Dossier

“Occasionally, when I’m looking back on when shit started going left… I pick the day I met that crazy man who could talk to computers.” -Marauder, reflecting on when times were simpler.

A week prior.

I woke up after scarcely 4 hours of sleep mostly recharged mentally, even if my body would need a bit of a pick me up. The smells of gunsmoke, oil, and coffee greeted my nose immediately, and my eyes, both organic and cybernetic, were greeted with the exceptionally bright fluorescent lights overhead. I rolled off the hammock that I haphazardly strung up with chains, blindly catching myself just below while I waited for the splotch of searing white to clear from my biological optic center. Thankfully, the other needed just a few milliseconds to adjust, so I didn’t land on any nails below me.

My room in our little hideout was the biggest, for sure, but that was only because I slept in the workshop. The Garage, as we called it, was a warehouse, all the way out in the middle of nowhere just south of the “palm” of Michigan. I’d scouted it, and made sure it wasn’t connected to anyone, anything, and just far enough out of the way that our chances of being found accidentally would be exceedingly low. A few hours of scrubbing it off of any maps online and erasing its address from global databases and registries had been a hell of a tedious job, especially by myself, but I had to be meticulous about it.

That day of working while the others were renovating and having a bit of time to bond with each other (read: argue, bitch and moan,) had been the inspiration behind the Tablet, actually. When all was said and done, I claimed the workspace as my room, with everyone’s respective spaces within it falling under my watch. Hyobin and Sileena claimed the second floor, and Gabriel took the basement. It so happened that the place was huge enough that we’d been perpetually in the process of making it a proper headquarters for the month and half we’d been operating out of it. Each floor had a working kitchen and bathroom, yet somehow, they always gravitated to me. Didn’t matter much, I had plenty of space and I slept like a rock.

First thing I heard, guitar strings. Gabriel started most days treating us to some damn racket, and whenever it was the guitar, I found it least irritating. The other options were: him and the punching bag in the corner, him slamming together things that don’t fit together in a show of “ingenuity” or him dropping pots and pans so he could cook.

“Maria?” I asked him with a deep yawn, recognizing the melody.

“Yeah. Felt like a Santana kinda day,” he replied across the Garage. With a nod I pulled on the chain that lowered and raised my hammock-blanket-sleeping situation to get it out of the way, and lurched towards the bathroom. On the way, I tapped my cell phone, immediately connecting to the wifi once my fingers connected with it, and flipped through emails without needing to touch it anymore at all.

Oh, yeah I served as our internet connection: little trick I picked up in college, and something that came in handy to keep us from being tracked via cell service. I’d figured it out around the same time that I invented the Shade Program, which was the handy bit of always-on technology that kept me from being tracked and detected on almost any network in the world. It was a matter of a few dense lines of code compounded together, and then offloaded into my subconscious with a singular use. Put extremely simply: when I am observed by anything that isn’t analog, a signal is sent that erases me.

The trick was making it fast and automatic, which is why I buried it so deep in my own mind it broke into the subconscious and is something I have to focus to stop. That way, it turned on fast, on the order of attoseconds, and autonomous. Applied to my ability to read signals, and I just need to be within a few dozen miles of a cell tower, give or take, and I can serve as a wifi connection. Now, lucky for us, the Warehouse is off the beaten path enough not to be easily stumbled on, but not within dense enough forestry that it blocks me from connecting.

An encrypted email was the target of my attention, but I’d reread that in a minute. First thing first: starting my day off properly. I looked in my own eyes, completely black instead of white with a glowing green in the center of the sclera. That was both eyes, including my fake one. Easily my most recognizable feature.

Shower, quick trim and brush for my beard, toothbrush, and oil for my locs. Took me all of 30 minutes, which was far more efficient than usual. I usually took my time, but I knew the day would be long. Six am, and the whole team was already awake. Once I came out of the bathroom, I cleared my throat.

Sileena was on the old couch in the corner already, still in her pajamas with her hair pinned up in the messiest bun I’d seen of late. Hyobin was in a sports bra and yoga pants, finishing up her morning workout. She’d likely slept even less than me last night, due to needing less time to do so. She was in the rinky-dink old loveseat I smuggled in along with the rest of our shitty furniture. Gabe sprawled out on the other side of the couch from Sileena, just a tank top and joggers, looked like he’d slept well at least.

