Chapter 1
5:45 AM March 22nd 2023, Purge Night
It's hot. That's the first thing a woman feels as she wakes up, it's hot and humid. She pushes her dark brown hair out of her eyes and tries to focus. Her head was pounding in pain and she had a piercing pain in her abdomen. The rocking wasn't helping.
Rocking?
She lifted her head and looked at her surroundings. She was sitting in a seat, next to an automatic door, with a reinforced seatbelt on, directly behind the pilot's cockpit. She was in a helicopter. She started to calm down as memories started to flood back to her. She noticed her backpack leaning on her legs and reached over to it. "AHHHH" she yelled in pain, she lifted her black shirt and realized she had an open bullet wound in her stomach "great".
A thunderous sound came from outside and it felt like the helicopter went ten meters in reverse. She then started to panic as more memories started to flood back to her, she needed to get out of there. She unbuckled her seatbelt and carefully opened the door, once the lock was opened the door flew to the side and broke off its hinge revealing the entire city of Los Angeles was on its side. Clutching onto the hand rest, she looked outside and saw that the helicopter was dangling from a vineyard of power cables off the end of a toppled radio antenna on top of a skyscraper.
She had to sit back down with all the pain in her stomach. She sat directly on the handgun she was carrying, realizing a way out she pointed it at the glass in the cockpit. She made sure she was under the pilot's chair to be safe from falling glass. She pulled the trigger but there was just a clicking sound from the lack of ammo. She had to move fast, there was a terrible creaking sound that sounded like gravity was taunting her. She looked around for anything else she could use, there was a protective case laying on the other seat. The woman just barely reached the case and pulled it over, she opened it to find another gun.
"Yes!" she cheerfully said, pulling the gun out and flipping the safety off. She pointed it at the cockpit window and shot it. But a bullet didn't come out, it was something on fire that got stuck to the window. She realized what she shot.
"Oh Fu-" she said as the flare burst. The glass shattered and the helicopter shook, several of the wires snapped and the helicopter shook like a ragdoll and fell another twenty meters.
She didn't have a second to spare, she climbed up the chairs passing the pilot's corpse, and up onto the hull of the helicopter. The copter was dangling about fifteen or twenty feet away from the building. She clutched onto one of the cables for dear life, the hull of the copter was a little slippery. She started climbing up the cable, desperately trying to ignore the hellish pain of her bullet wound.
"DOWN THERE" someone shouted from atop the building. About four armed guards with pistols ran to the railing along the roof and started shooting towards her. They missed the first few but there was no way that would last long. The woman didn't have time to climb down so she just let go and fell through the window to crash back into the chair right on her ribs. Between that and her stomach she could barely pull herself back up. She noticed the flare gun on the ground next to her, with quick thinking she loaded another flare (there were two more left in the case). She crawled to the window and punched the glass until it shattered, she shot the first flare at the guards and it missed completely. She shot another and it hit one of them. She had one more, there was no way she could hit all of them and she had someone counting on her to get back home. By now the guards had figured out they needed to aim at the cables. There was one way out of this though, not impossible just improbable. She aimed the flare gun at the toppled radio antenna on top of the building connected to all the cables. After a successful hit at the right of the radio antenna, it started to collapse and sent the copter flying towards the building. A jump like that was going to hurt, here goes nothing….
5 Months Earlier
"HmmMhmmhmm world's smallest violin, really needs audience…" Nicole hummed before a loud buzz went across the mall, quitting time at last! Finally After a long double shift of fixing escalators at the mall Nicole was finally free to go home and get some sleep after she picked up dinner. A few of her coworkers were messing with a now sparking circuit board "Lisa that's not working"
"I'm getting closer"
Nicole dragged herself over there knowing she'd be out of a job if they burned this place down "just move" she said, shoving Debby and taking her tools. Nicole cleaned the track, removed the solder, and put copper tape down resulting in the circuit board functioning better "there you go" she said before leaving
Debby examined the circuit board "Hey boss fixed the… rectangle just like you said"
After pickling up KFC and rushing back to her apartment through awful Kansas city traffic, Nicole went across the hallway to her neighbors
"Hey Nicole" Mary said
"Hi Mary thank you so much for letting Chloe stay here after school, I've just been so busy lately" Nicole said with gratitude
"Mommy" Chloe said running out of the apartment to her mother
"Hey girl I have chicken inside go make a plate" she said opening their own door for her six year old daughter
"Alright you get some sleep now" Mary said "oh and some lady was here earlier looking for you"
Nicole was too tired to look into that, she just sat down and had dinner with Chloe. "Oh mom I almost forgot, I got our mail for you" she said causing Nicole to drop her fork
"Oh ugh thank you sweetie, did you ugh.. Did you look through them" she said shaking
"No, why?"
