It Matters

The motorcycle streaked down the driveway, arriving with a screech of burning tyres just before the gate. The two sentries watched impassively from the other side of it, unmoved by the revving before them. Mello called out that which, to the uninitiated, didn't necessarily sound like a final warning,

"Open the gate."



"This is private property..." He got no further, before an automatic appeared, as if by magic, from the tight leather.



"Open the gate."



One guard ran for the telecom, while the other raised his gun. They were both dead before they could follow through. Mello crossed himself, apologising silently for the sin, and said aloud, "I'm genuinely sorry about that. You should have just let me in." Mello prowled the gates like a caged tiger, looking for a way in. He heard a car approaching at speed and leapt back onto his motorcyle. Ready for anything. Ready to kill again. Ready to... The gates opened at some hidden command, probably from the car itself, and he roared through before its occupants could even glimpse the carnage in his wake.



The half a mile of landscaped gardens disappeared in a blur of speed, then a huge, white house came into view. Those in the car would have alerted those inside, so Mello didn't bother with the niceties of this visit. It wasn't a social occasion. He rode the bike right up the steps and braced to shield himself from the flying glass as he crashed straight through a window. The leather and helmet worked better than he could have imagined, though the cycle skidded beneath him, jarring his knee painfully. He set himself upright again, shaking shards from his clothing and seat.



Now to find Matt. A text saying, simply, 'laptop'; a laptop set on sleep mode, without a password for entry, showing a text document with an address and the words, 'if you've had a text, I've been pwnt, bring an army'; and a second window relaying information from a tracking device; these were his clues. The address provided by Matt and that highlighted by the signal were both the same. This was the address, but there was no sign of life. Oh well, the house was large enough. Mello kicked the bike into motion and it screamed off through the vast rooms, skidding on carpet but nothing that a balancing foot couldn't resolve.



When he saw the men running from a doorway, he figured he had hit gold. Mello didn't wait, he pulled out the automatic and killed them all. Too heated with adrenaline to worry about the cost to his immortal soul now, just inconvenienced by the fact that their corpses filled the doorway. What idiots thought a bottleneck was a good offensive strategy anyway? He'd personally learned not to do that as a seven year old reading about the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Mello abandoned the motorcycle and leapt over four bodies, cursing at the added stabbing pain in his knee.



He was in some kind of huge greenhouse, its plants overgrown monstrously, pressing against the glass ceiling and walls. There was a movement and Mello shot at it. He dived for cover in the nearest bush. It was thorny. It scratched at his leather. A shot flew past his position, so he moved further within. Somewhere to the left, there were voices. One called out loudly. "Here comes the cavalry." Mello could picture the smirk. It was Matt's smirking voice. "Back to that impasse I mentioned before."



Matt didn't sound harmed. He would be later, but that was a different kettle of fish. Mello listened, waiting for the information that he hoped would come. Matt could have his head in the clouds ninety percent of the time. He would think to give it, wouldn't he? Mello slid through the foliage, closer to the source of that sneering.



"M..." A choked male voice, panting, as if it really hurt to speak. "You're making a mistake."



"I'm the one with a bomb in your computer that only I can disarm." Matt had that too patient tone, as if he was speaking with someone barely worth his consideration. Mello knew that was bluffing. If that had been the case, Matt would have just ignored them and got on with playing a game somewhere quiet. He noted the information about the bomb. That was distinctly Matt. He could make a bomb out of the most random things. Then finally, the precise knowledge he needed. "Right now, my people are in the room, which means they are past your people in the rest of the house. There's just you, me, those five over there and two outside and all of my people closing in. I'd say that gives me odds of 95% pwnage here."



By Matt's standards, that was a huge speech. Mello wondered if he had already killed the 'two outside'. He crept closer until he could see them all. Matt on the floor, beside a grave, lying beneath a middle-aged Scandanavian. His gun still closer to garotting his victim than actually shooting him. Mello did wonder why that one was still alive. He wouldn't have been if he had been in Matt's position. However, it did make things difficult. How could he take him out without accidentally killing Matt? Apparently, this was similar to the challenge facing the five people all standing on the far side of the grave, each with their pistols trained on the couple on the floor. None of these could be the person with whom Mello had already exchanged gunfire, which meant that there was at least one at large tracking him.



Fair enough. Mello fancied the odds himself. He bent and picked up an ornamental pebble, then threw it as hard as he could over his concealing fern and over the heads of the party in the clearing. As he expected, all five of the halfwits opposite turned expectantly, falling for a schoolboy ploy of distraction. Was it a requirement of heavies that they had to have the intelligence of a troll? Mello raced into his advantage, gunfire blazing the instant he was in view. All five danced grotesquely under the puppetry of bullets, then fell. It was carnage. All the more sickening when, a second later, Matt pressed his own trigger and Johan's head exploded, covering Matt with unspeakable fluids and matter.



Time seemed to freeze. Matt caught between nonchalent indifference and a nervous breakdown. Mello didn't have time for that, he kicked the body off his lover and pulled Matt to his feet. "If you're going to develop a phobia of corpses, you're going to have Hell of a time leaving this place." Mello commented wryly. Matt's eyes, hidden behind smeared goggles, closed for a half second. Mello changed gears. He screamed into his boyfriend's face, "You have got some serious explaining to do, you incompetent motherfucker!"



Matt's eyes snapped open. Mello was shouting at him. He would do as he was told. He was being told to 'fucking run', so he ran, chasing after Mello through the hothouse into whatever destiny held for them outside.