Moon Base One: Tyr4nt: A Prequel Story

by Patrick Rivers

  “Jesus,” Zeek said, “that guy looks like a linebacker.”

  “That’s Shark, our point of contact, don’t say anything about his—” Before she could finish, Jamaicans with machine guns were pulling them out of the van.

  “Is the back open?” Shark asked.

  “It’s, it’s,” Zeek stammered, he looked the man up and down. “It’s open,” he finally managed.

  Shark held out his hand. “Keys.”

  Zeek hesitated. “What, what about the money?” he asked.

  “Keys,” Shark repeated. “Check the back,” he called to one of his men.

  “Give him the keys, Zeek,” Ash said.

  Zeek handed them over, and someone started patting them down, both of them. They found the pistol on Ash. “Tsk, tsk. You don’t trust us? You were supposed to come unarmed,” Shark said with his deep voice.

  Ash shrugged and said, “Oops.”

  Shark shook his head.

  “It’s all dere, Shark, my mon,” one of the gangsters called from the back of the van in his Jamaican accent.

  “Why don’t you have an accent?” Zeek asked Shark. Ash winced as if in pain.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Why don’t you have a Jamaican accent? I thought only Jamaicans were allowed in this gang?”

  “Who the fuck is this guy, Ash?” Shark pointed a thumb at Zeek with a sneer on his face.

  “Ignore him, he’s just nervous,” Ash replied.

  Now it was Zeek’s turn to wince. Gasoline on the fire.

  “And why would he be nervous?”

  “He’s a virgin.”

  Shark let out a bark of laughter, the booming of his deep voice echoing off the ceiling and the cement floor. Zeek let out a breath he was holding.

  “He looks like a damn virgin,” Shark said. “For your information, four eyes, my parents are Jamaican immigrants. I was born here in Boston. I’m full-blooded Jamaican, but I don’t have an accent. You ignorant little piece—”

  BOOM! An explosion went off behind them. It sounded like a plasma grenade to Zeek’s ears.

  “COPS! FIVE-OH FIVE-OH!” someone yelled. And the warehouse erupted into a flurry of laser bolts. Ash was screaming. Zeek looked over his shoulder to see men in swat gear storming the entrance with blaster rifles. The cops and the Jamaicans were trading fire. A couple falling here and there, red and green lasers flying in every direction.

  Zeek had only one thought: Time to go.

  He heard dogs barking, and he grabbed Ash’s hand, she was still yelling. “COME ON!” he shouted, looking around, he saw the van and remembered Shark had the keys. But Shark was already running across the warehouse, ducking behind some hover car. Not gonna be able to get those keys…

  He ran blindly, his feet pounding on the cement gray floor, away from the entrance. Lasers were flying over their heads, he felt the sting of something hot on his bicep, but he ignored it and kept running.

  By the time he made it to the door, Ash had become a statue, silent and unblinking. Zeek kicked open the door and pulled her outside, he slammed the door close and was breathing hard, leaning up against it.

  They could see flashing lights coming from the opening of the alley. He thought he heard a flying police cruiser above them circling the buildings.

  “What are we going to do?” Ash asked. She was gripping his hand tight and her voice was shaking.

  “Sure as hell aren’t going that way.” Zeek nodded his head at the police lights and took off in the opposite direction down the alley where they came up short. Dead end.

  “Fuck,” Zeek said.

  “No, no, no.”

  Zeek let go of her hand. He surveyed the alley spinning around in circles. He saw some crates against a wall. “Maybe we can stack those crates and climb over the wall?”

  He started picking them up and pushing them against the brick wall. The yelling and gunfire were getting louder now inside the warehouse.

  “It’s too high,” she said.

  Zeek craned his neck upward to see the wall towering above them. She’s right. When he looked back, Ash was over at the spot where he had gotten the crates from. She was lifting something heavy off the ground, but it was too dark for him to see.

  “This way,” she whispered.

  “Which way?” he asked, frowning.

