Sorry about that.
Not that any of you would give a shit, anyway. Or anyone is even looking at this shitty piece of crap story.
Chapter 9: A Day in the Life with Em
EM
Em didn’t want to go.
Of all the places that her brother could’ve been, why there?
It didn’t make sense.
It didn’t.
She had looked there before.
She had searched the whole place top to bottom.
She had gone as far as to look in every bathroom stall.
So it didn’t make any sense at all.
She wanted to believe that the watermark was a lie or wrong.
That the report was falsified.
That the man in the report was not her brother.
That, perhaps, they were reading the watermark wrong.
But it wasn’t.
They were reading it right.
She had to go back.
Back to the place over 20 miles again.
Her hometown.
To the lab.
Where her brother fell up.
)(
Em woke up. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. And then she realized that the bed was scratchy, and then got up.
She was in another motel room. The wallpaper was yellow and peeling in places, and a colony of enterprising spiders was spinning a web in the corner. The bed was clean enough, she supposed, but the patchwork blanket was ugly. Comfortable, though. Across from the bed was a drawer with a TV on it, though all the TV would show was static. She turned her head sleepily to the left of the bed, where, on a chair, Ed was sleeping. He was clutching a pistol in his lap. He did not look very comfortable.
Em got out of bed and stretched. She sighed. Sometimes she wished she could wear pajamas. She had exactly three changes of clothes, and none of them were for sleepwear. She usually just slept with the most comfortable combination she could find, which was usually a T-shirt, her vest, and jeans. Ed didn’t wear anything else, and just tried to wash his clothes in the laundry every three or four days. Someday, Em mused, she would invest in a RV with automated turrets which would spit out metal death on intruders while she slept peacefully with earplugs in comfortable pajamas. Actually, in a matter of fact, she realized, with how much money Ed was making, they should be able to buy a RV. She nudged Ed with her foot.
“Oy,” she said. Ed opened one eye lazily, glanced at her, and closed it again. “Yes?” he wearily asked.
“Let’s buy an RV,” Em answered, trying to sound innocent as possible. “It would be far better than the two motorcycles we have right now, and far safer too.”
“And, along with that,” Ed bitingly replied, “it would put a giant fucking target on our backs. Just having a fucking RV is like going outside and shouting, ‘Oh, look at me! I have a million dollars to waste on a RV.’ We would be attacked in a fucking heartbeat the minute we enter the road.”
Em stared at him. “No, in other words.”
“Nope.”
Em sighed. “Well, it was worth a try anyways. A RV would’ve much nicer to ride than two bikes, though. And it would’ve been cool, like Mad Max.”
“Well, I have nowhere near the patience or time to go look for a RV, much less make it look like the one in Mad Max, so stick with what you’ve got, I suppose. Anyways, I have to go out now.”
“What for?”
Ed stared at her in confusion. “I’m sorry, you are Em, right?”
“…Yes?”
“Then you haven’t been distracted by all the fucking chaos going on and forgotten that I had a job, did you?”
)(
Em wearily sighed as she sipped her glass of tea, and glanced across the street.
Despite being the future, humanity’s preoccupation with weapons was bonkers. Ed had set up about three hours ago, and Ed had counted more than 40 customers in that short amount of time. He probably would’ve gotten more if he didn’t like haggling so much, causing 4 customers to give up in frustration, and, in one customer’s case, pulling a gun on Ed and trying to steal all the guns. Unluckily for him, the first gun Ed pulled out of the cart was a trench gun, and there weren’t enough of the man’s insides to fill a plastic cup afterwards. Sadly, the smell of drying flesh on the pavement caused business to temporarily stop while Ed moved upwind of the corpse. Em sipped her tea, grimaced, and then dumped it out on the pavement.
She stretched, and looked at Ed, who was staring at the gun in his hands with a frown. A she watched, he looked up at his customer and shook his head. His customer angrily gesticulated, and Ed shrugged. They argued back and forth until the customer dumped another clip of bills on the table in exasperation. Ed looked at the stack, shrugged, and gave the customer the gun, who angrily marched off with it. Ed looked at the retreating back of the customer, raised an eyebrow, and looked across the street at Em. Em shrugged, wondering what he was trying to say, and Ed raised his eyes to the sky in exasperation. Ed turned his attention back to the line and beckoned the next customer to the line. Em looked at the ever-increasing line and her heart sank in despair. It looked like he wouldn’t be done for another four or five hours, minimum. She wanted to stamp her feet in impatience. She knew where her brother was now, so why couldn’t they just go? What was all this crap about planning? She wanted to scream in rage. And she knew just the cure for wanting to scream in rage dramatically.
She stood up, threw her cup in the trash, and strolled down the street. If Ed needed her, then he knew where to find her.
Getting a drink.
)(
Em was very unimpressed.
She had just downed her seventh shot of liquor, and she didn’t even feel drunk yet. The guy next to her, on the other hand, had just fainted plain off his stool. She shrugged, and poured herself another shot.
If this was the bar she was going to be in for another three or four hours, then so be it. The Hammer, which was a stupid name for a bar, by the way, was actually not all that dirty for the only bar for the fine town of Nattucket, considering it was the only bar for at least 10 miles around and was visited by at least 200 people every day. Of course, the only reason why it was so clean was that the barkeeper had a specially designated shotgun for people who dirtied the floor, walls, tables, the front of the store, or anything else in the vicinity near his bar, and, considering most people liked life, worked wonders in up-keeping personal hygiene.
Em sighed, and downed another shot. More than anything, she wanted to feel the haze of being drunk come upon her. But her father ruined drinking for her a long time ago as a kid when, on accident, he put hard vodka in a stew instead of white wine. Afterwards, Em and her brother threw up for hours. Well, she thought to herself, reaching out to the bottle, at least it increased their alcohol endurance crazily.
Then a big, burly hand swiped it. Em turned in irritation and found herself face to face with the man she saw earlier who was arguing with Ed over the price of a gun. “Well, hello, girl,” he leered, clearly drunk. “What’s a beauty like you doing in here?”
Em, politely as she could, responded, “Ignoring people like you. Go away, please.” She saw the man’s face twist in anger.