Mostly, they all looked like they were ready for the meeting. “Gimme like 10 minutes guys,” I requested, and Gabe went back to playing Sileena groaned immediately.

“Come on Kendrick, we could’ve slept that teeny bit longer. Why’s everyone up before you, and you’re the last one ready?” I rolled my eyes.

“Stop staying up all night, and you won’t be tired all the time,” I snapped back once I reached the kitchen. “I know how long you were on your laptop scrolling through Reddit. I’ll start cutting the wifi if you can’t get yourself up in the morning.”

“Be reasonable,” Sileena pressed forward, falling over on the couch, stretching her legs over it’s arm and closing her eyes as Gabe, legs folded, snickered away. “I can’t just fall asleep, you’d be cosigning me to an oblivion of darkness for the same amount of time, and that’s just fucking cruel.”

That first sip of coffee was almost worth hearing their mouths while I threw a breakfast burrito from the fridge in the microwave. While it warmed up, and the team lamented me a bit more, I meandered to the ACTUAL workshop and snatched up the tasers that would later be turned into shockingly useful pistols for the job. With them all dropped off on the wooden table between the team, my coffee and burrito there too, I finally took to de-encrypting that email mentally. “Alright, bums, we’re up early because last night I got an email from an old friend from college.”

“Yeah?” Sileena asked, sitting up, now looking just a little bit more chipper, holding the pot of coffee and mug, pouring herself a cup. I blinked and the pot was replaced with an empty flower pot. “Who’s this friend Kendrick?” Wait, when did she… ah right. “Shifting” as we liked to call it.

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I’m decrypting it now, but the last time we spoke, she said she’d have something actionable for us to work off of.”

“So it’s a girl,” Gabriel chimed in with a chuckle. “Sorry, keep goin jefe.”

“God I hate you guys. Okay, so this friend of mine is no friend of the FORGE, like at all. Back then, we were just a group of hacktivists with a pen, some paper, a dinky ass tablet, a laptop that was falling apart, and a mission to expose everyone, the FORGE included and especially. Each of us had a bone to pick with the kind of people who run the FORGE and other corpos like Haven. Even so, we kinda fell apart when we graduated and went our separate ways. Most of us kind of got out of the business and went legit.”

“And you ended up taking the fight right to those assholes,” Gabe cut in.

“Yeah, and the person who got me this info has been working at bringing them down since as far back as I can remember her.”

“How do you know she can be trusted?” Hyobin pierced right through anything else I had to say.

“For one thing, according to her at least, they killed her mother when she was a little girl. A whole big cover up she swore she’d expose one day. Sounded like run of the mill fanatical bullshit to the rest of the group, but her zealous intentions were welcome. After what happened to my dad, and the people in Venezuela?” Gabe made a sound below a grunt and a scoff. “I trust her, that’s all I’m saying.”

The email opened on my phone, and I blinked twice to get my eye’s inner mechanisms working. It projected the email’s contents directly from my brain onto the wall ahead of the seat I always took at the “head” of the group.

Dear “Upgrade,”

Man, I gotta say that name really does suit you, doesn’t it? Two years have gone, and I’m still not used to typing it and connecting it to the little boy I met in college.

Anyway, like I told you, I found something. I don’t know the particulars, but I’ve got schematics for a certain building in New Detroit, which to my knowledge is what rich old men are calling Downtown Detroit now? God I really hate these guys. It’s taking a lot not to get on my soapbox here so I’ll be concise. This place is a FORGE building. Some kind of engineering firm? One of their fronts, of course. See that black spot near the center-ish? Yeah that’s a vault and security system that has NO business being used for anything other than exclusively to protect the damn president.

Whatever’s inside just got there about a week ago, and it’s presence has a lot of voices buzzing. Here’s the thing, though Upgrade, when I say voices I mean the kind who move mountains. Everyone who knows shit about anything is learning about this one way or the other. I got an invite to a sit down I will not be attending, unsurprisingly given that I left my calling card after I stole the schematics and wiped the hard drive, but I was also told to spread the word to anyone who fits in.

Helps to have connections one way or the other, so here’s yours. Halogen is holding a “banquet” in the Playground. I’ll assume you’re familiar with both names since you live there, but in case you’ve lost touch I’ve got dossiers attached. San the Mountain, Jericho, Sway, and at least two other FORGE affiliates will be there too. You get to show up with no more than two, but I’d recommend against more than one. Shows of force will inevitably put you on the backfoot if you overreach. Sunday best, Upgrade. Try no to make yet another mess on my dime. At least not one that can be tracked back to me.

