Chapter Text
Sharp, aching pain spread over your ribs as you lay on the ground, small rocks digging in where you’d been kicked and beaten not an hour before. The two men who had ambushed you on the road had beaten you senseless, and kept up the constant barrage of hits until you’d finally grown too weak and sore to properly fight back. You suspected they had only stopped so that they didn’t have to carry your unconscious, or dead, body to this destination. Now, one stood by the heels of their employer while the other plunged a shovel into the dirt, over and over, just feet from your head. It didn’t take a REPCONN scientist to figure out that they weren’t digging for buried treasures in Old World graves.
It was only when the one man grew bored of scraping away at the hard-baked Nevada clay that he finally stopped digging, throwing the shovel off to the side. “This is bullshit. I ain’t diggin’ an inch more in that goddamned rock.”
“You sure that’s deep enough?”
“Shuddup. If you got a problem with it, you get that shovel and start diggin’. My hands and my back fuckin’ hurt.”
You shifted, wincing at the pain from your injuries as you dragged yourself up to your knees. It was a struggle– your wrists had been bound over your gloves with rope, and your legs had been tied at your ankles. Regardless, you managed, twisting your hands to loosen them enough to untie; or at least, to make it easier to maneuver enough to untie your ankles.
The man who had been digging noticed your squirming and chuckled. “Guess who’s wakin’ up over here?”
Luck was not on your side tonight. The man who had hired the two thugs noticed your predicament and stepped forward, tapping the ashes off his cigarette–careful not to get any on the white of his tacky checkered suit.
The thug who had been watching the digging scowled at the man’s apparent dismissal from under his thick, dark eyebrows. “You got what you were after, so pay up.”
The man in the suit rolled his eyes. “You’re cryin’ in the rain, pally.” He took a long last drag off his cigarette before tossing it into the dirt, crushing it under a battered dress shoe that had once been polished to a shine. “Time to cash out.”
He sauntered in your direction, casual in taking his time. The thug with the dark brows threw his hands up, exasperated. “Would ya just get it over with?”
The man in the suit raised a single finger, as if to shush him with a gesture. “Maybe cons kill people without lookin’ em in the face,” he began, locking eye contact with you. It was distinctly uncomfortable. “But I ain’t a fink, dig?”
He pulled a silver disc from the inside of his suit jacket. It glinted as he turned it to and fro in the light of their campfire. “You made your last delivery, kid,” he murmured, holding it up pointedly. “I’m sorry you got twisted up in this scene.”
Putting the disc back into his inner pocket, he rummaged around some more. His hand re-emerged, clasped around a silvery 9mm pistol. The dark haired thug looked away while scratching the back of his head, disgusted. The one who had been digging, a younger man with reddish hair done up in a spike, went wide-eyed and slack-jawed, paling further under the moonlight. You glared at their employer, opening your mouth to speak, but he cut you off before you could so much as make a noise.
“From where you’re kneeling, must seem like an 18 karat run of bad luck. Truth is,” he shifted, eye glinting with a hint of regret as he aimed the barrel squarely at your face.
“The game was rigged from the start.”
He pulled the trigger, and the resulting blinding flash of light and deafening bang were the last things you knew before infinite darkness.