“GET DOWN! GET THE FUCK DOWN!!!”
Stitch’s voice sounded far less threatening while being distorted by his mask.
I always thought that was a corny nickname. Stitch.
But we all had one, for security reasons. The less my “colleagues” knew about me the better. I went by “Grey”. I don’t think I’ll divulge my real name here, though.
It was a six person crew. There was Stitch – the muscle. Wick – sharpshooter. Wire – safe-cracking expert. Casanova – the intel guy, Eagle – sniper support/lookout, and me – the de facto leader/getaway driver.
The place we were robbing was a weight training equipment store that served as a front for a smuggling ring. What they did smuggle? Literally everything under the sun. Casanova had gotten in with the ring a few months prior, working undercover as they carried out their operations. He knew the general layout of the place, how many guards were going to be present at any given time, and most importantly, where the goods were.
Even with the intel he was able to provide, the operation was still going to be quite dangerous. If we were to be caught, the consequences weren’t going to be as simple as prison. It was going to be… much worse. In any case, I was just gonna off myself if things went south. So was everybody else.
So why choose such a risky place to rob? Well first of all, it would attract less police attention, as opposed to robbing a bank or currency exchange. Simple criminal vs. criminal action. No need to go and track down any stolen money. Second of all, we could kill with impunity. No civilians. Just the most rotten pieces of shit on the planet. As strange as it was, we definitely had the moral high ground here. Third of all, they were apparently hoarding millions in cash, diamonds, and other valuables.
In short, the operation was high-risk, high-reward, high-catharsis. Killing these bastards was certainly gonna feel good. Casanova had once told me about something he’d seen while in one of their storage closets. Frozen torsos. Human torsos that definitely weren’t big enough to have belonged to an adult.
“ARE YOU FUCKING DUMB? GET DOWN!!!!” Stitch continued to scream. The “employees” at the front counter hardly budged. In fact, they hardly reacted at all. They just stared at us with disturbingly blank expressions. I knew we should’ve expected more resistance than usual, but this kind of behavior was still pretty bizarre.
“Fuck!” Stitch spat. “They aren’t fucking listening. Can I just waste these freaks!”
I looked over at Casanova. “You recognize them? How involved are they?”
Casanova clicked his tongue. “I think they’re new hires. Only seen them sneaking around in the basement since last week. But they’re aware of the operations for sure.”
I sighed. “Alright. Waste ‘em then.”
Stitch and Wick put two bullets in both of the employee’s heads. I was kind of relieved when they dropped. They were starting to freak me the hell out.
“And you’re sure nobody heard that?” Wick asked. Even with silencers, they’d still made a hell of a lot of noise.
Casanova shook his head. “Nah. Right now, there should only be people in the basement. And you can’t hear shit from down there.”
“And nobody’s watching security right now?”
“I’m 95% sure nobody is.”
Wick shot him a concerned glare.
“Stop being greedy, those are good odds.”
“Alright then,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The plan was fairly simple. Once we got down to the basement, we’d waste anybody and everybody there, grab as much shit as we could, and then get the hell out of there before reinforcements showed up.
However, the only reason we’d be able to do this at all was because of Casanova’s intel. We really owed him this one. Usually, there were dozens of guards stationed here at any given moment. There was only a small frame of time each week where there’d only be four. According to him, five of the eight main traffickers would also be present, in addition to the guards.
We were about to do society a favor.
I gestured towards him. “Lead the way, Cas.”
“Hey aren’t you worried they’ll find out it was you?” Wire asked him.
“Nah,” Cas responded. “I’ll be fucking outta here. Getting sick of this country. Already got property down in Jamaica. Smooth sailing from here on boys.”
I had plans on retiring from heists after this one as well. It really wasn’t a terribly sustainable occupation. I nearly had enough cash as well. I just needed a little more and I was golden.
We entered through one of the back doors, before locating the entrance to the basement.
“Fuck, boys. Here we go,” Stitch looked at us, before tapping his chest twice. “Godspeed.”
“Godspeed.” We all whispered in unison. It was sort of a tradition for us to do at this point.
