SATURDAY EVENING

JUNE 3rd, 1989

MIAMI, FLORIDA

Samuel slammed down the car trunk with one hand and let a pair of grocery bags hang in the other. He looked up at the one familiar apartment complex in Brickell and tried to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The sticky afternoon heat was doing tricky things; he could swear his aviators were fogging up.

He looked back at his "new," rusting Fiat. Of all the parts he could never fix in the damned thing, it had to be the air conditioning system. He could fit on a replacement door and work out a ruined transmission, but not the one thing that could make the Florida air tolerable. He picked up a second plastic bag and made his way out of the parking lot with lead in his sneakers.

'Just go back and get your bike later, the ER visit won't take that long.' Sure, not like I'll find it nabbed or anything when I get back...

He jabbed the intercom button with an impatient finger.

"Hey," he said, "it's Samuel. I've got that stuff you wanted."

He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and attempted to parse the list scribbled on it. Something, something, newspaper.

Adrian was quick to respond. "Good. You're alone?"

"Just let me up. For God's sake, man."

"Right, sorry. Come on in."

Samuel kept his gaze locked on the linoleum floor between his shoes and the elevator.

He was halfway across the lobby before a voice stopped him: "Hot out there, ain't it?"

Samuel looked over to see two policemen leaning at the reception desk across from the stout, middle-aged woman standing behind it. The officer who had spoken held his hat and fiddled with it restlessly. He wore a smile on his square jaw, but his eyes were cold beneath a head of shaggy brown hair. The other was turned to the woman, giving Samuel nothing to look at but the back of his shaved head.

Samuel found himself sweating again in the air-conditioned space. "Yeah, no kidding."

"Looks like you've got a lot in your hands there. Need some help?"

Samuel had halted at the elevator doors and tapped the call button a few times.

"Nah, I've got it."

"Have we met before? You look like the... friend of a friend."

The elevator arrived.

"Don't think so. I, uh, need to get going. Goodbye."

He leaned back in the elevator and breathed deeply as the doors slid closed. Sweet, cold air. He looked up over his glasses and huffed, staring himself down in the mirror across from the doors. What the hell was that? He held up the plastic bags sagging in his hands, fairly heavy and triple-bagged for what looked like a simple load of groceries. Just drop this shit off and I don't have to worry about it.

Much to his relief, the elevator car made a straight journey to the penthouse floor. He set foot inside, glancing around in case anyone was watching, and speed-walked to Adrian's apartment door.

"Adrian!" he hissed, forgoing his occupied hands and knocking with his elbow. "I'm here. Open up."

Samuel rushed into the room when the door opened. The first thing to greet him was the sweet, slightly acrid and very cold tang of rum in the air. The apartment foyer was emptier than usual, adorned with nothing but a glass tabletop stacked with cardboard boxes. A small wastebasket sat in the corner, overflowing with crumpled papers and empty Chinese takeout boxes. The kitchenette to his left was barren, save several empty and partially full bottles of alcohol. The phone and answering machine lay dormant.

Samuel jumped at the door slamming shut behind him. Adrian stood up against the door, pressing his ear up against it and breathing heavily whilst looking Samuel up and down. His brown eyes were alight with paranoia and, judging by the bottles on the kitchen bar and the one dangling full in his hand, most likely drunkenness as well—the whiskers growing all underneath his chin and the circles under his eyes did not make him look any soberer. He seemed to be in nothing but worn gray denim pants and a wrinkled plaid shirt at first—even his feet were bare—but the popped buttons around his collar revealed his bulletproof vest underneath. In one white-knuckled hand he gripped a pistol.

"Jesus Christ." Samuel managed, frozen stiff. Adrian continued to stand his ground, continued to listen past the door for some unknown attacker. "Ad—Adrian, what the fuck is the matter with you? There are cops downstairs!"

Adrian did not so much as change his expression at the news as he turned to face his friend fully. His eyes had lost their wildness, now flicking between the bags clenched in Samuel's fists and the aviators he wore as he set his pistol down on the counter.

