"Where is he?"
"We don't know, Pearl. Calm down." Garnet tries to reason to her while sitting on the couch but fails.
"But it's been three days! He couldn't have flown off that far to be gone this long." Pearl voices her concern at the still missing teen while standing next to the window, waiting for the person in question to show up.
It's been three days since Pearl and Stevens's impromptu space voyage that Marcus hitched a ride with them. After he was blown off course and sent out of viewing range of anyone, Steven and Pearl went ahead and left towards home so they could get some rest and reassure Greg of their near explosive encounter with the ship. Needless to say he was very angry at their actions but was also very happy to see his son safe and sound. The next day they were expecting Marcus to walk in he and Pearl could finally clear the air around them, but that wasn't the case. The second day, worry started to be on everyone's mind but soon chalked it up to the fact that he must have been pushed far off and of course had to walk the whole way home. The third day though, that's when worry really started to set in for some.
"You don't think he left us, did he?" she asks them. Thoughts start to go through her mind at her actions against the teen, some she was not proud of and wasn't in the right mind set to properly talk to him. Now she's worried that maybe her actions made him want to leave.
"Nah, I doubt that." Amethyst pipes up from her sitting on the kitchen counter.
"What makes you think that?" Steven asks from his bed.
"Well, for one his stuffs still here." She waves to the pile of weapon cases near the warp pad. "His rides are here and he doesn't seem like the type to just up and leave like that."
"Maybe…" Pearl thinks. He's been working too hard since he came around to just up and leave. He's had plenty of reasons to leave, both because of physical and emotional pains, but that doesn't explain his disappearance now. "But he's still-"
"Pearl." She looks to Garnet. "Give him time. He's always been the resourceful type." Garnet says with a smile. She then crosses her arms behind her head and crosses her legs.
"Yeah, relax P." Amethyst adds and lays back on the counter with her legs hanging off. "I'm sure he'll come back before you know it."
Pearl looks at all her friends as they all relax, even Steven has gone back to playing one of his games. She lets out a sigh before looking back out the window. 'Where are you?'
"Ughhhhhh…" I groan as my sense start to come back. I feel incredibly tired and weary but my senses are starting to come around. I feel my movements are somewhat restricted but only to my hands. The room I'm in is a somewhat small stone-walled room with the only thing in it is a rectangular green wooden table, a steel door with a small hole covered by bars, a single hanging light bulb above me, and me handcuffed behind my back to a simple folding chair. To my left, and to my surprise, an IV is next to me feeding into a vein in my arm. "The hell?" I question at my predicament. 'What the hell is going on? Last thing I remember was… Oh god. Who are-'
*Creak*
I fall limp and pretend to be asleep.
"Ahh good. You haven't woken up yet."A guy says as he walks in and closes the door behind him. "I'm… fifteen minutes late but looks like that didn't matter." I hear his footsteps walk closer to me before I feel a slight tug on the IV. "Chances are your just barely hearing me but you most likely won't remember this."
*TInk*Tink*
I hear very thin metallic pats long metal. "Now let me just give you your daily dose and you can go back to dream land."
Not wanting to go back to dream land, I shoot my eyes open and kick the guys leg out from behind his knee, causing him to fall to it. "Argh! What-?! Ugh!" Not giving him a chance to cry out, I bring both my legs up and close them over his neck in a scissor-like fashion. He drops the syringe he was holding and tries to pry my legs off him but I close them harder, cutting off his air supply and pulling me off the chair. I grunt as I keep my legs on him as I struggle with the handcuffs on me. The guy kicks and moves all over, trying desperately to pry me off but wrapping my feet around each other just closes my legs on him harder. I feel his fingernails trying to tear through my pants but he fails as his movements get less and less forceful. His struggles get weaker until I finally feel him fall limp. To make sure he's not playing dead, I jerk my legs roughly to make him fight back.
