Chapter Eleven

"I dunno." Doc said. He sucked on a cigarette and held onto it with a shaking hand. "That wasn't the smartest thing to do."

            "Had to." Felix said, sitting on Doc's cot, looking at the floor. He looked up at him in his recliner. He was invisible again. "Besides, I got her out."

            "I should have set up a video camera. You were doing some strange stuff while you were floating around in her head." Doc said. "You were kickin' and hollerin'…" Doc thrashed around in his chair, imitating Felix. He didn't realize he wasn't being seen. "So how is she anyway?"

            "Better than ever, I think. I cleared up a lot of stuff in her head. Least I hope I did. Certainly was a pain in the ass to deal with." Felix said. "But what I want to know is why you had me help you. I'm sure Nocturne is well suited for a job like that, besides the fact that shamans and hermetic magicians aren't always the most magically compatible."

"Yeah, the path of the Owl is really into that all-knowing and all-seeing angle, but I didn't know how long it was going to take. If the sun would have come up while she was screwing around in Circumstance's brain, no telling what would have gone wrong." Doc explained.

"But she's inside. There's no natural light down here." Felix said.

"Doesn't matter. The Owl shaman is pretty damn in-tune with when the sun and moon rises and falls. She doesn't wear a watch for a reason."

The doorbell rang, followed by the monkey chirping "Who is it?" as it ran for the door. Felix paid no mind until the monkey screamed bloody murder. Obviously it wasn't his brand. Suddenly, a small explosion went off, silencing the monkey. Felix jumped to his feet. Doc instantly became visible again.

            "What in the hell?" Doc exclaimed. Felix dodged through the bookcases and looked down from the loft. A small black crater in the middle of the carpet surrounded by blood and black fur was everyone's focus. Everyone else emerged from their bedrooms or the kitchen and surrounded the area.

            "What happened?" Nocturne asked, kneeling down to observe the area more closely, as did Sparky. Under a large piece of monkey gore, Sparky discovered a small trid disk. It was a brand that won acclaim for it's durability. He wiped it off on his black t-shirt, drawing a streak of monkey blood peppered with bits of fur. He stepped over the couch, turned the trid on and slotted the small disk. The screen displayed PLAY and a counter on a bright blue screen, the flickered to the face of the orc that had been plaguing Felix and Emily. His face was still dressed in bandages. One eye was still obscured.

            "No doubt you know what happened to your pet." The orc said in a low, gnarled voice. "I hired a kid for ten bucks to carry a pack of Colbalt's to your door and drop it off for the monkey. The monkey didn't know it was just enough grenade to spread it around the carpet."

            "This message concerns Emily Post, AKA Circumstance, AKA Celine Kryer, and Felix Page, AKA Fletch, and the death of Yoshi Shira, brother of a second-tiered Yakuza boss for the Shigeda. They have offered me a one million nuyen bounty to bring both of you in."

            "I'd like to see you try, you piece of garbage..." Bubba growled.

            "However, I lack the motivation to go after you myself. I've sold a spell lock and a focus that once belonged to Tomorrow Page to a Swiss foci dealer. The pair, being of very high grade and quality, fetched a price of seven hundred thousand nuyen."

            "I'll kill 'em. I'll goddamn kill him." Felix exclaimed, pointing his finger at the screen.

            "I've used these funds to arrange a contest. The first person, or team of persons to bring me Felix Page and Emily Post will be awarded seven hundred thousand nuyen." The orc explained much like a lawyer would; an articulateness that didn't suit his voice. "These contestants have not been informed of the deal the Yakuza and I have. Which brings me to the purpose of this disk."

"Bounty hunters can be violent, to say the least, when working. If you surrender to me, I will escort you to the persons that request your presence relatively unharmed. I prefer this solution as it saves me seven hundred thousand nuyen. The contest begins midnight tonight. I will be at the warehouses Felix Page was originally kidnapped from."

