Vigilante: Adventures Of An African Hero [COMPLETED]

[Thirteen] Fighters Fight

Nipp, Gina and Michael - who had decided to take them himself - arrived in the Sahara desert which divided Africa into North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Towards its East lay The Red Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean bounded it from the West. On its North was the Mediterranean Sea, and on the South was the Sahel belt.

The three got out of the helicopter. The wind was blowing hard in the desert, forcing them to use their hands as shields from the dust. 

Nipp gazed around, trying to figure out why they were there. "Are you going to leave us here on the desert, Old Man?"

"I wouldn't be here if I was," Michael said.

They waited for a couple more seconds before the sand in front of them began moving apart, and in its place a large metallic door arose. It was an elevator. A ding followed and it opened.

"Follow me," Michael beckoned, leading the way into the elevator. His guard was the last one inside (carrying two briefcases), leaving the pilot behind. The door closed and the sand covered the ground again, like nothing was ever there.

"I see now, this is an elevator," said Gina, touching its surface as it went down.

"Wow, that wasn't obvious," Nipp remarked, making Michael and his guard chuckle.

"Shut up."

Nipp stuck his tongue out at her.

The elevator stopped and the door opened. The four of them got out. They found themselves in a medium sized room with a lot of people holding tablets, too busy to even look at the four. There were multiple holographic screens on the side that took everyone's attention.

"What is this place?" Nipp asked, curious as ever.

"Welcome to Cantona," replied Michael, grinning. "The world's best betting ground. But it's only for the rich, like me."

"Is that what those briefcases are for?" Gina asked, staring at the screens as there were men and women shooting each other, stabbing one another, and showing all acts of violence.

"Yes, and no." Michael stopped and turned to the two teenagers. "There are multiple rooms dealing with different bets. This room, for example, deals with bailing out top tier criminals. Those blacklisted in each nation. And then we pay those same criminals to hunt down terrorists."

"Criminals hunting down other criminals," Nipp said.

"You can say that."

"How does it work?" Gina asked.

"It's easy: Us, the bettors, choose one criminal to bail out and give him or her a time frame to kill a terrorist of our choosing. The less time they take to do their job, the more money the bettor receives."

"Are bettors allowed to bet against each other?" Gina had a lot of questions lined up, but Michael didn't seem bothered by them. Actually, he looked happy sharing what he knew with the two.

"Definitely. Another bettor can hire a criminal to kill yours, especially if you bail out someone who was once charged with terrorism. You want to know what's even more fun? You can warn the terrorist about their impending deaths, just to make it more exciting." 

He sounds like a total psycho. Black Santa sends people like Michael to jail, Nipp thought.    

"And how do you know if the kill is done?"

"There are hundreds of satellites outside our beautiful planet. Unless you live underground, we can see everything."

"But why are you doing this, playing with people's lives?" Gina's tone showed her to be in pain at what the rich men were doing. Though Nipp was hearing of Cantona for the first time, he wasn't shocked that such a place existed. The rich always found something to spend their money on to entertain themselves, and it always came at the expenses of others.