Warm Regards, HiJack <3

“Wait, you’re little friend is Hijack?” Gabriel asked incredulously.

“Yeah, you heard of her?”

“She’s kind of well known in a few circles I used to be in online. Legendary for being right about everything. Hell, she’s exactly like you think you are. I’m kinda jealous,” he admitted.

“Damn, crushing already? You haven’t even seen her yet,” Sileena teased in a way that came out a little bit mean. Gabe stopped playing long enough to flip her off and she quieted a bit.

My eyes flickered to Hyo, and it took only a second to recognize the smoldering in her eyes and what had caused it. San the Mountain was a sore spot for Hyo. One of the main reasons she’d joined up with me in the first place. She didn’t meet mine, instead crossing her arms and holding back on whatever she wanted to say.

“The schematics we’re looking at are for a tech firm which specializes in both consulting and engineering for neural interfaces,” I explained, drawing attention to the schematics on the projector.

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“Oh, like brain tech?” Sileena asked, crossing her arms and trying to tune in as best she could while still groggy.

“Yep. That and the whole central nervous system. If I remember correctly this one is all about aiding people with memory problems. Everything from head trauma to Alzheimers - they’re working to fix it all.”

The room was so silent it was almost deafening for a few moments before Gabe chimed in.

“I wish that could inspire some kind of… hope I guess. Knowing these assholes, this whole building is dedicated to something insidious.” I took a second to study his expression, keeping the left eye fixed in place so the projection never moved. His brow furrowed, lips wrinkled into something akin to disgust. More than most here, he hated them. Almost more than me, and that was saying a lot. He was also right, there was no way that everything was on the Up and Up.

The FORGE was nothing if not an absolute lie. “Forging a better future” is how they advertised their… businesses in the modern day, but their origin was far less virtuous. They’d started out as a conglomerate of expensive defense contractors sometime in the late seventies operating worldwide. Even back then, speaking technologically, they were leagues ahead of most of the world. At some point, they started expanding into the tech sector properly, offering more than guns for hire, offering to share what they produced and the know-how for a price.

It isn’t a surprise they've intertwined themselves in all the BRIC nations, in the governments of every world superpower, in every military on the planet in some way shape or form. It was subtle, and it took a long time to do it, but they’ve become known as altruistic to the public at large, with their military ties and less legal ventures going the way of every corporate entity with limitless reach and money.

A lot of those less legal ventures involved experimenting on the poor or otherwise destitute. People going missing. People ending up dead and their families hit with litigation so airtight and powerful that you didn’t have much choice outside of taking the money and being quiet forever. Way too many of their targets were people of color, and far too often law enforcement at every level turned a blind eye to it.

What else is new, right?

“Exactly, that’s why whatever they’ve got hidden away in there is, probably, something they’d be hurt by us stealing. It’ll deal a blow to their bottom line, at the very least, if someone manages to infiltrate and steal from them,” I went on, getting out of my head.

“In fairness we do not need much of a reason to go after them,” Hyobin agreed venomously. “Knocking them off balance, even a little bit, is good enough for me. As a start.”

“Cool. So, that leaves us with this little meeting to discuss.” At that, I blinked again and the Dossier for every single name she’d listed and then some appeared on screen. First thing first, Halogen. Mocha skin, curly hair, and eyes that looked to be at least six colors that blended only enough to be solid while still individual and distinct. Her lips pulled up into a grin, like she was aware she was being photographed while a red streak ran down her cheek. Blood red.

“Halogen,” I began, “lesser known as Samantha Sims. Enigmatic, something of a visionary and in deep with the FORGE. She’s been a top dog in the underground since before it was as wide reaching as it is now. She made a small fortune on her art and broke into the drug game HARD with the money, according to the rumors. When the FORGE started expanding their influence through major cities coast to coast, she was one of the first people to sign on back in the early days of their foray into the underworld. Through her, they fought a proxy war against the police, the most established criminals, and any other competitors trying to do the same. Her hands are more bloody than some of the board members of the FORGE itself. Halogen, both the drug she synthesizes and her moniker as both Artist, Kingpin and Head Bitch in Charge, has destroyed as much as she claims it has helped build, and to top it off the drug is made from her own blood.”

