Chapter Eight

Brendon woke up suddenly, his dreams still taunting him through the eye of his subconscious. He and Lisa were still in that old cave that they called home. Brendon slowly scooted over to her and gently nudged her. She let one eye open, groggily and looked around before making eye contact with Brendon. "Morning sunshine." Brendon said with the slightest hint of sarcasm.

"Morning hun." Lisa replied as she sat up and stretched. "What time is it?" She asked. "'Bout noon, we don't get up soon, the fins'll have to be eaten at night and we still won't have any work."

"Yeah, yeah. Say, do you think we should move our job board into town? I don't think it's doing us any good on top of our house."

"If they want help from the right people, they can ask directly, Lisa."

"But there's two things wrong with that. One; we aren't famous and two; nobody knows where we live." Lisa retorted with a triumphant smirk. "Ugh, fine. We'll move the sign... But you're checking it everyday."

"How bout we do boulder-file-slicer?"

"Okay... Ready?" Brendon said, setting the mind-hollow device on his head. Lisa nodded and they both thought of what they wanted with their eyes closed. They both said in unison, "One... Two... Three!" They both opened their eyes and looked up at each other's projection.

"Ha! I win!" Lisa shouted joyfully. "You go every day, but I'll go with you, because it's boring around here alone." Lisa boasted. Brendon rolled his eyes and then thought of something, causing an exclamation to appear on his mind-hollow.

"Wait, did you cheat?" He said, with an eyebrow raised. "No sir-eye." Lisa said, turning her back and walking cartoonishly to the food prep part of the cave. "You totally did."

"Okay, yeah. I might've." Brendon rolled his eyes and smirked.

"Hurry up and get lunch done so we can get that sign moved and head into the woods for dinner grub. Unless you want to look for a job in town and get paid?" He said, gesturing his hands about. Lisa pondered for a second. "Hmm... I don't feel like going into town today, so forest it is." She said.

They walked outside the cave and looked over to where their sign was. Suddenly, Lisa's eyes lit up. "Hey! We have a job posting!" She quickly ran ahead to see the paper pinned onto the board. "The first one in a while." Brendon said, lagging behind and seeming skeptical.

Lisa took off the paper and read aloud, "To Brendon and Lisa, I've heard of your mercenary group that you had established not long ago. I have this issue with these things that have been roaming around as of recent. I've heard they're called 'abominations' and they've grown to be quite the nuisance around my business. If you could, would you consider getting rid of their population?

They seem to be mindless and so far, annoy the population, so the local enforcement isn't doing anything about it, but it's bad for my business. I will send payment of six-hundred-thousand in cash once the job is done. Head of BHQ, Cyprus..." Lisa stared at the job and Brendon could almost see the greed in her eyes. The greed quickly turned into ambition. "We only gotta kill a few ugly things and we get paid that much?" She said, trying to hide her excitement and failing pretty badly.

"Don't get your hopes up, Li. These business guys don't normally offer so much without a catch.

Look at the back and look for small text." Lisa nodded and looked the paper over very carefully. "I don't see anything. We could ask him when we get there, right?" She reasoned. "Depends if he's even there. I've heard the Bounty HQ boss is rarely around to manage the company. Most of the time he's on private vacations or business trips." Brendon said, showing an inquisitive outlook on the matter.

"Well, money or not, we can probably find some cool trophies off of the creature, thingies." Lisa said, clenching the paper in her arm. Brendon smirked and gave her a nod. "I've also heard about these abomination things. I heard they were only in the 14th District, but they might've spread out somehow. In any case, let's be cautious." Brendon said before they set off.

They strolled down the main road, but heard nothing from the town below. Lisa looked over to Brendon, who seemed to be pondering something. Brendon suddenly spoke, "If the abominations were really annoying this town and Cyprus, why don't I see any people nor creatures? Also, why can't Cyprus just hire someone to do this? I mean, he IS the head of Bounty HQ." Lisa smirked, "Well, he hired us, didn't he?" She retorted with a slight nudge.

"I guess, but that still doesn't explain why there isn't anyone around." Brendon noted, making the conversation quiet. They reached the main opening of town, welcome sign greeting them with a rustic charm and an almost eerie silence. Suddenly a weird humanoid creature jumped from the top of a building and several others followed. "An ambush!?" Lisa shouted, confused. "Mindless, eh?" Brendon said sarcastically. They nodded to each other and took on a massive horde.

The creatures had clothes on. Not just normal clothes, but ones that were specific to that town. As Lisa and Brendon fought, Lisa noticed first. "Brendon... These creatures. They're people!"

"What?"

"Look at their clothes. They're the style of the townspeople!"

"What did Cyprus do to them!?" Brendon yelled as they cleared the crowd. They were finishing the last few before Brendon saw someone walking up the main path of town. Brendon turned to him, "Get out of here! It's not sa-" Brendon was cut short as he heard slow clapping going along with each step. "C-Cyprus!?" He shouted, clearly surprised.