"I warn you not to attempt to kill me or cancel the contest, as the Yakuza, who own these warehouses, are extremely territorial and will not tolerate any display of violence they have not previously arranged. If it is eight o'clock, you have sixteen hours. Instructions for your surrender are included in the next track of this disk." The image of the orc froze as the disc ran out of footage.

            "So what do we do?" Emily asked. She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, leaning against the frame. Everyone in the room turned to her.

            "I can't afford to lose two decent runners. We're gonna kill that son of a bitch." Bubba said.

            Emily and Felix stood on a street corner in what seemed to be the very center of Seattle. Thousands of people flowed along the sidewalks in a noontime rush to feed themselves or run a few errands before they were due back to work. Felix and Emily were dressed in their armored work clothes and looked like a part of the faceless mass, except they just stood there.

            "Why did they pick such a busy place to get us?" Felix asked softly, looking at the rushing traffic.

            "If we did anything daring it would get on the news." Emily replied flatly. "Don't talk. I don't want to talk right now." Felix turned his attention back to directly in front of him, slightly more anxious because he thought he irritated Emily. They stood in silence for a few moments. Behind them, watches started to chime in a soft asynchronous chorus of the hour. A short limousine with incredibly dark windows detached from the flow of traffic and pulled to the curb. The back door was opened by a very angry looking Asian man wearing sunglasses.

            "Get in or I kill both of you." He ordered. They both climbed in and sat between four men just like the one who opened the door. Each wore sunglasses and held a gun on their laps. One of them ordered the driver, hidden behind a privacy window, to drive off. The limo crept slowly into traffic, then sped back into the flow.

            The limo continued through the business district of Seattle. As they drove, they passed through the large boundary between the commercial and the industrial sections of town; office buildings were gradually replaced by small factories and warehouses. As they took a left turn down a smaller street, Emily winked at Felix and inhaled deeply.

            Almost instantly, a water elemental appeared. The elemental filled the entire car with water and applied tremendous pressure. Only a space surrounding Felix and Emily by a fraction of an inch was spared from being soaked. The engine sputtered and stalled out. The other occupants inhaled water without realizing it and started to cough, which just made their situation worse. One opened a door, spilling hundreds of gallons of water out onto the dirty street. They were washed out onto the pavement. They laid on the street, coughing and gasping, trying to get their breath back. This made it very easy for Bubba and Sparky to hog tie each of them. After they were all immobilized, Bubba carried one in each hand to a van parked across the street and tossed them in the back. Felix and Emily climbed out, dry.

            "I see Bones finally showed up for something on time!" Felix exclaimed. Bones closed the back door of his van when Bubba tossed the last hog-tied man in. He gave Felix the finger from across the street, shook Bubba's hand and drove off, taking one corner especially tight to disturb the contents he was hauling. While Bubba pushed the limousine to the curb and parked it, Sparky pulled up with an identical vehicle. They all climbed in.

            "Where to?" Sparky asked. He put on a cap that limousine drivers commonly wore, but it looked ridiculous perched upon his nine-inch tower of hair.

            "Shut up and get going." Bubba said. He turned to Emily. "Your stuff is in the seat compartment. Fletch, there's a Viper in your seat compartment. Set phasers to 'shred'." Felix opened the small compartment to find a chrome plated pistol and a pair of long clips. He slammed one clip in and flicked the small switch from one shot at a time to three, just as he saw Emily do a few days earlier.

            "Where's Nocturne?" Felix asked, still examining the Slivergun.

            "She's not very… active during the day." Emily replied.

            "Of course."

* * * * * * *

            "I still don't get it." A man said to the person standing next to him. He tapped the tiny barrel of the Uzi softly against the wall he leaned against. The man standing next to him sucked idly on a cigarette.

            "What don't you get?" The man asked, vaguely interested.

