Larna stared up at a strange rusty metal surface above her. The last thing she remembered seeing was a bright blue sky. Then a flash of blinding light pulled her in like a whirlpool. She shook her head as she slowly moved up into a sitting position. She just could not remember how she had ended up flat on her back in this metal tunnel. Her eyes flashed around the scene. Her assassin instincts took over as if they had just hit the on button on an automatic timer. She sprang up to her feet athletically in a smooth gracefully movement. She was standing at a crossroads. Four tunnels led away north, south, east and west of her location. They seemed to go on forever. Larna immediately went to activate the Thala’s operations function. There was no response. Larna snapped her eyes down to her left wrist where the computer should have been. It had gone. The Time, History and Location Analyser had been surgically attached to her left wrist shortly after she had been volunteered for a time travel assignment. It accessed Factual Historical Information (FHI) Implants that had been surgically attached to the inside of her skull. Those Implants gave Larna every single piece of data concerning people, places and events going right back to 1980. They also stored STC (Space Time Co-Ordinate) numbers in them. Larna operated the Thala by thought process and any response was given to her in her subconscious thanks to a modified FHI Implant. The only sign that Larna was using her aid was when it appeared on her wrist. It appeared when Larna activated the operations function. When it was activated, the Thala lost the power to keep the invisibility shield in operation, as it is at all other times, so no one can see the technology on her arm. Her anxiety level suddenly hit a large spike. There did not appear to be any way out of the tunnels. There was the occasional door, but none of them had any handles. She was about to make a decision to move down one of the tunnels when a man appeared out of the darkness. He charged right past her as fast as he could go. He was panting in such a way that gave away the fact that he had been running for some time.
“Don’t hurt me!” the man screamed out as he moved by. He did not even acknowledge Larna’s presence. “Please, stay away from me!” he yelled out in despair.
Larna looked back the way that the man had come from. She could not see anything. She looked back towards the man. He had gone. Suddenly a sharp stabbing pain ripped through her head. She sank down to her knees as a burning image slammed into her head. Larna saw herself lying on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Sharon and Tony were standing over her. As quickly as the burning pain had started, it stopped. The image was gone. Larna suddenly felt a hand on her right arm helping her back to her feet.
“My name is Gilbert. Are you new as well?” a male voice asked from right beside her.
Larna yanked her arm away sharply. She did not like getting help. She would rather cope on her own. She snapped her head around to look at the man standing beside her. He did not look a threat. Gilbert was quite a handsome man. He had short brown hair, with a tall and broad build. He held himself very upright and seemed confident of himself. Larna tried to relax her instincts to knock him on his backside.
“New?” Larna asked in an attempt to shake off the confusion that was dogging her since she had woken up.
“Have you just arrived?” Gilbert asked cautiously. His tone now reflected the reception that he had just received.
“You could say that,” Larna replied with a shake of the head. “So where is this place? I don’t recognise it,” she asked as she again looked up and down the metal corridors.
“I’m not sure. The last thing I remember was being shot. I then woke up flat on my back in these metal tunnels. This is a weird heaven if you ask me,” Gilbert replied with a slight shake of his head.
Larna glared at the man with a burning fire behind her eyes. Gilbert caught a glimpse of the look and gulped deeply.
“Well, hey, I don’t recognise this place and neither do you. It’s bloody obvious to me that I did not survive being shot in the chest and that this is what lies beyond life,” he explained quickly in an attempt to calm the young woman down beside him.
“This could be a computer generated simulation of some sort,” Larna expressed bluntly. “I saw another guy just before you came up to me. Something seemed to be chasing him, but I could not see anything,” she explained as she looked down the corridor in the direction she thought the other man had run off in.
“That sounds a little far-fetched to me,” Gilbert stated shaking his head.
Larna suddenly felt a cold chill run up her spine as if someone had literally walked over her grave. “How did you die then?” she inquired slowly.
“I was hiding out in a warehouse with a beautiful lady from America. A mad man was chasing us around Belfast,” Gilbert replied calmly. “I just cannot remember their names and the image of what they looked like is fading from my memory,” he stated shaking his head in frustration.
