“There’s no one bloody well here. The entire place is empty,” Anthony groaned from the top of the stairs.
“Shit, shit, shit. We got the wrong place, didn’t we? God I knew it! What have we done?”
Luke cut his brothers rant short, “Shut up, Paul, you’re not helping. How many casinos do you know with their own army on the payroll, huh? This is the right place, no doubt about that. The top dog may have given us the slip though. Did you check every room?”
“Oh no, we thought we’d just have a look at one or two and leave it at that,” Anthony responded, the gravity of the situation lending an edge to his permanently sarcastic tone.
“Very funny. Once again, not helpful.”
Alex stayed silent throughout. Turning on the spot, he gazed absently at his reflection in the unblemished patches of the floor. Anthony and the others watched impatiently, waiting in vain for their brother to snap back to reality.
Alex studied himself for a good while, cocking his head left and right, noticing, apparently for the first time, his thinning face, sunken cheeks, and mottled hair. A thin smile etched across his lips, growing into an unsettling grin. He chuckled. The sound was husky, abnormal, almost metallic. It reverberated around the quiet hall, a chilling ominous echo, like the rumbling of a distant avalanche.
Having banished the laughter from his system, Alex sighed, his chin slumping against his chest as he did.
The brothers watched.
In an insane frenzy Alex hoisted his gun up to meet his reflection and pumped the trigger until the entire clip had been spent on his malevolently smiling face. The bullets turned the eye sockets of his reflection into craters, gauging and splintering his pale skin.
The glass held firm. Pockmarks punctuated its otherwise pristine surface, each with a web of cracks stretching out to tarnish the perfectly still, reflective pool of mirrored glass. Alex dropped the gun and pulled a spare from the back of his belt, taken from one of his many victims that day. Hands at his side, he rose the metallic monolith that was his leg as high as he could manage, and slammed his heel down with lightning speed.
His foot penetrated the mirrored floor effortlessly. Waves of silver tore free. Reflective fragments twinkling like stardust as they flowed into the abyss below.
Beneath him, visible through the maw he had opened, a hoard of men and divinely ornamented women cowered with their backs to the wall. In the middle of the room was deep a sand pit. In the center of the ring were two men, bloodied and bruised, their fray cut short by the events above. All upturned faces stared at Alex, half in fear, half in simple wonderment.
Alex smiled back, and levelled his gun.
Ultor had already emptied half a magazine before the cornered punters began to whirr into action. They thawed from their frozen, helpless bewilderment and sprang forth, darting aimlessly in all directions, hoping to find sanctuary. They shoved and hammered at the door, trampling one another in a bod for freedom. Bodies quickly piled up in the doorway, blocking any hope of escape.
There was a brief pause whilst Alex reloaded, during which time he spared his brothers a questioning glance.
With his jaw set, Anthony led his brothers in joining in the maelstrom. Together, they rained down lead and destruction upon the caged animals.
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From a previously vacant room to the right of the grand hall, yet more competition emerged. The first man to appear bore large serpent tattoos across his naked torso, as well as, more concerningly, an automatic rifle. With a ferocious cry he peppered his surroundings indiscriminately. A number of his bullets found refuge in soft flesh.
Alex’s metal arm repelled two bullets, and Alex himself was fortunate enough to only sustain one glancing shot to the ribs.
Luke was not equally blessed. His torso was littered with punctures, and, in the furrow of his brow, a single, solitary, dark ruby sphere blossomed in upon his forehead.
The crazed Viper’s second sweep was cut abruptly short by a return barrage, as a second gun manifested in Alex’s hand and responded in kind. Simon made quick work of the other Vipers with little fuss or trouble, picking them off as they broke from the room, emboldened by their predecessors success.
With the threat neutralized, Ultor stepped forward, past the twitching body of his oldest brother, and liberated the assault rifle from the death grip of the lead Viper, as well as two grenades, which he hungrily snatched up. Returning to his post, he nonchalantly removed the pin from one of his new toys, tossing it carelessly through the hole in the mirrored floor, into the gaggle of quivering, huddled survivors.
By the time the explosion began to rack the building, Ultor was already within the lair from which the snakes had spilled. It was a simple task locating the now unconcealed passage that had previously been hidden beneath an ornate rug, emblazoned with the visage of Ebisu.
With an almost childish spring in his step, Ultor bounded down the carpeted steps, almost casually dispatching a still-preparing ambush team in the process. In the cavern below he began to mop up the last of the cowering suits.
Ultor proceeded unimpeded until a collection of bullets thumped into the wall at his side. The panic stricken shooter had clearly rushed and wasted an opportunity. Doing away with the man, and his companion who had been even slower to react, Ultor edged closer to where a passage led behind the far wall of the basement. There were entrances at both the left and right hand sides of the chamber, both leading to an office tucked away behind a partition wall.
Hearing Ultor’s approach a voice hailed the intruder, still calm and unshaken, “So what’s this about, kid? Money? Revenge? ‘Cos I warn you now, my reputation won’t allow you to take either.”
Alex continued picking a path through the debris of masonry and gore, his footfalls cushioned by the fallen, “Actually, it’s that reputation I have come for.”
A strangled laugh answered, “I see. Trying to make a name for yourselves as the new kids on the block, are we? I gotta warn you, kiddo, us established sorts don’t take kindly to punks encroaching on our territory. This path is going to walk you into a whole world of hurt.”
Simon had crept down the steps behind his brother, and remained poised and ready by the entrance, watching his Alex’s laboured progress towards the back office.
“You have the wrong idea. It’s your reputation I want, yours and everyone else’s who has grown rich and plump off the blood of good people. I don’t want to take that reputation, though, I want to destroy it. Any repute I win in the process is not for myself, but for the institution of order. Your demise will stand as a testament to that old adage,” Alex was close to the far wall now, “justice will prevail.”
There was a pause.
“I won’t claim it isn’t admirable, but you are in well over your head, boy. This world is rotten, and has been for a very long time now. There’s no cure for what this place has, and there is absolutely no way my death, and the deaths of a few of my associates, is going to change that. Nowadays, it’s every man for himself. Those with strength enough should use it to build up their own world, where the shit of this place can’t touch ‘em. Take that as some friendly advice.”
By now, Alex was flat against the wall to the side of the right-hand entrance.
“Who said I was looking for a cure? I agree with you wholeheartedly, but that doesn’t mean nothing can be done. Sometimes you have to know when to cut your losses and simply amputate,” he said, appraising his own artificial arm, and the object it held.
A metallic thud sounded against the far wall, closest to the left entrance.
Ultor swung around the corner and sprayed the room mercilessly with rapid fire from the assault rifle. Three of the five men who had sought sanctuary there immediately succumbed to the onslaught.
The two survivors began a retreat around the far corner, presumably hoping to flank Ultor from the other side.
They met their end with the blast of an awaiting grenade.