CyRun - Chapter 2

The mysterious man and old man Medici got out of the restaurant with guns on their hands. They looked left and right the small walkways made of metal –parking bridges- on the pouring rain, expecting more hitmen, but other than car lights going and forth, and huge holographic displays that lighted up the chilly night, they didn’t see anything.

“My car’s over there,” said Medici, pointing to his right.

The man stopped him and went over to check the car by himself. The polarized car windows were dark so he opened the back seat first. Inside was a man with a fedora, holding a thin laser wire on an African-American woman’s throat. Blood and sparks were coming out of her neck and mouth, one hand on her neck, the other waving desperately. The man cutting her neck stopped and turned to face the mysterious man in surprise with wide open eyes.

The mysterious man didn’t even blink. He shot at him twice. Once on the chest, the second time on the head. The assassin fell dead on the car’s floor along with the cable. The woman fell to a side.

The man looked over the car and under it. It seemed safe to him, so he signaled Medici to come closer.

When he arrived, the old man stared at the body of her bodyguard. “Is she dead?”

The man checked her pulse and shook his head. “Alive.”

“Put her on the back seat then and throw that asshole to the slums.” That meant throwing him off the car, off the bridge, and crashing down several kilometers to the city below, if he was lucky. Truth was there was a very big chance he would hit a random car instead, pulverizing his body in an instant.

The man did so without blinking, dragging the body by the legs and throwing it over the railings of the parking bridge. The falling body soon disappeared from view.

The man put his arms under the fallen bodyguard and lift her over the front seat, letting her fall on the back. “Hey, be careful,” said Medici.

The man shrugged and sat down, the steering column with stick paddles in front of him while Medici sat on the passenger seat. Before he could utter a word, the man was pulling the car out and merging into the traffic at top speed. Medici sank into the leather seat of his car.

After cutting a corner several blocks later, the man asked with a deep voice, “Address.”

“What?” Medici asked.

The man’s face remain cold and stoic, his eyes still half-opened. “Address.”

Medici stared at him. He didn’t know what to make of him, but there was one thing clear: he was very effective, and didn’t play around. Maybe he was loaded with cybernetics, maybe he had too much Fedesterone in his system or jacked some bad hardware on his neuro, but whatever it was it worked. “Peterson down in Bauchman.” He knew he didn’t need to say to go fast, he was already flooring it, swerving around, above, and below cars at speeds he had never seen.

Medici looked back. His bodyguard was unconscious, but breathing. Blood and oil had seeped from her open neck and exposed cybers and into the leather seats. He turned his sight upwards to the passing traffic, and saw a pair of headlights that shouldn’t be there, a car trying desperately to keep up with them. “We have a tail,” he said.

The mysterious man grunted as he threw a quick glace to the rear-view mirror. He shoved the stick paddles downwards, sending the car on the sudden dive. The car wasn’t going with the traffic anymore, it was plunging trough the horizontal lanes, missing other cars by mere centimeters. The ‘collision imminent’ sign lit up on the dash. The man ignored its beeping sounds.

“Oh god,” shouted Medici as he put on his seatbelt, his heart feeling like it was about to burst out of his chest. “You’re going to get us killed. Slow down.“

The mysterious man’s expression didn’t change as he twisted and turned the car around the almost suicide drive at top speeds, the available kilometers between them and the floor running out and fast.

Whoever was driving the other car began to open fire at them. The plinking of the bullets richotted off the transparent magnetic shield. It shined green before fading back again, as it was supposed to. The man did not ignore the ‘shield level’ indicator going down on the dash. “Nevermind,” Medici said. “Go faster.”

He grunted again as he lowered the window, gun in hand. He looked over his shoulder and fired at the chasing car. Medici covered his eyes in fear, thinking they were going to crassh.

By some miracle, they didn’t. It seemed as if the man had eyes on his back, the car still avoiding the traffic flawlessly.

The tailing car, due to speed and inertia, was having problems hitting them. The man was not, and all of his shots hit their shields. He didn’t stop until their shield shined red. That meant shield was running out of juice.

He went back inside the car, made sure there was still some energy on the magnetic shield, and put his seatbelt on. Medici saw him and did the rest, sweat pouring down the crown of his forehead.

The man turned his attention to the incoming horizontal line of cars and turned the car sideways on its axis, passing between two cargo trucks. After clearing it, he floored the break and turned the car upright in a single move. It seemed as if the car was hovering below traffic, waiting to merge.

By the time the driver of the tailing car saw them, it was too late.