“What did you say to me, you bitch?!” he roared, drawing the attention of everyone in the room and sent a fist at her. She sidestepped his punch, and he overbalanced, dropping the bottle on the ground and shattering it, spilling wine on the floor. The breaths of the watchers in the bar collectively hitched, and all glanced at the barkeeper, who looked angry. The man turned pale. “Oh my god, I am so sorry,” he said weakly to the barkeeper, who had stood up and was fetching something from under the counter. The barkeeper rose and aimed a double-barreled shotgun at the man.
In his gravelly voice, he said, “You have about 5 seconds to leave without making another mess.”
The man turned and ran for the door, bumping into a very harrow-looking Ed as he frantically vacated the bar. Ed looked at the fleeing back of the man in irritation, and then turned and walked over to Em, raising an eyebrow as he sat down. “What’d you do now?” he asked.
“Oh, you know,” Em murmured, waving for the barkeeper to bring her another bottle. “The usual.”
Chapter 8: Congratulations! Your Prize is a Destroyed Jeep, an Even Dustier Sheaf of Papers, and an Extremely Annoyed Bounty Hunter
ED
Ed was very tired of Em’s bike. Em had a very bad tendency to beat it up. At least once a week, she added yet another scratch or break to the vehicle, ranging from a dent on the front bumper to the entire back tire being burnt for warmth. As he and Em walked their bikes toward the smoking carcass of the Hummer, Ed was considering just selling the bikes and buying a Hummer (with a nice Browning M2 mounted machine gun emplacement like the one on the wrecked Hummer and a spiked front bumper to ram into things. like walls or humans. or rabbits. he hated rabbits.) so that Em couldn’t have a wheel under her hands anymore and act like she was in Mad Max. In his thoughts, he almost didn’t notice that he was about to get bitten by a rattlesnake until Em stomped on its head and turned it into mush.
“So…” Em ventured warily. “Are you still angry about the bike?”
Ed bluntly replied “Yes,” and walked faster toward the wreck.
It was only when Ed was a few feet away from the wreck he could actually appreciate (sorry, appraise. he wasn’t impressed at all by em, no sir) the damage that Em had done to it. In addition to the shattered windshield, the Hummer had crumpled around a very solid and firm rock, which in addition to turning the car into a donut, popped the tires, shattered about every window, and trapped a very angry man in a trenchoat. Ed crouched down and looked at the trapped man (i want your trenchcoat). It seemed like he was just merely trapped in between, without anything being crushed by the Hummer itself. Ed chuckled, grabbed the man’s wrist, and pulled him out of the crushed vehicle. Before the man could do something stupid (like trying to attack him), Ed immediately put a foot on the man’s back, preventing him from getting up.
“Hello there,” he said. The man responded with profanity telling him and Em to do something anatomically impossible to themselves. Ed sighed.
He tried again. “Hello, there.” The man just stared at him warily. A good start. He smiled. “What’s your name?”
The man just stared at him incredulously, and started to laugh. Ed facepalmed. Of all the ways he could’ve started, that’s how he started? (congrats, you fucking idiot.) Through the spaces between his fingers, he could see the man spit out blood. “You know,” the man said, “this has been such a good day for me. My associate has gotten killed, my only fucking vehicle has been turned into a donut, and I am about to be fucking drawn and quartered because I failed to kill you two fine teenagers.” He spit out more blood (there is not that much blood in a human body). “So what do you think would fucking happen, you arsehole, when you asked me my name?”
“Errr… you would tell me my name?” Ed asked. The man in the trenchcoat just stared at him. “Barry,” the man replied after an awkward silence.
“Barry what?” Ed asked.
“Just Barry,” the man said. He narrowed his eyes at him. “Why are you asking me this questions?”
Ed stated bluntly, “I’m trying to lull you into a state of confusion so that you would be taken off guard when Em starts torturing you.” (the truth hurts)
The man stared at him in confusion. “What? I’m sorry, what did you just sa-“
Then Em appeared and stabbed a piece of rusted metal into the man’s hand, her face twisted into a snarl (whelp, that’s my cue). Ed stood up and looked at the screaming man sympathetically.
“Just saying,” Ed asked Em, “but is this necessary?”
Em looked at the man coldly. “This man,” she stated, “has set back the search for my brother by a day at the most. As a result, I am angry, and, oh look! There’s someone who is unlucky enough to be worthy of my attention.” She stabbed the piece of metal into the man’s hand again for emphasis, eliciting another scream.
“Out of curiosity,” Ed said quietly. “Would your brother want you to torture this man?”
Em turned and looked at him silently. “No,” she replied, “I suppose not.” She sighed, and (rather reluctantly) pulled the (rather bloody) piece of metal out of the hand again. She looked at his hand inquisitively.
Ed crouched down again. “You should probably see a doctor,” he informed the man calmly. “You probably contracted tetanus, seeing as how rusty it was.” He dug around in his brown vest, pulled out a roll of medical cloth, and wrapped the man’s hand. “Out of curiosity, do you know where the nearest town is?”
The man hoarsely replied, “That way,” and he pointed further north up the road. “Two miles or so.”
“Well, that’s good,” Ed said. “You can walk over there, right?” The man nodded (more of a tilt up and down, though). Ed looked at Em, who had dug the sheaf of papers out of the Jeep donut and was dusting it off, coughing while she did so. Ed smiled at the man. “Best of luck to you, I suppose,” Ed said. Em came over, her face caked with dust, and brought down her foot on the man’s head, knocking him unconscious (and probably giving him a concussion. nice going, idiot).
Ed looked at Em, appalled. She shrugged unrepentantly. “What?” she said. “It was necessary.” Ed raised his eyes to the heavens (someday, he was going to have a long talk with her brother on how exactly Em was raised). “Nothing,” he replied, facepalming. “Let’s get out of here before you cause any more damage to the poor man’s body.”
Em raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing as they rode away from the smoking wreck and the bounty hunter (with tetanus and a concussion. whoopee).
Ed started to debate sending Em to a psychologist.
Chapter 7: What a Beautiful Day! WHAT A BEAU*QUOTE ALSO REMOVED FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS, YOU IDIOT*
EM
The two bikes roared along the highway in the darkness. The 2nd one in line had a shattered headlight, and was swathed in darkness.
At least, it would give the impression of that, if the person riding the front motorcycle wasn’t spewing a vitriol of cuss words, and generally threatening to rip out the trenchoat man’s intestines and shove them somewhere unmentionable.
