Andie screamed as she fell, only to hit hard, shoulder-first, on the steep rock face and roll across sharp pine needles and boulders. She flew off a ledge and tumbled onto something metallic and in motion. "Ouch. Was that necessary?" she yelled, breathing hard and trying not to focus on the fact that she felt like she'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler.

"Who are you talking to?" Bad Andie said.

"Whoever is running this place."

"You think there's some all-powerful being creating our destiny?"

"In this case, yes. I have a theory."

The hard-moving something vibrated and shook beneath her aching back. There was something familiar about the chugging sound. A high-pitched whistle wailed, followed by a cloud of hot steam. She sat, waving her arms to clear the haze. It cleared enough to reveal a tunnel looming a scant twenty yards ahead.

Quickly, she resumed a horizontal position and imagined herself two-dimensional, careful not to breathe lest the oxygen in her lungs add to her horizontal height. She squeezed her eyes closed for good measure, but even behind the vantage point of her eyelids, Andie could tell she'd been swallowed by darkness. The cold air shrieked past her ears.

Hours passed.

Or maybe it was seconds. Andie had lost track of time, given that each moment was terror-filled. It is a truth universally acknowledged that terror-filled moments are exponentially longer than pleasant ones.

The train exited the tunnel into daylight. This was odd because, on the other side of the tunnel, it was decidedly night. But Andie didn't have half a breath to digest this, because gunshots sounded in the distance. A bullet whooshed past Andie's shoulder.

She rolled off the train and landed hard on a fruit stand.

Apples, watermelons, cherries—a veritable fruit salad—spattered across an ancient market square. "That hurt," Andie yelled, staggering up, shaking her fist at the sky. The fruit cart confirmed her theory. They had trapped her in a chase scene.

The fruit vendor shook his fist at Andie, swore in Italian or maybe Latin, well, some romance language anyway. A motorcycle with a rider, face concealed by a helmet, gunned over the fruity mess, shards of watermelon exploding in its wake. The bike slid into a U-turn, tires screeching, and came straight for Andie. Her head whipped back and forth, looking for somewhere to hide because it was obvious the guy was planning on turning her into shards next. But she was in the middle of an open square with nothing close enough to hide behind before said squashing would occur.

Someone in the crowd whistled. She spun. A woman who looked like Halle Berry, wearing an orange bikini with a white utility belt, tossed Andie a helmet. Another woman, this one in a white bikini, picked Andie up as if she weighed less than a trial balance, and positioned her on a red Ducati. Andie had never driven a Ducati or any other motorcycle, but she assumed it worked the same as on TV.

She gripped the handles with sticky, watermelon-scented hands and revved the engine. It emitted a satisfactory roar. The kickstand retracted. The motorcycle took off, the other bike in close pursuit. Bouncing down narrow cobblestoned alleys, Andie decided, as her ass repeatedly slammed into the leather seat, that cobblestones were overrated as a street surface.

Out of nowhere, the loud, relentless strains of an electric guitar pierced the air, soon joined by a restless drum and insistent timpani. A quick glance over her shoulder told her the other Ducati was gaining on her.

"Do something!" Bad Andie said.

"Shut up and let me drive."

Andie rose off the motorcycle, gripping the handlebars as she rocketed onto a half-constructed bridge. Andie glanced in the rear-view mirror. The unknown driver was only a second behind.

"Watch out. Brakes. Brakes."

The Ducati hurtled off the bridge, made a slow-motion arc over the water where a school of great whites breached ten feet out of the water, snapping their jaws animatedly like toothy, bloodthirsty dolphins at a marine theme park show.

The guitar riffs changed to an off-putting, accelerating tuba solo.

Ahead, a hulking, glass-skinned skyscraper loomed. Andie looked back in time to see her pursuer drop into the shark-infested waters. Her Ducati continued its forward trajectory, albeit now in slow motion. By the time she turned back around, it was too late to prevent a collision between the motorcycle and the rear end of a pristine red Lamborghini parked near the building. Dramatic, angry red flames charged into the sky. Holy crap. The impact sent her flying in real-time into a skip.