“So are we just gonna ignore the elephant in the room?” Wire said. “What the fuck is that?”
He pointed to the ground, where some kind of symbol was painted right in front of the basement doorway. It looked like a circle with triangles lining the circumference, all pointing inwards. In the center of the circle was what I could’ve only described as an eye.
“Oh,” Cas responded. “I dunno. These people are probably in a cult or something. I mean, they sell kids. But they must’ve put it there recently. First time I’m seeing it.”
Not exactly something I wanted to hear or see. Nevertheless, we proceeded with the job. We rushed down the stairs and began tossing stun grenades. That just about did it. The ensuing firefight was a near-flawless victory on our part. Stitch was the only guy injured on our side, with a bullet grazing his shoulder. It wasn’t a problem, though. We’d taken out all the guards and the traffickers.
“Man, you fucked it up,” Wire said. “All that mass makes you an easy target.”
“Fuck off!” Stitch spat. “Let’s just get the shit and get out of here!”
“Where to now, Cas? Cas? Hello?”
I turned around to see Cas just standing there, his expression seemingly bewildered.
He shook his head. “I’ve… I’ve never these guys in my life.”
“So?” Wire responded. “What does it matter?”
“I’ve been undercover for months. Never met any new faces after day 1. But now they’re getting new employees? And now these people? Something’s going on.”
“Maybe they didn’t trust you as much as you think they did,” Wick said. “I doubt you know everything that goes on in this place.”
“Fuck that,” Cas said. “Something’s fucked up here.”
He walked over to the corpses of one of the “traffickers”. He kneeled down, observing a tattoo on one of their arms.
“Jesus, what the hell.” He held up the guy’s arm. His tattoo was an exact replica of the symbol that we’d seen on the ground earlier.
As it turned out… all of the traffickers had the same tattoo. Even the guards did.
“You sure you don’t recognize that symbol?” Wire asked. “Like, you’ve never seen it?”
“You think I’m fucking blind or something? I said I haven’t.” Cas responded. “Fellas, I don’t like this at all.”
“We’re wasting time,” I told him. “Where’s the shit we came here for?”
Cas shook his head and sighed. “Fine. Fine. God, I didn’t sign up for this demon shit.”
He led us to a locked, password-protected door near the back of the room.
“What’s the code, Cas?”
“Fuck if I know. Wire, you’re up.”
Wire took out his toolkit and began going to work. Only a minute later, the door was open.
“Shoulda never dropped out of MIT,” he said. “My talents are wasted here.”
“Yeah, yeah, cry about in the Bahamas,” Stitch said, walking in. We all followed suit.
Cas’s intel didn’t disappoint. We’d hit the fucking jackpot. Stacks of cash, gems, watches, you name it. There were also boxes of USB’s. I set on those on fire. Cas still appeared to be on edge as we shoved the loot into garbage bags.
“Relax man,” I said. “We found it. We’re golden. You’ll never step foot in this hellhole ever again.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”
“You have any idea what’s in there?” Wire asked.
I looked at the direction he was pointing towards. It was a small, grey safe in the corner.
“What could be so valuable that it needs double protection?”
Cas shook his head. “Like I said, I dunno. It’s like everything’s changed the last time I was here.”
“Well, it must be something good.” Wire said, getting up and walking towards it.
“We don’t have the time, man!” I called out to him.
He simply held out his hand. “Won’t take long.”
I did have a habit of underestimating him. He managed to crack the safe in under 30 seconds.
“Well, what the hell’s in there?” Stitch asked.
“Um… it’s a… necklace.”
“Alright, well toss it into a bag. We’ll figure out its value later.”
“Come take a look at it first.”
As it turns out, the necklace was… alive. It appeared to be made of sharp teeth, with an abnormally large eye as the centerpiece. An eye that was still blinking.
We must’ve stared at the thing for a minute straight without saying a word. I heard Wick silently utter a payer.
“What the hell are these people?” Stitch asked. “Let’s get the fuck outta here. Cas, you aren’t possessed or something, right?
Describing how I felt as “unsettled” would’ve been an understatement.
