Chapter 5: Hunt for Hawkins

We did part. Someone found him down the street, an employee or whatever, somebody he knew in a suit and they started to talk, and I found he had to leave on business. I expected that much. Gave him a stiff nod and I was gone before he even took a step to leave. I was sick of the awkward crap.

It was back to checking phone booths.

"Hawkins…Hawkins…Hawkins…" Muttering I was leafing through the phone book, leaning against the glass, licking my thumb and going through the pages. Couple of minutes later I had it, the phone number, the address for an Arthur Hawkins. I flipped the crumbled paper over and wrote it down on one of the side glass planes. I was replacing it back when the phone suddenly rang, making me jump.

It rang again, more demanding and I stared at it warily. Since when can you call a phone booth anyway? It had to be for me. That was the point in receiving strange calls from strange payphones wasn't it? I picked it up.

"Drayce here."

"I want you to stay away from my Kaiba-baby." I stared into the phone receiver a little surprised at the girly tone, feeling an instant dislike as well as confusion.

"Your…Kaiba-baby?" The name tasted fowl on my tongue.

"Yes. He's mine. You can have Joey or Bakura or Yugi if you want, but Kaiba-baby is mine. Stay away from him and his family." It was definitely a girl. One of those girly-girls that make me sick. Yet I was confused about these other names.

"Yugi?" I asked confusedly, trying to keep her on the line while looking around outside for where the bitch could be hiding. Her tone was arrogant and she sounded wicked pissed and she sounded like someone completely disconnected.

"YES! Yugi! You know friend of the Pharaoh Atem!" she snarled and kept mouthing off about leaving her beloved blue-eyed dream god alone before I toned her out. Pharaoh Atem? My eyes widened, remembering the tablet had been of Egyptian, had depicted a battle of some kind. Could a Pharaoh have anything to do with this?

Hell yes.

"LISTEN!" I roared through the babble raggedly, "I don't know what the hell you're going on about, but if I find out you're the one trying to kill me over a computer program I will catch you, gut you, then kill you. Tell me who Atem is!"

She hung up fast.

"SHIT!"

I was left slamming the receiver down on the phone several thousand times screaming my head off. After my arms became to hurt with the stress, I stopped and brushed by my hair for a few minutes trying to control myself.

I was loosing it. I was starting to believe this place was more. 'Didn't know what the side effects were' my ass. Insanity seemed like a big effect, didn't it? I pinched the bridge of my nose hard and concentrated on breathing. It had to have been easy. She had already lost it, I could tell she wasn't just a program, didn't know how exactly, but I knew it. I'd rather have believed that than believed that she was a program and started going mad.

I was outside and looking at the words I had scrawled on the bottom of the right hand corner of the paper. Pharaoh Atem. I had considered writing in a question mark but didn't. I also penned down Yugi, Bakura, Joey, and Wheeler with question marks. I remembered the kid from before had said his name was Joey Wheeler.

I was looking for Hawkins house by then. Why not? It was another question for me to ask the good explorer. And historian. Being an archaeologist, something that must have had a lot of researching to do, right? He's bound to know something about a Pharaoh named Atem. Had to.

The technicians still weren't responding. The hacker; that Kaiba-baby insane girly-bitch had to have cut those off. Just the type of person we need running everything in the computer at the moment right? Oh this was just wonderful. As for that other psycho in the damn basement, I'm thinking she wrote him in just to play with me like a damn puppet. Maybe that was why she was so paranoid, knowing that my first name is Love? Freaking ridiculous.

I had to take the bus across town. I figured it out after buying a map and comparing where I was now and where the house was. Turns out I was going in the wrong direction. I also bought a back pack from the little stand as well as a pad of paper and a couple more pens.

Dumped the map, my list/note, new pens (kept the old one behind my ear), the cash, and bullets into the black medium sized sack quickly. I decided I was going to keep the gun near me at all times now. After how good she could shoot, or one of her cronies could shoot, I wasn't going to fool around anymore.

People stayed away from me as I waited at the bus stop. I was too pissed off to care. I got on and tracked my route with the map the best I could. Not the best with navigation, but I have enough skill to get me by. When I thought we got close enough I pulled the rope over my seat that was sagging down at me. The bus stopped and I got off and walked the last three streets and found the place.

Found it up in flames.

I stood there looking dumbfounded, watching the flames curl up the sides of the house, the windows melt from the tremendous heat, watched the firemen running around like roaches with their high powered water toys trying to combat that mighty fire that made it self so very much at home in those walls.

And I could hear someone screaming. Screaming something incessantly behind me. Some blonde I didn't recognize. She had wide greenish eyes behind reddish glare on her glasses. Her face was twisted with horror.

"GRAMPA! My grandfather's still in there!" She's wailing and crying.

How old was the guy in the article? Some of those discovered were made years before I was born. That would make him a pretty old dude, right? Maybe even a grandfather? It had been a pretty big house. Not as big as the Kaiba's house, that was monstrous, but still a decent size house. Big Mortgage.

I roll my eyes.

"Ms! MS!" I point the gun at him, not slowing down at all, as I threw my bag aside.

"Shove it." He gets my point. His face drains of color as his hands go up in surrender. I ignore him and just enter the house.

