Stories I Never Finished

Eye Spy

1

"I swear I fucking told you guys not to engage." Calum's voice crackled through three separate earpieces tucked into his friends' ears.

They couldn't respond to their techie brunet friend from where he sat in a downtown café, hidden in the corner of the seating area; whilst a loud group of friends up the front ordered platter after platter for their drugged up selves.

He typed away on his computer, switching between the cameras implanted in his friend Ashton's glasses whilst he figured out what to do.
His three friends sat tied down in simple metal chairs, both Luke Hemmings and Michael Clifford stuck facing forward to a madman who had Ashton Irwin seated in front of him.

It wasn't too surprising to see them in some kind of warehouse, this criminal always had a tendency to use abandoned warehouses for everything. An overused cliché.

"You killed my sister." The madman looked directly at Michael, steel-eyed gaze peering out from the wicked demon face mask he wore.

"She was kind of a criminal so..." Michael nonchalantly trailed off.

Pointing the gun at Michael to emphasise his particular bone to pick with the twenty-three-year-old, he sneered. "Well now I'm going to take what matters most to you."

"Why does this always happen to me?" Ashton grumbled, irritated.

Calum's voice came through in a hurry. "Stall him. Backup's on the way."

The madman pressed the gun against the side of Ashton's skull, tucked into his golden mop of curly hair, and just as he opened his mouth to speak Ashton cut in.

"If you're taking something important are you gonna take his Xbox?" Ashton played his words.

"What?" The man was confused.

"His Xbox comes before like anything else."

"Definitely." Luke agreed, playing along. "He loves that thing."

"More than me." Ashton added. "If he had to pick between me and the Xbox—"

"It'd be the Xbox." Luke finished.

The man straightened up a bit, his gun moving slightly away from Ashton's head as he witnessed the scene in utter perplexity.

"I'd say maybe the PlayStation, but lately he's been obsessed with that new Xbox game." Ashton said. "What game was that?"

"The weird shoot-em-up one." Luke pitched as Calum's amused voice came through once more. "Call of Duty?"

"They're outside." Calum said.

The man huffed, letting out a bellowed cry of annoyance. "Shut up! I don't care!"
He held the gun back against Ashton's head. "You care about your friends, so you care about him-"

"No, not really." Michael casually disagreed. "I hate the fucker. I just have to work with him."

The man looked utterly exasperated.

Luke agreed once again. "Yeah, he's tried to kill Ash like five times this week."

Michael then shrugged. "He's just smarter than me."

Ashton gave a sarcastic grin, mocking a high pitched tone. "Aw babe, thank you."

The man scowled at the performance. "What the f—!"

"Freeze!" The doors burst open and armed police stormed the area. "Drop your weapon and put your hands on the back of your head!"

Three officers rushed forward once the maniac was subdued, untying the three agents and helping them out of the chairs.