Blood…

The feeling of it was slick, spreading easily down the webbing of his fingers, over the small cracks in his skin, like ink. Thick red ink. Beads coursed down his wrists, over the fine hairs of his arms, sliding over the ropey muscle of his forearms. The sharp, copper scent, like pennies, pervaded the air, the antiseptic corridor spattered with the red ink. Ink? Not red ink.

Blood.

It was much easier to kill than he’d thought. It wasn’t as if he’d had practice. This was his first time, after all. And he was, shockingly, unable to feel anything but amazement. Maybe, somewhere deep down, he could feel fear, anguish, disgust, sorrow. But, no, no, nonono that was below. This was above. The moment, the present. It was all at the surface, in the now, the pulsing, quivering present. It was all too easy to become a murderer.

Blood!

No! Not a murderer. A defender. A protector. A champion of justice. Not a murderer. Anything but a murderer. But that dribbling, sliding, oozing, coagulating blood, it mocked him, drops lingering on his fingertips before falling to the floor, pooling, landing with a soft and gentle ‘plp…plp’.

He could feel hot tears mingle with blood and stream down his face, eyes wide and unblinking, staring down at the corpse before him. It was unrecognizable. It had once been named Justin. He hadn’t been a bad guy, no more than any other person beholden to one of the Families was a ‘bad guy’, but Justin hadn’t relented. He hadn’t run. He was no coward. That had cost Justin his life. Now, ‘Justin’ was a shredded mass of meat and bone. Homo Sapiens Sapiens was no match for Homo Sapiens Psychicae, after all. No match for a Big Brother.

The Big Brother known as Subject 23 fled, weeping without sound and dripping red, fled into the darkened corridors.

---

“Well, this is an ugly sight.”

Security Captain Killian let the sheet drop back down, balancing on his haunches over the grisly kill. If it hadn’t been for the ID badge flung away in a corner, he doubted that it would have been easy to identify the victim. Justin Arriques. Security. Shucking his black latex gloves, he dropped them over the sheet and rubbed his eyes gently beneath his glasses. Killian was not pleased. “I’m guessing we’re keeping this internal?” Not pleased at all.

“Right,” sighed the suited man standing a respectable distance away from the gore. “You know, policy.” The suit waved an airy hand, shaggy blonde hair hanging over his face. First Son Vincent Moloch. He looked nothing like a COO of a major Family should, but that’s how nepotism works. “Any outside help would inevitably leak this out to one of the other Families, and then, well, vulnerabilities, attempts at hostile takeovers, hordes of Brothers and Sisters heading to their deaths. It would kill our budget, Cap.” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, puffing the smoke languidly. “You understand.”

He hated being called ‘Cap’. Made him sound like cute, tiny headgear. Standing, Killian, pulled out a pad and pen, old-school, and began scribbling. “This doesn’t make sense. 23 wasn’t a Big Brother. He was a Little Brother by a wide degree. I’d even classify him as a Baby Brother. Records say the welp could barely levitate a penny!” He growled, sketching the scene and body placement in ugly, un-artistic strokes. What in the name of sheol happened? Why were they up here?"

“Near as we can tell? The poindexters say it, uh,” Vincent made a snapping motion with his fingers, “Shattered. Their term, not mine. Means kinda, I dunno, awakened? Latent psionics rose to the surface. It’s a Telekinetic, so that would explain poor Justin’s state of affairs.” Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his bespoke suit, the executive shrugged. "To another facility on the upper floors, looks like. Transfer orders were requested last night, some egghead put it through on 'ASAP' status. Reason was omitted. I'll have to talk to the Head of R&D."

Killian grunted at the understatement. 

Telekinetics were the military elite of the Families, the closed-off and secretive group of Corporations that arose at the end of the Second Civil War, with the American Plutocracy, and most of the country, in shambles. Out of the Seven Families, the Moloch Corporation, his employer, was the second most powerful, an unenviable position, in all honesty. With the largest and most powerful Family, the Dagan Family, pressing you down to keep power, and the other five hoping to usurp you, it was a constant tug-of-war. However, Family Moloch was careful, and had long gained the reputation of being the stabilizing entity, the buffer, between the Families and their wars. 

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Captain Killian squinted at the mess in a disheartened, irritated manner, hoping to convey to the world that he really was not pleased. He was the opposite of pleased. Disgruntled? Naw, too soft. Angry? Not really, it was emptier than that, gutted of passion. Perhaps it was simply ennui. “Shattered,” he repeated sardonically, lip curling a bit. “These scientists waxing poetic all a-sudden?”

