CyRun - Chapter 10

Don Medici found was nervous. He was sweating profusely and pacing around the living room of his house, one hand on his pocket and the other one twitching and going back and forth between covering his mouth and rubbing his damp forehead.

“Has anyone found the fucking car yet?” he shouted.

Around him, his men were in chaos and disarray, running around shouting and barking orders and curse words almost to the point of incoherence. Computers beeped and phones rang as everybody was trying to figure out something, anything, about who the man that had identified himself as ‘Gabe’ was, or where the car he took had ended up.

“Our men are still looking for it,” one of his men shouted. Medici couldn’t see him in what seemed to be a sea of people, and Medici was right in the middle of it.

It was a mess. He was growing more and more desperate by the second.

Medici took two steps forward, as if looking for answers where there were none. “What about this… ‘Gabe’, what do we know?”

“Still nothing, boss,” a man. “His fingerprints, his face… all come back with blank results. It is as if the guy never existed. Our contacts know nothing about him either.”

“God dammit,” Medici shouted. “Can’t one of you fucks give me one single fucking answer?”

“Wait,” a man wearing a handset and a visor over his head plugged a computer in front of him shouted. The whole room went quiet, so silent that one could hear a rat piss on the floor. “I think I have something.” He pushed his visor up and blinked, trying to get his sight back, and found himself surrounded by all of Medici’s men, Medici right beside him.

“What is it?” Medici asked.

The man swallowed hard before putting his visor again, beginning to regret him having to deliver the news and having forgotten to check what he was going relay to begin with. “W-well, boss, Fernando and his crew have been trying to zero-in the signal of the tracking device of the car we gave this ‘Gabe’, and according to their last communication, they’ve been finally able to pin point its exact location.”

There was a sign of relief in Medici’s face and his frown began to vanish anda  smile began to form on his mouth. “Excellent. If we find the tracker, we find the car. Can you start an uplink or something so we can see what they do?”

“An uplink is already set, boss. I need to patch the audio. Just give me a moment.” The man began to wave his hands in front of the monitor, his tactile gloves acting as commands to the computer in front of him, except much faster and precise than one could archive with a mouse or a keyboard, his monitor actually having trouble keeping up with him.

Five seconds later, static filled up his visor, as did the monitor in front of him, before changing to a blue screen with the words ‘Audio Only’ in bright red letters right in the middle.

“That should do it,” he said, turning his head down as if looking at the computer. He moved his hand and said. “Mike, repeat what you said.”

“Are all them listening? Even the boss?” A nervous voice coming out of speakers set around Mancini’s floor asked. It was a speaker system usually set for alarms or important communications.

“Yes,” the man with the visor said. “Even the boss.”

“Oh ok,” the person on the other side cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve pin-pointed were the car should be, at least according to our insta-comp.”

There was a very loud sigh of collective relief heard around the living room. Medici himself smiled for once after what felt like hours. “We should be very close to it by now, but something’s off.”

Medici’s smile vanished. “What is it?” asked the man with the visor.

“We’re at the very bottom of the city. The guys are scared something’s gonna fall on their heads and turn them into spaghetti sauce. I’m more terrified of any of those cannibal fucks popping out from the sewers. We’ve seen some of those manholes move, and I don’t like it.”

“That’s odd,” one of the men behind Medici said. “Did he crashed? I bet he crashed.”

“Hundred credits say he crashed,” another of his Mafiosi said. 

“Hundred say he found the tracker and stole the car,” said another.

Medici glanced over to the man that spoke last, his chin jutted in anger. The other man avoided eye contact and looked down and away.

“Careful with the Crazies,” said the man on the other side of the line, the sound of heavy footsteps in the background. “It gets ugly down here, you’re not going back up.”

Someone close to Mike said something, although he was too far away from him from the guys in Medici’s living room to make out. “No, don’t be stupid,” said Mike. “Men scream before they hit the ground, we’ll know if one is falling, get your shit together.”

“How close are you to the objective?” the man with the visor asked.

“Only a handful of steps away. Odd, we should’ve seen the car or some cracks by now. Stupid fog, can’t see a damned thing in this place,” Mike said. “I think this insta-comp is being weird because of this shit.”

The man with the visor scratched his neck. He was getting desperate. He didn’t have to look at his boss to know he was starting to lose his cool. “Anything yet?”

“Not yet bu-- wait, I see something. We’ve got something.” Mike’s speech became replaced by the sound of several people running. “We see cracks, there are definitely cracks on the floor. We--“

The sound of footsteps ended and after that, silence.

“What? You got what? Mike, don’t go mute on me now, don’t leave us hanging. The fuck is going on?” 

Five seconds later, Mike finally broke the radio silence with a single word.

“Shit.”

A collective moan and some curses was heard around the whole floor.

“It’s the tracker,” Mike said between mild gasps of air. “That guy, whoever he was, found the tracker and threw it away. We got less than nothing. We got jack shit.”

“Dammit,” Don Medici shouted as he slammed the closest thing to his hands, which unfortunately happened to be the man with the visor’s shoulders. His device almost went flying off his head. “This is a fucking joke. What else did this guy did that we don’t fucking know?”

“Boss,” shouted Neri, running from the kitchen. The human half of his face looked as if he had just seen a ghost, a remote control on his cybernetic hand.  “You have to see this.”