  Zeek got closer and saw Ash climbing down a hole into a pitch-black tunnel. “A storm drain. I could kiss you right now,” he whispered as he put his feet on the rungs of the ladder.

  “We have to hurry.”

  Zeek went a little ways down the ladder and slid the cover back in place with a grunt, the clang of metal echoed in the chamber below.

  At the bottom of the ladder, Zeek saw with the white light of Ash’s phone that he was knee deep in sewer water.

  “Do you have signal?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  Zeek took out his own phone and the blue light from his screen illuminated his face in the dark. “Never mind, I have signal.” He made several taps on his screen.

  They were wading through the water away from the ladder, the smell was making them cough and gag.

  “Are you going to call someone?” she whispered, the shaking seeming to fade from her voice now that they were moving further away.

  “No, but I am doing this. Hacking into the city’s database.”

  He held the phone up to her face and she saw a map of the sewer system with a blinking red light in one of the tunnels.

  “Good work.”

  Zeek led her down a series of twists and turns and a couple of dead ends.

  “Where are we headed?” she finally asked.

  “There’s a bar a couple of blocks from here. We’ll call Joey to come get us from there.” Zeek’s fist tightened into a ball. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Damn.”

  “Me? This isn’t my fault! How was I supposed to know the cops would come?” She stopped walking. “You seemed more than willing early when you thought we were going to get rich.”

  He turned and ran a hand down his face, letting out a loud exhale in the small space.

  He said, “What are we going to do? Your uncle is going to kill us. You think he set us up, had the police raid the Jamaicans, take them out once and for all?”

  “Whoa, calm down. This isn’t the end of the world or anything. No one’s going to get killed. Cordoné is a businessman, as long as he gets paid, nothing will happen. I bet it was one of those Jamaicans that got picked up by the police and narc’d on the deal or something like that.”

  Zeek took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right, you’re right. But how are we going to pay him back exactly?”

  “We’re going to give him our winnings and—”

  “That’ll only cover half.”

  “Let me finish,” she said, holding up her hands. “And then I’ll get Cordoné to bring you in on this hacking job that we’ve been working on now for months. We’re coding to break into the system of a bank. I’ve got a good amount of it written, but there’s still a lot of work to do and we need you. You’ll be perfect, he’ll go for it. Then once we pull off the job, we pay him back and take a share of the profits.”

  “Okay, yes, that sounds like a good idea,” Zeek’s shoulders slumped. “This’ll work, we’re going to make it work.”

  “It’ll be fine. I promise,” Ash said and wrapped her arms around his waist. “And you can come live at my apartment, we can work on the coding during the day and party at night.” She twitched her eyebrows at him.

  “Of course, of course.” He leaned down and kissed her soft lips.

  She pulled back and said, “I love you.”

  Zeek hesitated but recovered quickly. “I love you, too.” They kissed each other hard, his heart still beating fast from the adrenaline of the raid.

  Her arms were still around him when he looked around at the sewer, the disgusting brown water they were standing in. “This is not how I pictured us declaring our love for
one another.”

  Ch. 13: Six Months Later

  “Cordoné wants to know when the job will be ready for launch. He said, and I quote, ‘Quit fuckin’ around with your nemesis: Tyr4nt,’” a woman with auburn hair and glasses said over Zeek’s shoulder as he typed away on a computer terminal.

  Zeek stopped typing and turned around in his rolling chair. The light from the computer screen blocked his view of her eyes, but he knew they were blue as the sky and captivating. He pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her. He was still in his chair, and she looked down into his eyes with a smile.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, waving her finger. “None of that until you finish the work. I still need to do the back-end coding, and I can’t finish until you write the preliminary code, Mister Star.” She stared at his skinny face, his blue eyes, and ran her fingers through his charcoal hair.

  She sighed and bent down, giving him a quick kiss. An electricity ran through their bodies that Zeek wished would go on forever. She pulled away, unwrapping his arms and took something out of her pocket.

