It was just before dawn. The air smelled of synthetic bacon crackling on the stove. It didn’t share the same savory, salty smell of its pork cousin. Rather, it was sweet. It was a peculiar choice for bacon, of all things. The engineers who designed the scent described it as a “more satisfying olfactory experience.” But to those who remembered the real thing, this new sugar-sweet scent was an imposter. To them, it smelled the way cherry candy tastes saccharine, rather than tart like a fresh cherry.
Fearless was one of them. He couldn’t recall the way bacon tasted, or, for that matter, ever eating it in the first place. But in his memory, he could smell it. It was hard for his brain to even make sense of it all. How a scent could linger in his prefrontal cortex, lying dormant for years until it was presented with the smell of the imposter. He’d like to think that a mother cooked it for him as a young boy. Or a grandmother, even. Back when pork was still imported from Earth, from real pigs that grazed on grass that grew from the ground. It was a pleasant mystery that his brain would never solve. And maybe that was enough.
“Is that burnt yet?” The sound of Vicious’s anxious voice interrupted his peculiar day dream. Fearless quickly snapped out of his haze and continued to push the syn-bacon around the pan, the strips charred to pinkish grey crisp.
“Just about,” Fearless replied. He didn’t address Vicious. He just kept his eyes on the syn-bacon. Expressionless.
Vicious clocked his sullen tone. “Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean that thing I said about only being friends because I felt bad for you. That wasn’t right.”
“I’m sorry I called you a prick.”
“Apology accepted.”
Fearless mulled this over for a moment, as if rescinding his apology. “You were kind of being a prick, though.”
Vicious shook his head. Then chuckled. He knew that halfhearted, half-assed apology was all he was going to get from Fearless. So he let him have this one.
“Yeah. I was.”
Fearless forked the syn-bacon onto a plate. The charred strips landed on the plate with an audible ting-a-ting. He turned to Vicious with a smile. “Think this will wake him up?”
Vicious grinned. “Yeah. I think breakfast in bed should do just the trick.”
Fearless and Vicious made their way across the penthouse. There was a thick fog that morning, one that reached all the way to the penthouse. A grey cloud lingered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. But as the sun began to rise, it illuminated the red Martian soil on the ground and bathed the entire apartment in an eerie, cerise glow.
They turned down a long hallway. It was lined with various paintings and other works of art. Vicious stopped in front of an empty space on the wall. Dust outlined the frame where the Rothko once hung. He sighed. “God, I loved that painting.”
Fearless shrugged. “Never understood what the fuss was about, I guess. All art is some guy throwing some shit at the wall and hoping it sticks.”
Vicious could only shake his head as they continued down the hallway, their bare feet slowly sliding across the cool marble floors.
“Can I ask you a question?” Fearless asked with a hint of trepidation.
“Sure.”
“How far are you planning on taking this?”
Vicious took a deep breath. “As far as I have to.”
* * *
The drool slowly dribbled from Dodd’s mouth. He was seated in the living room, crudely tied to an antique dining chair. There wasn’t any rope to be had, or duct tape, so they had used belts to secure his wrists and ankles. They belonged to Vicious’s father, constructed of the finest tanned leathers from the hides of animals that hadn’t existed in decades.
Vicious and Fearless took in the capo. There sat the man who had once held so much power over them. The one who ordered them dead. And now, he sat in a puddle of his own piss, helpless.
For a moment, Fearless wondered if he was dead. Part of him wished he was. For his sake. Because what was about to happen to Dodd was going to be inhumane. And he would deserve every moment of it.
“Time to wake up.”
Vicious held a piece of charred syn-bacon below his nose to rouse him. Dodd slowly began to stir, mumbling incoherently about the night before. His eyelids fluttered. Slowly at first, but then he brought the room into focus.
“Where the fuck am I?” Dodd’s voice cracked as he spoke. His throat singed by the long night of inhaling tequila and cigarette smoke.
“Don’t you recognize the place?” Vicious slowly paced behind Dodd. “After all, you seemed to know so much about it. You seemed to know so much about me, just because you knew my address.”
