The vehicle in front of me raced through an intersection. A moment later, I entered the intersection as well. Due to my lack of alertness, I didn’t notice movement on my right until it was almost too late. A gray-colored Toyota pickup truck rushed in from the right and got in my way. I almost crashed into it. I slammed on the brakes, causing the sports car to come to an abrupt stop, the tortured tires screeching.
The Toyota that had come from the side road swept in behind the pickup truck. It quickly closed the gap between the two cars and then two players wearing ski masks leaned from the passenger windows and started shooting at the car in front of them.
Since the events were taking place in front of me, I couldn’t tell if the shooters had skulls painted on the fronts of their ski masks. Yet I knew who those players were.
The British gang showed up after all.
I slammed on the accelerator, sending the sports car flying forward. It took me mere seconds to catch up with the trucks. The heisters in the first truck weren’t going to give up without a fight. One of them thrust half of his body out the front passenger window and returned fire. Another one was in the back of the car. He started to fire back out the rear window at the British players’ vehicle closely following them.
The oncoming side of the road was completely free of traffic, so I whipped the 911 out of my side and into the lane of oncoming traffic. I then pushed harder on the gas pedal and a moment later, the sports car drew level with the Toyota.
The player that was hanging out of the passenger window on the left side of the Toyota noticed me. When he turned his head to look at me in surprise, I saw that his balaclava had a skull painted on its front. It was the British gang, all right.
“Surprise, motherfucker,” I mouthed the words as I punched a button on the dash to roll down the right passenger window.
I then brought up a Beretta 93R and triggered a three-round burst through the window. The slugs hammered into the player’s face and drilled through his skull to blow out the back of his head in an explosion of brain matter and bone. The body of the now dead player hung down from the window and then dropped onto the asphalt.
The girl who was seated behind the steering wheel noticed what had happened to her teammate. She then twisted her head to glance at my car that closely followed the Toyota. It was a mistake on her part. She shouldn’t have distracted herself from the driving.
Seeing that the driver of the Toyota had her attention diverted, the players in the first truck directed their fire at the windshield of the vehicle behind them. The windshield crazed but didn’t shatter. It had to be bulletproof.
However, the impact of the slugs on the windshield caught the girl off guard and scared her. Instinctively, she cut the wheel to the right. The Toyota lurched, slid sideways, then flipped over and began to cartwheel along the road. A trail of thick smoke marked its progress. The vehicle then bounced off the road and smashed against the wall of a building.
The players in the first pickup truck didn’t stop to finish the British players off. Instead, they continued to race along the road, quickly leaving the scene.
I slammed on the brake pedal, bringing the sports car to a stop in the middle of the road. I then jerked the driver’s-side door open, leaped out, and strode toward the upturned Toyota.
As I reached the crashed vehicle, the girl started to crawl through the passenger window. She noticed me, rose on her elbows, and looked up. I stroked the trigger of the Beretta, sending a trio of bullets right in the middle of her face. The girl dropped to the asphalt, dead.
I tried the side rear door, but it was crumpled and wouldn’t open. However, after I jerked it powerfully, it came off its hinges and thudded to the ground. I leaned over to look inside. The third member of the British gang lay in a crumpled heap. He was alive, but all his movements were sluggish. He must have been experiencing a Concussion debuff, or something like that.
It was easy for me to kill this player now that he was completely harmless. But I wasn’t going to do it. I had other plans for this one.
I shoved the Beretta 93R into my waistband, then reached into the vehicle, grabbed the half-conscious player by the shoulders, and dragged him out of the Toyota. He tried to draw a pistol from a holster on his right hip. I whipped my own pistol from my waistband and cracked the player across the back of his head, knocking him out.
I then pulled his balaclava off his head. His stats instantly popped up in my HUD.
> Name: McDermott
> Level: 20
I regarded the player for a moment or two. He had a stern face and his black hair was cropped short. It was the player who had been following me while his two other teammates trashed my safe house the other day.
First of all, I angled the player’s hands behind his back and wrapped the bracelets of the handcuffs I had bought earlier that day around McDermott’s wrists.
I then walked over to the body of the dead girl and pulled her ski mask off too. However, her nickname didn’t appear in my HUD. When you killed a player, his or her dead body didn’t display the player’s stats in this game for some reason. I noticed that the girl had raven hair. She probably was attractive, but I couldn’t tell for sure because the three bullets she had taken right in the face had made a complete mess of her visage.
The girl and the other member of the gang, whom I had killed first, must already have revived. They were most likely racing to this street right now, so I had to get out of here as soon as possible.
I dragged McDermott’s body over to the sports car, then darted to the opened driver’s-side door, and reached under the dash. After pulling a small lever to pop the trunk open, I ran toward the back of the 911. I swung the lid of the trunk upward and then heaved the player’s body inside. I then got behind the steering wheel and took off.