"I'm sorry for the scare. Let me set all that on the dining room table for you." Adrian spoke flatly, with great fatigue, but otherwise deliberately and without a hint of inebriation. Samuel stared at the bottle in his hand as it was placed on the kitchen island, wondering just how long its empty companions had been sitting idly on that counter. Adrian holstered his gun and took the bags from his friend's hands, brow raising at their weightiness. "Uh, help yourself to whatever's left in the fridge."

He began making his way across the foyer to the dining area as Samuel opened the refrigerator across the kitchen island. There was very little to behold, save for a few plastic water bottles and a small pizza box—the latter he opened a crack, catching a glimpse of a handgun grip. He slammed it closed again.

"Lay off on the guns, would you?"

Adrian rummaged from across the room. "It's just a precaution."

Samuel looked up from the desolate fridge to find that Adrian had stopped sifting, holding up a rubber wolf mask and staring into the bag. "Where's the cougar mask? You agreed that you'd bring both of your disguises over."

Samuel took up a water bottle and began making his way across the room. "You know how my bike got stolen down south?" Adrian nodded once. Samuel took a seat beside him. "Turns out I left my mask too. Tough luck, I guess."

"Hm. Tough luck indeed."

Adrian dropped the empty plastic bag to the floor and reached for the second bag, which Samuel could not separate his eyes from. Its official contents, a newspaper and a blank cassette tape, covered up what little empty space remained on the vast table. Adrian removed the now empty bag within the outer one and was left staring wide-eyed and mortified into the bottom. Samuel followed his gaze: bundles of money, all of varying thickness and currency—dollars, rubles, even the odd dozen pesos—were scooped out of the bag and placed on the table.

"That's just something to help you out." Samuel took a swig of his water to combat a sudden dryness in his throat. "You said you were having problems with your rent, right?"

Adrian's eyes turned dark, cold, as they stared up into Samuel's own. "Where did you get all of this?"

He knew the answer already, Samuel could tell; there was no use in hiding the truth. "I've been taking cash from my hits for a while."

Adrian did not react, as this was no surprise to him. He only continued to stare with pursed lips, waiting for elaboration.

"This haul is everything I've taken since April. Started with some Russian bigshot back at the strip club you got me to hit. He had a couple grand on him and, well, not like he could do anything with it after I snuffed him..."

He could not bring himself to say anything more as Adrian began shoveling the bills back into the bag. The officer had trouble speaking at first, taking a breath but stopping himself, and could only find the words after the money had been gathered.

"I know you mean well, Samuel, but—" he dropped the bag and stood up— "I can't accept this."

"You can't?" The question came out hard and dry. "That's ten thousand dollars, Adrian. Cash."

Adrian seemed to balk at the number, but set himself straight in a heartbeat, turning towards the kitchen and walking. "I don't need it."

"You—what? That's bullshit!" Samuel said. Adrian stopped. "Look at where you're living, boxes everywhere! You're going to be leaving all of this behind to go live in some shithole apartment downtown or something? I'm trying to help you!"

"If I wanted to stay here I'd be taking your dirty money!" Adrian jabbed a finger at Samuel's face. "I'm not one to rob the dead, but God damn it, I'm all out of options. You think I'm moving out of Brickell, out of this apartment just because I have the landlady on my ass?" He pointed over to the phone across the room. "I've had strangers calling me and threatening to kill me. Here, let me show you." He rewound the answering machine, then jabbed a finger down on the play button.

"Message five. Thursday, 12:09 AM."

"Good morning, this is 'Doctor Becker' from the clinic. You need to come over again to our office on East Seventh Street, you've been missing scheduled visits. You miss another and we're going to send someone over to check up on you. Hope your health improves, Mister Lancaster."

"Message six. Today—"

Adrian stopped the tape with a click. "So far nobody's come to 'check up' on me, and I've had time to pack."

Samuel took another look around the foyer. More boxes, more furnishings that belonged to the landlady. "So, what, are you skipping town? Going back to Texas or something?"

"No." Adrian's voice was suddenly quiet, his sullen face staring down at the answering machine. "It's not that." He walked around the corner to the bathroom door nearby. "You'll have to excuse me. I need to compose myself."