            "How many of us did that guy hire? Fifteen? Right? We got fifteen guys in here, armed with whatever we wanted, to make sure one guy and one girl get delivered from one car to another? And we get a grand a piece?"

            "I guess."

            "A freakin' grand? Jeez, I've done lots harder things for a grand."

            "Maybe these two people are a lot more dangerous than you think." He flicked his cigarette away.

            "I dunno. How tough can a girl be, huh? I knock 'em over in the park. 'Less they got mace, I ain't scared."

            "Shut up." The man, who now lit up another cigarette, said. He nodded over to the entrance of the warehouse, where the limousine entered.

            "Don't be tellin' me to shut up…" The man with the Uzi idly threatened. The other man picked up his sawed-off shotgun and approached the car for a few paces. The other fifteen men also approached the car in a circle that broke at the garage door, all wielding guns provided to them by the orc that hired them. The orc looked down on the small militia from an office overhanging the warehouse floor. Another limousine, similar to the first one, pulled in behind it.

            Before the doors opened all the way on the second limo, the rear window of the first limo shattered as a small rocket designed to destroy light to medium tanks traveled through. It broke through the windshield and exploded, instantly incinerating the seven Yakuza personal inside and thoroughly destroying the car. The gas tank exploded a moment later, killing the four men in the circle closest to the limo. From the ceiling, the fire control system zipped across it's network of wires strung over the warehouse floor, positioned itself above the flaming car and spewed foam over the car until the fire died out. At the same time, the rest of the men opened fire on the limo containing Felix, Emily, Bubba and Felix.

            "Fires out!" Sparky shouted. "That was louder n' hell!"

            "Shut up and open that moon roof." Bubba shouted back. As Sparky did that, Bubba ripped the rear back seat up and covered the shattered back window. It vibrated as Bubba held it up but did not tear apart. Under the seat were two cartons of a dozen grenades each.

            "Start chucking them apples." Bubba ordered. Emily and Felix each took a box and opened it.

            "This car's bulletproof, right?" Felix asked as he pulled the pin and hooked a grenade out the moon roof and behind him.

            "You bleeding?" Emily asked.

            "Rhetorical question." Felix replied. They tossed all two dozen grenades out the window in five seconds, shaking the entire warehouse with explosions. After the twenty fourth grenade was away and had exploded, they sat silent and listened. They heard nothing from outside except the fire extinguisher zipping across the ceiling.

            "Ready?" Bubba asked the three other occupants of the limo. He reached into the compartment under the back seat and took out his large revolver. He dropped the seat from the back window and pointed the gun out, scanning the warehouse floor for anymore threats. Suddenly, a shot rang out from across the building. Bubba left horn shattered.

            "Got 'em!" Sparky exclaimed. From the front seat, Sparky fired four times out the back window, dropping a man hiding behind a large crate. A long barreled automatic pistol slid across the concrete upon impact with the floor. Bubba sat back, grasping the nub that was his left horn, grimacing.

            "You okay?" Felix asked, looking out the back window.

            "Yeah…" Bubba growled. He fingered his head around his horn lightly. "Feels like my skull is vibrating." He sat back up, opened the back door slightly and kicked it open. All four of them exited the car slowly, scanning their surroundings.

            "Where's the orc?" Sparky asked.

            "The garage door and the door next to that are the only ones in this building. There's one on the roof, but Bones has that one covered from across the street." Felix answered. He wondered if the orc would know if he was lying. They cautiously divided, each walking slowly toward each wall.

            "Where's the stairwell to the offices above?" Felix asked over his shoulder, looking around the charred limousine for anyone hiding behind it.

            "Bubba's approaching them." Emily replied. As soon as she finished her sentence, a man trotted down the stairs, carrying a shotgun. Bubba reacted instinctually and turned around, pointing his back to the stairwell. The man fired the shotgun. A dozen balls of shot hit Bubba's back, shredding his jacket but leaving the Kevlar underneath unscathed. He racked the shotgun again for another shot.

