The Wake Up Call.
(Part 1.05)
Introduction
Back in Hugi 16 I began a story about a young small time criminal who wants to make big in the world, quickly. This is the 3rd part of that story. The main character, Hetch, is having a really hard time trying to deliver a metal case and its mysterious contents to the customer of Hetch's low-life boss called Mewco, Around him is a world filled with hi-tech toys, designer drugs and street clans all conspiring to prevent Hetch from achieving his goal and getting paid.
The story so far.
Hetch has finally got his artificial arm and the metal case back from the lost property department and in doing so he almost lost his life when he attacked a security guard, fired a side-arm at the woman behind the desk and was trapped in the ventilation system while troops threw grenades inside. He has been mugged, beaten, bored, chased, frozen and shot at. It's shaping up to be a really crappy day.
He has teamed up with a kind stewardess from the long haul shuttle where he fell asleep while travelling to the Rhyson shuttle terminal. The Rhyson terminal has been severely demolished by a bomb blast and the authorities have placed Hetch's mug shot across most of the vid-channels. A massive number of troops have been quietly unloading huge machinery at the final shuttle terminal where Hetch got off. He has found a data-recorder belonging to the attractive stewardess and was about to ask her about some of its disturbing audio and visual entries when he was forced to the floor of her appartment by an unknown attacker. As this is Hetch's first mission as an illegal courier he can only fear the worst, that it is a rival courier eager to muscle in on Mewco's turf. With the rummour that Hetch's boss, the sleazy Mewco, is dead, and Hetch held face down on the floor with a gun barrel digging into his skull, things look very bleak indeed.
Chapter 1.05: Busted.
Well, well, well. What have we got here?
Hetch did not recognise the voice, but it definitely sounded pissed off. A hundred things raced through his mind, whether to wait this situation out or try and break loose, grab his case and bolt for the door. The heavy weight across the back of his legs convinced him that the stewardess had been knocked out as she had followed him through the door. No, for the moment he would wait and hope that a glimmer of hope would soon appear.
Are you fucking deaf?
Another boot made contact with Hetch's rib cage and he heard a crack, something had broke. There was a sharp pain in his side and his chest began to burn like it was on fire.
What's in the case?
I don't know,
yelled Hetch trying to ignore the pain.
Wrong answer!
Hetch heard the gun creak behind his head as the trigger was pulled. CLICK. There was no ammo in the gun. At this point he would had let out a huge sigh of relief if his chest didn't feel like an elephant had tap danced on it.
A small time punk with a metal case of goodies.
Hetch was pulled to his feet and slammed against the thick sound-proof glass of the appartment's window. Eighty floors below him the polluted city street rippled with people, crime and overcrowded transport pods. His lip split open from the impact and a small, red trail of blood ran down the glass.
Can you fly, punk?
He knows nothing about the cargo.
said the stewardess.
Hetch now had a chance to look around the room, there were two huge ape-like thuggs dressed in dark suits with armoured jackets underneath. They were too well dressed to be troops, but they were packing some of the very latest military hardware. Next to the door was the stewardess, her expression had completely changed. It was now cold and harsh looking, she was now holding a heavy duty mini cannon and it seemed to suit her new mood. On the floor next to her was the corpse of his ex-boss. It must have been Mewco's body which had fallen across Hetch's legs.
What should we do with him?
asked the stewardess.
Let's turn him into pavement pizza.
said one of the goons, eager to drop Hetch from the eighty-th floor window.
Want me to waste him?
No!
ordered the stewardess.
Let's leave him in here to explain Mewco's body to the enforcers. Come on, we've got a shuttle to catch.
Hetch recieved a sharp strike across the back of his head. He slid down the window and recieved yet another kick to his torso. The two goons then followed the stewardess out of the door.
Welcome to the courier business!
she shouted then laughed as the appartment door was closed and locked from the outside.
Hetch tore open his coat and threw the smashed data recorder onto the ground. It was lucky for him that it was so close to his chest otherwise a couple of his ribbs would have surely snapped like a chicken's neck in the hands of a world class arm wrestler. But it wasn't all good news, the battery pack had also broke and its corrosive acid burnt through his sweaty shirt and down his left side. He screamed as the dissolved shirt material was pulled from his melted skin. There was a island shaped burn across his chest and he knew it needed medical attention.
