The first blow was my fist—it couldn’t be anything else. I swung down hard and fast with my left, refraining from activating the powered exoskeleton only at the last second and snapping his face sideways in a spray of blood as his nose broke.

I rammed the lance into his stomach and triggered it.

He’d lost a bit of the air in his lungs at the blow to his face, but he managed a respectable scream of pain before his body locked up and he chewed on his own tongue.

I pulled the lance back a few seconds later, grabbing him by the hair and dragging him from the bed, throwing him down the three marble steps to smack face-first into the floor.

He shook and whimpered, trying to get one arm under him as he coughed and squealed. The blood spurting from his tongue made it clear he’d really done a number on it.

Well, he wasn’t getting off that easy. Oh fuck no. I kicked him in the face, then dropped the first of my two small medikits on the floor in front of him. I rested my new toy on the wooden table and checked the bedside storage, finding a snub-nosed slug thrower that looked more like it should be riding in a hidden thigh holster under a dress than a real weapon, but hey.

I pocketed it, watching him, as he frantically activated the medikit, stabbing it directly into his tongue and screaming as it went to work, repairing the damage and keeping him alive, as well as able to answer my questions.

I checked the other side of the bed, finding a large hunting style knife, heavily worn, and clearly valuable for its age, if nothing else.

I took it and walked around the bed as he tried to make it to the lance before me, clearly in shock and not considering that it was a security weapon, and therefore auto-locked to the user.

Rather than deactivate it, and ruin that particular surprise too soon, I kicked his foot out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor. Then I took a good windup and punted him as hard as I could in the side, hearing ribs break.

He collapsed, wheezing and crying out, blubbering, trying to get out that he didn’t know who I was, that I had the wrong room.

I knew better. I waited, seeing the way he braced one arm under himself and shifted. My fucking years of training, of fighting and killing on the front lines made his intentions as clear as if he’d written me a fucking love note and sent it in triplicate.

He lunged for the weapon. The cry of pain as his freshly broken ribs shifted almost made the entire fucking day worth it, as I dragged the weapon out of reach, and slammed the blade down, driving it through his hand and into the counter, nailing him in place.

He screamed. He fucking screamed so loud I knew that Fergie and Scott would hear it in the next fucking life, and I booted him in the face hard enough he fell sideways and half cut his hand free.

“Kabutt,” Bowdoin whispered, clearly in shock.

“Stay the fuck out of this!” I snarled, furious that he even dared interrupt this most sacred of times.

“You…you need information…?” he pointed out, and I growled, hating that I did, and couldn’t torture the fuck to death.

No, I needed to get that information first.

“Fine.” I squatted across from Tyrannus, staring into his eyes, seeing the open fear and confusion, smelling the rank, stale booze on his breath, and listening to him babble that I had the wrong person, and that he’d never tell anyone, just to go, to leave him.

I reached up and flicked the latches, releasing my riot helmet, then dragged it off, tossing it toward the door for later, and waited.

Tyrannus’s voice trailed off as his eyes widened. Fear became bowel-loosening terror, as he realized that not only did I not have the wrong room, but I was there most definitely for him.

“Kabutt,” he whispered, eyes like fucking saucers. “You don’t under—”

I hit him, a straight right, snapping his head back and making him shriek as the blade cut even further through his hand. His voice rose in another scream, before I grabbed him around the throat with my left hand and squeezed.

The scream died before it got really started. My left thumb laid flat against his windpipe, and I increased the pressure over and over, slowly crushing it.

I stopped long before I wanted to. Fuck, I wanted to watch his eyes pop out of his face, but I needed him alive. For now.

“Tyrannus, you traitorous piece of shit, I’m going to give you a single fucking chance to live, before I go all out and do what I really, really want to do, and torture you to death. Blink once if you understand,” I said softly. My voice shook with suppressed emotion.

He blinked, quickly.

“You sent us to that site to fuck us over. It was deliberate, wasn’t it?”

He stared at me, face purple as he tried to speak, and I hesitated before I relaxed the pressure slightly, letting him breathe.

“Was told…*cough*…to send…”

“Who by?”

“Corp.”

“I fucking know that, you little shit!” I snarled. “They paid the fucking bill and dropped creds in your account, and you danced to their tune. That’s how you ended up here. But WHY!” I roared into his face.

“You killed my team, you ruined my fucking life and saddled me with shitty mods, all because you could. Then you fucking stole my suit! Oh, I fucking know you took it…” I assured him, seeing the terror in his eyes. “The only thing I don’t know is why! If you’d planned that shit better, you’d have taken us all down, you’d have stolen our suits…But is that it? You were just too fucking incompetent to do it?” I shook him as he tried to speak, babbling something incomprehensible.

