Alice braced herself for the worst when her key slid into the front door of her apartment. She expected to be confronted with the gruesome aftermath of the previous night’s carnage. She prepared to see her white walls displaying the fresh stains of blood splatter, and was resigned to the fact that her vacuum cleaner would be sucking up bits and pieces of Carson for months to come.
So it was a pleasant surprise when she opened the door and found her home in near-pristine condition. The place was nothing less than immaculate. A neutral observer would never guess that a large proportion of a man’s digestive tract had spilled out here only hours earlier.
The carpet was spotless. The walls were so dazzlingly white and bright they looked freshly painted. Her front door had been replaced, and it now opened and closed without sticking to the frame, which it would occasionally do during periods of high humidity. Her furniture had been rearranged in such a way to give the impression of a more spacious living area. There was even the delightful aroma of baked bread wafting through the air. Alice’s only disappointment came when she realized the smell originated from a can of air freshener, and that the police had not actually baked her any bread.
Alice may have been a neurotic germophobe and fastidious neat-freak, but even she had not been able to achieve this level of cleanliness. She really had to give those crime scene clean-up crews their due.
The mood was dampened somewhat when she discovered the brown envelope that had been slipped under her front door. In all the chaos from the past twenty-four hours, she had momentarily forgotten how this whole episode had started.
She opened it up. Inside was a card with “ELIMINATED” stamped across Carson’s face.
She pinned the card up on her wall, alongside the other three. She had them arranged in chronological order; a kind of timeline of death.
She wasn’t quite sure why she started doing this. Maybe she thought these people deserved to be remembered in some way, and not discarded from memory a week or two after their departure.
She stood there for a moment and looked at the cards. Naomi, Vicki, Roque and Carson. Four people dead within the space of seven days.
There were twenty-seven contestants in total. She didn’t know how long the lottery was going to last when she first signed up, but she assumed something like fifty or sixty years. If the contestants continued dropping off at the present rate, the whole thing would be over within a couple of months. It wouldn’t be long before a card announcing her own elimination was being slipped under strangers’ doors.
Alice was in way over her head, and she knew it.
It dawned on her just how exposed she was. She never really felt like her life was in danger, but that was because no one had any reason to want to kill her. It was only now, when she assessed her surroundings, that she realized it wouldn’t be particularly difficult for anyone to get to her. Something had to be done.
Beefing up security around her apartment was her number one priority. So the next day, she had a locksmith come around to install a new set of locks on her door. She had extra locks put on the windows too, for good measure. It was unlikely that anyone would scale twelve floors to break into her apartment from the outside, but she wasn’t prepared to leave anything to chance.
She was supposed to obtain her landlord’s permission before making any alterations to the place, but at that moment forfeiting her bond was the furthest thing from her mind.
She traveled to her nearest electronics store and bought up big in their home security section. She purchased two alarms for the apartment, a personal alarm for herself, a distress horn, and a dozen miniature security cameras.
On her way home, she dropped into a sporting goods store and purchased a new baseball bat.
The wireless security cameras were shaped like small ornaments. They were tiny and easily concealed, about the size of an ice cube, and perfect for her needs. She positioned them around her apartment in various locations until every conceivable angle was covered. Any activity could now be recorded and stored on a remote server at the push of a button, and she could view the inside of her house at all times. If someone broke in while she was out, Alice would be alerted and the footage sent to her APhID.
She would need to arrange for someone she trusted to access the footage if anything happened to her. She knew of only one person she could trust one hundred percent, and that was Lachlan.
Alice tried calling her brother, but received no answer. She expected this – Lachlan could be next to impossible to get in touch with when she needed him the most, and becoming a fugitive had only made him more elusive. He may have owned multiple APhIDs and other communication devices, but he always disabled their power sources when they weren’t in use to prevent anyone from tracking him. He did this with all connected appliances – TVs, air-con units, lights, intercoms, alarms – claiming that anything on a network could be hacked into and his security compromised.
The first time Lachlan told her about this, Alice thought he was being ridiculously paranoid. Now, she regarded this behavior as perfectly reasonable.
She left Lachlan a message and asked him to get in touch with her as soon as possible.
She sat back and took a moment to evaluate her surroundings. She felt much safer now. A few sensible purchases had transformed her place into a mini-fortress. It was her very own prison; one in which she was both warden and inmate.
But even then, she knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Chapter 10
More than three years had passed since Alice last had any contact with Gidget, but it took less than five minutes of driving to find him again. He was peddling his wares at his regular hangout, loitering between a convenience store and a pawn shop.
She parked on the opposite side of the road and watched him go about his daily business. Every few minutes, a scrawny youth with bad skin and worse personal hygiene would approach, and the two of them would disappear into a nearby alley to conduct their transaction.
From all appearances, Gidget was doing pretty well for himself. He was decked out in expensive street clothes and thousand-dollar trainers. The gold chain around his neck bounced on his chest as he moved, and a diamond-encrusted Rolex hung from his wrist.
