((Into The Fire by Asking Alexandria))Every minute, every second counts. Even a decisecond can decide between living and dying for someone like Blaise DaSilva. The end was unexpected, had never been in scenarios he had imagined, though maybe it was too early to be described as an end. It was a matter of seconds before he was discovered. The dead man in the stall, the blood, and the gun lying a few feet away; he could rash into one stall to hide but it would be useless. The bathroom didn’t have a door; nothing was there that would separate it from the corridor. Like the room where the kidnapped were placed, it had very basic functions. The computers along with other devices embedded around the bathroom had been carved out; the slots the size of two fingers were empty and broken. He had checked them so he knew. Something beeped, but before he could find out what it was; he heard a shout from the open entrance. “Bast!” He was yet to see the person but he recognized the voice. The

Noah didn’t recognize him until it was too late. ‘What’s wrong with this kid?’ was the gist of his thought process when he noticed what he was doing. He gave off a bad vibe that made people want to avoid him, normal citizens like himself at least. He couldn’t speak for the villainous people who kept them here.Most teenagers had rebellious streaks, and some went to the extreme lengths, wearing phosphorus tattoos on their faces, cutting their flesh, and doing suicidal stunts such as jumping off their hoverbikes without anti-gravity shoes. ‘Was he one of them?’ the question flew out of his mind as quickly as it entered, at the time.Slowly, he tried to turn on the bed as hard as the concrete floor, the pungent smell flooded into his nostrils. His ribs hurt him. A groan escaped his mouth. It must be late or even the next day; this felt like such a long time after the last meal. He tilted his head to check the bed next to his; his face also hurt. Daniel was asleep, as well as several othe

“Whose clothes are they?” Blaise asked, a couple of minutes later. He sat at the edge of the bed with one hand holding the gun on his knee. “Umm… Henry’s,” Ivan answered, standing at the black slide door of the wardrobe which had emerged with a touch. Antonio stood awkwardly nearby his buddy, groaning, the knife still in his shoulder. Once in a while, both threw the defeated and yet treacherous peeks at him. “He was almost your underboss once, but dead and gone?” “Y–yeah.” Both their faces said silently why he was asking if he already knew, and under the surface was the confusion: how he knew this.“Who killed them? You?”They threw out a few names swiftly, even included a few descriptions for their appearances without him asking, such as, ‘you know that one with the birthmark on his neck?’ or ‘the two motherfuckers with the glow tats on their arms,’ and so on. For their own names, he had them introduced earlier.“Antonio, tell someone, a girl or an AI, to send the first aid kit

He gave them a warning by looking each of them straight in the eyes. They moved their hands away.They crossed the air toward him, up, left, and right. He had experienced neither this attack nor some of what he had faced during this timeline, despite his rewinds. Regardless, he could calculate their moves.One after another, he sent them down, in under a minute. The hall was silent again, just like when he had entered.“Underboss…” someone breathed, who had been among the four kidnappers of his. Blaise let the gravity pull him down and crouched down by his side.“Wh–what do you want?” “That,” he tapped on his own wristband.“Sure thing.” Sticky long hair shaking, he nodded quickly. “And password.”The answer was immediate.“Anything else?”“That’s enough, for now.”He headed in the direction away from everyone. He passed through the dark portal shape which was blinking with static. Somebody—from the audience—had damaged pixalates near the door on his way out, after being caught in

***Several hours earlier***A group of patrol hovercars was driving around the city’s air lanes, well after midnight. As they went separate ways, one departed to a northern borough. It flew round and round in a stealthy manner till it came across a green hovercar covered in holographic pictures and texts:Humans Rule671MPHCLUB 3000With the siren, the blue hovercar went after the green. The latter fled into the maze of the sky-alleys and soon the pursuer lost sight of the runner, changing its course to glide away between the buildings. However, it went to a halt before coming out to air-lanes for the legal traffic.If a vehicle could reflect the mood of the driver, this patrol vehicle certainly did; the hovercar looked lost as well as its driver Corporal Jason.“Why did the signal go out?” He sighed. “Why isn’t he answering?” In the background, a song was playing, the vocalist was quietly screaming. He touched a spot on the control panel and enunciated a sequence of numbers. “It’s