“What?”

“Didn’t know!” He swore. “Corium, that’s all I knew about!”

“Bullshit!”

“No!” he managed to get out, his eyes filled with terror, and I let the pressure off a bit more. “My *cough* handler! He paid me to send the team for the rod…Blue Team was headed for a different mission. I diverted them, got them there ahead of schedule, and he wanted to make sure we got it back, that’s all. So he paid me to make sure you went as well!”

“So, what? You fucked it all up? You got us and Blue there before they were ready? The scavs were being lazy and it all went tits up?”

I scoffed.

“Didn’t know!” he begged. “We didn’t know about the scavs. Not straightaway! We thought it was a system failure that caused it to crash. Then, when it was taken to the site, maybe scavs—we didn’t care! You were supposed to kill them all and get the Corium back. It was part of the Sentinel Project!”

I stared at him, having no clue about any project, and not liking that he was adamant that he didn’t know what happened.

“Bullshit!” I snapped. “You’d not be here, you’d not be getting made a fucking corpo for fucking that up!”

“No!” he gasped. “No, the sentinel was fine, as long as it was covered up, all good!”

“What was covered up?” I snarled.

“The Corium—it was rigged with the rest of the satellite as an orbital weapon. The scavs hit the satellite with a missile, that was a fucker, but the Corium could be used again. It’s too valuable to waste, so they wanted you to recover it!”

“And my suit?!” I snarled, and he flinched. “Where the fuck is my suit, you little shit…” I punched him in the stomach, then again, and again.

“Don’t know…” He wheezed. “Melted…”

“Melted? Fine!” I roared, hitting him again and again, then pausing as he tried to speak. “No, no, you don’t need to fucking try that shit anymore!” I snarled. “You had your chance!”

I stood, dragging him upright and triggering one of my stored charges to rip his hand free of the embedded knife. He screamed, and I carried him to a chair, an old-looking one, all carved wood and shit.

I slammed him into it, then took a few quick steps, grabbed the lance and triggered it, extending it slowly upward as he squirmed, trying to avoid it.

The tip touched the underside of his chin, and I pressed harder. The prongs slid further open to the sides to sit over his lower jaw and cheeks, even as smoke curled up from their contact points and he shrieked over and over.

“Kabutt…if you keep going, you’ll fry his Key. We won’t get anything else from him!” Bowdoin shouted. “Fuck, man, your suit! You’ll not get your suit!”

That made it through my rage.

I needed my suit, or I’d never be able to find Richie and Sync. Without the suit, they died, and this shit got off too easy!

I pulled it back, staring at him as he shook and quivered in the seat, blood and piss running down his legs.

Then I tossed the lance aside and moved.

I levered the blade free of the table, and used it to cut the sex swing down, then stripped it into long cables. Those cables I used to bind him to the chair, before grabbing my second small medikit. I injected him with it, grabbing another chair and dragging it over to stare into his eyes as he slowly recovered.

When he focused on me again, he jerked his hands and legs, trying to get free, until he realized that I’d tied him to it well, and he started to babble some shit about having nothing to do with my suit.

I knew better.

“You see this?” I picked up a large medikit and set it on the floor to my side, then the second one. “And these?” I pulled the pliers I’d swiped from the maintenance office earlier free. “I’m going to torture you,” I told him, watching his expression.

“I’ve had you cut off from the net, and we’ve set this room to block all sounds. I’ve got about six hours before the next shift change, so we’ve got at least that long here. I’m going to torture you to the edge of death, then use these medikits.” I nodded to them, and he stared at me, one eye wide with disbelief, the other swelling shut.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“I’m going to wait until you recover…then I’m going to start again,” I said. “I wanted my suit back. I need my suit, but you don’t have it, and you don’t know where it is. That was your only bargaining chip. I’ve lost my suit? Fuck it then. All of this?” I gestured around the room we were in.

“I’ll never get out of here, not alive, not after what I did to get in here. So this is how it ends.” I smiled. “You killed my team, and I’m going to make your death fucking terrible. Then, when they come for me? I’ll go happy.”

“You…you can’t!” he half begged and half wept.

“Oh, I can, and I fucking will. So, tell me, dickhead, which is your favorite finger?” I grinned at him deliberately as I reached for his hand, the pliers gripped tight.

