The Third Adventure: Action, That's How! (A Caper in Time Part 2)
by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - One Chapter a Week Starting 27.11.16
58 HOURS, 56 MINUTES, AND 8 SECONDS
"And a three..."
He took a little hammer and positioned it against the blunt end
of the spike.
"Two..."
He gently raised and lowered it, lining up the angle before
raising it properly.
"One."
The heavy metal door squealed open behind the surgeon.
His eyes rolled as he let out a sigh through the rubber mask.
"Excuse me?! I'm about to lobotomise a man!" He snapped as he
slammed his hammer down on the tray and turned to face the
intruder.
"Me too."
Gunshot. The slapslapslap of fleshy debris against white tiles.
The intruder leaned over John, and he saw his vacant face
reflected in their black visor as they carefully removed the
spike from his eye socket. They tossed it away over their
shoulder and lifted the plastic glass mask. "Hi," said Chel
Hagar.
John mewled impotently, and she took off her left glove and a
knife snapped out of her mechanical thumb. She prised the lid
off of a small box on John's collar, buried her blade into the
machinery and tore out the circuitry with one motion. "Better?"
"And the shred of humanity reveals itself! Impeccable timing.”
"That's offensive."
"What?"
"Why do I have to be 'human' to be good?" She unbuckled his
restraints.
"You pointy-eared pricks literally make humans fight for sport!"
"I literally just shot someone’s fucking head off!"
John Boss sat up straight on the operating table and looked
down. Spots and spurts of red lay across the checkered floor,
around a puddle of blood growing from the surgeon’s bottom jaw.
Which was, heroically, still holding on to the rest of him.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever killed for me.” He tore
off his collar and fixed his eyepatch back over his empty right
socket. "So, where are we doing?”
"There's a river right below the east side of the building. We
can get around the hospital if we climb out the wind...oh."
Chel's train of thought wrecked as she looked at the four brick
walls surrounding her.
"Why would there be a window? This is an operating theatre."
“This is an impulse escape plan.” She looked around quickly.
“Well we’ve not much else to work with except…” She lingered on
a ventilation shaft hanging from the roof.
"No," declared Boss.
"Why not?"
"It’s so cliché."
“So you are lying.”
“Hm?”
“How would a peasant from 200 years ago know about modern action
movie tropes?”
John Boss paused for a frankly uncomfortable amount of time. He
looked on at the tiled wall ahead of him, lost in its
perpendicular lines. There was a crack, right there in the grid,
and he saw - whether real or imagined - a liquid blackness seep
down its crooked path and start to leak from this breach, this
violation. There was no reflection on the liquid’s surface for
there was no liquid, only void pouring down the black lines and
erasing the white in between. As the cold inky blackness
overcame the floor and rose up to his ankles, he became acutely
aware of his meatiness, of a skeleton itching against muscle.
Pearls of sweat pushed out of his skin and burst like sores down
his forehead, and his heart began to race, and he saw
word-pictures of these things: In his mind’s eye, he saw his
mind’s eye, and the fear in Chel’s. Her mind’s eye or her actual
eyes? She was sobbing, nonetheless. She tried to hold the dark
fluid in her hand, and it fell in treacly strings below her
fingers. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, a hand painting a letter on
her forehead with the thick and ethereal substance. Waist-deep
in a matte black sea with no horizon, arms outstretched.
“Please!”
~~~~~
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"Why would there be a window? This is an operating theatre."
“This is an impulse escape plan.” She looked around quickly.
“Well we’ve not much else to work with except…” She lingered on
a ventilation shaft hanging from the roof.
"No," declared Boss.
"Why not?"
"It’s so cliché."
"Well what do you suggest!? Half the fucking hospital will have
heard that gunshot, the place is crawling with police, and any
second now-"
"Wrong again."
Chel sputtered. "What!?"
"This room is soundproofed. The surgeon said so."
She paused. "Really?"
"Of course. It must stop anyone outside hearing the screams."
"Oh. Right." She breathed in and straightened herself up
slightly. "Gives us time to think of something properly." She
put her cold metal thumb to her lips. "Umm, right. Oh! Put that
collar back on, and I'll strap you back in the table."
"Chel, that's the exact opposite of an escape plan."
"No, think about it! If you just lie there and put on your
best...lobotomy...face, I can just push you through the hall,
down the lift, and we're out of here. Fuck, I might even be able
to just shove you in the back of a van and drive us to safety."
