Chapter 1: Dom
There’s this 1950’s diner on a thirsty Highway 87 facing a rusty, dated, century old, 2920s style metropolis in the distance. I guess that’s what we get for voting in a totalitarian mayor that spends our city’s taxes on keeping the lights on for his rich buddies up in Lakken Sky leaving the poor to literally live hand to mouth. In which then you’d be forced out here in the wasteland in uncharted territory. No monetarily gluttonous Tryterrah City Security to mistake the victim for an offender. No societal sects or government approved syndicates to keep a look out for. And your money is no good out there. The minute you start flashing T.U.’s (Tryterrah Units), you can say goodbye to everything you worked for and wake up with a severed hand and left to bleed out on the outskirts of Highway 87.
It also houses everything but homey middle income folks. You’re either off-grid salvaging for the get-by; wealthy enough to live in the overpriced shithole of Tryterrah by doing what I do or worse; or are associated with the uber-elites of Lakken Sky. Hardworking ‘droids ordering their liquid HidroGen to keep them though the day. Loud mouth thugs from the south come through here to chat up the cashiers. Heckling about, “Hey hunny! You lookin’ like a real relic of the late twenty-nine hundreds! How much a night?” Usually ending in the TG-4000 tossing them out and hauling their asses into the street. I come here for my daily brew of charcoal piss and the interesting characters that come through during the day, they get their rush and it dies down around noon. Today, I’m here on business and it’s personal.
Then around quarter to one, like clock work, the black 4 doored liqueur obsidian coloured truck with a truck-cap pulled into Jackie’s Fill and Stop Diner. A bodyguard first steps out and lets out a woman in a sapphire midi-dress and black Louboutin shoes. She was always polished from her short slicked pomade hair tucked under a wide brimmed hat and tided against her dark skin like waves in the midnight. She’s never alone. Arrives with three people. They’re always two different people. Always dressed in black tactical attire. Two wait at the entrance. One is always with her. I can’t see who they are. They are tall with dark mahogany skin, busty with a muscular physique with dark grey roots to white ombre hair and what looked like tungsten forearms and hands. A long scar travels from their left side of their forehead down to their right side of their jaw. They have this grimace look about them and I would hate to find out why. They always arrive with her and never leave her side. I’ve found my client’s subject.
Her cold chrysoberyl eyes darted at the cashier, “Walk me to the back, dear.” The cashier drops what she’s doing immediately and asks the other to take over the front cash. As she escorts the mysterious lady to the backroom, the busboy comes over with an iron kettle to take my plate of half eaten spiced Chik’fu sandwich and blocks my view. He asks me if he can get me anything else. I ask for a refill on my coffee and he pours me a cup and I lean over to see the cabalistic woman come back out from the back alone with their bodyguard. Blood appeared to be on her gloves and disposed of them in the trash. She turned to her bodyguard who was holding a large briefcase dripping in crimson. “So hard to find good help these days.” The guard stared stoically, “Ma’am.” As they walked out I pulled out my phone to take a video to send to my client. By the time I glanced up, the guard was standing over me and the madam near the entrance. Their piercing grey stare captivated my attention. In a dark grainy voice they said, “Fire and gunpowder do not sleep together.” They place their wet bloodied hand on my phone and I sit there frozen with fear watching my surveillance slip through my fingers quite literally. I look up at them and they crush my phone with one hand without a flinch. They walk off with my crumpled phone and hands it in the madam. She looks her bodyguard without even acknowledging me, “Take out the trash, Wolph. It smells like rotten bacon in here.” Wolph then throws my debris phone into the trash and takes their blood drenched hand and wipes it on my trench coat. They then drape me out of my seat, over their head and on to their shoulder, “I know the spot.” I then get thrown into the back of the truck and taken an onerous punch square to the face. The last thing I hear before the boot closes is the madam’s voice, “Now Wolph, do you have to play with your food?” and see a distant look on Wolph but then a slight smirk creeped on their face while looking at me. My contact.
~~~~~
I woke up to the smell of fermented vomit and rotting bodies. The taste of the pungency fuming of week old garbage, ‘Ugh, Fuckin’ hell.’ I struggle to open my eyes, filled from the rain and equivocally wet substances that have congealed around my peripherals. I wipe the gunk to my vision, rose up and climb out from the dumpster. I fall to my knees from the pounding headache endured from the punch I received from Wolph, my contact, to help finally bring down Madame Beta Qidist for illegal synthetic organ trafficking for over two decades.
I fall onto my back sunken into a puddle of a pothole. The rain poured harder as I stared up pass the adjudicated monumented walls of the alley way; into the night that was blanketed by the thunderous shrouds that enveloped the stars. I hear a pitter-patter in the distance but instead engulfed by the reverberant of lightning rumbling over me. The steps draw closer and stopped behind me. I close my eyes. ‘This is surely the end of me.’, I thought. I feel an umbra eclipse over me and open my eyes to find Wolph’s glowing cold steel eyes in the shadow of their bang, towering over me smoking what smelled like khat and weed, “So you comin’ or you got a better plan.” I get up pretending to not be fazed by the near concussion they gave me earlier, “We need to go over the plan again since you don’t seem to be crystal on the matter. We are arresting Beta and the constituents of her ring. Let’s not forget you are the only witness who has came forward to — ”
Wolph interrupts, “ — came forward with info on Beta’s operation that involves me avenging my sister whom she kept hostage promising to set her free if I agree to be her muscle. Instead she had already harvested her organs and sold them to her banker bud, Johnni Silvio, up in Lakken Sky. If I don’t get blood, Dom, I promise you an indefinite slumber.”
