As Worlds Drifted

by Parker Tiden

  Tristan pulled off his helmet, his hair wet with sweat. "I don't know who the two tag-alongs are, but they dress, walk, and smell like Russian special ops."

  Maria ripped off her own mask, her cheeks were flushed and her skin glistened. She unholstered her Glock. "What are we waiting for?" she said, glancing at the tall black doors.

  Tristan unholstered his own weapon and shook his head, "I'm going in alone, it's just too dangerous."

  Maria gave him an incredulous and defiant look, flipped off the safety, and chambered a round. "Like hell you are," she said.

  "I have nothing to lose, you have everything to lose," he said.

  "What about your daughter, doesn't she deserve a dad?"

  "Maybe, just not this one."

  Maria let her eyes move across his face, "Self-pity doesn't become you," she said matter-of-factly, and then, without saying another word, pushed through the doors and disappeared.

  "Shit!" Tristan said as he turned to Rajeev. "You need to stay here. You have fulfilled your oath."

  "But—" Rajeev tried.

  "You now need to bear witness." Tristan ripped off the top of his Master Chief suit, he didn't need to hide anymore, and bent down to his right ankle holster. He took out the drive where he had put the video Rembrandt had cleaned up. "If we don't get out of here," he placed the drive in Rajeev's hand, "you need to give this to Miroslav Latki, with SFPD. Do not let anyone else know you even have it." Rajeev nodded and Tristan turned and pushed through the doors into relative darkness. It took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at—a sea of boats without the water.

  "Lil," Nick whispered, "I know you're pissed and all, but shouldn't we call the cops or something?" We had left the safety aisle behind us and were crouched behind the Sunseeker meeting room, where high rollers meet to discuss multimillion-dollar yacht deals over glasses of champagne. The massive fiberglass dreams rising more than 20 feet high, all around us.

  "He is the cops," I hissed. "Besides, we don't know who we can trust. We have to deal with this now. I just don't want to run anymore..."

  "But he's a maniac."

  "Maybe, but what he doesn't know is that I'm a lunatic."

  "Great, I'm stuck between a maniac and a lunatic," Nick sighed, only half-jokingly. We were both soaked in sweat.

  My anger had worked wonders in Alphacore, pushing JRN to new heights, carrying us all the way to the finals. My anger had now reached a new level of intensity, but would it be a match for real bullets?

  Maxwell was becoming increasingly careless. "Hey, kiddo, I just want to talk, I promise nothing is going to happen to you." By babbling incessantly, he was divulging his own position. It was impossible to tell for sure, but it sounded like he was less than 100 feet away now. "Your mother is worried. I spoke to her earlier. I'm sure we can work all this out." So, he was threatening my mom now. On the positive side, he wasn't scared of me—a tactical mistake for him but a tactical advantage for me. I gripped my flare gun tight, still not entirely confident in its effectiveness as a combat weapon. Since when is a Reddit thread on shooting bears with flare guns something to bet your life on? If I could find a way to leverage it. "Your father wouldn't have approved." That's it. The bastard just sealed his own fate.

  "What about the other guys?" Nick whispered.

  "What other guys?"

  "Didn't he have like two henchmen with him?"

  I had been so focused on Maxwell that I completely forgot to factor in his posse. Rookie mistake. They could be flanking us right now. Nick was gripping the spear gun. He had killed thousands in Alphacore, headshot records and all, but could I count on him to kill for real? Could I count on myself to kill for real?

  I rested the back of my head against the cool glass of the Sunseeker booth and looked up at the beamed ceiling some 40 feet above us. The random shadows and blue-tinged light that danced across it harmonized with the faint but familiar clucking sound in the distance. I looked down at my flare gun again, "I know what we need to do," I whispered to Nick.

  Maria was crouched low just to the left of the door. The exhibit hall was massive, and a tactical nightmare. There were hundreds, if not thousands of places to hide. The advantage lay with those who stayed put, but Tristan and Maria needed to keep moving. He thought he heard a voice somewhere at the other end of the exhibit hall. He crouched down next to Maria. "They are at least three," he whispered. "We have to assume that they are armed and prepared to use deadly force."

