Chapter Eleven – Dial M for Multiball
Dial M for Multiball
The hatchback puttered along the country lane, eyes peering out at us from the darkness of the forest. Ahead of us, the limo was pulling into a gateway, the steel doors swinging behind it. Rabbit killed the engine by the edge of the road, the darkness of the trees seeping into the vehicle.
“I’ll scout ahead,” I told the greying treasure hunter. “You ditch the car and circle round the back.” Rabbit nodded, reaching for the whip in the back seat. I slipped out the passenger door, and crept towards the wall, looking for a leg over amongst the trees lining the dark, forbidding estate.
Some minutes later, I found myself at the walls of the mansion, peering round a pillar to the doorway, where a lone goon stood guard, surrounded by a moat thick with koi carp and other, more exotic specimens. I felt for the cold comfort of my Colt .45, the ten steel balls nestled inside the chamber, cool and ready to enter the maelstrom of vengeance and turbulent fury that awaited me in those thick, stone walls. Peggle. Ha. It wasn’t about how good you were. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought differently was a fool.
Moments later, the goon’s skull shuddered against my pistol grip, and the man fell like a sack of potatoes onto the steps below. Free ball. I tipped his unconscious body into the moat. “Sleep with the fishes,” I whispered.
Inside, the lobby echoed like a morgue, each footstep ringing like a church bell in the night. The room was filled with tanks. Vast, shimmering containers, a wall of glass separating me from the ocean of life. In the distance, I thought I could make out a giant serpent, swimming into the darkness. Leaning closer, I almost missed the shape that darted suddenly behind me.
The world lit up, a universe of pain dancing like fire and stars before my eyes. My own private burlesque of agony, the sensation arcing like lightning across my body. Burnt, beaten, drugged and exhausted, I collapsed to the floor. The shape loomed overhead, smiling. The taser started to glow again.
Sparks flew. I watched as my coat smouldered as the limp garment, sodden with rainwater, tried and failed to douse the pain. Looking up, all I could see was Peggle, points and bonuses for surviving this long, like the game pitied me, somewhere within the deep, screwed-up folds of grey that consisted of my brain. What was left of it, anyway.
“Hello, Detective,” the figure said, swimming into view from behind a wall of pain. I stared upwards, watching the ceiling throb and spin, individual blocks popping and disappearing from view. 100 points. The last ball, spinning into the darkness below. Game over.
“It’s…” White pain flashing behind my eyes. “You.”
“Yes, Detective. It’s me.” The dame smiled. Blood-red lips smiled faintly in the shadows, shimmering with the light rippling through the tanks.
“I admit,” she continued, “you’ve been rather useful, despite your ineptitude. I can see it in your eyes. They got to you. How are they, detective? The blocks and pegs, haunting every waking moment?”
As the image grew into focus, I merely smiled. From my view on the ground, I could see that the legs, blue and orange blocks tracing every curve, did indeed go all the way up. She noticed my grin, and her face screwed up like a child denied a candy bar in the store.
The broad hit me again, the white flash of pain surging through my feeble body once more. Pegs popped into existence, disappearing one by one like soap bubbles, leaving behind little tens and hundreds. I gasped in pain, and the frown on her pretty little face turned right into a vicious little smile.
“I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am, you know. He’s running scared. Bjorn thinks the feds are on to him. Can you believe it? You send one third-rate detective crawling his way and he thinks the world is crashing down on him.” She smiled again, a flash of gleaming, knife-like white teeth in the darkness. “Guess who offered her services in removing the threat?”
She paused, perhaps expecting me to answer. I merely groaned. She continued, a lithe arm waving the petite taser like a particularly hot schoolteacher gesticulating with a chalkboard eraser.
“That Rabbit proved to be more useless than a marshmallow revolver. Kept bawling about honour and ‘biding his time’. The fool seemed more adept at plundering the wealth of dead civilisations than grasping the here and now of cold, hard revenge. I needed someone more direct. Someone not versed in the art of subtlety and espionage.”
I was about to protest, but instead coughed, great black blobs hocking up onto my miserable excuse for a jacket. The dame stepped back in horror, her gleaming white eyes hidden by a brief frown.
“With your help, I made it to the Institute, Bjorn’s front – no doubt you found it for yourself. There, I was given access to his accounts, files, some of the oldest skeletons in the darkest of closets. Anything to make the feds vanish, as indeed I claimed was my speciality.”
She started to pace about, waving the little taser at the wall, a portrait of her face hanging in the darkness. The delicate instrument was a little poodle that looked sweet enough on the outside, but that could turn your privates into dogmeat in a blink. Behind her, the fish swam, oblivious to it all.
“He welcomed me into his little enclave with open arms. I was like one of them. It was pathetic, really. A criminal mastermind, infiltrated and betrayed like a gullible child.”
She turned to gaze scornfully upon me once more.
“And now, my little secret agent, it is time to say goodbye. But oh,” she pouted, a look of mock sadness upon her pretty little face, “don’t be sad. I have a parting gift. Since you seem to like Peggle so much, I thought I would bring you one of these, fresh and piping hot from that snivelling rat’s experimental drug lab. After all,” she said, bringing something I couldn’t quite see from her tiny purse, “if Peggle is good as it is…”
She leaned in towards me. I tried and failed to scuttle backwards, to escape, but all that came out was a feeble “No… no…”
“…you can only imagine what Peggle Extreme is like.”
The world exploded, set on fire, was immolated in colour and sound and screaming, screaming pain. I barely heard her say “Goodbye” as the chaos of light and shape rushed past me. I writhed in terror on the cold, dark floor, the surges of blocks and pegs and balls and points and long shots and slides and bucket shots and triple plays battered my head like a baseball bat with broken glass sticking out of it. Time merged into space merged into a sea of unending nightmares.
Later – I have no idea how much later – I heard footsteps on the tiles, and the sound of voices. The click of safety catches, the gloves coming off and revealing by fists of steel. With infinite effort, I heaved myself from the floor and staggered into the shifting shapes and colours in the shadows, my body screaming in a thousand million places, to seek my vengeance and end this. It’s game over, Bjorn, I whispered to the demons that lay in the darkness. And you won’t get a replay with a bullet in the skull.