"Who wants to go for a light jog?" Jessie suggests.
"To the complete opposite side of the building?"
"Mhm."
"One of you better tell us who the hell you are before we pound your shit in." The leading grunt threatens.
"That's no way to ask someone a favor! If you're more kind about it, I might be motivated to give you my name."
"They're those Curators! Two of them were competing in the ring!" A voice behind the grunt shouts.
"The disguise really was useless." I sigh.
"So you do know who we are! Then why'd you even ask?" Jessie taunts.
We're a group of people they obviously don't like, in a place we definitely shouldn't be, and Jessie's acting in the most non-compliant way we possibly can. I can see where the situation is headed. I wish it could go any other way, but it's too late to change it now. Ever since being branded an Antique, I've been fated to endure non-stop unpredictable hardships. And if I want to survive, if I want to live for her, I have to adapt.
No more sitting around and following orders. It's time to act…
So, I inhale the resolve that was pounded out of my body, gather new strength in her memory, and let my feet burn a path in the carpet away from the situation.
This is it! If I can get a head start, I can make it away from Jessie, Victoria, and that room of gang members! I can sneak out of the arena, call Ghislain, and get him to teleport me back home! I'll be safe, and nobody can say I broke any rules!
This is their mess, they made it, and I have nothing to do with it!
"Nice hustle Ren!"
"Ah!" In the depths of my inner monologue, I hadn't noticed the superhero-shaped missile streaking by my side.
"We should make a secret signal between each other in the future. That way, next time either of us wants to start running we can discretely notify the other and we won't be left behind."
Tremors lick at my toes every time my feet hit the ground. The walls shake against the strength of an earthquake that's cascading behind me.
"What is that!?"
"What do you think it is?" A step behind me and Jessie, Victoria is resting on the back of her man-servant. His face is straining while he's forced to carry Victoria at the same pace. "We're getting chased."
"Chased?"
The sound reverberates like a drum line, every step we take sucks us further into the vibration's maw. I turn around and spy the foaming mouths from the party we interrupted glaring at us.
They're relentless! I'm already exhausted! I have to go faster!
"Get back here!" One of them yells.
Don't die, don't die, don't die!
"Jessie...!" My throat gets bogged by spit, almost choking me for speaking. "Stop them!"
"Don't use my secret identity Ren!"
"Forget the name! Ack! Do something!"
"I can't 'forget the name'! That's my most important character trait! I took a whole week thinking of it!"
"If you two bums won't do anything, I'll take care of it! Call it a fair trade for you paying for my lunch!" Victoria hops off the slave's back, sprinting in time with us. "New guy, shoot behind us wildly! Don't bother looking!"
The order spawns a mind in the guy's left hand. He takes his gun, turns it towards the crowd, and pulls the trigger as fast and as many times as possible.
My hands jump to my ears, and the subsequent flashes startle my eyes. The muffled bangs play about eleven times, then die down. The calm after the storm of bullets lets me turn around to see the whole crowd ducked down, but no one looks injured. They all quickly get back up and converge for a quick check-up. After ensuring each other's well-being they all continue chase, this time even more pissed than they were before. Their short stop gives us a little distance though. They're still gaining on us, but it bought us some-
About half of our aggravated pursuers reach their hands down their pants or into their pockets. Then black and silver guns slip out of their hiding spots. The crowd fires without warning and without restraint, forcing a scattershot of bullets to spray behind us. The lead rebounds on the suffocating walls and jumps off the ceiling whizzing past my ears and face.
"Shit!"
I scramble faster, hoping to outrun or fortunately evade the little packages of death that weave through this hall of horror. I almost trip myself as I try to duck a series of shrapnel that would've split open my head. It feels like I'm in the jaws of an animal, and I have to run for my life if I want to avoid getting bitten by its hundreds of teeth!
And Jessie isn't making this any easier!
It's like they've become a bullet as well, mimicking the way they bounce off the walls and sporadically jump from place to place. Their makeshift cape dances around the bullets, remaining unscathed, and the dark glasses they pillaged are still glued to their face. Jessie zips through the danger with a wide grin, staying a few steps ahead of me and Victoria.
