10:32pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

"What the fuck?"

The bikers that Aiden found himself facing were not the one percenter outlaws common in the previous century, but members of the high-tech gangs who raced and fought through the night streets of Kanto, rebelling against corporate tyranny and the high surveillance state. They wore jackets, pants and bodysuits made of deep purple synth-leather and latex, and watched him with multicolored eyes that he immediately knew had seen violence.

Aiden couldn't think of what to tell them, or how to reply to what he figured was an acceptably alarmed response to the scene he had just revealed. One by one they stood from their seats and saw what lay in the room behind him, and he took half a step back, trying to avoid a sudden escalation. "He... Tried to kill me," he finally explained, deciding that the truth seemed appropriate.

The bikers passed each other unsure glances, during which time Aiden noticed that they each had the exact same gang logo somewhere on their clothes; a grey centipede, holding a japanese knife in its mouth-parts.

"He tried to kill you?" Asked one of them, a young japanese man with unnaturally white hair that ended in a straight-cut fringe. As this white-haired man stepped forward the others looked to him, waiting for some gesture or command.

"He told me that he could give me a safe place to sleep and then he tried to kill me," Aiden said. Less of the truth, now, but the fear still in his voice was real.

The man watched him carefully. "Mikio, Hiromi, go and check," he said.

Two bikers, a man and a woman who were both a little younger than their leader, pushed past Aiden and went to where Sarratt lay on his back with one of his own throwing knives still deep in his forehead.

"Yuji, it's Sarratt," the woman called back; her long, silver-blue hair falling down past her shoulders. "There's a fucking knife in his head."

"He tried to kill me so I… Stabbed him," mumbled Aiden.

"In the head?" Yuji, the white-haired man, asked him. "You don't seem wounded."

“I was lucky.”

"Bullshit,” said the woman. “You lured him back here and murdered him. Let’s kill him, Yuji. We’ve already gotta get rid of one body, might as well get rid of him too.”

"That’s not true! How could I have lured him here?" Aiden asked, trying to appeal to the man’s common sense. "I don't even know where I am!"

"He's got a point," said the other man, looking up from Sarratt to examine the rest of the room. "The back door is maglocked and I've never seen the guy before. Even if he knew where this place was, how'd he get through? He couldn’t have just lured Sarratt back to his own joint.”

“Our joint,” the woman quickly corrected. “Not his.”

"Just let me go," said Aiden. "I don't want any trouble. It was self defence. I’ll just walk out of here and none of you will ever see me again."

"Just wait a second," Yuji told him. "We need to figure out what happened here before we let anyone go anywhere."

"I told you. He lured me here and tried to kill me."

As Aiden spoke, the girl with silver-blue hair - Hiromi - walked up to him from behind. "How'd he lure you?" She asked, her hand suddenly reaching towards the rim of his trousers and pulling at them so she could see inside. She rolled her eyes as Aiden pushed her hand away. "He's not even wearing underwear," she said. "And those are hospital trousers. Yuji, this guy's from Fukaya General. Real question is if he’s a victim or one of the assholes who shot up the place.”

“Do I really look like I just shot up a hospital?” Snapped Aiden.

Yuji immediately groaned, rubbing his head with one hand and sitting back against the edge of a table. "Shit. Well, we can't just leave Sarratt there, and if this guy's really from Fukaya, the KCPD will be looking for him. What is it with my shitty luck lately? Just when I thought we might finally have an uneventful evening.”

“You think they’ll come down here in force to get him?” Asked one of the others.

Yuji gave an unmotivated mod. “Yeah, they just might. It’s too risky to keep him here, or to let him wander off back into the streets.”

Hiromi turned to Yuji, her eyes growing wide. "You want to take him somewhere? The cops are already on high alert, Yuji," she said. "Not to mention Kumo. We can’t ride out tonight, it’s too dangerous.”

"Got no choice," Yuji said. "We gotta dump the body and figure out what to do with our guest here."

Hiromi lowered her gaze to her feet and grumbled. “Shit. I guess we’re doing this. Want me to get the truck?"

"No, you'll look out of place driving it at this time of night," Yuji told her. "Mikio, you take it."

Mikio nodded. "Sure thing. What about this guy?" He asked, gesturing to Aiden. "Would be easiest to just pop him in the back of the head right now.” As he spoke, he opened his jacket to reveal a handgun pushed into his belt.

"Nah, we'll take him with us. Don’t wanna kill him if we don’t have to, and especially not where it will leave a mess," Yujio said. "Put a bag over his head and let’s go."

Soon everything went dark for Aiden. Someone behind him, perhaps the bartender, pulled a thick sack over his face and the dozen or so bikers in the room soon jumped into coordinated action. He felt a strong hand press into his shoulder, and he was pushed through the bar with no way of knowing where he might end up. All he knew is that he didn’t want to get into another fight, and that it was best to go along with them until he was either released or found the chance to escape.