Dodd’s eyes frantically searched the room for the voice. “Listen, I have money. Lots of money. We can work something out! I-I drank too much last night. OK? I-I don’t know how I got here. Or who you are—”
Vicious slowly kneeled down next to Dodd so they were eye level. He spoke to him in a comforting matter, as if he were a doctor addressing a child who was about to get a vaccine.
“Sure you do.”
Dodd recoiled in fear. All at once, the blood drained from his face. It was as if he had seen a ghost. Maybe, he had.
“Vicious…”
Vicious grinned. The darkness was no longer riding shotgun. No longer was it bubbling beneath the surface. It was here. And it was the one leading this interrogation.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
Dodd immediately began to panic, tugging at his restraints. Trying to break free. But it was no use. As it turned out, the belts were as effective as they were expensive. He frantically looked around the room, for a way out, for someone, for anything until his eyes landed on Fearless.
“Fearless! You gotta help me! You can’t let him do this!”
Fearless lit a cigarette. And took a drag. He leaned against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, the fog clouds outside of which were now blood red. He stared into them, pondering Dodd’s words.
“Can’t let him do what, Dodd?”
Dodd motioned to his restraints. “This! This! Look at me!”
Fearless exhaled a plume of smoke. And nonchalantly approached the chair. “But he hasn’t done anything yet. As far as I can see, my friend here has merely tied you to a chair with some luxury leather accessories. It could be worse. All things considered.”
He took another drag as he slowly paced to a modern leather armchair nearby. He equally slowly sat down, crossed his legs and held the cigarette high between his index and middle fingers—channeling his inner Audrey Hepburn, sans the cigarette holder.
“It’s not as if he, say, sent you on a job with a briefcase full of playing cards.”
Dodd’s eyes widened. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t form.
“You didn’t think we could open the case, did you? Oops,” Vicious opined as he pulled his Red Dragon issued 9mm from his waist. He ejected the empty clip from the handle. And began to slowly load it with bullets. One by one. And turned to his partner.
“Fearless, how many toes do you think Dodd has?”
Fearless played along and carefully looked his bare feet over. “Oh, ten, I reckon.”
Dodd clocked the handgun and quickly realized where this was headed. And he was running out of time. “Look, boys, this is all just a big misunderstanding.”
Ka-chunk! Vicious racked the slide. “Huh. Is that so?”
“Yes, I swear, I can explain!”
Vicious placed the 9mm’s muzzle on Dodd’s big toe. “Then explain.”
Dodd’s lower lip trembled at the sight. “OK. Look. The Red Dragon was working with Slade on a deal for a new party drug. The negotiation wasn’t going well. The Elders wanted to get the deal done. So they told me to have a couple guys deliver a case. I didn’t know what was inside. I swear!”
Vicious turned to Fearless. They traded a glance. Then turned back to Dodd.
“Wrong.”
BANG! Vicious squeezed the trigger and blew off Dodd’s big toe!
Dodd howled in pain. “Motherfucker! You motherfucker! Fuck! Fine! Fine! The briefcase was my idea!”
Vicious pressed to the big toe on the other foot. “Why us, then?”
Dodd struggled to catch his breath as the blood poured from his foot. “What are you talking about. I just needed a couple guys to deliver the fuckin’ case! You were available!”
BANG! Vicious blew off the other toe! And Dodd howled louder.
“Wrong answer! Who sent the assassin, huh? Was it the Europa Crew? Did they put you up to this?”
Dodd’s eyes began to flutter. A pool of blood formed on the floor. “No…”
Vicious screamed in frustration. “Bullshit!”
BANG! Vicious blew off one of Dodd’s toes!
BANG! Then another!
Fearless looked down to his feet. The pool of blood had traveled all the way across the room. And was soaking into his shoe. “Vicious. I don’t think he has the answers you’re looking for.”
Vicious locked eyes with Fearless. They were black. “Then we need to start asking in a different way.”
