Chapter 23: The Auto-repair Shop

Indra Harmony’s findings on the murder of Johnathon Kubrick.

Johnathon Kubrick was a married, 29-year-old male identified dead in his home located in San Lagos on the 3rd of June, 2497, by his wife of two years upon coming home from a business trip. Mode of death was due to bleeding out from the mouth by a slashed-off tongue, however, we identified contusions around his mouth and neck, as well as chipped fingernails. They indicate that he was constrained by a ring-like apparatus we believe to have latched onto his face for purposes of prying his mouth open. Time of death is estimated to be at 1930 on the 2nd of June.

The mode of death aligns with the M.O of known mercenary, Lennon Culpa, otherwise known as Tonguelasher. Witness reports and security footage put him within the neighborhood at 2100, multiple claims of hearing disturbing screaming from Johnathon’s apartment at 1900, however they failed to report due to “how frequently his wife brought out the leash and whip”.

Lennon Culpa is known to have began his mercenary work three years prior but has been engaged in the criminal sphere since birth, having bought human meat and often making disturbing posts on the Abyssnet Forum page VortexEYE on topics regarding the taste of it and often claiming the tongue tastes best. On April 4th 2494, his seven-year girlfriend, dog and 2-year-old son were found dead with dissected tongues, and since then he has adopted extensive facial augmentation to keep his identity a secret.

Previous investigations have pinpointed his location by tracking the various cars that eventually lead him to the garage on Reminghunt 1498, owned by a Nathaniel Overrink. These cars were typically sent in for service, and would then be used for his crimes.

As for the reason why Tongueslasher was hired, Johnathon’s brother, Horace…

5:15 PM June 9th

Diana

The rest of the file dictated a complex family tree and history that could be summed up as Johanathon’s brother being a black sheep in the family of a long line of Corporates. Although Johnathon’s Neuroframe had been scrubbed clean, his wife pointed out her husband’s brother had sent death threats that she had relayed over to Indra Harmony during the initial assessment.

Admittedly, it still wasn’t clear if his brother had sent out the call, but it was pretty damn convincing that Tonguelasher had done it.

“What’s the bounty on him?” Choirmen said beside me, he drove calm even when speeding quickly through the city’s bustling traffic.

A voice, bitter and groggy, spoke from our comms. “Forty thousand.”

“Damn…” I whispered. “His record says seventeen kills that we know off… and that he receives Shardware from the Jaegers in exchange for protecting them. So why are we only going for him now?”

“Because he killed a damn corpo…” The voice from my comms was harsh. “Hell, that’s where 30k of the bounty came from. Placed by the widow.”

“Dead or alive?” Choirmen swerved between two cars without breaking a sweat, I suspected he had a Mutation to deal with high speeds.

“Both are fine. Widow wants him to rot slowly, wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gonna bribe the judges into getting him in the Talonhouse.” Anthony said.

“Talonhouse.” I felt sick just hearing the name. “Maximum security, really think they’ll let an Iron in? Place could hold a Gold.”

Choirmen slowed as we turned a corner, pushing me aside slightly. “Talonhouse needs a few Irons every so often, gives the big boys something to play with.”

The voice from my comms came like a sting. “Grandpa said to know when to give the dog toys, and when to take them away.”

The rest of the twenty minute ride went by smoothly, little small talk and mostly about gauging each other’s capabilities. I’d informed them of my ability to absorb electricity and use it to boost my physical strength already during the initial getting to know each other, but never had the opportunity to show it off.

Truth be told, it wasn’t protocol for me to be assigned on a case like this so quickly, either they were testing me… or hazing me. On-field assignments for SIM-Adapted Investigators would typically wait until our geneticists prepared a report to our squad of our capabilities. Based on that, we’d be grouped up.

Then again, they thought I was Silver. On par with the Liuetenant’s Grade, so maybe their expectations of me were twisted… or this was an elaborate trick to get me killed. I didn’t squirm at the thought, I couldn’t let myself. Most likely, I was just being tested…

I chose to believe that.

As conversation continued, Anthony relayed that he had a weaker version of his aunt’s and grandfather’s ability to influence others with his voice, although didn’t indulge into the exact mechanisms of the mutation. While Choirmen possessed something he called… blood missiles. Alongside a few mutations specializing in recovery and durability, he compared himself to a human body shield.

Once initial assessment of our powers were done, the conversation switched.

“Got any family, Jones? How was your life before joining the force?” Choirmen finally raised as the lights and towers of the city shrank in the rear view mirror.