He doesn't. With him unconscious, I let him go and take stock of him. He doesn't seem like no one important but he's got a lab coat, glasses and I take note of the syringe he had with him. I also notice the IV pulled out of me in the struggle so I tiny rivulet of blood is going down my arm. "Shit." I curse quietly and pull my arms out from under legs to the front. "C'mon. C'mon. C'mon." I say as I rummage through the guys pockets for a key to the cuffs. After a few moments of looking, I find nothing. "Fuck!" I yell quietly and sit down roughly. Looking at the situation I am in, I let out a deep sigh and rub my face. Now that I think about it, my entire body feels a little stiff and my arms are sore as hell. 'Where the hell am I?' I question in my head. 'The guy also said daily… how long have I been here?' I take a few moments to compose myself at the idea of just what happened after I got knocked unconscious. "I need to get out of here." I state and look around for anything I can use. My eyes land on the syringe and I smile. "Perfect." I grab it and look at the item. "Well, not perfect but you'll do." I place back down on the ground before stepping on it hard.
The syringe easily breaks and to my joy, the needle breaks off. Using the piece, I take it in my hands and proceed to try to pick the cuffs free. After a couple of failed attempts, one of them is open. "Yes!" I quietly yell and get to work on the other one. With my new free hand, picking the last cuff of me is child's play. "Great." I stand and rub my wrists. "Now I just need-"
"Hey Joe. What's taking so-" Someone else walks in but I quietly cut him off by placing one hand on his mouth and pulling him in with the other, and slamming him against the stone wall next to the door. "Mm!" The guy grunts after the first hit but I slam his head more firmly against the wall, knocking him unconscious.
I let him fall to the ground limply before I quickly peek out into the hallway to make sure no one else saw. Satisfied, I move back in and start searching the new guys person. The guy is wearing a jacket that looks very famili- "Hey!" I quietly yelp as I notice it's my jacket. "You son of-" I don't even bother to finish my sentence as I take my jacket off the douche. Once it's fully off and on me, I smile. "There you are." I look down at the guy… and kick him right in the jewels. "Dick… although yours my hurt in the morning." I give a cheeky grin as the guy continues to remain unconscious. I look down inside my jacket to find the holsters are still there but my guns are missing. "Damn." I curse and take a moment to compose myself. I make one of my swords appear and use it to cut off some straps off the lab guys coat and use them to make a makeshift bandage for the hole. After a few moments, I start searching. I find some miscellaneous things, like loose change and a wallet with three hundred dollars in it, 'Thank you.' But as I check his waist, I find a holster with a pistol in it. Taking out the holster and strapping it to me, as well as fishing out a couple magazines from him, I take out the pistol, making sure it's fully loaded and the safeties off, and examine the piece. It's an FN Five-seveN with a 20-round magazine and a laser attachment to the underbarrel. This gun uses a unique cartridge called 5.7 by 28mm, most notably used by Five-seven series weapons and P90's. "What the hell are you doing with this?" I ask the unconscious guy. Obviously he doesn't respond but I pay him no mind as I drag him and his friend to the far end of the room and handcuff them to each other. With my enemies alive but unconscious, I move over to the door and prepare to make my escape. Locking the door behind me, I make my way down the hall quietly with my new pistol leveled in front of me.
'I have to be careful. If I or anyone else discharge our weapons without a silencer, these narrow halls will carry the sounds far off into the building, alerting everyone. Until I get some info as to where I am and who I am dealing with, I should resort to non-lethal takedowns until I know for sure.' I quietly continue my way down the halls, making my footsteps as quiet as possible and steadying my breath so I can listen for any footsteps around me.
Minutes pass to close to an hour as I continue to make my way around this complex. The halls all look vaguely the same so it's a bit difficult to accurately gauge where I am going. I encounter some people here and there but I manage to hide in side rooms to avoid being spotted. As much as I want to knock guys out so I don't have to deal with them later on, I can't have the higher-ups of this place or whatever get wise to the fact that their men suddenly start disappearing. Most of the guys don't wear a collective uniform, they wear casual clothes that an average person would wear. However the weapons they carry around definitely vary, from some carrying only pistols like my Beretta's, to carrying around AK's and Carbines with some powerful attachments to them. I have no idea who these guys are. They seem armed up like a militia group, PMC's (Private Military Contractors), or anything involving a military group in general, but the way how they carry themselves, and the lack of discipline they have, kinda throws those options out of the window.