  “I’ve got a small present for you from the Boss.” She handed him a vial of Blue Drillamine, the liquid was thick and viscous; an aqua color moved back and forth as he tilted the vial in his hands. His face lit up, and he spun back around. He placed the vial in a loader and turned to face her. He held out the loader to her and raised his eyebrows.

  She held up her hand. “No, that’s for you, you go ahead, I’m fine. I’ve got some work to do. I’ll be back in a few hours, and you better have that code done, or else you’re sleeping on the couch.”

  Zeek was about to inject the loader into his arm when he paused. He looked up and said, “Oh, come on, Ash. I’ve got to beat this guy, this is more than some silly personal feud. China. He’s from China. This is more than hacking! This is an act of patriotism. Democracy versus communism, we can’t let them prevail, Ash.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re high, get to work. I’ll be back later.” With that she turned and left the apartment, and out into the busy streets of Boston which were swarming with hover cars.

  Zeek spun back around in his chair, he took a cigarette from a red pack and cupped his hand around the end as he sparked his lighter. He inhaled and a plume of smoke rose above him.

  “High,” he muttered to himself and took another drag.

  A message alert on his computer: “You’ll have to do better than that, Z the G. Or should I say Zeek the Geek?”

  Zeek froze, the cigarette hung in his mouth.

  He continued to type and snoop around.

  Another message beeped, “Tyr4nt: What are you looking for in there, Star?”

  Star? Not good, he also knows I’ve hacked him, what else does he know? I’ll have to be very careful with my next move.

  “Z the G: In where?”

  “Tyr4nt: In my database that you’re searching through without permission. Does Cordoné know about this? Where do you think Ash is heading?”

  “Fuck!” Zeek shouted at his monitor, and he killed his computer. He disconnected every

  wire in the apartment and started his emergency evacuation procedure in case of a police raid.

  He whipped out a comm phone and called Ash. It rang over and over, but no one answered. Pick up, pick up. Damn it.

  He dialed Cordoné on a vid-call, his face popped up quickly on his screen. “What’s up, Zeek? This better be good news about how you’ve finished the job—” Cordoné started to say.

  “Listen, nine-one-one. We have a breach, they mentioned you and Ash by name. I can’t

  get her on her comm. Do you know where she went?”

  “Goddamnit, Zeek, who breached us? I swear to God if you say Tyr4nt…she mentioned

  something about going to a girlfriend’s house,” Cordoné replied sternly.

  There were sirens in the background and Cordoné’s eyes went wide. Zeek watched as he walked over to the window and peered out of a set of blinds. “Shit, Zeek, I’ve got cops here. Call my lawyer, Young, she’ll know what to do. And you better get to Ashley, fast because things are unraveling quickly. See you on the other side, Zeek.” With a click, Cordoné hung up.

  Zeek stood in the living room of their tiny apartment. He scanned the room but stopped when his eye caught the vial on the desk sitting next to his monitor. Oh, you want a war? I’ll show you a war, Tyr4nt.

  With determination, he slammed the loader of Drillamine into his arm, click. The high was almost immediate, his mind started to race, and his heart felt like it would thump out of his chest.

  He weighed his options, his cold, logical brain was telling him to flee—to forget Ash and save himself. But he couldn’t leave her, it had been six months since they got together and that had to be good for something.

  The Drillamine was intensifying now, his heart pumped faster, he felt his mouth go dry as sandpaper. He also felt that familiar sensation of floating. A vision entered his mind, the cops breaking down the door, pointing their blaster rifles at him, and telling him to get on the ground.

  He shook it off as a hallucination…an effect of the drug. But the vision came back, this time he was shot in the back as he tried to escape.

  Gotta get out, I have to find Ash. He snatched his keys and cigarettes from the desk, and pulled his jacket from the closet and left the apartment. He was sliding his arms through his winter jacket when he came to the end of the hall and stood in front of the elevator.

  The feeling of being shot came back to him. His finger hovered over the call button; he pushed his dark-rimmed glasses up his slender nose. Better take the stairs. He glided down the stairs, and as he walked outside, a police van pulled up with a swat team flooding out the back of it.

