Bullet in the Brain

Part 1: Live In Our Shadow

“Family of scags and leechers,” the sun-glassified tattooed man muttered through a mouthful of cigarette smog. “Let’s see if you can at least properly tinker my custom Solar City gun mods.”

My tied brother’s wails and my terrified sister’s hyperventilation sounded in the Sparkweld Syndicate’s stuffy, neglected warehouse.

We failed to satisfy his questioning. The chilled barrel held to my head would soon light up red hot. Nothing in my skill set existed to escape this situation, and even if I could, my life would cease after an inevitable underworld-led manhunt. They had connections that would even make a politician salivate.

This was it. And I was going out like a punk, a loser. Having lived my entire life like a loser? What my mind acted on could have been considered guts. Or perhaps it was my underlying deranged pettiness.

I only had one chance left to do something tough while I was living. To take something back. In any way. Of any amount. To show my mettle befitting of a raised Solarite of the 2080s. I was one, and I would prove it to someone other than myself.

I shifted my head forward, and the gun’s barrel shadowed me perfectly. Joe was too much of a professional to fail to do that much, even when he should have relaxed because I was unequipped. bound up like a dog. powerless prisoner.

He was amused and left temporarily speechless.

“What the hell, kid? I should have shot you through that dim skull of yours for that maneuver.” Joe said.

My eyes turned directly into the line of fire. His sidearm. I blew him an inaudible raspberry or two. My mouth was ball-gagged, so it looked like I was simply a fruit-stuffed feast animal that started bobbing. I would have included my mocking hands, but alas, I had to settle for shimmying my sides like a snake. It was hilarious and satisfying to see his face twist.

It was faster than I could predict. Thump. An uppercut plunged into my empty stomach, propping me against the wall. I was breathless and completely dazed.

Immediately, he followed with a flying knee to the left cheek and my teeth. The momentum, weight, and sting carried through my neck and jaw far beyond my skin. Blood steadily trickled around and down my gag, too thick to be absorbed by my denim jacket and worn trousers. An honest red stream flowed down my nose. I struggled to keep my heavy head and body from collapsing on the grey floor.

Well. At least he didn’t shoot my kneecaps. I’d seen that happen before. It was the type of thing you kept to yourself if you knew what was good for you.

“You are not invincible, Astrid.” Joe puffed a fierce cloud. “Heh. Unbelievably, out of this lot, maybe you could have become someone in this city if you had another chance. I could have used you as a decent hired hand destined to die in a nameless firefight. But you are finished. Your life is our gang’s blood debt.”

He oriented his weapon back to me with a wisp of air.

I solemnly accepted the pull of the trigger from the gun muzzle three shallow inches away. There was no point in dodging. A man can’t outrun his own bloody creations.

A whirlwind-type bullet whistled above my right ear. The air crackled with the ignition of gunpowder. My heart tensed to the point of bursting as I imagined a traumatizing death.

Concurrently, or perhaps even before the gun’s mechanism released its mechanical reaction, my blood unknowingly puddled on the floor where it permeated through the concrete in a gap smaller than which a plant could rise. It went unnoticed in the depreciating holding room. The entire floor curiously glistened with a thick red sigil and many more delicate white sigils crowding the inside.

“A cult symbol?” Joe said. “The fuck is happening to this city nowa–”

It was then that the minute assailant contacted and pierced my flesh. My brain’s hypersensitive webbed mass made an exception to time’s normal flow in response to the stimuli. My gag sprang out of its hold. I lived the scene a thousand times slower in fragments.

Abruptly, an eldritch voice radiated into my thoughts.

Failed Sacrifice. Four Souls Sensed.

Inadequate Blood. Inadequate number of Mediums. Overcoming Conditions. Compensation Demanded. Monumental.

The unstoppable force continued out above my left ear effortlessly through the safe room, going at what I could only guess was about 1300 feet per second. As my limping body crumbled, another force lifted me into the air. My last sight was all three people in the room levitating like phantoms in bemusement as white light blanketed us from the ground.

I couldn’t decide if my brain was playing tricks or meddling with reality as I faded. By then, most of my thinking organ was inactive or forcibly expelled. In the end, whatever amount remained, I would trust.

Through only my nerves, I felt a semisweet smile creep up on my blood-painted face. In some way, I had won. As I awaited to be buried myself, I stared in entertainment from above at my own room of corpses. There was no question what the mentioned compensation would be.

***

Four Hours Earlier

I trudged around the piss puddles with practice toward the GameTree down the worn alley where neon lights emanated overhead, to get a new game to play during my fifteen-minute lunch breaks.

Awww. You are feeling happy. Don’t you have 105 hours of work next week? Three jobs of mindless, lame labor.

I sighed. Why was I so negative?

I’d always lived like this, I reminded myself. It stood to reason that I could do it once again.

I had finally sold enough clothing, furniture, and personal keepsakes. My room was a bare bed and the definition of prisoncore.

I borrowed money from anyone I could get to listen, since I wouldn’t be paid for the next six years. If only my damn siblings would graduate earlier.

The plan was to trade in my only game as well, but I had a thousand-plus playing hours in Marcus Quest. It was painful, but inevitable to lose my saves.

I chuckled.