Em finished her latest rant, and then sighed. Cussing while driving was cathartic in that one didn’t really have any control over what spewed out of his or her mouth, so everything that one had wanted to say and/or cuss out left one’s body. She looked in the side mirror at Ed, who was busily trying to search the darkness for the telltale lights of a vehicle.
“Ed!” she shouted over the shoulder, returning her focus back to the road. There was no response, and Em realized she was being an idiot, as the wind would rip away any words she would would say. She fumbled around in her pocket with one hand and brought out an earpiece and microphone, and hooked it around her neck and put the earpiece in her ear. She said Ed’s name again.
There was a crackle, and Ed’s tired voice came over the line. “Yo,” he said.
“See anything?” Em asked.
“No, not really,” Ed replied, yawning, while he did so. “We should catch up to him sometime though. I think. Bikes should be faster than Hummers… probably.”
Em sighed, and focused back on the road again while Ed chattered tiredly in her ear. If she ever found the man who took the papers… well. Her mouth suddenly split into a very wide smile. She would have lots and lots of fun.
)(
The man in the trenchcoat suddenly felt a chill down his spine. He looked in his rearview mirror, but didn’t see anything, and relaxed again. It was more than likely that the boy and girl were currently chasing him right now, due to the stupid motel manager seeing him on the way out. He should’ve killed him. Oh well.
He looked at the sheaf of papers again. As far as he could see, it had something to do with the laboratory up near Swallow’s Hills, judging from the reference of Dr. George as the supervisor. It was curious, though, that the laboratory up there was performing experiments on the Hole. He heard something about it performing biomutation experiments. Oh well. Not his problem.
He checked behind the Hummer again, and nearly crapped his pants when he saw the headlight of a motorcycle appear far behind him. He scrambled to turn his rear headlights off, and wondered if he had turned them off in time. The sound of his rearview window shattering answered his question.
)(
Em cursed. She had meant to hit the man in the head, or even one of the tires, but she missed. After all, she was on a motorcycle. Gun fights on motorcycles were impossible. Except for in movies. And this was nowhere close to a movie, as if this was, she would be played by another 20-ish actor pretending to be six or seven years younger than she actually was. She fired again, and a bullet pinged off the side of the Hummer. She cursed again, and then started to abuse the poor bike’s engine, driving faster.
“What exactly are you doing, Em?” Ed asked. “Why, you wouldn’t be thinking of, I don’t know, JUMPING on the jeep, would you?”
Em replied, pulling up next to the Hummer, “Get my bike.” Then she jumped off the bike and onto the Hummer’s roof. Ed started cursing at her with vaguely unpleasant expletives as the sound of his bike faded, presumably to retrieve Em’s bike.
Em then realized that she had done something utterly stupid. She was on the roof of a moving Hummer. More specifically, a Hummer that was moving over 75 miles per hour. She briefly considered that if she screwed up, she could die. Oh well. She brought down the butt of her gun on the windshield of the Hummer, cracking it instantly and blocking all visibility.
There was a muffled curse, and the man in the trenchoat poked his head out of the left window, gun in hand. Em brought her gun down on the man’s hand, and heard something break. The man screamed, and dropped the gun. This particular action also made the man jerk the wheel, and the Hummer turned 90 degrees. Em saw this as her cue, and rolled off the vehicle just as it flipped. She bounced a bit on the ground, getting scrapes and bruises on her face and arms, and then slid to a stop looking up. She heard the Hummer hit something hard. Ed walked into her view looking up. She smiled at him.
“Nice night, huh?” she said.
Ed whacked her over the head, and launched into a stream of expletives about how he was tired of picking up her bike.
Chapter 6: I feel sorry for whoever owns the hotel…
ED
To the man’s credit, he was fast.
The minute the man saw the gun (from a .44 Magnum at that too) he immediately turned so that his chest was parallel to the barrel of the gun. When Ed actually fired (wincing at the recoil; i mean, jesus freaking christ, what kind of masochists would make this?), the man was turned almost 30º from being completely parallel from the barrel of the gun. The bullet hit his chest, and then skirted along it, drawing sparks as it scraped along his chest, and then shattered a window.
The man staggered back, giving Ed the opportunity to lunge out of the bed frame and tackle him. The force of Ed’s tackle threw them into the (barely standing) wall, sending them into the next room over, which was full of unconscious people sprawled out on the floor and bed, apparently not caring about the machine gun rounds that went through their room (are those heroin needles? how strong are they that you can’t hear machine gun rounds ripping through the room next door?). They both landed on the floor (thankfully not landing on wasted junkies and causing a puke shower or getting a needle in their back), knocking the wind out of both of them. The man recovered first, and punched Ed in the stomach (dammit, man, i almost got my wind back), and shoved Ed off of him, rolling one way while Ed rolled the other way. Ed slowly got to his feet, groaning (where is my wind give me back my wind), while the man did likewise, pulling out a machete from his coat. Ed grinned, reached for his revolver (don’t bring a knife to a gun fight jacka-), and then, realizing that he had left his revolver in the other room, tackled the man. All of his other guns were stored in the gun crate… which was also in the other room. All he had… was nothing. Ed smiled weakly at the man, and started to slowly back away. The man lunged at him.
Ed immediately dodged backwards, wincing as the swipe from the machete drew a small graze on his cheek, and then, just barely, avoided having his arm cut off when the man embedded the machete in the bedpost. There was a gunshot in the other room, and the man’s head jerked left. Ed took this opportunity and kicked the man backwards (damn, i was aiming for his nether regions), who tripped over an unconscious junkie, and fell on the ground. Ed wrenched the machete from the bedpost, and grinned at the man. The man pulled out a submachine gun (MP5K, 9mm), and grinned back. Ed’s smile disappeared like a poof of wind (where were you when i needed you).
“I don’t suppose that I could pay more than whoever hired you paid?” Ed said resignedly (don’t look left don’t look left don’t look left).
The man briefly considered it. “Do you have 300,000 dollars on you?” he asked coyly.
“No.”
“Bad luck to you, then,” he said, and then his finger wrapped around the trigger.
