So by following me, he had been trying to slow me down. Why? Because he had wanted to give whoever he had played with some more time to get prepared for my arrival.
Meaning someone or something was waiting for me to arrive at my place.
Sure, I could be wrong in my conclusions, but some sort of spider sense told me that there was a trap in my safe house. I hadn’t gotten any warning messages about intruders. Which only meant that whoever had been or still was in my safe house had found a way around all my security systems.
I pulled from the curb and slowly drove around the block, looking for any suspicious vehicles parked nearby. However, there were no players in this part of the city. Or they had holed up somewhere so that to avoid being spotted.
I parked against the curb in front of the main entrance to the building again and switched off the engine. After I stepped out of the car, I gave the street another look-over. Everything seemed peaceful and quiet. Was it the calm before the storm? Time to find out.
However, before entering the building, I decided to check my garage first. As soon as I entered it, my heart sank. All the five cars were totally destroyed. The windows were shattered and the tires were ruptured. The bodies of the vehicles were crushed as if someone had been beating them with sledgehammers.
The luxury sports car seemed to have suffered the worst part of the savage attack. The car was reduced to a pile of debris. Even the armored SUV was obliterated. Whoever had been in here must have used a powerful explosive to destroy the car.
There was no player hiding in the garage.
Anger slowly rising inside of me, I entered the building and walked to one wall. After I touched it, a section of the wall slid aside, revealing the car of the elevator. I punched in the code and the door of the elevator parted and slid open. As I rode it one floor down, I pulled my pistol and got ready. When the door slid open, I walked into my safe house, leading with the Sig Sauer.
The place was totally trashed. The pieces of the destroyed luxury furniture littered the floor. The expensive electronic devices were demolished. All the weapons and ammo were gone. It seemed like a tornado broke out in this place.
Suddenly, I heard someone talking. I whirled around, bringing my pistol to eye level, ready to gun down whoever was about to attack me.
Yet there was no one behind me. The voice was coming from a door to the security room. Suddenly, it was quiet again. I started walking toward the door. It was ajar. Then a muted voice reached my ears from the room again. I took in a long breath, kicked the door open, and burst in the security room.
It was small, so as soon as I got inside, I saw that there was nobody in the room. Off to my right, a bank of security monitors was mounted on the wall. All of them, except for one, were shattered.
I walked toward the wall and looked at the only monitor screen that was still working. It showed a ten-second looped video. I saw two players standing in the middle of my safe house, a girl and a guy. Then the guy walked up to the camera, which had recorded this video, and looked into the lens.
He said, “You shouldn’t have fucked with us, Striker.”
Then he brought up a pistol and shot the camera down. Then the video started to replay from the beginning.
I knew who these two players were. They had made sure I would recognize them. Both the girl and the guy were wearing skull design balaclavas in this video. Moreover, the guy was speaking in a thick, easily recognizable accent.
The British gang had paid me a “friendly” visit.
Chapter Nine
After the British players trashed my place, I didn’t play Heist Online for a few days. I was frustrated and pissed off. But it wasn’t the reason for my not playing. I just was too busy IRL and didn’t have much time for virtual reality video games.
When I finally was back in the game, I found out that Allison had already reached level 20, which was max level in this game. Moreover, Flynn was just out of prison. He had already played a few simple heists and leveled up to 15. My level was 18.
Our team back together, we played some heists on medium difficulty. We mostly just replayed the heists that we had once completed. Allison was elated to play with us again. She said that when Flynn was in prison and I was absent in the game, she had had to play with random players and she hadn’t liked it at all because most of them, according to her, had been stupid newbies.
Sure enough, I told my teammates about what the British gang had done to my safe house. We all concluded that they had been willing to take revenge on me after Allison and I botched their plan to strip us of the paintings that we had stolen from the art gallery.
A surprising thing was that the British gang had spared Allison’s safe house for some reason. Allison guessed that they might not have known the location of her place, but both Flynn and I thought that it was highly unlikely. Since they had managed to discover my lair somehow, then they should have been able to easily find Allison’s place as well.
“They must’ve known where Allison’s safe house was,” Flynn said. “Moreover, I’m sure they’re well aware of me and my place as well. Yet they trashed neither Allison’s place nor mine. I think this is because they know that you are the leader of our team and that we follow your directions. They must’ve come to the conclusion that there was no point in destroyed all our safe houses when they could trash only your place. They must’ve thought that since you are the leader of our team, you would get the point and make sure that our team wouldn’t stand in their way from that day on.”
Flynn also said that he had seen more messages about the British gang on the official forum. Some people complained about having been robbed by those players. They asked the game developers to ban the British gang. However, the developers just ignored such requests probably because the members of the British team didn’t break any of the game rules and there was no reason for the developers to ban them.
