Richard staggered back a step as he caught me.
“Hey!” he bellowed loudly in my ear. “What happened in there? The door was locked, I couldn’t get in when I heard the gunshots.”
“No time,” I panted. “We need to move.” I pushed off of Richard and managed to take two steps before the pain in my leg made me fall to the floor. It hurt bad, an ache like nothing I’d felt before, hot and spreading over my entire leg. I started to build a splint, reinforcing my armour around my leg.
Richard followed me with his submachine gun in hand, looking back at the closed door. “What happened?” he repeated.
I tested the splint, putting my weight on it. It did enough, the adrenaline that was making my heart beat a hundred times a second did the rest. I trudged forward wondering if there was any point in speaking. Helen could be telling him whatever she wanted. I couldn’t even be sure this was actually Richard.
But if it was him… I needed the help.
I spoke dully, “The Ghost Queen manipulated Sullivan into allying with her against the Jiezhi-Fedyaev alliance. Her condition to that alliance was killing me. Sullivan obliged. I guess I can consider that my excommunication from the Ring.”
Richard reacted viscerally, shaking his head like a dog. “What the fuck… Are you sure?”
Gesturing at my wounded leg as I limped I said, “Well, they shot at me, so…” I reached the door and swung it open. The alley outside was empty. I limped forward and Richard followed me out.
“What about Graham? He’s in there, right? Why didn’t he stop Sullivan?”
I turned to face him. “Helen, the Ghost Queen, can create the illusion of seeing someone you know. She can make them say anything she wants, even bring up memories she shouldn’t know about. I’m not immune. I barely got away and they’re gonna come out of that door any second now.”
Richard checked the safety on his gun, then pulled the slide to glance at the round in the chamber. He gestured jerkily at the closed door. “So I can’t shoot anyone that comes outta that door? Cause it might be an ally.”
I eyed him. “It’s just Gambler’s Ring members in there. And Helen. They’re all allies to you. I appreciate you not shooting me though.”
Richard spat onto the ground. “Fuck that! I’m so sick of all this. What happened to loyalty? The Ring used to be like a family. I’m not some two-bit thug that does whatever I’m told without good reason! Come on.” He seized my arm and hauled me forward, towards the main road. “We need to regroup with the rest of the crew. We’ll take my car.”
I let Richard support me to the car. He sure sounded like himself. But I knew better than to trust that. Nell had been perfectly imitated. Even when the ‘body’ for the ‘mask’ was a muscular man, I’d been fooled. How did that work? The face had changed certainly, but had the proportions of their body changed too? I couldn’t recall. It was like my brain didn’t care if certain things didn’t line up, I had believed that it was actually Nell pointing a gun at me. But it was only a powerful illusion.
I shuddered as I remembered seeing Chase in that nightclub. She wasn’t like him, she couldn’t just tell people to do the things she wanted. She had to trick them. She’d made Spike immobilize me by making him see me saying something rude about his girlfriend.
My thoughts were broken by the sound of the door slamming open. Someone shouted.
Richard released me and whipped around, firing a quick burst from his machine gun at the recessed entrance to the hideout. Without looking he dug in his pocket and then tossed a ring of keys at me.
“Red convertible, parked right outside the alley. Start it!” he shouted and fired another round at the corner to dissuade anyone from poking their head out.
I caught the keys and stumbled out of the alley. A few pedestrians had heard the gunshots and were running away. True to his word, Richard’s shiny red convertible was parked in front of me. The top was down so I hauled myself inside and over to the driver’s side. Retaliatory gunshots rang out as I got myself seated and started the engine. The car rumbled to life and I shifted it out of park. More people were running now and I saw some people on their phones, no doubt calling 911. I glanced down at the gear stick.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Richard sprinted out of the alley, the barrel of his gun leaving a wispy trail of smoke. He leapt into the car.
“Drive!”
“I don’t know how to drive stick!” I said.
He looked at me incredulously for a split-second, then bellowed, “Then move!”
I pushed myself up and tumbled over the driver’s seat into the back seat. Richard immediately slid over and shifted the car into gear. We tore out of the parking space, wheels squealing. Sullivan’s thugs appeared at the alleyway entrance and fired erratically at us. One of the car backlights shattered and I ducked down.
Richard weaved between cars as we raced through the casino district of Sillwood. The afternoon traffic made it difficult to make progress. I raised my head to watch the people going about their day. A businesswoman talking on her phone passed a tour guide talking to a group of wide-eyed tourists. Guilt struck me in the gut. Some of them would be caught up in the war between the Rings. Collateral damage.
Richard slammed on the brakes, pushing us both to the edge of our seats. Someone had stepped out onto the road to cross. Richard cursed at them. The pedestrian who was crossing stopped and stared at us blankly.
“Move, jackass!” Richard shouted at him, laying on the horn.
I looked behind us, fearing that Sullivan’s men would catch up. Traffic was piling up. Others were getting angry and honking at the delay. A motorcycle rider was passing between cars, sometimes jumping the curb in haste. His bike was black with a white lion design on the side. I glanced back towards the pedestrian who was leaning over to pick something up. He was wearing leather gloves and one of his hands reached into his waistband. Something flashy dangled from his ear. An earring in the shape of a lion’s head.
Shit.
I reached over Richard’s shoulder as the pedestrian straightened up and fired three shots into the windshield. I grew a shield of antlers in front of Richard’s face just in time for the bullets to ricochet off it. One bullet broke through the shield and bounced past my head, most of its energy spent.
Richard blindly floored the accelerator and the car shuddered as the man went under.
Somebody screamed. Richard didn’t let off the gas. I dropped the shield so we could see. The windshield had a thousand spiderweb cracks running through it.
