The crying baby could be heard across the large hallway. The sound echoed over the myriad of holographic head busts displaying different faces and circled in slow motion. The walls seemed to amplify the cries as they bounced off of them.
The little girl ran, panting as she sprinted from outside the spacious house. Not pausing even for a moment, she lithely lept up the first staircase, then negotiated deftly up the open winding stairs that led up to the mezzanine, where the long hallway led to the source of the crying.
Breathlessly, she leaned against the opened door, peeked, and watched silently. The baby was quiet now, nuzzling on her mother's breast, who was humming to her a comfortable tune. She tilted her head, her green eyes curiously taking in the serene scene before her; when the woman holding the baby looked up and smiled at her, she immediately leaned back, trying to hide.
“Sweetie, what are you doing there? Come in.”
She silently scolded herself; she wanted to be the best sneaker in the house, and if she couldn’t sneakily peek at that woman, she silently vowed to get better.
“C’mon, you can help me keep your little sister company.”
She leaned in again and looked at the woman. “But, I thought Father said not to disturb you and the baby?”
The woman chuckled and shook her head. “Not all the time. I’m sure she doesn’t mind having you here,” She raised her hand and motioned at the child to come closer.
She stepped in and looked at the large plate-glass windows that made up the wall on one side of the room. The sun was out, and people were working in the large garden. She could make out some in uniform marching in one direction, always those uniformed men and women that marched around the grounds of the house, she mused to herself.
As she stepped closer, the woman gently took her hand.
“Were you running? You’re all flushed!” She chuckled amusedly.
The little girl nodded enthusiastically. “I heard her crying. I thought she needed help.”
The woman smiled warmly at her. “She is in no danger or needs help in this house, sweetie.”
The little girl looked at the baby, who was still nuzzling on her mother’s breast.”Why was she crying?”
“She was hungry.”
The girl’s brows frowned at the woman’s reply. “She cries like that when she is hungry?”
The woman just smiled back and nodded assuringly. “Yes, she can’t talk yet, so that’s how she tells some things to people around her.”
The girl nodded almost sagely, taking in the explanation from the baby's mother. Her hand slowly rose and gently patted the baby's delicately soft hair.
“Why is her hair so red?”
The woman can’t help but laugh softly at the question.
“It’s just one of the things that we can have. Has anyone asked you why your hair is so pale it looks like silver?”
The girl looked into the woman’s eyes, her face deep in thought as she pondered the question. Finally, she shook her head. Her reply seemed to denote understanding of the woman’s point:
“No.”
The woman smiled. “Can’t wait for your sister to grow bigger so you can play with her?”
The girl nodded surely at the question and smiled wide. “Yes, yes.”
Her mouth opened as if to add something, yet she paused, her face in deep thought.
“What is it?”
“Father said the world can be dangerous sometimes, and some people need protection.”
The woman’s brows frowned in amusement and almost chuckled. “And when did father tell you this?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t… I heard him talking earlier in the study room.”
The woman nodded slowly, not knowing what to say to assuage the girl.
“So, I will protect her.” The girl proudly smiled and nodded curtly as she said it.
“You want to protect your little sister from what is dangerous?” The woman asked as if to test the girl at her pronouncement.
She nodded, her hand again gently stroking at the delicate red hair of the baby.
“Yes, yes, I will protect her.”
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Noa… Noa, wake up!” the voice was faint as if someone were calling out to her from a distance.
“Noa, wake the fuck up!” The voice suddenly burst forth, close to her face.
She gasped deeply, her eyes opened wide. A hazy visage of a man looked down at her; his irises were like lines repeatedly going around in a circle.
Her left hand moved swiftly and knocked at the man’s side, which sent him recoiling away from her. She lept up almost simultaneously before the man could react and brought her boot toward his head. He blocked it with an arm and shoved her back. Yet he backed away from her instead of pressing on, his hands raised as if in submission.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Noa! It's me! Duke!”
She froze and shook her head. “Duke? Shit, sorry.” Her eyes adjusted better now, and the man’s form cleared in her vision.
He chuckled, amused at the sudden apology. “You’re apologizing?”.
Noa swatted him at his reply.
He nodded hurriedly as he raised his hand up to defend from Noa’s swat. “Yea, your new overwatcher, ‘member?”