He stood and grabbed the back of Dodd’s chair. He dragged the chair through the pool of blood and across the marble floors, leaving two parallel red streaks in its wake. Vicious placed the chair in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He raised the 9mm to the glass.
BANG! The window shattered onto the floor!
The wind howled furiously throughout the penthouse. Vicious put his foot to the seat of the chair. And slowly tipped Dodd backwards on the two back legs. He teetered over the edge of the window, where the fog had since cleared to reveal an eighty-floor drop.
Vicious looked to Dodd. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Was the assassin from the Europa Crew or not?”
Dodd's eyes fluttered open. It was a sudden moment of clarity. Perhaps he knew between the blood loss and the streets of Tharsis City waiting below that he was going to die either way. He spoke slowly between labored breaths. “I hired the assassin. Off the black market. It was me.”
Vicious was taken aback. The admission hit him like a sledgehammer. “What? But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want us dead? We’re just two janitors.”
Dodd slowly shook his head. “Just you. Just you.”
“Me?”
Dodd slowly nodded as he tried to string the words together. He was fading. “I didn’t know. Until. You told me. Where. You lived.”
Vicious clenched his jaw tight. “I don’t understand.”
“Your… father…”
Vicious slowly cocked his head sideways. The darkness faded. The light once again filled his eyes. The eyes of a little boy. Who just wanted to be loved. “My father? What does he have to do with any of this?”
Dodd softly chuckled. He was surprised. “You… don’t know… who you are?”
Vicious could see it in Dodd’s expression. His lips slowly curling to a smile. That sneer. He knew he was telling the truth. That Dodd knew something he didn’t. And he was enjoying every second of it.
“What do you know about my—”
FWIP! A bullet clipped Vicious in the shoulder!
Vicious cried out in pain as he tumbled backwards a few steps, clutching his arm. His head whipped back to Dodd as he realized his foot was no longer holding the chair steady. Vicious lurched for him—“No!”
But it was too late. Dodd fell backwards through the open floor-to-ceiling window. And in an instant, he was gone. Vanished. Vicious rushed to the edge of the window. He locked eyes with Dodd. For a moment, he looked peaceful as he free-fell those eighty floors. And just before he smashed into the pavement, where his bones would shatter into an inconceivable amount of pieces, Vicious could have sworn he saw Dodd smile.
“Get down!” Fearless shouted as he dragged Vicious down to the floor.
Gunfire peppered the penthouse through the open window. Fearless looked across to the building opposite them, where he could see the muzzle flash of a long range sniper rifle.
“Sniper!”
FWIP! A sniper bullet whizzed by Fearless’s face, just ever so lightly kissing the tip of his nose. He held his hand to his face, making sure his nose was still there, then glanced at his palm where a few drops of blood were lightly streaked.
“Not cool!”
FWIP! FWIP! FWIP!
Fearless and Vicious army crawled across the marble floors as the sniper fire continued to rain down on them. They quickly retreated into the U-shaped kitchen, where a wall of seamless white-oak cabinetry hid all of the appliances and cupboards. The only thing the designers couldn’t hide was the solid marble island in the center. Fearless and Vicious quickly took cover behind it, momentarily catching their breath.
“They almost blew my nose off!” Fearless shouted.
Vicious winced, clutching his shoulder. “Who is they?!”
Fearless motioned to Vicious’s pocket. “You still have those binoculars?”
Vicious winced as he reached into his pocket and handed over the binoculars. Fearless peeked ever so slightly above the island’s marble surface, the binoculars to his eyes. He slowly scanned the adjacent building where the gunfire came from, searching for a shooter. And, sure enough, he found him. The sniper was laying on his belly on the roof of the building with a military grade M40 bolt-action rifle with an infrared scope. He had concealed himself entirely in black, but had neglected one crucial element. He was wearing a two-tone black and gold Rolex on his wrist. They called him Blackeye. And he was the Red Dragon’s most elite sharpshooter.
“Fucking Blackeye. I knew it,” Fearless grumbled.
