The Job. Part Two

Part One.

As soon as he gets out of the car, his friend calls out to him “Yo, catch.”

He throws a weapon out to Eddie, taken right out of the car’s trunk. Eddie stumbles with it at first, before holding it properly and checking it out. Rico gave him an SMG and, from the looks of it, an expensive one.

“Where’d you get this from... No, more like; How’d you get this on the trunk?” He had checked it this morning, there weren’t any weapons before.

“Told you I was doing business” Is what Rico says. “Decided to buy you a little present too. Put it on the trunk while you were looking around” He adds.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful but… I already have a gun” Eddie’s still looking his ‘gift’ over, turning the weapon around, checking its weight, making himself familiar with it.

Rico stops rummaging through the trunk for a moment, pointing at Eddie’s hip, where his handgun is “That peashooter of yours is so old it’s going to fail at one point, so I decided to get you something new” He then continues to move things around the trunk

Eddie digests Rico’s words for a moment. “…But I like my peashooter” He responds, dejectedly.

A chuckle is all that he gets in response.

Eddie shakes his head, now’s not the time to mess around, not when they have a job to do. He goes over to the car’s trunk and stands next to Rico.

“I hope this thing has more ammo than this” He gestures to the magazine loaded onto the weapon.

“Also” He adds, shortly after “Where exactly are we going?”

Rico moves away from the trunk, leaving enough space for his friend to look at its contents, before gesturing to them.

With a smile on his face, he says to Eddie “Help yourself, there’s enough stuff inside for three Ricos and six Eddies”

The trunk was loaded with dozens of different types of ammunition. Some, he recognized as ammo used by the weapons they have hidden at their apartment, others are new. He picked up some more for the gun his friend bought, it always helps.

Rico puts a hand on his shoulder and looks out towards what seems to be a ruined apartment complex and points to it.

“Target is at the building in front of us, had Ajax check it out while I was in the meeting”

He called Ajax too? He usually leaves him out of the simple jobs… This one must be bigger than he thought. All the more reason to be nervous.

“Any reason you didn’t bring him with us? Could use the extra hand…”

His friend takes out another weapon out of the trunk “Ehhh…” It seems like he’s trying to find the right words to say.

“Ajax is more like… A computer guy” He takes out a… clown mask from the trunk and closes it, then turns to Eddie.

“Yeah, so?” Eddie asks.

“He’s more likely to shoot us on the foot than the guys in front of ‘im” Rico deadpans. “You got your mask?” he adds quickly while gesturing to the mask on his other hand.

“I still don’t see the point of that, it’s not like people don’t know who we are…”

“It’s our trademark!” Rico complains “You, me and Ajax, The Murder Klowns!” He makes a gesture with his free hand, the sign of the horns, while saying it.

You could tell he put a K there too, because of course he did.

One of Eddie’s eyebrows rises at the comment “And last week we were Murder Doks, and before that we were Murder Knights and before that…” He trails off

“Okay! Okay!” His friend almost screams “Look, we need to wear something to stop the common thug for realizing who just shot their buddy last week, because then they storm our floor and try to pop our heads” He explains.

Rico looks away from Eddie, his eyes refusing to see his friend, almost as if he was embarrassed “…The name’s just a bonus”

“It sounds cool too” he mumbles.

At that, he can’t stop but laugh a little. “I get it, I get it…” He shakes his head again, to try and get rid of his amusement “Murder Klowns it is.”

Eddie moves back to the front of the car and takes his own mask from his seat on the car. From behind him, his friend pumps a fist into the air as if celebrating.

At simple glance, the mask he picked up looks like a normal clown mask bought at a market, with some small changes made to it to fit the “Metal” aesthetic his friend was going for, the black paint poorly smothered over it being the only proof he needed.

Let it be said that Rico was not, and will probably never be, an artist.

He puts the mask on his head properly before turning to his friend “So what’s our plan here?”

For all of his silliness and antics, Rico was a big part of their operations, the (biggest) brain of the team, always with an idea of how to pull off their job, and how to pull out of it if things got messy.

“We go through the back door” he answers. “Ajax kindly ‘borrowed’ the place’s map back when it wasn’t almost falling down on itself. I kinda have an idea of where to look for our generator”

“We’re not using the main door?”

“Not unless you want to get filled with bullets”

While they were busy setting up and arguing, the sun was already replaced by the moon and the darkness of night covered the entire city. There was still light of course, from the many ads and neon lights plastered on almost every wall of every street, but in this part of town the lights were scarce and the darkness drowned almost everything.

It’s a good thing his eyes have adjusted to the darkness without the need for implants.

There was no one outside the building to stop them, no one making rounds outside to protect their building, it was typical for the Strays. Most of them go hard on their addictions, passing out and then waking up the next day with a killer headache and no recollection of what they did before.

