Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

Ever since his university days, Lewis had never particularly liked nightclubs. He’d often found them sketchy, full of shady characters and strange vibes, and it took a lot of alcohol to make him feel comfortable dancing in front of other people. However, having his life on the line had a similar effect. He did his best to blend in, trying to keep his shoulders and hips swaying somewhat in-tune to the beat. It felt clumsy, but everyone seemed to be too drunk or interested in grinding on their partner to care.

He looked back at the stairs. There was no sign of Blackwell, Caruso, or Jackson yet, but he spotted a dimly lit area with more standing tables back beneath the area where he’d first walked in. Lewis decided it would be harder to find him on the dance floor and resumed his attempt at dancing.

He continued that way for several minutes, his eyes constantly scanning the crowd. There was no sign of the men in black, or Jenna, or Gonzalez. He started to get worried. How long would it take the others to get here? Would the agents try and snatch them before they even got in? No, that was unlikely. It was too open out there.

With a chill, he realized that a nightclub would actually be the perfect place to kill someone. It was dark and most people were intoxicated or preoccupied. You could stab someone, inject them with poison, or probably even shoot them with a silenced pistol on the dance floor and no one would notice. You could then carry the body over your shoulder to one of the tables, and set them down, seeming like a concerned friend, then exit the venue and be long gone before anyone realized the person slumped in their seat was deceased.

The one thing he took comfort in was that they definitely wanted to kidnap Jenna. Pulling a kicking and screaming person out of a public space would make their jobs very difficult. However, he realized that if they injected her with a sedative and carried her unconscious out of the club, they could probably pass off as her friends taking her back to her room.

There, on the stairs. Jackson, now minus his shades, scanned the crowd as he stepped onto the dance floor. With his extremely stern expression and aversion to any form of dancing, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Lewis ducked his head down as Jackson entered the throng of partiers, his pulse racing. He thought about trying to head for the stairs but realized that must be what they wanted. They’d sent one down to flush him out while the other two waited above to pounce. One was probably patrolling the top floor, while the other waited just outside the venue in case he slipped by. His best bet was to try and stay undetected until Jenna and Gonzalez arrived.

Jackson pushed through the crowd, still scouring the mass of dancing figures. Lewis hadn’t been spotted yet. He awkwardly jived his way to the edge of the dance floor and walked into the hangout behind the stairs. As he passed by the steps, a hand suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm.

He reared back and spun around.

Jenna put a finger to her lips and motioned for him to join her under the stairway. As soon as he did, she pulled him into a tight embrace and fervently kissed him.

He smiled. “Missed you too. When’d you get here?”

“About 30 seconds ago. I saw one of them out there and immediately ducked under here.”

Together, they peered out through the steps at the multitude of clubbers. At first, Lewis didn’t see Jackson, then Jenna pointed him out by the right side of the bar. He stuck to the edge of the crowd, trying to get a better view of everyone.

“The other two must be somewhere upstairs.”

“There’s just the three of them?” she asked.

“That I know of.”

Jenna nodded, still staring out at the mob as strobe lights cast alternating blue, green, and pink glows across her face. Then she turned toward him again. “It’s dark and crowded enough in here that we could probably slip back out and nobody would notice us leaving.”

He nodded. “True, but I told Gonzalez we’d meet her here.”

“You trust her?”

“If she was working with them, she had ample opportunity to turn me over to them directly. Or to knock me out when we investigated the hotel room.” Jenna looked hesitant. He shrugged. “She’s the only help we’ve got.”

“Where was she when you called her?”

“I don’t know. I got… interrupted.” He rubbed his neck. Of course, the astronaut hadn’t been there. How had he let himself think that? But the way it grabbed his throat… it had felt like something was actually choking him. “I just told her to meet us here.”

“This isn’t that big of a place. They will find us eventually.”

“Then we have to keep moving.”

Lewis looked out at the dance floor. Jackson was now leaning against the bar sipping a drink, evidently having decided to put in some effort toward blending in. Caruso and Blackwell must’ve still been upstairs. He scanned the seats lining each balcony and finally spotted the two agents sitting across from each other toward the rear of the left wing. They had removed their sunglasses and looked like they were having a casual conversation over some drinks, but Lewis saw them each take long looks around the venue and down at the dance floor.

“I see them,” he said, pointing.

She nodded. “Good spot for a lookout.”

“If we can get to one of the corner bars up there, it might be dark enough that they can’t really make us out. And we’ll have a good view of the door to see when Gonzalez comes in.”

“Unless she’s already here. Can you call her?”

Lewis whipped out his phone and took the business card from his wallet, glad that Jackson hadn’t checked out this area yet; he knew it was only a matter of time. He dialed Gonzalez’s number. It rang several times, but she didn’t pick up. “Damn.” He slid the phone back into his pocket.

“Guess we’ll just have to go,” Jenna said, grabbing him by the hand.

She pulled him out from behind the staircase, and then they moved around and up the steps at a normal pace, just two patrons heading back to the main floor. Lewis didn’t dare look back until they had reached the upper landing, where he stole a quick glance toward Blackwell and Caruso’s table.

Both of them were gone.

“ Shit ,” he hissed.

Hearing him, Jenna pulled him to their left and toward the bar tucked away in the corner. There were a few stools surrounding it, but only one was not taken.

“Have a seat, I’ll grab some drinks.”

Without looking at him, she said, “They might not have noticed me yet, but you’re the one they followed in here.”

“Yes, but you’re their main target.”

Now she threw him a curious glance, an eyebrow raised. “What?”

“I’m expendable. They were only holding me to get you to cooperate.”

“But…”

“Think about it. Who did they send the game to? ”

They arrived at the bar. Her face had gone pale. “I thought they were trying to kill us because you were onto something.”

“No, they’re trying to kill me because I was onto something. But you were their next target anyway. You play a lot of violent video games. Plenty of people would probably believe that’s what drove you crazy if you were to ever snap and stab somebody. Hell, your parents would believe it wholeheartedly! They’d probably do interviews for the next big thinkpiece op-ed about video game violence. These people couldn’t have picked a better scapegoat.”

“But why ? What does all of this serve?”

He glanced around. Still no sign of the men in black. Or Gonzalez.

“My guess,” he postulated, “is that it’s testing brainwashing for assassinations. It’s the only logical explanation. If some gamer shoots a politician, and it’s blamed on games, nobody suspects a conspiracy. It would be too ludicrous. So everything in the past six months has been all the foundation work. They’re creating a culture that fears violent video games so that when important, influential people start dying it’s chalked up to the same thing.”