7
Briggs walked out of the air-conditioned tower, the doors hissed closed behind him with finality. He could feel how tense his shoulders were and tried to loosen them. He pushed thoughts of Violet and what she wanted him to do into the back of his mind. Briggs had grown used to compartmentalizing and on his next exhale, his body was relaxed and his mind blessedly blank. Trudging slowly past the main gardens that dotted the outside of the main tower helped to settle his mind. The calming serenity, even this far underground, helped to soothe his soul, and it made him smile. His mind wanted to recount his meeting and he forcefully shoved it down. This day had been a clusterfuck, but he’d been through worse.
Briggs purchased a food stall meat stick, its heavenly aroma pulling at this empty stomach. It felt good to munch on the meat as he walked towards the main transport hub. His mind was going through the steps he would have to retrace to hop back on the purple line to get back to the west side of town. Then from there, it was a short trip back to his rig. Pulling up his wrist, he looked down at his watch, noting the time. This little side venture almost wasted half the day, but he was way ahead on getting most of the major repairs done. He could afford to have a day like this…well, minus all the terrors he faced at the top of that tower. Briggs shuddered as the train car pulled up to the station.
It’s all behind you, just worry about the present and not the past. He mused internally.
The doors to the car opened, and he stepped in. He looked around the packed carriage, looking for any available seat. Seeing nothing, he opted to stand and hold onto one of the many poles dotted around the center of the car. The tram was off, whisking him back towards the western side of the underground. He watched the crowd, getting on and off at every platform. He mentally made up some stories about their lives. This one might be late to a first date, this cute little old Ork lady might be traveling to see her grandchildren. His mind just worked like that, coming up with ways to pass the time outside his rig. Then he felt it. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. Someone was watching him.
Briggs stretched, using the cover of a fake yawn, to glance around the entirety of the car. No-one really stood out as suspicious, everyone was minding their own business in one way or another. Another station went by, more people entered, and fewer people stepped off. It was during this shuffle of bodies something became apparent. It wasn’t that he was being watched by one person, no…it was worse. He was being watched by several people, and they all had the same thing in common. They were all wearing what appeared to be dockworker uniforms, ratty blue and gray coveralls stained with grease and dirt. He counted at least three on this car, there could be more. The transport train itself wasn’t that long, maybe six cars max, which meant there could be upwards of six or more of these people. He took notice of their race, one was human, the other was a Lupin, or fox-kin.
He was only three stops away when they made their move. As if by some unseen signal, the two men in his car started to slowly work their way through the crowd, they were trying to get close to him. Briggs moved towards the outside of the car and waited for the door to open. He tried to make it look like he was just waiting for a window seat, nothing out of the ordinary, just a Runner wanting to take a breather. When the door’s hissed to close, he played his opening gambit and jumped out of the tram.
He just managed to not get his coat snagged in the door, but only just. Some of the people who were waiting for another tram line looked at him in shock. Briggs simply nodded to a few people, tipping his ball cap to a few more. He was trying his best not to arouse suspicion, he didn’t want civilians getting caught up in his mess.
Now I will just see what falls when I shake this tree. I hope I am just being paranoid, but…it’s too perfect. I leave the mayor’s tower, and people start following me.
Briggs took the extra couple of seconds to make eye contact with several monitoring security systems on this pillar. Hoping that if he ended up on the business end of a knife, that someone would have a head start on catching his killer. He looked up at the concrete façade of the pillar, seeing the number five stenciled roughly fifty feet off the decking. Briggs grunted, knowing full well that pillar five was one of the more…loose pillars when it came to security protection. He’d gambled with his life, and it looked like the house was trying to get him to cash out. He tried to walk at a steady pace, to not rush, but given his gut feeling, it wasn’t happening easily.
Then he saw them, those same uniforms. Two of them were right behind him, walking, not running towards him. These people were certainly persistent. Willing to take as much time as possible to hunt him down or accost him. Or who knows, maybe they were just fans and wanted his autograph…or his obituary in this case. Briggs pushed through the rest of the crowd, muttering ‘excuse me, pardon me’. He had to get clear of the busy streets. If he had to defend himself, fighting amidst a crowd of onlookers was not the way to do it. You could never be sure if someone in the crowd might be in on it.
