But Maybe We'll Live Forever

I brought my gun up quickly and pointed it at the vicious looking man, trying to keep the fear out of my eyes. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”

“Oh, Shelby,” Korse said, shaking his head as if he were disappointed. “It’s who you are. Lower your gun, love. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“You don’t fool me, Korse,” I spat.

“Shelby,” Korse said smoothly, approaching me slowly. “Have you really been so deceived?”

“Stop calling me that. My name is Atomic Battery. I am a Killjoy. I run with Party Poison, Fun Ghoul, Kobra Kid, Jet Star, and right now Galaxy Escape, Ritalin Revolver, Bulletproof Liberation, and little Sunshine. My brother was Bullet Deceiver, who you killed,” I responded, staring at Korse through the barrel of my ray gun.

Korse shook his head slowly, keeping his snake eyes attached to my own unwaveringly. He waved the Draculoids away, and they marched off obediently. “Your name is Shelby Chauncey. You are a citizen of Battery City. Your mother and father died in the fires of 2012 and your brother looked after you since. Your brother’s name is Rory Chauncey. He isn’t dead.”

I felt myself lowering my gun. “Rory’s alive?”

Korse nodded. “Rory is alive. You have been mislead by those animals. You’re on the wrong side, Shelby. This isn’t you. You work for a cell phone company that’s on the verge of shutting down. Verizon, isn’t it? You aren’t a killer. You’re not a Killjoy. You’re just a girl.”

I brought my gun back up. “My name is Atomic Battery and I am a Killjoy. My brother was—is—a Killjoy, too. Wherever you’re keeping him, let him out, or I will shoot you in the head.”

“Shelby,” Korse said calmly. “You aren’t going to kill me. You can’t kill me. You don’t kill.”

“Not yet,” I murmured.

“This isn’t who you are.”

“It is now.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I shook my head rapidly. “Shut up. You’re trying to break me down so that I’m weak. My brother isn’t alive, is he? Rory’s dead. I am a Killjoy. I am a KILLJOY!”

“Calm down, Shelby. You’re crying.”

“I’m not—”

“Touch your face. It’s wet with tears.”

I brought my hand up to my face and felt it. He was right. I was crying. I was crying really hard. I gripped my gun with both hands and stared at him firmly, trying to keep myself from shaking.

“You haven’t taken your medicine in quite a while, have you? If you had taken your medicine, you wouldn’t be crying right now,” Korse said. “Oh, Shelby. What have you become? A wild mess, that’s what you’ve become. This isn’t who you are, Shelby Chauncey.”

“Yes, it is. This is me. This is who I am. I’m not Shelby anymore,” I whispered, feeling myself start to shake. I didn’t want to cry in the presence of this monster, but I couldn’t help myself. It was uncontrollable.

“Come with me,” Korse said, prying my right hand off of my gun. My left hand felt weak. I dropped my gun on the floor. It made a loud clatter, but it was barely noticeable. All I could really see was Korse taking my hand and leading me across the white floors.

He led me into a white room. It looked like a control room. There were keyboards and TVs and computers everywhere. Wires ran up along all the walls.

“What is this?” I asked fearfully.

“This is where I show you who you really are,” Korse said.

“Atomic Battery.”

“No. Shelby Chauncey.”

“I’m Atomic Battery. And—and they’re going to be looking for me. They’ll come for me. My friends are coming for me. They will always come for me,” I said, stumbling along my words.

“You’re right,” Korse said. “Party Poison and the rest of the filthy Killjoys will be looking for you. But not for the reasons you might think.”

“What are you talking about?” I said stiffly, reaching down to grab my gun, only to realize it wasn’t there. I remembered dropping it on the floor and felt myself shiver slightly in fear. I was alone with Korse and I was completely unarmed.

“They don’t care for you,” Korse said gently.

“Yes they do,” I said immediately.

“Shelby,” Korse said even more gently, as if he were dealing with a frightened child. “They don’t. They just need more people for their demented cause.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“The Killjoys don’t care for anyone. They care for only one thing. Taking Better Living Industries down. And they will do whatever they can to recruit more people like them. They will deceive anyone. They will give people a false sense of love and security. They manipulated you into believing they cared for you so that they could create another Killjoy. They’re creating an army, and they will do whatever they must to build it,” Korse said.

“No they’re not. They care about me. Party and Kobra even kissed me—” I began.

“Kissed you?” Korse asked. “How cruel.”

“What—”

“They don’t love you.”

“Yes they—”

Korse pressed a few buttons on the keyboard and the most giant monitor in the control room blinked to life, showing the lobby. Dead Draculoids were sprawled everywhere and fearful agents were still hiding under their desks. I saw the group all together. Party Poison was looking at everyone with a worried expression on his face.

“Party!” I yelled, running closer to the screen. “PARTY!”

“He can’t hear you,” Korse said.

The group began splitting up but still keeping fairly close, going down hallways close by each other. I heard their nervous voices calling. “Atomic! Atomic!”

“I’m in here,” I whispered. Then I screamed, banging on the monitor. “I’M IN HERE!”

Kobra Kid’s face was on the monitor now. He was looking into various rooms. “Atomic? Atomic! Atomic Battery! Where are you? You stupid bitch—… I didn’t mean that! Atomic, I’m sorry… Are you here? Atomic!”

“They’re looking for me,” I said. “They care. I told you. They care.”

“They need you. It doesn’t mean they love you,” Korse responded. He came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Look at them. Running from room to room looking for you. It would look as though they truly cared, wouldn’t it? But they don’t, Shelby.”

Party Poison was gripping his gun, running down the hall. I watched the monitor as he came across my gun, which was lying on the ground looking eerie and pathetic. He called to the others, who quickly ran into the scene and surrounded him as he held my gun.