There was a bang, and the man reeled back, cursing, as something pinged off his chest, sending him backwards. Em strolled into the room, aiming Ed’s revolver at the man. She fired again, but the man, sensing that not all had gone right, ran for the window, shoving Ed aside in the process, and dove out with the sound of shattering glass. Ed picked himself up, wincing gingerly (there goes my wind again), as Em ran to the window. She fired some shots at something, but cursed with the screech of tires. “He’s gone,” she said angrily.
“What took you so long,” Ed asked. “I mean, it’s not like you didn’t have a gun or something?”
Em pointed back into the other room. “That guy,” she said indifferently. Ed peeked into the other room and saw a corpse covered with so many stab wounds from heroin needles, wood shards, and a butterfly knife that it resembled a pincushion rather than a corpse. He looked at Em, who shrugged. “What?” she asked with a note of warning in her voice. “Nothing,” Ed said quickly, and looked back into the room. He was forgetting something… what was he forgetting… something to do with watermarks (OH YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH).
Ed whirled around to Em, eyes wide and panicked. “Where’s the papers?” he asked.
)(
The man in the trench coat drove at full speed down the road. He kept looking behind him as he drove. The hit had gone so, so wrong. Why him? Jesus Christ. His accomplice got killed, he lost his machete, and he failed in killing a teenage boy and girl. It was laughable. The only thing he could possibly salvage out of this… he looked at the passenger’s seat. There, covered with dust and wood chippings, was a sheaf of papers. He wondered what they could possibly contain. It was probably important. Sheafs of papers, with even a watermark, usually were.
Chapter 5: Paper Abuse… along with Bed Abuse, Door Abuse, Window Abuse, etc…
EM
Em read the final words of the report, groaned, and then threw the report at the wall. Ed caught it before it made impact, and smacked her over the head with it.
Em and Ed had read the report. Multiple times in fact, so many times that the report looked very ragged. And what had the report told them? Absolutely nothing.
The report was simple. It talked about number 3 through 5 of a series of experiments involving the Hole. Mostly, it was tossing remote measuring instruments up into the Hole. Interestingly enough, the recording instruments all went berserk, showing ludicrously high levels of whatever they were measuring, and then breaking spectacularly in showers of sparks. One even notes that the radiation meter exploded, causing multiple injuries, although none fatal.
However, the report said barely anything about Em’s brother. It mentioned that he was the head scientist in the trial on the top of every trial, but aside from a comment saying that her brother “had a stick up his ass” from a colleague, there was practically nothing about her brother. Although it did provide some good information, it said nothing about the location, or the time, or any useful details. It also didn’t mention who or what exactly her brother was working for. Hell, since it didn’t say the last name of her brother, for all she knew it could be a different person with the same name as her brother, while her actual brother was in a different department. The document was practically useless.
Em grabbed the report from Ed and threw it at the wall again. This time, it made contact before Ed could catch it again.
“Really, Em,” Ed complained as he picked the paper up the floor and dusted the paper off. “What did the paper ever do to you?”
Em didn’t answer him, and merely sighed. She had actually hoped that she would find her brother through the document, but what had she found? Absolutely nothing. She wanted to shoot the report. Actually, when she thought about it, why the hell not?
She was about to pull out her gun and demand Ed hand the paper over when Ed, still dusting the paper off and inspecting it for creases, paused and looked further at the document. “Huh,” he said. “There’s a watermark on the report, but it’s really faint.”
Em paused, confused. “What the hell is a watermark?” she asked.
“You know, on Microsoft Word 2007, and stuff like that, you can add like… a brand? A little sign Anyways, yeah, you could add something like that to the back of the report,” Ed explained.
“Actually, what’s Microsoft Office 2007?” Em asked.
Ed looked at her weirdly. “Didn’t you live near a lab?” he asked incredulously.
“Yeahhh…” Em confirmed, confused. She didn’t see where he was going with this.
“Didn’t you guys have computers?” Ed asked.
“Yeah, but no one could actually use them,” Em said. “They were reserved for the ‘scientist’ guys. All we got were typewriters.”
“Oh,” Ed said. “Okay. Well then.” He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Anyways, Microsoft Word 2007’s like an electronic typewriter, only about 10 times better. I think that whoever wrote this used Microsoft Word 2007… might be 2010 though because it looks a little more streamlined…”
Em took the paper from his hand, whacked him over the head with it, and handed it back to him. “Get to the point,” she curtly said.
Ed rubbed his head gingerly. “Fine, fine,” he said grudgingly. “Anyways, the author put a watermark on it. It’s really faint, but…” He switched on a lamp and held the report under the light. He cursed. “Nothing,” he said. “We might need to, I don’t know, get like a really, really bright light source. Like a floodlight or something.”
The lights went out. Ed looked up in confusion. “What the heck?” he asked. “What happened to the lights?”
Then, from outside, there was a clunk, and blindingly bright light flooded in through the windows, temporarily blinding Em. Judging from the clunk and the oof coming nearby, Ed had also been blinded and had fallen over. She blinked, trying to get her sight back. Actually, come to think of it, this seemed very familiar. Something like… something related to the police from a long time ago. Something… like SWAT’s dynamic entry tactic. Cut the power, blind, and then… breach… Her eyes widened, just as her sight came back. She lunged at Ed, knocking them both down, just before the window, door, and pretty much everything else was immediately destroyed by a hail of bullets.
)(
The man in the gray trench coat watched as his associate riddled the hotel room with a .50 caliber machine gun. He smiled. He would be making quite a profit tonight.
When he had received a contract from the Triad to kill two teenagers, he thought it was a joke. But, lo and behold, they were being fully serious. According to his employer, these two teenagers had destroyed an entire Triad bank on their own, killed 19 guards armed with machine guns and shotguns, and then pointed a gun in a Triad sergeant major’s face before escaping. His employer had said, specifically, to riddle them with so many bullets that there would be practically nothing left of them to bury. A Browning M2 would do that to a person, he wryly thought, as the M2 Browning ran out of bullets. His associate wiped his head, jumped down from the machine gun mount of the Hummer, and then walked over to him.
“Are we done here?” the man sleepily asked. The man in the trench coat frowned. His associate was quite a deadly man, but he liked sleep a little too much.