He heard little of the next few minutes. At first he wasn't sure if some kind of audio suppression tech was being used to deafen him to their words, but soon he realized it was because they had an impressive level of discipline. They knew what they had to do, and they wasted no time speaking while doing it.

Over the next few minutes Aiden was taken outside to a cold alleyway, and a small truck pulled up sharply to his side. He heard a door open, then he felt hands guiding - and then pushing - him down into the back seat and out of view. Someone sat down next to him, then the door was slammed shut and the engine started with a whirring hum. Outside he heard the similar whirring of bikes, and he lay still as the vehicles began to move.

"Where are we going?" Aiden asked through his hood.

"Nowhere you need to worry about," said a voice he didn't recognize.

"I was telling the truth, you know. He tried to kill me. Look around that room and you'll see the evidence."

"I don't care, to tell you the truth. I was enjoying a drink with my friends, and whatever happened back there just shit on our whole evening."

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Aiden sighed and went quiet. For nearly thirty minutes he felt the truck turning and stopping; descending down one hill only to climb to the top of another. Throughout the entire journey he was acutely aware that his hands were not bound - that he could, at any moment, fight and attempt to escape. But he didn’t want to kill anyone else, his evening already so full of death, and decided that it wasn’t worth it while the man sat so close to him.

After a few minutes, the man leaned towards the front of the truck and spoke again. "Shit, I don't like this," he said to the driver. "Kumo could have already seen us. We could be in a fight before we even know it's coming."

"Don't worry about it," replied another, a voice Aiden recognized as Mikio. "We're moving fast and quiet, and we have guys out ahead to make sure there are no surprises."

"That doesn't make me feel any better, man," said the unknown one. "These streets are basically sewers. You know - and I heard this from my cousin - there are people who never even touch the road? They spend their entire lives on the upper floors, taking those walkways that go between buildings. Think about how many people are standing on those bridges, looking down at us even now? How are you gonna check that none of them are spiders?"

"Well luckily for us, we're almost there," said Mikio. After a few seconds the vehicle turned, then a minute or so later it came to a complete stop and the engine died. “You can take off the bag.”

The man leaned over and pulled the bag from over Aiden’s head, and he looked up and blinked into the evening light. The door by his head opened and he saw Hiromi standing there with a long knife in her hand, and he thought she was going to stab him until she gestured for him to climb out. He did so, and when he finally stood again he found that they were at least hundreds of meters from the nearest of Kanto's skyscrapers.

They were standing on an old shipping dock, surrounded by abandoned and decades old containers, piled two or three high and arranged in a haphazard, maze-like manner. Old cranes reached high above them like towers, and around them were abandoned warehouses lit by the distant flames of squatter’s fires.

"What are you going to do? Kill me and dump me here?" Aiden asked them, looking around as each of the dozen or so members of the gang stood by their slick, dark bikes and kept an eye out for trouble.

"No," said Hiromi, "but it would be a good place for it. Stick you in one of these old containers, deep in one of those warehouses? It'd be a hundred years before you were found."

Aiden closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to focus on the surrounding skyline. Kanto was all around them, its buildings reaching into the sky like a forest of hideous blocks. Even though the waterfront was a large and far flatter area, those buildings were like a wall around them, making Aiden feel trapped.

Behind him, from the bed of the truck he had been riding in, two bikers pulled away a tarp cover and opened the bed so that they could reach the body inside. They each grabbed one of Sarratt's legs, then after sliding him towards them, lay him carefully on the ground. The knife was still in the forehead, and Aiden had to turn away from it.

"How did you people know him?" Aiden asked. "He didn’t come across as a biker."

"Black market supplier," said Yuji, now walking towards Aiden, Mikio and Hiromi with a submachine gun hanging at his side. "Didn't know too much about him, if I’m honest, but he had powerful friends. Friends who'll want to know what the hell happened to him."

And then, Aiden finally realized why they were there. Rather than being killed and dumped, he was being handed to whoever Sarratt's supposed allies were. The exact same allies who had tried to capture him in the hospital. He closed his eyes, knowing that he could still get away if he started running. Even if they could hurt him enough to slow him down, they wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Or perhaps he should just kill them all... He could do that too, couldn't he? He killed those mercenaries, after all...

"Hey, boss?" Asked one of Yuji's men.

"What is it?" Yuji replied.

"Sarratt. I swear he just moved."

Aiden suddenly froze in fear, hoping that whatever the biker had just said had been an exaggeration or lie. After a second he opened his eyes, then slowly turned to look at where Sarratt’s body lay on the ground, twitching.

Mikio looked half-panicked. "Should we help him?" He asked, glancing at Yuji.

But Yuji was speechless, and it took someone nudging him in the shoulder for him to finally answer. "Yeah,” he said. “Check his pulse. Maybe he's just convulsing - like after death nerve shit."

"Who, me?" Mikio asked, clearly not wanting the job.

"Yes, you. Damnit, Mikio, just do it.”

