Location: Velstand Industrial District

Time: 2:58 PM, February 14th 2108

I still hadn’t fully decided what it was I wanted to do. I’ve noticed that in the moment I have no trouble making completely life shattering decisions without a second thought, but when I have the time to think things over I can be surprisingly hesitant.

W. After spending around a month in their care I’d come to learn a few things. While they definitely didn’t deserve the reputation that they had as domestic terrorists, they weren’t perfectly innocent either. The leaders of W wanted to make the city of Velstand a better place. I absolutely believe that. Their goals are pure.

My issue was with their methods. W seemed to operate on a principle of necessary evil, and I can’t blame them for that. You’ll never get anywhere in this city by playing by the rules.

Trust me on that one.

Unfortunately, I’m not pragmatic enough to accept that, even though I understand their reasoning is the correct one. W is taking the most direct method. The method that in the long run has the best chance of saving the highest amount of people.

The current government of Velstand needed to be restructured. That was a fact that I wouldn’t argue.

But what kind of damages would that result in? What kind of chaos?

Wouldn’t it be better to focus on reform?

Yeah, I get it. When the other side is arbitrarily killing anyone they want reform isn’t a realistic option.

But why should that stop me? Justice doesn’t compromise.

If I kept working with W, wouldn’t that be abandoning my ideals? Wouldn’t that be following Vier’s advice?

Maybe, but it’s not like I could accomplish anything on my own anyway. I needed W’s help just as much as they wanted mine.

Then it might be best to stick with W, and try to steer them in the right direction.

The other thing to consider was W’s chances of success.

They were basically nonexistent. At the moment it was only really the police working against them, but if they made any real progress MID would certainly track them down. And if the ARA got involved they would all be killed without even realizing what was happening.

Wasn’t that all the more reason to help them?

“Ah, I don’t know!”

The other people walking along the sidewalk stopped and looked in my direction.

I let out an awkward laugh and kept walking.

Come on, Jaxon, you’ve got to be smarter than that. I can’t say for certain, but I’m probably a wanted man. I shouldn’t be making scenes like that in public. I imagine I shouldn’t be in public at all, but if I stayed cooped up in that food processing plant W uses as a base of operations all day I’d lose my mind.

People are always coming and going, talking about things I’d rather not hear. Lately there has been a lot of fuss about people from the Cypress Organization. As much as I hate it, it seems like everywhere I end up there are people willing to use those criminals. They’ve even been sending some kid along with their other members. I tried talking to her once, but her stuffed animal told me to buzz off.

What kind of shady organization uses an innocent kid like that? Well, I suppose W isn’t any different.

Emily might seem scatterbrained, but she has a good heart. I’m sure of that. And I can tell that she only wants to help people. Honestly, she’s too kind hearted to work for a group like this. I just wish she wasn’t being forced into such dangerous positions. Considering she has an augmentation, the members of the ARA wouldn’t hesitate for a moment if they thought she was in any way involved with a group like W.

Did I have the mental flexibility to stick with a group that would use someone like that? And even if not, didn’t I owe them for my new hand? Something like that couldn’t have been cheap.

Well, anyway, I didn’t know what I was going to do. So as long as I didn’t have any better plan, I might as well stick with W until something happened to change my mind. That’s the decision I came to by ignoring my responsibility to make a proper decision.

Turns out none of that mattered anyway.

I used one of the back entrances to enter W’s hideout. I was instantly assaulted by a smell I couldn’t forget.

The iron rich air forced me to remember the carnage I would never understand.

From what I knew, W had around a 100 members in total, with 30 or so using this food processing plant as a headquarters. The rest were, well, somewhere else. I wasn’t exactly high enough on the food chain to know those kinds of things.

All 30 of the people I’d spent a month getting to know, with the exception of the absent Emily, were dead, scattered throughout the plant.

With the state most of the bodies were in I couldn’t actually confirm if everyone was actually accounted for, but this didn’t look like a scene that allowed for survivors.

Standing in the middle of that carnage was W’s newest member. A recruit that showed up a few weeks after I did. Her grey hair and impossibly sharp claws were stained with dried blood. Her canine ears perked up as I entered the facility.

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It was the first time I saw her without a hat on, but I couldn’t be surprised by her inhuman headgear. It wasn’t her appearance that make her a beast, it was how comfortable she looked surrounded by absolute carnage.

Those ears, claws, and unnaturally sharp teeth that showed as she smiled widely. That girl, Lucy, she was an aberration. She must have been hiding her condition, waiting for a chance like this.

Was she working with someone else, or was she just a wild beast? With aberrations it’s hard to tell. If augmenteds are met with suspicion, aberrations should be met with the utmost of fear. With them it’s not a matter of a slight personality shift, there’s nothing human left about them.

From my time on the police force I can tell you that Velstand has no official law against them, but that doesn’t mean they’re treated like humans.

Maybe I’m just being prejudiced, but the aberration standing before me hasn’t done much to break the stereotype.

“Hahaha, Jaxon! I’ve been waiting for you! What took you so long?”

She was waiting for me? Given the situation, I can’t say I felt flattered.

“I shouldn’t complain though! I was the one that purposefully waited for you to leave before starting! Hahaha!”

“Why are you laughing?”

I didn’t feel like bothering to ask her why she was waiting for me, or why she waited until I left before starting her massacre. She planned on killing me, just like she killed everyone else. And she must have thought that having me around to help everyone else might have given them the edge.