But by far the most conspicuous display of his newly-acquired wealth was the change in his physique. The last time Alice saw him, Gidget had the body of an eight year old girl, or an underfed whippet. Now, his biceps and pectoral muscles burst out from beneath his tight tank top – which he insisted on wearing, despite today’s cool and overcast weather conditions. These were almost certainly robotic implants, surgically inserted beneath the skin, which gave him a tougher and more menacing appearance without having to spend endless hours in the gym.
Alice waited a few minutes until Gidget was alone, then flicked her headlights on and off.
This caught his attention. He crawled up off his stoop for a better look.
He hesitated for a moment. He didn’t recognize the car, so he didn’t know if he was being summoned by a potential customer or an undercover cop.
A moment later, he cautiously shuffled over towards the car.
The passenger side window rolled down. Gidget flashed a wide smile when he saw who was behind the wheel.
“Well, well,” he drawled, exposing a mouthful of gold-plated teeth. “Look who it is.”
“Hey, Gidget,” Alice replied.
Gidget was a self-anointed nickname. His parents had originally blessed him with the name Ivan Zuckerman, but he regarded this as an inadequate handle for a street-savvy drug dealer. Back when he and Alice enjoyed a regular buyer-seller relationship, she would often refer to him by his birth name whenever she wanted to get under his skin. But years had passed since they had seen one another, and she was here to ask a favor, so she decided to play nice.
“So what brings you back ‘round these parts?” he said, leaning up against the hood of her car.
Alice noticed that Gidget now stood about six inches taller than how sh
e remembered him. He used to be about five foot four; something he was always self-conscious about. He had either experienced an unusual late-twenties growth spurt, or he had undergone significant shin and vertebrae extensions to go along with the muscular implants.
Alice unlocked the car’s doors. “Hop in and I’ll tell you.”
Gidget grinned, then climbed into the front seat.
They drove a couple of streets over until they came across a semi-secluded car park. Alice switched off the engine. She did a quick check to make sure they were alone.
“Got any lemon drops on you?” she said.
This was a rhetorical question. She knew Gidget was selling lemon drops. That was all he did. Gidget was the guy you went to when you needed lemon drops. He used to sell a little bit of everything – heroin, coke, weed, meth, LSD, Rohypnol – but switched exclusively to lemon drops due to the increased demand and higher profit margins.
“How many you need?” he said.
“Ten. For now.”
Gidget nodded. “Cool.”
His hand disappeared down the front of his pants as he retrieved his stash. Alice tried not to let her revulsion show while he counted out the pills.
He slipped them into a Ziploc bag, then held them out for Alice’s approval. Ten small yellow chemical balls, the color of old newspaper.
Lemon drops: the low-grade Xylox substitute, manufactured in clandestine laboratories and sold on the streets. The name derived from their resemblance to tiny lemons (dimpled appearance, irregular shape), as well as the sour taste they left after swallowing.
Goliath, the elusive underworld figure, was said to control the majority of the lemon drop market. This was believed to be his primary source of income.
Alice felt a churning feeling rising from the pit of her stomach akin to seasickness. She knew she was dicing with death simply by coming back to this part of town. Now, she had taken it a step further by actually purchasing the very thing that had once brought so much misery to her life.
“Hundred bucks,” Gidget said.
“A hundred?” Alice let out a burst of shocked laughter. She didn’t know what kind of scam Gidget was trying to pull here. “The last time I bought these, they were three dollars each!”
“What can I say? These are turbulent economic times we’re experiencing. Inflation’s affecting us all.”
“You have ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold glued to your teeth, Gidget. You’re not exactly doing it tough.”
“That’s my price,” he said with a blasé shrug. “Take it or leave it.”
“In that case, I’ll leave it.” Alice waved the pills away with a cavalier gesture. “I could buy the real thing for that much.”
“So why don’t you?”
Gidget taunted her with another golden smile.
Alice knew what he was trying to do, and Gidget knew that she knew. This was a total power play. He was ripping her off simply because he could. He knew she didn’t have anyone else she could turn to. He was also punishing her for staying away for so long.
Besides, ten pills meant nothing to Gidget. Business was booming. He shifted five times that volume every hour. Lemon drops were the growth industry of the moment, with a consumer demographic that was expanding by the day. There was little doubt it was a seller’s market.
Alice scowled for a moment, as if she still hadn’t decided on her next course of action.
She then relented and fished five twenties from her pocket. She reluctantly handed the money over.
In exchange, she was given ten poor-quality counterfeit Xylox pills that were recently in close proximity to a drug dealer’s genitals.
Gidget stuffed the cash into his pocket. “As always, it’s a pleasure doing business,” he said. He shoved the remaining pills back down the front of his pants. “I’d love to stick around and chat about old times, but I really do have to keep moving. Let’s not leave it so long between visits next time.”
He reached for the door handle.
“Gidget, wait!”
Alice’s words came out a little more desperate than she had intended.