  The sky was dark and gray, Boston’s weather was hardly agreeable this time of year. The sky opened up and rain trickled, his pulse climbed, he estimated it was at least at a hundred beats per minute. He was hard pressed to know if it was the drugs or the sight of the cops.

  He pulled his hood up to hide his face as the swat team ran through the doors of his apartment building. An officer in a yellow rain jacket and brimmed hat was walking toward him. Moving rapidly, he crossed the street and headed for his car. The cop stopped and watched him for a second, then proceeded to tell people to move back and clear the entrance.

  Zeek made it to his hover car, soaked and shaking as he opened its door. His car was a silver, Korean car, a four-door sedan. The drugs seemed to be too intense now, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he could feel his heart rate slow a little. Ah, that’s better, much more copacetic. Just calm down, everything is going to be okay. Where do we go? Which friend’s house?

  His phone beeped; he had a message: “Head to Amber’s. -Tyr4nt.”

  Zeek squinted at the message, a million thoughts flooding his tweaked-out brain. How did he? Why isn’t Ash picking up? This has to be a set up. I have to leave town right now! Just start the car and drive far away from here, start over. I can go legit…I can get clean.

  He knew it was a lie, he dialed Ash again on his comm, no answer. Damn!

  Zeek pushed the ignition button and the electric motor came to life. The radio screamed hard rock at him through the speakers at a thousand decibels. “Ah!” he yelled, startled, and reached over and shut it off.

  Ch. 14: Amber’s

  It had stopped raining, but the sky was still covered in dark gray clouds that were almost black. Zeek turned off his wipers and parked in front of an apartment building. He took out his comm and sent a message, “I’m outside.”

  The reply came seconds later, “No.”

  Come on, man, Zeek thought. He pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, cupping his hand around the tip as the lighter ignited. The flames licked the end of the cigarette as he inhaled deeply, the burning sound was like burning leaves and filled the car with smoke. He threw the pack of cigarettes in a cup holder and cracked the window.

  Turning his head, he exhaled smoke through the win
dow. His fingers played with the dial on the radio, and he turned up the music, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he sang along, off-key. The passenger door opened, which made him yelp and pull out his blaster pistol he kept under his seat. Pointing the pistol at the man standing at the door, he said, “You scared the shit out of me, get in, hurry!”

  The man was pale with a shaved head, with a gold small hoop earring in his left ear. He sighed and got in the car, slamming the door closed. “Give me one of those.” He pointed to the cigarette between Zeek’s lips.

  A news reporter came on the radio: “Today, Jason Wong, Director of Moon Base One, announced that a ship would be launching from Earth to take more prisoners back to the automated—”

  Zeek turned off the radio and handed him a cigarette.

  “Thanks, but still no,” he said.

  “No? What? I need your help, listen—”

  He held up his hand, cutting Zeek off. “We shouldn’t even be seen together right now, Zeek. It’s too hot, you heard they got Cordoné?” The man lit the cigarette and exhaled at the windshield.

  “Michael—”

  “Nos, you know I prefer Nos. I’m not giving you any more Drillamine, didn’t Ash give you the stuff? I see you’re starting to get the shakes,” Nos said.

  “Nos, yes, I know about Cordoné. I was on the phone with him when he got popped. And the cops just raided my place, I barely got out—”

  “What the hell are you doing here then?” Nos asked, glaring at Zeek, ashing his cigarette with a flick through the crack of the window. “Jesus, where’s Ashley?”

  Zeek’s comm beeped: “Tick-tock, Star, tick-tock.”

  Zeek pushed the start button on the car and took off toward Amber’s place. Zeek swerved around a car and cut another off as he made an illegal left turn.

  Nos fastened his seat belt. “Zeek, slow down, what’s goin’ on?” he said as he clutched the dashboard, Zeek sped through lights and stop signs like a mad man.

  Zeek sped up and changed lanes, the rain began to fall on his windshield. He took a turn too fast and the back end of the car slid, but he turned the steering wheel sharply and drifted back into his lane.