As the tall steel overlooks faded to bark and leaves, I saw within their fluttering mirage a child with short silver hair. It calmed me, who knows how many times in my life here I’d imagined abandoning it all to just return to that life, before I chipped metal into my neck. Before my biological father found me… before reuniting with Yvette and following her into this life.

My voice came quietly, nostalgia settling in as my eyes trailed along the streaks of leaves. “A father. Never knew my mother. We lived in Seven Woods where it was quieter. Spent a whole lot of my life hunting, plucking fruits from the trees, fishing by the lakes… then I moved here. Wanting to make a difference.” I answered honestly, didn’t have any point to hiding that, but I saw the confusion in how he raised eyebrow.

Typically the situation of parenting was the opposite.

Choirmen chuckled, moving past the difficult part of my childhood. “Me and my wife just had a son, beautiful boy… both of them. Husam just turned seven, the whole squad threw a small party for him. You would have loved it. Anthony-”

“Shut it, Tluste!” The voice shouted over our comms.

Choirmen quietly turned off the comms with a tap on the car’s dashboard. “Don’t worry about Anthony, he’s not a bad kid. Just troubled and keeps on finding himself in it. But he’s trying… the Grazhe’s are a tough family. As for the story, yeah, I let him do tricks on me, basically Jaden could ask me to do anything and Anthony would make me ‘suggestible’ to it.”

“What’d your kid make you do?” My curiosity was piqued.

“Ah, kid asked me to do a backflip.” Choirmen groaned, rubbing his back. “Felt it break right through my mutations, been bruised since then.”

A precious smile fell over me, the faint crack in the window allowing the smells of petrichor to send me to the time of my fourteenth birthday, when the only thing that mattered had been dinner, and when we’d go and hunt it. “That’s adorable.”

“Your old man?” Choirmen stiffened. “How is he?”

This was the part where my smile shifted, but I just kept myself focused on the trees blurring green and brown like wet paint mixing on a canvas. “He’s proud. I’m getting far, and I’m… doing good. Yeah, the Toxin Club was bad and still fucks with my head but I see a future. We see the future.”

Or maybe… I did. Yorrick Jones, the man who had adopted me from the Cradle suffered from his own… complications. There was just distance between us, an unreachable distance between what our lives had become. I knew he had… moved on, but I- I just wasn’t ready to confront him.

Another few minutes and we stopped by a small run-down group of concrete blocks that the car winded through until we found the garage, a tall and wide concrete cube in which around twenty cars were serviced. ‘Nathaniel’s wheels.’

“Looks like someone’s home.” Anthony’s voice came through, and we all got out of the cars to carefully survey the scene. Though there wasn’t any sign of human activity, not immediately through the few windows, but the lights were shining and the buzzing sound of machinery ran through the building.

Choirmen held Anthony’s shoulder, a warning glare digging into the younger man. “We do this clean, Anthony. Knock open, no sneaking through the back. No use of your powers, you know how the courts throw that out. Your grandfather and aunt know when to use them, focus on your other Mutations right now.”

Anthony’s return was sharp-tongued. “Yeah but you really think his widow’s gonna let it- fine.” He tugged his arm free, striding up to the door and raising a loud, almost deafening sound from the voice I’d been so used to as a quiet sulk.

“This is the WBPD First Precinct! Intelligence Department! We have a warrant, come out with your hands raised up!”

No sound, another ten seconds passed and he banged again.

“We won’t wait anymore! We’re armed and-”

“Hold your fucking steel man!” A nervous voice bellowed through, the door quickly opening to reveal an older man with a thin arm of rusted steel ending in a wrench. “Wh-what do you want?”

Anthony pushed the man aside, delving deeper into the garage and disappearing further in as we heard tumbling steel and the sound of drawers opening and closing. Choirmen, on the other hand, helped the old man from stumbling — whether the good cop . “Sorry about him, what’s your name?”

“You can read the sign right? I’m Nathaniel Overink… run this place, I- did we not do our taxes right? Was there an issue-“

“Nothing like that, we just believe that one of the cars here was used to commit a murder. Now, do you know who touches up these cars? Anyone else in the building who works for you?” He seemed genuinely caring as he pulled a seat from the reception.

“Just me, my brother, Kyle, and his boy. They’re deeper in…”

A soft smile rose on Choirmen’s face. “Y’know, couldn’t help but notice the nice wheels here, noticing some stuff I’ve seen only in those pre-collapse books. Nice shit man.”

