I was back in the car and although I’d been rested, mounting tension in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t quite shake had replaced it. I had heard enough about The Lady to know she was the main reason I was in this mess, the main reason why my life had been turned upside down and everyone in the galaxy appeared to either want to kill me, torture me or question me.

  I neither wanted to meet her or be in her presence, but I no longer had a choice.

  I thought back to my home and my family and wondered if I would ever see them again, wondered if Xcorp had reported me missing to the authorities. Was my name on all the news channels? Would I even warrant front-page news?

  I doubted it.

  I had done nothing remarkable in my life, anything noteworthy. I had just kept my head down and kept on chugging away in the vain hope it would get me one step further up the ladder, one step closer to that glorious retirement I kept on telling myself would come the more hours I put in and the more time I gave away; but life, as I was finding out, sometimes loved kicking you when you were down, and I hadn’t been more down than this.

  I gritted my teeth and clenched my fist as we drove past one run-down building after the next. Although the sun had arisen it did nothing to improve the view we drove past; instead it highlighted its flaws, its blemishes, whereas the darkness covered it up like make-up on a black eye on a housewife.

  “Where’s Poppy?” I asked José, who was in the backseat next to me.

  He looked my way and gave me a shrug; I took the hint and returned my attention to the passing buildings and oddities that swept past my window, allowing the time to simply pass me by.

  “You’re real quiet back there, ass-face,” Willis said over his shoulder. “Thought you would be happy to be on the move, happy to finally get this over and done with.”

  I said nothing but just continued to look out the window.

  “I know you thought you were clever swallowing the data-stick, but what goes in must come out and we know it hasn’t left your system yet, so we’ll just hand you over to The Lady and she shall get it out of you one way or the other. I heard she is a patient woman, and she always gets what she wants, so I wouldn’t count on trying to outsmart her. To be the number one crew in the borough of Paradise Lost takes something you don’t need in controlling the other boroughs; it takes a level of evil that would make even the devil shiver.

  “Although this planet is no bigger than a moon with boroughs in jungles and mountain ranges, this borough is different. This borough is ground zero. It’s where everyone starts off. People think getting to the top and staying up that fucker is the hardest part of the journey, but it’s the fighting at the bottom with the rest of the crabs, maggots and worms, all trying to pull you down while you climb to the top, that’s where the real fighting takes place.

  “The other crews in Paradise Lost treated The Lady like a joke when she first came on the scene, but that soon changed when the bodies started to pile up. Not much scares me, but The Lady is a demon from the greatest depths of hell.

  “I just hope I get the chance to send her there one day.”

  I let out a snort and rolled my eyes, which caused Willis to snap his head around.

  “Something I said funny?”

  “Everything you say is funny, you mad Irish bastard,” Tuari said in the driver’s seat next to him, “which I am surprised at because how anyone can understand a thing you’re saying is beyond me.”

  “I ain’t talking to you, shitbreath, I’m talking to know-it-all back there,” Willis said, pointing my way. “You got something to say or something you wanna say, just come right out and say it.”

  I bit my lip and kept staring out the window, fingers drumming against my knee.

  “Thought so—”

  “I thought the Christian faith took issue with little things like murder, kidnapping, stealing, and being an all-round piece of shit! If I’m not wrong, they even had a list of commandments that stated something to that effect.

  “You, being a practising Christian, would know that, but it seems, Willis, you have ignored all the core principles of your faith and are only using it when it best suits you. Fuck anyone else! As long as the paddy here gets his pint of Guinness and gets to be judge, jury and executioner.” I was breathing heavily now, the tension I was feeling loosening my tongue.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “What I find funny, Willis, is you think you’re so different from the people you think so little of, but you and they are one and the same. I don’t know if you think you’re going to Valhalla or Eden or whatever it’s called, but I can assure you, you aren’t.”

  Silence came upon the car as Willis’ jaw worked from side to side. Tuari drove eyes forward, not taking them from the road; José, who sat next to me, had his head turned to the window.

  I knew Willis expected me to avert my gaze from his, but I would not give the asshole the pleasure. They needed me alive until I got to The Lady, so I knew he would not kill me, although it didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt me.

  “It’s called heaven, the place where all the good souls are destined to go,” he said before turning back around.

  Was that it?

  After all the bullshit I had expected him to say his response left me feeling empty and angrier than ever.

  “And another thing—” I began but was cut short as something slammed into the back of us, forcing my head forward into the headrest in front of me.