“Alright, pack it up. We’re outta here.” I said, heading towards the stairs. I couldn’t wait to leave. But before I could even make it out of the room, I got a call on my radio. It was from Eagle, who’d been hiding out on the 7th floor of an adjacent building. He was only supposed to call if he’d spotted any suspicious activity outside the store.
Obviously, this was gonna be bad news.
I picked up the call.
”Hello?”
”Grey? Find a fucking place to hide!” His tone was frenetic.
”What? What the hell-“
”Go, Go! Don’t ask questions, just hide. A fleet of cars just pulled up outside. Over a dozen people got out. Maybe even twenty. They’re getting out and walking in as we fucking speak.”
”Are they armed?”
”I’m not sure, but… they’re walking weird. It’s screwing with my head. Fuck! I think one of them saw me, I gotta go. Just hide!”
“Eagle? Hello? Shit!”
“Well,” Wick said. “That didn’t sound good.”
“It wasn’t,” I responded. “We gotta hide.”
“Is that joke? If somebody’s coming down, let’s just waste ‘em.” Stitch objected.
“Too many. Won’t work. Cas, I thought you said nobody was coming back ‘till midnight.”
“That’s the way it’s been for months, it is my fault that they suddenly changed the goddamn schedule? And EVERYTHING else?”
“Jesus,” I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself. “Fuck it, just find a place to hide.”
As soon as we stepped back out onto the main basement floor, another issue presented itself. All the bodies were gone.
“What the hell?” Wick said, dumbfounded.
We hardly had time to digest the news, as heavy footsteps began descending down the stairs. Eagle was right. Their footsteps did sound weird. They were too… uniform. As if they were all marching in unison or something. And there were a lot of them.
I was starting to panic, looking around the basement for somewhere to hide.
“Cas, where the hell do we go?”
“There’s no goddamn place to hide! Shit!”
“Check it out!” Wire said.
I looked over, seeing him holding open a door in the opposite corner of the room.
“No. No way,” Cas said. “That door was never there before.”
“You sure, Cas?” Stitch said. “Your memory seems pretty foggy these days.”
There was hardly any time to argue. The footsteps were getting dangerously loud. We all rushed into the mystery room, with Cas being the last one to enter. I did have to admit. I was beyond unnerved. I knew Cas the best out of anybody in my crew. He didn’t do any drugs. No record of mental health issues. I believed him 100% when he said that this door was never there before.
Once we were all in, we shut the door behind us, plunging ourselves into sheer darkness. We all grabbed our flashlights and pulled them out. I could only describe what we saw in front of us as a cruel joke.
We were in a short corridor, leading to a small room at the end. In that room was the entrance to another staircase, leading down. And on the floor? The symbol. That same, hellish symbol.
Obviously, none of us wanted to go down. We are all perfectly content with waiting until we got an all-clear from Eagle.
Wait. Eagle. He told me that he’d been spotted. I didn’t call his radio, in case he was hiding. I texted him instead. No response.
“What the hell is going on?” I heard somebody whisper.
“Just keep quiet,” I said. “We’ll wait here until I get a response from Eagle.”
That option was quickly wiped off the table when we heard the doorknob begin rattling.
You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought to myself.
Nobody needed to say anything. We started moving towards the stairs, as much as we all dreaded the prospect.
The stairs themselves took around a full minute to descend fully. A full fucking minute. Where the hell did this thing lead? At the very least… it didn’t sound like anybody had followed us down.
In retrospect, that fact should’ve been more concerning than anything. These people obviously knew there’d been a break-in. They obviously heard us running towards the stairs. Why the hell had they not chased us down?
“Shit. Alright, let’s get our bearings straight,” Wick said. “Cas, you have any idea what this place is?”
Cas shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
“Fantastic,” Wick mumbled in response. “Well, I’m not gonna be a sitting duck. There’s gotta be another way up. But make sure we know the way back. Just in case.”
We started walking. The place was… weird, to say the least. It didn’t look haphazard at all. The floors looked like they should’ve belonged in a well-maintained hospital. On top of that, the place itself had a hospital-style layout. Well, with hints of a prison. A prison-hospital hybrid, if you will.
