By the time we made it back to Mars Gym Gav was down to his last drinkable dose of the green stuff. Each dose lasted half as long as the previous one, and we started to realize how someone like Michael could accidentally go too long without another one.

  “How do you feel Gav?”

  “Stronger. Is that weird?”

  “Definitely. I don’t think the people making this stuff expected to make you bulletproof. Maybe it’s a side effect of having it run through your system faster.”

  I parked the car and pulled my pistol out of its holster beneath my jacket.

  “You ready?”

  “‘Course I’m ready bro, they’ve got Lexa, and they’re letting people turn into spoiled veggies. These suckers gotta go.”

  I nodded at him, and jumped out of the car. Even if Lexa wasn’t here, the neutralizing agent mentioned in Michael’s message history was, and we needed it bad. Even with a whole crate of the green stuff in the back of the van, at the rate Gav was having to take another dose, he’d be out before the sun came up, maybe sooner.

  We reached the front doors of Mars Gym, and found them to be locked. No surprises there.

  I examined the lock on the door and saw that it was a pretty standard retail lock. I whipped out my set of picks and had the lock undone in a matter of seconds, but the door didn’t budge.

  “Fake lock for a fake business,” I said to Gav. “Looks like you’re up big guy.”

  Gav nodded, downing another dose of the green stuff. He gingerly set the protein shaker down, and took a few steps back, aligning himself with the doors of the gym. He took a moment to compose himself, then rammed his body into the front doors, blowing them open.

  Gav’s entrance didn’t set off any alarms. I wasn’t sure if I should have been surprised or not. On the one hand, if you were pedaling a miracle cure with potentially lethal side effects, you wouldn’t want anyone snooping around, on the other, you definitely wouldn't want police snooping around your weird fake gym.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I passed through the broken down doors of the gym. As I passed I felt that same membrane of air that separated the inside from the outside. It was much more noticeable at night. The slight chill of the air outside did not interact in the slightest with the relative heat of the gym.

  Once I was inside, the lights flipped on in the gym.

  “I’m afraid the gym is closed,” said a voice that I recognized as Lexa’s manager. His voice came crisp and clear in my ears like it was coming from an expensive set of earbuds.

  “Impressive sound system,” I said to the empty gym.

  “Only the best for business,” said the voice.

  Any moment now I expected to turn into a vapid zombie. I hadn’t forgotten the trance-like state the other gym members besides Gav had been put in. I was going to count on Gav to do something about that for me. He seemed somehow to be able to resist it.

  “Are you Lexa’s manager? Is she okay?”

  “Of course she is, why would she not be?”

  “Is she with you?”

  “I am afraid it would be unprofessional to disclose the whereabouts of my employees to customers.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “No, I do not believe I know what you are talking about. Here is what I do know. You are trespassing on my property, in fact you have already broken in, and if you do not vacate the premises immediately then I will be forced to call the police.”

  “Call them,” I said, calling his bluff. “I bet you’d love to have police come down here and start snooping around your little operation. What is this place, huh? Some kind of messed up research facility?”

  “As I said, I do not know what you are talking about.”

  “You can cut the act, old man. Lexa showed us a video of you putting everyone in the gym into a trance-like state. I saw you come out and examine them. That’s what you were doing, right? Until you saw Gav escape?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “We ran into your men by the way. It’s unfortunate they were the “ask questions later” type. Had to do them in.”

  I let my words sit in the air, and there was a long pause before the voice of Lexa’s manager came back.

  “You killed my men?” said the old man’s voice, and I could swear that it almost sounded regretful, sad.

  “You won’t be hearing from them any time soon that’s for sure.”

  There was another long pause in the conversation.

  I wasn’t technically lying– I think –he probably wouldn’t be hearing from his men any time soon, but I also didn’t think they were dead. I remembered the little silhouette I had seen crawl out of one of the robot men’s chests.

  The manager’s voice came back. This time with a homicidal edge to it.

  “Okay monkey,” he said. “You want to play? Let us play.”

  In the next instant, my ears were assaulted by a sound so debilitating that it caused me to double over, covering my ears. The sound, which wasn’t really a sound, was like wads of cotton being rhythmically pounded into my ears. It was loudness without noise, and it was invading my mind.

  It was then, with an increasing amount of horror, that I realized that I had lost control of my arms and legs.