“People in the hills can’t get enough of it. Only way I can afford a place like this.” Nathaniel said quietly, then alerted as the sound of another man yelled.

“The hell do you think you’re doing here!”

I rushed, flowing through the corridors to the sound of voices growing more chaotic. Anthony had a gun drawn, a thick piece of metal as long as half his forearm that was poised at the two men. “You’re all under suspicion of harboring a known mercenary by the name of Tonguelasher.”

The older of the two men, well-built and balding, also held a gun in his hand but it wasn’t drawn up. Kyle, the co-owner of this Autorepair, and Nathaniel’s brother. “Look we ain’t got nothing to do with that shit! Just look around but don’t damage the merchandise, they’ll bust our balls off man!”

The younger of the two — his son — however, slunk further in the back with eyes wide in fear.

“Don’t you fucking move, kid!” Anthony’s sight switched onto the boy who couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old.

Seeing that, I sent harsh grit into my thoughts, sending them through our police Neuralink. “A-anthony, stand down. I’ll send them over to Choirmen, the two of us’ll take a look through.”

“Nah, they stay where I can see them. You’re all under suspicion for harboring a criminal mercenary under the alias ‘Tonguelasher’.” His voice grew that same rebellious, almost childish, edge — but there was something in his eyes, a strange wisdom that grasped the reflection of the vehicles here and twisted their fallacies. “T-tonguelasher’s switched his identity. Could be an-ny one of them — heard other Mercs do wo-r-rse.”

The younger man nearly fell just from hearing that name. “What the fuck’s a T-tonguelasher? A type of MAL?!”

“Keep moving and you’ll wish you had a MAL in front of you! Tonguelasher’s a wanted criminal and suspected of killing over 17 individuals! Put your weapons down, hands up and step backwards to the sound of my voice!” Anthony’s voice began to take a deeper reverberation, reaching into the depths of my head. His gun remained on sight for the younger man, while his father pleaded by throwing his gun to the floor and turning his backside to us. He was unarmed. “L-look, I’m dropping my gun! We’ll follow your orders, just… keep things civil! Kid hasn’t done anything, I swear… he’s just scrap-brained!”

That fear in his eyes… I didn’t like being looked at that way, but Anthony was right — Tonguelasher could have disguised his identity… though how would the merc have infiltrated a family business? My voice sank colder, equally aimed at Anthony and the two men. “Investigator Grazhe, I’m going to take them to Choirmen. Look around, find any Datacubes if you can and copy them for Rorsche.”

He grumbled with a nasty side-glance, but I’d already stepped ahead of him and taken the older man’s shoulder. I pulled his shaking body aside with the younger man orderly slipping into my view.

“We don’t know no Tonguelasher.” The older man whispered, a mixture of fear and apprehension in his voice. “This is some misunderstanding, y’all.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“It is…” His kid hushed, his eyes glanced down.

“I know what this is…” His father suddenly raised his tone like a knife. “It’s cus you’re always on that Net talking to strangers! Fucking hell, Jay! What did you do this time!”

“Nothing!” The kid, Jay, protested with a tense shudder. “I- I- just have friends, that’s all!”

“Friends,” His father clicked his tongue, the disapproval in his voice too eerily similar to what I’d hear from my biological father, “like you ever had any.”

“Enough.” I barked as Choirmen nodded at my arrival with them. “Both of you, cooperate and this will be cleared soon.”

Choirmen kept them all in the reception, noting me a job well done and ordering me and Anthony to dig deeper into the facility. I searched the ground floor, jacking into several Datacubes that relayed their information through my lenses. Account details, workshop inventory and specific mods of vehicles that were ordered… some of those were bordering on breaking the law. I noted it down, but didn’t press it forward right now since it would only derail the investigation.

“First floor’s clean.” Anthony grumbled from a ledge above me.

“So is the ground.” I replied, before curiosity slipped through me. I funneled my Gold into the equipment around my wrist, feeling a sharp warm sting run up my arm and float around my skin. Instantly, I felt the resonating hymns of a hundred more electrical devices run around me.

And beneath me, it was like a labyrinth of circuitry too scattered and varying in width and strength to be the city grid. My voice connected to Choirmen and Grazhe. “There’s a basement.”

“No records of it for the building’s history.” Choirmen responded before a minute long pause. “They’re saying they don’t know anything about it… but mentioned the place was recently when they bought it two years ago. The younger one, Jayden, says he thinks it’s back from when this place was run by old gangs in the earthquake. Jaegers used to own this place according to the records, and could have sealed it off once they sold the place away.”