In the sterile bathroom were hundreds of half empty drug hypos and bottles of unspellable tablets, potions and probably a few poisons too, but nothing suitable for burns. So he walked into the kitchen and searched through the eye level storage units, appart for the usual assortment of snack food cannisters and a few dead insects there was nothing. The appartment was empty, perhaps even the entire level of the tower was empty. This only thing in sight was a half empty bottle of slug juice, high alcohol tongue tearing liquid with enough power in its fumes to deck an elephant, maybe even the same elephant that Hetch felt had jumped up and down on his chest. He gulped a few mouthfuls. The fire water burnt almost as badly as the battery acid did, but after a few moments his head swam round and the heat vanished. Amplified by lack of both food and sleep he felt sick and tired, very tired. He just wanted to sleep for a week while being fed grapes by a tag team of naked babes pandering to his every whim. This day dream of flesh made him think of Mewco and his stories of horizontal pleasures in his many adult fun houses with some of his female employees. There would be no more of these sex stories from Mewco, the only stiff he would now get would be from rigor-mortis, this led Hetch's mind back to his current situation; being trapped in a strange appartment with the body of his ex-boss and painful burns across his chest.
With Mewco's corpse there under his nose Hetch knew that he was way out of his depth. If the king-rat himself, Mewco, couldn't handle a deal then it must really be major league stuff. Hetch kicked the body over and began to search its pockets. It turned out to be a great treasure trove of drugs, weapons and enough locker keys to fill a large suitcase. The lack of any credits was hardly surprising, Mewco had always said that carrying cash was for chumps and he could smell it on people a mile away. Hetch gulped down a handful of pills. He didn't know or care what they were. Hopefully something to help ease the pain of his chest.
Come on.. think!
he told himself, desperately trying to think up a plan.
After trying the door a few times he walked back to Mewco's corpse and dropped down onto the floor holding his throbbing head in his dirty hands. He closed his eyes and watched the drug enduced fireworks fill his mind. The affects of the slug-juice grew stronger and his tongue began to feel like a slug, a sticky, bitter snail-like foot covered in salt. His chest still burned like hell, so he tried pouring some of the slug-juice over it like he had seen many times in the old 2-d movies.
Argggh, shit!!
He made a mental note; don't believe everything you see in the movies.
Damn. Looks like a pricey skin job. That's gonna need more credits.
He told himself while looking at the red burn across his chest. Then he remembered Mewco and the boosts about his expensive plastic surgery on his face and body to mask the vast amount of bio-tech implants and reconstructive surgery. Hetch looked closely at Mewco's face and neck. His throat had been cut almost from one ear to the other. He noticed a small flap of skin and couldn't resist pulling it to see what was underneath. This grislly curiosity gave an interesting reward. Mewco's face peeled off like an overripe orange. His entire face was a synthetic mask and it was a really expensive one, not the cheap kind of body parts which Mewco often sold for large amounts of profit. This caught Hetch's imagination and he tried lifting the hair from Mewco's horrorific looking skull. Again this came away easily and Hetch held both of his hands in front of him. In one was the long,scruffy looking, black hair wig and in the other was Mewco's face mask with Hetch's fingers poking through the eye sockets like a gruesome puppet. If those drugs and alcohol hadn't made him so drowsy he would have probably lost his lunch all over the floor by now.
He had all of his dead boss's possessions, his drugs, his weapons, his illegal hardware and now he had his hair and his face. Hetch finally had an idea. He would become Mewco. Atleast he could move around the city more easily with someone else's face, clothes and identity. So he pulled the grislly face mask over his head and tugged the black wig over the top to hide the edges. After swapping his coat for Mewco's heavy coat, and fixing a thick metal collar around his neck to conceal the cut where Mewco's throat had been cut, the transformation was complete. Mewco was reborn.
Hetch picked up the bottle of slug-juice and stuffed a piece of material into its open top. A flick of his lighter and it was alite. He threw the bottle against the glass window and it burst into flames. The flood of smoke and heat almost immediately covered the floor and window. The room filled with choking smoke and toxic fumes but Mewco's inhaler had enough air to last for a few minutes and he hoped that this would buy him enough time before he was consumed by the fire himself. The sound-proof glass was heavy duty. It needed to be, the tennants of the Eldora tower paid huge amounts of money to be isolated from the noise polution around it. He just hoped that the heat from the fire would be enough to melt the window, or atleast attract someone's attention. Sacks of black smoke crept their way along the ceiling and soon the fire would deliver itself onto Hetch. Soon we would be in a sack of his own, a black body bag.
To be continued...