He walked towards the center of the pillar, moving around small vendor stalls, a few food alleyways, and hopped over a few kids playing marbles. He looked around the jagged metal and concrete walls, looking for a directory, or some form of city markings. His eyes passed over and then snapped to a diagram of pillar five, he noted that there was a piping junction just a floor down from here. Perfect! Hopefully, he’d lose them there. Piping junctions were usually massive affairs—filled with pumping stations and pipes to move various fluids up and down the pillar. From waste, to water, to electrical conduits, it all centered around that key area. Briggs rounded another corner, catching sight of two…no, three people following him. It just kept getting better and better.
The metal stairs rattled as he descended one floor, the metal door swinging wide on rusted hinges. The squealing metal did nothing to hide where he was going. Good, he thought. The corridor was damp and musty, there were watermarks and… stains everywhere. In this dim light, he had no clue what they were. A few small insects darted around his boots, fleeing from the intruder, all while dodging his heavy footfalls.
He rounded two more corners, then came to an auto door. It clicked and slid open, and the muggy air from the junction room hit him square in the face. It felt like a sauna. He strode into the room and looked around to see if there was any other exit. The room itself was circular, with a smaller diametric hole terminating in the ceiling. There were two other doors on opposite sides of the circle, but the dominating factor in the room were the pipes. Most of the piping were grouped in four distinct color-coding categories, he had no idea what each color meant. There were yellow, green, blue, and black. Each cluster of pipes had similar diameters and manufacture. The smallest of them though, was yellow, he could easily tell that briefly. The pipes all snaked up and down the walls, feeding into the hole in the ceiling. In the center of the concrete room stood a worn statue, it stood eight feet in height, and was raised on a circular dais. The statue might have been to a god of repair, or maybe a servant of the science industry, he would never know at this point. The door hissed, breaking him from his investigation. Briggs turned to look at the three…dock workers that walked in. He heard another hiss, then spun to his left, the other door opened to permit two more dock workers. All of them were wearing regulation rebreather masks. The shiny black leather masks were nothing special, simple tools meant for working in hazardous conditions. Instead of eyeholes, each mask had a rectangular plastic window showing off eyes, and the bridge of a nose. The singular tube left the side of each mask, and collected on their backs, where a small oxygen-tank, filter combo sat.
Briggs backed up towards the statue, letting the dais elevate him, for a small height advantage. He saw that each person had a gray armband; the outline of a screaming wolf emblazoned in red. All five of his pursuers stopped just a few feet away from the dais, all of them looking at Briggs. Then one by one, they all unzipped their coveralls and started to pull weapons from inside their suits. Briggs scanned each weapon. He saw two knives, two metal three-foot pipes—both of which had screws welded onto the elbow bend at the end, and lastly, the one in the middle pulled out a cattle prod. Or what he hoped was a cattle prod, The way that thing was giving off sparks did not fill him with confidence that it was operating within safety ranges. One of the masked gangers spoke up.
“You seemed to be lost… Runner. You’re in Howler territory now, and this is a good old-fashioned shake down. Your credits or your life. Your choice.” One of the men bellowed, the rebreather muffling his voice, it almost sounded distorted.
Briggs chuckled, “Really, your money or your life? Is that the best you got? If this is just a simple shake-down…as you called it. Then why follow me all the way from the mayor’s pillar? I didn’t know that the howler’s territory extended that far.”
His attackers looked at each other, then they all busted out laughing.
“Look at this guy. He must be an outsider. Oh…he has no idea.” He heard one say after another, their voices blending into a messy, muddled mixture.
Just from that sort of laughing stint, he could hear that one of them was female, he was not sure who the owner of the feminine voice was. At least the howlers were equal-opportunity scumbags. Then the man with the prod stepped in front of his fellow gang members.
“So, I say again. Your money or your life. It’s not a hard choice, Runner.”
