"Yep. Still breathing," Alex muttered.
He clicked off his small tactical pocket flashlight and stepped back from the man lying on the dark hallway floor. The guy had a blank, empty stare and was drooling a little.
"Report confirmed," Alex said, speaking into his wrist communicator. "This isn't some zombie straight out of a horror movie. Just a poor sap with his brain fried by hypnosis. Which confirms our target, the self-proclaimed 'Mr. Saturday,' is hiding in this place."
Alex rose from his crouch and dusted off his uniform's kneepads. He checked to make sure the slug vials on his belt were secure and smiled confidently.
"Well..." he said to the empty air, cracking his knuckles. "This guy with the terrible name better surrender the hard way. If he gives up easy, this mission is gonna be way too boring."
Alex drew his blaster, giving it an expert spin around his finger before gripping it tight. His gamer instincts were tingling.
"This is literally like a stealth shooter campaign," he thought out loud, strutting down the corridors with an air of grandeur. "Infiltrate the enemy zone, take down the minions, capture the final boss, and head back to base to collect the bounty. Piece of cake."
"UGHHH...!"
A guttural moan shattered the silence of the mall.
Alex stopped dead in his tracks.
"GRAAAA! BRAAAINS... WAIT, NO, SLUUUGS!"
Multiple roars began to echo off the rock walls. Alex looked up, and his jaw practically hit the floor.
Shuffling out from the shadows and the mall's storefronts were dozens of figures. Not five. Not ten. At a glance, Alex could count at least sixty hypnotized people. Civilians, merchants—all with glowing red eyes, sprinting clumsily straight toward him like a human avalanche.
Alex's survival instinct took the wheel, completely running over his pride.
"I take it back!" Alex yelled, spinning on his heels. "I regret everything! I deeply, deeply regret this!"
He bolted in the opposite direction as fast as his legs could carry him, the horde of "zombies" hot on his trail.
"I want easy mode!" Alex shrieked, waving his arms wildly as he sprinted down the hall. "Someone lower the difficulty, please! I do not get paid enough for horror speedruns!"
While tearing down the corridors at top speed, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the horde wasn't catching up, Alex stepped on something slick.
Slip!
He lost his balance, his arms windmilling comically before he fell flat on his rear against the hard stone floor.
"Ow, my tailbone!" he groaned, rubbing his lower back.
Looking down, he noticed the floor was covered in water and rapidly melting chunks of crystallized ice. Ice? he thought, frowning. Someone fired a Frostcrawler slug around here recently...
He didn't have time to analyze the crime scene. The snarls of the hypnotized horde were echoing closer. Alex leaped to his feet and kept running, skidding around the corner of the hallway.
But he stopped short.
Right in front of him, completely blocking the corridor, was a gigantic, glowing white spiderweb. And stuck to it, struggling helplessly like flies caught in a trap, were several hypnotized people—victims of an Arachnet slug.
"You've gotta be kidding me!" Alex exclaimed.
He had to do a 180 and backtrack to take another hallway. But as he reached the intersection, he ran face-first into an even larger horde of hypnotized people than the one originally chasing him. There were dozens of them, completely blocking his only escape route.
Alex gritted his teeth and gripped his blaster, frustrated to the core.
"Dammit!" Alex yelled, aiming his barrel at them. "You're lucky you're still alive! If you were real monsters, I'd have fired a Thresher slug to rip all your heads off by now! But no, I just have to be the villain with 'standards'!"
With panic rising in his throat, he darted his eyes in every direction looking for cover. The closest thing was a luxury fashion boutique, its window display featuring mannequins dressed in elegant cavern wear.
Praying to the fast-food gods that the place was unlocked, Alex threw himself against the glass door.
Crash! The door gave way. Alex rolled across the floor, popped up quickly, and flattened himself against the wall, holding his breath. He peeked through the glass out of the corner of his eye. Outside, the hypnotized mob shuffled right past, groaning and dragging their feet, possessing the short-term memory of a goldfish.
