Breakwall - 2.0 - Gold, Ashes and Sea
ESCAPE FROM THE ZONE
Breakwall - Episode 2.0 - Can Jonny and crew get out of the De-militarized zone with their precious bonus intact? Follow us on Twitter for news and updates. Join us on discord to hang out with cast and crew!
CREDITS:
Abigail Turner as Jonny
Travis Storey as Evan
Madeline Dorrah as Ella
Damian Szydlo as Troka Brute
Dan Boud as the Narrator
Written, Designed and Edited by Damian Szydlo
Script Editing by Jupiter Sanders
Show theme by Doug Maxwell
Music and Sound Effects from Syrinscape & Audioblocks
TRANSCRIPT
[The sound of wind whipping through an abandoned district - music slowly fading in to accompany the sounds.]
[Anxious, Jonny waits impatiently for Evan and Ella to make the pickup. Evan’s voice urgently comes up over comms]
EVAN
“Jonny? Come on, Jonny. Pick up, pick up, pick up… Do you read me?”
JONNY
“Evan? I’m here. What’s the situation?”
ELLA
“Jonny!? We’ve been trying to get through to you. We think -”
EVAN
“We think something's been jamming you. That interference we were picking up earlier goes way past the regular zone static.”
JONNY
“Can’t be. This place is dead… quiet. You inbound? I think I see you coming in.”
ELLA
“We’re still a few minutes out… there’s no way we’re in visual range.”
JONNY
[Jonny’s urgency sharply increases.]
“Shit... It wasn’t a jammer...”
EVAN
“What!?”
Focusing rings around the iris of Jonny’s cybereye whirled and locked into place as magnification algorithms zoomed in on the incoming vehicle to confirm her suspicions. It was an old Caldwell Flightcar; well worn and patched up by scrap. She could hear the grav-engine struggling as it sped towards the tower, too fast and too overloaded with passengers to be safe. This hardly seemed to be a concern for said passengers as three of them were hanging out of the windows, banging on the sides of the car as if that’d give it more speed.
JONNY
“Looks like the Troka are back for seconds.”
EVAN
“Well, you kind of killed a lot of them… Wait, how did they know where you were going to be?”
JONNY
“You know that shithouse signal you two were on about earlier? Wasn’t my signal that was the problem. I’d bet my chips they’ve got a siphon stuck up under your belly. You’ve been hacked.”
ELLA
“What!? Since when did the Troka start using tech?”
JONNY
“There’s a first time for everything. Now pick up the pace, you’re going to be comin’ in hot.”
Sliding down onto her knees beside her prize; she kissed her fist and pressed it to the surface of the case with a smirk before shrugging her longcoat back over her shoulders.
JONNY
[Said lovingly to the case]
“You just stay right there. We’re takin’ you for a ride.”
The howls of the Troka were a chilling sound against a wind that only seemed to intensify with the mood. Sliding backwards, Jonny braced herself against a seemingly stable section of wall beside the ‘window’ the crate had torn into the building. Predictably bullets raked the side of the building as the car strafed past at breakneck speed. Hazarding a peak around the corner told her all she needed to know. The ones that had been hanging out the windows were already securing weapons to their bodies, getting ready for a jump as the Flightcar spun around sharply for another pass.
JONNY
[Said to herself.]
“Well. This should at least be fun to watch. Let’s have it then…”
The world slowed down... the wind seemed to stop as Jonny’s adrenaline pump engaged. It always began this way, with this calm. A pistol gripped in each hand, the sound of her own breath was all her hyper focused senses could hear as the first of them crashed through the brittle wall. He was the unlucky one, his body not stopping it’s decent here on the forty-third floor but rather much lower, the ground shattering below his impact as floor after floor gave way to his weight.
She was already moving by the time the second one landed on sturdier ground. His hands fumbled for his assault rifle too late as Jonny sprung up from her spot against the wall, bullets already in the air and hurtling towards the scrambling Troka as the next invader crashed down beside him, knife in hand. This one had better instincts than his comrade, wasting little time before charging in to bridge the distance between himself and the merc, her cyberarm colliding defensively with the inside of his first wide slash all while bullets slammed through the body of his clumsy friend.
With a sudden jarring rush the world caught up again with her. What had seemed like slow motion accelerated to a manic pitch as she agily sprung backwards in the face of her adversaries’ furious onslaught. She was sure she’d broken his arm with her first deflection but he was clearly too strung out on thrill drugs to feel it.