It was also big. We’d walk down the corridor, passing dozens and dozens of closed metal doors, but there’d be no end in sight.
“What the hell’s behind these doors?” Wire whispered.
Honestly, I really didn’t want to know.
“This is pointless. We’ve been walking in a straight line for like twenty minutes. How big is this place? I’m starting to freak the fuck out.” Stitch said. “Let’s just go back and-“
“Hang on.” I cut him off.
Somebody had stopped walking with the group. They were standing about 20 feet back, absolutely still, with their flashlight pointed at the ground.
“You find something?” I called out to them. “Hello-“
I felt somebody grab my arm.
“Stop.” Wire said.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Everybody’s here.”
I was confused. I shined my light down at everybody’s shoes. Six pairs, including myself. That meant…
I looked back up at the mystery person, petrified at the prospect of directing my flashlight towards whatever was lurking there in the darkness. A few seconds of tense silence passed, before they turned their own flashlight off.
And then they started walking towards us.
“Stay the fuck back!” Stitch shouted. I heard him raise his rifle. I followed suit, attaching my flashlight to the mount underneath the barrel and pointing it towards the mystery person.
God, I could’ve gone my entire life without seeing the thing that was illuminated before me.
It was… a woman. About eight feet tall. Wide, dead eyes and a wide, static grin. Too many teeth in her mouth. Almost looked like a damn doll. We all opened fire at once. Thankfully, she went down. However, she ate at least six bullets, two of them headshots, before she did.
“Yup,” Wick said. “Our past has caught up to us. We’ve died and gone to literal hell.”
I can’t say it was a terrible theory. I didn’t know how else to explain what the hell was happening.
Before any of us could decide on our next course of action, we heard doors beginning to open up, one-by-one, all around us.
I heard Wire sigh. “Is it too late to repent?”
We all started running. Unfortunately, our senses of directions seemed to have gotten a bit jumbled. We inadvertently split up. Wire, Wick and I ran in one direction, while Cas and Stitch ran the opposite way. I aimed my light up, only to see… things beginning to stumble out into the hallway. Some resembled humans. Others, not so much.
Thankfully, Wick was with us. He hadn’t earned that nickname for nothing. He began shooting the creatures down in front of us, clearing a path. Most of them looked similar. Just zombified humans, for lack of a better term. But some were freakier than others. I saw a six-armed humanoid wearing a steel mask, a slug-like being with a gaping mouth, a hulking man with rusty saws for hands, amongst many other monstrosities.
At a point, an oily, elongated arm reached out from one of the rooms and pulled Wick in. I’ll never be able to forget the sound of his slimy, muffled screams. It was the worst possible outcome. Compared to Wick, Wire and I couldn’t shoot for shit, and it showed.
Soon enough, we were effectively trapped. Creatures had started piling up in both directions, and we were running out of ammunition. With nowhere else to go, we just ducked into one of the empty rooms and shut the door behind us.
Not moments later, they began viscously pounding on the metal. I could see no way out of it. I started wondering if Cas and Stitch had made it. Whether or not Eagle was alright. The decisions that led my life to such a shitty conclusion. I’d always told myself to put the past in the past. Not to dwell on my regrets.
However, it was all that I could do right there. I pulled out my pistol. I’d made a promise to myself. I was going to die on my own conditions.
“Well… I guess that’s that.” I muttered. I could hear Wire fishing out his own pistol next to me.
But before we could do anything drastic, the pounding suddenly stopped. A few seconds passed before the door opened. My flashlight was on the ground, so it partially illuminated the two figures that stepped in. They seemed to be humans, more or less. But I didn’t get my hopes up.
“Well, isn’t this quite the surprise.” A voice said.
The next thing I knew, somebody had kicked me in the face. My body went limp, with my consciousness slowly fading into nothing as I was laid out on the floor. The last thing I saw before everything went black was Wire falling down next to me.
Everything was going wrong. I’d even fucked up my own contingency plan.
When I woke up, I was tied to a chair, back in the basement. The first basement. Wire and Cas were next to me, in similar conditions. Stitch was nowhere to be seen, though. Wasn’t a mystery what had happened to him.