"Phew..." Alex sighed, resting his head against the wall, thoroughly relieved he hadn't just been eaten by zombies.
He relaxed, lowered his blaster, and turned his head to inspect the inside of the store.
His relief lasted exactly one second.
There, standing right in the middle of the high-end clothing racks, were five blasters pointed directly at his face. Behind the weapons, he immediately recognized the blue Cave Troll, the red-haired girl "Cherry", the ugly Molenoid, and the leader of the group.
The Shane Gang. Again.
Alex raised his hands slowly, flashing his best apologetic smile.
"What's up?" Alex said, breaking the tense silence. "I'm guessing you guys are the security guards for this place, right? I'm just here for the sales."
Eli Shane, keeping his blaster steady and his eyes locked on Blakk's officer, tilted his head.
"Not us," Eli replied with a serious tone, lowering his weapon just a fraction to gesture with his chin toward the man standing next to him. "But he is."
Alex followed his gaze and noticed the fifth man pointing a gun at him: a guy wearing a blue security guard uniform.
Scene Change: Alex's Original World
[Location: La Paz, Bolivia. Territory affiliated with the Great American Alliance]
"And don't come back here, you idiot!"
The rotting wooden door flew open, and a man was unceremoniously tossed out into the dusty street. He tumbled across the asphalt, skidding to a halt right next to the curb.
The man spit out a wad of blood, dusted off his leather jacket, and slowly pushed himself up. He glared back at the door, where a fat man in mystical robes was watching him furiously.
"For a 'supreme seer' who talks to the beyond..." the man yelled, rubbing his jaw, "you sure didn't see that punch coming, did you, you fraud?"
Michel picked up his metal lighter and the ring of keys that had fallen out of his pockets during the scuffle. He walked over to his motorcycle parked on the corner, dropped heavily onto the leather seat, and pulled out his cell phone.
He opened his notes app. The screen displayed a massive list of locations: spiritual centers, magnetic anomaly zones, alleged portals, psychics, and shamans all across South America. He scrolled down to the name of the "seer" he had just visited, highlighted it, and changed the font to a deep red.
Crossed off. Just another charlatan.
Just as he was about to turn off the screen and start the bike, his phone buzzed. An incoming call. The caller ID flashed the name "Mariana," accompanied by an angry monkey sticker.
Michel sighed, mentally bracing himself, and brought the phone to his ear.
"Hello? Everything okay?" he asked, trying to sound casual.
"Michel? No, of course everything is not okay," his sister's voice sounded utterly exhausted, teetering on the edge of a breakdown. "Mom is getting worse every day, and you're still on this stupid crusade across the globe."
"It's not a useless mission, Mariana. I feel like I'm close to finding the truth, my gut tells me so," Michel defended himself, his tone dropping low and defensive.
"You've been saying that same crap for two years, Michel," she reprimanded him, her voice rising, heavy with pain and anger. "Stop it! Just accept that Alex is dead!"
"He's my brother!" Michel snapped, slamming his fist against the motorcycle's handlebars. "How the hell do you expect me to just give up that easily? He didn't—"
"He was my damn brother too!" Mariana cut him off, her voice cracking. "But we have to focus on the living, Michel. Mom's mind is slipping more every day. Today... I don't think she even recognized me."
A thick, painful silence hung over the line. Michel squeezed his eyes shut, a lump forming in his throat, but his pride refused to let him yield.
"Look..." Mariana sighed, sounding entirely defeated. "I was drafted by the army. I leave tomorrow. Mom's going to have to go to a state asylum or a psych ward if you aren't here to take care of her."
Michel's heart stopped.
"What?" he yelled, sitting up straight. "What the hell were you thinking joining the army, Mariana? Are you stupid? We're on the brink of a global conflict!"