“We’ll look for an access down.” I said, before honing back on the electrical wavelengths flowing all around me. It felt like walking through a cloud with patches of thickness followed by a gap, but there was a pattern I’d come to know over the last few days.

I absorbed some more charge from my inert gun, not even enough to constitute a fifth of a round but it spiraled an aching shiver up and down my arm. To my senses, it was like my breathing developed another lung that stuffed information in, a shower of pricking air that held secrets from me.

Air that flowed, running off to deposit into nodes of importance. I just needed to track downstream, or maybe it was upstream? Beneath me was a river of energy alongside reservoirs, but what I was looking for was weak and would be clouded by these huge fields of energy.

Anthony yelled from across the space. “Jones, are you just going to stand around or will you help?!”

“Give me a moment.” I said, too quietly for him to hear, while I was concentrating. If only we had someone with an Analyze function. Instead, my brain was on fire, I’d tried separating the various fields into imaginary colors and sizes and depths and weights, but there was too much information running through me. It was like dunking my head into boiling water and deciphering the bubbles.

I searched until I found a prickle, a small sensation I’d come to know whenever any electrical sliding door opened to view. I walked over to where it would be directly underneath me, sensing the net of wires that spread off it like a spider’s cobweb.

And then it rose higher, the wiry threads spat up to this floor until it was running beneath my feet and running into an empty car-lift to take the vehicles higher up, except whereas the others only had wavelengths stretching upwards… this one also pushed downwards.

Bile sank into my throat, this would only be accessible by a worker here.

“I-it’s one of them. Choirmen. Anthony was right-t.” I said sharply through the Neuralink. “C-car lift goes into the basement, one of them has access to it.”

The voice that came after wasn’t the carefree one I’d come to know, it was grim and tough like chewed bark. “I understand.”

I dropped into the lift, puzzling my way through the various controls until I found the wiring that ran downards wasn’t in the actual gearbox but rather a hidden switch underneath it.

“Anthony! Need some backup! Found the way down!”

He came in slowly, a displeased grimace planted on his face that stepped in right next to me. “Got a bad feeling, one of us should stay back.”

“Choirmen’s Second Rank and a Tier II Bronze.” I said, more to myself. “He can handle it.”

His stare fixed on me — “I’m Bronze Tier II as well, you know?” — but he nodded and I got the sense of an actual understanding between us. I clicked the button and we descended with a slow scrape of metal and concrete. Down into what I could only describe as the lair of a psychopath.

—--------

Everything was lit brightly in effulgent green lights to a sickening degree, like they were trying to be so putrid to mask up the even more vile objects erected here. Shelves upon shelves of clear vats, each holding a pink slip or rod that was distinctly fleshy.

Then I held my hand over my mouth, as though I thought it safeguard my own tongue from slipping in to join the collection. There was a thick smell of spices and gunpowder intermingling against the dampness of rotting flesh, harbored against a wall was a decaying but headless corpse stripped of all flesh where it’s bones were used to prop up what seemed like circular bands with sharp legs sticking out of them.

Anthony’s voice broke from it’s typical angst into one of unadulterated and sickened shock. “What the fuck! There has to be like… forty of them here!”

Andrew’s face was grave, anger and disgust sketching over him with bulging veins and fading color as we trailed deeper into this basement. Each container of a tongue had a name, gender, age and date alongside… marination. Finding a Datacube, I opened it to find a recipe for… a tongue sizzler with a portion for two.

“Oh… what the… what the fuck.” Anthony covered his mouth, stumbling back and gripping a table as his gaze shook against the dimly lit corners of the basement.

He pointed over to another shelf over a workbench, and then I felt my stomach drop. There weren’t just tongues. There were pieces of faces, chunks of jawbones, cheeks, skulls with eyes still in them — several of them buzzing with electrical wires stretching out of them as though they were still alive.

I was thankful I decided against lunch. Loose skin sagged over metallic skulls like morbid taxedermy, facial augments to replace someone’s image — and life. Another machine resembled a printer of sorts, weaving together a black cloth that briefly shimmered and took the texture of human skin.

The one I was staring at, however, was one I’d seen clearly when I first entered.

Nathaniel, the old man who owned this shop, had his face sagging atop a steel skull. Pieces were ripped off like he was a cloth rag tossed into a shredder, edges of the skull it draped over poking out as though to torture the man in death. Tonguelasher had assumed his identity.