"Oh no reason" Nicole said, speed-walking to the mail. She rummaged through until she found what was expected, an eviction notice "I just ordered a grown up movie and I didn't want you to see it" she said using the first excuse to come to mind.
"Wait you're not watching District 9 without me right"
"Oh I would never"
About an hour later she put Chloe to bed, pulled out the trundle bed and got some rest. Thirty minutes later she heard a knock at the door and forced herself up, she opened the door to find a blonde woman around her age waiting.
"Well don't you lovely today" she joked
"Do I…." Nicole focused on her face "Zoey Brooks!"
"Hey" she said giving her old friend a hug
"Wha…This is great, I haven't seen you since… you know" Nicole said "so what are you doing here"
"Ugh can we talk?" Zoey asked "maybe go to a bar"
"Ugh.." Nicole pondered, she looked back to Chloe's room, the only one in the studio "I don't think I should go too far" she said "there's a lounge downstairs"
"That's actually good, because I can't really afford anything good to drink," Zoey said with a hint of embarrassment.
"Seriously, what happened to your grand fashion designer plans?" Nicole asked
"No one would pick it up, had to sell the place and move to Solvang. Do you know how many Fashion connections there are in Solvang, None" Zoey complained
"Where's Solvang?"
The two of them went down to the lounge and popped open some cheap beers from the vending machine. "So what are you doing exactly five months from today" Zoey said with a strangely mischievous smile
Nicole pondered this weird question for a second. "Well this is our first year without Jacob so I'm gonna try and get a second job for some extra cash, plus I've got to see how much a purge shelter costs…" Nicole did some quick math in her head, she looked at Zoey with suspicion "what are you saying?"
"An old friend of ours is looking to do a little recruiting, something that could fix a lot of our financial problems" Zoey said with charisma "hey I'm really sorry about Jacob, I'm sure he was great guy, really provided for you and your daughter"
"Yeah" Nicole whispered with sorrow "I'm sorry are you some kind of criminal now"
"Only when it's not a crime…. and never if it puts people in danger" Zoey specified
"What old friend?" Nicole asked trying to ease the tension
"Evening ladies" a familiar masculine voice came up
"Logan Reese" Nicole said standing up and accepting a hug
Logan sat down with them and started sipping a beer "Alright before we can start exchanging baby pictures we owe you an explanation, I'm guessing you know who David Snyder is"
"Yeah he's a piece of shit"
"Correction he's a piece of shit Millionaire" Logan quipped "He claims all his money came from his security systems company but he's also been busy extorting every small business from Little Rock to Philly and he's keeping all those funds in a nicely wrapped vault in Los angeles with a little bow" she said with a little sarcasm "this purge night we're gonna empty it out and return about 300 million of the money" he explained causing Zoey to roll her eyes
"And more importantly over 250 million that we'll be splitting seven ways" Zoey added causing Nicole to almost drop her drink
"Well that's quite generous Logan, so what else is this about" Nicole said suspiciously
"What, do I really need any other reason than to help innocent people who have been screwed over" Logan claimed causing both girls to glare at him with irritants "alright here's what's going on, he's been trying to buy my company and he's not the kinda guy you're aloud to say no to for long" Logan confessed "but all that goes away if he's suddenly bankrupt"
"Gotta say I would love to see him broke" Nicole said with smugness
"So are you in?" Zoey asked
"Me"
"Yeah you're great with all the electrical and mechanics stuff" Zoey said trying to sound convincing
"But I'm not really a hired gun" Nicole pointed out
"That's just it" Logan said "we don't want hired guns, they'll betray you to either take the money for themselves or so Snyder can give them a reward, we want people we know and can trust" Logan said before taking another drink
"I don't know" Nicole said before taking another drink "I mean you get we'd be in danger right"
"Oh well unfortunately yes, even I have to make sure Snyder doesn't suspect anything" Logan said pulling out a piece of paper, it was an invitation to spend the Purge in Snyder's high security Purge shelter "the man's literally using the Purge as an excuse to hold potential business partners hostage for twelve hours and discuss terms"
Nicole pondered this, she was in a tough spot but she'd be putting herself in danger for money. But this was also about the Purge, every year up to this point their family settled in the Purge shelter downtown and usually returned home to find it either wrecked or ransacked. This year that wasn't an option anymore.
They sat there for a moment to process all the information "Chloe can stay in my penthouse with Quinn and the kids, I don't think they've seen her since she was what 2 months, it's well guarded with an updated-"
"Deal!" Nicole said quickly upon hearing this
"Alright then" Zoey said with a smile "welcome aboard"
Hey guys hope you enjoyed the first chapter, i uploaded this first one alongside the second one and I'll be posting new chapters every couple days, Thank you for reading and please review