It's beyond hot. Sweltering isn't even the right word. The smoke was thick and ebony black, almost like welcoming curtains. I held my sleeve to my mouth on reflect and go deeper into what could have once been the hallway. The gun was still in my hand incase any of those idiots tried to come in after me. The smoke stung my eyes so I had them squinting.

"HAWKINS!"

No answer.

The reddish yellow pulses of light are damning. I could get why Hell would be terrifying, but I had an advantage. I kept pushing through, minding the flames and the creaking floor. I have a hunch. It's the thing that's always done in games. I guy can't be on the first floor, that was too easy. No, the guy had to be either in the basement or up stairs so you'd have to be daring and risk your neck for the prize.

I go up the stairs when I find them, relatively fire free, slowly. Everything was sunset crimson. The spit in my mouth had all dried up making me feel like I was the Sahara on the inside. Didn't touch anything. The creaking of dead burning wood was enough to warn against that. Seeing them, coated in black with soot.

Seen it all before.

Go through two bed rooms looking for the guy, yelling his name even though the odds of him being knocked out are pretty realistic. Had he even been remotely conscious I was sure he would've been the type of guy to get himself found and out. This guy had to be out cold. Which meant I'd have to carry him back outside.

Found him in the third bed room. I expected that. He was on the floor; face down, in a white looking shirt in the moving heated air. Some burning ceiling had fallen on him. Even more drama to add to this annoying situation.

I got down on my knees and brushed it off fast, grabbed his outstretched arms and stood, pulling him about an inch forward. Grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and pulled him up with hardly any strain. I could smell the adrenaline rolling in the sweat on my skin. And then I froze when I saw a familiar shape standing in the corner. Standing in shadow. Watching me.

I had the gun out and aimed firing. Gawked when it was so easily evaded in the twisting blackness. Smoke took that moment to rush at me as more of the ceiling fell in. I was cursing with no bounds at all. Shit that made no sense at all. He was heavy but I made myself balance him on my shoulders, hold him up and take slow yet hurried steps to the door.

I could hear laughter.

I cursed it, but never turned back.

Each step cracked, making my eyes bug out slightly, teeth gritted, and prayed the damn thing would hold. Embers fluttered like fireflies. My legs buckled but I didn't feel it. I only know it because I saw them. They seemed oddly numb. Blackened from walking through all the cloudy soot.

The second to last step broke. I fell forward hard on the floor. My legs woke up to a horrible red itching biting, immediately kicking. Hawkins was still gone on my back so I had a problem getting up. I clawed visibly into the floor, and made myself rise. I was staring at the blindingly white door frame. Welcoming cooing light. Light begging me to join it.

My brain felt fuzzy.

I was outside a minute later, on the ground, and feeling arms pulling at my body, picking me up. Someone was trying to take the gun that was tightly gripped in my hand. I growled at that someone and started cursing again in the blinding white and shadows. I was fighting them off. My legs hurt like hell.

I couldn't see.

Eventually, they got the idea and got off of me. I blinked my eyes several times, pointing the mussel of the pistol anywhere and everywhere around me, telling them more to back the hell off even though I couldn't see anything. My hands shook with the burning pain in my legs.

"GET AN ICEPACK!" Girl's voice. Not so wailing and upset now. More commanding. There is silence and a fresh cool breeze that brushed my back. Ecstasy. I knew I was shaking visibly, yet there was too much shit in my eyes to see anything at all. I felt the cold smoldering metal of the gun griped in my hand but didn't dare let it go despite how much it burned.

A cool hand grabbed my knee as something bit into my calves. I screamed, my hand flying out into the unknown, groping wildly in surprise. I wasn't in anyway to shoot. I catch fabric and hold it in a vice grip. I can hear female cooing, but feel lost in strange white and shadow around me to keep shaking. It's the wild desperation folds its waiting arms around me, not tight enough for me to throw the gun out of my hand, but enough to knock some sense into me.

"BAG! GET MY BAG!" I demand, still waving the thing around. I'm surprised no one tried to rip the thing out of my hand.

"GET THAT BAG!" She yells above the sirens so loudly I'm surprised. A painful itch as replaced the insane heat. I'm still blinking blinding, muttering about not being able to see. More cloth rubs against my arm in another long eternity of a second. I grasp it with the gun still in my hand, feeling for the opening somehow, find it, and dump it while I hold the back in my arms tightly still blinking.

Shivering and huddled into a feeble position, cool hand on me knee keeping my upright and a soft cool substance on the back of my legs, I take a long breath of clean air and let it out.

"Alright." I say.

I'm grabbed uncomfortably; arms pressing against my body, being carried as neatly as you can please, clutching the bag. My legs flare up in pain at the absence of that cool thing and I feel a scream coming on. Breathing ragged. I was loosing it.

And then there was that everlasting laughter.

My eyes were wide with it. The sound of it. That horrible, freakish sound, ringing and singing like haunted bells. Echoing incessantly. Over and over and over…as I claw at the still chest of the one carrying me, telling myself it wasn't that one laughing, there was no vibrating or breath on my tilted head. It was simply the game. The game. It's all about the game.

Sleep greeted me with a goodnight kiss.