She landed on goose feathers. Andie sputtered and spat a mouthful of down into her feather-coated lap.

"Hey, you're in my skip," came a distant voice from above.

Andie craned her neck and squinted to see the source. About fifty floors up, a figure dressed all in black, down to a piratical mask and headscarf, crawled down the outside of the building. "Huh?" She flinched when the window a floor below the figure shattered and a bunch of unsavory-looking men inside the building reached for the climber.

Some of the glass shards landed on the feathers and in her lap. The climber (descender?) pushed with his feet against the window above his adversaries and let go. He dropped. Andie scuttled to a corner as the guy landed in the exact spot she had just vacated. He was panting, his cheek was bleeding, he had an enormous blaster hooked to his belt, and he wore the most bizarre-looking "gloves." They looked like rubbery dish gloves attached to Frisbees on the palms.

"Are you okay?" said Andie.

"You've come at last to fulfill my destiny. I've been waiting for you for nearly twenty years," he said, the Frisbee part of the gloves retracting into the palm.

"What? No. Me? I don't even know you." He peeled off the gloves and then removed the mask. "Tom Cruise?" He was Tom Cruise, but a young Jerry Maguire-era version.

"You do know me." He gave her his trademark charming white-toothed grin.

"Well, I mean, everyone knows of you, but I don't know you." Being friends with Sterling, Andie was mindful that people thought they knew the movie star because she came into their living rooms on a regular, albeit non-physical basis.

"And who are you?"

"My name is Andie. Andie Bank."

"Well, Andie Bank," he said, wiping the blood from his cheek with his sleeve. A few puffs of down stuck to the wound on his face. "You're here now, and I can leave this nightmare."

"You've lived here twenty years?"

"Yes. I mean, at first, I liked it. But you know. How long can you run? Not to mention everyone here keeps laughing at me because of my running style. They call me 'Pumpy Arms.'"*

"So rude!" Andie said, mostly to keep Tom on her good side. "But why would the aliens leave you here?"

Tom Cruise avoided her gaze.

"Didn't they agree to give you everlasting life, great food, sex, etcetera?"

"Yeah, but no one reads the fine print."

"What do you mean?" Andie narrowed her eyes. Aliens. Figures. Like some of Hollywood's major film studios, they try to sneak stuff into the fine print.

"Well, let's just say they didn't appreciate my religious viewpoint. These were not the aliens I expected. And this world is crap."

"So you tried to convert celebrities?"

"Maybe."

"On a world where the inhabitants are immortal denizens of a moon designed to grant their every desire?"

"Yeah."

The guys from inside the skyscraper picked this moment to slide down the exterior of the building, ropes tied around their waists, and make their way toward the skip. "And your friends up there?"

"Computer-generated villains," he spat, pulling his blaster out of the holster and firing up at them without even looking. One villain dangled lifelessly on his rope. "Yes, I've spent the last two decades running from expensive motor vehicles, explosives, and hoodlums. All computer-generated. We better go before they get here. They're armed. And stupid."

"Where are we going?"

"Look, there's no time to explain." He holstered his weapon, scooped her into his arms, and jumped easily out of the skip, scattering feathers. Why did everyone think carrying her around like a tiny, helpless baby was okay? Next, he would bark orders at her.

"Hold on tight," he barked.

"Put me down."

He ignored her. She held tight to his neck as he ran through the parking lot, bullets streaking past them—each one missing by a hair's width. After a few minutes, for no reason, the "men" ceased firing at them and stopped following. The music from nowhere ended. Tom put her down. "Why did they give up?"

"Give up? No. They're resetting for the next take. We have about three minutes before it starts up."

"You mean they're going to do this again?"

"Normally, yes. I do this same loop about fifty times a day. But not today, because you're here to save me."

"Okay, I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm saving you. If you hadn't noticed, I'm stuck here too. I fell into some kind of elevator shaft. I don't have any idea how to get back because I have no sense of direction. And I'm needed aboveground. My boyfriend has been abducted by an army of jellyfish drones, and my best friend is being held against my will. So line up, buddy. I have a few others to rescue before I worry about you." Okay, maybe she sounded a tad bitchy, but the guy thought carrying her was a good idea. And she didn't want to add any more items to her "People to Save," To-Do List.

