“Aban said you would come when I needed you most.” His words almost hissed from his lips. “How true it is …”
  I was stunned. Norton, the secret, the clue, was a cold-hearted tubby sitting right in front of me on a bed in a ghost hospital. His little plant, book, glasses and slippers were all that remained of a life he had maybe once lived. But even that left one great mystery. I was speechless.

  “Come, we don’t have much time. You may not know but we are under attack. My surveillance died only moments ago and they were already on the fifth floor by then. Most are waiting on the ground floor, others outside. We have to hurry or else more will come – they know where I am now.” He leapt from the bed, picking up his book, glasses, plant and sliding on his slippers. “Follow me; I know this place like the back of my hand.”

  He glided past me, a dark night gown flowing after him. Thankfully Tran hit me and pulled me after them. Otherwise I might have remained in the room dumbfounded and stupefied.

  Norton’s figure swept through the empty corridor and dark office – the lights were back on. The next hallway was what I dreaded but miraculously all the bodies were gone. The walls were clean and the light lit brightly. I began to wonder if all of the freaks might have been made in my mind. I often felt my mind did that to me; betraying my sanity.

  As we burst into the final office we saw the door across the room swing open. Gun fire instantly cracked through the silence. Cabinets nearby shattered open and flung apart as bullets pierced the metal frame and entered the ancient folders and files. I dropped to the floor, grabbing Norton’s ankle as I went. He too fell, his plant smashing before him.

  He slipped on his glasses and threw the book into the air. As it hovered above, inertia and gravity fighting, I watched as a bullet pierced the leather covers. It flung overhead and landed with a soft thud as scraps of paper fell lightly to the floor around us. The desk we had dropped behind was attacked and was littered with hole after hole as more and more bullets smashed through the wooden surface and shattered any hope of protection.

  Above the deafening booms I could hear yelling come from the door and expanding around the room. Oh shit! They were surrounding us!

  “Tran!” I yelled, turning to look behind me at the old man, hands clasped over his poor, old, fragile ears.
  “What?!” he roared back, pulling away his hands cautiously.
  Another bullet shattered a cabinet behind him, paper bursting into the air and falling gracefully over him.
  “They’re surrounding us!” I felt Norton jig a bit – he turned to look at me. Great, now even he was going to think I was an idiot for getting us into this mess. It wasn’t my fault Aban’s dying words were practically a death trap.
  “So?!” Tran yelled as he clapped his hands back over his ears as a shower of fresh bullets pierced a nearby set of desks and cabinets. I heard glass smash in the distance and grabbed Norton’s head and shoved it to the mossy, carpeted floor.
  I hesitated. Did I really want to reveal that I didn’t know what I was doing?
  “What -?!” A bullet cracked the table top above and it snapped. It fell to the floor, nearly missing Norton and I as it seemed to hover inches above our heads. I continued – this was insane!
  “What do we do?!”
  Tran looked up again as zooming bullets overhead crackled into the cabinet behind him. I think I knew by then that they could see him.

  “Here, gimme your damn arm!” He reached out, flinching as another bullet showered paper over him.
  He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand closer to him. “Remember this baby?” he asked, waving my own palm before me, the glowing red dot flashing before me. Of course!

  There was no need for a reply as I threw my arm into the air and pressed hard onto the red dot. At once a high pitch squealed for a split-second before an overwhelming pulse vibrated forth. In a shockwave, light after light shut off and the gun fire ceased. I felt the desk above us fly away and I heard nearby cabinets come crashing back to the office floor. Even from the edges of the office I could hear the aimless clicks as men dressed in black tried to fire sleeping bullets.

  With a smile on my face I grabbed Tran and Norton and began sprinting towards the door. Thankfully there was a dim light being cast from the mossy windows on the western side and I could make out the objects on the floor. But that wasn’t what I was worried about as we made our way across the clattered room – it was the men that clouded our way out of the room. And this was only the first floor!

