How the fuck… How the fuck!? I kept shouting in my head. I got dressed as quickly as possible. How did things spiral out of control so quickly? It was completely insane! Just a few days ago I was having fun and enjoying life. I mean it, honestly. You know what I mean, I was really in a groove! I was making the most of my time working for the company and I was starting to really love it.

How could this have all gone so wrong!?

I stormed out of my apartment and stopped dead in my tracks. What the fuck!? I was shocked to find everything painted black. The walls, doors and all the trim, even the floor was painted in a glossy black. Things had come a long way from the lemon yellow they once had been when I arrived a few months ago.

I decided to knock on Jacob’s door although I wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe I thought he would join me? I knocked politely. No answer. I knocked louder. Still no answer. So, I pounded on the door and shouted for him. I think internally I was having a panic attack. Wouldn’t you?

Finally, the door opened. “What the fuck, dude!?” Jacob yelled at me. His dirty dreadlocks hung in his face. He was wearing shitty jogging shorts and nothing else. His body was covered in terrible Ozzy style tattoos which just seem generic as if no thought was put into what he wanted to display on his body.

“Buddy we’ve got to jet. There’s trouble heading our way,” I told him.

“You got that right,” Jacob retorted. “You took off with my girl last night! Not cool man, not cool!”

“First off, she not your girl. You don’t own anyone,” I said. Then I shook my head. I didn’t want to fight about it, so I started over. “Look, I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter anyway. We have an emergency going on. We must go down to the lobby…”

“Fuck that shit!” Jacob exclaimed and slammed the door right in my face.

You know what? Fuck it! Jacob can die up here by himself, but I’m out!

I went to the elevator. It arrived empty. I got in and punched the lobby. Whatever was going to happen, I would meet with Frank and the two of us would get the hell out of here and fly off to some other city, like we did the last time. I hear St. Louis is nice, right!? Probably not far enough, maybe Madrid? Or Egypt!? Come on, where would you go if you had the chance?

Anyway, while I was thinking about where in the world I would like to hide out, the elevator reached the lobby. When the doors opened it was just chaos. Fuck!

I stepped out and saw security everywhere. I mean, guys I had never seen here before. Hired mercenaries, that kind of security. They were armed, like swat team. They carried assault rifles with pistols on their hips, tasers and nightsticks. I have seen police in New York walking around with less body armor on! It was completely insane.

“JR, what the hell are you doing here?” Sherry exclaimed when she saw me. She came rushing over. Her eyes were like to dark caverns with dark bags underneath and her hair was mess, like she had just woken up and had no brush. Her clothing looked slept in.

“I came down to meet Frank…” I tried to explain to her, but before I could finish, she did something that blew my mind.

She forced a gun into my hand. She had gotten it from her handbag that was slung over her shoulder.

“Here take this, you’re going to need it!” She told me in a way that made my blood run cold. The look of fear in her eyes was absolutely terrifying.

“What the fuck, Sherry!?” I shrieked in a voice that sound far to feminine for my liking. The gun felt cold and heavy in my hand. I had never fired one before. I didn’t even know if it was loaded or how to check if it was! This was happening way too fast. My brain hurt, like I was about to have an aneurism. Maybe I could just go back to my apartment and barricade the door or something. I mean, nobody would know I was there, right!?

“I know, I know,” Sherry replied. She was shaking and on the verge of tears. “This was not how things were supposed to go, there were concessions and protections that we were supposed to have…”

She lost what she was trying to say, her mind buckling under the pressure, the strain of the situation. What was really fucked up was I didn’t even know exactly what the situation was yet. No one had filled me in yet.

I grabbed her by the shoulder with my free hand. “Sherry,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

“We can’t,” she responded and tried to shrug off my hand but couldn’t even manage that. She looked defeated. “It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?” As far as I was concerned, we could just fucking leave! Couldn’t we!? Were they going to shoot us if we left the building?

“They are coming for us, right now…” she tried to explain, but the words were failing her.

I shook her. “Who is?” I demanded.

She looked past me. “Frank!” She exclaimed.

Frank came in through the main entrance. Sherry ran over to him. From her large handbag she produced another handgun and handed it to him. Was it a bag of infinite handguns, like it was some video game!? He stared at the gun and then looked at me in complete bewilderment.

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I rushed over to them. I was not about to be left out of this conversation.

“It’s time you started answering questions, or you’re the first person I’m going to shoot with this fucking thing,” I threatened her. I meant it. I had enough.

She didn’t even flinch. She took a deep breath. “The Mexico City operation was overrun and destroyed by a Mexican drug cartel. They captured the guys with the knowledge and killed everyone else before burning the building to the ground. It did not make the international news, because the company wouldn’t let it.”

“What the fuck!?” I exclaimed. I knew it! I fucking knew it!

Frank just nodded as if he had been expecting this as well.

“When they took out Miami, they were a lot quieter about it,” she continued. “They came in force at the start of the day and killed everyone inside.”

“Let me guess, the company suppressed that news too?” I questioned.

She nodded. “We were just tipped off an hour ago that they are coming here, right now. In fact, I’m surprised Frank got here before them.”

“I would ask why, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to it, right?” I said to her.

