Ok, so I'm gonna break down and inflict some of my fiction on the lot of you. Got the idea for this one from a dream I had last night, and while it's not done I'll edit to add to it as I add to the story. It isn't meant to be that long anyway. Not that thrilled about the title, but it's the best I can think of at the moment. Listening to alot of Godhead as I write this (no reason).

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Loose Ends
Rosa and her husband walked urgently through the sliding doors out of the cool, crisp autumn night. It wasn’t raining, an oddity in Seattle this time of year, but the deep gash on Rosa’s left forearm needed medical attention which lent speed to their gait. The NuYou clinic in the Lakeview plaza was far from cheap, but it was the closest source of medical treatment the young couple could afford. There weren’t that many people in the plaza mall at 4 am, so they were able to easily make their way around the recessed open air food court and down the hall to the clinic. They would have went in clinic’s the outside doors normally, but at this hour they were locked to make security a bit less of a concern.

Getting through the clinic’s polarized sliding plexiglas doors in NuYou’s spacious lobby, Rosa squeezed into a chair near a large potted fern while her husband went up to the receptionist to check her in and confirm account information. The corpulent guard seated at the security desk near the outside doors on the other side of the lobby glanced nonchalantly at them before taking another gulp of soycaf and returning to whatever AR amusements he was viewing. It didn’t seem like a busy night – the lobby could seat 50 people comfortably and there were only about a dozen individuals awaiting treatment – but at this hour a dozen was rather unusual. It took only a few moments for the receptionist to confirm the account data her husband sent over from his commlink, and Rosa spent them trying to keep her crudely bandaged arm away from white and rose flowered print of the blouse that concealed her bulk. She was tired, almost panting, from the five block walk to the clinic and still somewhat shaken from a near run-in with a go-gang whose colors she couldn’t place on the way. The light sweat that her body was still producing glistened on her brow and matted the dark curls of her hair tight to her face. Her husband came back, weaving around a low faux wood coffee table strewn with a couple magazines that sat at the center of the square of seating that Rosa shared with an elderly Caucasian woman. He sat done beside her and gently hugged her arm, telling her in their native Spanish that the nurse would be out for them in a few moments and reassuring her that she would be alright. The elderly woman looked up from newsprint that she was reading and sized up the two of them momentarily, deciding whether to speak to them. In the end her sociability won out over her courtesy and she asked Rosa in a weak but friendly voice “What happened dear?�

Taken aback by the breach of sprawl etiquette, Rosa took a moment respond. “I was making breakfast and lunch for my husband�, she said with a thick Hispanic accent, “and the knife slipped.�

“I’m sorry to hear that.�, the old woman said, sorrowfully or perhaps wistfully fondling a plain gold ring that she wore on a chain necklace. “Don’t you worry though, the nurses here do good work and Dr. Michel really cares about people. They’ll have you fixed up in no time. My left eye is acting up again, the picture’s all fuzzy and grainy. Dr Michel said last time that I should just get a new pair, but I can’t bring myself to do it. My Frank spent ages and ages saving up for this pair when my natural sight failed me 30 years ago, and I don’t want to just throw away his gift.�

Rosa nodded in understanding, and was about to say something when the nurse came out from the treatment rooms in back and called her name. Her husband helped her up, and as they started to follow the nurse back she looked back at the elderly woman. “Good luck with the eye� she offered with a weak smile. The old woman just smiled back, still holding the ring, a trickle of tears working their way down her cheeks.

The nurse, a vapid looking brunette elf of indeterminate age, had just opened the door to the second treatment room on the left as a huge crashing noise echoed from the lobby, followed immediately by a pair of loud gunshots and the ripping clatter of a submachine gun and a simultaneous series of shrieks and screams from the lobby and receptionist. A deep rumbling voice yelled “Get on the floor ya fragging breeders! Anyone that tries of leave dies�

“Everyone on the floor in the center of the room, now!�, higher, more human and sane sounding voice continued. The command elicited a series of scrambling and whimpering as the unassuming people in the lobby complied. Rosa saw a large, heavily muscled ork carrying a wicked looking shotgun manhandle the old woman out of her seat to the floor, provoking a frightened cry, but the view was interrupted as her husband shoved her and the nurse into the treatment room and quietly closed the door.

The saner voice continued to bark orders. “Billy, Zeek, get those outer doors shut and make damn sure they stay that way! Then get in back and secure that supply door. Teague, you’re on crowd control after you see to Skyler. Spin keep this place’s Matrix connection down and keep an eye on those damn cameras in case they followed us. I’ll clear out the back and get a doc.� Rosa’s husband grabbed a disposable scalpel from one of the room’s many drawers and ripped off the sterile wrap in vain preparation to defend them as the voice drew closer. “Brock quit fucking about with that old bat and keep an eye on those interior doors!� The nurse cowered in the corner of the room, and Rosa stood stunned behind her husband as the door of the next room over crashed open, and then the next one. Their door was the next in the pattern. The voice, which Rosa had mentally labeled “the Boss� for some inexplicable reason, yelled for the occupants of the other room to join the people in the lobby, and the scrambling in the hallway marked their obedience and perhaps the passage of two sets of heavy boots. Rosa couldn’t quite tell. “Please don’t hurt us!� a female voice squealed.

