Randomers

by Alexis Dogman

"I'll do it! Don't throw me out!" Dr. Wu screams. Kaew lets go of his collar and he falls onto his hands.

  "Get me my bag," Dr. Wu barks as he gets onto his knees unwillingly.

  Zach immediately reaches for his brown leather bag from the back seat and drops it onto the floor beside the doctor. Dr. Wu flips the top of the seasoned bag open and quickly slips on a pair of sterile gloves before lifting her blouse off the wound.

  "I need to operate immediately or she will bleed to death, but I can't do it here. There's no equipment," Dr. Wu's forehead locks into a frown as he announces flatly. The drone shoots another round of bullets again and Yuna manages to veer the car of course.

  "Just do it," Zach instructs, "I won't blame you for anything that happens. Just try your best."

  Dr. Wu shakes his head, "The risk of her dying here is very high."

  "Just do it!" Zach shouts and the doctor nods. Bullets then hit into the back of the MPV once more, shattering the glass. They all duck a little and quickly continue their work on saving Nikki.

  Dr. Wu removes a bottle of antiseptic solution and hastily sterilizes the wound area. With a scalpel from his sterile pack of equipment, he makes an incision to enlarge the bullet wound and more blood splurges out.

  "There's gauze in my bag. Remove the blood. I can't see a thing," Dr. Wu instructs and Zach immediately takes the gauze to soak up the blood.

  "You, take the torchlight from my bag. I need more light," Dr. Wu instructs Kaew. Kaew quickly digs into the bag, turns the LED flashlight on and shines it onto the wound.

  "Hold on tight!" Yuna warns as she negotiates the car at a roundabout and all of them, now on their knees before Nikki get swished to one side.

  "Don't let her slide off!" Dr. Wu shouts for Zach to grab onto Nikki and Zach, with his shoulder against the side of the MPV, Zach grabs onto Nikki and holds her in place, making sure she doesn't slide off the car seat until Yuna swerves the car back onto a straight road.

  Once gaining back balance, Dr. Wu forces his gloves fingers into the incision and tries to locate the bullet through touch. In a situation like that, this is the best he can do. His fingers feel around and find it. The bullet is lodged just slightly below the incision. He pulls the bullet out and drops it onto the floor beside them.

  "Let's hope there is no internal bleeding," Dr. Wu utters as he prepares to stitch Nikki up. However, there is just too much blood and Zach has run out of gauze. Without hesitation, Zach removes his white T-shirt and uses it to soak up any blood from the wound as Dr. Wu starts to stitch the wound up. Kaew watches as she cringes at the sight of Dr. Wu poking the needle into Nikki's flesh.

  The MPV's large and heavy physic is no match for racing off the drone. Its slow pickup is putting them on the loosing edge and the drone is now just fifty meters behind them - the perfect distance for a clear shot.

  Chin drops the drone to only five feet from the ground and looking directly into the back of the broken rear mirror, he shoots a round of bullets, catching the passengers by horror. Kaew dives as she screams, alerting Yuna of the attack. Yuna veers the vehicle into the oncoming lane. Alas, it’s too late, Dr. Wu slumps onto the floor in his own blood. A bullet has shot into his head. Zach screams at the sight of the dead doctor. Nikki is unlucky, she is merely stitched up halfway and her wound is still bleeding badly. Her body is starting to turn cold and white. Zach knows he is loosing her.

  Kaew clambers for her gun and starts shooting at the drone to which it immediately hovers back up away from Kaew's view. Trapped in the vehicle, they are going to die for sure.

  "Dr. Wu dead," Kaew informs Yuna.

  "We need to get Nikki to a hospital. She is loosing a lot of blood," Zach pleads, starting to cry.

  "If we can loose this thing," Yuna answers crudely.

  Zach starts to weep as he holds Nikki's head to his bare chest, "Don't die on me Nik. Don't die."

  "We all going to die," Kaew mutters, aiming the gun out the back.

