CHAPTER TWO—THE “NEWS”

John’s jaws were clenched, his muscles tense and his face was probably red.

“Nnngh! “

Three!”

“Hngh!”

“Four!”

Just one more rep to go!

At three-hundred and fifty pounds, John was able to do five reps. Once that became easy, he would up that to six, then seven, and then jump that up to four-hundred pounds.

Except he wasn’t certain he wanted to be that big.

“Hey meathead,” Kyle said as he walked into the workout room.

“Hnnnngh!”

“Fiiiive!”

The weights clanked down heavily on the bench. John breathed, then sat up to see Kyle still towel-drying his hair. He was barefoot, skinny as a rail and shirtless. But his abs were something the ladies seemed to like.

Or so he said.

“What’s… what’s up, Small fry?”

Kyle chuckled. “Man, I’m so bored.”

John got up and went to the bar. He took out a cold energy drink from the fridge, popped the seal and downed the whole thing. “I’m starving.”

“You’re not bored?”

John shrugged as he activated the online government-approved in-home holo-net device. Or course, theirs was hacked, so they could get any manner of censored content they wished.

Most of the restaurants online catered to the little folk—which meant the food was synthetic. But there were plenty of expensive establishments for upper crust types. Being a billionaire himself, John qualified.

It was too bad he had to be so rich just to order decent food.

“Why not go to a party or something?” he suggested.

“Ugh!” Kyle noised. “I just did my uncle’s gala thing four days ago.”

“You know, Kyle,” John said, “something tells me ‘galas’ aren’t really your kind of party. “

“No, no,” he said. “It was pretty cool. They had a sports car show with the latest models and a bunch of babes in bikinis and the biggest open bar you’ve ever seen—all atop the Mura Vivo building. You know—swimming pools, games—all that.”

“And that wasn’t good enough for you?”

“Man, I need some excitement.”

“That’s not exciting?” John perused the menus. The problem with rich people food was that the portions were pathetic. John would need ten just to fill him up.

“No, John,” Kyle complained. “I need some excitement, man.”

“Ah,” John said as he cracked the seal on another cold drink. This one was water. He took a sip. “So you want to take Max and Staxx out on the town.”

“Damn straight! Come on, what do we got?”

John shrugged. “Well… nothing, really.”

“No,” Kyle whined as he ambled over to the sofa like a zombie and let his head fall back. He flopped down on the cushions. “Don’t tell me that. We gotta have… I don’t know… something!”

“Lexa,” John said.

She appeared. “Yes, John? How can I help you?”

“Bring up that thing I’ve been looking at. Shit—no not that.”

“What was that?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing.”

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“That wasn’t ‘nothing,’” Kyle said. “I saw babes.”

John sighed. “It was just the annual Miss Fit Catalogue.”

“Oh, I see,” Kyle said. “You like that kinda thing? I always thought women who did weight lifting were manly.”

“Gods,” John said. “It’s not a body building contest.”

“He’s right,” Lexa said. “Miss Fit is an annual athletics competition for women, though body building is not part of the—“

“Okay, okay,” Kyle said.

John sipped his water again. “Lexa, bring up that other thing.”

“Yes,” Lexa said, bringing up the news feeds John had collected.

MONSTER KILLS FOUR, in LT-D-98 Today, the top news article read. It was dated two weeks ago.

“Oh not that,” Kyle said.

He’d heard of the monster going around. Of course, that was just a scam or some kind of prank. It had to be.

“It could be real,” John argued. “You don’t think the MSM really wants this shit to get out do you?”

“No, but… It’s probably just some serial killer. That’s boring.”

“What,” John asked, “you don’t want to hunt a killer down? Isn’t that what you do in your VR thing?”

“My ‘VR thing’? Um, you sound like my grandpa!”

John chuckled, though he didn’t let Kyle know that he had delivered the question in that manner on purpose. In fact, John had slipped into Kyle’s games on more than one occasion just to hunt him down and kill him.

But that was a secret.

It was difficult to hold back his laughter when Kyle raged from his gaming booth.

Poor idiot.

“Yeah, well, the VR simulations are your thing, not mine.”

“John!” Kyle exclaimed with frustration. “Help!”