The second the car crossed the horizontal traffic line, it crashed against Medici’s car, full force. The magnetic shield did its work and it made both cars bounce from each other like rubber balls. Medici’s car was sent flying against one of the many deserted buildings that infested the lower parts of the city. It crashed through a window and two floors. The mysterious man fought with the steering columns to regain control of the vehicle, but his expression remained cold and uncaring. He was able to regain control of the car after it the shield hit an iron bar.

The other car hadn’t been so lucky. It was sent flying towards another car and straight into a giant neon billboard. With its magnetic shield nearly depleted, it only covered it for the first impact. It exploded the instant it touched the ad.

The mysterious man took the car out of the building. “My heart,” Medici said, clutching his chest. “I feel as if my heart was about explode, and I just had it refurbished.”

The man said nothing.

Before merging back into traffic lane, they both caught a glimpse of their assailants’ fate. Medici grinned and relaxed into his seat. “Let’s get out of here before the dregers come around asking for questions.”

CyRun - Chapter 1

"Bitch,” old man Medici said as he entered the dilapidated, ran down restaurant on the fifth floor. He sighed as he saw the cracks on the walls, plastered with corroded pieces of aluminum and metal hastily soldered into it to keep it from falling apart on the patrons. The roof had wires and dim, blinking light bars hanging out. The chairs and the tables were made of metal and plastic fused together and, judging from their rusty, unkempt appearance, seemed to have been pulled from the nearest garbage dump.

The whole place was a mess, but he wasn’t surprised. After all, he was in the worst part of the city, in one of the darkest, filthiest corners. It was one of the many towering structures people referred to as slums, built for quantity, not quality. They housed around forty-three thousand people in an area not larger than a block and half.

Crime, filth, and chaos were rampant in the slums. He liked it that way. What he didn’t like was that due to dregers –the corrupt police force, hated by everyone- he was forced into hiding in such disgusting parts. He was fine making a profit out of crime, the filth, the wireds, the addicts, and the pushers; he simply didn’t like hanging around with them.

He sighed heavily before taking a seat, taking his hands to his face. His muscle, two beautiful women loaded with cybernetics, stood guard. The blonde next to the door, with her arms folded, and the brunette in the car, hovering next to the parking bridges outside.

No fucking way I’m walking all the way from the bottom, the less I have to be surrounded by vermin, the better.

He massaged his eyelids and waited for the ordroid to come around and ask for his order. He was hungry, very hungry. Had he been in his usual place, Pon Mavelour, a fancy italian family restaurant downtown, things would be different. He would have waiters and a maitre'd all uniformed up, ready to take his order and do his every whim. He used to own it, the owner under the thumb of his crime syndicate -at least that's what the dregs were calling it- along with huge chunks of the city.

But the heat was on his syndicate, and with heat, came betrayals. His muscle was weak and disorganized and his most trusted allies had abandoned him, as his contacts had. All it took was an overzealous dreger allying himself with a small megacorp to sell the same kind of ‘products’ Medici’s outfit did to send it all to hell. He hadn’t realized, until it was too late, how truly complacent his outfit had become over the years.

Once, he could’ve gotten everything he ever wanted. By that point, he could barely get service in a lousy restaurant.

“Where the fuck is the ordroid? I’m starving here,” He screamed wildly as he slammed a fist on the table. There was no answer. Instead, an octagonal hatch on the ceiling opened and a small, thick touchscreen pulled by a piston lowered into his view. He massaged his eyelids. Not even a fucking ordroid, you have to be shitting me.

He gave up, throwing his hands above his head in defeat. He scrolled down the menu, and selected the first dish that looked edible. “Order up,” the machine replied with a broken down, scratchy robot voice before going back up the hatch.

He looked around the place and was unable to see anything resembling a kitchen, or even a bar. From the corner of his eye he spotted a figure sitting on a dark corner, eating what looked like thin slices of raw beef, which reminded him of carpaccio. Black hair in a mullet, dark serious eyes, and with a big jaw, the man seemed to be uninterested in anything else but eating his meal.

His bodyguard had spotted him too, and looked at Mancini, expecting an order. Mancini simply shrugged. He didn’t know him, and had by far more than enough time to make a move if he wanted, yet didn’t. As paranoid as he was, he had no reason to be afraid or suspect anything from him. He made sure no one knew where he was going before he left, and had even picked the place at random.

Still, he signaled his bodyguard to keep her eyes on him by pointing at his eyes before pointing them at her and them at the man. She nodded.