"Who are these guys?" I quietly mutter to myself as I look to the back of some guys walking away. I continue down the direction they came from and go around a corner. "Shit!" I quietly yell and roll forward, just as a camera oscillates to my direction. I look up while directly under the camera to still see it moving to my previous direction. I quickly look down the hallway to see how far it is to either another door or a hallway turn. As the camera stops to aim down the hallway, I ready myself to run. "Alright, let's go." The camera starts to turn and as soon as I know its field of view is no longer pointed down the hallway, I take off. I try to limit my footsteps sounds as much as I can but my main concern is getting out of the potential view of that damn camera, and hopefully there is no other camera down the hall I turn to. I slow down and quiet my footsteps considerably as I come to the corner and easily slide to the side and out of the previous hallway. After making sure no one else is in the hallway with me, I let out a breath of air I was holding. "Phew. Man that was close." Something that was most interesting to me was the fact that my shadow speed ability didn't kick in. 'Then again, the only times I've ever actually used it was during times of when I was fighting for a situation called on me to help out my friends in any way. I'm alone and the camera wasn't necessarily a danger, just a small hindrance to me and not life-threatening.' My head perks up as I hear mutterings and footsteps behind me. 'Fuck! The guys from before!' Looking down the hall, I spot a steel door a few feet from me. With quiet smoothness, I move to the door, open it, and silently close it as the talking gets louder. I crouch against the wall in the dark room and hold my breath.
A few moments pass as the guys walk past the door and I barely hear them through the door. When they fully go past, I breathe out and search for a light switch. "C'mon, c'mon. Where are you? Ah! There you are." I say in triumph as I flick the light on. "Alright, now where should… I…" My thoughts trail off as I turn around and look on in amazement at the room I am in. For one thing, all the other doors, besides my cell, were wood; this one is steel and has multiple locks on it from the inside… and I know why.
I just walked into an armory.
The place is relatively small, like the average size you'd see in a video games armory, but it is packed on all sides of the walls and tables with a plethora of weapons and even in a corner, is a steel fence cage with more weapons in it. "Holy shit." I say in awe as I examine the weapons around me.
One of the walls is lined entirely with pistols, revolvers and one-handed weapons. I'm seeing multiple Beretta's of different make and models, some M1911's, scorpion submachine guns, Glocks from 17's to 20's, a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 Mod 0 pistol, MP9's, Mac 11's, Desert Eagle .50's, Colt Python revolvers and even an Anaconda, some small round snub pistols of the .38 caliber, .44 caliber magnums, Smith & Wesson revolvers, MP5K's, H&K MP7A1, Mini Uzi's and even a sawed off double barrel like mine.
That's just one section, another two is the assault, shotgun or rifle variety of weapons. AK47's, AK74u submachine gun, M4A1's, M16's, Galil assault rifles, IMI Tavor MTAR-21, SCAR variety, UMP45, Aug Bars, Remington shotguns, UTAS UTS-15 shogtun, AA12, M249 saw, M60, Dragonov SVD sniper rifles, and a Striker shotgun.
The cage however has some of their most devastating gear, such as explosives and some body armor. RPG-7's, LAW rocket launchers, M67 Frag grenades as well as other frags such as some pineapples, flashbangs, smoke grenades, several cases of ammo, and some grenade launchers, even attachments for the large two handed weapons.
The last wall of the room has an array of weapon attachments, from lasers, flashlights, extended magazines to sights. My eyes however land on the small items set in the middle of the table, more specifically, my pistols and my phone. I grab my phone and to my dismay, the batteries dead. 'Shit. How long was I out?'