  As we approached I saw a few dark figures moving towards the door. There was already a large amount of men standing there, waiting, but more and more were making their way to the doorway. How the hell was I going to get through there?
  Out of nowhere, a hand latched itself with a tight grip around my ankle and I came crashing to the floor. The other two stumbled and fell forward a bit before slowing and stopping, and I felt someone crawling over my legs.

  Panicking, I kicked my legs rapidly and began throwing my fists at the dark figure that began to climb further up my body – for some reason I felt sickly. But the feeling drained away as I saw from the faint glow from the windows a glint of a blade etching closer towards my bare throat. Not again … I thought and threw my arm up and tried to latch onto the wrist with the blade. The cheating little bastard switched hands and stabbed forth. Thankfully, because of the dark, he missed – but only but a tiny bit. But it was enough for my other arm to come racing up and crunch the thick glove into his bony face. He sort of half-rolled, half-flopped off me and I jumped to my feet, my heart racing and the adrenalin and my senses running overdrive.

  I quickly searched for Norton and Tran, my eyes darting around the room, but I couldn’t see them at all. The last I had seen was of them running towards the door. Damn!
  But I heard it, a soft scuffling coming from behind me. I spun around; arms stretched out in defence and saw Tran throwing a dark figure to the ground and Norton lifting another by the throat and forcing him backwards into a cabinet which crumpled into a heap of fluttering papers.

  They finished at once and ran at me and without saying a word I sprinted for the door. The group had begun to disperse as we arrived and I threw out my left arm and pressed the charged pulse. At once I heard the high pitch and then the resounding pulse as the blast shocked forth and ran head-on with the group. Even in the darkness I saw the walls crumble a bit, the paint and base crackling. The men were forced to the ground as some of the roof caved in and landed in a pile of rolling dust clouds.
  Within seconds Norton, Tran and I were leaping over the silent figures and through to the staircase. As we jumped the first few stairs, I heard the echoing claps of more men running up the dark stairway. All I could see were bobbing heads leaping up the cases.

  I turned around, gasping for air and looking at Tran. “More are coming up the stairs,” I whispered.
  He nodded in the dark and looked over the railing. Sure enough, packs of men armed with weapons were marching up the stairs. But they weren’t really marching, they were running.

  “There’s no other way.” He moved back and left the echoing claps resonate in my spinning head. I felt hopeless – I had never been in a situation like this before!
  “There is,” came the cold voice of Norton.
  He stood nearby, behind us, a few steps up. From what I could tell, he was staring at a completely moss-covered window overhead. And then in a flash of movement, he bent over, took off a slipper, aimed and threw with such precision at the window.
  The slipper pierced the glass at the direct centre and went straight through leaving a shattered hole of light seeping into the hallway. I turned to Norton, ultimately searching for an explanation.

  “’Without the dark, they cannot lark.’ It’s what they always used to say, it’s what I was taught. This will give us the advantage. We will face them head-on, but their tricks won’t work unless it’s pitch black.”
  For some reason I suddenly realised the recurrence of the word ‘they’. Norton had never used a name, only that word. And it hit me with a strange mysteriousness. These riddles, these poems, where were they from? Norton’s mystery seemed to lift to yet another level.

  “Quick, here they come! Your guns will be effective here!” Tran’s gruff voice split the clapping resonance and I reached for my pistols and drew one in each hand. And sure enough, as I aimed at the bottom of the stair case, shadowed figures ran directly into the light from the window and I fired a shower of bullets onto them.
  The first few men dropped quickly and easily and then they started to get smart. Some used the dead as body shields but I quickly shot through them. Others used claws to climb up beside me. But as the first few did, I watched in amazement in my peripheral vision as Norton spun into action.

  Out from behind me, he ripped two blades from my armour and cut the ropes free, but after more and more began to appear he went along to each person slicing them and then their rope. At one point two men close to each other made it over the ledge, but Norton in a quick, simple movement sent a blade through one while wheeling about and taking the head off the other. Both fell to the staircase heavily and Norton leapt a few steps to take out another who had begun to climb over the railing.