Felix swiveled around and pulled the trigger three times. For each pull of the trigger, three bullets, intact and relatively perfect traveling through the barrel, transformed into twisted piece of scrap metal a few feet away from the gun. The first flechetti round hit the man in the stomach and bounced off a plate in his coat. Five others traveled upward, also bouncing off his armor. The seventh shot hit the man in the base of the throat, the eighth square in the windpipe and the ninth right below the jaw. An explosion of blood and tissue covered the walls of the stairwell. The man fell forward, his head still barely attached by his spine.

"You okay, Bubba?" Felix called. His gun was still trained on the small hallway. Bubba looked up.

"Yeah. It was just bird shot." Bubba said. He was surprised at the look on Felix's face. There was no sign of fear or hesitation; only cold calmness. "You okay?"

"No. Some guy just tried to kill you." Felix replied. "How many shots do these things have in 'em?" He ejected the clip, examined it and slid it back into the base of the gun.

"Uh, yeah." Bubba replied. He cocked his gun and approached the stairs again. Each step creaked loudly as he went up. The second floor was a bare walled hallway, twenty meters long and too small for Bubba to stand up in. He crouched far over and advanced awkwardly, his colossal gun pointed straight ahead as he approached the door at the end.

"I don't see what was so difficult to understand from my instructions." The orc asked through the door when Bubba was half way down the hallway.

"Where's the money?" Bubba shouted. He raised the gun slightly higher, bringing it to sight.

"What? That puny amount those substandard foci sold for?" The orc laughed. "Hardly enough to pay the burn unit. I saved a substantial amount of money considering I cannot feel the pain."

"I don't believe you." Bubba growled. "You've got three seconds before you don't have to worry about some burn unit."

"That's out of the question. I've already collected the bounty for your two friends. It's already been spent. If the Yakuza don't get them from me, they'll kill me and go after them anyway."

"I should save them the trouble." Bubba shouted.

"I'm your best bet! Save your own goddamned skin! Give them to me and you live to go steal another day." The orc shouted back. Bubba fired through the door. The door bent in half and ripped from the hinges but still remained upright.

"I should have known. A troll lacks the mental capacity for logic." The door fell forward, revealing the orc. It appeared to Bubba that he failed to hit the orc, even though the orc was standing in the middle of the doorway. Bubba cocked the hammer again. The orc stepped forward sharply and punched at Bubba. Hundreds of pounds of force contacted Bubba in the chest. He flew backwards, slid down the stairs and into the middle of the warehouse.

Bubba laid there for less then a second before the orc was on top of him, strangling him. Bubba clawed wildly at the orc's arms. He tore away charred flesh and muscle, but the orc didn't budge and squeezed tighter.

"Die motha fucka!" Sparky screamed from the top of the limousine with a gun. With the speed of wired reflexes, the orc raised his fist and struck him with magical force. Sparky doubled over and fell onto the hood of the car, barely breathing. Bubba jabbed at the orc's head with all his strength. The orc launched backwards from the force. In midair, he flipped over and landed on his stomach. Bubba and the orc jumped to their feet.

The orc charged Bubba and punched him twice in the stomach. Bubba didn't appear to be affected. He crossed his hands above him and brought his bunched fists into the orc's head. He fell into a heap at Bubba's feet. Bubba raised his foot to kick him, but the orc took hold of Bubba's stationary ankle and ripped it forward. Bubba fell backwards and hit his head on the limo, denting it deeply. The orc jumped for Bubba. Bubba raised his feet, caught the orc and launched him again. This time, however, the orc was in control of his descent. He flipped twice and landed on his feet.

Felix, now seeing the chance to hit the orc without accidentally hitting his friend, pulled the trigger until it exhausted it's ammunition. Half of the shots appeared to hit. All of them appeared to do significant damage. The exposed flesh of his arms and shoulders was shredded, but amazingly, not bleeding. Felix stood there, absolutely dumbfounded.

