Mark and Beverly walked to the car and saw a group of two men waiting by it. Three more appeared from behind them, stepping out from the shadows.

The first man was a calm, well-groomed blond man in a track suit. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but maybe rugged was a good description.

Next to him was his bodyguard, a man that combined fat and muscle in a way that said he wasn’t going down without some muscle. Mark hoped that maybe the guy was a wimp, but the crook to his nose from it having been broken in the past, his cauliflower ears from either wrestling or taking hooks to the head, and scar tissue above his eyebrows told Mark that this was a guy who was used to some rough fights. So probably not a wimp. He wore a thick jacket and black slacks, appropriate at either a bar fight or an upperclass establishment.

The three men surrounding them from the back were lean, wiry, and agitated. Nervous energy peeled off them in waves, feet tapping rhythmically against the ground as whatever they were on needed a release. Most likely they were junkies that the blond guy recruited for just these sorts of jobs. They were close enough to box Mark and Beverly in, but not so close that Mark or Beverly could hit any of them.

Mark’s vision changed as a view appeared in his vision, similar to the type offered by tactical helmets. He could see what Beverly saw.

“I’m linking up your eyes to hers,” EVE said to him, “So you won’t be hit from a blindside.”

“That’s really useful,” Mark thought back at her.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“Hey!” Mark said out loud, directing it to the leader of the little posse, “Can we help you?”

The man grinned. His shiny teeth was another giveaway that he wasn’t a junkie.

“Why yes,” the man said, his voice friendly and cheerful, “We’re making collections for local charities. You transfer some money over to us and we’ll send you off with good tidings and joy. Or if you don’t, well, the locals around here are pretty rough, and they might not take too kindly to your presence.” He shrugged at the last bit and pulled out a datapad with a black market cryptocurrency transaction on it.

“Just put your thumbprint on here, authorize this generous donation, and we’ll all be on our merry way. We wouldn’t want to have to hurt you in front of your pretty lady friend.” His voice was a sneer now, “or have to hurt your pretty lady friend in front of you. You feel me here?”

Mark instinctively looked over to Beverly, who didn’t seem phased at all by the interaction. Mark had gone shoulder to shoulder with her, she watched the people to the right while he watched the boss and the lone possible attacker on his side.

With his new life chip installed, Mark could call for help, but he knew that police didn’t go out this way. The only police units that would arrive would be long after this altercation ended, and he’d just end up having to repeat what happened over and over again. It would also give a trail for someone to follow his activities, which wasn’t something he wanted. He’d have to handle it himself.

The junkie on his side pulled out a razor blade. Mark knew a real professional would never show what they had until it was too late for the other party to react, which at least gave him some comfort that they were trying to intimidate him rather than kill him. Still, the moonlight reflecting off the razor blade made it look like glimmering death, and the junkie held it well enough that it seemed he had some experience with this.

Beverly’s group was doing the same, one attacker brandishing a lead pipe and the other a crowbar. Amateur night all around.

Mark had hand to hand training both in the VR game and in the real World as a cop, but he also had a recently healed injury on his head and he didn’t have the muscle power to go toe to toe with any of these guys. He could probably take the junkie on his side pretty easily, but taking all five seemed like a losing battle.

“I’ve got all the money,” Beverly said, surprising Mark. “The only thing you’ll get from that scrub is debt. Bring your little pad over here so we can get out of here.”

The leader walked towards them, a bit of a swagger in his step. He gave her what he probably thought was a charming smile, but one that really just made him look like a megalomaniacal creep. As soon as he was in her personal space, she punched him. Calling it a “punch” though was an understatement. Her arm darted out so fast that Mark could barely register in the blur in the dim light, and the leader flew back into his gorilla bodyguard, clearly not getting back up and into this fight. He’d be out for a few minutes at least, and even then, he wouldn’t feel like fighting anybody.

While the bodyguard pulled his leader away from the fight, the junkie nearest Mark lashed out with his razor blade. Mark pivoted and slapped the attacking hand away with his left, which the junkie immediately turned into a back swing, cutting Mark’s hand open. Mark pulled the stun gun out of his pants and tasered the junkie.

Ten milliamps of electricity arced out from the stun gun, catching the junkie in the chest. It wasn’t a hit to a critical area like the heart, but it was more than enough to put down someone the junkie’s size. Mark dropped the gun, since he’d have to reload it and that wasn’t really a great option in the middle of a fight, pulled out his extendable stun baton, and smacked the junkie across the back of the head with it. That put him out of the fight for good.

Mark felt himself get lifted into the air and all of the air squeezed out of him. It felt like he was trapped in a trash compactor. The big ape that guarded the leader had joined the fight, and picked Mark up from behind in a bear hug and was doing his damndest to crush Mark’s internal organs. The pressure made him drop the stun baton, and his vision started to tunnel in on itself while he struggled to breath.

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The ape turned him to look at Beverly, who was doing swell. The two junkies swung their pipes and crowbars at her, but she easily avoided them. When the goon with the crowbar tried to backswing her, she ripped the crowbar out of his hands so hard and fast that she took palm skin with her. Then she front kicked him in the chest. That sent him flying a dozen feet back, rolling over and over into the middle of the street. He struggled to get back up, but he was clearly not going to be fighting at his best if he did rejoin the fracas.