After five minutes a small, grey, rusty servodroid on flimsy wills came out with Mancini’s order –a plate of spaghetti on what seemed to be pre-packaged tomato sauce- arrived. It smelled like plastic drenched in overcooked sauce. Mancini shook his head in disgust. But this is how it’s going to be from now on. So be it.

As he grabbed the plastic utensils, he saw two men enter the restaurant, an African-American with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and a tall Caucasian with black hair and brown eyes, wearing simple civilian clothes. Nothing stood out about them except for the way they were conversing with each other loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear.

“So here comes Vigart, right?” said the African-American, waving his arms back and forth. “And he has the ball on the tenth yard. Clock is ticking, and he calls for a time out right at the last minute.”

They walked towards the middle of the restaurant and pulled a couple of chairs. The African-American was all excited while the Caucasian looked bored and even irritated, with narrow eyes and lips pressed togheter. “So there we are, in the last minute. They go for it--“

They didn’t sit down. Each drew a gun from their clothes and fired. The bodyguard got shot right between the eyes. Blood and wires splatted on the wall behind her head. She slid down the floor, leaving a blood smear.

The Caucasian fired at Medici. He was used to attacks on his life, it came with the profession. He knocked the table down, hiding behind it. He hoped it would stand the bullets. He took his gun out and was about to pop out to fire, but the shots stopped.
“Listen Medici, no one is coming to help you. You’re done for,” the cuacasian shouted. “Come out and I promise we’ll make it fast for you.”

The African-American had spotted the mysterious man eating on a corner. He seemed unfazed by what had happened, his attention still focused on his plate of raw meat. It looked as if he didn’t care a person had been shot, or that there were two people carrying guns walking around.

“Hey you, tough guy,” the African-American shouted as he walked towards him, waving his pistol. “Since you didn’t run, guess what’s going to happen to you?” He wanted to mock him before killing him. “You’re going to die.”

The other man remain unfazed. His eyes didn’t move from the plate. He ate another piece of the raw meat in his mouth.

“Didn’t you heard me?” The African-American was getting irritated, and walked closer. If there was something hitmen hated, it was being ignored. He was now only one table away from him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you son of a bitch.”

“Let it go,” the blonde hitman said angrily, lowering his voice. “We’re here for Medici.”

“Fuck you and fuck him.” The African-American had reached the man’s table. He raised his gun – a grey cylinder with wires with two holes on one end and a trigger on the other- and aimed it at the man’s head. “You’re dead, fu—“

The man stood up and before the hitman could react he pushed the gun to a side. The hitman, surprised by his lightning speed, pulled the trigger by mere reflex and hits the walls. The man grabbed the fork from the table and stabbed the hitman on the neck, blood pouring down his white shirt as he screams in agony.

The blonde hitman registers what is going on, and turns around. As if he knew what was going to happen next, the man pulls the dying hitman closer with the fork and holds him as a shield while the other one opens fire. The African-American shouts in agony with a mouth full of blood as he’s shot several times. The man takes the gun out of the hitman’s hand and fires at the blonde assassin five times. The Caucasian hitman falls to his knees as sparks, blood, and oil come out of his chest. He was augmented.

The man drops the dead African-American and looks at the blonde assassin with half-open eyes, his expression still cold and uncaring. The blonde clenched his teeth caked in the red vital fluid as he tried, in vain, to raise his gun.

He raised it only so little.

The man shot him on the forehead. The blonde’s hitman eyes went backwards into his skull before limping down to the ground, dead.

The man put the gun on the table, sat down, and continued eating his raw meat as if nothing had happened. If he ever was the least bit concerned about anything at all, he didn’t show it.

Old man Medici stood up from behind his table. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He had seen everything from his hiding spot. It had all gone so fast, faster than usual, and just like that, he had been saved by a complete stranger. He couldn’t believe his luck. But he was a smart man, he knew that once the live signals of the augmented blonde assassin reached whoever sent him, they would send more people. But he knew he had hit the jackpot with the stranger.

“Hey,” he shouted at the stranger. “I’m a powerful man, a man with connections. You get me out of here, and I’ll make sure it’s worth your time.”

The man didn’t even look at him.

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’ll pay you!”

The man’s eyes shifted slowly from his plate to Mancini. “How much?” he asked in a deep, raspy voice.

“More than you think, now get me out of this place!”

The man closed his eyes as if in deep though and, after taking the last piece of raw meat from his plate, stood up and nodded towards Medici.