“No,” the man in the trench coat replied. He didn’t think that the two teenagers would know police entry tactics, seeing as though they were an organization from quite a long ago, but it was best to make sure. Additionally, if he fucked up and didn’t fully complete the job, there was usually a penalty involved. Usually the penalty was death. He pulled a submachine gun from his trench coat, and clicked off the safety as he walked toward the destroyed hotel room. He carefully stepped over the smoking ruins of the door, and surveyed the room. Everything in the room was destroyed, except for a mattress, which was draped haphazardly over the hollow frame of the bed. He didn’t see anything that looked explicitly like a body, but, again, .50 cal bullets would tear a man apart, so he wouldn’t know. He bent over and picked up a weird sheaf of papers on the ground, when the mattress was slid off the frame, and a nasty looking revolver was aimed at him from the hollow bed frame. A male voice gleefully said, “Peek-a-boo!” The gun fired.
Chapter 4: The No-Idea-Which-State-This-Is Submachine Gun Cactus Massacre
ED
Ed closed the door of the motel, and sat on the bed. He put his head between his knees, and took some deep, shuddering breaths. Then he threw the pillow at the wall (like that’s going to do anything).
He cursed Fate with all his heart (ignoring the fact that fate isn’t actually sentient). He had been so close. He had a gun barrel shoved straight in Mr. Song’s face. He could’ve blown off his face right there and then.
But no, Mr. Song just haaad to know that Em’s brother was alive. And then Ed had been caught off guard with the lemon grenade. A lemon grenade. It was stupid of him. He should’ve noticed the bloody grenade mechanism on top of the lemon, but nooooo, stupid, guns-for-brains Ed just looked at it once, saw some weird lumps at the top, and then dismissed it. He shouldn’t have trusted Mr. Song at all, and just ventilated him. He shouldn’t have just thought, Oh, I’ll just not keep my end of the deal and shoot him after we’re done. He should’ve remembered that Mr. Song was the man who committed the mass murder of an entire town, and got away with it. Of course he would have a contingency plan (men like him always do).
Ed stood up abruptly. He couldn’t be in here anymore. It was… (stifling? claustrophobic?) No, that wasn’t it. Nothing was wrong with the room itself, with an old flat-screen TV, a little dusty desk, yellow wallpaper (no relation to the Yellow Wallpaper), and a quaint little bed (quaint was the only way he could describe it, really. it just had that kind of feel). The problem, he realized was, with him. If he didn’t get out of here, he would probably get an assault rifle (probably the FN SCAR 17S, seeing as though how it was the one on top of the gun cart) and shoot up the room, causing possible damage to the room (dollars out the window) and perhaps a stray bullet into Em’s room, which was right next to his. He sighed, and walked over to the gun cart, which was next to the window. He unlocked the 16-digit character lock on the front, flipped up the cover, and dug around, intentionally avoiding the FN SCAR 17S on the top (the other residents of the hotel wouldn’t be happy if they got woken up by the sounds of the assault rifle in the middle of the night). He dug out the FN P90, found a suppressor (Full Autho Gemtech G5) and screwed it on. Then, after closing the gun cart and locking it, he stretched and slipped on his shoes. Then he opened the door and went out into the pale moonlight.
)(
Ed fired another burst into a cactus (he’ll probably be responsible for making the cactus population in this town extinct). It exploded nicely in shards of needles and chunks. Ed was suddenly grateful that he hadn’t brought a shotgun instead.
On the cacti’s part, though, exploding them was having a very nice effect on the stress he had accumulated over the last few days. He imagined Mr. Song’s face on each cactus before he shot it, and when it exploded, he felt something in him unclench a little more. Of course, this didn’t change the demonic urge within him to shoot Mr. Song to death (nothing except actually shooting Mr. Song would ever change that) but it helped him keep that urge a bit better at bay.
He aimed at another cactus, and pulled the trigger, but he heard a little click. The gun was out of ammo. And, as he realized, he had used all the magazines that he had allotted to himself for personal use (aw, man). He could use the magazines he had planned to include with the gun when he sold it, but he wanted good money for the gun, so he decided to go in for the night.
He turned around, and saw Em a little way off, heading toward him. He frowned. Wasn’t she asleep? What did she want at this time of night? (probably wanting to know why she was hearing suppressed gunshots) Em stopped just beyond the ring of exploded cacti, and looked around with an amused expression on her face.
“What we have here, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, adopting an over-the-top detective voice (something like Sherlock Holmes), “is a crime scene. I do wonder what happened here. Innocent dead cacti, and a teenage boy holding a submachine gun that’s still smoking, in the middle of the night.”
“I-“ Ed got out, before Em’s eyes comically widened and said, “Oh, my! I have found the murderer!” She pointed at Ed. “It was you!” (no shit, Sherlock)
“Ha ha ha,” Ed said dryly. “Very funny.”
Em shrugged, and said, “At least you’re back to normal.”
Ed looked at her (what does she mean normal?). “Normal?” he asked questioningly.
“You don’t look as tired,” Em said, “and you don’t, well, look as angry as you were with that man.” She cocked her head questioningly. “I think. I ight be wrong.”
Ed shook his head. She wasn’t wrong. Exploding the cactuses had certainly helped (i salute your service, cactuses), but he also felt more relaxed just from being out of Mr. Song’s presence. (i would probably be more relaxed if i could shoot him, though) He filed the thought away for later. “What about you,” he asked. Mr. Song had played with her too (“playing” is a very light way of putting it), so she might be feeling out of it.
She shrugged. “It didn’t affect me as much,” she said. “I didn’t know him as well, and he didn’t know me as well, so he didn’t really have a bunch of content to go on. I was busy with the pictures, anyway.”
He thought this was a good time to ask. “Did you read the report?”
Em shrugged. “No, actually, not yet. I wanted you to get some sleep before we actually read the report.” She indicated to the exploded cacti around them. “Although there’s not really a point, now. Do you want to read it now?”
“Sure,” Ed said. He switched the safety on the FN. “Probably better than culling the cactus population.”
Chapter 3: A Deal with the Devil in the Pale Blacklight
*Double release today and tomorrow, due to ACT last week. Whelp. :P*
EM
Em sat in the chair, her revolver idly resting against her thigh. She detected huge amounts of bullcrappery, and briefly considered just shooting Mr. Song in the head. She dismissed the thought.
