Transcript
Pretty tough door for a house that’s been abandoned for 60 years, Adam thought, nothing a good lock pick can’t solve though. Adam had walked past this house on the way to school every day for longer than he could remember, and every time, he’d tell himself that one day, he’d work up the courage to explore it. Something about the way it loomed over him, casting a shadow on the road, dwarfing all the other houses in size, made him so much more reluctant to explore it than all the other abandoned houses and factories.
So, as he slowly cracked the door open, he was both relieved, and disappointed. It was surprisingly bland. Dusty, but bland, he thought, as he raised the neck of his shirt over his nose as a makeshift dust filter.
He stumbled around the room, knocking an old lamp off an old wooden table, guided only by thin slivers of moonlight seeping in through cracks in the roof as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The front door seemed to have opened to a room containing nothing but rubble and another door. In a way, it was anticlimactic compared to his expectations and fears built up by the various ghost stories he’d heard over the years.
Adam carefully crept up to the door, afraid that any ill-trodden step would result in him falling through the rotten floorboards, and into whatever endless abyss lay below. He gingerly reached for the doorknob.
Suddenly, he was stopped in his tracks by a loud click. Light began flowing in from under the door. Why does an abandoned house have electricity? He wondered, before asking himself the more important question; why is there someone in this house?
The door swung open, narrowly missing Adam’s face. Behind the door was a tall man in his thirties. “Sorry mate,” he said, yawning, “business hours are between nine and seven. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”Adam peered over the man’s shoulder, looking into the next room. Inside was quite a different story to what the outside of the house told. There was a clean white carpet covering the floor, a black coffee table sitting in front of a leather sofa, and the walls were lined with guns.
Adam slowly started putting the pieces together in his head. “Y- you’re a hitman?”The man’s brow furrowed. “Uh, stay here. I’ll be back in a second.” He replied.
He exited the room, slamming the door behind him. Adam waited a few seconds, and then carefully cracked the door open, peering inside. The man was screwing a silencer onto the end of a handgun.
Adam spun around, running to the front door.
He grabbed the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge. Nononono, he thought, panicking. He didn’t have enough time to pick the lock again. He had to find a way to fight back. A pile of rubble versus a wall of guns. Great odds I’ve got, he thought to himself. Desperate for ideas, he grabbed a slab of wood off the ground, and stood slightly to the left of the door.
Seconds later, the door opened, hiding Adam, and the hitman walked through, looking around for him. The man walked up to the front door, checking the lock.
Adam slung the slab of wood across the room, landing on the table he bumped into earlier.
“Come on out!” he called, eyes darting around the room, looking for movement, “I wish I didn’t have to do this. I really do. But I can’t have the cops finding out about this place. Hurts business, y’know?”
He took a shot at the table. Adam used the opportunity to escape into the room the hitman had just come from. He didn’t have much time before the hitman would realise that he wasn’t behind the table.
Inside the room, the wall was lined with all sorts of guns. Rifles, pistols, shotguns, and some other weapons he was too scared to imagine what they did. He crept over to one of the handguns, taking it off the wall. It felt heavy in his hands, but not unfamiliar, as he had shot guns at his grandfather’s farm before.
Satisfied, Adam spun around to face the door, knocking a few guns off the wall in the process, which hit the ground with a crash.
“Hey!” The hitman yelled, hearing the noise and running back into the room. Adam raised his gun, pointing it at his chest. “Don’t move a muscle.” He commanded, feigning confidence. The hitman froze, his eyes moving between the gun in Adam’s hand and the empty spot on the wall. A bead of sweat dripped down his face.After staring at each other for the longest seconds of Adam’s life, the hitman spoke. “Ha! You really think I’d leave a loaded gun on the wall?” he retorted, raising his own gun towards Adam.It was now or never. Besides, Adam had nothing to lose. He squeezed the trigger.
A boom resonated through the room, followed by two more. “This is the police!” A voice boomed.
A loud crash was heard as the door was kicked off its hinges, and two men entered the room, guns drawn. “Oh thank god!” Adam sighed, “This man was about to-“
Adam fell to the ground, eyes glassy. Convinced that he was shut down, the policeman put his remote back in his pocket. “What the hell?” The hitman yelled at the men in police uniforms, “When I signed up for this droid testing program, I thought they’d be doing problem solving, not trying to kill me!”“Relax, Mr Curiel,” Said a man in a suit, as he entered through a hidden door. “We had all the proper safety precautions in place. You were never in any danger.”“Yeah?” The hitman shot back, “What about the gun he almost shot me with?”“It wasn’t loaded.” The man replied coolly.
A few men and women in uniforms carrying various items began walking in through the door, putting furniture back in place and replacing broken items. “Take this one back to the lab and reformat it,” the suited man said to one of the workers, as he gestured to Adam on the floor, “Obviously we still have a few issues to fix with this model before mass production”
The worker nodded obediently, before dragging Adam out of the room.“We’re running through this scenario again tomorrow, people.” The man announced to everyone in the room. “Be here by 10am tomorrow,” the man said to Mr Curiel, “Same clothes, you’ll be acting as the hitman again.”
Curiel grunted in response, before exiting the room, a scowl on his face.
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