01 - A Rude Awakening

The bouncy rumbling of the truck shakes Ray awake. Befuddled and still dizzy he tries to recall where he is and how he got there. He realizes his arms are chained together behind his back and onto a small, rusted metal bar. "Fucking amateurs" he thinks as he gathers his strength and, with a hearty pull, rips the chain off of the bar.

Someone betrayed him. There isn't a lot holy to Ray in this life, but his own well-being certainly is. Whoever is behind this is going to pay for it, he swears to himself.

"I'll start with you numbnuts!" he mumbles towards the driver cabin - or at least he thinks so, hard to say as it's dark and he's still a bit disoriented. And, well, he's of course aware that, to get any revenge, he first needs to get out of this truck.

His arms are still tied together, so it won't be easy to just get out of here. But the drivers won't know that he got himself loose otherwise. Let's get their attention, he thinks and starts to wildly kick against the inner wall of the truck, still believing it's the back of the driver's cabin.

After enough commotion, the truck stops. He can hear faint voices from the other side arguing, then the talking stops. Soon after he hears banging against the side wall of the truck - he kicks furiously back in response.

"Shut the fuck up!" he hears from the outside, which makes Ray kick even harder. Angry people react stupidly, he knows, seeing his chance. With success - a moment later he hears the door lock mechanics at the other end. Ray prepares himself to jump head first onto whoever climbs up into the cargo area.

The door opens, blinding bright light shines, but the silhouette of the guy is good enough. Ray charges.

"What the hell?!" the other guy exclaims puzzled at the sight of Ray wobbling towards him, crashing into the side and knocking himself face first on the floor. Someone clearly underestimated the after-effects of the sedative.

"Idiot", the guy states and turns around, climbing back out of the cargo area.

Ray, now lying on his side, yanks his arms, hoping the rusty metal bar is still attached somehow to the chain.

Which it is. He grabs it.

"Ey shithead, I'm not done with you!", Ray mumbles, blood drooling from his mouth, as he slowly attempts to get back on his feet. The guy starts laughing at that level of delusion. "Alright, humor me then" he thinks and turns around again, walking back towards Ray.

"Come here, I'll bite your nose off!", Ray, now standing upright again, blabbers in an attempt to taunt the guy, knowing he won't be taken serious or seen as any kind of thread - which is the plan. He's fully expecting that the guy just overconfidently tries to push him to the ground to put an end to it.

As he's close enough, Ray uses the dizziness to his advantage and takes full swing rotating his entire body to ram the iron bar he holds behind his back into the unaware guy.

Pow! He thrusts the bar straight into the guy's side and he collapses to the ground. Ray himself feels a sharp burn on his hands as the rusty end cuts into them along the way.

Ray embraces the pain as it finally shakes him awake and fully back to his senses.

Now he just needs to get out of those chains, padlocked behind his back.

"Keys?" Ray asks calmly standing over the guy, who's wincing on the floor in pain, hard of breathing. No reaction.

"KEYS!?" Ray shouts as he forcefully kicks his foot against the metal end sticking out of the guy's side. He's crying out in utter pain, and it'll only be a matter of time now that whoever else is still in the driver's cabin is going to come looking.

With trembling hands the guy reaches into his pants pocket - Ray's reflex moves his foot back towards the metal bar as deterrent - pulling out the key to the chain padlock.

"Yo, Potter, the hell's going on in there?" a second voice suddenly asks from the outside "you know we won't get paid if he arrives in pieces", adding a nasty laugh.

"So someone is paying them to deliver me", Ray thinks. Finding out who is naturally going to be next on his agenda. Too bad this isn't the time to ask questions, and he needs to get an idea what to do if the second guy decides to peek inside the back.

"Unlock me or the pain will get unbearable" Ray addresses Potter in the initial dry and calm way. He figures, in his current state, he wouldn't be able to do anything stupid. Of course, making him actually cry out in pain would be Ray doing something stupid, with the other guy right outside.

"Fucking psycho" Potter whimpers under tears as he fumbles about to open the padlock. Click, he succeeds.

"Potter?!" the voice outside exclaims, banging against the truck, getting impatient.

Crap, time's really ticking now. Ray is quickly checking if Potter has anything else useful on him, hoping for any kind of weapon.

Bingo! He does have a knife. Unfortunately he poked it straight into Ray while he was distracted searching Potter's pockets, throwing a pain-contorted but self-satisfied grin at him.

Ray gets up, more annoyed than hurt. "Yay, got a new knife", he thinks as he pulls it out. After a quick glance at the knife, he bends back down to Potter, stares him blank in the eyes, and without a word or a blink, slits his throat.

"Piss off, we're having a moment", Ray shouts back to the other guy outside. He quickly searches the rest of his stuff.

"What the... Potter! Enough now, Vic is expecting us at the warehouse, get your ass out here NOW!". You can hear his steps coming

"Vic... warehouse..." Ray is taking mental notes. Then he pulls the rusty metal bar out of Potter, and attaches it to the metal chain, MacGyvering a throwing weapon together. Next, he grabs Potter and heaves his body out from the truck, as the other guy approaches from around the corner and is greeted by Potter thumping to the ground in front of him. A quick shriek follows.

Ray, knife in one hand, swinging the rusty stick-on-a-chain with the other charges out from the back of the truck and into the second guy, who's now holding a pistol looking startled. Ray goes all in.

The chain in full swing, he yeets it towards the guy, hoping his makeshift attachment holds enough.

Bam!, the metal bar goes in full force straight against the guy's head and shoulders, knocking the dandruff right off him. He stumbles to the side and has no aim at Ray, and likely won't see straight for a moment either.

Ray, keeping the chain in motion, carefully approaches him and takes another swing, aiming for his legs this time. He throws and lets go of the chain.

The chain tangles around the guy's legs, knocking him straight off his feet, smashing into the ground.

Lying on the ground, he knows there is no point to yield, Ray isn't going to let him live no matter what. At worst, he's going to torture him for information. With nothing to lose, he gets his gun up, ready to end it on his own terms. Ray is standing above him and has his own plans.

Ray throws the knife to the ground besides him, grabs the guy's wrist and yanks the gun out of his hand, tucking it in the back of his waistband for now.

"Now, I need you to point to some places on the map", Ray explains eerily calm, "you gotta have a map in there, right?" He points to the truck, the guy nods, knowing he will regret showing any resistance at this point.

"Good", he picks up the knife and grabs the guy's wrist again, "doesn't need two hands for that" he says, and cuts deep into the forearm, severing the tendons. The guy cries out in complete pain, his hand hanging limp, but Ray remains unaffected by that.

"Let's go", Ray says and drags him towards the front of the truck.

Not long after, Ray is satisfied, knowing his current location, the location of the warehouse, and who Vic is. The guy doesn't know anything about who hired them, though, it all went through Vic. Well, at least Ray has his next destination then.

Ray heaves Potter's body onto the passenger seat. They'll expect two guys in the truck, he thoughts, and Potter was a lot more silent. The other guy - Ray still hasn't bothered to find out his name, and after all they'd been through, it would be awkward to ask it now - he puts in the back of the truck. Maybe he's still of use.

He grabs his stuff from the driver's cabin and loots everything else of use he finds there, gets behind the wheel and starts the truck. Next stop, the truck's original destination: Vic's warehouse. Having its location on the map, that won't be too difficult, he figures.