Samuel was left alone in the foyer with nothing but the bag of money and the stale tang of rum in the air. He turned to the dining room table, shoulders heavy, and set foot into the dining area again.

The finer details of the packed table could now keep his attention. Sitting out in an organized fashion was a grand assortment of supplies. At the center were the scorched remains of a rubber animal mask—the river otter that had been so fondly spoken of months prior. Samuel gingerly placed a hand down beside what was left of the mask and stared longingly into his own mask's eyeholes. The timber wolf almost looked happy, he thought; to see it incinerated would be a shame, but necessary. His eyes continued to wander for a few minutes; laid out were several twenty-dollar bills, a large black duffel bag, a rifle, a shotgun, boxes of ammunition and what initially looked like two wallets at the end. As he walked the length of the table, however, one of these "wallets" revealed itself to be a passport.

The bathroom door closed across the room, and Adrian approached in his usual denim garb with a heavy bulletproof vest in his arms. Samuel looked up from the portfolio in the small booklet to find its likeness staring him in the face—so weathered, so strained and ready to break—miserable and hesitant to speak.

"I'm getting out of the country."

Samuel could only stare. "What?"

Adrian's face strained harder. "I'm flying out to Cuba first thing tomorrow. I know it's a lot to drop on you so suddenly, I'm sorry."

Samuel found himself looking into the photograph's eyes when it clicked. That was the man he used to know, the man who had brought him into the life of true American patronage by way of a mask and a knife. That was not the man standing before him now. He could barely stand upright, his hands shook, and his face was thin with anxiety. He was a thirty-something that looked over forty, brimming with paranoia and stress. Adrian Lancaster was a cop too afraid to go out and get his hands dirty for the country he claimed to love—even if his life was at stake.

Samuel tossed the passport down to the table and scooped up the bag of money from his feet. Without so much as looking his friend in the eye, he shouldered past him towards the front door.

"Sam, where are you going? Look, I'm sorry." A hand gripped Samuel's arm, prompting him to whip around and rip the aviators off his face. Adrian seemed startled at the sudden emotion leveled at him through his friend's eyes, with his face in full view and no longer obscured by a cougar or a wolf or the fatigue of the small hours of the morning.

"Where the fuck are you going?" he hissed back. "Cuba, huh?"

"I would've told you earlier, but this is a very recent plan." Adrian's brow furrowed, and his mouth went taut. "So what if it's Russia's territory? I can't be reached by the law there."

"So you're deciding to run away from your problems, is that it?"

"What? No!"

"You're leaving the country and ending our friendship because you've been getting threats over the phone for not doing your job!"

Adrian's jaw dropped. "'Not doing my job?' It's my job to save people's lives, not end them!"

"Don't give me that! You've been parroting that bullshit since April, but you still had the balls to go out and keep the people on the phone happy! Look at where you are now, you coward!"

Adrian's face had gone red, and at the final word he snatched a fist around Samuel's collar. Samuel, this time, stood his ground with a glower.

"Don't you call me that," Adrian snarled. "I am not a coward."

"Keep telling yourself that." Samuel shoved away his friend's suddenly slack grip and started for the door again, closing it with a slam behind him.

Adrian was soon playing back his answering machine again.

"Message six. Today, 1:33 AM."

"Good morning. We have a very important new client at Miami Beach who would like to have a word with you…"

He was stooped over the dining room table with an M16, and with the cold, methodical torpor he had once been accustomed to, he fitted the belt around his waist with magazine after magazine.

He had no mask to hinder his vision, and he had no vest to weigh him down. He only had an address and a single thought in his mind: I'm not a coward. Just watch me.

Fully loaded and ready to get to work, he flung open his apartment door.

Standing before him was his landlady and two police officers. The eldest one, an old, pale man, stood scowling, but the other enraptured his attention immediately as he held up a badge in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other: Officer David Lloyd, contemptuous as ever.

"Adrian Lancaster, you're under arrest."

After a lot of deliberation (and a lot of things taking away from game development time) I've decided to share what I had written in the meantime, the first half of the seventh chapter. I may add more to it in the near future as development on the fangame continues.