ELLA
“Soooo… Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
JONNY
[Engaged in combat]
“Ella, I’m a little busy right now.”
ELLA
“I get that. I do. But we’ve got more company. Another car full of them just dropped in on our tail.”
JONNY
[Dodging out of the way of another knife swing, trying to look for a window of opportunity.]
“Just get here now! And be ready!”
EVAN
“What do you even MEAN be ready!? Alright, Evan. Hold it together. You’re only driving a floating car into a firefight. You know, everyday stuff! Everyday... badass merc stuff. So basically we’re going to die. Great. That’s great.”
ELLA
“You’re talking to yourself again.”
EVAN
“I know I’m talking to myself!”
Ella wrinkled her face in annoyance before a flash of an idea seemed to ignite behind her hazel eyes. Without the slightest hesitation or consideration in regards to the predicament they were in, she half dove into the backseat of the car; roughly bumping into her partner as she hastily rummaged through their duffle bag.
EVAN
“Hey… Hey! Do you know what’s not easy? Keeping this thing in the air as we’re getting shot at, driving max speed- Fuck! Ella, come on! I’d like to see you drive this thing!”
ELLA
“Just hold on a second. I’ve got an idea!... Just one second… Alright, Got it!”
EVAN
[Ella emerges from the backseat with a piece of equipment. A smile spreads across his face.]
“Oooooh. Is that what I think it is? Tell me that’s what I think it is.”
ELLA
“Yup! It’s a deployable Leash! One shot from this bad boy and we’ll have control of that heep. FULL control.”
EVAN
“You can cut it’s engine!”
ELLA
“I’ve got a waaaaay better idea.”
EVAN
“Jonny’s gonna be so impressed. Do you think she’ll give us a bigger cut?”
ELLA
“Do you think she would? I mean we do deserve it. Whatever, open the doors.”
EVAN
“One step ahead of you.”
With a grin, Ella grabbed onto the exit handle as the car door raised and tucked up over the top of the vehicle’s roof. Wedging her foot under the seat she took a deep breath before hanging herself out the door. Buffeted by a gust of wind she nearly lost her grip on the handle of the Leash-Gun as she bit her lip in nervous frustration before ducking back into the car for a moment as a hail of suppressing fire rained down on the car.
ELLA
“So. I’m nervous.”
EVAN
“You can do this. Just… like wait for a break in their fire or something. Take your time, I mean they’re only trying to knock us out of the sky. I’m sure we have all day.”
ELLA
“You don’t even know how to do encouragement, do you?”
Steeling her nerves she popped out the door again, channelling the annoyance bestowed upon her by her co-pilot. She was rewarded by the sound of the bolt impacting on the cockpit of the pursuing car. She ducked back into the passenger seat as the door slid down behind her, a look of satisfaction spread across her face. Engaging the HUD for the device was as quick as raising her hands to pull it down from the menu in augmented reality. Readouts and images brought to her courtesy of the sensors in the hacked vehicle hovered in the air of her digital perception like ghostly holograms. She noted the Troka were having a hard time locking onto their car as Evan slipped in and out of their sight with his erratic driving. She wasn’t sure if it was skill or panic as she stole a quick look over to her stressed out friend before resolving that it was time to do her part in ending this chase. Reaching up, she pulled the ‘command’ screen to rest directly in front of her.
ELLA
“Assuming control now.”
If the Troka were screaming, she couldn’t hear them as she flipped the car upside down and opened the doors, instantly shaking two of them free to plummet down to the empty streets below. The beat up car, to her surprise, wasn’t handling the stunt well. Engine failure alerts filled her field of vision before the car shut down… following it’s dislodged passengers to the ground with the rest of it’s crew strapped in.
EVAN
“ACE! I thought you said you weren’t going to cut their engines? Like you had some cool plan in mind?”
ELLA
“It wasn’t my fault! Or at least it wasn’t intentional. The engines just cut out on their own!”
EVAN
“What a piece of junk! If anyone asks, we totally killed all those guys on purpose.”
ELLA
[Disregarding Evan and turning her attention back to Jonny]
“Jonny, we lost our tail and have you in visual range. Looks like the car that was circling your tower is getting out of here. What’s the plan?”