  I lost concentration as my bullets diminished and threw the pistols to the ground beside me. Instead of grabbing the blazer, because of the time it took to charge, I ran down the last steps and began fist fighting those who dared turn the corner.
  Once or twice I felt a bullet thud against my armour, but the adrenalin and testosterone that was surging through me kept me going to the point where it didn’t even knock me back. Tran soon joined me, and together we took out the daring idiots who tried to take the easy way up.

  After a few minutes we had gotten rid of the first large group and Norton soon joined us, breathing heavily and his eyes glowing with that same evil. He seemed to be suddenly thriving on this spree of death. Almost like a vicious creature hungry for more.
  “We won’t be able to evade all of them like this!” Tran gasped loudly, taking a glance over the railings. Even from where I stood, the gunshots from moments ago still echoed loudly in my head, I could hear the thunderous footsteps of heavy boots racing up the stairway. It was so utterly hopeless.

  “Then we will go right through them. Get in so close they won’t know or realise. Give me your arm.” Norton neatly tucked the blades through a leather belt that held his tattered jeans up then reached for my wrist. He studied the cufflink carefully for a moment before retreating his arm and looking upward.

  While he studied the ceiling, I stuck the helmet on and got used to the night-vision. As the new way of seeing things came to life I realised how many men we had actually taken out. The pile was much bigger than I had originally guessed. I started to count but Norton quickly interrupted me.

  “This is as high as the stairs go. See the roof there?” Sure enough the roof of the staircase was only a little bit up. Jeez, imagine how much it would have sucked for those who had been left on the higher floors. “Use your hook to attach to the ceiling. We’ll grab on and you get us over the edge. From what I know about the Chinese armour series Z-72, the hook will let us freefall until we stop it. Got it?”
  Again, an intense amount of knowledge burst from Norton’s lips. How could he know so much? He was only, what … eleven?
  “Got it?!” I was snapped back to reality as gunfire shattered against the walls above us and Norton’s deathly growl split my thoughts in two.
  I nodded at once, raising my right arm and using the eye screen to aim the device. I had locked on to a secure area of the ceiling and fired within a few seconds, and at once I felt the rope go taught. Good.
  “Get on guys,” I yelled as I walked to the railing. Thankfully the mass below had their heads bowed and were running as fast as they could up the staircase.
  Norton latched himself and my front while Tran climbed onto my back. Almost instantly the rope pulled up, sending all three of us wavering over the ledge, and then it let go. My stomach seemed to leap through my chest and I wanted to scream so badly, but nothing came out. Miraculously Tran and Norton kept quiet too as we slipped through the darkness in between the revolving staircase.

  Flashes of running men swept by as floor after floor went by. But then I looked down, the ground floor rushing towards us with such velocity I wasn’t sure we could escape it. I tried to find a button to slow us down but I couldn’t find a thing!
  It came closer and closer, the dark shadowed floor almost eating us up. And then I felt my wrist go warm, I smelt the smoke, and within a split second we had slowed in enough time to hit the ground with only a slight thud.

  We collapsed in a heap as we finally struck the melted linoleum floor. I let out a sharp cough and Tran growled. But as we lied there, Norton jumped to his feet, sliced the cord with one of his blood-stained blades and crept to the open doorway. For a second there was a deathly silence before I heard a yell from above and bullets firing.
  The loud cracks came from above and they were firing upon Tran and I who were still in view. Someone had realised we had gotten past. It was probably that stupid noise I made when I hit the hard ground.

  I grabbed Tran and forced him toward Norton. All three of us leant against the wall beside the door gasping for air, breathing heavily and trying to hear something in the halls beyond over the deafening gunfire and rasping breaths.
  “There are at least twenty in there …” His voice was cold but determined. Norton was certainly down the line. “Let’s go, otherwise the others will be on us in a few minutes.”

