Standing atop a dead, mutilated corpse, a large figure held the remnants of a handgun, the small black magazine laying within the pool of blood drifting around the dead body. It was a fresh kill, the former human being murdered around two minutes ago. Around the walls, there was no sign of a shootout or struggle; just a quick, unexpected kill. However, a small spherical metal object stood gallantly before the killer with a single blue light blazing in the frozen time.

Even whilst everything around him seemed stuck, trapped in this one singular moment, the killer slowly begun to move, retrieving a magazine from the boat load on his belt, sliding it back into his handgun until a click resounded in the silent realm beyond time.

Bang.

Suddenly, the small sphere detonated, blowing the small section of the large house to smithereens, causing some of the structure to collapse, and forming a barrier before the killer. Still, it didn’t seem to end there. A bullet seemed to fly past the killer, a very poor shot for the stealthy assassin, one they would regret.

Hastily threwing his body around, a full one-hundred-eighty degrees round in a mere second, placing the poor shooter in his direct gaze, the killer quickly directed his handgun and pulled his finger on the small trigger or the little gun.

Breaking through the air, the small bullet shooted forth like a small rocket through space, following it’s set course with brilliant precision, swirling in the air like a ballerina until it pierced right between Sneaky’s eyes, following it’s route to the brain of which it made quick work before a hasty exit out of the other side. One down.

As the body fell, the killer moved further through the house with a blood-thirsty gaze. Morti wasn’t enough. No, he was killing every damned traitor in this house, hunting the rats to the very last one. It had taken three loops to get this far, but that was alright; this was to be the final one.

Throwing a spherix, the spherical small fusion grenade, around the corner, Ajax listened out for any signs of movement before the explosion boomed into his poor ears. Reactivating the temp-implant that transferred much greater hearing signals to his brain, Ajax heard the light clicking of a gun, twisting his body in it’s direction. As the sneaker bobbed their head out, a bullet ended that problem.

Looking around the destruction caused by his spherix, Ajax upped his kill tally by three strikes. It seemed the morons had grouped up, making them light work with a spherix to toss. Only three to go. Mentally noting that fact, Ajax heard the sound of shattering glass above; it seemed the bastards wished to escape.

‘Not a fucking chance’ he spat as he gripped his handgun tightly, remaining on the lower floor and running outside through the nearest door. That phone off Thorn made things much easier with the door politely unlocking itself. It seemed it did some things automatically when the app was open, which could be a problem around their flat.

Spotting two figures attempting to hop the wall, Ajax fired two shots, one planting itself in the taller one’s skull whilst the other blew straight through the shorter one’s brain. One left.

Hastily, Ajax looked around him, attempting to find any running figure. None. After a bit more looking, he took out his phone, hijacked all the cameras of the area, and flicked through, hoping to find the stray rat. But there was nothing.

“Damn it!” Ajax cursed with a lot of passion. He had both succeeded and failed. Morti was dead, yet a traitor still lived.

Putting that to rest, whilst remaining cautious, Ajax began searching the late Morti’s private quarters. Seiji had mapped out the whole house for Ajax, so finding the secret weapons room wasn’t exactly difficult, since Seiji had made a point of mapping that part out, too. It made Ajax wonder how the hell Seiji had found any of this out, and what he had previously planned to do with it. Seiji was even more dangerous than he though.

“Perfect” he said in an eerily joyous tone. In his hands was a large sphere, which looked just like a spherix, just much larger; an X-Spherix. Or what was normally referred to as a grounder, since it flattened every building to the ground. Why did Morti have this in his house? Because he was a damned psycho. Why wouldn’t he have a device capable of destroying his estate on accident.

“Almost seems planted” Ajax muttered. And this act would be no accident.

Sitting on his motorcycle, ready to leave, he couldn’t help but wait a little longer. Checking his watch, he smiled demonically before looking back up at the building.

“Peace at last” he began to drive away.

Boom.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------”Sorted?” Thorn asked.

“Sorted” Ajax replied, jumping onto the sofa with a tired expression. He’d changed his clothes in the garage, leaving a bag of bloody clothes in there for Thorn to find. Not that he’d find it too strange, considering the kinds of things their group got up to.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Alice left a few hours ago” Thorn said, “She seemed a little pissed, to be honest”

Ajax sighed, he would be receiving an earful about that, he knew. To Ajax’s silence, Thorn asked the question he’d been holding back for a while.

“Why don’t you two get back together?” he asked, “I mean you’re basically dating now. You clearly like each other”

After seeing Ajax’s reaction, Thorn regretted asking that question a little. The tech-geek’s roommate seemed pretty frustrated about that topic. It was clear as day that he wanted to get back with her, but…

“She doesn’t want to get back with me” Ajax hesitantly admitted, “She doesn’t like what I do. She doesn’t understand me. You has no idea what its like to know nothing outside the taste of artificial pastes; to leech off all your friends for a place to sleep, and if that doesn’t work, to sleep on the streets, vulnerable to any psycho that might feel like killing that night”

Clearly, they had some different views on the world. Ajax had had it pretty rough after his dad lost it and his mother died. No matter how much he might have loved her, he could never bridge the gap between him and Alice; they simply came from different worlds. Her father was a higher up in MetEx’s military branch, growing up more sheltered than a princess. That was the blade that pierced a hole in their relationship; their alien childhoods.