I possibly was one of the best living players of Marcus Quest, I thought curiously. How many professionals or hobbyists were still playing this 70-year-old game? The game’s sale would solely be as a collectible.

I was shoved from behind into the pavement by bulky hands, in the midst of deciding which direction to turn.

My sleep-deprived self was lit up in pain.

“Watch it, jackass,” I said. I tried to rise, and multiple jagged hands and knees pressed faster and more accurately around the back of my legs and wrists.

I cursed and tussled.

My perpetrators quickly bound me with a blindfold and cuffs.

“Help! Ther-” I yelled, and on cue, a gag was stuffed in my mouth. I annoyingly heard satisfied snickers from behind.

Then, I was hauled like a sack of potatoes and tossed into the back of a vehicle. It was 3 AM, but I should have been safe from petty crime. I seriously assumed gangs stopped organ harvesting in light of new, complete artificial organs.

As for the prospect of robbing me, I could barely rub two coins together, and it showed in my bland, short-cut almond hair. My hair was ridiculed compared to modern, brazen Solar City standards.

I battered into the sides of the trunk in the drive, my senses withdrawn and disoriented at the same time. The vehicle came to a stop that lasted longer than the others, and I was yanked over the shoulder and dumped in a room that was electronically locked.

“This eighteen-year-old is the last of them, Joe,” a voice said.

Yep, that’s me.

“You are free to go, lads,” a scruffy, deep voice replied.

I heard shifting in front of me and the door lock again as my blindfold was removed to reveal my soon-to-be killer, or at the very least, my god forsaken kidnapper. My rope-bound brother and sister?

No, that wasn’t right.

My younger brother, Terro, and older sister, Bea, frantically looked to each other for what to do. They both had on an orange-blue Naoburu sailor uniform. For such a respected college, I thought the color combination was overbearing to the point of ruining any prospect of style.

“Talk, you two suckers,” he said.

I turned my neck to the right and stared deeply into an alloy barrel, and an unaturally lengthy limbed black clad man, whom I guessed was Joe. This was who I was looking for. My body reflexively moved under the barrel, which tipped down to match.

For whatever reason, my family refused his call to conversation. It ticked me off. The gun to my dome and all.

“Fine, have it your way,” Joe said with a huff. “One of you can swap with Astrid, and he’ll talk in your place.” They turned white as paper and clamped their mouths tighter.

“Haha. Sorry. It cracks me up to see family members turn on each other. No, Astrid will make both of you talk just fine,” Joe laughed as the barrel wobbled up from my head to stomach, and his finger fidgeted, just tapping on the cusp of the trigger.

I shot an accusatory gaze toward my family, which they dodged. In truth, I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t trade or risk my life to protect theirs either.

“So how is the Wallia family going to pay a 6.7 million dollar debt to my boss. Any ideas?” Joe said.

Finally, Terro broke the silence. “We don’t know a thing about this debt. Maybe we can pay it back later? We certainly can’t do anything about it if we can’t leave or if we die.”

The barrel pressed mercilessly into my hair. “Don’t play me for a fool. You know about the debt your father and mother incurred. Your father was a compulsive gambler years ago, and your mother was a fraudster who saw it fit to cross us.” Joe pressed.

I knew nothing about this, and I could sense my siblings didn’t either, from their denial.

“That’s our parents' fault, surely you could ask them for what you need?” Bea pleaded.

“I can’t, unless you swinesons do something,” Joe said. “They vacated this city with no trace. By now, they could be across half the globe or in space for all we know.”

My siblings were shaken. I groaned internally.

I guessed my parents really loved me. Conditionally. As long as I worked tirelessly to pay for my brilliant siblings' college. Seeing how my parents were nowhere to be seen, in the end, we were all blindsided. For the first time in years, we siblings were equal.

I could be more bitter that my parents used me as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it's cool. I was a gracious person at heart… no. No. NO.

Who I was doesn’t change what happened to me.

The rubber gag, blood, and saliva tasted rancid. My fingernails knifed into my palms. I wouldn’t forgive them. Liars. This whole city. Liars.

Why did my pissy government allow gangs to prosper? Second-largest city in the world for what?

Why doesn’t anyone do something? Why was fate carried along strands my eyes were too destitute to see?

I tempered away. Meanwhile, failed call after failed call was heard from my siblings dialing from both of their phones. My parents gave no response.

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Joe said. “They wouldn’t skip town by accident. They wouldn’t answer what they understand as a tracker’s call either. They learned to be thorough from a life of bullshit and grifting. Something you school children know nothing about.”

“If you let us go, Joe, I can guarantee, with promise, that Terro and I will make some good money in a few years,” Bea said. “You could have your payment plus interest in fifteen years.”

“I’ve heard all this rubbish before. You want to waltz off free? Hahaha. The boss makes it clear that it would be more trouble than you're worth to let you go.” Joe said. “Ahem. We have a set policy for situations like these. This part is ugly, but fitting for a family of scags and leechers.”

***

Alas, my death was not simple. Because of my persistent consciousness, I realized that through a lethal rocket of steel and the floor’s abstract markings, something strange had taken hold of my life. I experienced a seamless transferral from Earth’s plane to another. My mind didn’t see any image of the process that could be likened to teleportation, only the resulting muddied water that frosted my skin and the harrowing, accompanying, lifeless silence.