Hard Order

Prologue

0.

Three doors.

It looked like three doors, all right next to each other. It was funny, because it was a thin hallway. Lucas remembered running down it once before when he was fifteen. The strip club bouncers had made good form of kicking out underaged kids, but fifteen- -year-old Lucas and his big brother weren't gonna give the bouncer the satisfaction.

It was a thin hallway. It only had one door.

Three doors?

The doors started to merge as he got closer. Was he running or walking? He couldn't tell. He couldn't tell that he was stuck in a hobbling jog. The drugs were getting really heavy.

Someone behind him, very silent.

Oh, two doors now. And they were the old fashioned kind, too. The same doors from ten years ago. Little knobs you turned with your wrists instead of the kind with the automatic keypad, or the sensors. These doors were made of wood.

This door was made of wood.

Really close, now. It was just two doors overlapping each other. But which doorknob?

Lucas slammed headfirst into the door, having apparently been running faster than he had thought. He was even dizzier now than before.

"Shit, he's got a gun!" someone yelled from behind. His voice seemed to echo inside Lucas' head.

Two knobs. The drugs made things hazy. Lucas reached for the left one, and recoiled as his fingers crunched into wood. The knob seemed to slip sideways to the right. Lucas grabbed it, felt real brass, and turned it.

Oh, it was raining. Of course it was raining. Lucas could only imagine the hell that the drugs would play on him now. He wondered why he didn't succumb to them and drop. Non lethal injection? Just to make him try and escape? He hated the idea that he was being toyed with. No sense sticking in the doorway.

Lucas jumped over the two steps that led into the back alley and continued his hobbling jog forward. The thumping rhythms of naked women faded into the off-beat pounding of the rain on every nearby surface.

Blinking lights up ahead. A car horn pulsed through the sheets of rain. Weird. Normally one would hear a car horn, not feel it. In fact, Lucas realized that he wasn't hearing anything. Pounding. Beating. Pulses. Thumps.

Weird.

But car horns meant one thing: a road. People. Cops.

Thank God for police reforms. Had this been five years ago, cops would have shot him for fun if he came out of an alley bleeding and under the influence.

The multiple copies of everything started to merge back into one shape. A nice wholesome crowd stopped and stared at Lucas as he hobbled out of the alley.

He felt something loud. He felt something go through him.

Lucas glanced down to see his own blood splurting out of his stomach. A woman in a designer dress with her hair in a three foot tall curl-over put her hands up to her cheeks and screamed an old-fashioned monster movie scream. A good scream for everyone who could hear to enjoy.

Well, that's a funny connection.

Building cameras, traffic light cameras, a high school dropout's cell camera caught it all. Blood, screaming, and the shooter who emerged victorious out of the alley behind Lucas, who had since dropped to his knees, clutching the exit wound that the bullet left in his torso.

Lucas realized that he would never hear anything else again. He would be dead before the drugs could clear. He thought that was an odd thought to have as he died.

Cold nickel pressed against the back of his bare neck. His body shivered once more before the shooter pulled the trigger.

A cough. A gag. A good quart of blood pumped out of the neck wounds and bubbled in the back of his mouth.

What a messy way to die.

Lucas twisted around as he fell and caught a glimpse of his killer. He figured that he deserved that much. Sucks that it was otherwise pretty undignified to be caught in a strip club.

Sandy blond hair, fair skin, rough Slovak face, no cybernetics or other enhancements... Lucas didn't know this guy at all.

He didn't think he would.