Briggs hesitated, then pondered, the pieces of this shakedown coming together in his mind. He reached to the side of the statue, gripped what he figured might have been its hand, and applied a bit of his strength. The stone broke off cleanly, the rumble of the pumps hiding the noise.
“How did you guys know I was a Runner? It’s not like I’m wearing an armband or anything. So, who sent you,” Briggs demanded.
The tense moment passed, and their leader made the call. “Kill him, make it look like a mugging.”
The cattle prod wielder darted towards Briggs, swift as a snake. He stabbed at him with the prod, trying to catch Briggs in the chest. Briggs dipped away, letting the prod detonate its lethal electrical load against the statue. Sparks flew, eyes squinted, and Briggs bashed the man’s hand holding the prod. The stone crumbled, its integrity all but useless in a fight. It was enough pain in the man’s arm for the prod to come free, clattering on the floor. Briggs reached for the weapon, only to pull his hand back as a metal pipe clanged onto the grating, right on top of the prod. Briggs shot up and danced back, trying his best to keep the statue to one side of him. He turned round the corner and hopped off the dais. A knife wielding attacker cut him off, his blade slashing out. Briggs held up his forearms, the blade pitching sparks off his coat. He didn’t feel the blade tear into his skin, but the pressure on his forearms was enough to throw him off balance.
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Briggs stumbled back and dipped another wild swipe of the knife. He pushed off the dais, used it as a springboard, and thrust himself at his attacker. The knife came back, but Briggs closed the distance; he was well within the attacker’s personal space. Unless he switched his grip on the knife, it was useless, in its current position. All he could do was slash and not stab at Briggs. The returning slice was stopped as Briggs caught the man’s arm in his armpit. Briggs pulled it taut, then using his left hand, he struck hard against the exposed elbow. He felt the bone snap, the arm bend in the wrong direction. The man…no, the woman yowled in pain, her fingers spasmed, and the knife clattered on the ground. Briggs let go of the captured arm, and using her own momentum, cracked her hard in the jaw with a haymaker. He saw her eyes go blank, slipping off into dreamland. Briggs picked up the knife, then a burst of pain shot through the right side of his ribs, almost dropping his newly acquired knife. Turning towards the source of the pain, he just caught sight of the head of a pipe coming in towards his head. Ducking to avoid the lethal blow, the statue behind him taking the brunt of the brutal weapon’s attack. Stone debris flew all around, showering the area with gravel. Briggs rounded on his new target, the new pain in his side blossoming into a dull ache. The coat had blunted most of the damage, but he could feel his bruised ribs aching every time he breathed.
A line of fire drew itself across his back, Briggs spun adroitly, slashing out with a reverse grip on his new knife. Two blades met in the air; a dull scraping noise rattled in his ears. The plating warded off that backstab, but the gaps in the armor let a little bit slip through. He could feel blood starting to well on his back. It wasn’t a good sign. Briggs ducked, without warning, as the other man’s pipe sailed past where his skull was. These gangers were all going for the killing blows, no doubt about it. He could use it to his advantage, but at this rate, the fight was going to be over with him in a pool of his own blood.
Briggs went straight into the knife wielder, he was the largest of the gangers by at least a head, he might be half Ork or full Ork, but he wasn’t sure.
Why didn’t this guy have an improvised club? Why does he have such a small knife instead? Musings for another day.
He kept the two men on the ropes as best he could, dodging, parrying, feinting, all while managing to minimize damage on the return blows. The pitted knife of the ganger flew towards his face, and Briggs batted it aside, giving him a much-needed opening. Briggs flew into the man’s exposed side, hitting his floating rib with the pommel of the knife, he felt the rib give, and something shatter. He ducked under the return slash, and using the man’s own momentum, cut under his armpit and out past his shoulder blade. Swearing and yelling was mixed with an arterial spray of blood. The larger man stumbled away, his meaty hand applying pressure on the wound. The effect was immediate, the knife came free, falling towards the floor. Briggs swept down in a half spin, reaching out, and grabbing the knife in mid-fall. He reversed the grip on one knife and kept the other blade pointing forward towards the fourth ganger. Briggs felt his mind go fuzzy for a moment, but his adrenaline pushed his awareness to new levels, sharpening everything in focus. He could feel the myriad of small cuts and bruises all over his body, these exchanges were anything but clean, and he was starting to flag. After the short exchange, Briggs felt light-headed, the corner of his vision was starting to blur.
