'Man… I can't catch a fucken break! Ever since I arrived in this world, it's been one bloody chase after another!' Sami thought as he vaulted over a stack of pallets, landing hard and twisting to dodge stacks of crates and overturned barrels.
He glanced back to see the three men now openly chasing him at top speed, vaulting over obstacles in their path.
'Who the fuck are these guys? And why the hell are they chasing me?!'
At that moment, a motel door slammed open ahead, spilling a couple into the street and directly onto Sami's path.
He couldn't stop on time.
'Shit!'
In the next second, he crashed into the couple, sending the woman sprawling across the cracked asphalt, her heels clattering as she tried to catch herself while he tumbled awkwardly, slamming against the ground with a grunt.
The man's eyes widened in alarm as he lunged to grab her, shouting a string of curses at Sami. But before he could reach them, Sami scrambled to his feet, breath ragged, and muttered hurriedly, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Without waiting for a response, he was off again, sprinting down the street. The three men pursuing him veered around the couple and continued relentlessly after him.
The chase stretched on for several minutes, Sami weaving past moving vehicles and dodging every obstacle along the grimy, littered asphalt.
'Damn it!'
He swung hard into a corner. At this point he was already tired. He could feel his lungs burn and his legs growing weak while the three men giving chase seemed to get faster with every passing second, like wolves closing in on prey.
Seeing that he was slowing down and would get caught at this rate, he decided to call on Joonas for help. After all, Joonas had said he could run faster than him, and had even helped him earlier.
"Hey, Joonas… help me out here, buddy," Sami called in a hoarse voice. "Uh… take over or something?"
But Joonas replied in a listless tone, "I don't know, Sami… but something's wrong. I feel… weak. It's like… I'm dying."
"What?!" Sami blurted as he kicked his leg against a pole and staggered to catch himself. "What do you mean 'you are dying?!'"
"Don't you find it weird that I keep trying to fall asleep?"
"Huh? I thought maybe it was normal stuff," Sami replied in confusion.
"Normal? You're an absolute moron, you know that? I don't even have a body. I live in your damn mind, so how the hell would it be normal for me to want to sleep?"
'Oh… that's right. Why didn't I find that weird?'
Sami frowned. Now, not only was he being chased by random people, but he had to wonder what the hell Joonas meant when he said he was dying.
However, he didn't get the chance to linger on the thought for long, because something else suddenly caught his attention. Far down the street, emerging from around a corner, he saw something charging toward him. It looked like a dog barking, but… it was no ordinary dog. Instead of limbs, it had metal parts that whirred as it ran.
The strange thing was, it looked oddly familiar.
"What in the Terminator-looking, freaky-ass shit is that?! And why the hell does it feel like I know it?"
Sami had just blurted that when something else emerged from the same corner the dog had come from. It was a young girl with rebellious short blonde hair. She wore a loose-fitting T-shirt and worn jeans, with a pair of glasses perched on her face. A small chain wrapped around her wrist and coiled up to her elbow.
She looked out of breath, as if she had been running. The moment her eyes locked on Sami, she yelled in a hoarse voice, "Found you, V."
Then she sprinted after the dog, closing in on him.
Sami's lips parted in a dazed half-breath. "Wha…?" His chest tightened, caught somewhere between confusion, exhaustion, and disbelief. As if the pursuers behind weren't enough, now a girl was closing in from the front, along with her half-metal, half-dog monstrosity.
Still, he didn't slow, because for some reason, both the girl and the dog felt so eerily familiar, as if they were old friends or something like that. And so, he kept running straight toward them.
Then at that moment, he heard one of the three pursuers bark, "Lets just shoot down this gonk already! We need just his right arm, right?"
Sami immediately looked over his shoulder, just in time to see the one in the gas mask draw a weird looking gun and level it at him.
'What? They have a gun?' His PTSD instantly flared.
In that instant, the masked man fired, but before the bullet could reach Sami, the girl reached him and lunged forward, shoving Sami down and out of the way. The bullet whizzed past, barely missing him.
Then without slowing, she reached into her back pocket, pulled out a switchblade, and in the same breath hurled it at the masked man before he could fire again.
The blade spun through the air and buried itself in his neck. He clutched at the wound, blood spewing between his fingers, then collapsed, choking as he hit the ground.
Seeing their colleague fall, the other two men who were now dangerously close to the girl and Sami reached into their hoodies for identical guns. But the girl was faster.
She lunged at the nearest one, kicking the weapon from his hand just as he leveled it at her. In the same breath, she twisted and brought her chain-wrapped hand crashing into his skull.
The man crumpled sideways with a grunt, but before she could turn, the last one had already drawn his pistol and aimed straight at her chest.
However, before he could fire, the girl's dog suddenly launched forward, its jaws snapping shut on his crotch. The man howled in agony, the gun jerking as he fired wildly into the air.
Seizing the opening, the girl sprang up, grabbed him by the head, and drove her knee hard into his face. Bone crunched beneath the impact, and his body went limp as he toppled backward, out cold.
Just like that, in a matter of seconds, the three men lay on the floor: one probably dead, the other two unconscious.
The girl clutched her thighs for a moment as she caught her breath, then turned to pat the dog on the head and murmured in a hoarse voice, "Thanks, Maki."
The dog barked in reply, wagging its tail, and as it did, the girl straightened and finally turned to Sami, who was now on his feet, staring at her with visible confusion.
Then she broke into a wide smile, lifted her hand in a wave, and called out, "Hey, V. Glad I made it in time."