When Ed had finally walked out of the strange room in the closet, Em had been worrying that something had happened, as she hadn’t heard a gunshot, and was debating whether or not to enter the room guns blazing. She stood up from the couch, holstering her revolver, and then frowned at Ed’s face, which was twisted between fury and despair. He pointed back there.
“He… wants you,” he said, his voice pained and furious
Upon entering the room in the closet, Em first saw the mysterious Mr. Song whom Ed had dreamed about killing all these years, and immediately thought there was something unnerving about him. It wasn’t his appearance. He was a short Chinese man, who was somewhere in between thin and overweight. His face wasn’t good-looking, but it wasn’t particularly ugly. Mr. Song looked perfectly average.. This averageness made it hard for Em to imagine that he was the man who had ordered the executions of Ed’s entire family. No, it wasn’t the averageness. What was unnerving about Mr. Song was his expression. The expression seemed perfectly neutral, but underneath it was a strong hint of malice. Em’s trigger finger felt itchy.
Mr. Song smiled as she came in the door. “Hello, there,” he said. “You must be Emily. Come, sit.” He gestured to a leather chair in front of his desk. He spoke like a friendly parent. Em’s trigger finger felt itchier.
As she sat, Em warily replied, “What do you want?” The fact that he knew her name put her on edge. Ed leaned against the wall, his fingers idly tapping on the butt of one of his guns.
“Why, to tell you some fabulous news, of course,” Mr. Song cheerfully replied. “Do you want to know it, Mrs. Jones?”
Emily bluntly replied, “Sure.”
“Your brother’s alive, Mrs. Jones,” Mr. Song said, drawing out the words with a sense of delight.
Em felt like she had been shot. Ed had warned her, just before he went in, to brace herself, but for something like this… impossible. Mr. Song was playing with her. She drew her revolver and pointed it at him.
“You’re playing with me. I saw him die!” Em snarled, just barely fighting the urge to shoot him. In fact, she thought, let’s just shoot him. Her finger tightened around the trigger before Ed’s hand gently shifted the barrel of the revolver away from Mr. Song.
“As much as I would agree with you that this man needs to die,” Ed said, “just… listen to him. Then we’ll decide whether or not to shoot him.”
“Very well put, Mr. Tango,” Mr. Song said, smiling. Ed grimaced as if the remark bit him. Em grudgingly sat down, and rested her revolver on her thighs. Ed sighed, both in relief and in regret, and leaned against the wall again. Em thought that it was stupid that Ed trusted her to keep her temper, but, out of respect that Mr. Song was Ed’s person to kill, not Em’s, resolved herself not to lose her temper.
“Well, now that there are no interruptions,” Mr. Song said, acting as if he didn’t just have a gun barrel aimed at his face, “I’m going to continue. Mrs. Jones, your brother is alive.”
He leaned down and opened a file cabinet. Ed immediately pulled a black, stub-nosed revolver from his holster and aimed at him. Mr. Song chuckled. “Relax,” he said. “I’m just getting a folder.”
Em carefully watched Mr. Song as he dug around in the file cabinet, pulled out a random bright-yellow lemon and placed it on his desk, found a light-brown folder labeled Jones, and closed the cabinet. Mr. Song didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Mr. Song looked at Ed, who was still aiming a gun at him. “Now, Mr. Tango, if you could aim that gun away from me…” Ed grunted, and reluctantly placed the pistol back in its holster. Mr. Song sighed, and shook his head in mock disgust. “My, my, so many interruptions.”
He placed the folder on the desk, and opened the folder. Inside the brown folder were three pictures and a report. Em grabbed the pictures first, and looked at them. Her heart skipped a beat.
It was her brother. Her brother. A little scruffy, a little older, and a lot more tired, but it was her brother. The three pictures were of him in a white room, dressed up in a white jumpsuit, and frantically working out formulas on a whiteboard. In the background, other scientists watched, some in awe and others in understanding, along with a man in dark-grey armor, dark goggles, and a black helmet, clutching a black shotgun. Em couldn’t get enough of the pictures, and she kept looking at them, feeling for the first time in six years a feeling of hope. As she devoured the pictures with her eyes, she saw, in the corner of her eye, Edward reaching out for the report in the folder. Then something fell on the floor and rolled in front of her feet. She looked at it.
It was a lemon-colored grenade pin.
Em froze and looked up. Ed was frozen in the same place he was before, looking at Mr. Song. Mr. Song had the report in one hand, and in the other hand, the lemon. Although now, as Em looked closer, it was a lemon with the top part of a grenade. Mr. Song was tightly holding the bar part of the lemon grenade closed.
Ed made a choking sound. “I didn’t know you were a Portal fan,” he ground out.
Mr. Song smiled ruefully. “I actually had a son who worked at Valve before the Hole appeared,” he said. “He gave me a free copy of the Portal games for my birthday, and I played them.” He shrugged. “Unsurprisingly, the fact that people would make grenades in the shape of lemons still surprise people.”
Something released in his face, and his face warped into an unhinged smile. Something akin to the burning fires of hell flickered behind his eyes. “Looks like we are truly in an unfortunate situation here, aren’t we?” he cooed. “If you kill me, we all die. But, on the other hand, if you let me live, then we all win. You don’t die by way of explosion, you get this report, and as an added bonus…” His smile twitched up even higher. “I’ll write down a very, very important question on the back of the report. But that means I have to live.” His smile, impossibly, twitched up even higher. “What do you say?”
Em briefly brought back the thought of shooting Mr. Song in the head, but dismissed it, as she didn’t think that being consumed in an explosion from a lemon grenade would help her brother. But, as she saw in alarm, Ed’s hand was slowly twitching toward a revolver.
“Ed…” she said in warning. Ed’s hand stopped, but he stared with absolute hatred toward Mr. Song.
“One day, I will come back and kill you,” Ed growled. “One day.”
Mr. Song smiled predatorily and said, “And I can’t wait to see what comes of that day.” He looked at both of them. “So I’m guessing you’re going to let me live then?” he asked. “Excellent.”
Holding the grenade in one hand, he put the report down on the desk, and scribbled something on the back of it quickly. He handed it to Ed, and gestured toward the door.
“If that’s all you need, then I do believe our business is done here,” Mr. Song said, his face back to normal. “I do hope you’ll come visit me again, Mr. Tango and Mrs. Jones. I guess it will be a truly unforgettable experience.”