“There is one other thing.”
Gidget looked at her. “What is it?”
“I need your help with something.”
Alice took a moment to work up the courage to say what was on her mind. She had been incapacitated by an unexpected attack of nerves. Her mouth had dried up. Her tongue felt like it had tripled in size.
“Are you gonna tell me what it is, or do I have to guess?” Gidget said.
Alice swallowed her anxiety, then blurted it out.
“I need to buy a gun.”
This statement was followed by a deathly silence.
Gidget tried not to react, but Alice caught an involuntary flicker in his eyes. She watched him carefully process her request, planning his next move with the greatest of caution.
An excruciating interval of time elapsed before Gidget finally spoke.
“Meet me behind the Black Star,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
He climbed out of the car before Alice could say any more.
Nine and a half minutes later, she found herself in the dank alley behind the Black Star Tavern.
Despite almost succumbing to a panic attack back in the car, she felt pretty good about how everything had gone so far. Finding a gun turned out to be surprisingly easy. In the end, all she had to do was ask. She expected Gidget to at least grill her for a few minutes and ask some questions.
She wasn’t carrying much cash on her at that moment, but she could have the full amount by the end of the week.
A light breeze blew, and Alice unintentionally inhaled the myriad of scents festering throughout the area. She quickly moved to cover her nose. She’d forgotten how bad this part of the city could smell. She was able to tolerate it back when her senses were eroded by excessive Xylox use, but now it was like standing in an open-air ashtray. She could almost feel the germs on her skin multiplying at an exponential rate.
Without warning, she was grabbed from behind and shoved hard against the wall. Her body seized up with fear.
Her first instinct was that she was being attacked and robbed by some deranged xombie. But then she heard Gidget’s voice.
“You really think I’m that stupid, huh?” he whispered into her ear.
His right hand clamped around the back of Alice’s neck, pinning her to the wall. His left hand patted her down, frisking for hidden weapons or recording devices.
Alice winced as the left side of her face pressed against the cold bricks. She was left in no doubt that those were robotic implants inserted into Gidget’s arms and chest. His strength bordered on superhuman.
“Gidget, relax,” Alice said, though she was far from relaxed at that point in time. “I don’t have anything on me.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you. You know me.”
Gidget took his time with the search. He made sure it was thorough. When he was done he was confident that Alice was clean, with the added bonus of getting to know her a bit more intimately.
“Come on, Gidget. This is stupid.”
He spun her around and pushed his face to within an inch of hers.
“You don’t think this looks at all suspicious? You avoid this place like a venereal disease for two years, then turn up out of the blue asking me to get you a gun?”
“I’m desperate.” Alice’s voice faltered. “I ... I’m in trouble.”
“So why did you come to me?”
“I didn’t know where else I could go! You’re the only one I know who could help me.”
“I could go to prison just for giving you information like that!”
“I’m sorry! Just forget I said anything.”
Gidget relaxed his grip slightly, and Alice managed to shrug free. She made a dash for the safety of the main road.
“That’s right, leave!” Gidget shouted as she vanished around the corner. “You
better not show your face ‘round here again!”
Chapter 11
Thirty-two years ago the Pro-Firearms Industry Group (P-FIG), the secretive but powerful worldwide weapons organization, held its inaugural conference inside a plush hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. It was billed as the most significant gathering of its type in history. Representatives from every major player in the global arms industry were in attendance, along with lobbyists, libertarians, right-wing media titans, and some of the world’s most influential pro-gun politicians.
Their goal was simple: to tear down as many barriers as possible in allowing access to firearms, and to give every human being on the planet the opportunity to own a gun.
P-FIG president Ralph Lott delivered a stirring opening address, outlining his dreams of mass gun saturation one day culminating in world peace. Since it was a proven fact that increased gun ownership actually lowered crime rates, he reasoned, if everyone had access to guns then eliminating crime entirely would be an achievable goal.
He implored his comrades to do all they could to get as many guns into as many civilian hands as possible.
Midway through the speech, a booming shot rang out. The conference attendees, believing they were under attack from a gun- and freedom-hating liberal, scrambled to take cover.
One brave politician, Senator Sebastian Devereaux, spied the lone gunman standing near the front of the auditorium. He took out his concealed Sig Sauer P229 9mm handgun and, with little regard for his own safety, pounced up and opened fire. The gunman was struck four times in the chest and killed instantly.
Sadly, nine bystanders were also struck by stray bullets, five of whom later died from their injuries.
Thomas J. Hickman, a bestselling conservative author and top-rating talkback radio host, witnessed this while cowering beneath his seat. Under the impression that Senator Devereaux was the original gunman, he reached for the .44 caliber Magnum revolver he carried with him at all times, then charged forward and fired at the senator from point blank range.
Senator Devereaux was fatally wounded, as were three other attendees caught in the crossfire.
Mr. Hickman was then shot and killed by Omega Firearms CEO Vaughn Maloney, who mistook him for the first shooter.