Richard hit the brakes and spun the wheel, pitching me forward over the passenger side seat. My leg throbbed intensely as I struggled to right myself. Should’ve put on a seatbelt. We ran down a side street, weaving to avoid cars and pedestrians. The motorbiker followed closely behind, one handed steering while aiming their own gun which looked like it had been hastily spray painted black.
Richard lifted his gun from his lap and fired wildly behind us. The man on the motorbike responded in kind, bullets pinging off the back of the car.
“Take over,” Richard snarled and took his hands off the wheel to aim his gun over the back of the seat. I grabbed the wheel in a panic as the car strayed close to a parked car. The next major intersection was rapidly approaching and I didn’t have access to the brakes. I am NOT about to get into another car crash.
Richard fired a long string of shots that caused the motorbiker to jump the curb and drive on the sidewalk, the parked cars acting as a shield. Richard swore and pawed at his jacket for another magazine.
There was a blur of green to our right and I took a chance, swerving the car towards it and almost losing my grip of the wheel as we hit the curb. The park was small, as we were in central Sillwood, just a set of stairs leading down to a few rows of trees, with a grassy patch beyond them.
“Two more bikes!” Richard cried out, reloading his gun with practiced ease.
“Forget that for a second!”
I pulled on Richard’s shoulder to make him face the front. He took the wheel just as we became airborne down the steps. Tires hit the concrete and I barely avoided slamming my face into the dash as Richard fought with the wheel, the car fishtailing.
“Drive close to those trees,” I said and leaned out over the passenger side of the car. More bullets whizzed past as Richard drove closer. My outstretched palm slapped against the first tree and I pulled as hard as I could. The tree trunk stretched like taffy as part of it was sucked out, fighting against gravity. I didn’t stop, adding a small amount of trailing tissue with each tree that I touched. The bark and wood began to merge with each other, mixing as some of it entered my skin, giving me fresh energy. The trees creaked and groaned from the added strain of their bases being malformed.
“Turn!” I shouted, pointing.
Richard spun the wheel, tires screeching as we drifted into a new direction. Bullets slammed into the side of the car. The tree tissue followed me in an arc, reaching out, creating a strange tendril of wood across the path. A biker careened into it, knocking him clean off his bike. Richard whipped the car back in time to avoid hitting anything except the stairs leading out of the park.
I braced myself on the interior as the bottom of the car scraped against each step we rode upwards. Looking back, the other two riders had stopped as the trees started to crash down around them, no longer able to support their own weight.
Sirens wailed in the distance as Richard navigated us away from the scene.
“We shook them for now,” I said.
“Those were the Fedyaev’s. Printed guns too, from the looks of it,” Richard said darkly.
“What now?” I asked, retracting my armour and immediately gaining the relief of moving air across my sweaty face.
“Text the others. Warn them about what’s happening. Find a location to meet up.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” I said.
Richard scowled. “Why not?”
“Helen will be hunting me. Sullivan’s on her side now. I don’t want to force the others to choose between staying safe and protecting me. Plus, Helen could find out and set a trap. She seems to know a lot about us already, courtesy of Alek’s experience I suspect.”
“That fucker.”
“If Graham or someone else tells Sullivan and he tells her… I don’t think I’ll escape a second time.” I closed my eyes, trying to find some semblance of stillness for a moment. “You could try salvaging things with Sullivan. Let me off somewhere and I’ll figure it out. You could explain to him that you weren’t in the loop of why people were shooting at me.”
“If Sullivan has truly turned on you then I’ve lost my faith in him,” Richard responded. “He promised me he would rebuild the Ring and protect his new family. You are a part of that family now. He can’t just take that away.”
I opened my eyes, staring at Richard.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“Nothing. I guess I didn’t expect that out of you.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled. “I can convince the crew. We’ll all leave the Gambler’s Ring.”
I grinned. “You? Convince the others?”
“Shaddup.”
“No offense, but I don’t see you convincing someone like Terry. Besides, why would you throw away your life for me? The Rings mean more to you than anyone in our group. Where would you go?”
Richard fell silent as he drove us away from downtown. It was a little crazy to travel a few blocks and suddenly see people going about their day like there wasn’t a gunfight minutes away from where they were walking. We did get some wide eyed looks at the bullet holes that riddled the exterior of the car.
“A long time ago, I would have agreed with you,” Richard said. “That the Ring was everything to me. I would’ve probably hurt anyone who suggested that I wasn’t loyal to the end. But… that was before I met my wife.”
“I think I heard Terry mention that before. You’re married?”
“Suprising, I know. There’s a slim chance that a man like me finds love.” The slightest smile crossed his lips. “But it happened. She’s taught me a lot. Especially about what it means to have family.” He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “The Ring brought me out of poverty, gave me a proper life. I owed my life to them. I didn’t want to let that go, even for her. But I get it now. Something changed and I failed to recognize that. The Ring is gone. What’s left isn’t the same. I blamed Dice but… no. The family I knew is gone. It’s time to cut ties and focus on the real ones who have stuck with me. My real family. My wife and Graham’s crew.”
“Will she be okay? Do we need to get her somewhere safe?”
Richard’s face grew still. “She’s in a hospital in Toronto. Late-stage cancer.”
“Oh… I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like my words were worth less than nothing.
Richard just shrugged. “She’s happy. Whatever happens here, her smiling face keeps me going. It doesn’t really matter how I feel about it, because if she’s happy, then it’s me who needs to change.”
“She means that much to you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
My parent’s faces settled into a deep place in my heart. It was time to come clean.
“I need to make a stop.”