Speaking of her, her strategy of dodging is just holding onto her captive's body. She's probably hoping whatever bullets have a chance of hitting her dig into her ride instead.
"Hm, it seems like they were going easy on us." Jessie comments while they duck under a bar of bullets.
"What did you do Victoria!?" I screech.
"They're trying to kill us Ren, don't tell me you're getting cold feet about retaliating."
"That's not what I'm saying! Make him aim at them so he hits them!" A gust of wind snips at my hand, and a dead round clinks ahead of me.
"Are you trying to bankrupt me?"
"What are you talking about!?" I stutter for a moment to dodge a piece of lead that would've blown out my knee.
"I have to pay the people I control an appropriate amount according to what I make them do. If he saw himself shooting people he knew, that'd cost me an arm and a leg's worth of things. Depending on how much he likes them, the house could even disappear and get used to pay him! But if he doesn't see what he's shooting at, then I can reduce the cost! It's all about getting him to do something he wouldn't necessarily disagree with!"
"That does nothing to fix the problem you started!"
"Then you shoot em'!"
"I can't do that! My aim is terrible! That mission in Alaska was the first time I touched a gun!"
"Then stop complaining! I'm doing my best!"
"Jessie, you do it! Use your revolver!"
"My revolver for these guys? That's a little overkill don't you think?"
"Overkill!? I want you to overkill these guys sky-high! Blast them through the mall upstairs if you-" My screaming almost makes my feet crash into each other. But Jessie catches me, pulling me back to balance.
"How about instead of thinking about shooting the people behind us, we run with everything we've got!" Jessie encourages. "No use having a training day if we die at the end!"
My lungs weep with every step we take along the circle hallway. The rug scrapes my naked feet, giving me the traction to run at my best even without shoes.
I know I'm going to feel decimated tomorrow, it already feels like someone ripped and tore every muscle in my body. But if I stop now, they're literally going to rip every muscle in my body. I've got to go! Go Ren! Go for her!
My aging legs hit speeds I haven't felt since I was in high school. The stagnant air is blustering the sleeves of my new clothes and combing back my peachy strains of hair. Lead bombs drizzle danger through the hall. The imminent threat stepping at my heels feels like it's grown stagnant, that we're keeping an equal pace.
I want to turn around to check if what I'm feeling is real, but abandoning the focus I have now might be the death of me. As long as I keep up with Jessie and Victoria, I might live.
So we run. And run…
And the distance didn't seem this bad when we were walking…
"Whew, this training is a little more intense than I thought it'd be! But any experience is good experience!" Jessie chimes.
"Quit... with the lines... and run..."
"We'll be fine." Victoria says. "If we need to I can toss this guy I'm controlling into them to slow them down."
"How easily... you're prepared to... gah- throw away this man's life is... frightening. You're insane..." Talking this much torches my lungs and takes my focus off my legs. I have to shut up.
"I don't appreciate the hurtful comments Ren. I'm just doing what I need to keep us safe."
I open my mouth to spit out some insult from my burning throat, then see a small bullet rebounding off the floor. The small piece of reflection shines on a path towards Victoria, and I don't think she's noticed. I can't tell if it'll hit, I can't be 100% sure, but either way, something takes over me. Something that moves my right hand without thinking between Victoria and the bullet.
Shit! A sharp pain radiates from my palm as lead slides in and lodges itself inside. I chomp down on my lip to stifle a scream, and nearly trip again.
"Ren!" Jessie screams as they sees blood erupt from my hand. "You're hit!"
"Mfm!" My hand feels like it's on fire! Trying to move it agitates the wound and sends the pain through my body! But I can't stop, shit I can't stop! Stopping means a dozen more of these holes. Stopping means dying!
"Ren are you good?" Victoria asks.
"I'm fine, just keep going!" My left-hand grips my other wrist, and adrenaline fixes the engine behind my chest, quiets my exhausted breaths, and puts me into overdrive. My feet stomp past Victoria's manservant and almost match Jessie.
