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Title: "Click"
Author: Terastas
At an abandoned factory, a phone rang. That was an oddity in itself-
nobody had even given this place notice for seven years, and the fact
that this phone line had been set up after it was abandoned decreased
the odds of a random call. The lights flickered on immediately, giving
only a dim view of a wide storage compartment littered with broken crates
and rusted machinery. Up in the single office overlooking what had once
been a weapons manufacturers, a single desk had been set up, on which
a laptop computer and the ringing phone rested.
From the shadows, a tiny figure emerged in the office space, barely
noticable due to its micro nature. Quietly, it scampered across the
floor, climbed up the phone cord, and jumped onto the desk. The figure
was a mouse, barely over three inches tall, wearing a light blue tank
top, black shorts, and a pair of dark glasses, all just her size. With
a tiny leap, she jumped up towards the buttons and landed on the appropriate
switch to turn on the speakerphone.
"Hello" she said into the speaker.
"Click! Am I on the speakerphone?!" whispered the voice on
the other line.
The mouse, Click, looked around nervously. "...Yes."
"Then turn it off!!" the voice hissed. "You're going
to have company any minute!!"
No sooner than those words were spoken did Click leap off the table,
narrowly avoiding the gunfire that sent sparks flying from the phone
system. The only piece that worked was the receiver, which now hung
off the desk from the cord.
"Click?! Dammit!" The line went dead.
For the first time since it was abandoned, the front doors opened.
The light was dim, but a faint outline of three men armed with automatic
weapons could be seen against the outside moonlight. The one in the
center was without a helmet and clearly a deer due to his massive horns.
"Crap" said the right-hand guard as he surveyed the surroundings.
"She could be anywhere."
"It doesn't matter" said the deer, who was evidently also
higher ranking than the other two. "Morgan said she was his only
contact. She'll have the discs we're looking for." He looked around,
seeing nothing. "Spread out. Don't leave a stone unturned until
you've found the discs."
Ten minutes later, they had given up looking for the discs. Now, while
the other two patrolled around in search of Click, the deer had turned
on Click's laptop and was trying to hack into her files, and since he
was only experimenting with one-word passwords that he thought could
have applied to Click, he was meeting with little success. Click wasn't
worried about the files- she'd designed the system so that the files
could only be opened by hacking. What worried her were the two guards,
who could have killed her just by stepping on her but were ready to
unload a few rounds of PK-102 machinegun rounds at her. Slowly, keeping
a close eye on the massive pairs of feet that circled around the lower
level, she silently made her way through a crack in one of the windows,
connected to the ground floor on both sides by a thin piece of twine
only visible to eyes her size.
Outside, a black jeep slowly drove by once a minute, each apparently
occupied by one of three armed passengers. Obviously whoever was after
her had taken a low profile, but was still taking drastic measures nevertheless.
Suddenly, just as she rounded the corner away from the street, a massive
hand fell down on her and lifted her through the air, its clawed fingers
holding her arms tight.
"Oh my God-!" Click began, but not before another finger from
the other hand pressed over her lips.
"Shhhh. Don't panic. Its me."
Click blinked at the darkness, then only when her captor held her up
to his face did she recognize the white tiger that was holding her.
He pulled his finger away from her lips and Click breathed easy.
"Terry" she gasped. "Oh thank God! I thought you were
a goner for sure."
Terry opened his hand so that Click was now sitting in his palm. "Of
course not. You were right bout Kletain's data discs- they might be
worth more than we imagined."
"They are, huh?" Click folded her hands behind her back and
looked down. "Then we'll need my laptop I suppose... Its still
in there."
"I'll take care of them" said Terry. "You just wait here
where its safe."
"But Terry, you don't-"
Before Click could finish her sentence, Terry yawned his jaws open wide
and brought his hand abruptly to his mouth, forcing Click inside. Click
fell off of his hand and landed face down on Terry's wet tongue, which
instantly tossed her to the back of his mouth, towards his throat, and
down into his awaiting stomach.