The orc looked around. Felix, startled awake, jumped behind a high stack of large crates. The orc leaped forward and ran for the crates, slamming into the stack with his shoulder. The stack creaked and groaned as it slowly tipped. Eventually, the top boxes slid off and the entire stack tumbled into one gigantic pile. Packing hay, injected Styrofoam and hundreds of appliances ranging from portable soy preparers to SuperSpace refrigerators scattered like shattered glass over the concrete floor. Pages of invoices floated down like snow.

The orc stood in front of the stack for a moment, then snapped his head around to see Emily standing, looking at the fallen stack in horror.

"Run!" Bubba croaked as loud as he could from the front of the limo. The orc sprinted for Emily, picking Bubba's revolver from off the floor as he approached. Emily realized what was happening and ran for the stairs with the orc in pursuit. Bubba dove for the orc and tackled him before he could chase Emily. The gun slid across the floor towards the direction Emily ran. The orc squirmed away and got to his feet. Bubba rolled backwards and made it to his feet. The orc stepped forward, kicked high into the air and aimed his heel for the top of Bubba's head. Bubba dodged to the right and caught the orc's swiftly moving ankle in the crook of his arm. With his right fist, he punched the orc's thigh. The sheer force dislocated the orc's hip.

The orc pulled his leg back and hopped backwards a step. Bubba stood there, his guard up and anticipating the orc's next move. The orc put his foot on the floor, shifted his pelvis and thrust down, sending his hip back into joint with a clear, loud pop. No sooner was his leg back into joint did the orc send that same leg up and kicked Bubba square in the crotch. Bubba was now launched. He landed on top of the limousine, curled up and holding his crotch in the most pain he had ever felt in his life. The orc turned and ran the same direction Emily had earlier.

After two minutes, Bubba was finally able to loosen up and move. He struggled to his feet and, with tears in his eyes, walked for the pile. At the edge of the heap, he started to clear away debris. Suddenly, he paused and cocked his head to listen. After a few moments, he jumped to the top of the heap and tossed mangled appliances and shattered pieces of crates in every direction, digging down to the bottom where he found a refrigerator upside-down on the floor. Bubba crouched and knocked on the back. Someone knocked back.

"You've got to be the luckiest son of a bitch on this freakin' planet." Bubba said.

"I certainly don't feel like it." Felix's muffled voice called back. "I've got an instruction manual poking me in the butt."

"I never understood why things like refrigerators need instruction manuals." Bubba replied. He guided his hand against the wall of the refrigerator. Once he grabbed hold of the edge, he hoisted it up to allow Felix to crawl out. Once he was free, Bubba dropped it and sat down on the pile. Felix laid on his back next to him.

"Hard to breathe in there." Felix panted.

"Same could be said about someone's foot kicking your nuts to oblivion." Bubba said as he was clearing his throat. From across the warehouse, Bubba's gun fired. The bullet struck Bubba in the chest, knocking him off of the debris pile. Felix sat up in a quick jerk to see the orc across the room, the 1.3 caliber handgun in his right hand and Emily, seized by the hair in his left hand. She had given up struggling and just clutched the orc's wrist. Felix looked down at Bubba at the base of the pile holding his chest.

"Now I'm the luckiest son of a bitch on this freakin' planet." Bubba groaned. He pulled a hamburger patty sized slug of lead from the middle of his chest. The bruise on his chest steamed slightly. Bubba was much too hurt to offer anymore resistance. Felix looked back up at the orc and Emily.

"I am going to make this real fucking simple!" The orc shouted. He hoisted Emily into the air. Her feet were clear off the ground, her stomach on the same height as the orc's head. "I'm going to kill you, then I'm going to kill her, then I'm going to haul your corpses back to the Yak!" Felix stumbled down the pile and approached them. The orc cocked the hammer quickly and held it out at Felix.

