulled out two pistols, anticipant of the man in the suit following after her. She stayed for the longest minute she had ever experienced.
"Get up Millennia, just get up," she softly said to herself. She picked herself up and climbed back down the tree and began to run through the forest. She eventually happened upon a small box with what looked like a computer in it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large truck appeared on the scene of the small box which housed the small PC. An ear shattering horn sounded from the large truck as it bulldozed over the trees towards the small box. Millennia began to run towards the box as fast as she could, and as she opened the door, she quickly pressed a button on the computer and looked towards the truck. The truck slammed into the box with full force, instantly demolishing it.
The three suited men stepped out of the truck slowly, examining their wake of destruction.
"She got away," the first one said.
"It doesn't matter," the second one said, "The informant is real." A small glitch showed a hint of bright green in the body of the second suited man.
"We have the name of their next target," the third suited man said, "A player named Pixel."
The second man stepped backwards towards the truck. "We'll need to begin a search."
"It has already begun," the third said as he stepped towards the truck.
"Wake up Pixel."
…
"The Minecraft has you."
A soft music filled the room. CD-ROM's lined every open space, each in various cases explaining what they were. A young man lay in a bed with a bright red comforter, just barely lucid. The man looked up at the nearby computer screen and saw the strange words.
"What the hell?" he asked in bewilderment. He instinctively pressed the macro to remove the text from the screen. The screen, however, defiantly began to display more words. The man rubbed his eyes again and slowly read the words as they appeared.
"Follow the white chicken," the man said with mounted confusion and bewilderment. Again, instinctively, he began pressing the "escape" key on his keyboard while the screen began to display more words.
"Knock Knock, Pixel."
*BOOM BOOM BOOM*
The man that the screen called "Pixel" suddenly jumped out of his seat from the sound of the hard fists against his door. He looked around the room, and then slowly looked at the screen.
Blank.
"Who is it?" Pixel shouted to the door.
"It's Choi," a man called back in response. Pixel stood up from his bed next to his computer. He had a very slim physique with few discernible features: chestnut hair, brown eyes, quivering hands, long slim legs. He wore a black t-shirt and dark jeans which fell to the floor as he stood up to answer the door.
Room 101 clicked open to reveal a small posse gathered on the other side. The two most prevalent were the ruggedly handsome man with the leather jacket and the woman in the scantily clad dress and very large necklace hanging off of his shoulder. The man looked begrudgingly at Pixel, who had just barely revealed himself through the cracked open door.
"You're two hours late," Pixel said matter-of-factly.
"I know. It's her fault," the man said as he gestured to the woman. The woman's expression remained unfazed.
"You got the money?"
The man reached into his jacket and pulled out a wad of bills. "Two grand," he said, handing it to Pixel.
Pixel instantly shut the door and went to his nearby book case. He pulled out a book entitled, "Teaching of the inner mechanisms of Notch". He opened up the book about halfway open to reveal the secret compartment which lay inside the pages. The book contained several disks with various labels. Pixel pulled one out, and left the stack of bills folded in the book as he placed it back on the shelf and returned to the door, again only cracking it open as much as was needed to sustain a transaction. Pixel handed the disk to the man, who instantly breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"Hallelujah," the man said happily, "you're my savior man; my own personal Jeb."
"You get caught using that-" Pixel began to say pointedly before he was cut off.
"I know, I know…this never happened. You don't exist."
Pixel looked at Choi sullenly, and then looked down to his feet. "Something wrong man?" Choi asked with false sincerity.
"No nothing," Pixel began to explain, "My computer has just been…" his sentence drifted away from his lips and faded like a shadow in the sun.
"You look a little whiter than usual."
Pixel looked back to his computer. "Do you ever have the feeling," he asked cryptically, "that you're not sure if you're awake or dreaming?"
"All the time," Choi said as a smirk slithered into his lips, "It sounds to me like you just need to get out of the house, man." Choi looked over to the girl hanging on him. "What do you think, Dujour? Should we bring him with us?"
The woman scanned Pixel up and down as if she hadn't become aware of his presence until that moment, and then broke a wide smile across her face. "Definitely," she breathed from her pink lips, "It'll be fun. I promise." She winked to Pixel and turned to show off more of her bare shoulders. A bright white hen was tattooed over her left shoulder blade. Pixel stared at the chicken on the woman's shoulder almost in confused shock.
"Yeah…sure, I'll go," he said casually.