“NOOOO!” he screamed. The words fell out in a desperate rush. “Transport! It’s in transport! It was repaired. Someone fucked up…It should have been melted, but it was marked for repairs…You couldn’t use it, so I…I…”

“Yes?” I hissed, slowly increasing the pressure on the pliers.

“I sold it to M-Corp!” he screamed. “Please! I sold it to M-Corp. It’s why I’m here!”

“They made you corpo and gave you enough money to sit here, all for my fucking suit?” I snarled.

“No! It’s not…They didn’t pay me, not yet!”

“Then why the fuck…It’s here?” I asked, suddenly connecting the dots. “It’s fucking here?”

“Not yet.” He wept. “It’s on its way. I’m supposed to be here to confirm it’s intact and to go over the next stage.”

“Which is?”

“It’s going to the Ghost Squad, M-Corp’s Ghost Squad…They’re corpo black ops, deniable…” He shook his head. “They’ll fucking kill us both for this. Nobody knows…”

“They’ll have to find us first.” I snorted, seeing it as another fucking addition on the list of people who wanted me dead these days. I stood and moved to the nearest closet, searching it quickly as he sat there, weeping.

“We’re dead…we’re so dead! They’ll never believe I didn’t tell you,” he blubbered, and I ignored him.

Nothing in the first one, nothing in the second—nothing of use anyway. But the third? That was it. A small shelf held his datadeck, as well as all the various crap that anyone who was serious about that shit always seemed to have. Special gloves, cables, fucking random clips and shit: I didn’t care about most of it, but I grabbed the deck and the cable, plugging the cable in and stepping up to stare into his one open eye. I rammed the other end of the cable into his Keystone, forcing the link between him and it, then sent a connection request, one that he accepted instantly.

He was broken, and he knew the only way he died fast now was by doing what I wanted. It was that, or die fucking slowly, a digit or a tooth at a time.

“Sending the request to pair…Got it, got root…Fuck’s sake, you people…” I saw Bowdoin shaking his head in my HUD as I waited. “Okay, he’s transferring all his backups to the deck…”

“My credits,” I snapped at him. “Give me my fucking credits back, and the routing details for my suit!”

“I’ve already got them,” Bowdoin said. “Give me a minute, maybe two, and we’ll have everything from him on the deck…Shit, there’s some serious corpo-sec shit on here…He’s auth’d us, but…”

“Can you divert my suit?” I snapped at him.

“It’s not that fucking simple. It’s in a specialized transporter…I’m having to work around the security lockouts. Right, right, where the hell do you want me to send this when I get there?”

“Where?”

“Through the lockouts!” he snapped. “Fuck’s sake, I’m trying to divert a private transport for mil-spec gear, stuff that shouldn’t be anywhere outside of the army or the highest corpo armories, and it’s being monitored by M-Corp! You think I’m a fucking god?”

“Shit…” I growled, trying to think. I should have thought about this. I’d known I couldn’t have it delivered to my fucking apartment like a pizza, I just…with everything that was going on, I’d not had time to think about this shit again. I was going to get Lucky to stash it somewhere, then he’d proved fucking unreliable…And it wasn’t like I could ask Gunther to hold it for me. He’d either sell it, or be raided for it and murdered!

“I…” I racked my brain, trying to think of where the hell I could send it, when Bowdoin spoke up.

“Look, I’ve done some work with a smuggler now and then. He’s an orc, and an absolute dick, but…”

“Oshbob?” I asked, and he hesitated, nodding.

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Fuck’s sake, he’s like a rash! Everywhere I go, some fucker works for, or with him!”

“He’s a fucking crime lord, what the hell do you expect!” Bowdoin snorted. “Look, can he use it?”

“No, nobody but me can pilot it,” I assured him.

“Fine, I’ll divert it to him, get him to stash it in a warehouse. Then you can arrange to collect it, all right? He’s got a load of warehouses—smuggler, after all—so he’ll probably never even check it, just overcharge you for accepting the package and holding it, all right?”

“Yeah, fuck it, I’ve got a meeting with him tomo—today, I guess, anyway.”

“Well, that’s good. Look, this is gonna take some time, and…I’m just gonna say it. I don’t need this shit. I don’t want to see what you’re gonna fucking do to that guy.”

“He deserves it,” I growled, and Bowdoin nodded.

“Maybe, yeah. He’s a fucking dickhead, and you said he killed your team. Richie?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “It’s complicated, but yeah.”

“Then fine. I’m fine with him dying, and fucking painfully, but I don’t need to fucking see it, all right? I’m going to have nightmares as it is! You’re…yeah, I’m opting out.”