“Not now, Neri. Can’t you see we’re busy with trying to get our heads out of our collective asses?”

“I know,” he said, stopping in front of Medici. “That’s why you have to see this.”

Without giving his boss a chance to talk back, Neri turned to the CRTs on the wall and pressed a button. All of them changed at the same time to a local news broadcast, a picture of a building on a wide shot as a camera slowly panned around it.

Everyone recognized the building immediately. It was the same building Medici had sent Gabe to.

“Thank you John,” a female voice was heard saying. Emergency vehicles had established a perimeter around the building.. “We’re here on the Fifth Police Pound in the third sub-level of the corner of Koldyron and Hannon, were a gruesome massacre unfolded just minutes ago. Seven on-duty police officers were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. All corporate media has been banned from the area until investigators end their research, but according to some of the early reports we’ve managed to obtain, there was only one survivor with a concussion who has been taken into custody for questioning.”

The newsfeed on the television was the cut into vertical halves, a news reporter wearing a cheap suit and too much hair gel appeared on the left half. “So Joanne, do the investigators have any possible motives or suspects yet?”

“No John. According to the reports, all surveillance equipment in the building was destroyed in the firefight and nothing seems to be missing except one single solitary truck.”

Medici’s jaw would’ve hit the floor if it hadn’t been attached to his face. Several of his men stood in awe as to what they were hearing, some of them taking their hands to their hair in disbelief. 

“Now, while the report states that it all points out to a single man being responsible of the massacre, the Police Department scoffed at the hypothesis when reached for comments and said that it must’ve been a planned gang strike of at least several dozen and asked us to remind the people that the policemen assigned to the Pound were either rookies or people close to retirement and that nothing would’ve happened if normal policemen had been assigned.”

“Thanks Joanne.” The right half of the display faded away, leaving only the newscaster on full display. “And now we go to the Chief of—“

Neri turned it off. Medici stood there, with wide open eyes. 

It was one of his men who broke the silence. “You have to be fucking shitting me.”

Medici turned to face Neri. “It seems your new guy did his job to a tee, boss.” The old man still couldn’t talk, and took his hand to his forehead as to wipe sweat away that wasn’t there. “I don’t know how he did it, let alone not survive, but he did. What do we do?”

Before he could answer, a voice came out the speakers on the lobby. “Boss, we… erm… have a problem.”

Knowing Medici couldn’t talk, it was Neri who pressed a nearby communicator button. “This is Neri. What it is?”

“Well, erm… it’s that man. Gabe. He’s back, asking for clearance to land… and he has the truck with him.”

That phrase alone seemed to get the old man out of his confusion. “Make him land right now,” he said as he began to run towards the hanger, all of his men following behind him, including Neri.

By the time they had reached the hangar the truck was parked inside, the metallic gates closing behind it.

“You, stay here,” Medici told his crew as he went down to meet with Gabe, who was already jumping out of the truck, carrying the same bag that Medici had given him. Neri followed him anyway.

As always, Gabe’s face was impossible to read and devoid of any expression whatsoever, his jaw clenched and eyes half closed almost as if bored. He closed the door of the truck next to him and didn’t take a step forward, seeing that Medici was already on his way towards him.

Medici signaled the same guy who had opened the door –who was standing next to the controllers next to the gates- to check the truck. He did. “Holy shit, it’s all here.”

“You sure?” asked Neri.

“I-I remember how the truck looked before it went out,” the man said as he climbed into the back truck and pulled one of the small boxes inside. He jumped back down, opened it and took a pair of visors with two small green tubes connected to them with wires. “It’s the stuff, and it hasn’t been touched. Holy shit, it’s all here.”

The old man and his friend could only stare at Gabe in disbelief, especially considering what he had managed to pull off, something not even his best men could, while it seemed that he hadn’t even broke a sweat.

Before they could speak, the man in front of them pulled his card reader from his jacket and typed some numbers. “Pay.”

“Y-yeah.” The old man had been certain he wasn’t going to need to pay the outlandish sum he had promised. He had never expected Gabe to return. Yet he did. “S-sure, give me the reader.”

The only reason his hands weren’t shaking was because he felt a weird combination of nervousness and respect. There was something about Gabe that was utterly terrifying and nerve racking, but also to really admire. He swiped a card and gave the reader back. “It’s done.”

The man with the leather jacket checked the reader, nodded, put it back in his pocket, and began to make his way out the building, bag still hanging from his shoulder and hands in his jacket pockets.

“Wait,” asked Neri. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Home,” Gabe muttered without looking back. Medici’s men didn’t even try to stop him, some of them still trying to register what had just happened. He opened the doors leading to the lobby and closed them behind him.

After several minutes of silence, giving up in trying to find out an explanation to who or what that man was, Neri scratched the back of his head, his attention back at the truck. “Well… what do you want me to do with this, boss?”

Medici rubbed the crown of his forehead and closed his eyes. He tapped it a couple of times before finally opening his eyes again and looked at the truck. “Call Fat Larry. Tell him we have his merchandize and we’re charging double for the extra problems.” He pulled a cigar from the front pocket of his suit, put it on his mouth, and lit it, slowly regaining his cool. “And send someone to tail that guy. We need to find out something, anything about him. Might as well be where he lives.”