73-year-old Doctor Tanner despairingly gazed upon his home of the last 24 years. A beautiful condominium, near the top floor of a high-rise building, in Vale-Steel, one of the wealthiest, most comfortable cities in Mirsada. He hadn’t really slept there much, nor had he been one for having company, or “company”, but it had been a nice little feather in his cap, and he almost felt himself tearing up as he left it behind. Especially, since he was leaving it behind, in this manner.
Tan skin pale from lack of sunlight. Dark brown hair with a case of untreated alopecia that left a good deal of his head bald. Chrome-eyes that had long been replaced by the cybernetics that had given his nation a new lease on life. Yoshinori Tanner was a middle-aged man by the standards of Velena-Rana. Or rather, considering how long cultivation and medicine could preserve a life these days, he was barely even middle-aged. Yet his life was already over. At least “this” life was definitely over.
In just a few short weeks. He’d lost his job with the Mirsadan Military’s Research and Development. Yoshinori had also been publicly denounced by the state, and thus lost all credibility as an academic. He’d lost all social standing as the state denouncement was topped by a commuted jail-sentence that made it clear that he was in fact considered an “enemy” of the state, to some degree. Then while sitting in this apartment, drowning his sorrows in alcohol, he’d quietly watched as his friends and peers seemed to disappear. Falling out of contact, one by one.
At first, Doctor Tanner thought he was merely being frozen out of the Mirsadan social scene due to his tarnished standing. Then one of his closer friends had called him, his voice filled with stress, the audio distorted by some strange, pinging, ringing, aberration. The man spoke only two sentences, but they cut through Yoshinori’s drunken, sulking, like butter. Turning the liquor in the doctor’s gut into lead, and filling the Doctor’s veins with ice.
“R-, Run, Yoshi…You need to run…” said the other doctor. Barely managing to get those words out before there was the sound of a door being kicked down, and weapons being discharged.
That call came maybe fifty-five minutes ago, and after twenty-minutes of confusion and denial, Yoshinori quickly came to the conclusion that his old friend, and rival, was right. He “did” need to run. The irony wasn’t lost on him that he’d largely been able to so clearly determine this due to his own hands on experience, being someone that others had run from.
Over the past few decades, as he’d made his way through the ranks of the Mirsadan Government, he hadn’t just worked with the military, he’d worked with the police, and other agencies…And while he considered himself a true-patriot, and felt most acts that his nation had taken, were largely justified, Doctor Tanner was well-aware that some of the most hypocritical, of Mirsada’s peers in the international community, considered the current administration a bit despotic and tyrannical.
Some of them even rudely termed their system of democratic-monarchy a dictatorship, with the old crown held captive to the state’s whims. Back when he was part of the in-group, he’d have scoffed at such assertions. Now, when he was clearly on the outs with his government, there were some things in his past that made Yoshinori concerned that the state might be sending its hatchet men to clean up loose ends, and make sure that he didn’t spill any state secrets.
*************************************************************************************************************
Several weeks later. A taxi ride, a plane ride, and train ride, and a ship ride later. Yoshinori found himself sitting on the bed of a no-tell motel in the middle of some podunk town in some random province. Eyes bloodshot, a spell-pistol in hand.
He was still being hunted. He’d risked leaving trails as to his location and movements, to use his greatly decreased influence, and highly diminished assets to try and figure out exactly what the hell was going on.
At first Doctor Tanner had thought that it was the state coming after him. Yet he’d been able to confirm that the measures he’d set in place, and the favors he’d called were still active. So long as Yoshinori made no move to defect, or run beyond the borders of the country, the nation would close half an eye and forget him.
As much as Yoshinori was an earnest patriot, he was wise enough to know that politics was always a dirty game, and over the years had gathered and readied enough “ammunition”, to potentially injure the current regime if they moved against him. It was actually part of why he couldn’t believe his current state. He hadn’t been able to believe that all those favors, all those bribes, and all that blackmail, hadn’t been enough to save his status. Fortunately, it could at least preserve his little life.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
However, that made the situation even more troublesome. The state might not have been coming after him, but from what his sources told him, they sure as hell had no intention of protecting him either. Even when he showed his hand and threatened to use some of his political ammunition, it was clear that the state would rather take that hit. Suddenly Yoshinori had a clearer view of the events that precipitated his fall, and the picture he saw terrified him.