He waved goodbye with the grenade as Em and Ed backed out of the room, and, as Em closed the door to the closet, quietly laughed.
Em looked at Ed, and saw that he suddenly looked tired beyond belief. She tentatively asked, “Shall we go?”
Ed slowly nodded, and as they exited the bank, she looked down on the back of the report. Mr. Song had written, “What is the Hole?”
Chapter 2: From Worse to… Already Worse
ED
“I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” the old woman remarked out of the blue. The young boy looked at her in confusion. They were sitting in the chairs his parents had installed on the ceiling, he on a comfy plush armchair, his grandma in a rocking chair. “Er, Grandma… do you remember who I am?” the boy tentatively asked. The old woman snapped at him, “Don’t you dare think I have Alzheimer’s! My mind is still sharp as ever, thank you very much.” She sighed. “No, what I meant was that I don’t know what’s become of the world anymore. I mean, think about it. We live in a world where the moon is full every night, and gravity goes topsy-turvy every day. Back in my day…”
The boy sighed inwardly (oh no not this again). He had heard this every day (at least when grandma had stayed with them), and finished her sentence with her. “The moon would come out full once a month, and gravity would remain normal, day and night.” “Good,” the old woman sighed, smiling. “I’m glad to see you’re working that into that big brain of yours.” (big brain? that didn’t make much sense…)
The old woman reached out to pat his cheek. For some reason, the pat felt more like a slap. Then Ed realized it was a slap, and then he woke up.
)(
Ed woke up sitting up. For a second, he wondered why he had woken up sitting up. Then he remembered the explosion that had hurtled him into this wall, and was satisfied with that reason. Then he saw a girl with brown hair (er… m-something… oh! Em!) crouched in front of him, a gun in her right hand (a Browning Hi-Power Mark III, 9mm variant), her left hand rearing back to slap him ag(wait, i don’t want to be slapped). Ed snapped out of his reverie and grabbed her hand.
“Oh,” Em remarked, looking at him (is that… disappointment?). “You’re awake.”
“Yup,” Ed said, rubbing his cheek (ow ow ow em hits way too hard). He looked around. They were in a bank (presumably the triad leader’s headquarters) that was pockmarked with bullet holes. There were multiple columns all throughout, glass cubicles, and there was a large set of stairs leading up to a set of double doors. One of the columns had collapsed, and, judging from the blood seeping out from under it, it had crushed someone. Dead bodies were lying all over the floor, guns still clutched in their cooling hands(one TEC DC-9, a Ruger LCRx, a Remington Model 870 Wingmaster, a.. Thompson Submachine Gun? did the triads think this was the 1920s or something? he’ll have to grab that later), and puddles of blood spreading over the cool linoleum floor. It seemed as though Em had killed everyone on the bottom floor (judging from the sheer amount of bullet casings on the ground, she had missed a lot). Then he noticed one of the bullet casings was starting to float off the ground.
“Er.. Em,” Ed said nervously, using the wall to stand up. “How long was I out?”
Em thought for a second. “30 minutes? An hour?” she guessed. “I don’t know. I was… busy. Why?”
Ed looked at her(crap crap crap). “We got here at around 5, right?” he asked.
“Ye-“ Em started to say, and then paused as a look of realization came over her face. She looked out the window, and Ed looked out the window with her. It was still night (thank god) but Ed couldn’t see the moon.
Then the Hole appeared over the horizon, along with the first shreds of light.
“Shit,” Ed and Em said at the same time, just as their feet lifted off the ground.
)(
Ed heard something weird, and looked over at Em, who he discovered to be… hyperventilating. She looked like she was panicking.
“Well, shit,” Ed said in the most calm way he could think of (shit shit shit shit shit omg we’re going to die shit shit shit).. They were in the worse situation possible. As far as he knew, there were still people in the building, who would undoubtedly murder him and Em once they recovered from the reversal of gravity. And, looking from it, Em was in the grips of crippling PTSD (knowing that your brother disappeared in the same way would do that).
“Em!” he yelled. Em still looked pale, but she nodded as he pointed at the door. Ed grabbed the wall and pushed off toward the double doors. Due to an error in judgement (more like a suicidal over-confidence) he only brought his hip and ankle holsters. He left the rest of the guns in a storage unit (i should’ve brought at least a SAW or something…), along with the motorcycles (each one inside a spherical container). It didn’t matter, as there was a very convenient submachine gun lying (floating) in front of him. He grabbed the tommy gun, and then landed on the wall next to the double doors (actually, he was going to land feet-first on the door, blow a thousand holes through the door, and then enter, but this worked too). Em landed on the other side of the doors. She still looked pale, but she looked a tiny bit better. She pulled her Browning, and whispered to him, “On the count of three.”
Ed nodded (despite the fact it was such a cliché), and readied his tommy gun. Then he realized that he couldn’t actually ready a tommy gun, and just aimed it at the door. Then he realized that the metal thing poking through the barely open doors was a gun barrel (Steyr AUG, 45 mm) and kicked the door in, sending the man who was trying to aim the gun toward Ed into the wall. This particular action also revealed the two men who had shotguns (Remington Model 870 Wingmaster, 12 gauge) who were also behind the door. They had surprised faces as Ed tore them into pieces with the tommy gun (whelp there go the shotguns… whoops well at least there’s still the aug… wait never mind). He sighed. What a waste of money. He could’ve sold those for hundreds of dollars, and bought lots and lots of guns, and then sold those guns for even more guns.
He slung the tommy gun over his back (no more bullets) and then pulled his revolver (Smith & Wesson Model 629 Double-Action) and cocked the hammer. He looked around the room. It was one of those waiting rooms, with a row of chairs along one side of the room, a closet on the other side, a little, short table in the middle of the room. There was no door though he immediately shot the closet, seeing a slight movement in the doors. There was a choking sound, and a man (now dead, of course- a bullet to the head would do that) fell out of the closet holding a fire axe. He looked down at the body (no guns… pity). He looked back up at the closet where the man was hiding. In the closet, there was a little passage (what? why would the entrance be in the closet? that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever), and, at the very end (at least from what he could see) it turned right. There was light reflecting at the very end. He grinned. The only person who would be frivolous enough to put the entrance in the closet… he only knew of one man (found you, you cocksucker).
