O'Della sat in silence, his tears had long since dried. His eyes felt raw and tingly, his body ached, and his mind struggled to understand what had transpired. An awful smell filled his nostrils. The sewers smelled of dead rats and excrement. The room he was in was barely the size of a small studio apartment. On one side were crates, falling apart due to their age, stacked on top, and inside were old rusted wrenches and cutting tools for running pipe. It was dimly lit by a small orange bulb behind a metal grid on the wall opposite him. Other than that it was empty and only had one entrance to the main sewer grid on his left.
His hands shifted slightly and left a smudge of blood on the photo in the wallet he held. It was a picture of a blonde woman in her mid-twenties, holding a baby girl. His eyes drifted over the photo longingly and his jaw set as he fought his emotions. It had been such a long time since he looked at the photo, he had almost forgotten the features of his wife. She had a stern expression, her deep blue eyes fixed on the camera holder. The way she held herself displayed her efficacy as a mother and a strong woman. He remembered the way he snuck up on her in the backyard to get this picture.
The way her dress hugged her curvaceous body, how her hair swayed in the wind, and the strong smell of lavender. Everything about her had been perfect that day, he wanted it to last forever. A weak smile crossed his face as he remembered her scolding him for scaring the baby by sneaking up on them. Even her annoyance was beautiful, nothing made him happier than that woman.
His voice trembled and came out hoarse. "I miss you, Anne... Sammy will be there with you soon. Make sure you take care of him too."
He closed the wallet and his eyes, trying not to think about the past. His mind wandered anyways, it seemed to want to torture him. Before the Second Civil War, he had been an average Joe. He worked as an electrical linesman, laying down wire from junction boxes to houses and construction sites. When the President declared the mobilization of the military to the central territories, a draft had been instated. Instead of waiting for the enemy to be on his doorstep, O'Della had volunteered and joined the Marines. He climbed the ranks quickly and became a squad leader in the first year of the war.
He had seen many things in that time, some still made him question humanity to this day. People will do anything to survive, or if they're paid well enough. On the side of the United States, he had learned that when he saw his men get blown to bits for nothing more than monetary gain. Men hacked and slashed at each other without remorse, they brutally tore at each other with bare hands and exosuits and used chemical warfare to quickly and efficiently dispose of large swaths of men. Nothing was as cruel as man, not even his supposed God.
When the Collective Neutrality Act had been signed he returned to his home in Tennessee. There was little left aside from rubble and shambled camps. He had searched for his wife and child for days, the area was so unrecognizable he couldn't even find his old house. Eventually, he stumbled upon a camp of squatters that contained his neighbors. They informed him that during the war multiple bombing raids had been conducted on the area. In the last year of the war, his town had been hit relatively hard and a bomb fell directly on his house. Nobody knew for certain what happened to his wife or child, and no bodies were found, but O'Della knew nobody could survive that. He had seen it many times in the field.
After that, he reached out to his old military contacts and found where Sammy was staying. They were the only two surviving members of his squad and he had nowhere else to turn. Sammy had welcomed him in and was staying in a rundown apartment in New York. They both had no family left and felt like stray dogs, unwanted by the NUSA and shunned by Tempest. After a few years a plan was formulated between them, they would move to the newly built Rapforn City in Free State territory. There they could put their skills to use and raise hell under Tempest's nose.
His eyes slowly opened, then he started to get up and put the wallet back in his pocket. He had spent a few hours in the dark and damp room waiting for someone to pass by looking for him. Nobody had yet so it was time to get a move on. He still wasn't sure what his next move would be, but he had to get out of the sewers first. He walked over to the boxes, his footsteps echoing loudly through the tunnels. A small rasp and clinking noise filled the air around him as he picked up one of the large wrenches. Best to have some sort of weapon, just in case.
Sammy made fun of him constantly for not wearing a gun, and maybe he was right. For now, the best he could do was this wrench and his augmentations. His boots made loud thuds as he exited the room and began jogging out toward the exit. He didn't know the sewers well, but if he followed the downward slopes he should arrive at the lowest points where waste water exited. Mice and rats skittered by his feet and small puddles splashed as he moved through them. The walkway he was on was narrow and poorly lit. He could barely see five feet in front of him, but his descent continued nonetheless.
