11:29pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.
The rain that began to fall bounced from the tops of metal shipping containers with distinctive thuds, and ran over their edges and down their sides to coalesce as puddles and running streams of water on the ground. Soon the lights of the distant cityscape were reflected on soaking tarmac; a post-impression of blues, reds and purples that constantly shimmered in the downpour.
One of the corpses, disfigured in that the side of his head had come apart, slowly and quietly pushed himself up from his place on the floor and used the tips of his fingers to roll his eyeballs back to the front.
He sat there in silence for a while, watching the rain wash away the blood from the bodies around him. He felt it pool into the side of his skull, and into the holes that littered his limbs and torso, and after a while his pain was almost gone. He blinked to snap himself out of a half-awake dream, then reached his hand into his hole-ridden coat and pulled out a small, glass screen. He tried to swipe it with his thumb but it had been cracked and shot through, and he casually tossed it away in the rain.
He leaned around him and checked the nearest body for a similar piece of technology, his body stretching in awkward and unnatural ways. The next one was cracked slightly, but it still shone with the light of a screen, and he took the corpse’s thumb and pressed it against the print lock until the main interface scrolled into view. He sat back up, crossed his legs beneath him, then pressed the call button and entered a number.
A few seconds later, silence answered.
“He got away,” said Sarratt.
“Can you pursue him?” A woman asked him, her voice monotone and disapproving.
“Not possible,” he answered, a slight grin on his face. “I took a beating, and he could be miles away by now.”
“You sound like this is amusing to you,” the woman said. “Whose phone are you using?”
“No-one’s. Not anymore.”
“I see. What did you think of him?”
“He shouldn’t be underestimated. He might have been a failure, but he was still one of us. And he’s definitely smart enough to be a problem. You were right, though - he doesn’t remember anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I could see it in his eyes. He had no idea who I was.”
“I see. Do you think, if you were being serious, that he could defeat you?” The woman asked, causing Sarratt to laugh.
“No,” he replied as he calmed. “I do not think. His regenerative capacity is impressive, but that wouldn’t last forever.”
The woman went silent for a time, then returned with newfound command. “Make sure there’s no mess left behind.”
“Fair enough,” said Sarratt, glancing around at the bodies around him. “So, who are you going to send in my place? The angel? The furry? Or perhaps web-woman?”
“We need to find him, first. Then we need to know the true extent of his abilities.”
Sarratt grinned. “The furry, then.”
“Do not be disrespectful, Sarratt. They are your equals.”
“Sorry, Ma’am,” he replied, though he was clearly still amused.
“Don’t be sorry, just follow your orders,” said the woman. “Oh, and get rid of that biker gang. They’ve seen too much.”
Then she ended the call, leaving Sarratt there with nothing but the sound of pouring rain.
After a while, Sarratt stood and went to the nearest body, and by its arm he lifted it to his mouth and sank his teeth into flesh. Slowly, he began to devour it, and with each swallow his body’s remaining wounds began to seal and repair themselves. When he was as good as new, his skin unmarred, he piled the bodies into the back of the abandoned truck and covered them with a sheet of tarp. Then he climbed behind the wheel and drove away.
11:38pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.
The black motorbike rushed through the backstreets of the city; a 2120 J.M Seax with a hybrid engine and custom modifications to make the accelerator roar. Aiden held on to Hiromi tightly, staying as close as he he dared as she gripped the handles and leaned her body to the sides in rhythm with her bike’s turning. Looking over her shoulder, Aiden could see a display between the bike’s bars, which flashed in alert of a newly received message that showed only a single word: ‘scatter.’
Hiromi suddenly turned with the aid of her brakes, and soon they were drifting around a corner, rainwater spraying up from the road, and speeding down a forgotten alley. A single cat watched them as they passed, then rode up a set of concrete stairs and flew out onto a slightly larger side-road where a car had to suddenly swerve to avoid them. Unperturbed, a fearless Hiromi kept on, skilfully navigating traffic in both lanes as she weaved between them to best suit her needs.