Players had been speculating about the British gang a lot on the official forum. Some people suspected them to be hackers while others argued that if they had been hackers, then the developers would long since have banned them. The fact was that nobody knew anything about the British gang. Many people who had been robbed by them tried to find the members of the British team to take revenge on them. Still, nobody had achieved any success yet.
We continued to play some more heists and soon Flynn and I both reached level 19. After that, we decided to find and play a hard heist that we hadn’t done before.
We examined the available missions and picked one.
> Name: Car Shop
> Level Requirement: 15-20
> Difficulty: Hard
> Objective: Your goal is to steal at least one supercar from the car shop.
Flynn told us that this heist consisted of two parts. The first part was to enter the car shop, found a manager, stole his keycard, get into his office and get the keys to the supercars from the key storage. This part was straightforward and easy.
The second part was to steal the supercars. Sure enough, once you got in one of those cars, security guards or random NPCs would notice you do so and call the police. So we would need to escape from the scene as fast as possible. Once we got the cops off our tail, we would get a notification about where we needed to get the supercars.
This part was difficult because we needed to get the supercars to the destination in an undamaged state. If the vehicles got damaged, we would get no reward. Moreover, the supercars were extremely fast, so it was difficult for an inexperienced player to drive them, not to mention race away from the police without damaging the car.
Before the British players had destroyed my safe house, I owned a sports car in this game, so I had some experience in dealing with superfast cars. So did Flynn. As to Allison, she had never driven a supercar. Therefore, Flynn suggested we take only two cars, me and him driving the two cars while Allison riding shotgun in one of ours.
Sure enough, the girl wasn’t content wi
th what he had suggested. Assuming such a passive role just wasn’t in her nature. She always longed for action. Which was why she stated that we should steal three supercars. She said that she would do her best to deliver the supercar to the destination undamaged. Flynn scoffed at her suggestion.
“Driving a supercar isn’t exactly the same as driving a normal car,” he said. “Being inexperienced in this, you might get in a crash. Are you sure you can handle this?”
“Of course, I do,” Allison stated self-assuredly. “Have some trust in me, would ya?”
“I’m just saying that once we jump in those supercars, we’ll have about five minutes to get them to the destination,” Flynn said. “Meaning that we’ll have to drive as fast as possible in order to get away from the cops and deliver the cars to the destination. If you get in a crash, you may end up dead and you’ll get no money for this.”
Sure enough, his reasoning with Allison fell on deaf ears, as always.
After we shortly discussed the plan and made all necessary preparations, we jumped in Flynn’s SUV and set off for the car shop. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived. Flynn parked the SUV along the curb and we got out of the car.
We then entered the car shop. We noticed three supercars right away. They stood in front of a huge glass wall. One of the cars looked like a Lamborghini, another one like a Bugatti Veyron, and the third one like a Porsche 911.
We just took a few minutes to wander around to familiarize ourselves with the place. There were a few security guards and several surveillance cameras in the car store. Since we hadn’t put on our masks or done anything wrong yet, no one paid us any attention.
We soon located the manager’s office. However, the room was empty. The manager himself was strolling around the place, stopping to chitchat with the would-be customers every now and then. We watched him closely for about ten minutes until he finally made a beeline for a restroom. Flynn and I entered the room after him. Allison stayed outside to keep watch for other NPCs who might enter the facilities.
After making sure there were no other civilians in the room, we put our ski masks on, grabbed the manager and secured his wrists with a pair of plastic handcuffs. Flynn then went through the pockets of his clothes. Once he found the keycard to his office, we knocked the NPC out and shoved him in one of the toilet compartments.
We didn’t want to alert other civilians yet, so we doffed our ski masks and put them away before walking out of the restroom. Since we had discussed our plan earlier on, we didn’t need to say anything to one another. Flynn set off for the manager’s office to get the keys to the supercars from the key storage. Allison and I stayed next to the door to the restroom.
Luckily, none of the other NPCs felt the need to use the facilities, so we didn’t have to deal with some other civilians.
Half a minute later, Flynn’s voice came over. “I got them. Get to the cars and wait there.”
We reached the supercars at the same time as Flynn did. He held out his right hand and opened it. There were three keys lying on his palm.
“Which cars would you like to drive, guys?” Flynn asked.
“I’ll drive this,” Allison exclaimed pointing toward one of the supercars.
Flynn handed one of the keys to her.
“And you?” He asked me.
“I don’t care.”
“Okay.”
He gave me another key and asked. “So are you guys ready?”
“Always,” Allison stated.
“Yep,” I said.
“Let’s do this then.”
We looked around to make sure there were no security guards near us at the moment. Then we put our masks on and jumped to action.
Allison darted to the rightmost yellow sports car that looked like a Lamborghini. The girl pushed the scissor door upward and lowered herself into the luxurious interior. She pulled the door down and after a second, the vehicle engine snarled to life. Smoke belched from the screaming tires for a half a second and then the sports car lurched forward, shattering the big window.