His eyes grew round. "Elevator shaft? Where? That's the ticket out."

"I already said I don't know where it is. I am geographically challenged. But there must be other exits."

"If there were, I haven't found them, and I've been navigating this trope for twenty years. Just tell me exactly how you got here."

Andie relayed her excursion to Tom. He asked a lot of detailed questions and eventually concluded the elevator must be near the Pine Forest of Death (pleasant name!)

A low hum vibrated in Andie's chest. Tom glanced at the sky. "It's starting. Over here." He ran toward a line of Ducatis at the edge of the parking lot and helped her on. The wind whipped up, and the music followed—a cacophony of horns, causing Andie's heart to thud so hard, her pulse throbbed in her ears. Less than a quarter-mile away, a battalion of Blackhawk helicopters hung low in the sky like ... jellyfish drones.

Tom revved his engine. "Follow me."

"Why aren't they firing?"

"They're set to go when the motorcycles head out. It's all strictly scheduled."

"Then let's not go," Andie said, rationally.

"I vote for that too," Bad Andie said.

"This is not a democracy," Andie said.

"Believe me, I know."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It's just you have overlord tendencies."

"Do not."

"Why are you arguing when I'm agreeing with you about staying put?"

Tom snapped his fingers in her face. "Andie? Are you in there? We have to go. We can't stay here forever, but the Blackhawks can." He fired at one and it dropped from the sky and exploded in a fireball. The heat burned Andie's face.

"I hate chase scenes," Andie grumbled.

"Tell me about it."

They took off, crashing through the arm in the parking lot, onto a street, then into a forest. Even the music couldn't drown out the thwacking of helicopter blades as the Blackhawks gave chase.

They rode over forest trails while being shot at, with Tom occasionally aiming blindly behind him and blowing up a helicopter here and there. They jumped over streams. Traversed a chasm, landing hard on the other side, all while narrowly avoiding bullets. She recognized the gravel path. "This way," she yelled over the music. Finally, they arrived at the base of the elevator. "I found it!"

Tom turned his bike in a tight circle, kicking up pebbles, and skidded to a stop. Andie simply applied the brakes. The Blackhawks continued to fire and miss.

"It's here somewhere," Tom said, tracing his palm over the moss-covered stone surrounding the shaft entrance.

A Blackhawk bullet hit an inch from Andie's foot. "Faster!"

"Found it!" Tom tore away the moss, revealing a rusty button, and pressed it. Old machinery clanged and creaked. A glass elevator appeared at the entrance. Both the floor and the ceiling were shattered. Tom stepped in. "It's broken. I'm pretty sure it won't hold the both of us." She could tell he was lying.

The Blackhawks blew up both Ducatis. "You can't leave me here."

Tom leveled the blaster at her. "I'm really sorry, but someone has to take over for me in this damned trope. Apparently, this is your destiny. Maybe someone will rescue you in twenty years. Don't think I don't appreciate what you've done, though." He grinned and did that "so long sucker," dance like Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.

"Wait," Andie cried, trying and failing to zap him. A Blackhawk dropped so low and close it was not inconceivable that her head and neck might become painfully disconnected.

"I'm not a monster," Tom said, tossing her his weapon as the glass doors closed. The elevator disappeared along with the last shred of Andie's patience. She took cover in the elevator shaft and fired at the helicopter. But blowing it up did nothing to improve her mood, nor did it help her escape the trope. And escape she must, because no way was she spending the next twenty years with only Bad Andie for company.

"I heard that. Too bad I don't have the same luxury."

That did it. She tucked the blaster into the top of the spacesuit. Nothing is a "match for a good blaster at your side." Han Solo said that in Episode IV, and who was she to argue with Han?

No one. That was who. Andie unleashed a string of curses, mostly involving Tom Cruise's parentage and suggestions for where he could go and grabbed the first rung.