“What year was it?” Larna asked casually.
“1990,” Gilbert replied immediately.
Larna shook her head slowly. Either they had both been transported to a future destination or an alien ship to be a part of some sick and twisted ‘entertainment’ or these corridors were truly some forms of afterlife.
“Welcome to hell,” Larna said quietly under her breath as she glanced up and down the corridor.
Larna was weighing up the options that were open to her. There were not many that she could see. The most important thing to do was to find out what this place was. The person she had seen before had obviously lost his mind. Whether that was a natural cause or someone playing mind games with him, the end result had been the same. If there was someone controlling this environment then there was a way out. Larna found it hard to accept the fact that this was the fate that awaiting everyone that died. Gilbert watched her closely. He just did not know what to make of the stunning auburn-haired vixen standing next to him. He was sensing that she had a lot of self-confidence. Her confidence appeared to radiate from her whole self.
* Welcome to the corridors of hell, * a deep threatening voice suddenly boomed out from the darkness. * These corridors are a never-ending maze with no escape. If you survive for twenty-four hours then you get salvation, * the voice continued delivering the rules.
“Why do I get the feeling that there is a but coming along?” Larna asked softly in a — wait for it — tone of voice as she glanced back to the man standing beside her.
* You are going to be hunted down by your worst nightmares. If one of these nightmares catches you, you will be dragged into one of the hell rooms, where you will live in that nightmare for the rest of eternity, * the voice expressed in a cold dark emotionless voice.
Larna glanced down the metal corridor. Her sixth sense for picking up trouble was ringing alarm bells through every fibre of her body. Another man was running towards them.
“HELP ME!” the man screamed out at the top of his voice while reaching out to both Larna and the man with her.
The guy was suddenly yanked to a halt. It was just as if he had been grabbed from behind. A split second later and he was dragged backwards. Gilbert darted down the corridor in an attempt to see what happened. The poor man was dragged, by what appeared to be thin air, towards a door. The door opened quickly and a bright light filled the corridor. The man disappeared into the light and the door was closed.
“What’s going on?” Gilbert asked horrified by what he had just seen as he stopped dead in his tracks.
Larna slowly moved up to stand beside Gilbert. She glanced at the small window at the top of the door. She glanced up and down the corridor before she moved across to peer through the window. She turned back with a sexy grin on her face.
“What is so funny?” Gilbert checked shaking his head in amazement. He had found that whole scene rather upsetting and terrifying.
“That guy’s nightmare was that he was being chased by a huge piece of cheese and that when he was caught the cheese put him on a cracker and started eating him,” Larna explained, trying as best as she could to not burst out in laughter.
“How do you know that?” Gilbert asked glancing towards the door.
“Because, you can see everything that is happening inside the room through that window,” Larna replied calmly after she had nodded her head towards the door.
“But, why couldn’t we see that chasing him?” Gilbert pushed in an attempt to get his head around everything that was going on.
“They’re only real in the minds of the person being chased,” Larna replied instantly. “They think that they are being chased by a strange nightmare. I’m guessing that this place does that to you. It slowly sends you mad. It twists things in such a way that the mental torment drains you both psychologically and physiologically. You lose energy really quickly and the nightmare can catch you up,” she finished explaining in a tone of voice that displayed no emotion at all.
“Shouldn’t we start running or something?” Gilbert asked nervously as his eyes frantically started to search the darkness of the corridors for the nightmare that would be chasing him.
“Why?” Larna checked as she raised her shoulders slightly.
“Well, to try to outrun the thing,” Gilbert replied in a tone that suggested that his answer had been an obvious one.
“What’s the point?” Larna pointed out with a shake of her head. “You’re going to be caught not matter how fast you run,” she added coldly. “That’s the whole fucking point,” she continued sharply. “There has got to be a way that you can beat this,” Larna concluded positively.
Larna slowly walked over to the door opposite them. She peered through the window of this door. She turned away sharply.
“What is it?” Gilbert asked when he again she the look of fire coming to behind Larna’s eyes.
“You don’t want to know,” Larna stated bluntly as she moved to the side of the door.