The water next to him, which had previously been stagnant, was now rushing past him. He heard the patter of liquid hitting stone as he drew closer to an exit. Light finally began to shine through, and brightened the narrow tunnel as his eye caught sight of the exit. It was flush with the afternoon sun and he could see the highrises of the city, with the sun having set in the backdrop. As he reached the edge and looked down he realized this was a water outlet passage, dumping sewage and waste into the river below him.
He peaked past the corner of the exit, it was a sheer drop of sixty feet to the water and rock below. The exit was located at the end of one of the canals that separated the districts. The large walls surrounding the river narrowed down and came to the ground, where they met with the beachfront. The river closed down into a small canal that fed water out to the ocean. Corruption ran deep in this city, so deep that even the sewers didn't care about regulations. At times O'Della wondered if this city was a living creature, standing tall in defiance of every human moral. It was befitting of the place Tempest's Free State branch called home, ruthless and uncaring as long as there was money to be had.
There was no sign of patrols on the river or canal, and no people were on the beach since it was filled with trash and sewage. He turned around and lowered himself down. His hands grabbed the ledge and he sharply kicked into the rockface below him, his feet stuck into them. He squatted down and used his legs to hold steady, then shoved his mechanical arm into the wall. The rock cracked around his feet as he pulled them out, he continued his climb down the nearly flat surface in this way.
Once he reached the bottom his eyes drifted back up, and an assortment of holes in a zigzag pattern had been left from his legs and arm. The jog and climb had given him plenty of time to formulate a plan. First, he would go to Noki and retrieve his payment. Next, he would return to The Concave and find out what Denny knows about Kabuki Mask. After that, he would exact his revenge. The thought of his partner crossed his mind again and he looked down, his anger built.
His clothes were tattered and covered with blood, his boots were ruined from the climb, and his arms were still stained red. He could smell the sewage and sweat on himself. Swimming in the river hadn't done him any favors, neither had all that running. The wrench he grabbed hung loosely in his waistband, luckily he hadn't needed it. He didn't favor his odds with a wrench versus a gun.
'Maybe I should get some clothes and a gun from the safehouse first. This wrench is nice and all but it won't do much against a firearm.'
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He began making his way back into the city. Eventually, he would come across one of the many ladders to make it back to street level, so he just continued down the river for now.
# A few hours later #
The clip of his ruined soles on the concrete sidewalk rang out, distracting him from his thoughts. The road and walkway were torn up, cracking and tilting in odd directions, due to years of misuse and lack of maintenance. The few people he passed were homeless and drug abusers, either that or they were gangbangers. Many of them gave him odd looks, but none of them dared approach. He ignored them, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and continued to walk with his head hung low.
He was currently in Tatami District, an ironic name considering the state of it. Tatami usually brought to mind a peaceful tea room in Japanese culture. Here, however, all it brought to mind was the worst of the worst, a lowly place where scum and psychopaths roamed free. It was also the place he called home.
He passed by many abandoned buildings and old manufacturing complexes, their dilapidated appearance casting long broken shadows from the surrounding street lamps. The night air was damp and heavy, and the clouds loomed overhead ominously. It would probably rain soon, but that might be a blessing in disguise as it would wash away the feral scent of the streets for a few hours.
He neared his destination, about to turn into one of the many abandoned factories. Before he could a young voice of Irish descent came from behind him. "Oi, old man! Stop there and turn around. Slowly."
He stopped but didn't turn around. He had dealt with kids like this before. "Look kid, if you value your life you'll fuck with someone else. I'm in no mood to screw around with dipshits right now."
A hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. A young man with red hair and a cheap cybernetic eye had a gun pointed in his face. "The fuck you say? I'll kill you, old man! Your chrome would fetch a pretty penny in the market!"
O'Della smacked the wrench into the hand that held the gun and punched him as hard as he could with his right arm. He felt the young man's chest cave in, his ribs cracked and protruded from the skin around his hand. The Irish man's eyes went wide as he fell back, gasping for air that wouldn't come. He tried to crawl backward but O'Della stopped him as he dropped down and straddled him.
"I tried to tell you. You don't value your life though." He lifted his right hand, it made a hiss as it swelled up, then brought it down with extreme force. Blood sprayed across the road and up O'Della's shirt as the young man's head turned into a mush of bone fragments and blown-out skin. Brain matter splattered around him as he brought his hand down again. His body was on autopilot, the anger from his day boiled over as he continued to bash the pile of goo that used to be a skull.