While all these are really good and beautiful to look at, it makes me that much more worried as to who I pissed off that has access to the men and firepower of this caliber. As much as I want to admire and take every single one of these weapons, I don't want to be bogged down with the extra equipment. I do however decide to grab some pistols to help me out. I holster the FN, take off the holster, and strap it to my ankle before picking out my new pistols. While this is as good a chance as, I decide to upgrade from my old Beretta's to something a little differently. This time I grab some Beretta 92FS's but with a stainless steel frame to them. I slip those into my inner holsters before grabbing another holster and grabbing my last gun: A FNX-45 Tactical. With a .45 ACP ammo usage and with an ease ability to put on attachments, it'll do. I grab a black colored one, load it, attach a flashlight to it, silencer and set the sights. "Nice."
*Creak*
*Thu*Thu*Thu*
With quick reflexes, I turn around as the door to the room behind me opens and I place three rounds at the person, two to the chest, and one to the head. I dash forward as the body begins to tumble forward and I catch it before it hits the ground. Pulling it in, I look down both hallways to find no one. Reeling back in, I quietly close the door and look back to the body lying face down in a slowly growing pool of blood. 'Damn… its been awhile since I took a life like that.' With a heavy sigh, I turn the guys head and close his wide and surprised eyes. Taking a moment for the dead, I go through his pockets for anything I might need. 'Still don't know who these guys are… but if they have this kind of firepower, they must not be for anything good, that's for sure.' I pull out something from his back pocket to find a Smartphone similar to mine. Guy didn't even have a passcode for it so I didn't even need to hack to get in. I don't find anything incriminating or anything I can use to find out who this guy works for exactly, but I do find a map of this place. "Perfect. Alright… let's see where I am… okay… now where to-… Oh god." I say in surprise at the sheer massiveness of the structure. It's very big and very large with the amount of rooms and hallways it has but I don't know exactly how big because the map doesn't have scale to it. Some of the rooms are even labeled barracks or sleeping quarters, smoking areas, break rooms, offices, a garage, but to my biggest surprise, this isn't the only armory.
Whoever they are, they have multiple of these small time armories scattered throughout the whole complex. If each one are as stocked up as this one, 'Fuck…' I look at the body, "Who are you guys?" I say outloud but I know I don't expect an answer. I go back to the map and look for the closest exit I can find. To my elation, I'm only a few corridors away from the garage so maybe I can steal a car and get the hell out of here fast, maybe destroy some so they don't have the chance to come after me. With my destination in hand, I hold the guys phone in one hand and my FNX Tactical in the other hand, using a Harries flashlight grip technique so I can look at both the map and keep my gun downrange without looking away. I peek out the door and start my way down the hallway towards the garage.
It takes a few minutes and a couple close calls but I find the door to the garage. With very careful movement, I crack open the door and peek through to find the entire place lit up but with no one around. I check my corners inside quickly before I close the door behind me and lock it. Taking a moment to compose myself, I look at the very spacious garage area. It has three double wide garage doors and plenty of tools all around to be used to work on vehicles and such. From what I can guess, this place was probably some type of warehouse before these guys took it over. There are around ten cars here from standard various modeled cars to trucks and even a couple motorcycles, as well as some trailers that could be hitched up to a car or truck. My pistol away, I materialize my sword and get to work at cutting tires left and right. They all cut easily from my sword but I do it carefully so the tires don't explode and make a loud blowout when punctured. I stop at a large truck at the end of the line next to a semi trailer.
I am about to get in the truck when the door to the semi trailer opens up. "Okay. Delivery checks out and is ready to go. Now I just need to- Hey! Argh!" A guy comes out of the trailer with a clipboard and spots me but before he can warn anyone, I throw my sword at him, making it embed itself directly into the guy's chest. He chokes for a second before I take out my pistol and place a few silenced shots into him, making sure he is dead and doesn't scream out. As he falls to the ground with a thud, I go over to him and take out my sword.