Vicious cocked his head sideways. “Blackeye? Our Blackeye? Are you sure?”
Fearless nodded. “I’d recognize that ugly ass Rolex anywhere.”
“But that’s impossible! The Red Dragon doesn’t even know Dodd’s missing yet!”
“They’ve probably had your penthouse under surveillance for days. Hell, if the fog didn’t lift, you probably wouldn’t have gotten shot,” Fearless said, as he clocked Vicious’s bullet wound. His shirt soaked in blood. “Oh shit. That doesn’t look good.”
“I’ll be fine,” Vicious said, pulling his shirt tight.
They heard the familiar chime of the private elevator. They turned to the digital placard that hung above the door and indicated what number floor the car was currently passing. The numbers were counting u—8… 9… 10…—and fast.
“Well, whoever they are—they’re coming for us,” Fearless concluded.
Vicious pointed to a nearby monitor discreetly built into the seamless white oak cabinetry. “Turn that on. The private elevator has a hidden camera on a closed circuit security system.”
Fearless kept a low profile as he scrambled to the monitor. He tapped the screen and the monitor slowly came to life. On screen was a fish-eye view of the elevator car where four heavily armed men were crammed inside. Fearless’s eyes narrowed, confused. He called back to Vicious.
“Those guys are not Red Dragon, I’ll tell you that much!”
“Then who?” Vicious shouted back.
Fearless took in the image, searching for clues—when he saw it. One of the men had an intricate tattoo on the inside of his forearm. A Grecian woman in a flowing white toga riding a bull.
“Shit…” Fearless muttered.
CRASH! The monitor exploded from the impact of a sniper bullet!
Fearless dropped to the floor. A small piece of the monitor’s glass screen stuck to his cheek. He plucked it out. “Come on! Enough with the face shots!” he bellowed.
Fearless quickly crawled back to his position with Vicious behind the kitchen island. “It’s the Europa Crew. They got four guys on the elevator. Armed to the teeth.”
Vicious softly muttered. “It can’t be…”
“Well, clearly, it is! And I gotta tell ya, from what I’ve heard, they’re not the nicest bunch!” Fearless scoffed, as he turned back towards the digital placard above the elevator. The numbers continued to rise.
21… 22… 23…
“We don’t have time for this, Vicious!”
Vicious shook his head. Then locked eyes with Fearless. “Before he fell out the window, Dodd told me he hired the assassin to ambush us at Slade’s. He got him off the black market. The Europa Crew never came to him.”
Fearless was taken aback by this information. “But why would Dodd want us dead?”
“Not us.” Vicious shook his head. “Just me.”
Fearless cocked his head sideways. His face contorting with shock. “You?”
From across the room they heard the ding as the car reached the eightieth floor.
The elevator doors slowly parted and emitted that same delightful, lab-designed melody. The same one that played the night they took Fiona and Penny back to the penthouse for a nightcap. But this time, the melody took on a haunting quality.
Fearless reached into his waist for his 9mm, but it wasn’t there. He cringed. And whispered to Vicious. “Fuck! I must have left my gun in the catering van!”
Vicious popped the clip from his 9mm to check his ammo, only to realize—“Shit. I’m out.”
Fearless panicked. “Well what the fuck are we supposed to do now?!”
When, suddenly they were interrupted by a deep, raspy voice that echoed through the penthouse. “Vicious… Vicious… Vicious… Tsk tsk tsk.”
The voice belonged to Darien Cortez, the older brother of the drunk that Vicious had killed at Big Jae’s Noodle Bar. Every inch of his skin was almost entirely tattooed with images of Greek gods and illustrated tales of their legend. A fresh tattoo was etched into his cheek. So new that it was still smeared with petroleum jelly to keep the ink from smudging. It was a name. Nicky.
Darien continued to pontificate. “You know, you would’ve gotten away with it, Vicious. You would’ve been home free. So let this be an important lesson to you. If you’re going to kill someone, never use a credit card at the crime scene. And if you don’t want the waitstaff to give up your personal information… always, always tip.”
