Mila, sensing a conduit threat through Nick, bent down and shook his body. He was shaking convulsively and losing breath like an asthmatic swimmer anchored to the bottom of the trenchlike ocean. Sweat profusely buttered up his face and his eyeballs slid back as if he was being struck into possession.

"Nick, wake up! Nick! Wake up please!" But channels of blood had already started to form a nice scarlet pool. Mila couldn't ignore the cherry perforation creeping up from Nick's legs. In a few seconds, the boy would be dead unless...

"Just hold on a little longer Nick..." Mila tapped her watch and found the holographic syringe swirling in midair. The same image harkened back to when she was on the ground looking for a weapon, luckily she took the initiative to get the healing items first. Mila touched it and it suddenly appeared in her hands. She plunged the syringe into Nick's thigh and his chest and stared, bracingly, for any sign of palliative calm.

Nick racked a small cough but his uncontrolled breathing seemed to have diminished. The bloody holes on his body had closed in and the blood became cake dry. Nick sat up and sighed with relief.

"It worked!" Mila cheered. She ceremoniously patted herself on the shoulder. "Yay me! I'm so resourceful."

"Yeah...thanks," Nick said miserably. He got up and moved with a sullen gradient on his face to the edge of the roof. Mila for a moment almost thought he was gonna jump but the boy just stood there, absorbing the floral orange glow of the horizon. It blazed across the sky and released a beaming incandescent that made the two players almost forget that there were still kids trying to kill each other.

"Are you ok?" Mila asked.

Nick absorbed the dancing vivacious light, not daring to look down at the incessant carnage below him. The screaming and shouting seemed only to scratch the air the longer he stood there. Nick was shaking, not out of fear, but out of desperation. He wished he had died. Why stick around to watch these kids die and then burn in the bowels of fire?

"I just wish this was all real," Nick said. "And not just some facade of Hell."

"Hell is what you make it," said Mila. "You're real to me." Nick stared at her, eyes widened. The wind whistled through the awkward silence. Nick wanted to say something but he could feel his teeth biting back his tongue. "Well, you and my brother. You're both real to me."

"Oh, cool," said Nick lamely.

"Nick?"

"Hmm?"

Mila looked down at the ground as she folded her hair back over her ears. A pensive blackness invaded her soft pallid face. "I need to find Mekkis. I-I can't play this game without him."

"Oh," said Nick. It was a slippery subject and Nick wasn't sure if he wanted to lay in his two cents on it. "I'm sure he'll be fine."

"I don't think he is...I just get this feeling. And I've never gone this far without him. We've gone through so much together."

Nick bit his lip for a moment. "Is it true that you guys were homeless?"

Mila creased her eyebrows, suspicion crawling deep into her frown. Words that she never said had spilled out from a stranger he just met. And yet somehow he knew, there really was no labor in the revelation of truth. "Mekkis told you didn't he?"

"We had a few spits."

Mila crossed her arms. "I had a boyfriend back in Vancouver. We met in college and he kept on telling me all these sweet words about how pretty I am and how I could make it as a singer. I really wanted to be a famous singer back then..." a silvery line ran down Mila's cheek. "...but all he managed to do was get me pregnant and leave me with three kids and no money. I dropped out of college for him. I dropped everything for him all on the promise of a dream."

Nick played with his fingers, trying to avert those watery eyes.

"I-I really thought he loved me. That he was the one. Then Mekkis and I got kicked out of the house by our mom. She wanted nothing to do with the kids and Mekkis started to have gay feelings at the time...before we knew it we were living on the streets for several years. And yes we needed money, so I had to fiddle with a couple of guys for cash, so what! It was all part of Mekkis's financial plan. When we found the ticket we promised we would win together and change our lives."

Nick remembered the promise he had made to Jonathan. The story didn't seem all too far-fetched. But then again, everyone had a story...

"Looks like you've had a wild ride," said Nick. A blinking timer flashed on the red billboards. Ten minutes. Ten minutes and then the madness would stop. "Where should we go first?"

********************

Getting down the poles was a much easier endeavor than ascending it, Nick noticed. There was a sense of levity and calmness this time around. When their feet found purchase with the ground, there was an odd unmoving silence. It seemed some of the players had dispersed and were in hiding, hoping in some way to catch that mouse from a distance. Nick managed to collect a few more weapons and syringes for his inventory during the mutable gait.

Suddenly there was an installment of banging sounds that screeched through the air.

"Mekkis, get out of the way!" three more bullets tore through the air, crashing some windows. Nick and Mila had arrived at what appeared to be a bank.

Nick recognized the tone in that voice. "Diana?" He ran closer to the bank's glassdoor entrance to find the wet-haired makeup of a girl carrying Mekkis's arm over her shoulders. They stopped by a metallic bench where Mekkis sat in a motionless slump. There were lines of cherry blood trickling down his lips and bullet holes punched into his stomach.

"He's lost a lot of blood," Diana said, recognizing Nick's trembling profile. "I did the best that I could do to get him to not follow me...but he persisted. I'm sorry I—"

"Nick," Mekkis coughed, voice minced from loss of vigor. Nick bent down at the limp, trembling apparatus of Mekkis and held his wrist. His temperature had risen exponentially and his eyes were shaking. "Nick, look after her. Promise me you'll look after her."

"What?" Nick said, appalled.

But Mekkis didn't respond. He had already drifted into the flames.