Young Writers Society

Ace

"Hey, guys. Nice to see you too," the intruder smiled sarcastically as his hands went up over his head.

"Max," I breathed as my gun hand relaxed. I almost lowered it as the others had started to do theirs, but then I remembered. "You left. Where'd you go?"

"You didn't find my warning, did you?" he asked.

I shrugged. I had heard something about a warning, or something. I kept the gun aimed at his face.

"Ace, Ace," he sighed. "You haven't changed."

"Nope. Now someone tell us what EXACTLY is going on here! Don't leave anything out."

"The PKs--"

"No," I interrupted. "I know what they're doing. But why? Or is it some secret?"

James~~

Warning? The skulls?

"Riley, let me kill him."

Riley

"Riley, let me kill him." James says.

"Wait." I caution him. No need to be hasty, "So Max, the warning was a little overboard, don't you think?"

"It didn't seem to have any effect." Max replies.

"We don't run, Max. We fight. I take out my gun as well, happy to find it loaded.

"It's not what you think, Riley."

Suddenly, I feel my gun yanked from my hand. "Riley, what on earth are you doing?" Bree asks.

"Max is with the PK." I say. I knew he was. It was obvious. His warning.....

Bree hands me my gun back.

"It was against my will..." Max's protests are weakening.

"Max, I don't care. How can you think its right to go around killing people? Does that make sense to you, because it makes no sense to me. What sort of sick person would be okay with that." I ask him.

"I told you, there is more to it than you know." His voice is just above a whisper.

"Alis!" I yell. She comes out.

"What?" She asks bitterly.

"Kill him." I say. I point to Max.

Max

"Just let me speak, alright?!?", I said. I was glad I told them I was in the PK, no stress means lying was impossible (we just didn't tell the truth). It just makes things a little easier for now. They still had their guns up at me.

"Right now there's another Paradise Killer in the blue van right in front of the apartment building who wants to kill you. I sent the warning in the skull so that you guys could get away. Since you didn't start running, I needed to get your attention at my own risk a little more. If we don't kill the PK in the van, then more people will come. Just kill him, and I'll tell SS...my boss...that you're dead, and we can escape to a new place. The PK will never know the difference, and we can make time to make our own strike. Alright?"

They kept their guns up at me, but the fact that I went uninterrupted this time meant that they listened.

"Why the hell were you staying with those guys in the first place?", Riley asked.

"I don't know", I told them. The crappiest answer, but probably the most true. People started to relax a little more. They were all disgusted with me, but I don't know if they wanted to kill me still.

"At least all I did was kill. The guy in the van is a cannibal. A PK who died a few weeks ago was a necropheliac. I'm not the worst person in the world here. Besides, I'm trying to save you guys. Doesn't that count for something?"

"You're a killer!", Riley yelled at me.

"A killer with regrets"

"But a killer"

"but a forced killer"

"But a killer"

"But you probably would be dead already if someone else was sent over here"

Yeah, they definetly hated me. All I could say now was a bit redundant, but it was all I could say.

"Look, I want to keep you guys alive, and my plan works; kill the guy in my van and you guys run. If you have a better idea, I just want to help. Please".

Reg Carter

I walked out of the lounge into the hall, to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I noticed Max's figure in the door, guns pointed at him from all directions and his plead to Riles not too shoot and a suggestion of innocence on his part. I snarled and listened in, but unlike the others my gun remained holstered.

"Look, I want to keep you guys alive, and my plan works; kill the guy in my van and you guys run. If you have a better idea, I just want to help. Please," Max said.

With that I walked straight past him and through the door, I smiled back at him, "Thankyou, Max," I grinned.

When I walked out I saw the van Max was talking about and noticed a figure inside move to turn on the ignition, perhaps he saw it fit to run me down. Odd Methods I thought, until I realised he'd ducked under the dashboard to produce his very own sub machine gun. The bullets roared through the vans windshield, crashing into the land around me as I scrambled behind a hedge. He'd stopped to reload.

I walked out from behind the bush, with my arm out-stretched and my eye pierced down the sights. I shot three consecutive bullets at his position, he ducked from them all and got out of the van to get a better shot with his machine gun. I dived to the otherside of the road. Max and Riles came out of the door right at that minute.

Just enough time, I said to myself. His gaze was taken to their attention for a minescule amount of time. I turned to face him once more and shot two rounds into his back. Blood shot through his front as he collapsed to his knees dropping the machine gun. He let out a silent roar and a gasp for breathe just before I took one more shot. The lead bullet collided with the back of his skull and put him to rest.

