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Outrun Stories #37

The Artist and the Crook

By Outrun StoriesPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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A partnership born out of necessity rather than convenience. I hated him, he hated me, but we seemed to get the job done, somehow. We’d make it out of whatever job we’d gotten ourselves into, and you know, sometimes we’d even make a little bit of money. Not this time.

“Try and keep your eyes open, will you?” I say to him, holding his head in my lap as the smoke from the firefight creeps into our nostrils in a moment of silence as the fuckers in the next room take a minute to reload.

“It’s not supposed to end this way,” he chokes and splutters.

“I know, I know, just try and keep your eyes open. I’ve called in the evac unit, we’ve got seven minutes and we’re out of here.”

“Seven fucking minutes,” he tries to sit and pick up his hand cannon of a gun.

“Just stay down you asshole, we’ll make it out of this one yet.”

“No chance,” he tries to laugh as he pulls his gun over. “What the fuck type of half-assed job was that, you call yourself an Artist?”

“Look, what good are you going to do now, keep your head down, we’ll make it.”

“I’m the Crook, you don’t get to tell me what good you think I’m going to get done, and not after the shit you just pulled.” He rolls off my lap and pushes himself up, blood pouring from half a dozen gunshots across his body, half a dozen more embedded in his body armour. “Seven minutes till evac, three minutes till those assholes are back in this room, probably about two minutes till I bleed out, that gives you one minute to come up with some sort of plan. You’re the Artist, fucking redeem yourself, kid.”

I can hear their guns clicking into action in the next room and he’s standing there, shaking, arm raised, ready to take them on. The gun smoke and taste of blood in the air makes me twitch and I take a deep breath before hammering the keypad embedded in my forearm and bring up the blueprints of the building we’re in.

Seconds counting down, he’s wheezing and I’m scanning and scanning, rooting through all possible scenarios, then it clicks. “Switch to explosive charge rounds, trajectory, zero point six niner, full velocity. Eight shots will do it.”

“Slow the fuck down, kid. I’m in a bad way here, give it to me straight,” he turns to me, his hulking figure struggling, lit by the gun mounted laser sights coming through from the other smoke filled room.

“Take out the beam across the doorway, it’ll collapse, might give us just enough time to make the evac unit.”

“Can do.” He coughs, pulling out a clip, hammering it into his gun, as he puts a few points into the keys in his own forearm unit before he kneels, turns his gun away from him, lets it rip and the ceiling immediately collapses over the doorway.

“Good job, kid. Now, where’s that evac?”

I pull up the stream across my HUD. “T – three minutes. You got that in you, old man?”

“Probably not, but it won’t be long before we find out.”

science fiction
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About the Creator

Outrun Stories

Short sci-fi stories in 500 words or less deriving from the Outrun, tech-noir and NewWave aesthetic.

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