Mikio went over to Sarratt, then slowly and with as much fear as caution, knelt down by his shoulder. He reached down towards his neck and used two fingers to feel for a pulse, then after several seconds and a look of clear confusion, placed his ear against Sarratt's heart. "I don't understand... He has a pulse, but-"

Mikio's words were cut off when Sarratt opened his eyes, then brought his hand up and around the biker's neck so fast that he didn’t have time to react. Mikio's eyes were suddenly wide, and he was unable to breathe, and before anyone could do anything his neck was crushed between Sarratt’s fingers. A moment later, his body went limp.

The shock and silence of the watching crowd was like the death that they had just seen. But as Sarratt pushed Mikio's body away from him, removing the knife from his head and sitting up with a cold grin, Hiromi broke that silence by screaming.

"What the fu-" Yuji began to say, but stopped himself to raise his gun and fire at a foe who was no longer there.

Sarratt had rolled and moved in a distorted, broken way, forcing himself to his feet, and as the others watched on in terror, three of the bikers were suddenly being torn apart in a sickening show of gore. They tried to fight back but Sarratt was too quick, too precise, and too strong, and their struggle ended when he sank his teeth into the final woman’s jugular. He tore out the flesh of her throat in a leaning sweep of his body, and her blood sprayed out over everything around her as she spiraled to the ground.

"I must admit you surprised me, King," Sarratt said, the flesh dropped from his bloodied teeth as he turned to where Aiden stood frozen. Around them the bikers scrawled around for weapons or got on their bikes, and Yuji yelled orders to try and bring them back under control. "What you did was clever. And right after I chastised you for lacking cleverness."

Aiden stepped back as Sarratt began to clap his hands in a disturbing applause. "It's unfortunate that these Mukade saw it, though. They were valued customers.”

Aiden turned and began to run. Sarratt would have followed except that several members of the biker gang began to fire at him, their bullets tearing through his body and preventing his advance. When the shooting ended, one of the bikers rushed at Sarratt with a crowbar and Sarratt caught it with his hand, then pried it away and used it to break open the biker's skull. Aiden, rather than making his escape, stopped to watch this happen.

"Go home, little Centipedes," Sarratt told them, thrown back into a half-spin as a shotgun blast tore through his side. "Or I'll step on you all."

"Run!" Yuji shouted, holding no desire to lose even more of his friends. He and several others turned and fled back to their bikes, and soon were throwing themselves over them in a hasty retreat.

Meanwhile, Hiromi had a pistol in her hand and was firing it at Sarratt until the trigger clicked. “Fuck you!” She screamed at him, the empty magazine dropping to the ground as she backed herself towards the truck. Sarratt, who had been unphased by Hiromi’s attempts to kill him, grinned and began to approach her as the rest of the bikers fled.

Aiden couldn’t just let the woman die. With the overwhelming guilt of what he had done to Nami still fresh in his mind, he launched himself at Sarratt like a crazed bull. Sarratt saw him, turned, and swung the crowbar he held at Aiden’s face, but Aiden raised his forearm and took the full force of the blow. His bone cracked, his skin bruised, and he reached forward past the crowbar to grab Sarratt’s arm. Sarratt pulled harshly, and the curved chisel dug itself deep into the flesh of Aiden’s shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.

"You're not fast enough,” Sarratt mocked him, shutting up his cry by butting him directly in the face. “Not strong enough.”

His shattered nose already rebuilding itself, Aiden stared rage into Sarrat's eyes, and took hold to try and pry the bar away from him. Sarratt used his free hand to pull a throwing knife from the inside of his jacket, but when he went to stab it into Aiden's face with his inhuman speed, he found that Aiden's hand had already moved into the path of the knife, and stopped it with his palm.

"Not bad," said Sarratt. "But you still can't win."

"I'm not trying to," Aiden revealed.

A moment later Hiromi, who had been approaching Sarratt from behind, pressed her pistol against the side of the undying man's head and pulled the trigger. Sarratt was immediately knocked sideways as the bullet passed through his brain, the side of his skull bursting open in a cascade of brain and bloodstained bone. When Aiden released him he dropped to the floor, once again silent.

"... Shit," Aiden groaned, pulling the knife from his palm and letting it fall back to its master. Hiromi stared at him, in utter shock, as his wounds healed before her eyes. "You need to go," he told her.

Hiromi snapped out of the trance that watching Aiden had placed her in, and she turned and ran to her bike. She threw her leg over and clutched the handles, then started the engine and turned to make sure that Sarratt was still dead. "You think he'll get up again?" She asked.

"Yeah," Aiden mumbled, moving from Sarratt's body to walk in the same direction the other bikers had fled. He was about to leave on his own, bare-foot and still half-naked, but he found Hiromi’s black bike blocking his path before he could.

"Get on," Hiromi told him. "It's the least I can do for saving my ass."

Aiden stared at her, his only thought being that she would be in danger if he actually went with her. But after a few seconds he climbed on anyway, and placed his his hands on her waist for support. "Just get me to the road," he told her. "I'll go from there."

Hiromi nodded, then she hit the accelerator and they sped off into the night.