“Would you stop telling me I don’t want to know,” Gilbert snapped sharply as he stormed across to the door. He turned away from the window red-faced after only a brief look inside. “How can any man do that to a woman?” he asked with a deeply disgusted tone to his voice. “How come we can now see everything that happens?” he inquired solemnly.
“The devil obviously uses these rooms to break those not yet captured by his or her nightmares. When they see the suffering of others it makes them more likely to drop their guard and become anxious about what is going to catch them. That tiny thought could be the start of the hunt,” Larna explained reading between the lines and coming to a logical conclusion given the dark facts around.
She knew better than most how dark and twisted mind games could play right into the hands of those conducting the games. Larna had been a master of the manipulative games herself from time to time. Larna started walking away from the door and from Gilbert without any further comment. Gilbert leant against the side of the corridor briefly. He had got the distinct impression that the vixen with him had experience of these types of games. She looked dangerous but obviously had the dark side to her that made her even more of a problem than her looks suggested.
Larna was a Fox by name and a Fox by nature. Her looks and clothes were both designed to give people the appearance that she was just a stunning young woman and no threat to them. In fact, she was as lethal as the most dangerous snake. She had long auburn coloured hair with a white streak, about one centimetre wide, running down the middle. It was tied up in a ponytail. It was waved back from her forehead, with a tiny fringe down her forehead. She did not only have a feminine figure, but quite a muscular one as well, the perfect fitness trainers body, and with the look of the actress Hudson Leick, she could be classed among the most attractive women in the world. Her hazel coloured eyes could cast a spell over any man. Her face had just the right amount of make-up. Her eyes were surrounded by a dark eye shadow and her lips were a bright red with a black surround. She did not really need any make-up. She could have easily been mistaken for a pin-up and not a highly trained mercenary. The tattoo of the Chinese for Eternal Devotion, which she did herself in memory of her late husband, added a strange look to the right side of her neck. Not only was she a Fox to look at, but she had needed cunning and slyness to keep her alive for over half of her twenty-one Erayear life.
Her clothes were the perfect combination of sexiness and rebellion. The mixture of leather and lace was like something out of a rock video. A pair of black tight-pattern fishnet stockings covered her legs. On top of them going around her waist was a small, tight figure hugging black leather mini-skirt, which, at about eight inches long, just covered her buttocks. A black leather shirt went over a black lace bra. The shirt was tucked into the mini-skirt. Her jacket was a black leather motorbike jacket with matching black leather motorbike boots on her feet. The boots had got a number of buckles on the side and came right up to about halfway up her shinbone. Around her neck, she had a gold chain with a cross on the end. The cross hung down to lie just in between her breasts. It had been her mother’s necklace and Larna was never without it. On her right wrist, she had the wrist part of a pair of handcuffs that they use in the present day. Her father had given it to her when she was young. She used to keep it in a box until she killed her foster father. She wore it constantly to keep reminding herself that the police had wanted her.
Gilbert watched Larna walking for several seconds. His eyes were fixed onto her swaying hips. Her looks were dangerous. He quickly pushed himself away from the side and ran up to Larna’s side.
“So what do we do?” Gilbert asked as he took a brief glance to his side.
Larna glanced back with a — what do you think we can do — expression. It was obvious that there was no way they were going to be able to outrun the nightmare. Larna had not run from anything for years. She was not going to start just because she was dead.
“So what did you do then? When you were alive I mean?” Gilbert asked when he picked up on the fact that he was not going to get a straight answer to his last question.
“I was a highly trained mercenary and assassin,” Larna replied instantly without holding back or trying to come up with a cover story. She did not think that there was much point in hiding her true identity. She was dead. Gilbert was dead. Who was he going to tell?
Gilbert’s mouth started to drop open. He had got the feeling that she was dangerous, but it had never entered his mind that she was a lethal weapon. Larna glanced at the man. She could tell that her last statement had just wiped out any sense of a conversation from him. He just did not know how to follow on from that answer.
“What about you? What did you do?” Larna asked softly. She was not really in the mood for talking. Talking was likely to take away concentrating on blocking out all of the nightmares that ran through her mind.