Slamming down hard on her back after absorbing a knee to the gut that had knocked the air from of her lungs, Jonny rolled onto her stomach so that she might crawl to her knees. She was instead given another kick to her midsection, this blow lifting her off the ground to land dangerously close to the hole in the floor that the first aggressor had plunged through.
JONNY
[Talking through the pain]
“That’s music to my ears. Taking a beating here. About done with it too. Give me a second to clean up and I’ll be with you.”
She didn’t know where her pistols had scattered to in the hectic melee that had broken out. If the near supernatural strength of her opponent hadn’t given it away then the bluish green blood that had been gushing from around the knife she’d buried into his thigh more than betrayed him as being a synth. That made him the second one she’d had to fight today, both of them in the Troka. Without a doubt this meant they’d been doing some recruiting.
TROKA
“GET UP!”
The brute had a fistful of her hair now as he began to lift her up from the ground. She could taste the blood running down from her nose and she couldn’t help but smile as he hauled her up. She’d needed that moment. Needed it to collect herself, to catch a breath from the pummeling she’d endured. With renewed determination Jonny struck out, driving the knife in his thigh deeper, this time into bone. With a cry, the synth released hold of her, grabbing his wounded leg by instinct as Jonny freed a small pistol from her sleeve… tucked it up under his chin before pulling the trigger.
JONNY
“Get the ass of that tub as close to the gap in this wall as possible. No time to do this the safe way, that car’s going to be back with more Troka right quick and I’ve lost my guns.”
EVAN
“What about you? How are you getting out?”
JONNY
“I’m coming with it.”
If Evan had anything to say about that idea (and she assumed he did) then he said it without comms on. Jonny appreciated that as the idea of surfing a case forty-three stories above the ground was making her more than a little anxious. She’d use action to keep her mind from what she was about to do as moments later the car was floating outside and she was tying the rope she’d already secured to the case around it’s hitch.
Determination propelled her as she took up some of the rope’s slack in her cybernetic hand and planted her feet as firmly as possible on top of the case. Crouching down low she shook her head nervously before adjusting her grip on the rope. With a nod and a wave she felt the case lurch forward as the car began to pull away, forcing her to slide across the ground faster then she might have liked. Eyes wide with gut clenching fear she rode the case to the edge and slammed them shut as she went over it.
[Stinger and pause]
EVAN
“She’s dead, isn’t she? We killed her.”
ELLA
“It’s hard to see. Let me… just adjust… Okay. She’s not dead. She’s… I think she’s laughing?”
EVAN
[Agitated but relieved.]
“She’s crazy. She’s a crazy woman. We work for a lunatic.”
ELLA
“Hey, Jonny. Just checkin’ in. Having fun down there?”
JONNY
“What an absolute rush! You’ve gotta try this out. I... don’t know if I’d recommend it without a good cyberarm though. That drop was a fucker and a half! Get us out of the zone, will ya? I’ve had about enough of this place for a day and I can’t wait to open this thing up to see what’s inside! Open the door, I’m coming up!”
* * *
JONNY
[Speaking into her recorder]
“Thought I’d open it up with you here. Whoever you are. Made a deal with Evan and Ella. All the coins from the job are going to them… and whatever’s in here, sight unseen is going to me. It’ll be their first real payday, even if it’s under the table. They did… well let’s keep this between you and me but they did well out there. Maybe ready to get their tattoo. I’ll have to talk to Nick after we collect. See if the Albatross’ll sponsor them.
Alright, enough stalling. Let’s see what you’re holding onto.
[Sounds of keys pressed and the decompression of the case]
“Oh… Oh my god. They’re… beautiful.
Sorry. I forget that you can’t see what I’m seeing. This case was meant for someone big. Two twenty-fifth anniversary edition Caprican Moray pistols. They pack eight shots a piece, mag propulsion gives ‘em a big bang for each pop. There’s enough clips in this case to keep me in business for awhile… if I keep them. Bet someone would pay a pretty price for them… Set me up pretty for a year or two…
[Laughs a bit to herself.]
Listen to that, will you? I’d gnaw my own arm off in boredom if I had to lay low that long. I was born for the rush of this life for as long as it’ll have me. Besides… can’t help but wonder what the business end of a Moray does to someone. Got to at least put these things to work, yeah?
It’s decided then. We’re stayin’ in business. Better get to the Albatross and close this deal before that Gunrunner starts getting the itch.”