Spider

The figure on the opposite side almost disappeared in the blink of an eye, and only an ashen black track swept across the line of sight. Two seconds later, the trapper's face appeared before him, his neck tightly clutched by a strong hand. The sound of the throat and vertebrae being squeezed was transmitted from the inside to his eardrums and sounded a rare distortion. The acute pain and suffocation accompanied by the scorching of a blood-filled head made his eyes a little blurry. I've never seen his face this close before, Parkman thought with difficulty. This action took the last bit of oxygen left in his lungs, and he had to strain himself to keep his brain cells from shutting down. Those eyes so permeated in anger and hatred were so captivating that one wanted to scoop them out and carefully treasure them...

Just at the last moment of consciousness drifting away, the confinement on his neck suddenly loosened, and the trachea snapped back to its original shape like an elastic rubber cord. Parkman bent over, almost coughing his lungs out violently, hissing and pumping sounds in his throat like an airbox.

"Don't you dare lay a finger on him!" The other paused, then continued, "Call someone to bring him here! I want to see him unharmed, and then you can go the fuck back to your disgusting life of money, power and blood to the point of decay with that damn head packed in dicks and holes!"

"You mean trading my life for that kid's?" Parkman let out a weird laugh mixed with coughing. "Oh, you're a good man with a big heart. Even when your lover was pressed against a chair by my men, you can still extend a friendly hand to your enemy. The Vatican should give you an award, amen."

Gavin burst out an uncontrollable curse, his fists slamming hard into his abdomen like dense raindrops. The intestines were like being frantically chopped into pieces by a blender, and the nerve reaction that existed purely for the sake of making people feel miserable bit his brain. Parkman curled up and retched, suspecting that his jerking body had been punched through numberless holes from within by the other.

"Enough, Gavin... Although this bastard really deserves to be beaten, he’ll die if this continues." Jason tried his best to hold back the raging Gavin, who was so strong that he almost flung him out. His long-accumulated anger erupted like a volcano, destroying everything at the moment. "His death will definitely be very gratifying, but what about your son? He's still in his hands, and what awaits him might be the cruel revenge that this scum has long arranged!"

Gavin held his clenched fist, as if it could not help but get out of control and hit the man who should go to hell. He strove to adjust the frequency of his breathing, and soon his rationality showed its original color like the sky after the tempest had subsided, frosty calm back to his face yet again.

He picked up Parkman's limp and weak body, which twitched from time to time. "Call now! This is your last chance to save your life!"

Parkman, panting as violently as if his lungs had been broken, squeezed out a few intermittent words, "Ah... this deal sounds... quite good... But let me tell you... a secret... The reason why I've... lived up until now... is because I never trusted... anyone..."

"I think for a sadist and a lover of violence, he's got quite a clear head." A mezzo-soprano voice floated over lazily, with a smooth, chocolate-melting vibrato at the end of her words, like a little girl who didn't speak English very well. Its owner didn't seem to be aware of the charm, but it was this naive, innocent allure that made countless men tickle in the core. "Of course he can't trust you, you look like you could kill him ten times over without getting rid of your hatred. Most importantly, there’s no such thing as a promise in a trapper's training course; I remember the textbook said 'by hook or by crook,' didn't it, Gavin?"

"And 'by hook or by crook' targeting also includes comrades who became preys," Gavin said in deadpan, his finger on the trigger of the machine gun.

Mackenzie laughed softly, like a dreamy aria on a violoncello string. She was standing on a large rock on the riverbank, with her long soft brown hair gently lifted by the wind and surrounded by her twin little brother. "You see how bad and yet how amusing this world is! Ah, we're both the trapper and the prey, and what awaits us is a set ending and an uncertain course. Don't you think this is very interesting, like a net that envelops everything in heaven and earth, a labyrinth from which we can't get out."

"So, stop fighting, Gavin," she said in a teasing tone, but with a hint of depressed honesty in her dark brown eyes. "That way, at least you can return to Beast Camp alive."

"And then be destroyed like a piece of scrap iron? No, Mackenzie, even if my life is something that shouldn't continue to exist, I want to be able to choose my own way of ending it."