“It’s WHAT?” Sileena cut in.

“Muy sinestro, yeah. She’s one of us,” Gabe explained. I gave him the floor willingly. “She’s capable of making chemicals in her body at will. Apparently they affect her too, makes her a little loco. Back home we steered clear of Halogen and her ‘brabaje de bruja’. Witch’s Brew, we called that shit before she named it after herself.”

“After she bloodied the streets with gang wars and hallucinogens enough to absorb most of the crime and more vulnerable crews into her service, she was moved from place to place, pushing her art and drugs and special brand of violence. She maintains the Playground in Detroit to humor guests and treats it like a seat of power. It’s been a long decade and a half of tyranny, insofar as I understand it, but now she’s content to do less of the dirty work herself and oversee while people die by her word, or live under her foot.”

“Well said,” Sileena teased, ever the traitorous little troll.

“She’s got a lot of power. Basically untouchable. No one wants the FORGE’s top girl coming down on their head.” I blinked to swap the display to the next. A white man, this one, with a clean shaven face, eyes bright like stars, and short cut wavy brown hair.

“This one’s Sway, I’m sure you’re all familiar.” Sileena, expectedly, looked blank, so I explained for her benefit. “Timothy White. He’s a radio personality, runs Sway’s Waves. Everyone who listens to podcasts, cares about music and art, is on social media, or even just listens to the radio like a dinosaur knows about Sway. People trust him and his word, and he’s got a finger on the pulse of every thinkable underground venture by virtue of the former as much as because he started out as a journalist exposing all measure of war crimes, political incidents and major scandals, and getting away with the shit under a myriad of pseudonyms that eventually caught up with him.”

“And he’s still alive?” She asked me confused.

“Yep, and he gets a seat at the table with the kind of monsters that used to make the news. Give you one guess as to why.”

“FORGE,” she said and it wasn’t a question, but she wasn’t all the way right.

“Yeah, a different group of disenfranchised crime lords came for his head, and he made a deal with the right people to come out of it. The second group was the FORGE.”

“Yeah, but how does this translate to him sitting at a table with the snakes?” Gabe asked, intrigued. “For a little while, we heard talk about him being behind some of the news escaping Venezuela into the rest of the world. He goes from having integrity to the FORGE? Never added up.”

In fairness, he did have a good point. “In his defense, his hands are still clean, somewhat. He doesn’t do anything too morally reprehensible, besides keeping public opinion about the FORGE high and running damage control. He goes to these events as a known quantity, and protected by the strongest folks in the game, Gabe. Better to have him on your side than to have his next bit of calculated, weaponized journalism on you. I’m glad HiJack got his name in our ear, because that man’s got the pull to make life hell for the rest of the people at that table.

“Damn, public opinion is powerful shit, huh?” he said irreverently. “Too bad he sold out.”

“And if anyone doesn’t like what he has to say,” I started.

“They go through people like Halogen,” Hyo finished.

“And guess which two of these folks in these dossiers are thick as thieves? Sway and Halogen go back far enough to be on a first name basis.” Everyone got the unspoken in that: those two would be a package deal if we went after either of them.

Which we would be.

A blink, and an old Korean man with skin like leather and an ornate blade at his side. He was identifiably tall, almost dwarfing the shorter of his companions, and without a shirt on, a traditional korean tattoo body sleeve with the image of a white spider emblazoned in the center in bright red across his chest was the most striking thing about him.

Notably, it matched a much smaller tattoo on the back of Hyobin’s neck. She visibly stilled, and we all knew better than to speak before she cooled down. Surprisingly, she spoke first. “San the Mountain. A stupid name. “San” is already mountain in Korean. He has to be close to 80 by now, and yet he still lives.” She shook her head in what looked like disappointment before continuing. “San is the head of the White Spider Clan. Organized criminals of a kind that keeps to the old ways as much as is possible, and have been both allied with and enemy to the FORGE under his leadership. He got his start during what your people call The Forgotten War, gathering survivors from both the North and South, and creating a family of rebels who were displaced or forgotten. The family he made followed him dutifully, and it grew from the small few to a united clan taking people from across all sides. He’s done well for himself, overseeing it through 3, maybe now 4 attempts at overthrowing. One of which involved me, two of which had to do with the FORGE.”

“Wait… aren’t you like… 20?” Sileena asked and I was too slow to stop her. Hyo went on without expanding on that thought.