  "Shoot to kill, got it," Maria said, reading his mind.

  "We're gonna have to split up to cover this place. You take the left flank and I'll take the right." Maria nodded. The main lighting in the exhibit hall was switched off, but many of the booths and boats had their own lighting on. Darkness punctured by points of light.

  Maria was just about to set off when he took hold of her arm. He could feel the warmth of her sweat between his fingers. "You don't have to do this," both hoping and not hoping that she would change her mind.

  "Asshole," she scoffed and shrugged him off, "we've already been over this," and was on her way.

  "This isn't a Bond movie, I'm not going to drive a hovercraft right at the enemy," Nick whispered through clenched teeth. We had scrambled our way past the massive luxury gas-guzzling motorboats towards the far corner of the exhibition hall and the clucking and the blue light. The carpeted exhibits helped us move stealthily, but I couldn't shake the feeling that we were surrounded. Then we heard him again.

  "I don't want to have to call in the cavalry, Lily," Maxwell's voice was closer now. "I can't control the cavalry, or the level of violence they will direct at you, and that friend of yours, or should I say boyfriend."

  "He's bluffing," I whispered to Nick. I knew he wasn't going to call anybody. He was a treasonous bastard who needed to watch his own back, all the while trying to stick a knife into ours. His desperation was our advantage.

  I had finally found what I was looking for. Our backs were against cool glass again, but this glass was even cooler because, behind it, were thousands of gallons of water. The glass walls rose six feet to enclose an artificial indoor lake on which to demonstrate hovercraft and jet skis. All this water was too much to bear. My bladder was about to explode. I had started to slow-drip into my underwear. "Turn away," I ordered Nick.

  "What?"

  "Turn around and don't dare turn back before I tell you to." I gave him a look that made it abundantly clear that I was deadly serious.

  "I don't get it, but ok," he said wearily and turned away.

  I slid over a few feet along the wall.

  "And cover your ears."

  "What?"

  "Cover your ears or I will shoot you in the face with our flare gun."

  He sighed and did as he was told.

  I pulled down my pants and underwear, crouched, and, finally, released. It was bliss. The bliss was muddled by that damn whistling sound. It was louder than ever, and, for a second, I thought of how pathetic it would be if I was found dead on the floor, pants down, betrayed by my own bodily functions. I pulled up my pants, scooted back over to Nick, and gave him a tap on the shoulder. I saw in him that he knew what I had just done.

  "If they drive hovercrafts here, what do they need?" I asked in a whisper.

  "I don't know, a driver?"

  "Gas, you dope... and why do we like gas?"

  "Uhh..."

  "Because we can set it on fire. We just need to find it."

  We ducked along the edge over to the back of the water tank, in the far corner of the boat exhibit. An emergency exit's green light beckoned us, offered us a way out. But did it really? Maybe my judgement, my risk assessment, had been impaired by the hours of gaming, playing games where the risk-reward ratio was skewed. Whatever the reason, I was convinced that I needed to take a stand, here and now, that I needed to stop running, and I had just spotted what I would need to do it. There, against a wall, stood a heavy-duty fire locker… the type to store lawnmower gas at a Home Depot
. I felt the locker door, praying that it wasn't locked. It opened up to reveal its valuable contents, a dozen or so gas cans in red plastic.

  We pulled out one five-gallon gas can after the other and carried them to the front of the water tank. We worked in stealth mode, unsure how close Maxwell was as we placed the fuel tanks, evenly spaced in a semicircle of about 20 feet in radius around us.

  I had just put down the last can when a crash came from somewhere in the middle of the exhibit. We took cover behind a couple of jet skis displayed close to the water tank. I thought of Jamaal and George, may they be safe.

  "I know you're here." Maxwell's voice was really close now.

  Maxwell's voice echoed in the distance. Tristan used the voice as a homing device. His leg was aching, he couldn't remember when he had gone this long without sitting since Helmand. The crouching was killing him to the point that he had to stand up straight most of the time, making himself an easy target. He was surrounded by dozens of out-borders on various mounts—Yamaha, Mercury, Honda, Evinrude, Nissan...

