Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

“Jesus,” she said, thinking of the implications. “You could have them commit domestic terrorist attacks and use them to justify more public surveillance. You could orchestrate mass shootings and use them to argue for tougher gun control.”

Lewis nearly said something, then restrained himself. Guns were a political area where they disagreed, but he respected her opinion on it. He focused his attention on sweeping the area for any sign of their pursuers.

“But I still don’t get what the game has to do with Arcadia,” she continued.

“The game lures their victims out there.”

“Why?”

“Fuck if I know. They must do something there to complete the brainwashing. And that’s what we’re going to find out.”

“I think not,” a voice spoke, off to his left. He turned and found Blackwell standing there, once again pointing a gun at his chest. The man with the fedora turned to Jenna and said, “Come with me, or he dies.”

Nobody around them noticed this situation. Lewis spotted an empty beer glass that a bar patron had left unattended as he chatted with a red-haired woman beside him. His eyes flicked from it to Jenna’s and then back again multiple times. She spotted it too.

He turned back to Blackwell. “You’re not going to shoot me here in front of all these people.”

“Forget what I did earlier?”

“No, and I bet the Las Vegas PD haven’t either.”

“I’m afraid they have a shorter memory than you do, Mr. Lewis. If you check the street cameras, you’ll see no sign of an altercation. Truly tragic what happened to that officer.” He smirked.

Lewis wondered how long he needed to stall him. Evidently, it was long enough because a split-second later Jenna’s arm sailed into his view and smashed the glass against Blackwell’s head. It brought a smile to his lips for a brief instant as the man stumbled in reverse, one hand clutching his face.

Then he saw the other, gun-wielding hand rise into view and pull the trigger.

Asearing pain shot through Lewis’s left shoulder and he fell back, colliding with the wall just as Blackwell smashed into a pub table, knocking it over, and collapsed to the ground. The couple that had been at it reared back in shock. Grimacing, Lewis grasped the wound and took a glance at it. The bullet had entered just below the collarbone, missing any organs but still hurting like a bitch. Red blood looked black in this light as it trailed down the front of his jacket.

A hand touched his other shoulder. He looked up to see Jenna’s expression of extreme concern, her other hand covering her mouth as she looked at his shoulder. “I’ll live,” he said, staggering forward. She put one arm under his right arm and helped him walk toward the entrance. Instead, he pointed down the stairs where two red signs stating EXIT were located at each end of the Lagrange Point bar.

“Alleyway,” he grunted, not wanting to revisit the labyrinth of the Orbital Hotel & Casino.

Together, they stumbled down the steps as two bouncers ran over to where Blackwell had fallen. Lewis clenched his teeth and tried to spot Jackson and Caruso in the crowd. The former no longer stood by the bar and the latter was still nowhere to be seen.

“Come on,” Jenna said, pulling him off the last stair onto the dance floor.

People around them barely took notice as she helped her injured boyfriend across the tiles flashing from blue to magenta to white. As the alternating colors of the strobes danced across the clubbers’ upper bodies, Lewis spotted a tall, dark figure cutting a swath through the masses toward them. In the next flash of bright light, he saw it was Caruso. Her face was stern and angry. She must’ve seen them coming down the stairs.

“Ten o’clock,” he shouted over the roar of the music. The DJ was now playing a techno version of the Rolling Stone’s “Paint it Black.” Jenna turned her head, her eyes widening as she spotted the agent. She jerked Lewis’s arm and tugged him in another direction, spinning him through the crowd.

Lewis lost his sense of direction. The music blared and the people around them whirled in an indistinguishable mass of sweat, alcohol, and poor decisions. Suddenly, he felt her hands on his right shoulder and left hip. She pulled him closer and he did his best to keep her rhythm as they subtly glided through the horde.

“Do you see her?” he asked, leaning closer to her ear.

“No,” she breathed. “Try to keep low. Don’t look around too much. It draws attention.”

He focused on his peripheral. Most people around them were just dancing badly, but in the very corner of his view, he could see Jackson on patrol. Lewis was about to warn Jenna when a sudden look of surprise came across her face and she pulled him against her very tightly, pretending to nuzzle the side of his neck.

“The woman’s right there, five feet behind you.”

“Does she see us?” he said, making a show of caressing her shoulder as he lowered his head.

Jenna glanced up briefly, then back down again. “I’m not sure. She’s not walking this way anymore.”

“I see another one back there behind you. They must be circling the floor, trying to narrow us into the center before they close in.”

“And what about the one that shot you?”

“I haven’t seen him for a while. He must be dealing with the bouncers still. Or maybe he’s down here and we just haven’t seen him yet. He must be bleeding from the head, so he should be fairly easy to spot.”

“Where’s the nearest exit?” she asked.

Lewis raised his head and looked left and right. “We’re near the right side of the bar. The exit’s still about thirty feet away.” He saw Jackson moving toward that area and realized that if Caruso blocked the other door, and Blackwell stayed up near the entrance, all three exits would be barricaded. It would just be a waiting game.

He was confident that was going to be their strategy until Jenna suddenly wrenched backward out of his grasp, Jackson dragging her in a half nelson. The two of them disappeared into the throng. Lewis prepared to spring himself after them when someone grabbed his right shoulder, spun him around, and gave him a strong right hook across the jaw. He briefly registered Caruso’s furious snarl before his vision momentarily blacked out and he stumbled back into a group of college kids dancing.

One of them, who was pasty, slightly overweight, and wore a baseball cap backward, aggressively pushed him off while shouting, “Watch it, asshole!”

He staggered and managed to turn around just as the woman in black leaped for him and swung again. Lewis barely managed to dodge her flying fist, but she delivered a roundhouse kick to the side of his abdomen and he crumpled to the floor, landing on his hands and knees.

The crowd finally took notice of the altercation and began scattering back, a circle forming around Lewis and Caruso to watch the violence. Ignoring the pain in his left shoulder, Lewis got back on his feet and began pushing his way through the crowd to find Jackson and Jenna.

It was then that a gunshot erupted behind him, and the crowd began stampeding toward the exit. He spun around. Caruso was grappling with another figure for her pistol, the weapon discharging into the air multiple times. A burst of neon green strobe lights flashed across her attacker and Lewis saw the determined face of Sara Gonzalez.

As he watched, she slammed the heel of her shoe down on top of Caruso’s foot, and the black-suited woman slackened her grip on the handgun just long enough for Gonzalez to pry it out of her fingers, twirl around while swinging the pistol in a wide arc, and smash it into the side of her head. Caruso went down hard onto the glowing tiles as bystanders continued to rush for the stairs.