Three more members of the Europa Crew flanked Darien either side. They too were significantly inked up; one had gone as far as to tattoo a skull over his entire face. The end result was particularly menacing. But so was the Europa Crew. They were a relatively new crime family, having established themselves as a legitimate threat a few years back after they burned down a Red Dragon-controlled casino in the orbit of Jupiter and killed everyone inside. There wasn’t a motive behind the attack. They didn’t do it for the money. Or territory. Or even respect. They simply wanted to instill fear across the solar system. Their modus operandi was chaos.
Darien called out again. “I’m going to give you a chance, Vicious. A chance to show your face. A chance to admit why you beat my baby brother so bad that we had to have a closed casket funeral. And then, after I’m done with you, I’m going to give you the chance to beg for mercy.”
But there was no response. Only silence. Darien quietly motioned to his men and directed them to conduct a sweep of the penthouse. The men quickly fanned out in opposite directions, each taking a different wing of the ten thousand-square foot luxury residence.
With a pair of jagged hunting knives in each hand, Skull Face took the kitchen. He slowly stalked towards the island, his eyes following the trail of bloody footprints that led behind it where Fearless and Vicious had hid from the sniper’s fire. He rounded the corner and raised his weapons, ready to properly gut them only to find they were gone.
“Ah, shit,” muttered Skull Face. He turned back to the marble flooring, analyzing the bloody footprints and attempting to discern the various directions that they seemed to be heading in…
When one of the seamless white oak cabinets silently opened behind him. There stood Vicious, standing in a walk-in pantry. He hovered behind Skull Face for a moment like a vampire. Then, he quickly struck, wrapping his hand around the thug’s mouth and pulling him into the closet. Skull Face let out a muffled cry, but it was useless.
Crack!
Vicious snapped his neck and slowly dragged him into the walk-in pantry, unbeknownst to the rest of the Europa Crew. His jagged hunting knives skittering across the floor.
Meanwhile, two more tattooed men took the master bedroom. They carefully searched the room, checking in closets, behind curtains, even under the bed. They looked to each other with a shrug. No one seemed to be here, either. And just as they turned to leave, they heard a metallic ting coming from the adjacent master bathroom.
The two tattooed men carefully stepped into the bathroom, guns drawn. It was the size of a one-bedroom apartment, covered floor-to-ceiling in pristine imported white tile. An antique clawfoot tub sat in the center of the room. At the far end of the bathroom, a pair of white curtains softly billowed in the wind. The window was open. The men traded a glance and approached the open window. One took the lead and stuck his head outside.
“No fire escape out here. Just a ledge—”
Suddenly, an unseen hand grabbed the tattooed man by the neck of his shirt and pulled him out the window! The man screamed as he tumbled eighty floors to his death, the sound echoing throughout the expansive bathroom.
“Holy shit!” the remaining tattooed man cried out. He slowly backed away from the window, gun ready to fire. His hand trembled. He took another step back. The gun still trained on the open window. Then another step back. When suddenly, he backed into something. Or someone. The thug slowly turned around.
It was Vicious. He locked eyes with the man. And whispered.
“Boo.”
The tattooed man stumbled backward in the other direction. He raised his gun to fire, but his trembling finger couldn’t find the trigger. Vicious didn’t even flinch. He continued to slowly pace toward the man. A maniacal grin on his face.
The man didn’t realize that Fearless was emerging from through the window behind him. Fearless stealthily slipped into the bathroom and grabbed a bath towel from a wicker basket. He quickly unrolled it and in instant, had wrapped the towel around the man’s neck like a plush, high-end linen garrote. Fearless slowly brought him to the floor as he choked the man out. Dead.
“Hell of an entrance,” Vicious whispered, impressed.
“Thanks,” Fearless whispered back with a shrug. “How many are left?”
“Just Darien. But don’t forget about the sniper in the building across the street.”