Grace looked like she was going to cry. Bulletproof Liberation was biting her lip nervously. Party Poison looked serious, worried. Kobra Kid was, as usual, unreadable. Galaxy Escape looked miserable. Ritalin Revolver looked a bit crushed. Fun Ghoul looked like Grace; as if he was going to cry—but was trying to be a man. Jet Star looked genuinely upset.

“Look at their faces,” I said. “They care. They don’t want me to—they think I’m dead, don’t they?”

“They’re Killjoys. They won’t give up until they know you’re dead.”

“Why are you showing this to me? You’re disproving your own point—”

“They don’t care, Shelby. Look at them. They are merciless killers. They are constantly running. They don’t have room in their stone hearts for caring about someone. They don’t want to lose a potential member of their army,” Korse said, watching the screen along with me.

“You’re wrong. They—they don’t take the medicine. They aren’t robots. They—they’re Killjoys. They’re all heart. They feel more than anyone else on the planet,” I said weakly, trying to keep my voice strong.

The group began yelling my name in unison, louder and louder, in hopes that wherever I was, I would hear them calling. They began traveling down the hall in a group, yelling my name over and over.

“They’re coming for me,” I said.

“They’re coming for a Killjoy. They aren’t coming for you.” Korse’s voice was strong.

“They care.”

“They care, do they? That’s what you really think? You refuse to listen to reason?”

“Yes.”

“If they thought you’d changed, they wouldn’t try to reason with you like me. They’d kill you.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They’d know there was a piece of me still—”

“Then pretend I’ve reached you when they come in. Pretend you’ve decided that you belong to Better Living Industries.” Korse folded his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow at me, challenging me.

“Fine,” I replied. “Fine. But you’ll see—they care. They’ll try to find the real me. They’ll dig deep for the Killjoy inside of me before they kill me.”

Korse sighed. “We’ll see, Shelby. Take off your jacket. Throw it on the floor as if you’ve decided that being a Killjoy is a disgusting thing.”

I obeyed.

There was a banging on the door. They were calling my name. Korse turned off the monitor quickly as the door opened and my friends barged in, holding their guns up and pointing them at Korse.

“Atomic!” Grace yelled, running up to me and hugging my legs.

It took all the strength I had not to hug back and to stand there stiffly waiting for her to let go. I swallowed back tears when Grace pulled away from me, looking up at me with fear, shock, and sadness in her eyes.

“Atomic, no…” I heard Fun Ghoul whisper.

I tried to look at him dully and I saw pain in his eyes.

“You’ve gone BL/ind,” Party Poison said.

“She’s seen the light,” Korse said.

Party Poison shook his head. He turned his gun and pointed it at me; the others doing the same.

“I’m sorry that we have to do this—” Party said.

I felt my heart sink into the pits of my stomach. Korse had been right. They were just going to kill me. Just like that. They didn’t care about me; they cared about the Killjoys being plentiful. They cared about taking down Better Living Industries. They didn’t care about people. They didn’t care about me.

“You see, Shelby,” Korse said. “You can’t trust them. They’ll turn on you as soon as they believe that you’ve changed into something that they don’t approve of. We won’t do that to you. I won’t do that to you.”

“You don’t know anything about us, Korse,” Party Poison spat. “You don’t know anything about Killjoys. Or emotions. Or being human. All you know is fucking medication. And you’ve turned our friend into one of you. And we can’t let her live on like that.” His demeanor changed into a cocky way. He smirked. “Atomic, think of it as… us putting you out of your misery.”

I swallowed back tears. They weren’t—they didn’t—they didn’t care about me. They were going to kill me in a second. They were going to—

“Come now,” Korse said, placing his own white gun into my hands. “Do the honors.”

I took it and pointed it at Party. I looked down at Grace, who was holding my gun. Pointing it at me. I looked down at my jacket, lying on the floor, useless. I looked at the betrayed faces of my ‘friends.’ I swallowed and stared into Party Poison’s unfeeling eyes as we pointed guns at each other.

I never thought I’d see the day where I ended up here. Completely alone. No friends. Just a white gun and everything I knew gone in five seconds.

“I…” I began.

“Do it,” Korse whispered.

“I…” I looked at the group. I looked at the gun. And then I dropped it. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

Korse picked up the gun and pointed it at me. “What are you doing, Shelby?”

I bent over and I grabbed my jacket and put it on. I took my gun from little Grace and held it up, walking over to the side I belonged on. The Killjoy side. I stood in front of Party Poison, wiping the tears away from my eyes.

Party looked at me, a slight smile of realization on his face. I smiled back and turned back to Korse, looking him straight in his snake eyes.

“You see, Korse,” I said. “You were wrong. About everything. The Killjoys are nothing like Better Living. The Killjoys aren’t the dark side of your society. They’re their own world. Their own society. They aren’t killing robots on the other side of the spectrum of your obedient robots. They’re human. They feel. We feel. I feel. You have pinned down wrong. We live to be alive.”

“We live to be alive,” echoed the rest of the group supportively, smiles growing on their own faces.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” Korse said darkly.

“No, I’m not. This is the best decision I’ve ever made,” I replied. I smiled at him sweetly, giving him a small shrug. I blew him a kiss. I held up my gun to the ceiling. “After all, what is it you always say? …The aftermath is secondary?” And I fired into the ceiling and turned around, running.

“I won’t be a merciful next time,” Korse called. “KEEP RUNNING!”

I laughed and looked behind me, seeing the other joyful faces of the Killjoys running fast and free behind me as we fled the building. Keep running. I laughed.

Why would I ever stop?