Flynn swung himself into the black-colored car similar to a Bugatti Veyron as I dashed toward the blue car that looked like a Porsche 911.
I stuck the key in the ignition and twisted it, turning the engine over. In the side mirror, I saw one of the security guards start to wave his hand at me and shout something. Another one reached for his service pistol in the holster on his right hip. One of the civilians had already pulled his cell phone out of a pocket and was frantically dialing 911.
There was a rumble and half a second later the Bugatti Veyron barreled out of the shop at lightning speed. One of the security guards opened fire and some of the NPCs started screaming. Ignoring all the chaos in the room, I put the car in gear and pressed the acceleration. The Porsche 911 shot out of the car shop through the shattered window, the tires crunching over the broken glass.
The supercar powered down the street, then sharply turned south, its broad tires and four wheel drive keeping the vehicle clamped firmly to the road. The force of the turn threw me against the driver’s-side door. After I leaned back upright, I glanced at the speedometer. The needle flashed past eighty.
There was a slowly driving bus up ahead. But the oncoming lanes were empty for at least three blocks. So I cut the steering wheel to the left, whipping around the bus and accelerated. The 911 surged effortlessly past a hundred miles per hour.
Horns blared, tires squealed, and headlights streaked on either side as I swung the supercar from left to right and back again, each barely missed vehicle making a swishing sound of displaced air as it whipped by.
I raced through the streets for a couple of minutes without hitting any snags. Then I heard police sirens in the distance. In the rearview mirror, I saw a police cruiser round a bend in the road and drive after me. However, I was pretty much sure the cops wouldn’t be able to do jack to stop me.
There was an intersection up ahead. I stabbed a button to deactivate the traction control, then dipped the clutch as I spun the steering wheel with one hand and yanked hard on the handbrake with the other.
Even with four wheel drive, the 911 couldn’t keep its hold on the road, slithering around in a 90-degree spin as I stomped the accelerator to the floor. The engine roar was accompanied by an earsplitting scream from the smoking tires as the supercar lurched forward again, leaving thick lines of burnt rubber on the asphalt.
Up ahead, two more police cars appeared. They moved to box me in, but then hurriedly swerved to the opposite sides of the street when they realized I wasn’t going not only to stop but even to slow down.
I shot between the two police cars and glanced in the rearview mirror. The two police cruisers behind me were turning around to follow me. But the two player’s cars were very slow compared to the 911. By the time the two players finally finished turning their vehicles in the right direction, I was so far from them that it was impossible for them to catch up with me.
In just a matter of seconds, I gave all my chasers the slip. Then I received a text message that informed me about the place where I needed to deliver the supercar. I had to get the vehicle to the docks.
“I’m done,” Flynn said.
“Already?”
“Yeah. There were no cops after me, so I didn’t encounter any problems.”
“All three cops were trying to chase me,” I said.
“Have you gotten rid of them?”
“Yep,” I said and smirked. “It’s was a piece of cake.”
“What about Allison?” Flynn asked.
Before I could say something, there was a high-pitched shriek coming from the earpiece in my ear.
“What the hell?” Flynn snarled. “Are you trying to make us deaf?”
There was no reply. I waited a few seconds and said, “Allison?”
The girl didn’t say anything.
“Do you copy?”
Silence.
Then I heard Flynn’s voice. “I
think she got herself in a crash.”
“What’s going to happen to her now?”
“Nothing special. She died, so she won’t be able to finish this heist. After we finish the mission, we’ll get exp and money. At to her, she’ll get nothing. She’ll revive in her safe house. Or most probably, she already has.”
A couple of minutes later, I reached the docks. I spotted three blue shipping containers. There was the Bugatti Veyron inside of one of them. Flynn stood near it. He noticed the 911 and waved me over. I shifted to first gear and slowly pulled in another container. I then eased the driver’s-side open, stepped out of the car, and walked out of the container.
“What’s now?” I asked Flynn, who walked up to me.
“We need to close these,” he replied.
I saw that he had already closed the door of the first shipping container. After I did the same with the second one, a message popped up in my HUD.
> Mission Accomplished
> Money stolen: $8,000,000
> Money laundered: $4,000,000
> Penalty: none
> Gang members survived: 2
> Money earned: $2,000,000
Then another message emerged.
> +15000 exp
> Congrats! You have just leveled up to level 20! You have got 2 skill points to assign.
I noticed that Flynn had just reached level 20––max level in this game––as well.
As I doffed my ski mask, my cell phone rang. I pulled it out and checked the Caller ID. It was Allison. As soon as I answered the call and put it on the speaker, Allison yelled in anger, “Goddammit, I died! That car was so freaking fast and freaking uncontrollable!”
“You crashed?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Told you,” Flynn said. “You should’ve heeded my warning.”
Heist Online Page 19