The hells is wrong with me? I’m not that out of shape… am I? He wondered. Something was wrong, he just couldn’t put his finger on it.
He heard one of the men cut and run, their footsteps pounding towards the nearest door. They said something that Briggs couldn’t quite make out, but he didn’t care. He was fighting for his life. The small reprieve he had earned was taken away as the final ganger rounded the back of the statue, holding his pipe in a downward angle. There was only one direction he could go with that stance, up and to the left. Briggs would have to dodge it, but it left him exposed to the other assassin, or was it an assailant, either way, it was not good.
The pipe came whizzing towards Briggs, its predictable arc all but foreshadowed by the trajectory of the pipe wielder's body. Briggs ducked the blow, the pipe shattering the upper portion of the statue. He dashed forward, crouching low to avoid any retaliatory strikes. His knives flashed against the man’s beefy legs, he sliced and punctured as he swept past the man. More screams echoed in the chamber. Briggs' grin was wide and feral, his body in a haze of bloodlust. He rounded on the man, he just cut deeply in both legs. Using the man’s own body against him, he pulled his knife up towards his throat, while linking his other arm under the man’s armpit, successfully putting him in an odd-looking arm bar. The only thing keeping him up was Briggs’ strength. He made eye contact with the fifth assassin, his pipe still gripped in his shaking hands.
“Gentlemen…and well lady, we are all going to have a nice little talk about what just went down here,” Briggs’ voice was cold, calculating and unrelenting. The longer the fight went on, the higher his chances he’d kill these goons. He needed answers, not more corpses. He quickly assessed those around him. They remained where they were. They knew who the real predator in this room was. He angled his knife carefully. Adrenaline still coursed through his body, and he needed to remember to be mindful of his weapon. If not, there was going to be more than one person bleeding out. “I want to know who sent you, I know, that you know. This was preplanned and calculated. So, I want names!” He punctuated that moment by lifting his human shield bodily onto the blade of his knife. A little trickle of blood pooled around the blade of the knife, still wedged firmly against the man’s neck, right where his mask and coveralls met.
“We…don’t know who it was…” his hostage whimpered. “We really don’t know, our boss got word that you needed to be made an example of. So, we got the info on where you were headed. Gathered a crew and decided to follow you.” There was a brief pause in the man’s trembling voice. “Please, I have a wife, two kids. I know what I did was wrong, but…could you find it in your heart to forgive me? Let me go and all?”
Briggs pondered the man’s request as he rifled through his memory on who would set something like this up. He pulled up the most likely candidates and began to eliminate them from the least likely first. The list was a short one, with only a few individuals that could hold such a grudge and have enough money to procure hired muscle. It couldn’t be the mayor, she had her own agenda and he hadn’t completed her request. It wasn’t the union members, he always paid his dues and did a superb job no matter what the contract. His mind’s eye locked on Skinny Jimmy, he fit the bill on most points. He was scared to death of Briggs, so…yeah, he could have easily hired these goons.
“I think I might have to pay a certain friend of mine…a visit,” Briggs drawled. “Now we both have had a rough day,” he chuckled. “You and your friends are not doing so hot, and I think you beat the tar out of me. Not sure if I am going to be able to just, ‘walk’, these injuries off. So how about we call it…”
Briggs didn’t finish his sentence, as a thousand volt overcharged cattle prod tore into his back. He had always taken precautions against electricity, but there was only so much you could prepare for. He wasn’t a Boy Scout by any means.