A small three-step decline presents itself, one we all jump down without a second thought. But a second, after we clear the light obstacle, a heavy sound and a chorus of groans, echo behind us. Yes! Hopefully that gives us enough time to get whatever Antique they have and get the hell out of here!
Their sudden fall gives us a commanding lead in the race for our lives, running with these plain unending walls until they gain a familiar feature. On the left wall a red door identical to the one we released the first horde from waves us down.
"Did we... *huff* go in a circle!?"
"Nope, this should be the place!" Jessie wastes no time, planting their palm on the handle, eager to see what's inside.
"Wait!" The last time we opened up a door here we caused the same problem that's still biting at our backs!
But my plea doesn't reach them in time, as their hand twists the knob and we invite ourselves into whatever's waiting behind it. Inside, there's a similar-sized crowd as the first door we opened up, except they're far more orderly. The eclectic group is all crowded around the window, swallowed up by whatever Rosa is doing in the ring out there.
"Hey, we made it!" Jessie cheers.
The men and women in the box look at us with surprise, then after they process our arrival, their eyebrows scrunch together almost all at once and their hands start moving to different places around the room. Places in the room that just so happened to have guns lying around.
"Woah woah, wait!" I yell.
"Backs against the walls, everyone!" Jessie's bright smile is discordant with their frantic scramble to the wall, but I move with them and Victoria and pin my back against the wall next to the door.
Hellfire bursts from the doorway, shredding the door into splinters and scraps. A million pieces of explosive lead erect a wall out the doorframe. But because the three of us dodge before the blasts can hit, we all seem fine. The only one to not move, presumably because Victoria was too lazy to give him the command to move, is Antoine.
I have to turn my head from the scene. I don't need to see what happened to know. My eyes watch the carpet, trying to avoid looking over a few feet to the body. But my mind can't stay clear of it. His blood desperately pools under my shoes. It sticks to me like mud and holds me in its quagmire so I can watch him die.
I get the courage to look at him, and his motionless corpse shapeshifts. His muscles deflate into soft dainty skin, and a wave of blue hair crashes from his scalp. The corpse of a man I don't know looks like someone I've known for my entire life. Their face is hidden in the floor, but I know them. She needs my help!
My good hand reaches for her, hoping that just a touch can save her, can revive her from the dead just for a second longer.
"What are you doing!?" Victoria's hand grips around my arm, saving me from walking right into the line of fire.
It snaps me back. Back to the circle hallway. Back to the persistent gunfire, a little duller than before. And back to the body. A body that doesn't remotely resemble her.
I plant my back against the safe wall. "Thank you Victoria."
"You whine about me almost killing us in a car crash, then you actually try to kill yourself!? I'll have to stick close to you from now on so you don't do something crazy."
"This- This was a one-time thing, I'll be fine!"
"That's what everyone says before they do something crazy." My eye catches a silver shine in Victoria's hand. A weighty steel firearm gripped in her palm.
"What are you doing with that?"
"Well he doesn't need it anymore," She says motioning to the corpse. "Thought I'd keep it."
"No no no! You don't need a gun! You need a license for one!"
"I'll be fine! Plus, I'm attached to it now! It even has a name- Taxes!"
"Taxes?"
"The one thing you can't avoid..."
"Give me tha-" After the short decrescendo, the door vomits more bullets at us. Damn it! How many bullets do they have!? How long are they going to blindly fire at us?
If they find out where we are, or a bullet happens to rebound off the other wall, we're finished!
Even if they're not hitting me, the sounds are reverberating anxiety in my chest. The beat of my heart is straining to match time with the shots. Getting shot once is enough today!
A gunshot different from the thousands around me pops. One that's close enough to nearly blow my ear off. My eyes eek open for a second, and Jessie's disappeared.
He left us! That ba- "Don't blink, or you'll miss seeing the White Phantom!" I hear from the other side of the door. That stupid line amped with an explosive tone plants their image in my mind.
"How did you-" A man bellows in a deep accented voice.
The door retires from pushing walls of bullets at us. I grab the wall as a deep sigh almost deflates me to my knees.
They're prioritizing Jessie rather than us. "Can we all just take a nice deep breath and cool down? It'll help minimize your casualties!" They made it inside!