John thought about it, combing the scenario for potential
dangers, then nodded approvingly. “Sounds fun. Just one problem:
where in this world is 'safe' for a human fugitive?"
"It's in the city. Coal district. Should be about...a 20 minute
drive? This time of night?"
Boss picked up the inactive collar and lay back down on the
table. Chel put her glove back on, and pulled her visor down.
"Give me two seconds, I'm going to take a look outside and make
sure we’re clear to move out.”
She opened the door.
A dozen police officers had filled the corridor in a two-row
firing squad formation and were pointing an array of automatic
weapons at her.
She closed the door.
"This room isn't soundproofed."
John groaned and whinged as he hauled himself back up off the
table. "I just got comfy!"
"John. There is a firing squad of my friends and colleagues
outside that door with machine guns that will tear our bodies to
ribbons in a heartbeat. They have almost certainly called in an
army of reinforcements, who will have this building completely
surrounded in less than ten minutes. There are two of us. I have
a pistol with two magazines. You have a loincloth and an
eyepatch. There is one exit. So tell me, what is it about this
situation that you find so fucking funny!?"
He sighed sympathetically. "Chel, understand: this is a
respectable Saturday night for me. A solid...seven out of ten,
maybe. I herald from the time of myth, an age of magical wars
and necromancers on the hunt for dragon fossils; demi-gods
skulking in the gutters, aristocracies built on demonic bargains
and living mountains that fight all who would try to climb
them-"
"Surrender now, or we will enter the room and use lethal force!"
shouted a voice from behind the door. "You have ten seconds to
comply."
Chel lifted up her black visor, her eyes had gone wide and were
darting around the room. "But do you have any idea of how to get
us both out of here alive?!"
John's roguish smile faded. "I do, actually."
"What is it?"
"Surrender."
The police officers kept their guns trained on the door, waiting
for a breath of movement.
"Okay!" said a voice from inside the room. "Fine...I'm coming
out. I'm unarmed. Don't shoot me."
The door handle slowly turned, and creaked open by a few
centimetres. One of the officers ordered, "Unload your weapon
and slide it over on the floor."
There was a click, and an empty pistol was placed on the floor
before a boot from behind the metal door kicked it over to the
firing squad. "And now the magazine." Chel repeated the process,
scared to breathe. "Okay. Now, open the door slowly and come out
with your hands up."
Chel nervously grasped the handle, and slowly drew the door
open. She then tore it back, and bullets bounced around the
narrow corridor as the police officers fired at the thing
charging towards them: John Boss, using an operating table as a
battering ram.
They tried to turn but got bowled over and crushed as John and
the criminal impersonating a police officer - unrecognisable
behind their visor - leapt over the mess of kicking limbs,
swiped guns off the floor and charged down the corridor.
"LEFT!" shouted Chel.
John ducked around the corner as one officer started shooting
from below the heavy table. "BUT I CAME FROM THE RIGHT! THERE'S
AN ELEVATOR!"
"I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, FOLLOW ME!" She kicked open a door to
one of the wards, giving a clear line of sight to two officers
running towards her. People fled under beds and doctors ducked
behind patients. Bullets flew down the room and buried
themselves into the wood protecting Chel.
Careful to avoid stepping into view, Boss slammed the ward door
shut. "My plan wins."
Chel sprinted down the hall, ducking below the door's small
circular windows and wildly throwing covering fire into the
narrow corridor to the operating theatre.
She hadn't even looked up before John was shoving her to the
side of the next room, an empty ward. "Sides of the room! Hide
behind the curtains!" He was leaping from bed to bed, grabbing
curtains and drawing them half-shut as he flew through the air.
Chel did as best she could to run backwards through the leather
veils while pointing her gun at the entrance.
"Over here!" They piled into an elevator in the corner of the
room.
In the distance someone cried, "Come on! They're through-" The
elevator slid shut. Echoing gunfire was replaced by the same
easy listening tune from when John was wheeled in. Chel hit the
button for the second floor and leaned against the side of the
little metal box to catch her breath. She pulled the magazine
out of the rifle, trying to gauge how many bullets were left.
John inspected his eye in the mirror. "So what changed your
mind? Why come to save a brutish monster like me?"
"Three bullets. Excellent." She slammed the magazine back in.