Again, she nodded. “It all about territory. We took a lot of it away from them and made a lot of money. We figured this is the western plains confederacy, right? They’ll never get us here. Well, we were wrong. Ever since the breakup of the country… everything has weakened. They have gone to great lengths and great expense to take us out.”

“Like I said, we need to slip out the back and get the fuck out of here…” I tried to reason with them, but Sherry was having none of it.

“It’s too late JR, we can’t,” she told us. “They will have the place surrounded if they don’t already. We have to make our final stand. Right here, right now!”

“Finally stand!?” My heart almost exploded right there in my chest. What the fuck!? This can’t be happening! I turned to Frank in a panic and said. “We need to run!”

Frank looked like a deer caught in head lights. He looked at me, at the gun in his hand, at the gun in my hand and then back to the front doors.

Suddenly, we heard gun shots. Even through the chaos we could hear them clearly. The main windows, which glassed the entire front of the building began to shatter one by one. It was pure insanity as people began scream and running in every direction not knowing what to do. They crammed the elevator in an attempt to escape.

Then there was machine gun fire and all the glass in the lobby exploded as broken glass pelted people like hail. The big armed security went to work returning fire. It was moments after that, when the air was no longer filled with glass, that an armored hummer drove right through what was left of the front windows and into the lobby. Chairs and tables were thrown everywhere.

I grabbed Frank by the arm. “We aren’t warriors,” I told him. “Take the stairs, get to the fifth floor. The doors are armored.”

Frank nodded. He looked around realizing the situation. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Sherry, come with us!” I shouted to her since she was only steps away. She looked at us and at the gun she had in her hand and then back at us. She nodded.

A bullet struck her in the forehead, and she collapsed to the ground, blood and brains everywhere.

There were many more bullets, I could hear the ping sound as they just missed us.

Frank and I ran for the stairs next to the elevator without ever looking back. We weren’t the only ones, there were many others also running for the stairs. We ran up, flight after flight. Some people got off at other floors. I briefly thought about the apartments. They had balconies on the third floor, but I didn’t want to risk it. We could end up trapped. Frank and I continued until we made it alive to the fifth floor, the very top of the building.

There was no security like there usually was. They were already fighting for their lives in the lobby, or maybe they retreated. More likely they were already dead, but honestly, I had no idea.

We waited, our hands on our guns. I examined mine desperately trying to figure out how it worked and praying that I did not hurt myself or someone on my side when the time came. I found the safety and figured out how to unlock it. I was now armed and dangerous. I could not get over how heavy the gun felt in my hand, the cold steel fascinating and menacing at the same time.

We waited for what seemed like hours, but it was probably only ten minutes for the first cartel enforcers to arrive. They coordinated and came from the elevator and the stairwell at the same time. The first wave of them must have been high on coke because they came out guns blazing without any thought to their own safety, and we responded in kind. I have no idea if I even hit anyone, but many of them went down with gunshot wounds.

Some of them found cover. We used tables and chair which turned out to be very flimsy. Mostly their bullets went right through them.

I was shaking in terror. When the table I was hiding behind got struck too many times I tried to roll over to another location. Big mistake.

I took a bullet in the leg. It was the strangest experience ever. It felt like someone had punched me in the leg really hard and then it felt wet from the blood, but the pain just wasn’t there, at least not yet. It could have been the shock of the experience blocking it out. I’ve heard that happens sometimes. Like the adrenaline is keeping you going, especially when you are fighting for your life.

I wasn’t the only one. People all around me were being shot and many were not getting back up, pretty soon there were so many cartel people there that they stopped shooting and started looking for important people they could take. People who could make drugs and such. Everyone else was systematically executed with a bullet to the head.

I tried to run for one of the labs and was hit again in the back. I hit the ground face down and lay there.

So, I was fucked. I lay there waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Someone rolled me over. I saw a face. The face of someone who was not Mexican, but white like me. That seemed incredibly strange and yet this guy was looking down at me with a strange smirk on his face.

“Hello, JD,” he said to me very casually. Like we were having a conversation over coffee, and I wasn’t lying on the ground dying at all. It was fucked up!

“It’s JR…” I tried to respond.

His face was weird, like it was being blurred out. I could not make out the features. “Listen,” he said, “when you wake up from this, tell them… that they are not going to stop me like this… with silly games and such. And I’m certainly not going down without a fight. They will understand.”

“Who are you?” I croaked.

“Brent,” he said, and he grinned. Or at least I got the impression that he was grinning since his face was still blurry. “Brent Alexander.”

“What the fuck…” I tried to say, but my life felt like it was fading. What was he even taking about!? I never thought when I died, it would be confusing and make absolutely no sense. I mean seriously, what the fuck!? I had to be losing my mind. This is what happens when you die, right!? It just becomes this incoherent mess.

He put his gun up to my head and I thought, well this sucks!

He pulled the trigger.

For a split second there was darkness. Them everything when white. The brightest white I had ever seen. Is this what people mean when they say go to the light? Is this how I pass on to the next life? Was there even a next life? Seriously, I really wished I knew what was going on!?

Then out of the brightness I could make out letters that formed words. Suddenly it all came into focus. I could read what it said.

It read,

signal lost,

connection dropped.