Now relaxing on the sofa, Ajax let out a sigh of relief before looking up at what was on the tv. It was a documentary of the capture of ‘Likqavard’, the cyber criminal that shed most of his human flesh for their cyber counterparts and went on to kill, steal, rape; he had his cyber finger in every vicious pie.

“After MetEx’s ‘Retma’ managed to capture the monster, he was sent to Kynton prison, where he killed himself. Whilst Kynton’s officials managed to remove a lot of the implants, removing some of the more obscure cyber alterations would have been fatal. Sadly, this allowed the murderer to commit suicide after only two days in captivity” the speaker said.

‘Retma…quiet the hero. To think its already been a year since Likqavard’s death’ Ajax thought, remembering hearing of it on the news, around the time he joined Cyx.

“Likqavard? He’s pretty much the symbol of TD these days. He’s a walking anti-implant advert” Thorn stated as he looked up at tv.

Indeed, Likqavard was an example of what not to do. The man was barely human. With all his implants, Ajax was willing to bet he was only thirty-five percent human flesh. All the obscure implants he got should have damn well killed him, but the bastard had a weird affinity for implants, and the cyberman was said to use barely more than the average dose of Mood Stabilisers and Neural Regulators, or what most people called just Stabs and Regs.

“Indeed” Ajax muttered with a low voice. Hearing ‘TD’ really brought him back to the horrors of his father, a kind man gone mad from overexerting his body with implants. Those memories were a large factor into why Ajax never got any implants himself, despite the clear advantage of them.

“Still, Retma inspires the opposi-”

Thorn’s sentence was interrupted by a ringing noise. Looking down, Ajax prepared himself. As his phone flashed up with the name ‘Herl’ written on the screen, the killer knew exactly what Herl was going to say. He swiped.

“AJ,” a deep voice started, “Morti’s house has been hit. Morti…is dead. Come to the casino for seven, bring Thorn”

“Morti?” Ajax feigned concern and sadness. At that, Herl ended the call. Hesitating for a moment, thinking of how to present himself at the meeting, since he was the culprit they’d be after, Ajax stared into the void before turning to Thorn, who seemed intrigued by the call, noticing Herl’s name as it flashed up.

“What is it?” he asked, deeply intrigued. There was a hint of worry in his voice. Herl never called for something small; he only called if someone was dead. When it came to missions, he handed that down to people like Drago to control, on his orders, even for the MetEx operation.

“Morti is dead” Ajax started with a fabricated heavy expression, “Herl wants us at the casino at seven. MetEx might be onto us”

Of course, Ajax had to throw the breadcrumbs on someone else’s trail, and who better than Californium to pin the blame on, since Cyx were going to raid their base soon anyways, and Morti was a key figure in that operation. If anything, all the evidence pointed to the mega-corporation for they had every motive to do it, if they knew about the operation.

“Morti is…dead?” Thorn asked in shock.

“Dead as a doornail” Ajax spoke coldly before gathering himself again, “Whoever did this…we’ll hand them to hell with him”

Thorn’s expression was incredibly grim.

“With him?”

“With him” he said, “And we’ll follow. Hell is the after for people like us”

Thorn couldn’t argue, not one bit. Even as a mere NetRunner, Thorn’s hands weren’t of the clean kind. Even before he’d joined Cyx, he was a thief who stole people’s data and used it as ransom. Cyx wasn’t where people became crooks; Cyx was where crooks joined crooks.

In the garage, Thorn noticing the plastic bag of clothes and paying it no mind, the duo got into Ajax’s Porsche XK5, parked next to his beloved motorcycle. As it graced the busy road with it’s presence, Ajax flicked through the radio, looking for a good synth beat to listen to.

“Why’d you skip Pyro?” Thorn asked with eyebrows raised, “It’s a classic”

“It’s overused and abused” Ajax argued, “Yttrium’s for the cultured”

Thorn shook his head before his expression turned back grim, thinking onto why they were going to this meeting at all; someone has been killed. Cyx had been targeted. Someone had waged war on the organisation, and they weren’t going to take it lightly.

As Yttrium’s alien tune blasted in the fine, freshly washed vehicle, Ajax bobbed his head, his trusty leather clothes equipped with his black suit. Even Thorn, whom bathed in casual clothing, had dressed up for the meeting. After all, this was an important matter that not only involved the case of Morti’s murder, but the decisions regarding the MetEx raid, and how they would continue, if they would, without Morti. Chances were though, they would. One death wasn’t going to stop their desire to burn MetEx to the ground, and Morti’s death only added fuel to the fire.

With that data chip, they could bring that megacorp to its knees and slice off its head.