  A flash of white flared across my vision and there was a faint ringing in my ears as I grabbed the back of my neck in pain. The world returned in thunderous colour and sound. Someone was shouting and it took me a second to realise it was Willis.

  “Who do these herpes-covered sons of whores think they’re dealing with!”

  I looked behind us and could see a blacked-out van right up our ass. They sped up again and barrelled into us causing the car to fishtail. Tuari wrestled control of the vehicle, righting it back the right way just as a second blacked-out van pulled up alongside us. The glint of firearms got my attention causing my heart to skip a beat.

  “Guns! Guns! Guns,” I shouted, pointing out the vehicle.

  “Yes, we know, dickhead, we’ve got them too,” Willis said, pulling out his pistols. “It seems like Sodom and Gomorrah get to have some fun.”

  “Put these in your ears,” José said, handing me a pair of earbuds, I looked at them in confusion before looking back at him. “We’re in a confined space about to shoot firearms—you work it out,” he said.

  I did as instructed and was taken aback as the sound around me dimmed. It was like being underwater. The panic was still there, but I could take in the frantic nature of what was happening around me, if at a much lower volume. It made everything easier to deal with.

  A gun appeared in front of my face as the window next to me slid down. I saw the muzzle flash and felt the vibration go through my chest as the van next to us tried to swerve out of the way.

  Something pinged above my head and the next thing I knew my head was being pushed down towards my knees.

  Another few explosive rounds went off above my head before they allowed me to resurface.

  “Tuari! Get us outta Dodge, hombre,” I heard someone shout, but couldn’t figure out who.

  The car was launched forward as Tuari pushed it to its limits. Cars swerved out of our way and sounded their horns, as many had to come to an emergency stop in fear of colliding with us. The back window shattered as we took a straight and shot through an intersection.

  I closed my eyes waiting for another vehicle to T-bone us, but when the jarring sensation of metal on metal never came I opened my eyes and saw we had made it safely across. The only difference now was, Willis was hanging out the window firing his pistols at the vehicles chasing us.

  He pulled his head back in as the door mirror on his side was blasted off the car door.

  “I got a glimpse of one of the shooters,” Willis yelled, reloading his pistols. “It’s the Laughing Hyenas. I can’t see Arun anywhere, but I know that cock weasel must be in one of the vans. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to rub our faces in it.”

  José reloaded his revolvers slowly as he nodded his head. “It appears he has chosen to make his move.”

  “He’s probably still pissed off because of the job we stole from him on Mars,” Tuari said, turning the steering wheel hard left.

  “Or,” Willis said before firing a shot out the window, “he’s probably pissed at us because you left a dozen boxes of bees on his ship.”

  “I thought you would like the prank with the bees, what with you being a Christian and all.”

  “You’re thinking of locusts, idiot!”

  We took another hard turn as one of the vans pulled up beside us. The door on its side slid open revealing Arun’s smug face as he levelled a shotgun towards us and fired. Once again I was pushed down towards my knees as buckshot exploded around me. Lifting my head up again I yelled in surprise, as Arun was right next to my door and was pulling it open.

  I grabbed the handle on my side with both hands as the door was yanked open and tried to pull it back closed with all my might. Arun hung onto the handle on the outside and tried his best to keep it open. I strained with all my might and inch by inch the door came back towards me. Arun’s face appeared within arm’s reach, snarl plastered on his lips.

  He reached for a pistol tucked in the waistband of his jeans and I did the only thing that came to mind.

  I punched him.

  He blinked at me in surprise until I punched him again, his snarl now turning into a grimace.

  About to punch him again I turned my head just in time to see a motorbike coming towards us. Letting go of the handle caused the door to swing out, catching Arun full in the face. The bike tried to stop, but it was no use as he crashed into the open door taking it clean off its hinges.

  Door and bike went one way, rider went the other, as I stared into the door-shaped hole now on my side of the car.

  Thrown back into his van, Arun rested amongst a tangle of limbs he tried to extract himself from.

  José pushed me forcefully back as he sighted down his revolver, took careful aim and fired. The rear wheel of the van exploded and caused the van to fishtail as the driver tried to fight the steering wheel back for control but failed. Arun’s eyes widened in panic as the van spun out of control then flipped and rolled.

  I leaned out of the door opening and stared back in wonder as the van finally come to a stop onto its roof, wheels still spinning.

  “Bye, Arun,” said Willis.

  We continued down the road at speed, my body trying to relax but unable to; something was wrong.

  “Hold on,” I said, looking around the car, “wasn’t there another van—”

  That was the last thing I remembered as the remaining van slammed into the side José was on and flipped our car into the air.