  Meanwhile, in Hive 03, an alert is signaling on Goda's leech that his randomer has run wild again. He hammers his fists onto the ceramic wall of the shower cubicle as he curses, "Damn it!"

  Goda instantly exits from the shower cubicle to get dressed. Without drying his body, he puts on a black round neck T-shirt and a pair of black khakis before stepping into his black leather boots. Not caring to lace up, he leaves his room as he rubs his short prickly hair with his bare hands to flick off the excess water. Goda takes the pod back up to level 03 and storms towards the workstation.

  The moment he is at the workstation he tears the leech off from his wrist and the large curved screen comes to life. Goda stares into the grid at the moving GPS location of his randomer and immediately he sets the current to fifty percent. Exasperated with this stubborn randomer who seems almost impossible to be tame, Goda hits the electrocute button on screen and immediately Zach quivers onto the floor of the MPV.

  "Oh God!" Kaew shouts as she sees Zach quiver and slumping onto the floor exhausted. Kaew reaches one hand to touch his shoulder and his skin feels hot as though he is running a high fever.

  Zach groans before blinking his eyes in pain and murmuring, "It's the chip."

  Having electrocuted his randomer, Goda starts to open his thought log. There must be something that is causing this randomer to default. The moment he reads the last thought, his eyes bawl out.

  Nikki? His wife is free? But she is under hostage. The lurker has her. She couldn't have escaped the lurker... Goda thinks to himself.

  The lurker will report to the Hive if there is deviation of the plan... unless.... Goda understands at once. It isn't difficult to piece everything together. The lurker is trying to cover up for his mistake and now his actions are destroying the MAP.

  Goda reads on and is beyond stunned to realize that the lurker had actually deployed the drones and almost killing the randomer. If something happens to Zach, there is absolutely no time to re-initiate another randomer. Their intrinsically weaved Main Action Plan will be jeopardized.

  Goda punches in a string of codes into the supercomputer and traces the location of the lurker. The chip in his palm shows that he is two kilometers away from the randomer's current location. Goda then calls for the live streaming through the lurker's lenses but there is no feed. Chin isn't wearing the lenses on his personal mission. Goda then calls the computer to trace the drones and out of five there are only three online. Tracking their statuses, Goda sees that one of the drones is deployed and is locked onto the randomer. Goda immediately taps into the drone's camera. The live feed shows the drone hovering down again and taking one clear aim at the meandering MPV, it shoots another round of bullets.

  Kaew drops to the floor as the drone shoots again and bounces back to retaliate the drone's attack by firing shots at the drone but the machine hovers left and right before swaying up just in time to avoid getting shot down.

  Kaew immediately turns to check on Zach. To her horror, he is shot a little around the bottom of his left rib and is bleeding profusely. Having being weakened by the electrocution, he had not been able to duck when the drone fired.

  "Zach's shot!" Kaew shouts to Yuna.

  "I'm not gonna make it. Take these and the briefcase," Zach coughs as his chests feels tighter. The bullet had punctured his lungs and he will drown in his own blood very soon. Zach removes the bloodstained name card and credit card of Prof. S. K. Kwan from his pocket and passes them to Kaew.

  "Wat yu next task?" Kaew asks, taking the cards from his fingers as Zach painfully inches over to Nikki's now cold body and lays his cheek over her forehead.

  "I don't..." Zach coughs again and this time he coughs out blood. In a matter of seconds, he starts to choke for breath as blood filled airways. His body quivers and struggles to draw in air and he finally drowns, his eyes turning lifeless as his body sits slumped against Nikki's. They're both dead. Kaew bursts out into a sob as she continues to take guard with her gun.

  Meanwhile, back in the Hive, a huge red alert blinks
on Goda's screen Randomer T164 Default. The chip in Zach's neck confirms his death and uploads all data to the Hive's server one last time. After approximately two seconds, the chip and the one behind Zach's ear self-destruct by burning off.