His muscles seized; his back arched to the point that he felt like his spine was going to shatter. The sudden muscle spasm caused his knife hand to dig deep into his hostage’s throat, and his restraint on his strength waned. Briggs twisted the knife, its blade breaking off from the tang on the handle. The man whom he had in his clutches sagged to the floor, his hands coming up to staunch the flow of blood pouring out onto the base of the statue. Briggs’ entire body convulsed, but he kept his footing, through sheer determination. After what felt like an eternity and a half, the cattle prod popped and sizzled. Its battery was spent in one massive discharge.
Briggs could feel smoke pouring out of most of the gaps in his clothing. His skin felt like he was on fire, both inside and out. The pipe wielder stood in front of him, eyes wide with fear, a small patch of wetness was growing just at crotch level in his coveralls. He turned and ran, dropping his pipe, screaming prayers and rebukes towards his boss. Briggs turned slowly, feeling like death incarnate, to stare at the leader’s terrified eyes. This man had just stabbed him in the back, with a prod, with all intention of killing Briggs. Just to claim a bounty. His life was forfeit, that was the short version of a long moral story.
The man dropped the prod and started to blubber something. Briggs couldn’t hear him, he might have said something like ‘I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have taken this job, blah, blah, blah.’ He didn’t care anymore. Briggs planted his left foot right in front of the man’s dominant foot. In a blur, Briggs hit him with more than half of his unfettered strength. The man’s plastic mask shattered. The man flew off his feet and impacted the farthest wall with so much force that it caused spider web-style cracks to form. The man’s caved-in face sagged, as gravity pulled him from the divot he had just made with his own body. The noises the body made as it struck the safety railing would be left for Briggs' nightmares when he finally calmed down. Then the body fell into the abyss, far below the junction room. The corpse bounced off every protrusion in the dark until the sounds died away. The red haze took over.
Briggs came back to himself. He looked down at his blood-soaked coat, as well as his hands. There was so much, it was everywhere. He felt like he was covered in more than just his blood. Putting one foot in front of the other, he walked to the railing and pitched the two knives over the side. Not that a good security officer could go looking for the murder weapon. He noted that of the five assassins, two were dead, one was unconscious, and the last two ran for the hills. He didn’t want to kill these people; he knew that he violated cardinal rule number one of the Rules of the Road. At this point…he didn’t care, he was tired, hurt, and numb.
Briggs’ face tightened, why did he feel numb? That was supposed to only come after the adrenaline ran out, and his was still pumping in his veins, he could feel it. He pulled up his undershirt, seeing the nasty cuts the knife had given him. The wound didn’t look right, there was a black bruise around the various cuts and abrasions. After seeing the wounds, his vision started to blur. Poison…they must have used poison on all the bladed weapons, maybe even on the tips of the screws from the clubs as well. He didn’t have time to debate that notion.
Briggs reached for his medical kit on his belt, the metal snaps on the outside cover seemed to not want to open. He tried again and again, the numbness spreading from his body and extremities. With a final desperate bid, he gripped the pouch with both hands, his fingers sinking into the sturdy material. He wrenched hard, opening the container, but spilling the contents onto the blood and debris-strewn ground. Briggs swore under his breath, he clambered down to his knees trying to scoop up the medical syringe. It was filled with a cocktail of antigens, it might save his life, he wasn’t sure, but he needed to pray that it would.
He tried to pull the applicator from the case, but his fingers were too numb, and his body was too heavy. Briggs collapsed onto the floor, the syringe only inches away from his hand. His vision was fading, the outside edges turning black.
This is how I die? I figured it would have been something dumb like old age. Oh well, who am I to judge the will of the gods? I haven’t seen enough. I never found happiness, I never found love, and I never helped this society survive. My life, my existence, was just a band-aid…on a much bigger…issue. His mind was fading as his final thoughts rocketed into his skull. Then he saw someone, they were just a blob, walking into the wider blob that was the room. It seemed to be getting closer until the blob was right at his eye level, he couldn’t even make out any features. He made one last desperate attempt to reach his antidote. His body refused to budge. He tried to talk, but it came out garbled nonsense, it seemed his tongue was numb too. Another sharp pain lanced in his side, and then unconsciousness claimed him.