“Boss, he got away. Should we send some people to go look for him?” A man just came back after a few minutes of trying to run after boy who he just open fired at. He was disappointed that he lost sight of him, even though he was just a little bit behind.

“No, just ignore him. Our orders are to take priority” A tall and muscular man with long braided hair said. His face had large scars that would make children cry whenever they see him, but he can silence them immediately with his petrifying glare. It’s certainly a great party trick to impress certain people with deplorable tastes.

“Okay, boss” The reason why they called him ‘boss' even though he wasn’t one of the top heads, was because he was a senior officer among their organization. In fact, he was the only among them to have that high enough rank to warrant him that title in their group of thirty. And maybe because he was also the one that's leading this operation right now.

“Get everyone to setup the remote explosives. I want it done before the next call comes in. You hear? Before the next call”

“Yes, boss” He said with a nod, and then immediately turns around. “Did you hear that!? GET A MOVE ON PEOPLE!”

His shout sent the group of thirty men to scatter to specific locations of the mall. Each one had a few bags on their back, were they kept the remote explosives in. Eager to serve as the hands and feet for their cause.

After a year of planning and preparing for this day, it was now their time to make a move. Conspiring, making deals, kidnapping, and then sending people to their untimely graves, they did all of that to get to where they were. And they would still keep on doing it. This is for their groups goal, and they’ll make sure that they will attain it no matter how much sacrifice is needed.

Thirty minutes later, one by one, the men that spread out in different directions to plant the explosives came back.

“Where are the others?”

But not all of them did.

“Uhmm, I saw Green and Reynold’s go to the east side of the fifth floor to plant, but I didn’t see them when we went back down” Someone from the group answered.

“I saw Mike and his buds at the jewelry shops on the fourth floor. They asked me if I wanted to join in and get some… financial incentives, but I just ignored them and went on ahead with the others”

“Wait, I’ll try to contact them. Give me a sec…” He grabs the walkie-talkie that was strapped onto his shoulder and talks into it. But even after a few tries of trying to contact the others, no answer was received.

“Got nothing. Only static”

“Fucking shits! This is finally our chance and what do they do? Fucking things up and doing something else along the way. Wait till I g-!”

“””!”””

There was a thunderous rumbling that came from every direction which was soon followed by a loud bang, and the windows and doors that lead outside were now blocked by a thick layer of metal shutters and locks that were supposed to be used for warding off flying debris from hurricanes and the sort.

“What the fuck?” Also, the lights went out, making it impossible to see anything at all.

“Ah!” Pure darkness enveloped their surroundings, as confusion at what was happening filled their minds. But they knew one thing for sure.

They were trapped inside.

“Open your lights!” The one that they called boss shouted, and they all uniformly turned the lights that were attached to their vests on. It didn’t illuminate that far, though, but it was still helpful enough to see a few meters in front of them.

“Warren, go to the electrical room and check what’s going on. We’ll search for the others after the lights come back on, and then we’ll go to the control center afterwards”

“Yes, boss” He replied, as he took off into a run to the unmoving escalators and went up.

“Tsk” This wasn’t going according to the plan that they had devised, and it may upset the higher ups when their display of defiance wasn’t done in coordination with one another. They even got the easiest place among them all, where their target was farthest from the local police station and army barracks. Failure wasn’t an option for them, and they’ll make sure that it wasn’t.

Twenty minutes of waiting later, the lights were still off, and the person that went on ahead to turn on the power didn’t come back. They tried to check on him using the walkie-talkie, but all they got was static.

“Tsk, everyone move to the electrical room. Now!” He said in frustration. He was slightly getting anxious all of a sudden, and that feeling soon grew to fright when they reached the fourth floor.

“What kind of a sick joke is this!?” He shouted, as their flashlights made them see what that ‘joke' was.

There was a text written in what looks like red blood on the walls in front of the electrical room. It was the word ‘Hi' with a smiley face drawn at the end of it. It was still dripping towards the floor, meaning, it was written there just recently.

The men around him were startled, and some where even looking around in trepidation. But something has to be done about the lights, so, he pushed some of his subordinates to go check on it.

“ARGHHH!” Immediately after they went in, a scream soon followed from inside of the room.

“What is it this time…” He rushed in with his men, firearms at the ready. But, the blood drained from their faces when they did so, as they saw torn pieces of limbs and body parts scattered all over the floor in a pool of blood. Things were escalating too quickly for everyone else to process, but their boss couldn’t be derailed from the goal, as he gave out his next order.

“Turn the lights on! Now!” He yelled, and it immediately snapped someone out of their terrified trans to push the levers and buttons.

“It isn’t working, boss! Nothing’s happening!” That man replied in frustration, as he kept on doing what he could, although fumbling quite a bit.

“Then make it work, you fucking useless son of bitch!”

The man that got yelled at had gotten more flustered, as he didn’t know what to do. Even if their boss had told him to make it work, it just wouldn't. Even if he pulled and pushed everything that was there, there just wasn’t anything else that he could do.

