The Pandora Index (Older work)

White Masks

Daniel Walker

"Hey, wake up!" A man's unfamiliar voice rang in my ears. "Hey! I said wake up, asshole!" I felt someone kick me hard in the ribs.

"Jason! Stop." A sharp voice.

I painfully opened my eyes to find myself laying against a concrete wall in a large, three-way alley. It was night now and the alley was lit by a trashcan holding a fire.

I wasn't alone either. Four other people were in the alley too, and they were all wearing white masks.

On the far side of the alley, in the shadows, was a woman sitting on a
dumpster. She was only partially illuminated by the fire, but I could see that she had a mask that looked like a porcelain doll's pale face, complete with blushing pink cheeks, and pouting red lips. She was also wearing a large yellow raincoat and jeans.

Closer to the fire was the man wearing the android scrap armor, he was crouched near the fire with a woman who was wiping off the streaks of dried blood that had accumulated on the left side of his grinning mask. The woman had shoulder-length, bleached hair, and was wearing a green hoodie. Her mask looked like a Day of the Dead skull with black swirls and dots down the sides.

The tall figure of a man wearing a simple hockey mask with vertical blue and red stripes over the right eye, stood over me. He was wearing Pandora armor but he had scratched out the red and black 'P' of the Pandora logo and given the rest of it a white and blue paint job.

"It's about time, sleeping beauty!" The hockey masked guy said, his voice was slightly muffled. "Do you have any idea how long we've been waiting for you to wake up?"

I was fully awake now, but I couldn't sit up because my hands and legs were tied with cables.What are they going to do with me?

The woman by the fire  stood up and walked towards me to stand next to the man. She gestured towards a dark shape in the fire, "You and your friend murdered that man."

"N-No... Y-you don't understand. That man was the one who was dangerous!" I don't care if I sound desperate, Victoria said that these people kill Pandora officers, "He wasn't human, he was- He could shoot fire out of his hands!"

The man in the hockey mask held up his right hand. Electricity arc'ed around his bare fingers.

"Oh." I muttered, now realizing the predicament I was in. The dark alley seemed a lot more sinister now that I knew that I was surrounded by psychopaths who could probably blow my face off with a twitch of a finger.

"So, are you going to kill me?" I said, expecting the worst.

The Skull tilted her head.

"That's what you do, right? You murder cops." I explained, "Are you saying that you don't?"

Jason and the Skull stared at me. The man answered, "Not if we don't have to."

"Why should I believe you? You killed my friend!"

The woman bunched her hands into fists. She began to say something but she fell silent when she saw the large man wearing android armor stand up and stomp towards us. Each step he took, the ground seemed to shake. He stood over me like a human monolith. But, what had caught my attention first wasn't his size, it was that he still had two eyes. His left eye had completely healed.

The words "Fair trade." Rumbled out from under his smiling mask. He walked back over to the woman with the porcelain mask.

"W-what?" I stuttered.

"You killed his friend, so he killed yours." The other man explained. "In other words, Karma's a bitch."

I looked down. "So, if your not going to kill me... then what do you want from me?"

They stared at me for a few seconds before the woman asked, "Why do you trust Pandora?"

This question surprised me. Why shouldn't I trust them? They seemed good enough. The smile that had been splayed across Tom's face as he shot Weathers, flashed into my mind.

"I don't know," I replied. "But I trust them a hell of a lot more than you psychos."

"You ungrateful bastard!"

I was met with a swift kick in the stomach from the guy in the hockey mask. I gritted my teeth and fell back on my side in pain.

"Jason. Cut it out." The woman hissed as she stormed off towards the fire and began to warm her hands.

"What the hell happened to you..." the man muttered.

"What?" I asked, my ribs still aching.

The man began to say something but was interrupted by the skull-masked woman who had come running back.

"There's an agent nearby!" she exclaimed. "He's been watching us this whole time!"

"Damn! Do we know who it is?" the man asked.

"It's Snow." she said.

"Oh, shit!" The man was beginning to panic.

Snow?

"Alright, we got to start getting out of here. Angie," the man said looking at the woman wearing the skull mask. "You and Smiley should take him through the south passage and meet up with us at The King's Court. We'll go north and try to lose them in the scrapyards." He went back over towards the others and explained his plan to them. The Smiler walked over to us and nodded to the Skull. He looked back down at me, and before I could even protest he shoved a dirty rag into my mouth to serve as a gag. He picked me up and swung me over his shoulder easily.

The Skull started to lead us away from the fire. As we turned and I got a better perspective of the alley, I thought I saw a fifth person, just outside the reach of the flickering light. It was just a silhouette but the shape was undoubtedly the same as the man with the red scarf! The light glinted off his goggles just so I could see that he was sta.)- love ring at me. I tried to shout at him through my gag but I was too muffled for anyone to care. He turned and started to leave.

He was going to get away, and I couldn't do anything about it! My head drooped down as I accepted my current fate. I watched the scarfed man silently disappeared behind a corner.