She took a deep breath, her body relaxing. The red glow around her irises faded away as she powered down from combat mode. She bopped her head slowly, and her left hand rose to gently feel at the spot on her head where Mira had hit her. At least she figured it was Mira.
She sat down and leaned back against the railing of the staircase.
“That woman, Mira… I… that bitch knocked me out… Did you guys get her?”
He shook his head, a blue line moving up on his left eye; his communicator icon and that of Bug Bunny’s appeared in her HUD.
“Noa? You ok? I thought you got zeroed for sure.”
She nodded. “I’m… good, I guess, considering. What happened?”
“Whoever knocked you out must be mad good…”
“It was Mira. At least she indicated as much.”
There was a long pause before Bug Bunny replied, trying to suppress the excitement in her voice.
“Whoa, really? She must have taken your suit offline, then. We lost you for a moment. Then, I lost control of the gargoyle. Duke didn’t see shit either.”
Noa glared at Duke, who shrugged back in response; both his hands held up both an apology and a hint of fear at Noa’s icy glare.
As if she read Noa’s thoughts, Bunny piped in again, “Happens, Duke’s eyes are both chromed up and if that woman really was Mira… THE Mira, blinding his chromed-up eyes, would be like a cakewalk for her.”
He scoffed and shook his head. “Way to make a guy feel helpless with types like that.”
“Bunbuns, you said she took my suit off-line? Is that possible at all?”
“Honestly? I have no clue. I’ve heard of diggers digging past the ICE on a com-suit for sure, very rare, but has happened... But… A, it’s never done in the kind of ranges where the digger can go hit you physically, and B, I’ve seen the ICE your new suit is packing, and honestly, I can’t begin to dream of how to figure out an ICE-pick for it… Then again, she could have just hit you with a nasty shorting of your com-suit… but still, that requires breaking through the ICE…”
Noa frowned, her jaws clenched as she inhaled deeply. Her mind raced, taking in what Bug Bunny was saying, while some other thoughts began rising in her mind,
“Okay, table that for later. You got the final tally and IDs on the other Hyena HVTs?”
“Done and done, Noa. Gotta say, though, these are some pretty big Hyenas here, wonder what they were all doing at one location like this.”
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She shook her head at that and took another deep breath before she sprung up onto her feet.
“We’ll figure that out. I’ll talk to Denis. Pass me all relevant info collected please.”
A string of notifications flashed up and scrolled away on Noa’s HUD, indicating receipt of information from Bug Bunny.
“Received, thanks, Bunbuns.”
”Always a pleasure.”
Noa nodded at Bug Bunny’s response, sighing in relief before she turned and offered a hand to Duke, who was still sitting on the hallway floor. He gladly grasped her outstretched hand and pulled himself up with it.
“Thanks.”
She winked at him in reply and smiled before turning away and going to the door, where she picked up the weapons she had dropped, deeply relieved that Mira didn’t take them with her. Straightening back up, she turned to face Duke.
“I need a drink. Gather your stuff and meet me at loc deets, which I will send you.”
Duke looked at Noa, surprised. “We’re not done, are we? We still need to report in for scrip finalizing and confirmation, right?”
“Work can fuck off; I need a drink…now,” Noa hissed at Duke as she walked past him and down the staircase.
He shrugged and sighed. “You’re the boss lady.”
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
“We got sold out, best burn bridges and everything else that isn’t that essential.”
“Sold out? How?”
“Our convoy got ambushed just as we were about to leave.”
“What? Muthafuckin… it’s him, fuck.”
“Doesn’t matter; we’ll deal with him when the time comes. Right now, we must clean house and get into hiding before we can do anything else.”
The hulking man sighed at this. The anger of having been betrayed bit at him, yet he shook his head as he looked around at the small office which had been his main place of work for over two decades,
“I can’t believe the time is here already. You’ve always warned us about this, and I thought I’d be ready for it… but... I’m not.”
“It’s OK, Darien, it’s just the flow of things… although, all is not lost... I saw her; she’s alive, very alive, I might add.”
He scoffed, knowing exactly what the woman meant. A wry grin formed on his lips. “Her? Your charge…No way, all the intel we had from that sabo incident declared no one survived the transpo crash… No one, especially a little child, could have lived through that.”
“You know she wasn’t like any other…’little child’... And I saw her with my own eyes. You know I don’t fuck around with these kinda things. I am positive it's her, a hundred percent.”