There was a magroad up ahead now, with midnight traffic that moved so fast upon its rails that they appeared as barely more than an endless blur of light. Hiromi took her bike towards it, then down a sudden slope that led down into a tunnel beneath the highway. Before long they were deafened by the noise of the bike echoing back to them off the tunnel walls - a magnificent phantom roar.
They rode through the tunnel for another five minutes or so in complete solitude, until eventually their lane began to split off into two. Hiromi turned off onto the outermost lane that was sign-posted as ‘NO ACCESS’, and it narrowed at the same rate she slowed her bike until suddenly they were in an area of the tunnel barely wide enough to fit a car.
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“What is this place?” Asked Aiden.
“Nowhere,” Hiromi answered.
She kept going until a road barrier lay across the tunnel, propped up onto a tall, concrete block, and by staying low to the bike they passed under it and entered a large, abandoned parking lot. There were spaces for maybe 200 vehicles, yet besides Hiromi’s bike there were only three, and they were clearly abandoned. She drove through it, cutting across empty spaces and weaving between structural pillars until, at the far end, they came to a set of double doors made of thick steel.
“Get off here,” Hiromi said, reaching her hand to her silver-blue hair to squeeze the water from it. Aiden did so, his bare feet cold against the concrete and his tattered clothes sodden. After Hiromi dismounted, she took an old keycard from somewhere in her bodysuit and pressed it against a scanner, and with a hefty clanking sound, the doors unlocked and opened into an old maintenance area. “Follow me.”
She pushed her bike through the doors, and when Aiden had followed her through, she pressed a button that caused them to shut and lock again behind her. They found themselves in an old corridor, lined with broken doors that led into looted workshop rooms, and a service elevator at the end.
“This is one of our safe houses,” Hiromi explained. “I don’t even think the offs know this place is down here. Well, they obviously do, but they’ve stopped caring enough to check. Besides, we changed all the locks.”
They stopped in front of the only remaining door in the hall that was still closed, and Hiromi unlocked it with her keycard and propped it open. Inside was a comfortable enough looking den, with a sofa, a bed, a fridge, a desk with an old computer, several lockers, a working station and even a TV. It wasn’t clean, but it was surprisingly homely, and after leaving her bike propped up in the hall outside, Hiromi stepped in and walked over towards the fridge.
Aiden followed and shut the door behind him, and stood there as though waiting for permission to relax as Hiromi took a beer from the fridge and cracked the can open. “You want one?” She asked him, and when Aiden shook his head no, she shrugged and began to drink.
“Why’d you bring me here?” Aiden asked. “I told you to drop me off on the street.”
Hiromi paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Because some of my friends died tonight, and I still don’t know what I even saw. What I do know is that you saved my ass - that I’m alive because of you - and I guess I brought you here because I’m still shit scared and don’t want to be alone.”
Aiden suddenly felt like a douche. He hadn’t realized it until just then, but he suddenly knew that he was becoming desensitized to the strange and horrific circumstances that kept on happening to him. Hiromi wasn’t like that; she wasn’t used to the violence and the fear, and most importantly she wasn’t… Like him. And suddenly, as he stood there like a fool, he noticed that Hiromi was shaking and doing her absolute best to stay calm.
“Are you alright?” He asked her.
“I’ll be fine. This is the life I’m involved in. Crime, violence, gang wars. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a bad situation,” she said. “It was just the first I’ve been in one with an actual monster.”
Aiden walked over towards the sofa and stood there, wondering if he should sit down or if that might somehow antagonize her. “I don’t even know who he is,” he said. “This Sarratt person.”
Hiromi looked at him cautiously. “He seemed to know you. Kept calling you King.”
“That’s my last name,” he told her. “Aiden King. And I don’t even know what I’m doing in Japan, or what that name means here. I don’t remember anything from the past few years.”
She looked at him, then turned and began to pace the length of the room. “This sounds utterly ridiculous,”
“But it’s true.”
“Sarratt’s a black market arms dealer,” Hiromi explained. “My gang – I mean, the gang I’m in – we’re called Mukade, or Centipedes. We’re in a war against our rivals, the Kumo, or Spiders, over territory. Sarratt has been selling us guns for over a year now. We were getting involved with his organization… He even had access to our damn bar.”