"Yes, yes. It's Cyprus, the head of Bounty Headquarters! He's so cool, so rich, so smart!" Cyprus gloated, "Although; I need more." He said, stopping his clap and walk at the same time. Brendon turned to face him while Lisa held off the corrupt townspeople.

"Di-did you do this?" Brendon said, motioning his hand over towards Lisa and the people. "Well, yes and no. I told a bunch of nerds to do it. It'll bring me in more money this way. Think about it, constructing arenas and new museums to house our abominations. The amount of economic growth! Just let these little guys grow a bit, get some skills and they'll be bringing in cash by the millions- no, trillions!" Cyprus fantasized.

"You're turning people into monsters for profit!?" Brendon yelled back, but Cyprus gave a little chuckle. "Once again, yes and no. You see, I run a specific part of what you would call the 'Dark Web'. A section of our internet separates from the normal with so much worse people doing so much worse things to innocents.

After a month of my Bounty HQ's creation, I instructed some guys to begin building lower floors. I designed them as torture chambers and the such. For lump of cash, we allow these 'Dark Web'-surfers to have some fun with others into the same thing. They get to watch people die, exactly how they want to die. We don't discriminate against people of age, gender nor race, but I will say that females of the Fexn race tend to show up often on the screens. We run out fast, so we must get more often, but the payouts are huge. All our bounties aren't killed,

but instead kidnapped and brought here to be tortured and killed. We have plenty of leftover people from other bounties, but no way to use them, because none of our surfers want to see them killed, yet.

With that encumbrance in mind, I have constructed a way to make more money, satisfy more surfers and even boost an economy's strength. With every new creation, we had to get a test group. The first, of course was this little town. Popular, yes, but not enough for other towns to notice it disappearing. You wanna know the best part, though? Pretty soon these guys will be able to infect others and make different strings of my virus! It's so cool, I could dream all day about it. Anyway, you and Lisa were bound to catch wind eventually, so we'll just take you along with us. Since Brendon, you are the more skilled of the two of you, I'll have you get more victims when we need them."

Brendon's face scowled. "And what makes you think we'll be so willing to do this!?" He growled. Cyprus motioned his cane to Lisa. Brendon turned around to see her, lying unconscious while the creatures began tying her up. "You... You son of a-" "Ah-ah-ah" Cyprus said, waving his finger with one hand and holding his cane cannon to Brendon's temple. "Now. Quiet." He said before slamming a swift blow to Brendon's head, knocking him out.

Brendon awoke slowly, a large bruise on his temple where Cyprus hit was bulging and still a little sore. He was being wheeled down a hall in an old-styled wheelchair. He tried to look around, but his entire body was strapped to the relic, which was surprisingly well kept and sturdy.

They stopped at a door and whoever was pushing the chair walked over and opened the door with a four-digit code. When the lock didn't comply, he sighed and punched the lock, shattering the panel and somehow allowing him entry. He muttered to himself, "Gonna have to get Cyprus to buy a better lock for this. One that only opens from the outside." He wheeled Brendon in and noticed he was awake. "Ugh, you were so close. Why couldn't you just stay asleep? Whatever, listen, maggot, Cyprus told me to tell you that if you do as he says, Lisa won't get hurt. If you run or fail a mission, her name will be placed on the Dark Web Tablets."

He began to undo the straps, starting with the head. As soon as his head was free, Brendon went in for a headbutt. It connected cleanly, sending the guy back a bit. He got very aggressive and landed a square kick to Brendon's cheek, putting him in a daze. The guy took that opportunity to undo the rest of the straps and toss Brendon in the room. He fell to the floor but got up before his face connected and turned around. The guy already had the door shut behind him and Brendon could hear something very heavy being moved behind it.

He pushed against the door, but it didn't even squeak. He turned around to see hundreds of other people, sitting in a large room. Food dispensers lined the walls, but everyone still looked starved. A couple shared

sympathetic glances with Brendon before going back to what they were doing before. Many of the people there were actual criminals, but there were plenty of civilians to even it out.

The criminals shouted and ran around, sometimes hitting the civilians and shouting for a way out. Some schemed and others played cards. Some also cried, and others slept. Before Brendon could react, a paper slid under the door. One of the inmates picked it up and read it carefully. He held it up and yelled, "Brendon! Job!" Brendon strolled over reluctantly and took the paper. "It's your first, right? Don't stress too much, they don't take much outta ya, because most of them are just kidnapping. If you do enough jobs, they'll let ya out! At least, that's what I heard. Good luck rookie, oh and be sure to grab some grub while you're out. They don't give ya much round here. At least half these guys are cannibals and the others just starve or get what they can from the dispensers." Brendon looked down at the paper, reading it over. It was a kidnap job. This was Brendon's life now. He looked down at the ground, paper falling to one side and shed a single tear.