The Agent of Chaos [Astral Void Quest]

[Luci]

Hotline Miami 3: Luci’s Game

***

Chapter 1: Catching the Train

“First mission, take out Andrei Kolkov,” the voice of Jacket’s dead girlfriend, Hooker, had said on the tape recorder.  “You can find him at the Santa Clara train station tonight. He’s meeting a contact at two AM.”

Andrei Kolkov sits on a bench in a silent train station at 1:30 AM, his massive bulk taking up nearly three seats. He and his two thuggish companions have ‘dressed down’, wearing plain grey track suits and tennis shoes. An attentive observer would notice their gold chains, their flawless haircuts, and their $400 cologne. They might even notice the guns concealed in the Russian mens waist bands.

A train rumbles past, it’s lights flickering in the dim recesses of the train station. When it is passed, a young woman in a white tiger mask is standing on the other side of the tracks.

She is small, dressed casually in jeans and a tank top. Her skin swirls with multicolored bioluminescence. The eyes of the white lion mask burn with blue fire.

Her big silver gun glints in the buzzing fluorescent lights.

There is a rumble; another train is coming.

The thugs reach for their weapons, but before they can even touch them the woman has emptied her clip into the obese body of Andrei Kolkov. She lets her gun fall to her side, and cocks her head at the thugs from behind her mask.

By the time they have their weapons raised another train is barreling past them.

When the train has passed, the girl is gone.

***

Chapter 2: Viktor’s Pad

“Here’s an easy one, Princess,” Hooker’s voice had said on the next tape recorder. “Go take out that fuckboy Viktor, you know where he’s at.”

Nadezdha Semenov saunters down a dingy hallway in a ramshackle apartment complex in south Miami. The sultry blonde stripper’s hips sway expertly beneath her black miniskirt. She stops in front of a peeling green door and raps it quietly with her fingernails.

Instantly, there is the sound of locks and bolts being undone, and the door is swung open.

Viktor looms large in the doorway, the hulking Russian wearing a wife beater and an expression of confusion. Then again, his face always looks like that.

“Viktor,” Nadezdha coos as she breezes past him, her fingers trailing on his chest. Her accent drips with vodka. “I ‘ave missed you.”

Viktor’s stupid face scrunches stupidly, but he shuts the door and follows Nadezdha into his apartment.

The beautiful blonde is already helping herself to Viktor’s cocaine.

“I am thinking you are jealous still,” Viktor says as he reclines on a long leather couch.

“Puh,” Nadezdha says, while miming spitting on the floor. “I ‘ave spoken with Luci, is all sorted out.”

Nadezdha takes another long, shuddering snort, and turns back to Viktor with a smile. IN one swift movement the stripper straddle him, and the lovers are kissing wildly.

“The FUCK is this?” a voice screeches.

Viktor looks up to see Nadezdha standing a dozen feet away in a red dress, her face contorted in rage.

Viktor’s big dumb eyebrows look to the girl on his lap.

Her skin is glowing with swirling rainbow lights.

She is wearing a white lion mask, with eyes that burn with blue fire.

The real Nadezdha roars Russian curses as she pulls out a .22 caliber pistol from her purse and unloads the clip into the girl.

When the smoke clears, the rainbow skinned girl is staring at Nadezdha from behind the mask, unharmed. The girl cocks her head to the side, grabs a kilo of coke from the table, and then she is gone.

Nadezdha trembles as she stares at Viktor’s corpse, riddled with .22 caliber bullets.

***

Chapter 3: Car Repairs

“Nice job on Viktor,” the voice of Jacket’s dead girlfriend had said on the tape recorder. “The cops think his girlfriend got him. Next mission is tougher; go down to have Ivan’s Car Repair and waste every one of those sick ruski fucks.”

Olav Fuklofsky rolls into the back of Ivan’s Car Repairs in a black Mercedes, catching Ivan’s eye as he does. Olav is smirking, and Ivan knows what that means.

“Cargo?” Ivan asks in his thick Russian accent as Olav gets out and greets him with a kiss on the cheek. They wear matching italian suits and loafers, despite Ivan’s supposed job title of ‘head mechanic’.

“Cannot a friend come just to see friend?” Olav jests. Ivan grins. Olav pops his trunk, and Ivan inspects the goods.

A petite Cuban girl is huddled in a fetal position inside the trunk. There is a hood over her head, and her wrists and ankles are both handcuffed. She is trembling.

“Is good,” Ivan admits. The old Russian man whistles and points to the trunk.

A pair of track-suited thugs emerge from an office. The Cuban girl screams as she is lifted from the trunk, but her screams are abruptly cut short as the thugs take her back into the office with them and shut the sound-proof door behind them.

Ivan pours two glasses of expensive Vodka and offers one to Olav. The gangsters recline on the couch to discuss payment.

“Is good cargo,” Ivan admits russianly. “Two thousand for you, my friend!”

Ivan raises his glass in toast, but Olav is grim.

“Three thousand, my friend,” says Olav sadly. “She has such beautiful eyes.”

Ivan guffaws loudly. “HA! We do not buy girls for eyes, Olav! That is why they wear hood.”

Olav nods gravely. “I am thinking you will say this. So I say, go see for yourself.”

Ivan frowns, but rises from his overstuffed chair with Olav.

“These had better be some krasivaya eyes, Olav,” Ivan warns as they walk down a grim stone hallway and approach the soundproof room.

Ivan opens the door, and retches.

His two thugs lie slumped against the soundproof wall with big bullet holes in their foreheads.

Olav holds a handkerchief to his jowly face.

A sudden series of gunshots shock the gangsters into action. They flee backwards down the hallway, and the lights cut out.

A single figure stands at the end of the dark hallway.

A pretty young girl in a white lion mask with blue flames in its eyes.

***

Interlude.

The missions become more bloody as Luci carves her way through the Miami underworld.

Luci does not sleep, but she does wake up in strange places.

The nights blur together.

Luci starts to write in the Sage’s book, trying to retain what memories she can as her life slips into chaos and violence.

***

Chapter Whatever: The Biker

“Kill Biker,” the instructions had said, and no more.

A girl in a white lion masks stands over the kneeling, bleeding form of Biker. She removes his cracked helmet and places the barrel of her Desert Eagle to his temple.

“Before you kill me,” he chokes, blood dripping from his mouth. “There’s something you should know.”

The girl in the white lion mask pulls the trigger.

In the spray of blood and bone and brains, a glittering silver key on a thin chain explodes from Biker’s head.

The girl in the white lion mask picks it up and clips the bloody chain around her neck. She walks with heavy steps away from the crime scene, leaving her mask behind her.

***

GAME OVER

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