John looked at her in the mirror, her face once again hidden
behind the visor. She held the gun close to her armoured body,
and watched the light on the buttons descending.
Satisfied that his eyeball was still safely fitted in its
appropriate socket, he stood opposite her. "Right then, where do
we go from here?"
"The ground floor will be swamped already. They'll be sending
guys to the top floor where all the action is. We have about two
minutes to throw them off before they get their shit together
again."
Her radio crackled. "The fugitive's in an elevator on the west
side of the building, heading down to the second floor."
"Oooh, 'The Fugitive'," cooed Boss.
Chel sighed nervously and hammered a button to open the door.
"You killed 10-million silver behemoth on primetime and now
you're rampaging in a hospital. Congratulations Boss, you're
Public Enemy Number One".
John Boss gasped in surprise and delight, holding the gun to his
chest and gurning. "Oh, wow this is...okay, first of all I would
like to thank the Dryadoran government for giving me this
amazing honour, but none of this would have been possible
without my friends, my family, but most of all my fan-”
The doors opened and Chel grabbed John by the wrist. "Move!"
She looked both ways before they scuttled out into the corridor,
peering around every corner. The only noise to be heard was
Chel's boots thudding against the linoleum floor. "We have a
better chance at losing them on the east side of the building,
by the river. Check the ward through that window, I'll see if
there's anyone coming down the corridor."
John tried to be inconspicuous as he peered through the small,
circular window of the door into the ward, where the lights were
off and everything was silent.
Chel rushed back over to Boss. "Right, we need to get through
here as quickly as possib-"
John raised an arm in her path before she could shove the door
open.
She turns to him and he felt her glare through the dark mirror
of the visor. "What!?"
"This is the children's ward."
"So?"
He shouted under his breath. "You can't have a gunfight in a
children's ward!"
"Which is why we need to get through right now!"
"Your boots are loud, you'll wake them up."
"Do you have a fucking knightly code about kids?"
"We're supposed to be stealthy."
"Right, so what do we do?"
"There is something.”
“What?”
“Something I learned during my time in the military, in my
younger days. A highly covert stealth maneuver.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Something I learned during my time in the circus, in my younger
days. A highly entertaining showbiz maneuver.”
“What is it!?”
The announcer in the ringmaster outfit bellowed to the cheering
and whistling crowd in the smoky theatre. "And finally, a big
hand for our stars...JOHN BOSS AND CHEL HAGAR!"
The orchestra belted out a jovial da-da dadadada DA-DA dadadada
DA-DA dadadada daDAdaDAdaDAdaDA as John and Chel Hagar
side-skipped, arms locked smiles gleaming, onto the big stage to
uproarious applause. Boss in a top hat and tails, Chel in an
elaborately sequined showgirl outfit with red feathers. Which
would have been a surprise to children in the dark ward if a
single one had been awake.
Out in the hall, Chel slipped her boots back on. "Where the hell
did you learn to do that?"
John leaned back on a wall next to a stairwell door. "It's a
long story involving the Collisterran crown jewels, one kilo of
Chiller, and a very maternal singing tiger with nothing to
lose."
"Right, it says there's a fire exit down here, if we-"
A police officer rushed out into the corridor and stopped dead
when he almost bumped into Chel. "Shit, sorry I-" He turned back
to the fleshy shape he'd failed to register a second ago. He
pointed his rifle at Boss, who remained still. The elf was
young, and obviously inexperienced. His hands we shaking as he
spoke. "Okay, okay, just... You're surrounded, right? You're
never going to get out of this, so why don't you...just..."
Chel cocked her rifle, and coughed to get his attention.
He whipped around and had his gun pointed at her now. "Who are
you? Take the mask off, now!"
She didn't move.
"I'm not telling you twice, this isn't a fucking game now take
off the helmet!"
Chel might have had something to say here, but she was silent.
She recognised this elf from somewhere. The canteen? The
resemblance faded when his eyes bulged, and his skin started to
turn red as John Boss wrapped his collar around the elf's neck
and tore him to the ground.
The elf writhed and uselessly hammered the trigger on his gun
pointed at Chel. He scrambled for the safety lock on the side
but John dragged him around and kicked at his free hand. Boss
turned to Chel. "Well?! Shoot him!"