“Can you patch me through to someone, before you go?” I asked, and he nodded.

“I’ll keep a line open for now. Just, you know, send a message if you need me. But right now, I don’t need to be here, not for this, and I think I earned my creds, right?”

“And more,” I agreed, a little deflated as I queued up first the remaining twelve thousand credits I owed the hacker, and then another ten thousand on top, sending it over.

“Thanks, Kabutt,” Bowdoin said after a few seconds, clearly struggling with something, before he leaned forward, and stared at the pickup. “Look, I know you’re a good guy and all…”

We both snorted at that, before he went on.

“All right, a guy, one who pays what he agrees and gives bonuses, even if not a good guy, but seriously? Listen here, you moron. Richie treated me fair. Now, you’ve done me a good turn, so I’m about to do you one. When you deal with hackers, you need to fucking read what you’re giving them access to. With the permissions you granted me? I could have fucking made you my toy.”

“You’d have regretted it…” I said after a second’s thought, and he laughed.

“Root access, Kabutt. Root fucking access. I could have shut all your mods down, including your eyes and your organelles, or set them to reverse. I could have transferred all your money to me…Incidentally, what are we doing with dickhead’s creds?”

“How much is there?”

“Over two hundred grand…He’s been a busy boy, considering he had nearly double that a week ago.”

“Transfer it to mine. He can help pay off Reign’s debt.”

“Done. Okay, I’ve set you to be able to send out, nobody else can, and I’ve locked all of his shit down. Anything else?”

“No, I can sort most of it—wait! Can you separate out his conversations with his handler at M-Corp, and—”

“Already done. I set the datadeck to back up everything in his Keystone. Give it, five, maybe ten minutes and you’ll have it all to look over whenever you want. Looks like he was blackmailing someone and—”

“Thanks, Bowdoin…seriously.” I watched as the messages popped up, each confirming that he’d relinquished the access levels I’d allowed him. A trickle of cold sweat rolled down my back at his admission of the power I’d unthinkingly given him in my distracted and desperate state.

Once I was sure he was gone, I sent the major a call request and moved back, sitting down across from the weeping Tyrannus and regarding him, waiting.

There was so much I wanted to do, to say, but most of it came down to releasing my boiling hatred on him, screaming and beating him to death.

His entire defense was basically claiming that he was incompetent, and a backstabbing shit, but he didn’t mean for the team to die.

That was it.

“This—this won’t be over quickly,” I assured him, my anger rising again, and he surprised me with a sob that became a laugh.

“You think?” he asked me. “Whoever you’re talking to, they’ve diverted the suit? Once that’s gone, when it doesn’t turn up here…? When they realize that they can’t contact me anymore?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I growled.

“You think your suit’s the only one?” he cried. “Fuck, no wonder your team died. You’re as dumb as I thought you were! They’ve been collecting them!”

“Eh?”

“Why do you think I’m here!” he shouted. Tears streamed down his face, blood still dripping from dozens of minor wounds that the small medikits hadn’t been enough to seal. “They’re fucking here, Kabutt! The Ghost Squad! It’s under the fucking pleasure tower! I’m a guest…but I’m also a fucking prisoner!”

I stared at him, as the call to the location the major gave me connected.

“Kabutt?” he asked grimly, face and voice scrambled. “You have the data from Tyrannus?”

“I do, sir,” I assured him, uploading the data I’d gotten from Tyrannus, all his comm logs between him and the corp specifically, as well as all his comms over the last two years. “He admitted that M-Corp has a Ghost Squad, sir, black ops, and they’re housed here.”

“They’re there?” he asked, sounding disbelieving. “Their squad is in that fucking building, right now?”

“Apparently so, sir, under the building.”

“Evidence?”

“Just his word, but they have significant security here, sir. Not in the main building, but under it? They’ve separated off the area. No access to the lower sub-basements, and the only details I can find show heavy weapons emplacements. My hacker found evidence of an RI in the building, a security one—”

“That’s common enough.”

“Yes sir, but there’s a newly awakened AI as well, apparently. He found evidence of it watching him, but as long as he stayed away from the lower areas, it didn’t give a shit about him.”

“Defenses?” he asked, and I paused before going on.

“I encountered military-grade turrets outside the main security office. Beyond that, nothing really. But we were moving in the opposite direction all the time, so if that AI is really defending the lower levels?”

“They’d not waste an AI unless there was something there, that’s for sure,” he agreed, clearly thinking hard. “This could work, this could really—” He broke off again, then came back.

“Kabutt, I need you to be clear now. Does Tyrannus have access to the net? Is there anyone who can get these details, any other sources of the data?”