He looked at Em, who was currently sitting on the ceiling, waiting for gravity to fully reverse. She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been waiting for this for a long time, right?” she said. “Go ahead. I’ll take care of anyone who comes in after you.”
Ed smiled. “Thank you,” he said, just as gravity fully reversed. As his feet touched the ceiling, he pulled the gun from the left side of his hip, the pistol (Beretta M9, semiautomatic) he hadn’t touched in over six years with one bullet left in it, and started down the passageway in the closet. He turned left at the passage (everything was upside down, so left was right) and found himself facing a room. The room had two chairs and two desks, each one of which was bolted to the ceiling and floor. The chair on the ceiling, currently the ground, had a man in it. He looked up.
“Mr. Tango, I suppose,” the man said calmly. His face was emotionless.
“Mr. Song,” Ed replied. He raised the pistol in his hand.
Song cocked his head. “Look at you now, Edward,” he said, with only a slight sense of… was that interest? Satisfaction? “You’ve actually managed to put me in a position where I have more than a 90% chance of death. You must be proud of yourself.”
“Not particularly,” Ed replied. He finally had his family’s murderer at gunpoint, and yet… oddly… he felt wary. He could kill Song right now, without any repercussions, but something felt very, very wrong. He himself was in no danger, but he had this weird feeling that if Song kept talking, then… he would miss his chance (maybe even permanently). He wrapped his finger around the trigger, and prepared to pull.
“You know, Edward, I heard something from an associate of mine,” Mr. Song replied as if the gun meant nothing to him. “You’re traveling with one Emily Jones. Would you like to hear something involving her?”
Ed stopped. Here it came. Most likely, it would be a dark secret about Em. Whatever he heard, he told himself, he would kill Song right here and right now. No matter what.
Song smiled. “I heard that her brother, one Marcus Jones, is alive.”
Ed froze. What did he just say?
Song leaned forward, like a cat observing a mice under its paw. “And, if you don’t kill me, I will tell you where he is.”
Chapter 1: Just a Boy and a Girl, in the Middle of the Desert…
EM
The girl shot the man in the face.
As he fell, the girl proceeded to shoot the man again in the face, in the neck, in the heart, and in the balls for good measure.
The boy next to her with slitted eyes and stone black hair. scratched his neck blithely. Casually, he remarked, “A bit too much, perhaps?”
“Shut up,” the girl snapped back as she looted the dead body. She had brown, bitter eyes, brown hair cut short, and a grim mouth with a scar on one end. As she worked, she kept an eye on the boy, who had taken one of his prized guns out of his holster, a revolver in this case, and was busy spinning the barrel. The boy was dressed in long, brown pants, a white dress shirt, and a brown vest with a lot of pockets. Also, there were so many guns on his body it was ridiculous. He had two ankle holsters, one on each ankle, about four holsters on his hip, and so many guns slung on his back that the girl couldn’t count how many. In addition to that, there was a wheeled crate full of guns behind his motorcycle, each one, she knew from watching him many, many nights, lovingly maintained. The girl sighed, and stood up. What more could she expect from Edward Tango, infamous gun dealer and rogue?
She herself was dressed in a black trench coat that flowed around her ankles. Under it, she wore black jeans, a brown T-shirt, and a police vest filled with grenades, knives, a make-shift flame-thrower (for some reason, she could never find it when she actually needed it), among other things. She had scraped off the sewed-on POLICE on the vest, and was going to sew on something else, but, sadly, she had no idea how to use needles. The best she got was a M on the vest, and she settled for that.
“So, Em,” Ed said, grinning, “what should we do with that idiot?” He jerked his head toward the man who was running away from them frantically, illuminated in the light of the moon.
Em silently pulled out the Browning Hi Power she had at her hip, aimed, and fired. The man kept running. She fired again. The man still kept running. She fired again. The man still kept running. She got pissed, and prepared to fire again, but Ed, laughing like a hyena, without looking, pulled out the revolver from earlier and fired. The man screamed and fell, his hands clenched to his right knee.
Ignoring Ed, who was laughing so hard he was on the ground clutching his stomach, Em stalked over to the man, who looked up at her and started to scoot backward in a panic. Em pulled out a black rod from her vest and flicked it, expanding the baton, and flicked it at the man’s face. The man cried out in pain and his hands jerked up to his face, where a red bruise was forming. Em lashed out at the man’s knee, kicked him in the face when his hands jerked down to his knee, and then lashed his knee again. Then Em grabbed the man’s collar and shoved him onto the ground.
“Who, exactly,” Em said, cracking her baton across the man’s face, “sent you idiots after me?”
“Fuck you,” the man hissed at her. Em sighed, and pulled out her Browning. She fired one shot next to the man’s head, tested the barrel with a finger, and fired the Browning again.
“What the fuck are you doing, you bitch?” the man hissed, and then screamed in pain as Em dug the Browning’s barrel into his knee. Em pulled the Browning back.
“I’ll repeat the question again,” Em said. “Who sent you?”
“Fuck you!” the man cried out.
Em had to hold her Browning to his knee about two more times before the man gave in.
The man cried, “It was a man! We met him in Swallows’ Fall! He was Chi-Japa- I don’t know! He had two guys with him, two guys with, like, machine guns!”
“Thank you,” Em said. Em looked at Ed, who was examining the pistol that the first man had. “What should we do with this one? I think he should die.” She aimed the Browning at the forehead of the man.
Ed stood up and walked over to the man. He cocked his head at the man, who was looking up at Em in fear. “I vote he lives,” Ed said.
Em looked at Ed. He looked amused as usual, his face otherwise unreadable. Em lowered her Browning and holstered it, for all the good it did the man. “Shoo,” Em said. The man picked himself up, and started to run away, limping and clutching his knee.
“You do realize,” Em said, watching the man disappear into the distance, “that with that knee wound, the chances of him making it back to wherever he came from before the Hole comes up is around zero?”
“A tiny chance is better than no chance,” Ed remarked, getting on his motorcycle. He revved the engine. “Coming? We have a Triad leader to kill.”
Em sighed, and walked back to her motorbike, which had skidded some distance away when Em had swerved to avoid the RPG the dead man had fired at her. She picked it up, looked it over for damage, and, seeing nothing significant, slung one knee over it. She turned on the engine, and began the long journey to Swallows’ Fall.
The World Falls Up 
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