I slammed my palm over the elevator button again and again, there was no time and the comms in my ear confirmed as much when Choirmen’s voice broke throuh. “Fuck, you two get over here now! Hostage situation!”

At that point, I was hoping I could somehow charge energy into the elevator to get it’s pitiful ascent to speed up, but that aspect of my power escaped me. In the end, all me and Anthony could do was hear the commotion growing as the elevator neared.

A voice, aged and stiff with fear, yelled out. “What the fuck are you doing Nath! Let me go!”

“Shut up or I’ll rip your fucking tongue! God you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do it! All your nagging and the way you treat the kid, I bet it would make good dog food!” That voice was utterly ragged and distorted, like multiple people speaking atop one another.

“Let him go, or I’ll shoot!” Choirmen bluffed.

“Shoot if you want! I’ll drink his blood from any hole! Drop your fucking weapon or I’ll slit his throat”

“Stop, uncle Nathy! Let him go! Please, Investigator, just listen to him!”

We threw ourselves into the reception like hurtling comets, my Braceshocker raised and ready.

Nathaniel held a blade to ‘his brother’s’ neck, a sharp wicked thing that swung out from the side of his thin arm like an army knife’s many contraptions. His ‘nephew’ on the other hand was cowering in a corner, tears building at the edges of his eyes.

Choirmen held his hands high… his gun was on the floor. But his skin… the veins on the back side out of Tonguelasher’s view were bulging a crimson red.

Blood missiles, I remembered. Choirmen’s sly shift of gaze communicated his plan to me instantly.

Nathaniel… Tonguelasher forced his blank stare on us, it instantly lit up with glee as his voice dripped with malice. “Don’t make a move! I’ve put an explosive in the boy's frame… one step and we all die!”

Incoming Neurolink Comms: Third Investigator Anthony Grazhe

I accepted, a sharp squeeze fixing into the back of my skull as-

“Disengage the comms now!” Tonguelasher screamed, a crazed laugh carelessly tearing a thin streak of red on the hostage’s face. “Think I wouldn’t know! Think I’m not smart! I can see that twitch, the drill of another’s thought into your mind from miles away! I would know-! Hahaha!”

Anthony’s voice slithered out as the comms disengaged, his eyes dilating. “What do you want?”

I knew he’d used his powers, but it was like a faint whisper compared to the oppressive atmosphere compared to the overbearing pressure of truth I’d felt from his grandfather and aunt. Subtle…

“Isn’t it obvious!” Tonguelasher squealed, his voice only growing more maniacal as his blade dragged along the skin of his false face, revealing pure wiry musculature underneath. “Haven’t you ever tried it? Maybe I’ll feed you one so you know what you’re missing out on! This bastard’s shop was good cover, now I’ll have to find a new one!”

Kule tensed, trying to struggle. “What the fuck are you talking about, Nath, did you take your meds-!”

Tonguelasher’s strained the blade so tight against Kyle’s throat I’d feared a stray breath could tear his windpipe. “Oh, like you have any right to talk! I wonder which way I’ll cook your tongue, or maybe I’ll feed your boy to you!”

“Nath, what the fuck are you-”

“Tonguelasher, maybe I’ll take you up on that offer… would you cook a meal for me?” Anthony said, a turn so sudden I’d briefly been taken off from the tense situation.

Tonguelasher’s eyes went wide, like a drug was circulating inside of him. “So you see it then… it’s a remarkable feeling to consume your own kind. Assimilation, ever heard of it? They say that’s the secret to the MALswarm’s strength, I’ve been telling everyone for years about how good it feels to make another’s flesh your own.”

“What made you start?” Anthony asked, his own eyes widening as though to take in the entirety of the situation.

Tonguelasher looked like he’d been caught in a hypnotic trance, his focus held on Anthony like he was about to eat my partner. “I was a Nomad once, needed to eat so I killed one of my clan… I’d felt disgusted… until, until I wasn’t. The Implant showed me where it tasted good, that I could indulge where I used to feel pain. In the city, everyone’s clean… there’s no radiation spoiling your genes. This place is a restaurant to a starving man.”

Anthony’s voice grew coarser, strained, his eyes becoming bloodshot. “That why you killed the corporate, Johnathon Kubrick?”

“Oh no, I stay far away from the corporates… I just cleaned up someone else’s mess there. Corps are too nosy, even I know that but… but… the scrappers are everywhere, no one cares about if they go missing. May not taste as good as someone who’s body is unspoiled, but the tongues… they can’t be spoiled.”