There were however, some people wearing the colors of the Strays passed out on the floor. They both saw several of them on their way to the back of the building and Eddie was pretty sure some of them were dead.

Once they cross the street and stand right in front of the building’s backdoor, Rico gestures to Eddie...

“Give me a headcount with those magic eyes of yours”

Aside from zooming in to stuff, his cyber-eyes have a special mode, it makes him almost blind but lets him see the outline of people, like the heat vision in those movies Ajax likes.

Normally something like that is too expensive for people like them but thankfully a dead ganger gave it to him a couple of months ago as a little gift. Using said function, he couldn’t see any people inside, or at least any people close to them. It was a little hard to use it with his… clown mask on, but he had gotten used to it.

“No one in this room at least” He says, his voice still low. You can never be too sure.

“Works for me.” Rico shrugs before slowly opening the door. He makes a gesture with his head, telling Eddie to enter first. “Ladies first” he says.

“Oh, grow up.”

All he can see as he enters the building is darkness. The building is ruined, there’s not a single light source inside the place, or at least in this room, the ceramic on the floor is dirty and broken, just as some of the pillars holding the structure together.

He feels Rico close the door as he enters, looking around as well.

“It’s times like these that I wish I had them cyber-eyes of yours” He murmurs.

“I asked you if you wanted the parts back when and you said no”

“I didn’t know we were going to practically live in the darkness” Rico starts to walk slowly, following the schematics that Ajax gave him, careful to not make much noise as to alert anyone inside

“Hey, keep an eye out for people” He murmurs. “Tell me if there’s too much heat on our path”

All he can do is silently agree, he moves behind Rico, keeping an eye on their back and on the path they’re taking. Before moving rooms, he uses his vision to check for people. Eddie grabs Rico’s shoulder, trying to make him stop

“Not that way, I think they’re sleeping in there…”

 His friend lets out a small ‘tsk’. “We’re taking a turn then.”

They keep moving like that for a while, him keeping an eye out and Rico leading through the darkness. Surprisingly, almost no part of the building has light on it, so they spent most of their time walking on darkness.

His stress builds up with time however, because while he keeps checking for people, he also keeps adding their numbers on his head.

There’s too many of them. A single misstep, one loud noise… And it’s over. It’s a good thing they went through the back and didn’t start shooting up people, since extended firefights aren’t really safe.

Thankfully, they have no guards at all checking their halls. It’s a wonder no one has dealt with them here, it’s as if they’re begging other gangs to shoot them here. It would make him laugh a little, if his heart wasn’t trying to come out of his chest that is.

Eventually though…

“We have to go through here”

…It all has to go wrong.

“Walk through a room filled with sleeping Strays, why not just ask them to shoot us instead?” Eddie says.

They’re both standing right on the entrance to what seems to be yet another impromptu sleeping quarters. There’s at least six people inside.

Rico lets out a breath, he’s stressed out too it seems “Look, it’s either this place or go back through one of the other, much more filled ones”

“Are you even sure that the bloody thing is in there?” He has to ask.

And regretfully, Rico has to answer “We’ve been through the whole place, the basement is the last thing left unchecked and this so happens to be the easiest way in!”

He knows that, he really does, but that doesn’t make him feel better. He has to relent though, there’s no other way around.

He enters the room first. There’s six people sleeping inside on makeshift beds, some of them shuddering, others seem to be knocked out cold. On the other side in front of them there’s a door that, presumably, leads to the basement, at least according to the schematics their friend has.

He takes some air, to steel himself, before slowly, slowly, moving through the room, keeping an eye on both the residents and the floor (as to not step on anything and make noise) just makes him even more nervous.

Not to mention, whenever one of the sleeping beauties abruptly turns or mumbles on their sleep. He feels like he’s going to get a heart attack at any moment.

He makes it to the door and turns around, his new position lets him see the room, it’s smaller on this side. Rico started moving as soon as he got to the door, taking as much care as he did.

When he’s halfway there, Rico’s mouth moves as if to say ‘The door’ and Eddie immediately turns to open it.

He can feel his heart stop for a moment.

The door’s locked.

He turns back to Rico, who apparently can feel the fear on his face, even through the mask.

To the surprise of Rico (and to his horror) the person sleeping behind him groggily pushes themselves up from their bed. When Eddie’s head moves to them, his friend turns around in shock, as the person slowly regains their consciousness and realizes there’s two armed strangers in clown masks in their makeshift bedroom.

“Oh shit.”

I'm happy with the reception that the first part received, inspiring me to write this one much faster than the other. I want to give a warm thanks to everyone and their kind words on the first part of this story.

I hope all of you enjoyed this one as well. Criticism is always welcomed.