“I’m not quite sure what you were thinking there.” A voice called out from behind.
I suddenly heard a cacophony of footsteps, and before I knew it… there were about 3 dozen people, both men and women, standing in front of us. They were all wearing black suits and gloves, with one sleeve rolled up to reveal a tattoo. You can probably guess what it was.
What was even stranger… I saw the men that we’d definitely killed earlier standing amongst them. Hell, even the employees in the main store were there.
“I believe you took something from us.” The man at the front – a blonde man in his twenties, said.
“It’s all in the bags,” I said. “If you’re gonna kill us, I only ask that you do it quickly.”
“No. We’ve recovered those. But we’re still missing one thing. The most important thing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“It’s in my jacket pocket.” Wire spoke up.
The blonde man walked over and reached into Wire’s front pocket, pulling out a small container. He opened it up, revealing the weird eye-necklace inside.
I could hardly believe it. “Wire, what the FUCK!” I screamed. “Why the hell would you take that thing?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I thought it might be worth something. That some creeps would be willing to pay big bucks for it.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry guys. I fucked us all over.”
Obviously, I was furious. But at the same time… he couldn’t have known something like this was going to happen. My anger was useless anyway. Our fates appeared just about sealed.
The blonde man looked at the necklace and smiled. “Well, I’m glad that’s resolved.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“Well… that’s up to the discretion of our leader. The new Messiah. With your skills and some conditioning, you just may earn a spot amongst his loyal followers. Like us. But… you’ve certainly caused us some trouble. That likely won’t go unpunished. You may just end up back down where we found you… until we need you again, of course.”
Ah fuck. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“In the meantime… just wait here. The Messiah should be here soon.”
I was really wishing that I’d just pulled the trigger when I had the chance.
“But don’t worry… know that whatever happens… you’ll be a pivotal piece to the formation of the new world. A world shaped by the ideals of the Messiah. There is no greater pleasure we can execute in this worthless state known as human consciousness.”
“Hey freaks!”
Another voice called out from behind. But this time, it was familiar.
The blonde man’s expression changed. “Oh. What do we have he-“
A bullet was drilled through his brain before he could finish the sentence. I flinched at the sound of automatic machine-gun fire coming just a few feet away from me. I watched as each and every one of the people in suits were mowed down right in front of me.
I could hear the person who’d done it walking towards us from behind. I had a hunch about who it was, but still remained cautious.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he walked into view. It was Eagle, limping on one foot, covered in blood and dirt, his eyes wider than I’d ever seen them before. He’d definitely snorted a few lines. Couldn’t blame him, though.
“Eagle?” I said, recognizing his mask. “What the hell happened up there?”
He just looked me dead in the eye and shook his head. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
After he untied us, we all booked it up into the main store and out the door. There were about ten bullet-ridden bodies on the ground in the parking lot. All wearing black suits, of course. I can’t be sure, but I think I saw some of them moving on the ground as we ran. In any case, we got into our van and floored it the hell out of there. We were starting to hear sirens in the distance as well.
Eagle was shaking as he drove.
“You sure you’re alright to drive?” I asked.
With his mask off, he looked like he’d seen the devil himself. Although with everything that’d happened… I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.
“I’ll be fine.” He said.
“Well… what happened?” Cas asked.
Eagle just shook his head vigorously. “Don’t want to talk about it. Listen, we need to get out of the city. Out of the country, even.”
“Well, that was the plan, wasn’t it? Thanks for coming back and saving our asses.” Cas said.
Eagle just nodded once in response, his expression still borderline catatonic.
In the end, we’d only managed to make it out with two of the five bags we’d filled. But I wasn’t going to complain. At least we’d made it out at all. I uttered a silent prayer myself for Stitch and Wick. It's not like I believed in that stuff but... it felt like I needed to do something.
We sat in silence from then on. At some point, Cas fell asleep. His sleeve was rolled up slightly, revealing some kind mark on his forearm.
Out of curiosity, I rolled it up the rest of the way, just to check if he’d been injured or something.
What I found was worse than any kind of injury.
As far as I knew, Cas never had any tattoos. Especially not that one.
Oh boy.
---
Credits
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