"Hey — guys, can I make a comment?" Jason held his hand high, as if he couldn't wait to satisfy his desire to speak, and started his gabbling before getting any response, "Although I don't know much about these so-called 'trappers' and the place you guys stay in called Beast Camp, I don't think you're any genetically modified soldiers or robots or anything like that. You're no different from other ordinary people, except that the education you guys received sucks ass... Why don't you leave that nauseating, sick institution and let it close down? There are many things to do in this world besides killing people — eating, watching movies, strolling, shopping and buying clothes. Or you can travel, fall in love, drink and dance with boys and girls, find some buddies to play games online, you can indulge in pleasure, wander around too, choose to act as a priest or a gangster... In short, there's so much fun in this world, so why the fuck do you insist on stuffing yourself into a small dark box and then snap the hope locked in the bottom of it." He let out a long inhalation sound. He was barely breathing in the earlier speech, and he was a little dizzy.

Mackenzie looked at him with a tragic expression, as if it were an unidentified organism of naturally messy constitution. "You've met a naive fool, or a pesky mental case, Gavin," she concluded resentfully. "Either way, it gives you the urge to shoot his brains out."

Gavin didn't want to admit to ever having felt the same way as her.

"That's not peskiness, it's called eloquence!" the suspected patient protested in discontent.

"You don't need to care about that," Gavin told her. "This is between us. It has nothing to do with him."

Mackenzie shrugged indifferently. "Why the hell should I waste my time on an idiot who doesn't understand the situation? Our target is you, dear." The one she scorned shot her an unhappy glare. "May the contest between trappers begin — for the record, Ben and I will be acting together. You know the drill, and we won't make an exception for you."

Gavin nodded once. "As the same K-type, that's fair enough. Gotta give me time to take care of some things first, though."

"You're still annoyingly confident," said the female killer, "but we're not in a hurry, either." She sat down on the rock, swaying her calves as leisurely as she was about to watch a holographic movie.

Gavin looked back at his former boss, who looked in better condition. At least he could sternly accuse the after-sales service lady of negligence with an extremely indignant look.

Gavin drew the Buck 650 Nighthawk from his side and pressed the sharp, leg-weakening, black blade against his neck. Wisps of blood immediately came out of his skin like small red snakes and crawled over the blade. "Cellphone, Parkman! Or you'll be watching the parts of yourself leave your body one by one until you finally kick the bucket, and I have to warn you, the process between them it's going to be quite long."

Parkman remained silent until the blade moved down his chest to his crotch, his former subordinate seeming to start with what he loathed the most first. He finally couldn't help but cry out in fright, "Okay, okay, you win! I'll make that damn phone call!"

Gavin fished the phone out of his arms and pressed it down threateningly with the blade. "Don't fuck with your dick."

Parkman shrunk back and pressed the shortcut button on his cell phone. "Moore, where are you...? Good, you've saved your paycheck and your body. Head south along the riverside path, see a wooden house?" He paused and stared down at the ash-colored gravel between his legs, which seemed to be bone fragments of some kind of corpse, still glowing with sinister, frantic blood in the sun. This was probably because the capillaries in his eyeballs had ruptured due to the beating just now, and whatever he looked at now was clouded with a biting scarlet, making him feel as if the whole world was sinisterly, frantically full of blood and bones of the dead.

"All right. Stop the car, and then," he suddenly chuckled, and ordered in a fast and clear tone, "kill the kid!"

A dull and frightening gunshot!

Gavin stared in disbelief at the car that had come into view, its windshield stained beyond recognition as if it had been abruptly splashed with scarlet dye!

The moment the air froze, Parkman picked up the handgun he had dropped at his feet when he was beaten and pulled the trigger at Gavin. He was convinced it would be the fastest he had ever fired a gun, but the visualized perfect shot did not go off as he hoped.

He was stunned to discover that the command to ‘pick up the gun’ was only transmitted from his brain to his arm, and the second half of the action had disappeared without warning in the exposed section of bones and muscles. The nerve was snapped so suddenly that it reported false reflex results to the brain: his wrist was neatly cut off, the detached limb still clutching the handle of the gun, and his index finger wriggled powerlessly on the trigger like a sticky leech... At that moment, he didn't feel any pain, only an intense vomiting feeling that wanted to pour out all his viscera!