Chel kept her gun trained on the elf's head. She silently held
the trigger on her rifle, waiting for something. The elf, so
clumsily as to be almost accidental, clicked off the safety and
fired off a stream of bullets that caught Chel's right shoulder.
Her fingers clenched in agony.
Killing people, Chel discovered, wasn't what it looked like in
the films. They squirmed. They cried. They choked on their own
blood.
Chel stepped back. "Oh, fuck. Fuckfuckfu-"
"What?"
"Call for help, or-" She pulled the radio off his chest, and
held a button to send a message. She held it to her mouth for a
few tense seconds, then threw it on the floor. "He's dead.
He's-"
"Chel, he shot you."
"HE'S A KID!" She thrashed with her metal arm. "He's...FUCK!"
She kicked a dent halfway through a small steel bin. She fell to
the floor, dropping her gun in agony.
John took the collar off the corpse. "And you're alive.
Sometimes you have to-"
"Oh, fuck off!" She ripped the helmet off and threw it at him.
From behind mad strands of platinum hair she burned holes into
him with her eyes, red and huge and pregnant with furious tears.
"I could just shoot you, you know. I could shoot you right now
and they'd call me a hero. I could make up some story to explain
the mess, all the security cameras have seen is a visor. I could
shoot you, and my life would just be so. Much. Easier."
John picked up the rifle from the young officer's stiff grip,
and some magazines from his belt. He reloaded the gun, only
slightly hindered by the new technology, and tossed another
magazine to the floor at Chel's side. "But you won't."
"Why not?"
"Because that bullet tore through your shoulder muscles, so good
luck pulling a trigger."
Chel's radio crackled. "Gunshots heard from the fourth floor,
east wing. We're on our way to investigate."
There was a gentle barrage of footsteps in the distance. Chel
grabbed her helmet with her remaining arm. "They're coming. We
need to get out of here."
"Where to?"
"I don't fucking know. How much of the van plan can be salvaged
with one arm?"
"We’ve three hands between us." John took Chel's gloved metal
hand and hauled her up to her feet. "And anyway, I could learn
to drive," he smiled as he picked up Chel's gun and swiftly
reloaded it.
Not far down the hall and behind a door a voice shouted "There!"
"Run!" shouted Chel.
They sprinted down the corridor as fast as they could, Chel
nursing a bleeding shoulder wound and John trying not to wave
his two guns around too much. "That's another thing..." she
grunted a little for each step on the stairwell they were
descending. "...how the hell does a peasant from 200 years ago
know how to use an assault rifle better than a trained officer?"
The radio buzzed. "Backup's on its way up from the second
floor."
John smiled. "You've certainly added a lot more edges to the
chassis and the springs have a bit more razzmatazz, yes, but the
basic principles are the same as the old prototypes."
“Protoypes?”
They burst out the door and into some hastily evacuated offices
adorned with party decorations. At the same time, five more
elves with guns arrived on the other side of the room. John and
Chel ducked behind a desk. One of the elves pointed at the
still-swinging door. “Are you-" Chel stopped mid-whisper to
process what she was about to say. "Are you telling me that you
invented guns?"
John repressed a booming laugh.
A police officer stopped in his tracks. "What was that?"
John Boss jumped onto the desk and opened fire.
"Move!" The officers ducked behind cubicle walls as bullets tore
through the office, bursting water coolers and popping balloons.
Chel ran over past the door they'd come in and quickly looked
around. "There's only those two exits!"
Boss moved back while firing off short, unpredictable bursts
over the room. "Is there a window?"
Chel looked back. "Why?"
"East side of the building? By the river?"
If it weren't for the fact that Chel Hagar was the second most
wanted person in the entire Dryadoran empire and was currently
being shot at by her former friends and colleagues, it's right
about here her eyes would have widened in horror. "Oh for fuck's
sake."
"That's a 'yes' then."
Boss pointed his free gun to the office's one floor-to-ceiling
window and messily shot through it until it was a web of cracks
and holes. It clicked empty, and he dropped it to the ground,
grabbing Chel's hand as they ran towards the limp glass.
"NONONONOICHANGEDMYMINDABOUTTHE-"
SMASH! John Boss cackled as the two of them plummeted from the
window of St. Kainsach's hospital, and towards the black waters
of Dryadora city’s river network.
The police officers stood at the ledge and fired off all their
bullets into the unlit river below, in the vague direction of
the fading sound of a splash.