"What are you talking about, idiot?! Do you think I did it for fun?!" Mariana exploded through the receiver. "The government made the draft mandatory this morning! They declared a state of emergency! You'd know that if you weren't on the other side of the continent chasing ghosts."
"Mandatory?" Michel went pale. "Why the hell would there be a forced draft ag—? Mariana, what's going on over there?"
No answer. A sharp beep indicated the call had dropped.
"Mariana? Mariana!" Michel pulled the phone away from his ear and cursed out loud.
He frantically tried to call back, but the operator line gave an error. He opened his messaging app and fired off several texts, but they all hung on the "Sending..." icon. The network signal in the top corner of his screen had completely vanished. Zero bars.
As he desperately tried toggling his mobile data on and off, the ground beneath his motorcycle tires began to vibrate.
A low, deep, unnatural hum filled the sky, drowning out the noise of the city traffic. The sound was so overwhelming that Michel's phone physically shook in his hand.
He looked up. The clouds over La Paz looked like they had been ripped apart.
Dozens of titanic shadows blotted out the sun. Massive warships, boasting angular designs and gravity-defying technology, cruised through the sky, breaking the sound barrier. Painted clearly on the underbelly of the dark steel fuselages was a terrifying emblem in red and black: the swastika.
Michel gasped, staring in absolute terror at the metallic nightmare flying over his city.
"Why the hell is the Nazi Air Force here?" he whispered to himself, his eyes wide with horror. "How the hell did they bypass the airspace of Peru and Chile without tripping the alarms?"
Michel's world had just been plunged into war. Meanwhile, Alex, his lost brother, was lightyears away, eating pizza in an underground world.
Scene Change: Underground Mall - Slugterra
Alex slowly raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, but beneath that submissive facade, his sharp eyes were sweeping the store, evaluating the exits, the obstacles, and the exact positions of his five armed captors.
"Hey, Cherry! Great to see you again!" Alex exclaimed, breaking the silence with a crooked, insolent smirk. "I was starting to miss you."
"Ugh!" Trixie groaned in deep disgust, tightening her grip on her blaster.
Kord, the massive blue troll, let out a dry laugh without lowering his weapon. "I wouldn't make her mad if I were you, dude. She gets pretty temperamental."
"Don't take another step, villain!" the security guard in the blue shirt suddenly shouted. His name tag gave him away: Millard Milford.
Alex looked at him with pity. "Easy, buddy. Don't go hurting yourself with that."
Eli Shane took a step forward, assuming his role as leader. His gaze was cold and direct—a far cry from the friendly kid at the pizzeria. "What are you doing here?" Eli asked. "Did Blakk send you?"
Alex sighed dramatically, keeping his hands at shoulder height. "Relax, guys. We're all trapped in the same clothing store, surrounded by a horde of hypnotized shopaholics. Why don't we lower the blasters, sit down on those comfy fitting-room couches, and talk about our feelings?"
"I should have known Blakk Industries was involved in this," Trixie interrupted, completely ignoring his sarcasm.
Fueled by indignation, the redhead took a threatening step forward, closing the distance between them.
"What does Blakk want in this place?" Trixie demanded firmly, aiming the barrel of her blaster directly at Alex's chest.
Alex winked at her, throwing more wood on the fire. "Listen, sweetheart, Dr. Blakk is a man of refined tastes. He just wanted a new pair of fall shoes and sent me to find a size 10..."
"Tsk! Stop talking garbage!" Trixie snapped, losing her patience completely.
Furious at the officer's attitude, Trixie took another sharp step toward him, invading his personal space to try and intimidate him.
Alex didn't back down a single millimeter. His cocky grin didn't waver, but his dark eyes sharpened for a fraction of a second, calculating with cold mathematical precision the exact distance between his hands and the barrel of the girl's weapon.
Just three more inches... Alex thought, tensing his leg muscles, ready to execute a rapid disarm. Take one more step, Cherry...