"Phew, that was close." I say to myself. I can't help but glance inside the trailer and have my eyes widen at the scene. Very many weapons are placed inside the trailer, along with some other heavy duty pieces of equipment, and what looks like a car under a tarp. I de-materialize my sword before picking up the clipboard and reading the contents of the trailer. "… What the hell?... And this is a delivery!" I say in surprise. "Who are these-?!"
*Tap*
I turn around to the sound of a footstep but I'm not fast enough as a large object comes straight at my face. "Ugh!" I blanch out as the hit feels like a brick against me and sends me stumbling to the ground while letting go of the phone at the same time. My head feels heavy from the hit and stars start dancing across my vision. As I open my eyes, my vision is a little blurry as the floor takes up the majority of vision but also the phone and the rest of the cars in the garage.
*Crack*
A large boot slams onto the phone, breaking the screen entirely and cracking it in half. I weakly turn upwards and see a large figure standing over me. My mild concussion prevents me from discerning any facial features from the guy but I don't get to make anymore assumptions as another guy comes up and hits me with the butt of his rifle, knocking me out.
"God damnit."One of the guys curses at the situation. He looks towards the body of one of their guys as someone else examines him. "Is he…?"
"He is." The guy proclaims the man dead who was ambushed by their prisoner.
"Shit." He looks down at the unconscious kid and uses all his might to keep from completely tearing him apart for killing a few of his guys… but the boss wants him alive so he has to comply. "You two." He points to the guy who checked the dead body and to the guy who knocked him out with his rifle. "Get him in the van. We can't keep him here any longer. Bind him tightly and get some chloroform to knock him out." The two nod before one goes to grab the kid before taking him to the van outside, and the other goes to grab the items to keep the kid restrained. He looks down the dead body before letting out a sigh. "I go and kidnap the kid for my boss… and for what?" He looks to the unconscious kid before he's dragged outside. "How did you piss him off so much?" He says to himself before heading out to the van.
The van leaves the large warehouse building on the edge of town soon after and proceeds out of the city, the same van that originally kidnapped Marcus and the same people, the criminals setting forth out of the city to head out of state towards their boss's complex.
Half an hour passes as the van drives smoothly along the interstate in the dead of night as it rains.
"Hey!"
A loud voice is heard as the van suddenly swerves to the left side of the road, flipping over just before it leaves the road and rolling over again and again as it crashes through the forest area, hitting multiple trees, tires tearing off and doors flinging open or tearing off as multiple bodies fly out.
The van eventually stops rolling but not before it rolls on top of someone's arm, the guy screaming out as the fuel tank is punctured and proceeds to leak gas all over the place, the wet ground allowing the gasoline to pour out much farther.
Thunder strikes across the entire night sky, illuminating the entire carnage in a momentary flash of white light.
Well, seems like things are not looking to good for Marcus now does it. Having gotten drugged to remain unconscious for a few days, stealthing his way through an unknown enemy complex, getting knocked out and now getting involved in a car wreck?
Man he has all the luck.
Anyway, my stint with Mafia 3 is over and my tests are finished. The game was awesome and I failed a test. Yeah it sucks but take heart in knowing that it was absolutely not because of me writing or playing my game. The teacher only told us to read the entirety of two chapters for the test and that's something I'm not very good with. Thankfully she said she was going to add some study guides to help for future tests and added additional assignments because apparently I wasn't the only one getting a little low in grades for her class. Usually I'm not too privy to extra work but I think I can manage if it means I don't have to focus entirely on tests. I've also taken to playing some XCOM 2 off and on again but the majority of my attention can now be set back to this story, however I also modded the game so I need to find a proper sniper for me to give him or her the Widow from Mass Effect. Hopefully with the temporary less time I spent on this story goes away and allows me to really ramp up my chapter production again. You may have spotted some errors here and there and I was honestly surprised at how much I noticed and had to correct when I was writing. Hopefully I get out of this funk soon so I can deliver quality work to you guys and stuff that won't make me cringe or lie awake at night. Maybe expect the next chapter roughly the same length as this one but who knows. I always come up with new things all the time.
Thank you for your patience with me and have fun reading.