  Then, suddenly, he heard a muffled cry far to his left, a thud, a crack, and then another thud. He ran towards the sound as fast as his body would take him. His leg was almost scraping behind him. He figured that the sound was coming from a point where Maria would be just about now if they had kept pace. He zigzagged between the out-borders and past a wide carpeted walkway that, he guessed, ran down the middle of the entire exhibit hall. He ran past the tackle booths and rows of fishing rods. He heard a crash just feet away.

  He rounded a cluster of windsurfing sails, and there he saw them. To his right, no more than 30 feet away, one of the henchmen had his hands around Maria's neck. He had pushed her up and into an upright glass display case, her feet were off the ground, kicking wildly, as she was fighting for her life. Tristan raised his Glock and aimed right at the henchman's head.

  "Let her go," Tristan said calmly but clearly. This was an easy shot, even if he only had one useful leg to stand on. His finger started to squeeze the trigger. He would have preferred to handle the situation without firing a shot as the noise would bring unwanted attention from several directions, but he couldn't wait any longer. "Last chance, let her go."

  "Drop it," came a voice with a Slavic lilt. Tristan glanced to his left, and there stood henchman number two. Maria's legs were still kicking, but she would pass out any second now. The henchmen had obviously also been given instructions regarding noise levels, or else he would be dead already. "Drop it, now." Tristan released the pressure on the trigger and was about to disengage the target, but something he saw made him hesitate. It was a gamble, but they were both dead if he didn't try.

  "How's about you drop it," Tristan retorted.

  Henchman two's eyes widened, he hadn't expected this. He looked like he was about to abandon his instructions and fire anyway. Tristan returned attention to his target, the bastard who was choking Maria. He squeezed the trigger to the brink and waited, and waited... until he heard a crack to his left and fired. The henchman's head exploded as he went down like a sack of potatoes, bringing Maria down on top of him.

  Tristan looked to his left. Henchman two lay in a tangled pile of limbs. Rajeev stood over him with a bewildered look on his face, and that beautiful baton in his hand.

  Ignition

  "I know you're here, Lily," Maxwell's voice sounded like he was right next to us. "Or should I call you Luna... isn't that what your dad used to call you?"

  I looked at Nick, he looked at me. That somewhat lost look he had been carrying for the last half-hour had dissipated and been replaced by determination.

  A familiar frame stepped out of the shadows. He'd found us. "Great to see you again, Lily," he said, that eternal gum still in his mouth. "What's it been, a couple of months?"

  Nick lifted the spear gun. He looked over at me, I nodded slightly.

  "Not nearly enough," I said as Nick aimed and fired. The spear shot out of the gun, hit, and glanced off the gas can that stood two feet to Maxwell's left. Maxwell, unfazed, even amused, took a step forward. "Your father was in way over his head. He didn't understand how things work in this world. He was naive, that's what he was. His fate was an inevitable extension of this fact. You see... the forces that guide our world will not be deviated. They are inexorable."

  I gripped the flare gun behind my back as Nick struggled next to me to load the spear gun. I couldn't blame Maxwell for believing that he was witnessing amateur hour. Nick managed, finally, to pull back the heavy-duty rubber bands and place our last spear in the rail.

  "One could argue," he continued, "that we should have known… that I should have known that it was you all along. But you seemed so weak, so pathetic in your wallowing. I was convinced that you were a coward like your father." Suddenly, another crash, this one closer. Sounds of things breaking, a struggle, somewhere in the shadows. Maxwell didn't flinch. His focus was all on me. Nick raised the spear gun again. Maxwell just grinned. Nick pulled the trigger and the spear was catapulted along the rail and off the gun, right into the gas can. Maxwell didn't even bother to look as gas started to stream out of the hole, puddling around it and spreading outwards until Maxwell was standing right in it. He thought Nick had missed.