He hadn’t just gotten unlucky and managed to piss someone off. This wasn’t the result of one of Doctor Tanner’s political rivals in the State’s Academic world using some breakthrough to have the politicians knock Doctor Tanner down by several pegs. The state’s complete disavowal of him, was an act of desperation. An act of self-preservation. Which meant something, or someone, had managed to spook, some of the most powerful men and women in Mirsada so badly that they’d cast out Yoshinori, all his peers, and their subordinates. Just to save themselves.
After watching, waiting, and running for several weeks. Yoshinori had finally run out of steam. The state had frozen, and/or confiscated most of the Doctor’s assets. And as for the little money Yoshinori had kept hidden away, it was expensive to travel as far, and as often, as he had. Especially, when one was trying to travel incognito, to avoid being tracked. Getting all his sources to continue talking to him came with steep costs as well.
This was it. This motel was Yoshinori’s final refuge. He’d been spending his days waiting, and watching, and keeping an ear out…and despite all his efforts. He still had no clue who was hunting down him and his workmates. To make matters even more troublesome, being as “patriotic” as he’d been had resulted in Yoshinori and his peers creating countless reasons for why. Which was pretty much the same as having no reason to look to, at all.
It was almost a relief when the day finally came, that Yoshinori woke up in the middle of the night, to find several presences seated at his bedside, and surrounding the space around his motel room. At least the hunt was over, at least the mystery would be over. He sat up, switching his cybernetic eyes to their night-vision mode to get a better look at his visitor. He saw a face that he’d seen countless times before. Though those faces were either still in the repose of death, or screaming for mercy when Yoshinori saw them.
“Hello, Doctor Tanner…Did you have fun running around?” said a voice that was just as familiar as the face had been, for all that it wasn’t crying out in pain, or brokenly reciting letters, shapes, and numbers on command.
“So…This is why my dear Mirsada abandoned me…” sighed Yoshinori. His mind quickly completed the picture of his circumstances, now that he understood exactly who he'd offended.
“We technically had been watching around Coal-Lake, but I felt it appropriate that we give you a bit of freedom to run around, while we picked up the rest of your associates,” said the blond, dog-eared woman, in the crisp blue suit.
“Did you really catch us all, soldier?” said Yoshinori.
“Indeed we did…My sister lent me her considerable assets, and some human resources to assure that none of your ilk escaped…” said the woman.
“Your sister…Ah, Codename 3:15…Tch, I knew that it was a risk going after that one…but her outcome and state were just too outstanding…I just had to try and see why…” sighed the Doctor.
“But, did you though? Did you really? I’d argue you didn’t have to do any of the considerably shitty things you did and attempted to do…But, maybe that’s just me…”
“Tell me something…You Tank-born were raised to have a pure and wholehearted loyalty to the state that created you…How can you betray the country that created you, like this?” said the Doctor. Feeling oddly petulant in his final moments. Depressedly, deciding to be a bit unreasonable because there was no reason to mince words when it was clear he was going to die regardless of what he said.
“Meh…I don’t know…People will be people, no matter how they’re born…And weren’t you lot the ones who threw us away first…Isn’t quite rude of you to interrupt and ruin the lives we’ve all been working so hard to build since you cast us out? ” said the woman.
“Hmph, Sophistry!… Dying for the sake of the country is an honor! You should be gr-”
Yoshinori’s words were cut short as a silenced sliver of super-heated tungsten perforated his skull, and cooked away his brains.
“Ah, then the honor is all yours, Comrade…Welp, let’s go…We’ve already extracted the data from the good doctor’s soul. The night is short and there’s still a fair number of folks for me to 'chat' with before this matter is done with,” said Lorelai Irvine.
The woman left the room, and the pawns and rooks that accompanied her, followed. A maid would later find the body, and the death would eventually, briefly, make it to the news. Making it to the other scientists and researchers who were behind the ill-fated project of recapturing the tank-born soldiers created by the old regime for use as research subjects in their endeavor to perfectly blend cybernetics and genetic modification.