But he couldn't even vomit. The icy, sharp sensation from the skin on the neck began to advance step by step toward the inside of his body. Slowly and cruelly, it sliced open the flesh, severed the trachea and esophagus, and pierced into the gap between his cervical spine... and then to the flesh again. He looked up with his two eyes wide open, noiseless, the blood-red sky tottering in his pupils, which couldn't bear the pressure and burst into countless pieces and fell like snow, instantly melting into a stinky red liquid at his feet. He was capsized by the boundless sea of blood, and gradually sank. He was surrounded by darkness. He looked around anxiously, seeking in fear and despair... What am I looking for? He said to himself. I just want a bit of light, a light in the dark... Oh, what a stupid idea, like an idiot longing for salvation...

Gavin let go of his hand and let the dilapidated, blood-soaked corpse fall to the ground, and the spotlessly white sand was quickly dyed red.

He walked toward the car with his gun, his steps eager and slowly sluggish, and his back wrote frozen stiffness all over. The car door opened, and a figure got out of it with his head down.

"Don't shoot!" Jason suddenly let out a shrill, piercing outcry. That yell full of alarm and pain forcibly pulled the trapper's finger back from the trigger!

"Adrian!" he yelled, darting over to the man walking out of the car and throwing himself firmly on him.

"God, what's the situation! Parkman ordered his men to shoot, and then the car glass was covered in blood, that child's blood, and Gavin was about to go crazy..." Adrian stared blankly at the man hugging him and babbling. Before he could react, the familiar voice jabbered in his ear, but it was matchlessly reassuring and nostalgic, "How did you get out of this damn car? No, I don't understand why you showed up here? Oh, shit, someone tell me what the fuck is going on?!"

Adrian pushed him away a little, stared him up and down, and exclaimed nervously, "You're hurt? My God, you've got blood all over you... I'm taking you to the hospital right away!"

"Don't be so keyed up, Adri, it's just a few superficial wounds, and most of the blood on my clothes isn't mine." Jason had no choice but to first appease his roommate who tried to stuff him into the car in a flurry. "Oh, no, don't pull out the gun! Even if he really is a kidnapper who’s no good for me, it's also useless for you to fish out a bomb... And you, Gavin, don't point your gun at us. Careful of accidentally going off!"

The scene looked a bit tit-for-tat, yet disconcertingly chaotic.

A corpse with a blown head suddenly slipped out of the car door, which was tossed off the axis. Although its face was indistinguishable, it didn't look like a minor, either. "Oh!" Jason cried out in fear and pushed the unlucky ghost away. He had his body all covered in blood yet again, maybe even brains, eyeballs and so on. "And who's the protagonist of this horror film?"

"A child kidnapper gangster," Adrian said, kicking the corpse away a bit with his foot. "I drove past him and saw an unconscious child tied in the backseat, and he was shouting into his phone, 'this fucking kid slid as fast a rabbit, but I still caught him.' He caught me looking at him and fucking pulled out a handgun and shot me!" he said indignantly. "What's wrong with scoundrels these days? You do business with your window open, bring out such a display, and you blame people for looking around without tickets?"

Jason laughed. He probably figured out what was going on. "Poor thing. The biggest mistake he ever made in his life was that he shouldn't have shot the champion of the state games shooting competition."

"I shot him in the arm and forced him to stop the car. My tire was broken, so I had to use his and tie him to the front passenger seat. It didn't take long for his phone to ring again, and I put my gun to his head to get him to answer it. Who knew he'd suddenly struggle desperately." Adrian shrugged and said regrettably, "My gun went off, and his head just exploded."

"And what about the child?" Gavin asked, interrupting him.

Adrian glanced at him vigilantly, with a hostility that had not yet faded in his eyes. "In the back seat, sleeping heavily. The effects of the drug haven't worn off yet, probably." He pulled open the rear compartment door slightly, and a dark-haired, approximately 10-year-old child was lying on his back on the cushion. His slim body calmly stretched out, and his chest fluctuated slightly in steady breathing.