“Because I’m in a good mood today! Back in the Empire I couldn’t kill any humans. Even in the Northern Territories, Ellie hardly ever let me kill any. But she said I don’t have to worry about hunters coming after me in this city. And even the police won’t come after me. I’m doing officially sanctioned work after all.”

Lucy put her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest.

Like I thought. That thing wasn’t human. Our lives meant nothing to her. There was no point in trying to reason with someone like that.

“Stop. Surrender now and no one needs to get hurt.”

Just because there was no point didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

“Surrender? No no no, not happening. Definitely not. Ellie specifically sent me here. Probably because of you. She couldn’t trust a regular augmented to finish you off.”

Lucy pointed out my glaring disadvantage. My status as a nullifier can be pretty intimidating to most augmenteds. It might not seem like it thanks to all of the crazy strong people I end up squaring off against, but most augmenteds wouldn’t want any trouble with a nullifier, especially at close range.

That doesn’t apply to aberrations.

My ability can only nullify the supernatural aspects of augmentations. I can’t nullify the effect that those augmentations have already had on the physical world.

I could stop an augmented from producing a flame in their hand, but I couldn’t nullify the fire if it already spread to a piece of paper, and I couldn’t restore that half burnt paper.

I can nullify abilities, but not results.

And aberrations are already results. Their augmentations altered their DNA. After that initial transformation their augmentation doesn’t really do anything. Nullifying it wouldn’t do me any good.

The aberration before me had claws that could rip through flesh and teeth that could crush bone. There was nothing for me to nullify. Those were just her physical characteristics.

“Speaking off, I really need to finish you off now. Please die now.”

Lucy started charging at me. She was fast. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but she was moving faster than that.

My first instinct was to try and move away from her.

That would have been a mistake. Trying to back off would have only thrown me off balance.

I fought against my instincts and took a step forward while readying myself.

Once she was in range Lucy slashed across my body. I raised my left hand to block her claws.

Sparks flew as the metal alloy that makes up my hand managed to stop her claws.

“Hahaha! I heard you had a robot hand, but it’s harder than I thought.”

“Exactly. You shouldn’t have assumed I’d be useless without my ability to nullify you. It’s still not too late to surrender.”

“No, I mean, it’s only the one hand, right? How much of a difference will that make?”

Lucy resumed her attack, this time without breaks. She was constantly moving around me, taking swipes with both of her clawed hands.

I was trying to keep up, but blocking every attack was too much. After only a few seconds I was already trying to determine which attacks were worth blocking and which ones I should let connect.

Fortunately, none of Lucy’s attacks were as aggressive as they might have seemed at first. Even when they hit, her claws didn’t seem to pass more than a few centimeters into my body.

She was being careful. She was making sure not to leave herself vulnerable. She knew my best chance of winning was to catch her with my prosthetic hand. If things kept going the way they were I’d die from a thousand cuts.

Then it was time to turn the tables. I let one of her attacks land. Her hand pierced into my shoulder. It hurt, but nothing I wasn’t used to. Rather than back off, I pushed forward, lodging her hand further through my shoulder.

With the distance between us closed I reached for her with my left hand. I thought I was moving fast enough to grab her, but I only managed to grasp at the air. Before I realized it she was already more than five meters away from me.

“Hahaha! That was pretty fast for a human!”

“Clearly not fast enough.”

My shoulder was bleeding too much. I’d probably only get one more chance at her.

“Well of course not. You probably don’t know this, but I’m Ellie’s number one! There’s only a handful of people in the Empire that could keep up with me!”

“Well you’re not in the Empire anymore.”

“Yeah! I love it here! The humans here are fair game. I’d love to play with you all day, but I really do need to finish things up. I’m not sure when Emily is coming back, and I can’t risk running into her.”

“Emily? Why?” Was she worried about having to fight another augmented?

“She’s the one person here I’m not allowed to hurt. I think she has something to do with Ellie and Henry, but I don’t know the details.”

I was still trying to figure out what all of that meant, but she didn’t plan on giving me any time to think. She reached back and grabbed a steel cart used for transporting boxes of ice packs used for shipping. It must have weighed over 200 kilograms, but she threw it at me with only one arm.

I managed to dodge the initial impact, but the frozen ice packs launched out, impacting the entire area like a shotgun blast.

My body was covered in countless cuts and gouges, my shoulder had a sizable hole in it, and a dozen or so impacts from the ice packs left me practically immobile.

That might seem like a bad situation to most people, because, well, it was a bad situation.

But I was still feeling fine. I hate to admit it, but I really was getting used to that kind of situation. An overwhelming power was standing against me?

What else is new?

I’d keep fighting until I lost. And if I didn’t lose, I’d win.

“You sure you don’t want to surrender?”

“Hahaha! You’re a funny guy. You keep asking me to surrender, but what would you do if I did? Kill me? I already told you, I was sent here with government approval. It’s not like you could hand me over to the authorities. I’m the one who is on the right side of the law. I’m the good guy, and you’re the villain!”

“Sometimes the law is wrong. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.”

“Sure, sure, I agree!”

The law is definitely valuable, but there is something else far more important to protect. It’s not something that I need to bring up with Lucy though. I can recognize it, so I don’t need to try explaining it to anyone. Even during the callback, I’m a fool that can’t abandon justice.