  Goda watches with horror that the lurker just killed the randomer. Goda immediately puts on his earpiece and calls to contact the lurker.

  Chin feels the chip in his palm vibrating and lifts it to his ear.

  What the fuck is this? You just killed the randomer!

  Chin listens as Goda curses in his heavy Russian accent. For all he knows it is but another ghost.

  Chin puts his palm on his neck and replies, "Your randomer was running away with the briefcase. I just did you a favor."

  Chin proceeds with his chase disregarding the ghost. Instead of a professional killer, he has turned into a madman in pursuit of insane victory. The chip in his palm then vibrates again. Listening to it, he hears:

  You just cost the Hive its MAP you idiot!

  Chin merely snorts as he replies, "The Hive doesn't have to know. I can finish the job for you. Just let me slaughter these two women first."

  The cards are laid out pretty clear. If Goda reports this to the Architins, the weight of the failure will fall onto him, but if they can right the faults by maintaining the MAP, then consequences are he might still be granted to live. The only option now is to cover this lie with a bigger lie. It's the only shot Goda has for survival.

  Chin feels another vibration in his palm and raises it to his ear to listen to it.

  Retrieve the briefcase and kill the two women regardless of what it takes. We need the briefcase by tomorrow morning.

  Chin grunts a smile and focuses back onto destroying the women. He locks the drone's target onto the MPV as Yuna reaches a large crossroad.

  Yuna floors the gas as the traffic lights turn from yellow to red. She is just a few seconds too late. Traffic from the right turning starts zooming cross her path.

  Chin hits the launch missile button on screen and the drone shoots a missile towards the MPV. With the missile target locked onto the MPV the missile gains speed on the women.

  "Bomb!" Kaew screams watching the missile coming their way.

  "Ahh!!!" Yuna shouts as she braves herself to ignore the traffic and bet on their luck instead. She continues to floor the gas pedal and drives straight into the traffic hoping that they could get to the other side safely. Logic doesn't matter anymore as they are going to die anyway if the missile hits them.

  As the MPV slices through the traffic, the vehicles swerve away trying to avoid ramming into the mad, green van, honking relentlessly. Just as the missile is about twenty feet to hit the MPV's back, a red and blue taxi that can't bring itself to stop in time rams into the right corner of the MPV's bumper, causing the MPV to spin off. The missile hits into the poor taxi blowing it up to shreds instantaneously.

  Yuna looses control of the vehicle as the blast from the explosion is so strong it turned the spinning MPV onto its side. The women grabs on as the vehicle scrapes along the metal divider surrounding a construction site before finally coming to a halt.

  Yuna shakes her head to clear up her eyes. She survived the crash.

  "Kaew, are you alright?" Yuna quickly asks as she scrambles out of her seat, the side of her forehead and her nose bleeding from the impact.

  "Nothing broken..." Kaew groans as she crawls out from under Dr. Wu's corpse.

  "Quick, out front!" Yuna commands as she crawls out from the shattered windscreen immediately.

  Kaew grabs the silver briefcase and follows Yuna out the front. Yuna hides behind the front of the MPV as Kaew clambers out the empty windscreen, with a bleeding cut on her left temple and a bad cut in her right thigh.

  "Yu look bad," Kaew comments once she is out. Apart from her bleeding forehead and nostrils, Yuna has a bad cut over her left forearm and another cut on her right calf.

  Yuna ignores the comment of her equally injured comrade and leads the way past the scaffolds into the construction site, hiding before the drone can see where they went.

  The smoke from the explosion causes the drone to loose sight of the MPV and it immediately hovers high up into the air again for an aerial view. The drone emerges from the cloud of smoke and spotting the green MPV on its side, the drone hovers at full speed towards finishing the job.

  The drone hovers to the vehicle and to Chin's dismay, the women are not inside and from the camera's feed, even the silver briefcase is gone. Immediately a buzz comes in on Chin's palm. He puts it to his ear.