Riley

I give Reg a quick high-five. Bree runs out, and watches as we all put away our pistols. She stares at Max a minute.

"You could come back with us." Bree tells him. I was about to offer the same thing myself.

He leans back against a wall a mintue. I let him think.

"Fine." he throws his arms up. Bree grins.

"Good to not have to kill you." Alis says.

"You would have anyway." Max remarks.

"Oh, good, we are all friends again!" Maitea rushes out.

"Yeah, now we don't have to kill him." Ace says. Suddenly, a car pulls up. Everyone but Mitch takes there guns out.

"Cool it guys, thats Charile." Mitch says. I put my gun away and watch the man step out of the car.

Jimmy

I was beginning to regret ever coming here now. These guys had some serious anger issues. The more time I spent here, the more I realised how different I was to most of the gang members. I mean, all of them seemed to want to kill some one else.

"Cool it guys, that's Charlie." I heard Mitch say.

I suddenly realised that everyone seemed to have their guns out, pointed in front of them. I turned my attention to where their guns were pointed. A car had just pulled up in front of me. Seconds later, a man stepped out.

"Is there anyone they don't wanna kill?" I muttered under my breath.

*Sorry it was kind of short, I wasn't sure what to write.*

James~~

I turned to Jimmy, "Most of us don't like to kill, but when people threaten to kill you, people get on edge."

He turned to me, "You don't seem to bothered by it."

I shrugged, "I'm not."

I walked to the blue van and opened the door so that the body fell out. I checked his pockets and pulled out his wallet and phone.

"Reg! lets find out who this guy is... and who his friends are." It wouldn't be too hard to check police records to see if he had been caught and then find any other known aliases. With the phone I could easily trace the locations of all of the recent calls, and if Max really wanted to help he could show us which ones we needed to check into.

Alis

"Speak for yourself, James." I told him.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot, ALis loves getting her pistol into someone any chance she can." James said coldly.

"That's about right." I say.

"You haven't changed a bit." Jimmy said.

"You haven't either. Your the same old peace loving don't-kill-unless-you-have-to freak I know and love." I say.

"And your the same old killing-is-fun bitch I know and love." Jimmy remarks. Anyone else I would have shot, but my gun stayed in place.

"Just like old times." I tell him, and I meant it too. It was like Spain, except in Spain, I killed a bit more often.

"Aren't you afraid of hell?" Maitea asks me.

"We are all going there anyway." I inform her.

Max

Wow. I was back in the gang. I'd be lying if I said I was upset. I had to get what I needed to do done. I needed certainty that I could keep these guys safe for at least a little longer.

I stepped into the bathroom and pulled my cell phone out, calling SS (the PK boss).

"Hey, SS, just calling in to let you know that...these guys here are down"

"What guys?"

"The ones you sent me to kill"

"Oh, right. You don't need to check in every time, you know"

"Yeah, well that's just it...they kinda took down Zach"

"More of a reason to take the rest of them down. Good goin', Max, just get back here and get on another case quick, alright?"

"Um...I can't"

"Why not?"

"I...I lost one of the members" I lied. My head started hurting like hell. I needed to tell a stretch of truth to get it to stop. "I'm going to keep following him for a while"

"Follow one guy to some more...nice goin' Max"

"Thanks, I guess"

All was swell...for now, anyways. As I said thanks to SS for the complement that I didn't really accept, I got the ultimate honor of somebody slamming the door open with a gun at me.

"Who the hell are you talking to?!?", said the overly suspicious bastard. SS hung up.

Reg Carter

I stood there with my gun pointed directly at Max's head, the barrel wading up and down as I breathed in and out. My gaze was focused and my eyes as threatening as ever. I don't care what he'd thought, I always had to be on the mark.

"Want the honest answer, or a lie, Reg?" He said, angrily.

"Depends what you want to give me, don't it Max? Puttin' it simply, I wouldn't no either way. Would I?" I snarled.

"True."

"Well? Just 'cause I don't have a preferance doesn't mean your off the hook, Max. I want to know. Lie or truth. Who were you talkin' to?" I asked him again, the gun still firmly in my grasp pointed at his head. There'd be no second chances at this distance.

"The leader of the PK. I'm trying to help you guys, alright?!" He responded, annoyed and displaced, "They want you dead, so I'm stopping them sending more people so we can get out of here. And to do that, I need to make them think I'm still on their side. You got that, Reg?"

