The Only Hope for Me Is You

“So…” I jumped out of my fucking skin as a voice came from out of no where. I threw my head around frantically, looking for the person the voice came from when my eyes lay upon an approaching figure from behind a bush, a small girl, around my age, dressed in Killjoy attire, a dirty, bright orange racing jacket over the top of a yellow tank top, a blue bandana around her neck, torn up black skinny jeans and black dusty combat boots.

“…you’re part of BL/ind now? Electronic Joker…isn’t it? Saw you and those other Killjoys on the news.” she asked and I noticed a second Killjoy behind her, another girl, a bit younger than the both of us, my eyes were drawn to her neon pink shirt with the words ‘You’re the prototype for me” stamped across the chest, overlaid with a brown leather jacket, black skinnies and pink converse.

“You’re…you’re Killjoys…” I mumbled, looking back at the HQ ahead of me for any sign of oncoming security.

“You gonna shoot us?” she said, putting a hand on the smaller ones shoulder, keeping her distance.

“What? No, no…I can’t tell you…but I’m a Killjoy I swear.” I say, arms outstretched slightly.

“Then what the hell are you doing in there?” she asked, I notice that she’s had one hand on her gun at all times.

“I can’t…I just…” I’m disrupted when shouting occurs from behind me and I turn and see four Dracs marching towards me, I panic, throwing my hands into my pockets. One approaches me.

“Exploder requests your presence for dinner.” He spoke and then turned back, gesturing for me to follow on, I let them go ahead and turn back to the Killjoys, but they’re gone, nothing but their heavy, muffled boot prints in the sand where they were standing and quickly fled.

I sigh and follow the Dracs, jogging towards them as they’ve already entered the HQ, stopping as they come to a halt in front of the door behind the desk that Exploder disappeared behind yesterday.

The Dracs each split to either side of the door and one opens it for me; I nod before walking into the room.

I look around the room; it’s exactly like mine but with a dining table slap bang in the middle of it, and my brother sitting at one end of it, spinning his fork on the white table cloth.

“Ah sister, please take a seat.” He gestures towards the seat opposite with his fork before placing it back down next to the plate full of food, drugged food.

I fake a smile at him before placing myself opposite him, looking at the plate of food in front of me.

“Please,” he says, and I look up at his smiling face. “Eat.”

I pick up the fork and poke at the food and watch as Exploder eats the drugged up food, intoxicating himself every time he does.

“So sister,” he speaks, swallowing a mouthful and taking a sip of water. I don’t even want to touch the water. “how are you finding the place? Is it to your liking?”

“Yes,” I lie, “it’s…lovely.” I say, pushing the odd coloured mash potato around, Exploder scoffs.

“Bit of a shit hole if you ask me.” He laughs, sitting back in his chair, crossing his arms across his chest, looking straight into my eyes. “But sister, what I mean is…you don’t miss them do you? I mean…not even a little bit?” I gulp, gripping the cold metal fork tightly.

“…Because I think you do…I mean, especially that Kobra Kid. Nice drawing by the way…”

I drop the fork onto the table, looking up at him slightly. “I bumped into Show Pony earlier, had a little chat, looked at the little notes you’d been writing…and I sent him to the shack, told him to act like nothing had ever happened and everything was fine with you. But it so isn’t.” he smirked at me, rising from the table and throwing down the napkin from his thigh.

“It breaks my heart that you’d lie to me sister, it really does.” He says, walking away from the table and around to the back of me, placing his hands on my shoulders and I jolt as he does.

“Looks like now I’m going to have to break yours…quite literally.” I feel him smirk behind me as he grips my shoulders, so tightly it’s painful. I freeze, not knowing what to do, how I’m going to escape this one…but I need to do something. He lets go of my shoulders and my eyes widen but I continue looking at my plate.

“This should be…enjoyable.” He laughs, but jumps backwards as I rise from my seat, grabbing the knife next to my plate and I grab his jacket, pushing him against the wall, holding the knife to his neck.

“Open the door.” I say through gritted teeth, he just laughs.

“You wouldn’t really…would you sister?” he smirked, the corner of his mouth raised high. I press the knife harder against his skin and he winces, patting the door opposite frantically until it slides open as a hoard of armed Dracs come marching through.

I pull Exploder away from the wall by the collar of his jacket, holding him in front of me for the Dracs to see, the knife still pressed against his neck.

“Move or he dies.” I growl at them and they look at each other, before one nods at me and moves. I am hesitant moving in between them, still showing off the fact I have Exploders life in my hands. I push him out of the door before elbowing him backwards so he falls onto a desk, scattering papers everywhere and I know now is the time to run.

I see that the doors are blocked and run towards a BL/ind vending machine, pulling out the Vend-A-Hack that I stole, pressing various buttons, smacking the machine until I hear a gun tumble and scramble for it, pulling the white object out, loading it and putting the Vend-A-Hack back.

I fired a couple of shots behind me as I ran down the corridor, grabbing random pieces of paper and folders, stuffing them into my jacket. I’ve got to get some information somehow anyway.

I turn my back from the hoard for a second and a sharp pain engulfs my back, and soon, so does black on my eyes as I tumble to the floor of the BL/ind HQ.