“A gang war?” Aiden asked. “Why would a small-time biker gang be involved in a war? There’s enough city out there for a thousand biker gangs.”
“The Kumo don’t like what we do. Protection, racketeering, smuggling. We even deal in illegal augs – not the expensive cybertech but the real cheap, unlicensed amateur stuff. Sometimes we even mess with chems. And they’re nasty - they got a grudge against us. Won’t let it go.”
Aiden sighed, not sure how to answer. After a while, he changed the subject back to the only one they had in common. “Sarratt knows who I am,” he said. “He knows what happened to me.”
“You don’t have any augs, do you?” Hiromi suddenly asked him.
“What? Augs? No, why?” Aiden asked.
“Not even the high-tech, expensive shit?”
“I don’t think so,” Aiden said, looking over himself to make doubly sure.
“Then what happened to your wounds?” Asked Hiromi.
“My wounds?”
“You were injured. Your hand, your shoulder, probably more. You were injured and bleeding but now you’re not. There aren’t even any scars. I’ve not even heard of any implants that can do that and you… Don’t even have any.”
Aiden paused, and was about to try and explain himself when, suddenly, the door to the room opened behind them and in-stepped the gang leader with white hair. “Yuji?” Hiromi asked.
Yuji looked at her, then at Aiden. “I wondered where you were, I hadn’t heard from you. I thought you might be here,” he explained.
“You told us to scatter,” Hiromi reminded him. “So that’s what I did.”
“You brought this guy here?” Yuji asked her, gesturing to Aiden with a thumb.
“He saved my ass after you all left me there.”
“We didn’t leave you, Hiromi. I ordered everyone to retreat,” said Yuji.
“Well I couldn’t. King here saved me, and I couldn’t repay my debt by leaving him on the street, could I?”
“Well, you have my thanks, King,” Yuji said. “But we’ve got big problems now because of you.”
“Because of me?” Aiden asked. “I wanted none of this. I was just trying to defend myself!”
“Whatever your reasons, the results are the same. Sarratt was connected, and I don’t know how the fuck he did what he did, but it’s not just him we have to worry about,” Yuji told them. “There’s been word put out on the street that Mukade are fair game. A price is out on our heads, and there’s no doubt that Kumo are out there right now hunting us. We need to stay underground until I can fix this.”
“A price?” Hiromi mumbled, and from where he was Aiden could almost smell the fear in her. “Shit.”
He shut his eyes tightly, trying not to listen to the powerful beating of her heart. It was impossible. “I need to find him. I need to go after him,” Aiden suddenly said. “Or at least someone who can get to him.”
“What?” Yuji asked. “Get to who? Sarratt?”
“Yes. If I don’t, he’ll just keep coming after me. Maybe if I can meet with him, or the people he works with, I can fix all this. They must want something - there’s got to be a reason they’re doing this.”
“Going after that guy is crazy after what happened tonight. He’s got some serious enhancement,” said Yuji. “But… There was a guy I saw him with once. A corpo from Naka-Sura.”
Hiromi looked at them in disbelief. “You’re seriously suggesting we go after a corpo from Naka-Sura?” She asked. “He’ll be even more impossible to get than Sarratt. They have a private army. Not just security guards, Yuji, but an actual private military.”
“We don’t need to harm him, or even kidnap him,” said Aiden. “We just need to speak to him.”
“And if he’s connected to Sarratt, perhaps we can buy him off and get rid of this bounty,” Yuji said, the idea already growing on him. “Shit. This might be worth a try, Hiromi. It might be the only thing we can try.”
“The two of you are being ridiculous. We’re going after this man based on what, the fact he was once seen with our arms dealer? He might not have anything to do with the man – it might have been a fluke,” Hiromi argued.
“Maybe, but it’s the first time I’ve actually had a lead that might be able to tell me what the fuck is happening to me,” Aiden told her, looking down again at his still bare feet and his torn, bloodied hospital trousers. “And besides, we are not going after anyone. Just me.”
Yuji and Hiromi looked to one another, then Hiromi sighed and slid down onto the sofa in defeat.