  And without a moments hesitation he slipped through the open doorway and into the dark room. I followed next, throwing Tran the blazer as I went through and pulled the two smaller blades from my leggings. It wasn’t until I got further down the hallway and towards the office and waiting area where I met my first encounter. Once again the druggies had disappeared and they had been replaced ten-fold with men. I heard initial gunfire that was cut short – Norton.

  I took two men out silently but they knew about us by then. The room simply broke into hysteria as pistols fired bullets at anything that moved. Norton darted about the room gracefully, wielding the blades in such a fashion it was almost beautiful to watch through my eye screens.

  After about five men, I lost my blades. One of them kicked me in the head and sent me crashing to the ground, my blades slipping from my grip and sliding away underneath a nearby table. Dammit! But I was up in a flash and when I went to punch the guy, two nifty blades slipped through the ends of the gloves above my knuckles and stabbed him. He yelled loudly for a moment before slumping to the ground and falling silent.

  While I focused on another guy I could see flashes of the blazer gun slicing throughout the room. It had already taken out half the men. I ducked under a swinging fist after slicing a man’s wrist while trying to take the pistol from him, and then came up, shoving my fists right up to the edge of his clothes. I could almost feel the heartbeat pulsating against the cold blade.
  He slid away, rendering a fresh view of the room. But as he slid down, his face full of painful anguish and cold death, I watched helplessly as one of Tran’s blazer victims slowly raised his shaking arm, aimed the unsteady pistol, and fired. His arm fell to the ground in an echoing thump as the bullet pierced the atmosphere before slamming into Tran’s chest and sending him stumbling backwards.

  He tripped on his own feet as a look of pure horror crossed his wrinkled and obscured face. He fell back into a pile of tattered chairs and disappeared beneath them as they collapsed over him. My heart began to race even faster as the numbness came over me, fear suddenly entering my heart and spreading like poison through my body. No Tran! I almost yelled as I sprinted towards him as the last remaining resistance to our escape died away.

  Two figures jumped out in front of me as I ran, I raised my arms and sent blood-stained daggers slicing through their throats. I ran faster, my footsteps echoing and my breath scratching as I went. Time seemed to go slow, each of my feet slowly sinking into the ground, lifting again before the other fell. Step after step went by, the soft carpet beneath my feet scrunching as I raced toward the pile of dusty seats and the pair of motionless legs that stuck out from beneath them. My mind reeled, my senses went crazy, and I thought I felt my head going light.

  Breathe, I told myself as I crossed the last part of the room before falling to my knees and throwing the first chair aside. Behind me I heard one final gun shot and the soft slicing of someone’s throat and then silence. I couldn’t even hear my own breathing, perhaps it was the adrenalin, I didn’t know. Either way I feared for Tran’s life.

  Norton joined me shortly after I reached Tran and helped remove the layer of chairs that had covered Tran. As we pulled away the last and threw it away we saw the faint dots of blood on his face and the trail that led from his gaping mouth. Already he looked cold and so very tired. The blood from the shot had obviously sprayed all over him because even his clothes were saturated in the warm red colouring.

  I sat back as I took it all in: his gasping for air, his shaking arms, and his flickering eyes. I never wanted to see him go like this. Not while helping me on something that still even seemed so cloudy. I felt a lump in my throat – I hadn’t realised I had grown so attached to this ancient wretch.

  Norton slumped forward and lifted Tran’s head, turning it to the side and trying to scoop out as much blood that had been caught in his mouth and throat. For a second Tran convulsed before remaining still and I watched as his eyes rolled forward. There, in his eyes, was at least some form of life and conscious.