After two more punches, he stopped and realized what he was doing. He didn't feel remorseful, the kid had it coming, but it wasn't his style to lose control like that. He got up and stared down at his handiwork for a moment, things like that had happened on the battlefield before but never to this extreme. He shook his head and took a few steps back while he looked down the street to make sure he wasn't spotted. A few young gangers stared back at him, the shock evident in their eyes as they realized what a human could be capable of. Others were running away, scattering down alleyways and into random buildings.
He quickly turned back around and ran into the building he was originally headed towards. As he passed through the main entrance he slammed the door behind him, and brought the large oak bar down into its slot across the door. He sighed in relief and looked around the large room he was in. The building used to be a food processing plant, but all the machinery had long since been removed by him and Sammy. In their place were two beds, a few weapon lockers, and a large TV with an uncomfortable green sofa across from it. There were no windows aside from a single sunroof in the middle of the building that had been boarded up. There had been a fire exit but O'Della had laid brick over it as soon as they bought the building.
He still remembered the realtor that gave them suspicious looks and questioned their purpose with the building. Sammy was adamant that this was the best building to lay low in the entire city. Secluded with gangs around every corner, no paperwork necessary, and lots of space to move around in. He was right though, since they had gotten it nobody aside from the occasional druggie had pestered them.
O'Della twinged at the thoughts of Sammy, his death still fresh in his mind. He slowly moved over to Sammy's old bunk and inspected some of his items. Sammy didn't have much just a few books, a knife he got from his dad with his dog tags wrapped around it, and a family photo on top of his small dresser. He took the photo of Sammy's family and sat on his bed. It still smelled like his cologne. Fresh citrus and lemons filled O'Della's nose as he sulked, and stared at the photo. His fingers traced down Sammy's younger face in the photo, it was taken long before they met but he was still unmistakable.
After a few moments of reminiscing, he moved away and put the photo back. His feet dragged as he moved toward the back of the building where they kept a makeshift shower that Sammy had built on his own. It was simple but effective, a large water bag was hung on the wall with a tube connected to a faucet head and there was a drainage in the floor. He took his clothes off and turned the knob on the faucet to let the cold water pour out onto his head.
He just stood there for a minute letting the coolness envelop him, clearing his mind. After a moment of silence for his friend, he grabbed the bar of soap next to him and began to scrub his blood out of the crevices and cracks in his mechanical arm. Memories of their time together, good and bad, floated through his head as he washed his friend, and the Irishman, off of him.
Their time in service together, all the jobs they had done after, and the people they had killed and robbed. Sammy would be missed, not by many but by him. They were the only people that truly cared for each other in this wide and disparate world. Neither of them had family left after the war, no jobs, barely any money to their names, and a skill set that wasn't valued by the NUSA.
The water shut off as O'Della finished his shower. He sauntered over to his bed, and his bare feet made a metallic clank against the cold stone floor as he went. He pulled a box out from underneath and took the clothes out of it. There was a black shirt, leather pants, long black socks, and a large bulletproof vest. He put all of it on and shifted over to the weapon locker beside his bed.
After he unlocked it and opened the door his vision was met with the sight of his old service rifle and a few pistols. There was also a gun belt with several holsters and a bandolier. He grabbed the Walther P99, along with its holster and the gun belt, and slung them around his waist. He shouldered the old service rifle, began to take the ammunition and magazines out, and set them on his bed. He moved slowly and carefully as he filled four rifle magazines with 5.56x45mm ammo. He then put those in the bandolier and wrapped it around his shoulder and torso. He proceeded to load three pistol magazines with nine-millimeter ammo and put them into slots on the gun belt.
It had been a long time since he had been kitted out like this. He felt good with the gear on him, better than he had felt all day. It brought him back to his days in the Marines and made him wish for simpler days. He took the pistol out and slotted the fourth magazine into it, cocked it, and chambered a round. He did the same with his service rifle and the last magazine for it then returned them to their respective holsters. The pistol on his waist and the rifle through a loop on the back of the bandolier.
Finally, he sat down on his bed and rubbed his eyes. It was doubtful he would get any sleep but he should still try before contacting Noki. Letting things boil over for a night would be best. He lay down with his gear and stared up at the ceiling. Eventually, his eyes slid close and he drifted into a nightmare-filled sleep.