Fearless gritted his teeth. “Fucking snipers. They all think they’re so fucking cool because they can kill a man from a mile away. But you know what I think? They’re pussies. Any dumbass with a M40 and an infrared scope can kill a guy. Try killing a guy with a bath towel. Now that’s impressive.”
Suddenly, Vicious held a quiet finger to his lips. “Did you hear that?”
They both listened closely. For a moment, it was silent. Until—
Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.
It was the sound of footsteps. And they were getting closer. Vicious turned to Fearless with concern. “Shit. Darien. What the hell do we do now?”
Fearless chewed on this for a beat. His eyes ticked to the open bathroom window, the curtains billowing idyllically in the breeze. He already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask. But he couldn’t help himself.
“You still afraid of heights?”
* * *
Fearless and Vicious stood on the concrete ledge outside the bathroom window. It had occurred to both of them that the eeriest part about being eighty floors up wasn’t the height, it was the silence. There weren’t any street sounds at this height. No commotion. No chatter. No angry car horns blaring. Just the sound of the wind howling in between the buildings, daring you to make a mistake.
Fearless quickly shimmied across the ledge to a nearby access ladder that led to the roof above the penthouse. He too didn’t care much for heights, but he found it best to get it over with quickly with as little thought as possible. Fearless climbed the ladder and pulled himself up onto the roof. He turned around, then quickly realized that Vicious wasn’t behind him. He was frozen on the ledge.
Fearless called out to him. “Vicious! What the hell are you doing?! We need to move! Right now!”
But Vicious didn’t budge. He just kept his back to the wall. And his eyes straight. He was paralyzed with fear. Barely able to even speak.
“I… I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?!”
Vicious trembled. “My legs won’t move, alright? I’m too scared!”
“Too scared? Are you fucking kidding me right now? After all the shit you’ve put me through this week, this is how it’s going to end?”
Suddenly, something from the adjacent building caught Fearless’s eye. A small flash of light. Fearless’s eyes narrowed. He squinted at it. It seemed to be signaling them, like a mirror. What the hell was that? And then, he realized what it was. The morning sun reflecting off the scope of a sniper rifle. The shooter from the other building had spotted them. And he was lining up a shot.
“Shit,” Fearless muttered to himself. He called out to Vicious on the ledge. “Vicious! Listen to me! The sniper has eyes on you! He’s going to take the shot!”
Vicious didn’t respond. He was full on catatonic, lost in the throes of a devastating panic attack. Fearless quickly descended the ladder from the roof and carefully shimmied back across the ledge towards Vicious.
“Seriously!” Fearless said as he approached. “Of all the shit that’s happened the past few days, this is the thing that you’re afraid of?!”
Vicious didn’t even crack a smile. His eyes were locked straight ahead, his hands clinging desperately to the building behind. Fearless reached him and extended a hand.
“Come on!” Fearless shouted, the wind howling between them. “Take my hand!”
But still, Vicious didn’t move. Fearless turned back towards the sniper. His left hand was on his scope adjusting its focus. One click. Then another. Then, he slid his right hand down the barrel towards the trigger. It seemed to Fearless that he was sadistically eking out the moment.
Fearless whipped his head back to Vicious. “Vicious, please!”
When, without warning, Darien emerged from the nearby bathroom window. His eyes flared as he saw Vicious on the ledge. “You can’t hide from me, motherfucker!”
KA-CHUNK!
Darien pulled back the slide of a chrome-plated Desert Eagle and chambered a .50 caliber round. Fearless’s eyes ripped back to the sniper, his index finger now resting on the trigger. He turned back to find Darien, who lined up his shot. The absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on Fearless. There he was, stuck on a ledge eighty floors up with a ruthless killer who was afraid of heights, while not one, but two gunmen were ready to shoot them dead. Barring some kind of divine intervention, they would surely die, one way or another.
And that’s when Fearless saw it. Five floors below them. It was as if they were stranded at sea and at the last second, just before they were about to drown, they stumbled upon a lifeboat. But in this case, it was a basket-shaped rope-suspended scaffold used by window cleaners, about ten feet long and two feet wide. Just enough room for them to land.