The rise of the subspecies Homo Sapiens Psychicae led to an arms race between the Families, sequestering and breeding the rare strain of human, seeking to perfect the considerable weapon of Psionics. It had been a brutal, trial-and-error struggle, leading to thousands upon thousands of deaths, lunatics, corporate disasters, and gross human rights violations. But soon, the Brothers and Sisters arose, the specialized and favored Children of the Families.

Telekinetics, also called Kinos, Push-boys, or Turbos were the most prized, most rare of all the Siblings, able to enter a room with a handful of coins or metal shards or bits of ceramic and devastate an entire platoon. They were the leading edge of any of the Families’ swords, devastating, ruthless, and often emotionally dull and rational, a by-product of their psionics and augmentations.

Which was why this was such an odd case. This was irrational. This was savage, an act of passion, a flash decision. Kinos didn’t make flash decisions unless ordered to. They were cool, level-headed, and blunted, often disturbing to speak to due to their monotone voices and mask-like faces. Their eyes were often replaced as well, bionic prosthetics helping to track enemy positions and siphon information into an implant on their frontal lobe; it culminated in advanced tracking, calculation of probability, facial recognition and indexing, live-recording, and backscatter tech allowing for faint X-ray vision. A marvel of the highest level of technology, coming at a steep cost. Bionics required immunosuppressant drugs, leading to chronic infections and gravelly, persistent coughs. All in all, terrifying individuals.

Killian accepted a small plastic bag from one of the forensics, two shiny metal rounds from a gunpowder weapon, obviously Arriques’s. The two shells were half-covered in blood, and two bullet holes marked the wall directly behind the Captain. “Blood spatter seems to indicate 23 was shot,” he mused, dropping the plastic bag into an evidence bin and waving the forensics tech away. “Two holes, possibly from ground level, last-ditch sort of effort.”

Flicking a bit of plaster from one of the holes, Vincent rubbed the gritty particles together between his fingers. “How do you know? Analysis hasn’t been done.”

Standing over a pair of bootprints in the blood, Killian crouched down again. “Looks like 23 was standing here, apparently hovering over Arriques long enough for the blood to start coagulating. The blood from the boot-tread is darker, crusty. But there’s fresher blood here, see?” He pointed at a spot, where a few spatters of blood seemed slightly lighter in hue. “He was probably still a bit shocked. 23 has no violent history. He was probably tying a tourniquet around whatever was bleeding, or just bandaged it so it wouldn’t drip. Smart enough.” Still crouching, he carefully positioned himself over the gory mess that was the late Justin, and made his thumb and forefinger into a gun, sighted down the ‘barrel’. “Maybe Justin, drowning on his own blood, got two shots off, possibly grazed him. Death is murder on your aim.” Vincent shot him a smirk at the gallows humor, but Killian just shrugged. 

Standing, he scanned the area carefully. Oddly, though, there was no other metal aside from the bullet casings, which would be expected with this level of carnage. Metal was something the Kinos could grab hold of with their psionics and throw, flick, push, pull, whatever, often at startling speed. The metal acted like shrapnel from a bomb, shredding everything. Although, perhaps something smaller... 

“Ah.” From the corner of his eye, he did spot something metallic. He picked up a small fleck of electronics, barely the size of a grain of rice. Holding the little bronze capsule-like object to the light, Killian turned it over in his fingers, smearing his fingertips with dry, flaking blood. “Our murder weapon. He took the time to dig this out of the back of his neck, probably before getting transported, and, well, a metal pellet moving at 4000 fps will riddle a soft body full of large holes.” He squinted at Vincent.  I’m surprised he even knew it was there. Those are implanted at birth, right?” 

“Yeah,” drawled Vincent, looking down at the little chip, “But we’ve been looking at moving them into the bloodstream. Nanites. These things are obviously too easy to figure out,” he said with a lazy curse aimed at ‘worthless scientists’, keeping his expensive leather shoes away from the edge of the gore. “This is decades old tech. The tracking was faulty enough that it could only give you a five meter ping anyway. Now it’s costin’ us.” He stifled yawned, completely at odds with his aggravated tone of voice. “The Complex is locked down, though. 23 ain’t getting out of the Tower, but for now, it has free range within. Seems like it figured out how to sabotage the fire doors, so all sectors are open to it. Everyone has been evacuated to a secure sector.” He slapped Killian on the shoulder, smirking. “So you need to go hunting. You’ll need help for this. A Big Brother against a little man with a gun ain’t gonna cut it. We’ll fight fire with fire.”

“You ain’t serious,” deadpanned Killian. He patted the strap holding the folded railgun on his back. “This should be more than enough for 23. Strong as he is, he can’t deflect a slug going Mach 10.”

“Typical strong-man. Shoot it until it stops. Naw, you’ll need finesse.”

Killian bristled. “I don’t want--”

“We’ll give you one of them. It’s name is 81. Big Sister. You’ll get along juuuuust fine.”