“I was the owner of a car accessories shop. Then one day, a beautiful woman came into my shop. Although I was still grieving for my murdered girlfriend, this young woman made my heart leap. So, my heart ruled my head and I helped her. I was shot while trying to help her get away from this madman she said had been following her,” Gilbert explained calmly.
“What happened to your girlfriend?” Larna followed up. Her eyes were flashing around the corridors all of the time. Although the nightmare was likely to catch her, she did not want to be taken by surprise.
“She was murdered. She was studying for a postgraduate degree at university when her killer jumped into her car at a set of traffic lights in Belfast. She was on her way to see me. They found her body in her car in a car park close to Slemish Mountain. She had been stripped, raped and strangled with a black tie. They found her trussed up in the boot. The police said that she had probably been killed elsewhere and left there for a few days. There had been several murders, exactly the same as that one. All of the victims had been female students studying at the local universities. I never found out whether they found the murderer or not,” Gilbert continued with his story.
“I’m sorry,” Larna expressed in a rare show of emotion and consideration for the feelings of someone else.
“I’m just sorry that I did not get a chance to say goodbye. But—” Gilbert paused and looked around him, “—she is probably around here someplace. Maybe I can find her,” he started hopefully as he continued to look around him wildly.
Larna glanced back at the door that she had just looked through.
“I don’t think you would want to find out which room she is in,” Larna expressed calmly then shook her head as she continued to walk on down the corridor.
Gilbert just stopped walking. He looked around him in all directions. Larna had only gone a few steps when she realised that she was alone. She casually turned to look over her right shoulder. Her brow narrowed when she saw Gilbert just standing still in the middle of the corridor. Gilbert started shaking his head from side to side. It was a slow head movement, to begin with, but then started to get faster.
“I’ve got to find her,” Gilbert started ranting. “I’ve got to find her,” he repeated over and over again as his movements became twitchy and anxious.
Larna turned right around. She slowly moved back to him. Gilbert did not seem to be paying any attention to her anymore. She moved to stand right in front of him. His eyes did not look in her direction. Gilbert ignored her completely. He turned around to the corridor door right behind him. He started scratching at the door in an attempt to open it. Larna grabbed his right shoulder firmly. Gilbert twisted away sharply. He rushed down to the next door frantically.
“I’ve got to find her,” he continued to stammer.
Larna let him go. The man had been consumed by the need to find his dead girlfriend. Gilbert was obviously trapped by the nightmare that he had never said goodbye to the young woman that he had loved.
As Larna watched him going from door to door, Gilbert started fading out. He was not disappearing into the darkness of the corridors. Rather he was becoming see-through. After a couple of seconds, Gilbert had gone. Larna took a step forward. Suddenly a voice boomed from behind her.
“Well, well, my dear sweet foster daughter is here at last. I’ve been waiting for you for such a long time,” the man said from out of the darkness.
Larna swung around sharply. She saw her old foster father walking out of the darkness towards her. She started to curse herself for letting this nightmare from her past slip through. She had been having nightmares about this man ever since she was fourteen. After her parents were killed Larna had been placed with a foster family. When she was fourteen, the foster father of this family raped her in her bedroom. When he came in the next night to try again, Larna hit him over the head with a chair. The chair smashed and a sharp piece of wood went right through his skull. The man was killed instantly. He was now coming towards her with the same drooling expression on his face that he had had that first night. Larna fought back the feeling of being fourteen as best as she could, but the environment was having an adverse effect on her ability to fight back.
“You’ve been a very naughty girl. Daddy has come to give you a spank,” the man stated as he moved closer to her.
Larna stood in the corridor quite defiantly. She kept telling herself that the man was not real. She closed her eyes in an attempt to regain her focus. Her nightmare started to circle around her like a vulture circling its prey. Larna could feel the man breathing on the back of her neck. The feeling of helplessness that she had felt when she was fourteen started to wash through her.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Larna pleaded as her mind reverted back to the young girl she had been at the time of the attack.
“I’ve come to give you a good time sweetheart,” the man explained while pushing Larna back against the side of the corridor.