“Look,” John said, “this thing is real. Isn’t that right, Lexa?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “I’ve coalesced independent articles and videos from various independent and unapproved news sources from different outlets, including the Resistance Daily, the RLF News, the Truth Stream and last but not least, the Outlaw Times.”

“And what does the garbage MSM say about it?”

“Why?” John asked.

“I just want all sides.”

“The mainstream media,” Lexa said in her highly commercialized voice, “has written the deaths off, claiming various disparaging stances, including work place accidents, spurious witnesses testimony as well as deaths attributed to any killer as being wrongful information, since some of the deaths and disappearances have taken place in different locations.”

“No investigation?”

Lexa moved her hand over the floating holo-keys and brought up a video of LC Police investigators combing a crime scene. There were LCPD police, onlookers and paramedics putting white tarps over some corpses.

“As you can see, Mr. Harrowitz—“

“I thought I told you to call me Kyle?”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa said. “It’s not within my normal programming to be on a first name basis.”

“You call John by his first name!”

“Oh,” Lexa said with an alarmed look. “I do, don’t I? Hmm. It must be because we spend more time together.”

“Oh gods!” Kyle howled. “Is this passive aggressive behavior? From a freakin’ hologram?!”

John shrugged. “Lexa’s quite the unique personality.”

Lexa smiled. “Thank you, John.”

“Okay,” Kyle said frustratedly. “So clearly there’s a killer on the loose and our overlords don’t want to make this mainstream. But why not?”

“I’ve done most of the leg work,” John said. “It seems there’s quite a few people who have gotten sick, either from the water or just the general environment.”

“Life City’s polluted,” Kyle said. “The environmental activists have been shitting in the pond while they promote green energy on grassy knolls thousands of miles from here. What’s new?”

“Exactly,” John said. “Now it’s been reported that several corps have been dumping toxic waste in this area for a few years now. Lexa?”

“Yes,” she said with a warm smile toward John.

Kyle rolled his eyes.

“Envi-Tech,” Lexa continued, “is a prime culprit. The corporation has had twenty-seven lawsuits levied at them since the beginning of last year alone. The lawsuits claim they’ve been dumping toxic post processing waste into the lower districts and that it’s been making the residents in these areas sick.”

“What else?” Kyle asked.

“Other lawsuits have been levied toward the Krai Firm and Strogaus.”

“Strogaus?” Kyle asked. “Isn’t that a cloning facility? They grow that fake meat crap.”

“Yes,” Lexa said. “But that is not their only enterprise. They also use a techno-mage process called ‘layering’ when doing a lot of their work.”

“Oh good, illegal magical science,” Kyle said.

“Was illegal,” John said.

“The people who made that legal are the illegal ones. We should drag them out into the streets and shoot them in the head while the six o’-fuckin’-clock news broadcasts it to the world.”

“That aside,” John said, “Strogaus is also involved in interspecies cloning, as well as human and animal clone replacements. You can even have an engineered child made.”

“Shit,” Kyle said. “And what’s cloning and killers got to do with the environment?”

“Environment?” John asked. “Well, probably nothing,” he said, “but if there’s a killer, and this isn’t some ‘poisoned earth’ thing, then they could be involved.”

“Well I hope so,” Kyle said. “Because if these guys have accidentally made a monster that’s killing people, then we’re taking out the people responsible.”

“That’s a tall order,” John said. What Kyle was proposing was pretty risky.

“Don’t care,” Kyle said. “We do this thing, and we finish it.”

“All right,” John said.

Kyle pointed a finger. “We’ll go into their head offices and shoot the place up if we have to. Max and Staxx style.”

With John, it was always a balancing act between caution, tearing the system down one job at a time, and having a kickass time.

With Kyle…

Shit, it’s just kick ass all the damn time.

And that made John Smile. “Sure thing,” he said.

“On another note,” Lexa said cheerfully, “another point of interest that you might find entertaining is that the local residents of the lower districts affected have taken to calling the killer—assuming there is indeed a killer—the ‘Junkyard Lich.’”

Kyle moaned.

“What is it?”

“Man, I’m so bored! Sure this thing’s even real?”

“The bodies are real.”

“If the overlords are responsible for whatever’s goin’ on, then somebody’s getting tossed out another window.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Cause it’s the truth, Staxx”

“Well let’s check it out and see what we find.”

“Takin’ guns.”

“Hells yes, Max.”

“Now…” John said. “What should we have for dinner?”