"Ah, ah! If you even get off one shot, I shoot you in the head!" The orc called calmly. "You think you can do it?" The orc lowered the gun slightly, but kept it pointed at Felix. "I just need to know one thing. Seriously now. Why did you run me over? I mean, normal people, smart people, would have either given me a few nuyen or driven away. But you stayed, you got in a few lucky shots, and what has it gotten you, huh? Your parents killed. Your foci stolen and sold. Your friends shot up, and in a couple seconds, you and your girlfriend dead." The orc shook Emily around. "Why?" Felix was silent.

"Why!!!" The orc screamed, raising the gun again.

"I'm not a runner." Felix replied meekly, looking at the ground.

"What?"

"I'm not a goddamned runner!" Felix yelled.

"Inside joke." Emily grunted, holding on to the orc's wrist. The orc shook her again.

"What? That's the reason you're in this mess?" The orc said. He laughed. He waved Bubba's gun around, still holding Emily high off the ground by her hair. "You ain't gonna be nothin' in a second." The orc lowered the gun at Felix. Emily looked Felix straight in the eye. In all the desperation between the two, Felix and Emily communicated an entire battle plan with one glance.

Felix inhaled sharply and cast the most intense strength augmentation spell he could muster on Emily. Emily let go of the orc's wrist and grabbed for his other arm. Despite the immense amount of resistance she encountered from the orc's muscular arm, she pulled his arm towards her and raised her knee to bend his elbow with effort. Emily buried the barrel of the gun in her stomach and used her thumb to pull the trigger. The shot was silent, muffled by Emily's midsection. Most of the blood that was flowing through that region of her body fell, splashing below her noisily. The orc released Emily's ponytail. At that moment, Felix finally realized what happened to Emily and everything kicked into slow motion.

Emily fell to the floor in slow motion. Her feet hit the pool of blood, splashing it in all directions, like little spokes of a wheel, on her shoes and ankles. From there, with blood running from her stomach, down her legs and to the ground, she continued falling until her knees crashed into the ground. When she landed, in slow motion, she looked up at Felix with wide, terror-stricken eyes, and fell to her left side, holding Felix's gaze until she hit the ground. Felix blinked and looked up at the orc.

The orc stood behind her the entire time, a look of sheer disbelief on his face. Half of his throat was torn away by the gigantic bullet from Bubba's gun. The orc knew he was gravely wounded, but maintained the discipline over his body he had perfected over several years of intense training, almost stopping blood flowing from his neck. He reached up and gingerly touched the vertebrae that were exposed with his fingers. He shuttered when he realized what he was touching. He tried to speak, but no sound came from his mouth; only the bubbling sound of air being forced up through his shattered windpipe. The orc, his face still frozen in disbelief, raised the gun once more. His arm lacked the strength to bring the gun high enough to shoot Felix, and his hand lacked the strength to hold the gun any longer. He dropped it to the ground, staggered to the side two steps, and fell backwards. Time flowed at it's regular pace again.

Felix jumped into motion, running as hard and as fast as he could push himself to cover the small distance between himself and Emily. Half way to her, he jumped into the air and hit the concrete with his stomach. He slid for Emily like a baseball player stealing second base. He slowed to a halt when he came face to face with Emily. He rested his head on the cold concrete floor and mustered a weak smile.

"Someone's coming, Emily." Felix whispered, stroking her head. "Just hang on. Bubba will call someone. You'll be okay." The slowly expanding pool of blood crept up and touched Felix's cheek.

"You're not…" Emily started to say. She swallowed and focused on Felix's eyes. "You're not a runner." Felix smiled slightly.

"No?" He asked with a slight chuckle, blinking slightly to allow a tear to fall into the puddle of blood below him. A perfectly round, clear jewel floating on a crimson field. "Why not?"

"That would be implying..." Emily said. She inhaled and began to shiver. "That would be implying… you're a bad person."

"Hang on. Someone's coming."