Larna glanced at the hell door right beside her. Her foster father was standing right in her face. He was looming large over her, just as he had on that fateful night when her life changed forever. The door beside her suddenly opened. Larna glanced into the light then turned to glare back at the man standing in front of her.
“I’m not letting you fuck me for the rest of eternity,” Larna snarled through gritted teeth as her fighting spirit came flooding back into her body.
She focused on the image of her dead husband and Sensei. He had been the man to make her feel safe. He had given her the strength to do whatever she wanted. She was not going to let that man down now.
“I want to challenge the Reaper!” Larna screamed out as loud as she could.
The corridor disappeared instantly. Larna found herself standing in a circle of bright light. The rest of the room was in total darkness.
A figure wearing a long dark cape floated towards her. It looked like the Ghost of Christmas Future from Scrooge. The bony face, covered by a hood, and the bony hand holding the reaping tool. The figure was designed to strike fear into those standing before it. Larna stood with her hands on her hips in her sexy defiant pose.
“I don’t know how you knew you could challenge me, but it does not matter,” a deep voice said from below the hood. “I accept your challenge, Larna Fox,” the figure concluded then whirled back the cape to reveal its head.
“This is impossible,” Larna stammered as her mouth started to drop open.
“What is not possible?” a female voice now replied smugly. “It is perfectly possible. I had to die sometime. It’s now time to have a little bit of fun,” she finished coldly.
“But why you?” Larna asked sharply as she looked up and down the figure in all black standing before her.
“Challenging death is not something that can be won easily. I was the hardest challenge you faced when you were alive. Therefore I have been brought here to challenge you,” Shadow finished bluntly.
“So what have you got planned for me then?” Larna asked with a slow shake of her head in disbelief.
“You’re going to like this,” Shadow stated smugly. “You’ve got to save ten people in ten days. These people will be from different years, but they will all have died on August 9,” she added, as the smile on her face got wider.
“Died from what?” Larna asked hoping to get some clue as to the task ahead.
“That is for you to find out and for me to know,” Shadow snapped back sharply. “Now, you will be sent back as an angel—”
“What a guardian angel?” Larna asked, interrupting her arch-nemesis in mid-sentence.
“As an angel, you will only be seen by the victim you have got to save,” Shadow continued angrily, without rising to the game that Larna was trying to play. She was used to Larna playing mind games and tricks to make information slip out. Shadow was not going to fall into the trap. “No one else will see or hear you. You will not be able to touch anything that is alive, but anything that is dead can be touched,” she finished with a rising resentment coming to her voice. Shadow did not like the fact that she was giving Larna any information to help her.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Larna pressed strongly.
“It means that you cannot use those martial arts skills of yours to help the victims,” Shadow pointed out delighting in that fact. “You will pass right through any human that you try to touch. I’ll let you figure out just what you can and can’t do. I’m not here to make it to fucking easy for you,” she spat sharply.
“How do I get from one victim to the next?” Larna asked struggling to figure that out since she no longer had the Thala to help her.
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Shadow replied confidently. “Once you have failed with the first one, you will be sent to a hell room. There is one in particular that you are just going to love. I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer at the hands of the Grade ‘A’ Killer,” she finished with a menace coming to her voice.
“Who?” Larna enquired casually.
“I think you observed him in action when you looked into the room with that woman in it,” Shadow answered directly with a sick and twisted evil clear in her voice.
“Oh that room,” Larna stated in a — I should have guessed — tone of voice. “So what happens when I succeed with the first victim? How do I get to the next?” she toyed in her sexy slightly French-accented voice.
“You will be sent on. But, you won’t succeed. The first one is going to be the hardest because you will have to get used to how the game works. By the time you do get an understanding, it is going to be too late,” Shadow expressed in a voice that still showed the same amount of confidence that had been present from the start. “On your way now. I’ll see you in the hell room shortly,” she finished then snapped her fingers.
Larna watched as the blackness disappeared slowly. It was being replaced by a city of some sort.
Larna’s dead. This is her trek through the afterlife. After visiting hell for a brief spell, she decides the best she can hope for is to challenge death.