I just drove around the city for like fifteen minutes before I found an appropriate place. I pulled over, got out of the car, walked to the back, and swung the trunk upward.
McDermott had already come around. His eyes glared his rage.
“What the hell do you think you are doing, Striker?” He snarled with a thick British accent. “Let me go!”
Without answering, I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him out of the trunk. The player dropped to the ground. He rose to his feet, then whirled around and burst into a race. I drew my pistol and shot the player in the legs, dropping him to the ground.
Putting the handgun away, I walked up to the player. “Stand up.”
McDermott slowly got to his feet. “Whatever you have on your mind, you won’t accomplish anything. You can’t do jack to me.”
I shoved him roughly toward one building on the other side of the street. “Move.”
McDermott complied. As he walked across the street toward the building, he looked around to get his bearings. I let him do so. He had to know where he was.
We entered the building. McDermott stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face me. “So? Let’s get it over with. What do you want from me, Striker?”
I motioned at the stairs that led to the basement. He glanced that way and shook his head. “No bloody way. You want to talk, we’re going to talk here.”
I suddenly lurched forward toward him and socked him in the face, causing the player to lose his balance and collapse to the floor. I grabbed him by the legs and started to haul him across the room toward the stairs. McDermott kicked and bucked, trying to get rid of me, but I refused to let him go.
Once I dragged him over to the stairs, I stepped over the player and kicked him hard, causing him to roll down the steps. Two seconds later, he reached the base of the stairs. I reached into the pocket of my jacket and produced a stun grenade. I tossed it down the stairs. It thumped and clattered down the stairwell as I turned away from the blinding flash that followed a few seconds later.
I quickly descended the stairs to the basement. McDermott lay on the floor. His head had to be whirling and his vis
ion had to be obstructed by blurred spots. He was suffering from the flash-bang grenade concussion debuff. He would recover from the debuff in a minute or so. I leaned over and quickly hogtied the player with the rope I had bought earlier on, securing his arms and legs tightly. Now the only part of his body that McDermott could move was his head and fingers.
I then searched through the pockets of the player’s clothes and found his cell phone. In this game, only the owner of a cell phone could use it. When another player tried to use it, it didn’t work because all the cell phones used face ID in this game. If a wrong person tied to use someone else’s cell phone, it didn’t unlock. However, just in case, I tapped the screen. Sure enough, it wouldn’t light up. The face identification application glanced at me and refused to unlock the cell phone. I dropped the cell phone to the floor.
The dire effects of the concussion debuff finally wore off. The player glared at me and growled, “What the heck are you doing? Untie me, arsehole!”
I looked around the room. It was small and contained only a single chair. I pulled it over to the player and sat on it.
“Now that we’re comfortable, we can talk,” I said.
“What the hell do you want to talk about, wanker?”
“You are as dumb as you look, pal,” I said. “There’s only one topic I want to talk about.”
“Which is?”
I sighed. “You and your teammates have been robbing other heisters from the very first day in this game. Everybody’s wondering why you’re doing it. You and your teammates can’t use the money you steal from other players because it is “dirty”. You only can spend the money that you receive on your bank account. So there’s no point in robbing other players who’ve just stolen money from some place.”
I clammed up, waiting for McDermott’s reaction. Yet he refused to speak. He just stared daggers at me.
“So what’s the point of this?” I asked. “Why do you guys steal other players’ money if you can’t use it? How come you know about other heisters’ movements? And how the hell did you manage to find my safe house? Once you answer these questions, I’ll let you go.”
A nasty smile tugged at the corners of McDermott’s mouth. “What exactly makes you think I’ll spin the beans, huh?”
Before I could say something, he continued talking, “Do you really think I’m going to reveal our team’s secrets to you, Striker? You can’t do anything to me, you stupid fuck. You want to torture me? Go ahead! Players don’t experience pain in this game, so there’s no point in torturing me. You’ll just waste your time. Moreover, when I get sick of talking to you, I’ll just leave the game and you won’t be able to do a thing to stop me.”
“You’re really not a very bright, guy,” I said. “Yes, you can leave the game. But guess what will happen when you enter the game again? You’ll be back in this basement, lying on this dirty floor, tied up like a pig. So you shoulda left the game before I brought you to this place and hogtied you.”
A big grin appeared on his face. “You think you’ve thought of everything, Striker? I hate to disappoint you, but you are wrong. My friends are en route to this place. They’ll be here any minute now. And they’re going to be pissed off when they see what you’ve done to me. If I were you, I would get the hell out of this bloody place before they arrive.”
“Explain it to me. How exactly your friends are going to find this place?”
“I can’t believe that you’ve already level 20,” he said in an exaggeratedly amazed tone of voice. “They know where I am at now because they’ve already traced my cell phone.”
I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t know whether or not cell phones can be tracked in this game. Flynn was offline, so I couldn’t call him to ask about it.