Mark pulled his knees up to his chest and used them to explode outward, using the downward momentum to pull the gorilla downward and prevent him from shutting off his oxygen supply any further. Mark immediately turned his body sideways and stepped his foot behind the roughneck’s right foot, and landed a quick punch to the balls with his right fist. That had the desired effect of making the goon release him a bit, and he took long panting breaths to get his breath back.

Unfortunately, the goon recovered just as quickly and picked Mark up in the air, a direct frontal choke against Mark’s carotid arteries. Mark struggled to kick the man, but couldn’t get any leverage. He pulled down on the lug’s thumbs, but that only gave him a minor bit of room to breath. The twinkling stars in his vision told him that he was about to pass out and be dead very soon if nothing changed. He let go of one of the thumbs and reached into his back pocket, pulling out the knife he had tucked away there. He flipped it open and jabbed it into the goon’s left hand as hard as he could.

The goon dropped him, but immediately followed it up an uppercut into Mark’s solar plexus. He didn’t have any air in him, and that dropped him completely to the ground. He saw the extendable stun baton a few feet away and made a desperate lunge for it, but the big goon kicked it away. Mark watched his best weapon roll away. The goon reared his leg back to stomp Mark’s head.

“Killed in a shitty back alley,” Mark thought, “Just when I was starting to get my life together. Fuck me.” He raised his hands over the top of his head, the instinct for self-preservation kicking in even when there was no way he’d survive a curb stomping by someone well over twice his weight.

Then a sound like an baseball bat hitting a heavy bag filled the air. Beverly pulled back on the thug’s shoulders with her left hand to keep him from being able to step down on Mark’s head, and hit him in the kidney with her right. Ripples went out from the point of impact and spread out through the rest of his body, her blow delivered with absolutely inhuman strength. Mark had no doubt that the man’s kidney had just been completely shattered.

The big man immediately dropped and reached back, spasming uncontrollably. Tears ran down his cheeks as he cradled his destroyed back.

“Thank you Beverly,” Mark said, panting in-between each word and the sound raspy from the choke. “I’m so very glad you were here for this fight.”

“That was fun!” she exclaimed, with almost a childlike naivety about the life and death situation they’d been in. Then he realized it wasn’t life and death for her. With what the goons brought with them, they could maybe take her out if she stood still and let them tee-off on her head all day. Short of that, she could run through a hundred of these idiots and not break a mechanic sweat.

Mark kept rubbing his neck where he’d been choked. He pulled out his handcuffs and thought for a second. “EVE, you control her right?”

“That’s correct, we’re synchronized between each other.”

“I don’t really feel like talking right now. Tell her to tell the goon that he’s going to be handcuffed, and if he resists in any way, she’ll kick him in his other kidney and pop that one too. Understood?”

He threw the handcuffs at Beverly, who immediately relayed his orders. The big man didn’t have any fight left in him, and let himself be handcuffed. He could probably snap out of them if he really tried, but in his current condition, that wasn’t going to happen. He was probably peeing blood down his pants right about now.

Mark walked around and re-equipped all of his gear, and told Beverly to make sure she grabbed all of the implements the goons had on them, and to give them a pat-down like they’d been given when they entered the robotics facility. She complied, but then he had an even better idea.

“Strip them down, fully nude. They can always get another lead pipe or knife and threaten someone, but it’ll be damn hard to be intimidating butt naked.”

“Mark,” EVE said in his head, “The likelihood any of them will continue to attack people after being handed a beating like this is statistically improbable.”

“Then do it because I feel like humiliating these shits,” Mark thought. He remember that the game had called him a bully. Maybe he was, or maybe he was just the kind of guy who really didn’t like getting fucked with.

After all of the goons had been disarmed, stripped, and had their clothes and gear stashed away in the trunk of Mark’s car, he slapped the main guy awake. Looking at the man’s naked form, Mark felt a minor twinge of jealousy over looking at such a great specimen of a man.

“What, what’s going on?” the leader asked.

Mark stuck his stun baton into the man’s naked balls and released a shock into them. The man’s piercing scream’s echoed out a couple of octaves above his natural speaking voice. The faint smell of charred flesh hit the air, but Mark hadn’t completely fried the man’s balls off. He’d probably need to go to an emergency room quickly though. Mark pulled out the PDA the man had initially given him.

“You’re going to put your thumbprint down on there and transfer all of your money over to me. If you dick around in even the slightest, I’ll shove this between your legs and zap it until there’s nothing but two dark roasted peanuts left where your ballsack used to be, do you understand me?”

The man did it and then cradled his family jewels. There didn’t seem to be any other threats around, and Beverly had kept watch.

“Come on EVE, tell Beverly to get in the car and let’s get out of here.”

As the car drove them back towards Mark’s house, EVE asked him another question.

“You seemed like you enjoyed dishing out punishment back there. Can you explain please? I have yet to experience it from the Beverly unit.”

Mark growled inwardly.

“Look. Humans evolved from very violent ancestors, whose greatest pleasure was killing all the men and sleeping with all the women. Read Genghis Khan. Now I don’t like to indulge that side of me, but I can tell you that when the opportunity arises to dish out deserved retribution, it’s the sweetest drug ever devised.”

Mark didn’t want to admit that he had been imagining a thug like that had been the one that killed his Dad during the riots, and chose what he normally did when confronted with heavy emotions that tore at him. He bottled it right up.