Gavin took a few steps forward, his expression was a little moved, and then he covered his face with one palm. "My God..." He gasped in a voice that was about to burst into tears.

Jason smiled at the man who was soaked in some kind of emotion, and it was obvious that he shouldn't be disturbed by the outside world at this moment. He turned to Adrian. "You drove here, to save me? Dear, this is so touching; you risked your life... But how did you find me?"

"Cell phone. I called your cell phone, and no one answered, but God bless you had it with you at all times. You know, the FBI has a very useful cell phone signal tracking system. Even if it's turned off, as long as the battery isn't removed, you can still track the latitude and longitude of the target by satellite. On the other hand, their anti-intrusion program has comparatively been at a standstill at the level of three years ago — they think it's a safe vault in a bank, and the more combination locks, the higher the security factor." The hacker held up the frame of his glasses as usual and skimmed the corners of his mouth in disdain.

"Oh, Adri, you actually got into a fight with a government agent for me... I'm so touched I don't know what to say..." The blond man clasped his palms together in front of his chest, and said fawningly in a devout believer manner, "You love me so much, I'm sure you'll forgive me for the trifle of killing your Black Ladybird, won’t you!"

"What do you mean by 'kill'!" The object of his fawning exclaimed in alarm and anger. "What did you do to my Black Pearl?!"

"Don't get so worked up, honey. It's no big deal... I mean, your precious Opel died quite an honorable death — it was hit by a rocket..." Jason struggled to convince the other not to put the blame on him.

"What? A rocket?!" the latter yelled in despair. "Did you fucking drive her to the Iraq war? How could you treat her like that, you bastard! I had just remodeled her carburetor and turbo engine; she's a beauty inside and out and runs faster than a race car!"

"But not faster than a helicopter, dear. Be reasonable. You can't strangle your roommate because of a car, that's too inhumane..."

"Everyone's happy, isn't that so?" Mackenzie jumped off the rock at some unknown moment, and the soft voice cut through the space like an invisible sharp weapon, bringing a momentary cooling air pressure. "We don't want to be the ultimate boss who destroys the happy ending, but the warm episode is over, and the following scenes aren't suitable for children. Gavin, can you trouble those two handsome guys to take your child away? Maybe this way you can focus more on our mission."

Gavin slowly turned to face her, and after a moment of silence, said without looking back, "Jason, can I entrust Pei Lin to you for now?"

"No way!" Jason refused, "You carry your own burdens. I won't be a nanny for the kid!"

The trapper's back stiffened for a moment, and he finally turned his head. "Sorry, Jason. I'm giving him to you whether you like it or not. Take him away, and never mention to him what happened today, nor about me."

"I said, I refuse!" the other exclaimed angrily. "Don't expect me to raise your son for you, I'm not his mother! If you're worried about him, take him away now — don't go around sounding like you're giving your last fucking words!"

Gavin didn't speak, just looked at him deeply. Jason jerked his face away, feeling the gaze pressing down on his heart so heavily that he couldn't breathe. Heck! How could this be? It's practically like a rotten melodrama that willfully tampered with the ending to make people cry! He cursed viciously in his heart. Let all the tragic directors go to hell, they're all a bunch of bastards who stand around talking!

Adrian lifted his hand and put it on his shoulder. "Be sensible, Jason. There are things we shouldn't get involved in, and there's nothing we can do about it. Do as he says. Let's get the child out of here, and then—"

The feeling of the handgun pinned to the back of his waist being suddenly pulled out made his words stop in mid-air as if he had stepped on the emergency brakes, and the crisp sound of the safety pull-off sounded particularly harsh and shocking in the quiet air!

He quickly turned his head and saw that the child who was still asleep just now had somehow gotten out of the car door and was pointing his handgun at Gavin. A pair of dark crystal-like eyes on the handsome little face was alarmingly bright, the flames of wrath and hatred burning fiercely in the glance inconsistent with his actual age, and the fingertips tightened on the trigger that was barely within reach.

"You... It's you. I remember your face..." the child said with quivering lips, a watery glow of wronged emotions surfacing in his eyes. "You killed my mom!" he shouted in a puerile but sharp child's voice, "you're a murderer!"