“There’s nothing t-“

“HaHAHahahAHAHahA!” A soul chilling laugh came from outside that made the hairs on their bodies to stand on end. All of them got startled from the suddenness, that they pointed their firearms at the door in a form of self-defense from what made that sound. They were on edge before, but after that laugh, their fingers were now ready to pull the trigger at anything that moved.

“…” They stood there in silence for a few minutes before they slowly walked outside, with their guns pointed forward. Making sure the cost was clear first before they moved on towards the unmoving escalator that leads down to the third floor. But when they made it there, the lights abruptly came back on. Momentarily blinding them because their eyes couldn’t adjust quick enough, but when they did recovered from it.

“W-what’s that!?” Someone yelled and pointed at the opposite side of the floor above. They all looked towards where he was pointing at, and saw someone looking at their group. That person was wearing a white tuxedo and black pants, with a white top hat that he wore on top of his head.

“!” He was waving his right hand in a very enthusiastic manner, as if he were an old friend trying to get their attention. But, he clearly wasn’t.

That person’s face was hidden behind a plain white mask with two holes for its eyes and a drawing of a crescent smile below it. They couldn’t clearly identify if that person was a man or a woman because of the thing, though

“…” It wouldn’t be a shocking sight to see, if it weren’t for the big splashes of red stain on his entire attire that they could only imagine as blood. But, most of the horror that they felt came from the decapitated head of a person that he was holding onto by the hair in his left hand.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“O-open fire! Kill that fucking thing!” He gave his orders, although he stuttered and his voice was a bit high pitched this time around, unlike his usual deep and commanding one.

“Wha!?” But before they could even pull the trigger, the lights went off again, and total darkness soon took over for a second time. Leaving them in a state of fear and agitation, where they started pointing their lights at where that person was, in an attempt to see if he or she would come after them. But, their flashlights just couldn’t reach that far.

“What’s this I hear? What’s this I see?”

There was someone who suddenly spoke loud enough to echo in this place, but it didn’t come from anyone among their group. No. It came from the floor above, and as to what they could tell, it was probably that person wearing the white tuxedo.

“Big bad children coming to play? What’s this, what’s this?”

Angered that they were being toyed with, the scar faced man let loose a full magazine at where that person was standing before the lights went off.

“You little piece of shit! Come out and we’ll fucking play with you!” From the sounds that they heard, they could identify the owner of that voice as one from a male. It was a little too high pitched, though. Indicating that he was either a fairly young man, or that he was an adult with a high pitched voice.

“Oooh~ The big bad one wants to play with little old me? I see, I see…” There was a momentary pause, but a loud laughter soon broke the silence. “Bad children need to be punished. Yes. Like the others, you too would be punished. But first, I’ll first start off with…”

“You!” The walkie-talkie that was strapped onto the shoulder of someone to his right suddenly transferred that person’s words close to his ear. Startling the man into a panic, as he grabbed and threw the thing away.

“I hope you'll play well… and survive. aHaHAHAHaha!” He shot the walkie-talkie with his rifle to silence the unnerving laugh.

“There’s a fucking psycho in this place!”

“No shit! We need to get out as soon as possible!”

“But how? The controls for the electrical room aren’t working, and the emergency metal shutters are locked onto the entrance and windows right now. We can’t get out if the control center isn’t functioning”

“We could blow a wall up! We just need to use some o-“

Before he could finish what he was saying, a punch was thrown towards his face. It knocked him down onto the floor.

“Wha?” He was shaken while giving his superior a dumbfounded look, as if he was asking ‘why did you do that for?'.

“We have orders. It’s either you follow them…” The scar faced man readied his rifle and then pointed it down towards him. “Or we’ll be losing one more person today”

“”…”” Tension was rising, as neither of them were talking. The man on the ground thought that if he did follow orders and stayed inside, then there would be a high chance that he may just end up like those people inside of the electrical room, but on the other hand, if he said the opposite, then he’d get shot at.

“Now-now, boss. He just said it on the spur of the moment. He’s just a little bit excited and agitated from what he just saw. Come on, we need to get our heads straight, and get this job done before the call” Lucky for him, someone from their group had the gall to step up and intervene while the others just watched in silence.

“…” He didn’t answer back, though, and was still looking down at the man on the floor. Maybe he should shoot him now and make an example out of him, he thought.

“Boss, we need to focus” He said again. “Remember, the orders”

After half a minute of deliberating whether to do it or not, he finally pointed his rifle away from the man. The man on the ground finally released a sigh of relief, as he saw that he was in the clear.

“… Stand up and go into formation. We're going to check on all of the remote explosives. And if any of you even think of going against orders, then you’d better expect to have a body full of holes after this is all over” He said with a snarl.

They nod their heads, although, some of them were a still a bit hesitant. Not that they could be blamed for it, though. Since their group consists of mostly new recruits and greenhorns out on their first real operation. They had the values of their organization memorized in their head, but they weren't taking it to heart or seriously enough. That’s why they got the easiest place among their organization’s other groups in the first place. Because most of them were inexperienced and just started undergoing their training fairly recently.

All of them then went to each location of where the explosives were, checking on each one and noticing that there were some locations that didn’t have any remote explosives on them.

