The Payne Diaries - Max Payne 1- Part 1

That’s where it all started…

I walked through the door and saw it, what had happened to my home. An unmistakable sense of fear had fallen over me after I witnessed the state of the house. The markings on the wall, the smell of blood in the air, all that and more - but all I could think about was Michelle and the baby. I didn’t care about the photos, or the possessions, all I cared about was their safety. After a drunkenly filled evening of poker, I quickly sobered up to the sound of a ringing phone, the laughter that had once echoed in my brain was quickly replaced with urgency. After answering it, I realized the individual on the other end didn’t care about my situation, but rather was making sure that whatever was done… was done.

Dread flooded through my body. I slammed the phone down and sprinted up the stairs. Only after reaching the top did I hear the sound of screams. I tried to take a shortcut through the bathroom doors to reach Michelle, but the second door was jammed. I turned around and ran across to the baby’s room instead. There were two men there. Their guns were drawn. I moved for my own, drawing it on a dime and managing to put two well place bullets into the both of them. Moving into the room, my heart sunk as I saw that the crib was flipped over, a pool of blood formed beside it.

It was at that moment that my fear turned into rage…

Bursting through the adjacent door in the room, I met with another intruder whose eyes matched mine. My blood-boiling over from what I had seen, I shot the individual more times than was necessary. After cooling down, I ran into our bedroom, that anger would slowly turn into sadness as I saw Michelle’s lifeless corpse lay upon the bed. I stood there, frozen. Unable to comprehend the sight in front of me, unwilling to face it as fact. Yet, there I stood, having seen it with my own two eyes. Two eyes that would see that haunting image every time I fell asleep. And for the next three years, I did.

Three years later and the DEA finally got a break in the ongoing Valkyr drug case. Valkyr was a terribly addictive drug, one that they found traces of in my family’s killers during the autopsy. The break itself involved going after one Jack Lupino, who was part of the underground crime family here in the city. I was given the go ahead by the department to meet with my buddy, Alex, who had requested to see me. The two of us had been working undercover, so going over the case together only felt natural. After arriving at the Roscoe Street station by train, I could already feel something was wrong about the scene. Maybe it was the air, maybe it was the hidden body I had discovered, but something about the place didn’t feel right.

Gunfire erupted. After leaving where I had found the body, a firefight between me and numerous thugs broke out. I fought my way through the length of the station as I feared the worst for Alex. Eventually, I found my way down some stairs to a room where a surviving member of staff was being held. Upon freeing him, the employee told me that we needed to restart the power to the station. Made sense to me. We proceeded up the stairs to a locked door that I passed by earlier, not thinking much of it at the time. Upon unlocking it, the employee was blown away upon the doors swinging open. I would’ve felt worse about it, but evidently I was the lucky charm for death. I shook the feeling off and ran into the room to combat the man who had gunned him down, luckily succeeding. Turning on the power, I ran back downstairs and searched for my next objective.

The glowing train seemed like a reasonable next step. I boarded, looking for anything to get the thing going. Eventually, I found the go switch, and go it did, right into a barricaded wall. The train rammed through, going off the rails in the process. Once I regained my senses, I exited through the front door and found even more thugs waiting for me on the other side of the barricade. After dealing with them and making my way towards a tunnel that they were guarding, things began to get stranger and stranger. Why was there a tunnel? Where was Alex? Was he… dead? I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew I was going to have to deal with it. One way or another.