Terry had swallowed his partner whole.
The two guards had given up on searching for Click. It didn't matter
though. All they had to worry about were her files.
"Give it up already" said one of the guards that now looked
in through the window. "Morgan said she was an expert hacker. You
barely even know what a computer is!"
"Shut up!" the deer responded, obviously having become irritated
by the computer.
"Christ... Look just forget it! If you can't hack into it, just
fuckin' take it with you; we can get a real hacker to do the job back
at the base."
"We won't have time for that" said the deer. "It'll just
be a real waste of time if the files we're looking for aren't here."
"Well if you try hacking yourself and the files aren't there, that
makes it an even bigger waste of time, doesn't it?"
The deer grumbled, then reached up and slammed the screen down over
the keyboard. "Alright. We'll do it your way. We're packing up-
let the rodent go for now."
"Cool" said the guard. He looked over the railing into the
graveyard of crates and shouted: "Hey Carter, we're packing up
okay!"
Silence.
"Carter?" Then abruptly afterwards: "Geez Carter, what
the hell were you doing out there! We're packing up- lets go."
There was a muffled response. The guard replied: "I said we're
packing up! Move it!" Once again, there was a muffled one-word
response, to which the guard finally removed his helmet, revealing him
to be a possum (and also removing the muffled sound of his voice) and
shouted: "I SAID WE'RE PACKING!!!"
*thwip-thwip-thwip-THUNK! !*
The guard stiffened and fell back against the desk. A puddle of blood
formed just under the throwing knife that had lodged into his skull.
The deer's eyes narrowed at the shadowed figure that appeared outside
the office space. "Terry..."
He dropped the laptop, ran strait at the figure, and lowered his head.
"Heyaaaah!!"
Right before he was about to hit Terry at ramming speed, the tiger stepped
off to the side, grabbed the deer by the arm, and spun him over the
guardrail and into the wall.
"Dyah!" CRASH!!!
His antlers drove strait through the solid brick and held him suspended
above a pile of shattered crates twenty feet below. He tried to push
away from the wall, but couldn't. All he could do was clutch his aching
forehead and moan.
Calmly, Terry lifted Click's laptop off of the floor, only stopping
on his way out to kick the possum's body off of the stairwell so he
could pass by the suspended deer soldier in a civilized manor.
Just as he was about to leave, the deer called out:
"Terastas!!" he shouted. "Don't think you can run forever!!"
Terry turned around, looking up at the suspended deer. "I know.
But who said I was running?" He turned back to the door, then looked
back. "Oh, and Alsaisha. Give me regards to Diartigan."
Terastas disappeared through those doors. Five minutes later, the headlights
of Alsaisha's jeep illuminated the windows above the doors. There was
a squeeling of rubber, and then the doors flew away from their hinges
as the jeep sped unpiloted into the factory and crashed into the brick
wall, its gas tank igniting on contact. The dry splinters of crates
ignited easilly, engulfing the warehouse in an inferno in minutes.
After replacing the licence plates of Morgan's Lexus with those taken
from the jeep, Terry was once again on the road again. After ten minutes
of quiet undisturbed travel, he pulled over, reached into his pocket,
and took out two small chips each about the size of a pea. The first
one he stuck into his ear. The second, he put in his mouth and swallowed.
Shortly after, the piece in his ear began to buzz.
"Terry?" came the voice on the other end. "Did you...
Was I dreaming?"
"No" said Terry. "I really did eat you."
"But... I... HOW?!! Its not even dark in here- what the hell!!"
"I'll explain later. In the meantime, you're safter where you are,
okay?"
There was a short pause.
"Okay... And how long do you think I'll be... You know..."
"In me?" Terry shrugged. "Until we can find another safe
place to opperate from. That could take a while though."
"Great" said Click. "Just great..."
To be continued...
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