"To Kill A Runner " Chapter Seven "Living The Dream" (Cyberpunk Fiction)

The night came soon enough with fear and anticipation, the clinic house was more or less like an old abandoned warehouse with a collapsed second floor.. The brick shell with boarded up windows, ash from a burning garbage barrel in the air out front of the main doorway. Often foot traffic would knock on the door and the door would open but then immediately close. Doing reconnaissance all day watching the clinic and seeing that every few hours or so that same white van that had come to Adams apartment would park outside the clinic.

Deciding it was time to strike, Jerome loaded the weapons putting one magazine of fifteen shots into the hand gun and the other two glock magazines in his hoodie pocket. Then he took the machine guns magazines containing fifty rounds and locked it into place. Britney pulled her VR goggles down and powered on her drone transmitter, and then the drone. Jarome quickly trotted across the road with the drone fallowing behind him until he took cover behind the van. Hearing the driver inside the van he snuck alongside of the windowless van pulled his pistol trigger twice. Firing the first two shots through the glass and killing him immediately, leaving the driver slumped over the steering wheel bleeding out of his fractured cranium.

No turning back now, The drone moved to the center of the gravel yard and held position and soon the door to the clinic was opened up pouring out group of hooded gun wielding gang members. Right in the firing sites of Britney controlling her drone. Loud cracking bursts of a machine gun firing controlled bursts, a shot gun blast, groaning and shots back and forth. Jarome stayed down waiting for almost a full minute of gun fire to end then stood up to see a pile of seven corpses crumpled in the doorway propped open with someones leg. Knowing it was his time for action and the drone could not push past the pile of dead, he ran to the heavy steel door and slipped inside the drug den.

Staying alert and moving down the hallway rapidly he found himself in a den of rotting peeling walls and several people in each room slumped over in corns or laying on their backs and assumingly staring at the ceiling. The each had crude versions of VR goggles on but unlike Britney these people seemed lobotomized not even caring that a loud fire fight had just occurred. A depraved example of what the dangerously addictive better than life chips could be to the neural connections in someones brain.

Jarome left the room of plugged in zombies and continued on looking for any other hostiles drawing his pistol on each and every unexplored corner or doorway.adrenaline pumping and jumping at the odd silence of the place. Opening up room and his eyes widened seeing stacks of money piled on a table.

"PAYDAY!" he said as he started shoving stacks of binded hundred dollar bills into his pockets, after several minutes he knew he had spent too much time away from Britney. She was waiting for him and they didn't have any way to communicate. Rushing out of the room after collecting all the money he could carry and being tripped by a solid heavy leg sticking out. Falling on the broken plaster and ash covered concrete floor, having enough dexterity to turn and fall on his back lifting his pistol and firing shots at the man who had stuck his foot out.

A thin gaunt face of an old Chinese man, long gray hair to his shoulders and with a black leather duster. Firing four shots into the mans chest expecting the man to drop. His shirt and skin swallowing the bullets but not a drop of blood leaking out. He laughed as the flattened warped bullets pushed out of his chest. The mans wrapping his abnormally large hands lifting Jerome up one handed with superhuman strength. Feeling the mans cold fiberglass robotic fingers close around his throat and struggling. The last thing Jarome seeing was a flame growing in the eyes of this monster of a cyborg, a dragon of fire and anger forming and starting fire to the drug den.

In his unconsciousness hearing the wooden walls crackle and burn as if through water in a sensory deprivation tank. Jarome helpless feeling the strange weight of a stupor that made his entire body feel numb and dead. In immanent danger Jarome shook as he heard the laughing of the old man and soon the voice of Britney.

“Wait.... don't, look I don't have a gun “

“Drop the knife bitch...... Ahhhh!!!”

“Jarome get up... GET UP !! “

“You will pay for that... “

“Jarome GET THE FUCK UP ! “

In a sharp pain his cognitive senses came back, realizing the building was burning around him and the heavily modified man had vanished. His wrist was being yanked on by Britney as she screamed. Shaking his head and blinking and then using his own strength again.

“We Need To Move! Jerome.” Britney said as she was able to get him up on his feet and get him into the white van. Her battle worn drone in the back of the van, she was able to push the big man out and onto the gravel of the yard. Turning the ignition key and hearing the van engine hum to life. Peeling out throwing stones and turning on the headlights beaming illumination forward. Speeding away from the burning drug den as the sirens show up in the rear view mirror.