“Okay, I’ll play along for now… What then, so what if she is alive?”
“It means we can regain what was lost. It will take some effort and probably some unwanted sacrifices… again, but at least we know where we can head… we talked about this, Darien.”
His brows frowned deeply at this. “What? When?”
The female voice on the other side of the communicator laughed, “Oh for fuck’s sake, you WERE drunk off your chromed brain... I knew it! Good effort in hiding it, though, gotta give you that.”
“Hmmm, ok… so what about our people scattered around in the other gangs? Pull them out? Would they wanna leave their new families?”
Silence on the other end before her voice came up again, “I’ve sent out my call to the diggers I’m still in contact with. No idea if it's gonna be as what was laid out, though.”
He stood up, his hands massaged the edge of the worn table before him, and nodded sullenly. “So… burn all then? What about the cells not in the gangs?” He asked again, his tone denoted the reluctance to the task he knew he had to do,
“Do you want the Hyenas back on top like the old days? Yes, Darien, all of it. Bring what YeeBees you can, but not in digi-form, phys only, and get the ones you trust to round up the people we still have before they kill themselves. I’ll handle the non-gang cells.”
“If I still smoked, I could just roll them all up into carg-sticks…” He chuckled as he started going through the drawers at the table
“...And you better be right about this. If we do this, chances are we’re gonna lose patronage from our backer, and, without a House backing us, it would mean we’re just packing for our deaths,” He mumbled as he pocketed some info-sticks into a pouch.
“I don’t deal in fantasy, Darien, how many times do I have to tell you that? We do the groundwork. Once everything is ready, I’ll approach her. It shouldn’t even take that long.”
“I doubt she even knows what’s really going on.”
“Leave it to me. It won’t be a smooth ride, but I’ll make sure to educate her on that.”
“How?”
The voice on the other end sighed deeply, indicating she was getting annoyed. “Listen, we don’t have time for this. I know how. Leave it to me, okay? I’ll tell you about it when we meet next.”
He inhaled heavily, his jaw tightened, and he nodded curtly, more for himself than anything else.
“Fine, as you said before, we’ll erase the old Hyenas, finally, and come back again as a better version of ourselves. Guess we gotta do what needs to be done.”
“Updates on safe locations, sending them over now.”
A list flashed up on his eye HUD, with the names of locations indicating status: red for compromised, green for clear, and yellow for dubious, with an added note of ‘best stay away.’
“What? Wait, there should be more in the green. I just got off the line with them a few hours ago.”
The woman seemed agitated now. “Darien, the whole world can be done in less than an hour; a few hours might as well be a lifetime right now. So please, take a breath, and remind us, no… remind yourself how you got that name that you grew into. Personally, I still think it sounds funny.”
He scoffed, shook his head, and he grinned. “I’d rather it say Big something else, but Big Rock does seem better.”
“Ha haa, funny guy. Right, enough chatter. Get the boys and girls there packed, burn everything else, and then buzz me when you guys are clear. I gotta tie up stuff on my end. The non-gang cells that are scattered all over the place? They need to know that things are in motion.”
“Stay safe, Mira,” He uttered one last time before the line cut.
—--------------------------------------------------
The man on the other side of the call seemed upset, yet he retained the level of decorum he was known for as he continued to press. Richard grasped at his temples. All the developments taking place this past couple of weeks were never foreseen, at least not this soon.
“I get that you want to end it as soon as possible. But let’s be reasonable. Look at it from my side. If the other party was on the ropes, would you stop and let him breathe? Or press on for better gains once everyone agrees for a sit-down?”
“Richard, please, we’ve been in this for so long now. We, all of us, have enjoyed the past couple of decades. I am thankful that you are being candid with me, and the onus can’t really be taken on by any of the families, yet there is a strong word and proof that it was the Brotherhood that started this.”
Richard shook his head slowly, scoffing at what was said.
“I have seen this…’ proof,’ you mention, and it is nothing but a blurred figure of someone hitting that building. Admittedly, not anyone can get their hands on tech like that, but I have conferred with those in the know, and they assure me that it wasn’t one of their men.”
“And you believe what they tell you?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Richard, please, I did not…”
Seemingly annoyed, Richard didn’t wait for him to finish. “By implying that the people I trust may have ulterior motives, for whatsoever reason they may have, you are implying that either I am lying to you about what was advised to me, or that I am complicit in this…deception…or incompetent in the handling of the affairs of my House. So tell me, which one is it?”