“Tsk. That’s ten pillars that don't have anything on them” He said with annoyance. Things were getting worse for them, as eight of their original thirty men were missing, and some remote explosive locations were empty. There was also a lunatic out there in the darkness that’s hunting them down.

“Change of plans” He suddenly said. “We’re going after that bastard while searching for the others. The explosives aren’t our main priority anymore. We only have half an hour left before the next call arrives, and I won’t be taking this as a fucking failure because of some goddamned psycho that wants to play dress up”

It may only be a third of a quarter of the original amount of explosives, but that should still be enough to cause the building to collapse, or at least damage it near the point of collapsing. And getting back their new recruits to educate them once again were far more important now, but hunting that man in a white tuxedo was something of a personal grudge for him. He was ruining their plans and he won’t just stand by and watch as he did so.

A fucking psychopath? Who gives a shit. One bullet to the head is all it takes to send someone like him on a one way trip to meet his maker. He just hopes that he’d be the one to do it, but first, he’ll want to have some ‘fun’ of his own. The torturing type of fun.

“Let’s see who gets the last laugh, you fucking son of a bitch” He looked on ahead with an icy glare, as they marched through the darkness.

Meanwhile, somewhere in a storage room on the sixth floor, where the place was being lit up by a small wind-up flashlight, there was a boy wearing a white tuxedo and black pants. He was humming while he mixes corn syrup, chocolate syrup, and red food coloring inside a few buckets. It looked like blood, but it wasn’t really the red liquid that circulates in the veins and arteries of the human body. No. What he was mixing was the sort of fake thing that people used to substitute in the movies. He was grateful that his classmate’s enthusiastic blabbering about it was helping him right now, even though he could be quite obnoxious most of the time.

“Heh~” He chuckles, as he remembers those men’s reaction from a while ago. It was so much fun scaring the living daylights out of them, that he could laugh for an hour or two, and he would still find it very funny. They were all spooked out and startled that he was surprised and delighted at how effective his act was. Who knew that fake blood, a building without an exit, no lighting, a bunch of fake body parts, and a decapitated head from a Halloween store could cause so much fear in someone.

“… mphh” One of the men who was knocked out just a while ago suddenly woke up. He groggily looked around while being confused as to where he currently was. He couldn’t quite speak, though. As he, along with the seven others that were inside of the room with him, were all gagged and tied up by some rope.

“Hmm~?” He threw a few hard punches at the man’s face to knock him out cold again. It hurt his hand quite a bit, but he just ignored it and happily continued to stir. A good thing that he could split them up unknowingly one by one, and then hitting them a few times from behind with a baseball bat that he 'borrowed' from a store that sells sports equipment. If not, well, he had other alternatives to bring them down. They weren’t as subtle as hitting them from behind with a bat, though.

He still wonders why they were so easily distracted by something when they were all adults trying to cause terror among the populace. It’s just that luring them in by a broken showcase full of jewelry from a few stores was too easy. It was too easy that in fact, he thought that it might be some sort of trap to lure him out. But it wasn’t.

Are they too blinded by the sparkle and glamor of those metal and rocks that he could just pick them off one by one when their greed was taking over? Maybe. But it worked… it worked too well, he suppose. And the two stragglers that were too concentrated on what they were doing didn't even notice that he was stalking them from behind. Also, don’t even mention that wimp that tried to turn on the power. He was just horribly stupid. I mean, they all are. How come they aren’t even wearing anything to cover their faces? Do they want their faces to be shown to the public that much? Or maybe their confident that… no, they’re just a bunch of fools.

“Heh, must be some fresh new recruits… or maybe they’re just incompetents to begin with” He found it quite amusing that they'd send people like these to do something for their cause. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate that things were too easy, but… where was the thrill in that? He wanted something more challenging than some rookies on the loose.

“They must be trying to get more publicity if she’s the one that’s running this show… yeah, smells like something she would do” He remembers the face of that deranged woman from a few years back. She’s one of the five heads of that organization, and he somehow got her interests peeked when she saw him. Not because of his average looks, though, but it was because of another incident that happened before that.

“Hmm~ Hmm~” He hums once again, but this time, there wasn’t a smile on his face. Instead of that, there was something else more sinister that managed to leak out and show itself onto the surface. One that wasn’t quite… normal.

“If she wants something that'll catch some attention, then I should just… no…” He said in a voice that would rattle anyone who heard him to the core, and then immediately switching to a faint smile after saying that, as if nothing happened at all.

He then stood up and grabbed a handgun from one of the people that were tied up, and stashing it away inside of his tuxedo. He then puts his mask back on while carrying the buckets full of fake blood. Even if he wanted to enjoy this whole fiasco some more, the situation would turn dire if he did so. They were still dangerous men that's packing a lot of heat.

“I hope the folks around here appreciate some dazzling fireworks at this time of the day” He said, as he drops the buckets and then opens the door of the storage room. “Hah! Of course they would. It’s an up close and personal experience with something that’s about to blow up. There’s just no way that that’s not exciting to watch, and…”

He looks back at the eight unconscious and tied up men, with a large toothy smile that was hidden behind the mask. “You’re all lucky. You’d get to have the VIP seats this time around”

The door closes, and thus, the start of the finale has begun. But…