“No one does anything stupid, no one gets hurt.�, the Boss’s voice barked, likely echoing through the clinic. Rosa’s husband whispered to her in Spanish to stay behind him. An endless couple of seconds passed, and then finally the door to their room flew open with a crash.

He came into the room gun first, an older model HK MP 5 with a spare magazine duct taped to the right side of the one chambered. Holding the weapon in a single gloved hand, the wiry figure looked like something that just crawled out of the gutter, or perhaps the Barrens. He was only average height, but the feral intensity – akin to that of a cornered devil rat – that he carried himself with made his presence seem a lot larger. His worn and faded brown leather jacket cracked as he leveled his aim at them. “Drop the blade and get into the lobby with the rest. I don’t have time to play with you people.�

Rosa didn’t move, neither did the nurse who was doing her best to will herself into invisibility. Rosa’s husband stood fast, and with a single word declared his intent. “No.� His ample frame seethed with adrenaline fueled energy, sending the white tank top he had hastily thrown on not a half hour ago rippling slightly. Sweat started to break out on his bald shaven head. Rosa couldn’t see her husband’s eyes – he was taller than her by about a foot – but she was terrified. He was really going to try to defend her.

“Listen vato,� the Boss said with a half sigh, “cut the drek. Just play along and we’ll be outta your hair in 15 minutes flat.� He gestured in the direction of the lobby with the gun. “Now get moving.�

Rosa’s husband stepped forward quickly, trying to bring the scalpel up and get a grasp on him while the gun was out of line with them. He wasn’t fast enough. Like the flicker of a dying neon light the Boss swung the HK back into line, placing the muzzle harshly in the soft hollow of the other man’s throat. Rosa half gasped, half shrieked in fear as her husband stopped in his tracks. “Wired ‘flexes.�, the Boss growled, “Top of the line. Smartgun link says I’ve got 6 rounds left in this clip. More than enough to send you to hell. Drop the goddamn blade.’

The clatter of ceramiplast on tile signaled his obedience, but Rosa’s husband was still tensed. “Now get moving hero, you other two too.�, the Boss demanded. A tense second past passed and then the relative silence was broken by Rosa’s husband.
“No!�, he yelled, visibly shaking, hands balled into fists. “We ain’t gonna do it! I’ve heard what happens in these things! I’ve SEEN what happens! You come in waving your guns around like it makes you king of the world. You promise not to hurt anybody if we just follow orders, like sheep! And then in the end you slaughter us like sheep! NOT today motherfucker!�, he jabbed his finger into the Boss’s chest, accusing, “Not today, not me, and sure as hell not my wife! We’re gonna stay right here in this room, and when this ends we’re gonna walk outta here alive and laugh at your skinny dead white ass after Lone Star fills it with lead.’ Again he jabbed the other man in the chest. “And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it that you weren’t gonna do anyway!�, he screamed, raising his fist.

A static burst of gunfire exploded through the room as the Boss’s eyes narrowed and a crimson spray covered Rosa and the back wall of the room in an abstract of droplets and chunks. Rosa screamed, an echoing wail that didn’t stop when the insensate slab of meat that used to be her husband flopped unto the floor, overcome by gravity. She only stopped, her eyes wild with grief, when the Boss yelled “Enough!� After a moment, much more quietly, he repeated “You two into the lobby. Now.� The submachine gun was trained only on the floor. The nurse complied immediately scrambling out of the corner and past the corpse and its killer like a frantic animal. Rosa’s gaze lingered on her husband, and then slowly, mechanically, she followed the nurse.

The lobby looked like a hurricane had hit it. The guard was dead, his corpse festooned with a garish red hole where his considerable gut had been and a quarter-sized tunnel drilled into his forehead. His blank dead eyes seemed to stare at Rosa. His sidearm was still in its holster. The desk he occupied had found a new life holding the battered densiplast exterior doors shut accompanied by the concrete frame trash can that had apparently lead the assault on the clinic. Two punks, one with short wavy red hair, the other bald with a ghoulish skull face painted or tattooed over his own, busied themselves piling chairs in front of the clinic’s now disabled interior sliding doors to make a crude barricade. A plain looking young human girl lay unconscious and bleeding from a chest wound on a couch near where Rosa had sat, and a serious looking Asian dwarf in green leathers split his attention behind attempting to stop the blood flow and watching the patients, receptionist, and nurses huddled sitting in the now bare center of the lobby. A strung out, dirty looking punk sat in a chair near the dwarf, his hollow looking eyes following nothing and his gloved hands grasping and moving air as he manipulated his science project of a commlink’s AR interface.

Rosa staggered over, sobbing now, to collapse on the floor by the elderly woman. Seeing the blood that covered the younger woman the old woman shifted over to hug Rosa, trying desperately to comfort her somewhat. The ring around her neck slipped out of its hiding place in her blouse when she did, catching the eye of the ork Rosa spotted before as he busied himself reloading his shotgun. Effortlessly he straightened from the crouch that he was and walked over to them, the fabric of his baggy camo cargo pants rustling with the motion. The ork leered at them, fixated on the ring, the long cornrows of his hair framing his face and making him look like some sort of maniacal demon. Shotgun in one hand, he reached down and grabbed the ring with the other, planting his foot on the old woman’s shoulder and forcing her to the floor in the process. The chain snapped, and in a surprisingly defiant voice the old woman yelled “No!