Anton frowned as he listened to Richard. Ever since the incident at Factory 14, events had spiraled out of control, and now those under charge of their houses were at each other’s necks, with his family taking the brunt of the punishment.
He scanned through the documents on his eye HUD. Some of these showed the admittance to the Med-Tech center of a valued client - the daughter of a High House family no less - on the same night as the incident at the factory, and he was convinced it wasn’t mere coincidence.
Anastasia Angelica Essedar.
Client No: PL - 001071
Reason for Admittance: Insufficient Clearance
Status of Client at the time of Admittance: Insufficient Clearance
Treatment Administered: Insufficient Clearance
Location of Extraction: Insufficient Clearance
He waved the information sheet away; the important details were all blocked to non-family members, and the eyes under his control were not of high rank enough in the facility's management to afford him the information he needed.
He massaged his temples. The Essedar’s hold on the higher levels of information suddenly began to feel very stifling.
He sighed deeply; Richard was silent on his end.
“Okay… Will you be able to advise me on when is a good time for the Houses to sit down?”
“We haven’t had an unscheduled sit-down for over a decade, Anton.”
“Alright, so… maybe just the two of us? We of Xela are more than ready to hear your demands.”
“I will get back to you on that. You have my word.”
“Thank you; it means a lot to me that you are willing to do at least that.”
“You have a pleasant rest of the day, Anton.”
“Yes, and you too, Richard.”
The line cut; Richard decided to put all communications on hold as he tapped on the keys of his computer. The screen flickered up again, showing all the documents he had opened when Anton’s call came in.
Anastasia Angelica Essedar.
Client No: PL - 001071
Reason for Admittance: Critical wounding of left arm, resulting from forced extraction of Infixed Neural-Circuitry Liquid from the patient.
Status of Client at the time of Admittance: Critical Blood Loss. Severe Shock. Deep wounds to the left arm and shoulder. Several perforations throughout the torso.
He scrolled through the information, passed the more technical jargon that stated immediate treatment was given, and reached a line he was looking for
Location of Extraction: 352 General Belgrano Street, Adina Industrial Region East 2, Adina City.
His hand waved at the other window on the other screen. A map of the city popped up, showing him its location. Right at the address, he could see it: Factory 14.
He shook his head. He knew of what Anya and Noa had been up to the past years, and it had always occurred to him it was just young bravado and restlessness in life; he himself had gone through the same restlessness in his youth.
Yet it didn’t dawn on him that the two had operated at this level. He nodded thoughtfully to himself; his mind drew an idea of what had transpired. Something in the back of his head nagged at him that the blurred figure was Noa. He was familiar with the ability of certain implants to block facial recognition and identification, but this was different.
As he played the video that was sent to him. The ghostly specter crossed the road steadily as if nothing was amiss or there was any stress in the situation. He could see it, yet it was blurred out so much that the figure appeared as a ghost, a glitch in the recording, and this was after post-editing by the experts under his employ.
Maybe it was time that Anya played her part for the House. His mind now reasoned with himself. At least it would rein her in, and with her, perhaps it would also rein in Noa?
“PAT”
“Yes, Master Richard?”
“Locate Noa for me, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Turning to the first screen again, he looked up Noa's known associates. The list was not long; there were only a few names, none of which he could recognize.
A short, thrilling beep interrupted his thoughts as PAT’s voice chimed in.
“No exact location on Noa can be found, sir.”
“No exact location? What does that even mean? Don’t you have her on file?”
“Yes, sir, we have files on all the House members, especially those in your family.”
“And you still can’t pinpoint her?”
“Negative sir. We apologize for this.”
He scoffed, ‘a soft that apologized.’
His mind tugged at the idea of employing the House's information specialists, yet a resource drain like that was unnecessary. He could always interrogate her about it on her next visit if no exact location on her could be found now.
He nodded, his hand tugging at his chin as his mind ran through possible ideas.
“Get me in touch with Anton Belov, please.”
“Right away, Master Richard, will that be all?”
“Yes, that will be all for now. Get me, Mr. Belov.”
Richard sat back, his fingers tapping absentmindedly at the keys of his keyboard. The clacking of the keys seemed to be the perfect companion for his racing mind.