  Get the briefcase and finish them!

  Goda instructs as he watches through the lens of the drone, disgruntled. This is getting way out of hand.

  Chin snorts and ignores to reply to his ghost. He shuts the drone's camera instead before turning the drone around. He has had enough of barking from the ghost. He will finish the mission without any eyes on him. Chin parks his box van abruptly by the roadside and gets off. He goes to the back and opens the metal door. Chin climbs up and marches to his yellow super-bike. It's time for him to hunt.

  The women hide themselves deep inside the half-completed building of a three stories high shopping complex hoping to loose the drone but what they do not know is that the silver briefcase is tagged. Chin knows exactly where they are and with his leech set to trace the briefcase's location, there is no hiding from the killer.

  The yellow super-bike takes its speeding rider into the congested roads, weaving through the piled up traffic caused by the explosion. In a matter of minutes, Chin will reach the construction site and it will be the last of the women.

  The women climb up the unfinished staircase onto the third floor and hide behind a large pillar far off into the shopping mall structure. Keeping silent as they anxiously hide, the lurker calmly and steadily follows his leech and is in no time on the third floor. The sound of his boots echoes through the empty hall as he comes towards them.

  Kaew frowns as she shoots Yuna a desperate glance. They are now trapped with nothing but a briefcase in Kaew's hand and a gun in Yuna's hand.

  "Take this and go. I run slow. Yu die wait for me," Kaew whispers and tries to give the briefcase to Yuna. The wound in her right thigh is giving too much pain and is slowing her down. The only way down now is through the unfinished wall about twenty feet from where they stand. Yuna can climb down the scaffolds and maybe still make it out alive. Kaew knows she can't possibly run or climb fast with the dreadful wound and one dying is better than two.

  Yuna shakes her head, refusing to take the briefcase as she whispers back, "You're all I have left. I'm not going to leave you."

  "Yu stupid..." Kaew whispers with a chuckle, "...but I like yur stupid."

  "Ladies, I know you are back there. That briefcase is tagged. I can trace your exact location. Give me the briefcase and just let me wrap things up. I will promise you a smooth death," Chin laughs in a cold, harsh voice, sending chills up the women's spines.

  Yuna gives the gun to Kaew, "I will take him to a fist fight. You shoot when there's opportunity."

  "But yu no match for big guy," Kaew stares at Yuna with large teary doe eyes as she reasons.

  "I'm not. But I will hold him out for as long as I can. You will need to save us. Just try not to shoot me okay?" Yuna explains as she holds Kaews shoulders firmly. Yuna then releases her grasp, quickly snatches the briefcase from Kaew's hand and steps out into the open before Kaew can react.

  "You want this? Come and get it. The old way," Yuna challenges Chin with her right hand signaling him to a fistfight.

  "Where's the whore?" Chin gnarls.

  "We part ways. We're not stupid you know," Yuna tells.

  Chin looks around the empty structure but Yuna distracts him, "Fight like a man. No weapons."

  "Interesting but you will regret it," Chin laughs as he slips his gun back into its holster and takes off his gray coat. He throws his coat over to the wall revealing a simple white tank top and black pants over black leather b
oots.

  Chin cracks his large knuckles and twists his neck before slamming his right fist into his left palm. He is ready to kill.

  Yuna puts the briefcase onto the floor as she watches with a shiver. She takes a deep breath trying to brave herself to the duel and walks up to the middle of the empty hall.

  Be calm. Be emotionless. She reminds herself as she assumes her fighting stance in her blue jeans, grey racer back and gray sneakers.

  Chin marches up to meet his opponent and takes his boxing stance. This is going to be an easy kill. Chin starts off by putting a punch at Yuna's face to which Yuna swiftly backs off.

  Yuna then retaliates with a side kick into Chin's waist and it barely hurt him. Chin takes her kick without any problem and sends a punch into Yuna's abdomen. The punch sends Yuna falling backwards onto the ground.