I nodded and holstered the gun. "I guess that suits me. Welcome back, Max."

Ace

I scoffed when I heard that Max was back in the gang. "How the hell can they even trust him now?" I wondered aloud as I watched over James's shoulder. He was attempting to trace calls from the phone he'd found in the van. "Here," I said, "let me show you something."

"I can do it," he said.

I pulled out my mini-computer and replied, "But you could also do it faster." I then pulled a cord with interchangeable ends out of my pocket, and we hooked the cell phone up to the device. "So, now we can upload all the numbers," I said, doing so. "Then, we use this program to trace them..."

"Where do you get a program like that?"

"You either steal it from the cops, or you make it. At least one this precise. Anyone can pinpoint a city and state."

After twenty minutes of work, a small stack of papers came out of the remote printer, giving us the names and whereabouts of anyone the phone called, any pictures it took, any text messages it had sent, received, or drafted, and all the information about calls we could get.

"Told you you could do it quicker," I said to James, smug. "Wait a moment." There was a name on it that I recognized, and suddenly everything clicked. "So he wasn't Spec Ops. He was a PK. I get it now." I then grabbed a pen out of another pocked and wrote "DECEASED" over his information.

"This everything?" James asked.

"Yeah, should be. But feel free to play with it and see if you can find anything else." I took my computer and the cord and left the room. I hoped that he could find something more specific. What we had was good, but for all I knew, they could have up and left. Maybe the phone would still receive messages. Perhaps he could use it to fish for information from them personally.

I walked up to Riley and tapped her arm lightly to get her attention. "James and I have a present for you," I said as I handed her the papers.

Riley

Ace handed me the papers. I looked through them.

"Your a miracle worker." I told him.

"I do what I can." Ace said.

"I owe you one." I told him. Bree came over and looked across my shoulder.


Bree

"Ace, did you check the internal database, and remeber default is optional? If no matches are found, the decode will return default. If default is omitted, then the decode statement will return null. The decode function will compare each supplier id value, one by one." I told him. Everyone stared at me.

"I have no idea what you just said." Riley told me.

"You remembered." Ace said in aproval.

"Yes, but did you?" I asked him again.

"Uh, I didn't decode, but I don't think these guys would know enough to incode there system."

"Max, would thye incode there system?" I called to him.

"I have no idea what that means." He replied.

"I'll do a scan anyway." Ace grumbled, going back upstairs.

Max

I'm glad I was on Reg's good side, and most of the others had me in a quiet hatred; I could live with that, I suppose. But with the intrution while I was on the phone with SS...he was the one who hung up...I was praying he didn't put my picture on the death wall out of his own suspicion. I guess I'd just have to wait and see. But I couldn't shake that worry...

...wait a second, worry? For the first time in a while, I had a worry. My head really started hurting, to the point where I dropped instantly to my knees, grabbed my head and gave off a short shout of pain. It faded a few seconds later, but it was still long enough for everybody to be staring at me.

"What the hell was that?", Ace spoke up, saying what everybody was wondering too. I forgot...they knew not too much on the Paradise Killers, so they didn't know about the formula. And that was the moment I could feel it in my pocket; the emergency syringe filled with the formula injected into every Paradise Killer to make them have murderous headaches when they stressed about anything too much. It kept people moving and focused, and regret free...visibly, anyways.

I pulled out the syringe and showed it to everybody.

"It's called Freedom Formula", I explained, "Every PK is injected with it, makes you avoid getting stressed, or else...this...happens. Can't have stress when you're a killer for life, so...yeah"

Everybody stared at me a little more. Some of them looked a little frightened, actually. Cool.

"Any of you guys want this?", I jokingly asked everybody. They didn't think it was funny. It really wasn't, but I just dropped down on my knees and shouted in pain thanks to the marvels of serial killer science; nobody would laugh watching that situation.

Reg Carter

I heard shouts of pain from the room I'd just been in and looked around the corner to see Max on his knees talking to the rest of the group. I smiled and nodded at the idea that Max had slotted his way back into a comfortable position where the majority looked concerned. I walked out and stepped outside of the house to get some fresh air. For the first time since the wedding I peered down at my left hand and observed the wedding ring braced around my finger. I sat there on the steps outside the front door, just contemplating the events that had led me to where I am now. All the ups and downs, the revenge and the murders. I sat thinking of my sister's crystal green eyes and Bree's stunning beauty.

One thing was for sure. I was a Lucky Man.