  I tried to say something, but the lump in my throat jumped up and nothing came out. I leant forward a bit and took a glance at the wound. It was as I had feared; straight in the left side of the chest. Both lung and heart was probably punctured. He had a few seconds, if that …

  A cold, shaking hand appeared before me. It gripped my shoulder strap on my armour and held on tight. Looking down I saw a faint smile stretch across his face. I knew this was how he wanted to go, but I didn’t want this for him. But he shook his head, almost knowing what I was thinking and looked straight into where my eyes were.
  I quickly pulled the mask off, allowing Tran one last glance into my eyes. It was out of respect. He smiled a bit more and began to whisper. Leaning forward, he told me his last words. Those I would never forget.

  “Fear is made in the mind …” The smile drooped suddenly and his face went increasingly white. I latched onto his hand and his eyes rolled around one last time to look at me. “… Power of light overcomes darkness. S-show them … the … light …”
  He half-sat up and then went limp. The grip around my shoulder strap loosened and retreated and his eyes were fixated but deadly cold. Poor Tran, he couldn’t survive in this world. How did I have a hope?

  I sat there on my knees beside Tran’s dead body. Grief was not an emotion I entailed, but helplessness was. I could have sat there all night blaming his death on myself. Because it was. He didn’t have to come along; he didn’t have to help me. I felt stupid. Helpless. Like I was chasing a pathetic fairytale. I was a failure; I was Tran’s greatest failure.
  “We must move. They come from the stairwell and those outside have dispersed. Others have come to help; we must take this as our advantage and run. Head to Luno Place, there is some place on the other side that I have to take you to. Perhaps there we can avenge this valiant mans death.” Norton bowed towards Tran and got up, blades at the ready, slowly creeping toward the final hallway to the open doorway and out onto the emergency driveway.

  I remained with Tran for only a moment longer before closing his eyes and following Norton. We reached the street easily and ran through the shadows along the path until we reached the silhouetted forest of Luno Place. The large sign that usually read; Luno Place, Heritage Grounds, was beaten and vandalised and only the word Heritage remained untainted. I almost cussed in disgust, but Norton quickly passed the sign and took me along the path.
  After a while we finally slowed our pace and left the path, walking on a beaten road that couldn’t be seen from the main path. Vegetation now grew all over the track seeing as wheeled cars obviously hadn’t been along here in ages, so tracking wasn’t as easy as I had originally thought. We walked for an hour along the track before the sky began to lighten, dark clouds rolling above us and the same cold, grey day beginning. I finally spoke my first words since Tran’s death as we climbed over rubble of an old bridge that crossed a once flowing eddy.

  “Could you have saved him?” I asked, my thoughts and questions for the last hour or two finally breaking out.
  Norton walked on for a bit before finally answering. “No.”
  “Well then,” I said bitterly, “would you mind telling me where the hell we’re going, and what the hell we’re running from? Why Tran had to fuckin’ die? Why I feel like a nutcase, and why we’re walking around in daylight?” I stopped as the same helplessness and emotional damages from the past came flooding back, piling on top of each other and making everything seem excessively painful.

  Norton stopped too, spinning around and pointing his blade in my direction. Cold death swirled in his grey eyes, his face looking much paler than the night before. His lip curled up and I swear he almost growled at me.
  “Tran died trying to save you so you could save me. You saved me to save yourself, and you saved yourself because you want to understand this world. This world cannot be understood and I’m taking you this way so I can show you that. You’re a nutcase because you think you can help this world, and we’re walking in bright daylight because it is safest at this time of the day. And we are walking because I’m taking you to the enemy. Right under their nose I’ll show you the real world, what’s behind those closed curtains of your world. And behind them, you’ll see what is really going on and why you’ve been sucked into all of this.”
  He stopped for a moment, breathing heavily – I don’t think he’d even stopped for a breath.

  “We’re going to The Silent Bar.”
  With that he turned around, slid the blade through his belt and walked up another path. But this one looked tamed. Clean, almost. Something wasn’t right. And I could feel a strange nervousness prickling in my guts. Whatever this Silent Bar was, it sounded … real.