With a mere fraction of a second to make a decision, Fearless wrapped his arms around Vicious, held him tight and jumped off the ledge!
Bang! The sniper fire rang out!
Bang! Darien pulled the trigger!
The bullets exploded where the pair had been standing, shattering the giant floor-to-ceiling windows behind them. Fearless and Vicious fell together as one, tumbling towards the platform as the shards of glass chased behind them like a swarm of angry bees.
THUD!
Fearless and Vicious slammed into the suspended scaffold with force. The scaffold, in turn, began to rapidly descend. Although they had somehow safely landed atop it, they were still continuing to free fall at pace. The scaffold consisted of four pulleys, one for each corner. Each emitted a high-pitched wheezing sound as the ropes quickly burned through their steel wheels.
SNAP! One of the ropes broke!
SNAP! Another rope broke on the opposite corner!
The scaffold teetered violently from corner to corner, threatening to dump Vicious and Fearless from its basket at any moment, when—
SNAP! The third rope broke!
The scaffold flipped vertically, then came to a hard stop, the entire apparatus dangling by a single rope. Vicious and Fearless were now hanging upside down, not to mention face-to-face, as they stared at the street below them. For a moment they remained silent, the scaffold gently swayed in the breeze.
“All things considered,” Fearless said, “that went better than expected.”
Vicious craned his neck to look around Fearless. “We’re still a good twenty floors from the ground. How the hell are we going to get out of here?”
Fearless scoffed. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t plan that far ahead because you were too busy shitting your pants on the side of the ledge!”
Vicious eyed the pulley and the single rope that was keeping them alive. Then, his eyes flicked to the open end of the basket, which faced the windows of the building. He had an idea.
“On the count of three, I need you to push off the glass with your feet as hard as you can.”
Fearless rolled his eyes. “Oh, so now that you’re not eighty floors up you got a plan, huh?”
“1… 2… 3…!”
Fearless and Vicious pressed their bare feet against the glass, pushing the scaffolding out over the street. It slowly careened backwards towards the window, slamming into it with a dull thud and not even leaving a nick on the surface.
“I don’t think that worked!” Fearless shouted.
“Again!” Vicious commanded. “1… 2… 3…!”
The scaffolding swayed even farther from the wall this time and careened back towards the glass with even more force—but this time as it slammed into the building the window cracked in a scaffold-shaped spider web pattern.
“One more time!” Vicious yelled.
Fearless began to panic. “This feels like a bad idea!”
“And jumping into the scaffolding was a good one?” Vicious queried. “1… 2… 3…!”
They both pushed with an audible grunt, the scaffold swayed like a massive pendulum, its stainless steel frame groaning and gaining momentum as it careened back into the glass one final time.
CRASH!
The scaffolding burst through the floor-to-ceiling window and landed in the middle of someone’s living room. Fearless and Vicious groaned as they rolled out of the basket and onto the shattered glass that littered the floor.
“Are you… OK?”
The voice came from a ritzy man in a bathrobe, who was holding a cup of tea in one hand a hologram newspaper in the other. It appeared he was in far too much shock to be angry.
“No, no I don’t think I am,” Fearless moaned as he staggered to his feet.
The man took in their appearances. His eyes wide. “You two should really see a doctor.”
Vicious glanced down at his shirt, which was now entirely drenched in blood from the sniper wound in his shoulder. Fearless gently touched the side of his head, then recoiled from the stinging pain that ran down his face. A huge shard of glass had pierced through the cartilage of his ear and was still dangling from it.
“Fuck! Ow! Fuck! How many face things can happen in one day?!”
Vicious turned to Fearless. “We should go, they’re bound to figure out what floor we’re on now.”
They quickly turned to leave, the shards of glass crunching beneath their feet. When, Vicious stopped and turned back to the man in the bathrobe. He motioned to the catastrophic mess that littered the living room. “Oh, I uh, I live in the penthouse. I’ll have someone come by later so we can discuss this… situation.”
Fearless offered a grin. “Have a nice day.”