“They turned to crime early on, in the late 60s. After a few short wars with Triads, Yakuza, and several groups you wouldn’t have ever heard of, he managed to cement their presence in the world. Among the names so far, San is the most dangerous, overtly. He makes no qualms about murder, mass or personal. He has resources, he has loyalty, and the world’s foremost high profile assassin, Geomi, is his son.”

“According to the buzz I’ve been listening to, it’s thought that he’s entirely opposed to the FORGE… but considering Halogen saw fit to invite him openly that might mean less than we would hope,” I finished. Hyobin released her tightened fist as I blinked away the image.

This man had dreadlocks twice as long as mine, and one of his own eyes was scarred over. The picture had him in a damn nice green suit, and I couldn’t help but admire the style involved in wearing a suit like that with ivory-white sneakers. He was surrounded by equally well dressed men of various shades of black, and all of them had on black round framed glasses. Cartiers.

“Jericho Winters, leader of the Daywalkers,” I breathed out. “I will disavow you of the idea, immediately, that anyone in this image isn’t armed to the teeth. Each and every single one of them is a living weapon, or is armed with something dangerous enough to warrant FBI or CIA intervention in them simply being present together like this, and Jericho himself is probably not even the worst of them when it comes to threat level. He’s been living in Detroit since before the first time Halogen ever set foot there, or Sway ever reported on his parents and their gang affiliations. They’re an offshoot of the Black Panthers, but nobody knows how or when that split happened. All we do know is when the rest of the midwest started crumbling under the mounting weight of the FORGE and Halogen, he pushed back hard. He himself is one of the gifted, and a particularly dangerous one at that. His brother Miles, and his sister Millie, the Twins, are just as strong. Jericho has a two fold power. First, he’s capable of seeing the weakness in things, according to word of mouth, and in my only hostile interaction with the guy, he picked apart my power better than anyone else in the world. Secondly, and I like to believe that the first power feeds into this, he’s capable of opening portals like holes in reality.”

“When did you meet him?” Sileena asked.

“Before I met you,” was my reply, and she raised an eyebrow. “Another time. Anyway, the dangerous thing is that his younger siblings are witches.”

I gave it a second to set in before I went on. “Yes, like double bubble toil and trouble, witches. They specialize in defense, offense and augury, and that’s all I need to say about them, frankly. The likelihood that they haven’t found more people capable of doing magic is low, but considering all things I’d say this: more than 80% of their group is capable of the supernatural, be it magic, biological, or technological kind. The rest are dangerous in more normal ways.”

“Magic’s supposed to be rare. I still think it’s a myth,” Gabe spoke, but Hyo just chuckled to herself in response.

“Your powers are perfectly explainable,” I commented in fairness. “I have trouble reconciling magic though.”

“Sure, Upgrade,” she dismissed me. Sileena cleared her throat.

“More importantly than her mysticism, why would Halogen invite him? Or HiJack, or San for that matter?”

“The answer to that is why me and Gabe are going,” I responded flatly.

There was a whole ten seconds of palpable silence.

“Fuck no,” Sileena swore.

“Are you kidding me?” Hyobin asked surprisingly lucid given her boiling rage a few minutes ago.

“Dope,” Gabe responded.

All of that, at once.

“I’m dead serious about this, yes. I know, it’s possibly a trap, but I’ve got some ideas about that. First and foremost,” I began cutting off the projection and letting my eyes resync their positions in my head behind closed eyes. “Halogen wouldn’t be bringing Sway somewhere like the Playground if there was a chance this could get bad. He’s a regular guy. Barely ever had to fight in his life, probably. Secondly, this thing at the FORGE front in New Detroit seems like the kinda thing that brings people from all over the world to come through the city. More likely than not, it’s a sit down to draw lines, set the rules of engagement. Otherwise, the whole city could get razed to the ground which would be bad for all of us except maybe San.”

“And you want to walk into that den of thieves and killers willingly, knowing full well you’re almost the least dangerous one?” Sileena asked incredulous and slow, enunciating every word.

I grinned, and it was a sort of smile I’d been told made me look almost as scary as I thought I was by Gabe on more than one occasion.

“I absolutely do.”

“And why would you do something so pointedly ridiculous?”

“Easy,” I responded, “Because each and every person we just went over will probably discuss how dangerous I am to them as well, the second folks know I’m going.”