Perhaps, McDermott wasn’t lying to me. If he had been trying to bluff his way out of the situation he was in, he would probably have asked me to untie him so that his friends didn’t get all mad with me, or something like that. But he didn’t ask me to untie him yet. Which meant that he actually believed that his friends would come to his aid very soon.
However, my initial plan wasn’t to get the answers from McDermott. I had known from the very beginning that I had no means of making the player reveal his team’s secrets. Instead, I had planned to just bring the player to this place and hogtie him.
McDermott was well aware of where he was at now. I had given him enough time to get his bearings after I took him out of the sports car’s trunk. He knew the address of this place and although he was hogtied, his fingers were free. He could roll over to his cell phone and call his friend. Sure, it wasn’t going an easy thing to do, but he would manage to accomplish it. So even if he had lied about the cell tracking thing to me, he would be able to call his friends and they were going to find him soon. Which was why I left his cell lying on the floor instead of picking it up and taking it with me.
I remembered what that guy in the video had told me after he and the girl trashed my place. I looked at McDermott lying on the floor and echoed the words, “You shouldn’t have fucked with me.”
I then turned around and started to walk toward the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” McDermott called out.
After I reached the door, I turned around. “What, you changed your mind already?”
“Dream on, wanker,” he snapped at me.
“I don’t believe that your friends can actually trace your cell phone,” I said. “So if I don’t untie you now, nobody will come to rescue you. You’ll have to start the game from the beginning because you can get out of here on your own. But if you answer my questions now, I’ll let you go.”
McDermott simply clammed up. He looked very self-assured. Probably his friends were actually en route and going to show up any minute now. I didn’t have time to waste.
I waited a second more, but McDermott simply refused to talk.
“Suit yourself,” I said, turned around, and started to ascend the stairs.
I then closed and locked the door to the basement and bolted out of the building. I drove the sports car half a block away and hid it in an alley between two buildings. I then mounted my cell phone on the dashboard. After that, I took the duffel bag from the passenger seat, slung it over my shoulder, and got out of the small vehicle.
After I entered the building, I waited a few seconds, listening. No sound came from the basement, but the door was still locked, meaning McDermott was still in there. I looked around the room. Unfortunately, there weren’t any places where I could hide.
Suddenly, the squeal of tires came from the street as some car screeched to a stop in front of the building. I gingerly peeked out one window and saw two players jump out of a black-colored pickup truck. They wore skull design ski masks.
McDermott’s friends had arrived to rescue him.
I strode along a short corridor that led to the kitchen. There was a back door. If those players decided to search the house, I would get out of the building through that door.
A couple of seconds later, I heard the main door crash against the wall. Then the sounds of footsteps reached my ears. I tensed and got prepared to jump into action. However, the footsteps started to recede.
A few moments later, I heard muffled voices coming from the basement. Seemed like the two players had known where exactly in the house McDermott was. Which probably meant that he had used his cell phone to call them.
As the players ascended the stairs, their voices grew louder. I could now clearly hear the conversation.
“I want that arsehole dead,” McDermott growled.
“No worries, sweetie, we’ll find that bloke,” a cheerful girlish voice said.
“We’ll find and kill him if that what you want,” a calm voice said. It would be the leader of this team. I recognized the voice. It was the player who had talked to me in the video.
Not only the leader of the gang but all of the members spoke with the British accent.
&n
bsp; “I want more,” McDermott growled. “Players lose neither exp nor money when they get killed in this game. This wanker deserves much more than just being killed. We have to come up with more efficient ways to punish him for what he’s done to me. But for starters, let’s find and kill him. Where is he now?”
“There was no car in the street,” the girl said. “So he must already have driven away.”
“Give me a moment,” the leader said. “I’m gonna find him. Okay, here he is. He’s only half a block from here.”
“What is he doing there?” The girl asked.
“Dunno,” the leader replied. “He ain’t moving. Probably he’s just sitting in his car and looking through the available contracts to play.”
I smirked. I had left my cell phone in the 911. Seemed like the leader of the British team had actually just traced my cell phone. Yet he had no idea that I was in the kitchen and not in the car.
“Duh, that twat hasn’t even bothered to get as far as possible from this house,” McDermott said, “because he didn’t believe me when I told him that cell phones can be traced. He must’ve thought that I was bluffing.”
“He doesn’t know about it because he’s a heister,” the girl said. “Probably he doesn’t have friends in this game who play as cops. If he’d had such friends, they would’ve told him that cops could track other players’ cell phones in this game.”
“Why the hell did you tell him about it, anyway?” The leader of the team asked. “Everybody in this game thinks that we are heisters. Nobody knows that we actually play as cops.”
“Don’t worry, mate,” McDermott said. “Striker is so dumb that he’ll never be able to figure it out.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Anyway, let’s go to him right now before he drives away,” McDermott said. “But when we get to him, don’t kill him at once, guys. Give me a minute to talk to him.”
Heist Online Page 22