“The data…no, sir,” I said. “I’ve uploaded from him to me, and then to you…”

“And your hacker. I need locational data…he’s there with you? He’s close by?”

“Uh…” I started to get a bad feeling about this, and decided that he didn’t need the whole truth, and certainly not about where Bowdoin was. “We’ve got the areas we needed to locked down, sir. Anything that gets sent from those we’ve interacted with is being stopped at the local node.”

“And your call to me?”

“It’s a single broadcast, sir. Routed through…I don’t entirely understand it. My hacker is…in the security office. I told him to set me up with a single-use message to contact you. Once I’m done here? I’ll return to the office, and we’ll erase our presence from the system, then leave.”

“Excellent,” he approved. “It’s a corpo site with stolen military technology that they’re hiding, though, Sergeant. I’ll need you to stay on site. Keep your entire team there for now. I’ll send Blue Team to extract you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied, feeling less and less sure about this. Blue Team? They were good, sure, but if there was a corpo ghost team below us, as soon as they saw the helos incoming…not to mention the gamma cannons on the roof? Blue Team would be taken out, and…

“Sir, there’s gamma cannons on the roof, but if we take them out, it might trigger the AI’s protocols…”

“Don’t you worry about that, son. Just listen to me. This is an order, all right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Kill that shit Tyrannus,” he ordered. “Make it fast. I need to know that he’s dead. Do it now.”

“Sir…” I hesitated, and he spoke again.

“Dammit, soldier, I need to know his evidence is gone. Do that now. Your revenge isn’t a fucking priority, not here!”

“Yes sir,” I agreed, hating it, but trained over years to obey. I dragged the handgun out and turned to face Tyrannus, who sneered at me.

“Huh, hiding the evidence, eh?”

“Shut the fuck up, Tyrannus,” I snapped, then shook my head. “Any last words?”

“You told me to shut up.”

“Good words,” I approved, aiming at the point just above the bridge of his nose.

“Make sure you erase his Key as well,” the major ordered. “Is it done?”

“We didn’t send the sharks,” Tyrannus said suddenly. “Don’t get me wrong. If I could have killed you all and stolen the suits? I’d have done it, but it never occurred to me,” he admitted, all fear gone as he saw his inevitable death coming. “It wasn’t me or my liaison who set this shit up. I just sold them your suit and some secrets they couldn’t get otherwise. Think about it, Kabutt! You interrupted them before they were ready. If I’d sent you to have the suits taken out by the AROC? I’d have sent just you, not Blue Team as well.”

“Sir…” I paused. “I haven’t located my suit, not yet. He could have it anywhere. We need to—”

“Kill him! Fuck’s sake, Kabutt, kill him NOW! That’s an order, soldier!” the major roared.

I stared at the little shit before me. I hated him—fuck, I hated him—but I shifted my aim to the right slightly and pulled the trigger.

“He’s dead.” I stared into the stunned eyes of Tyrannus, the bullet having missed him by an inch, if that.

“And the Keystone?” the major asked.

“I put the bullet through it, sir.”

“Again. Make fucking sure!”

I fired again, shooting his bed twice more, then holstered the gun.

“It’s destroyed, sir.”

“And your copy?” he asked.

“I just relayed it to you, sir. I’ll delete my logs now…Done.”

“Good. Good man, Kabutt. I’m going to send you a program, a little something to run. It’s just a cleaner. We need to make sure those details don’t make it out, you understand?”

“Yes, sir, but the link here is narrow, and goes through the security system. Anything you send—”

“Fuck!” he snarled. “Fine, fine! The security office…go there. I’ll make sure Blue Team knows exactly where you are. Out.”

With that, he was gone, and I was left with a shitty feeling in the pit of my stomach as I exchanged a long look with Tyrannus. Too many details that I’d ignored until now suddenly linked up.

The sharks that had hit us, the erasure of the files, the determination that I erase any hint of the AROC…supposedly all of this was to stop military tech from being misused. And yet, he’d not asked about my suit. As far as he knew, it was fucking lost, out there somewhere—some random fucker was shipping it back to one of the other cities.

“Reign?” I called, activating the link to her, and getting her face popping up. A smile started but vanished as she saw the look on my face.

“What’s up, sir?”

“We might be about to get royally fucked,” I warned her. “Set the security office to kill anyone who’s not you three and move out. Get to the—”

That was as far as I got, before the window behind me detonated. The reinforced glass blew inward in a great wave that pockmarked my armor and rendered Tyrannus down to soup stock.