Hour 2

Emi tried to dial 911 but all she could get was a pre-recorded voice. She called again, and the voice repeated, "We're sorry, all our operators are busy right now. Please remain on the line for a dispatcher-," but Emi threw the phone in a violent frustration. She instantly felt guilty for giving in in front of her brother. Tears stung her eyes as she ran her hand through her voluminous hair, which had escaped her ponytail at some point, while she desperately tried to make sense of what was happening. Alex, who was still kneeling down next to their dead mother, asked in a voice bordering on a sob, "What do we do now? Are we going to die?" Emi was immediately reminded of her designated number and thought, "No... If this is for real, then I'm running out of time..." She responded to Alex, "I'm going to check to see if any of our neighbors can help us." as she was already running out of the kitchen. She had no idea what any neighbor could do for them but it was the only thing she could come up with on the spot. As she gripped the handle to the front door in her shaking hand, there was a loud mechanical scream that nearly deafened her; it was so loud she had felt it in her chest and was almost unable to tell that it had come from behind her rather than all around her. She thought "I think That was a gunshot. What the hell is going on around here...?" Then, all at once, she realized what had happened: someone had shot through the sliding glass door that connected their kitchen to their backyard. "Alex!" She thought as she felt her stomach turn inside out. She bolted so fast she rammed her knee into the wooden frame of the couch she and her mother had watched the news on just hours ago, but she quickly regained her footing and sprinted towards the kitchen. She wasn't thinking logically anymore; her body was moving on its own, and she had no plans for what to do against someone with a gun. As she was about to round the corner wall that connected to the kitchen she saw her dad's photo and immediately stopped her momentum in a skidding panic by bracing herself against the wall. She was too young to remember what her father sounded like but the moment she saw that picture she said "good morning" and "good night" to everyday it commanded her to stop. She peeked around the corner, and to her shock, she saw old man Conners, their sweet elderly neighbor, standing in a surrealistic spray of broken glass, cradling what looked like to be some sort of shotgun. "Seriously?" She thought. Old man Conners and his wife had always been good to them, like the grandparents they never had. The image she was looking at, him standing over her dead mother with a shotgun was straight out of a nightmare. Conners, a man in his late sixties who was mostly bald and wearing overalls that looked older than him, bent down next to their mother, still holding the stock of his shotgun. Something was wrong with him, the way his facial muscles contracted as he spoke and the way his mouth lingered on every word made him sound like he had completely lost it. "Killed their own mother? Greedy. Greedy." Emi thought "...what does he mean?" Her thoughts finally caught up with her, and she realized Alex wasn't there; he must've heard Conners approaching or seen his shadow and left before he shot the glass door in. Conners noticed her mother's phone that she had thrown across the kitchen in her frustration with 911 and he set his gun down to pick it up. She took the chance to rush him; with his back to her,, she slammed her weight into him and forced him off balance onto the kitchen linoleum that still shined with its fresh layer of glass. He exhaled in obvious shock, his breath musty and humid. Emi kicked the gun away and leaned her elbow into his throat as she screamed, "What are you doing!?" Conners, his face still gnarled in insanity, started crying as he said, "Barbra...my wife, she's dead, emi." Emi was still processing this information as he added, "If I don't kill you, ill... ill...!" Suddenly, his fist crashed into Emi's skull. It was small and old, but the strength behind it was raw. Her back slammed into the sink cabinet and she sat hard on the broken glass as she felt the sting of it in her hands when she tried to brace her weight. Before her vision focused Conners had grabbed the gun again and was already recovering. She slowly stood up, shaking in pain and fear. He aimed the gun at her as he said, "Please, Emi, just... Just..." His finger began to curl around the trigger, but suddenly Alex yelled, "Don't!" He looked over at Alex for just a second, who was shakily holding their mother's .44 magnum that he must've retrieved from her room. Conners shifted his gaze to Alex, which gave Emi enough time to grab a dish from the sink and launch it at his head. The ceramic bowl she had eaten her cereal in earlier that day detonated the moment it hit his skull, and before he could even slouch backward under his own weight, she had been mid-run to Alex. She retrieved the gun from him, and as she checked to make sure the safety was off, she had never been more grateful to her mother than that moment for teaching her the basics of that firearm. She had been so against it, had such little interest in it then, and still didn't know, but as she held it, she was morbidly thankful. As Conners reached for his gun a second time that day with blood flushing out of a new cut on his scalp Emi shot him. The round she let off was so explosive it felt like her eardrums burst as the sound ricocheted around the kitchen. The gun itself had almost flown out of her grasp, but she managed to hang onto it as her muscles and bones absorbed the potent recoil. Connors's body jolted sickeningly as the nasty shot perfectly perforated his chest cavity, fraying a flap of fabric from his overalls in its wake. His dying breath was something she'd never forget as long as she lived, raspy and labored as it got caught in his throat for the last time. Then, nothing. Silence, silence so loud it was frightening. Emi clutched her ringing head with her throbbing hand and cried silent tears laced with too many emotions to name. Alex hugged her and she hugged him back, her current mind and mental state on the verge of fracturing irreparably. A familiar "BEEP" broke the silence, her notification tone. She looked down to the source of the noise as Alex took her phone out of his pocket with a trembling hand and said "I thought maybe our phones could get through to 911 so I went to grab them but then I heard a gunshot and I-I-" emi consoled him "it's ok, I understand." She tried to use the most reassuring voice she could muster but it wasn't very convincing. She took her phone from him to check what the message was. It read:

Objective: Complete

Old time: 0:000:07:58

New time: 0:027:23:41

Her heart skipped a beat as she heard a "beep" from behind her, and she turned her head from her phone to look at Conners's flaccid body. She walked to it, gun in hand, just in case, and bent down over it, making sure the shotgun was out of his reach. As she searched it, Alex asked, "em, what're you looking for?" She retrieved his phone from his pocket, and luckily there was no lock screen on it. In Conner's messages a new one read:

Objective: expired. Player has been killed.

0:000:00:00

Emi looked at Alex and said, "I know I had less than an hour... I think I just took his remaining time." Her phone beeped again and though she hadn't clicked on the new message yet she could still read its title:

new objective