It wasn’t him?

If that piece of information troubled Anthony, it wasn’t shown. Dribbles of sweat poured across his face, and his eyes were so red I was questioning whether he or Tonguelasher looked more on drugs at the moment. “What would it take for us all to walk free?”

“The girl…” Tonguelasher’s eyes held me in the center of their wide orbs. “She… she’s gene-edited — my Implant tells me she’s from a Cradle. Perfection. I can feel it, she’s special. I don’t just want her tongue… I want everything. Her bones, her flesh… I want to know how it tastes.”

A primal dread scratched my bones, begging me to move but as I saw the kid’s face contort with each words out of the man who replaced his uncle… I couldn’t show weakness. Anthony’s expression shifted slightly, but it was like hands were holding him in place. “We can give you anything you want, but for that… we need you to do something.”

Tonguelasher himself was also afixed in gripped hands hidden from my sight, every bit of his body was frozen solid under the weight of the conversation. “What…?”

Anthony’s eyes met mine as he nodded. “You need to drop the blade.”

The blade fell like a pendulum, as though it had grown too heavy for the mercenary to hold. It almost seemed like a careless lapse of thought, and that was something I’d only grown more assured off when he suddenly squeezed tight and began to lift the blade back up. I didn’t have the time to question it.

I’d already started moving since I wouldn’t have a clear shot from the angle I was in, my electrical pumps of adrenaline pushing me over the edge as the hand I stretched open arced threads of jolting blue around my fingernails.

He panicked in slow-motion, clear as day when he seemed stuck between the options of attacking me or taking out the hostage. I hoped it would be me, and it seemed that way as I saw his face twist in fury and the bladed arm slowly curved away from the hostage. It’s scythe stretched across the distance in a maddened slash, I’d let it hit me… even if I was hurt, the charge resting would awaken and drill into him.

That would give Choirmen the opening, just another second and-

A crimson streak slapped Tonguelasher’s cheek, drenching into the musculature underneath.

Blood splattered the walls, on top of me and around the entire room. I froze, my body shaking as I stared at the scene.

Half of Tonguelasher’s face was gone, a metallic skull exposed and dented as bits of brain dripped from the fractured steel. His body slumped lifelessly.

But it wasn’t him I was staring at. The hostage… the kid’s father… Kyle, he was- half of his neck was missing. Choirmen quickly put pressure on the man’s neck and immediately sent out a ping for MEDevac. It happened so quick, one second Tonguelasher was hesitating and then the next both fell to the floor with parts of their head and neck exploded.

My eyes fell on the guilty face of Choirmen, and anger — promoted to fury by the adrenaline — slipping out. “Why’d you take the shot.”

“He could have killed you…” Choirmen huffed, his right hand dripping with an open wound of torn skin and burst blood vessels on its back side. “I saved you. Civilian deaths happen, I ain’t letting you die…. That was a stupid plan from both of you, now let’s clean things u-“

Motion flashed. Blood sprayed. Tluste Choirmen’s body crumpled over the reception floor as someone stuck a mechanical blade through his side.

Kyle’s son, Jayden, pushed me aside and wrestled the blade deeper into Choirmen before a whack sent him stumbling aside.

I went to stop him again, but something was strange, the way that kid moved his eyes — a gaze that was too calm, not the kind you would see in a kid who just lost his father — swept over me. Then he jumped back, mechanical shifts and whirs exploding over his body from his arm down to his legs.

I grabbed Choirmen’s wound, a laceration along his ribs that I’d definitely felt were sliced through, blood fell like a waterfall over my hands and I didn’t know if spraying an Iron-Grade MedSpray over the wound-

“Get him, Jones! I can take this!” Choirmen pushed me aside to stare at Jayden… his arms were thin blades and his legs bulged with pumping chords of Bronze fluid.

“That’s Concealed Combat Shardware! Kid’s a merc too!”

Jayden blurred, moving too quick for my like a sentinel of mechanical death. But not towards me, his feet skated backwards to dodge the three shots launched by Anthony’s pistol before gritting his face into a snarl and slipping through a doorway.

“Diana, we can’t let him go!” Anthony yelled, pushing forward to chase the kid who retreated back into the main garage.

“Go! You fucking worry too much!” Choirmen yelled, and that pushed my adrenaline to just the limit I needed to force my legs to blast my body forward. Who the hell was that kid? Were there more people in Tonguelasher’s operations?

I’d only know once I apprehended him.