  I have always loved the smell of gas. My dad and I had a ritual on those sailing Saturdays. On our way to the club, we would stop at the local 76 on Lucas Ave. My dad let me fill her up. When I was a kid, he used to stand right behind me, his hand on mine, to make sure that the muzzle didn't slip out. Later, he would simply lean against the side of the hood, strong arms crossed in front of him, a smile on his face like he could stand there forever, just looking at me as I focused intently on not messing up. We always paid inside the shop so that we could pick up one slush puppie each. Mine was red. His was blue. They tasted the same—like crap. But we didn't care.

  I had seen the movies. I knew I was supposed to say something cool, or profound, or humorous. I skipped all that and I simply raised my flare gun. Maxwell saw it for what it was, a harmless tool for shipwrecked sailors.

  "For the last time, Lily," Maxwell said, finally pulling his own gun from its holster, "give me the key. I have shown restraint, but my patience is running out in tandem with your chance of getting out of here alive."

  "Beyond fear," I said calmly and fired. The flair shot out of the plastic barrel and hit the ground right in front of Maxwell, and... nothing. It just lay there, spreading its bright red light, making Maxwell look like the devil he was.

  I glanced over at Nick, his mouth was open. I looked back at Maxwell, his gun was raised and pointed at Nick. "Give it to me now." I looked down for a second to fish out the drive from my condom pocket when, suddenly, a shot rang out. I froze, my eyes on the floor. I dared not look up. He had brought me back from the brink, he had invited me into his home, he had a kind smile, he'd built me Speed Freak, and opened up a new world. Now he was dead, and it was all my fault.

  "Check him," Tristan ordered Rajeev and pointed to henchman two as he ran over to Maria and pulled her off henchman one and lay her on the ground. She was badly hurt, bruised around the neck, and blood in her hair, but she would survive. She had the energy enough to give him a smile. He smiled back and stroked hair from her forehead.

  "He's dead," Rajeev said, now standing next to him. "I killed him."

  Tristan was about to say something moderately consoling to him when a rattle of gunshots rang out from the corner of the hall, not far away, followed by a loud crash.

  "Rajeev, you stay here with Maria," Tristan commanded. "We have no choice but to call for help now. Start with the SFPD and the EMS. Request multiple ambulances." Rajeev just nodded, his hand on Maria's side, looking over at the body of the henchman whose head he'd just split open. "You did good," Tristan assured him. "You did what you had to do." Tristan turned and started towards the direction of the gunshots. He was met by a wave of ankle-high water. He figured that the water's source was where he was heading. His leg was now officially useless,
dragging behind him in the water. If he could saw it off to go faster, he would.

  When I finally dared look up, I saw Nick still standing there, very much alive—for now. The rush of relief nearly made me forget where I was until my eyes fell back on that familiar smirk now spread across Maxwell's face. "Hand it over," he said with an icy calm, motioning with his left hand while his right still held that gun. We were out of options. I wasn't about to let Nick die for this… for anything. I held out the drive in the palm of my hand for Maxwell to take. He took a step towards me, and then, he lit up.

  He lit up, figuratively, at the thought of getting what he wanted, and then a second later, literally. The flare finally did what it was supposed to do, ignite the gas that had pooled around Maxwell's feet. Nick and I just stood there, frozen. It was an awful and wonderful sight. Maxwell, the human torch, flailed as the flames leaped up his cheap suit, and his face and hair caught fire.

  Then, his gun went off. Nick and I hit the ground as bullet after bullet smacked into the thick glass behind us. Cracks spread throughout it like a spider's web until, finally, the glass couldn't take it anymore. The glass gave way with a crack and a wall of water exploded out towards us. The roaring water knocked over everything in its path, including me. As I went under, something big swooshed past me mere inches above my head. I lost sight of Nick and Maxwell in the swirl of water and debris. It felt like I was stuck in a washing machine, or at least what I imagine it might feel like. Finally, I broke through the surface and gasped for air. I came crashing to a stop against a canoe that was wedged between two booths. I stood up, soaked, knee-high water still swirling around me. I felt the familiar taste of iron in my mouth and touched my hand to my head; my hand came back red. All around me was mayhem, alarms were blaring, lights were flashing. Where was Nick?