I looked at them, “Right. I won’t deny you yours but I have a duty to my client. I’m bringing in Beta dead or alive. What you do to Johnni is none of my concern. As a matter of fact, I will leave you to your own devices. But if you want to get back your sister’s remains, you need to co-operate and stop destroying my evidence I’m trying to build for my client.”
“I’m not going to blow my cover in broad daylight risking more lives back at the cafe. I can’t stand by a watch more people die. Not anymore.” They said cogently.
“Look — ” I said opening my shirt baring the branded scar over my collar bone from the war 15 years ago of my Unit’s crest, “ — I bared the burden of seeing my fellow comrades and loved ones die as well. But don’t dishonour the fallen by stepping into the acknowledgement of the inevitable maelstrom. Feel your vengeance, your sorrow, and may relish in the lex talionis of your enemy; but know we have sacrificed for an empty future of the present. The most we can do is keep what is left of ourselves, our sanity, dignity and not concern ourselves with a world we fought to defend but had left us behind. Death is the measure of chaos only to birth immortality.”
Wolph takes one last drag before flicking their joint to the wind, “Well I did not ask for your dissertation on your ferris wheel of death. Let’s get these fuckers.” Wolph hands me back my gun and we head in the back door near the end of the alley highlighted by a flickering light. We headed down a beige hallway that lead to a brown stairwell up to the 4th floor of a rundown project. As we open the door to the 4th floor hallway I screw on my silencer and aim and shoot Beta’s henchman guarding the elevators. Wolph proceeded down the hall and we saw a tenant come out of his unit with garbage. I gestured for the guy to go back into his unit but he didn’t catch a hint, “What the — ” the guy exclaimed as Wolph pushed the garbage into his open mouth and closing the door behind him. “So subtle.” I said eye rolling myself into another dimension.
Tense with anger, they approached the unit 413 to it ajar, “I never left the door open.” Wolph slowly pushes open the door and I get ready. We proceed inside to find crimson smeared everywhere. Beta stood across from a pool of blood and a metal briefcase sitting it as we witnessed her packing up her surgical tools in her leather briefcase. Her back was faced towards the door. I take cover behind the wall near the kitchen that was facing the crime scene. I nodded to Wolph and they creeped up behind her and grabbed her by the mouth. They dragged her into the hallway and removed her fedora only to discover it wasn’t her but rather Johnni wearing Beta’s attire. Vexxed, Wolph knocked Johnni unconscious and stored her in the electrical closet for later and continue to cover me. Two guards come out of the bathroom looking for Beta, “Hey boss — Oh, Hey Wolph, — ” Wolph punched them so hard you can hear their spine break. As Wolph was walking out of the unit one of the guards got back up to shot them. I aimed and shot him in the head before he pulled the trigger.
Wolph took Johnni’s body from the closet and we proceeded outside behind the SUV parked away from the flickering light. Wolph pulled out their dagger and slapped Johnni back to consciousness. Johnni comes to and attempts to stand up in Beta’s now broken heels. She kicks them off and is standing in the rain; throwing her arms up in the air, “I know what you’re here for. Beta told me this heart belongs to your dead sister. I paid good money for this procedure. How should I know that it belonged to your sister. Do you think taking it back is going to bring back your sister?” Wolph started to walk towards her pointing the dagger in her direction and Johnni stepped backwards, “Look, you’re a merc. What if I paid you for it. Name your price. I got loads of T.U.’s and can get you a spot in Lakken Sky. I got connections. Name it and you got it.” A grimace smile crept on Wolph’s face exposing their razor teeth and holstering their dagger, “You.” They pounced onto Johnni, pinning her to the floor as they tore through layers of clothes and flesh exposing her sternum. Johnni let out a scream before being washed over in agony. Wolph cracked open her sternum, breaking her ribs and pulled out her sister’s heart, “Hey Dom, grab me that jar in the back seat.”
I reminded them, “This is your doing. Not mine. I’m going to go find Beta.”
Wolph, got up to pull the jar out from the back seat and handed me a gallon of gasoline, “Well if you still want that ride, help a muthafucka out.”
‘Fuck.’ I thought, ‘What have I gotten into…’ I pull out and spark a Marlboro and take the jerry.
“Where are you heading to after this?” Wolph asked while carefully placing the heart in a HTK solution. Same stuff used from the medical bay during the war.
“Probably bury my face in the bottom of a bottle of absinthe at the bar until the sun comes up.”
“Hey, save me a spot, will yeah?”
“Sure if I’m still alive by then.” I said smirking.
Wolph stood up taking the heart with them back to the trunk of the car, “Nah, you’re alright kid.”
I poured the gasoline over Johnni’s body along with the jerry and threw my cig into the gasoline watching her go up in flames. We head off.
~~~~~
As we drive down the interstate, I lean over towards my passenger seat window. The witching hour’s breeze on a vacant highway penetrates my scalp. Cooling my flushed face after watching Johnni get filleted and cooked like pig roast. I look up at the street lights cascading across my eyelids, I remember all the times I’ve been met with compromising decisions I made to ensure the safety between my unit and my country. As the years that went by, what made society decide that senseless killing was a means to an end. Where those that can afford private bounty hunting can afford their own means of justice objectively. Always put in a circumstance to choose. Money or morality. Survival or Sanity. I can’t help but think how I let Beta slip from my fingers. ‘How’, I thought as I opened my eyes, the city lights cascading across my face. I’ve seen a lot of shit and I know that from her doing, she deserves everything that’s coming to her.
We got a tip from one of my sources that Beta was spotted at Donahue-Owen Private Hospital. So we exited off the interstate and headed into Kendichi Territory near the shipping docks. We pulled up passing the neon induced red light district into the dark back streets of the private hospital near the docks. Wolph hopped out the car and I followed them to the trunk. They opened up the floor board of the trunk exposing a cache of firearms. They hand me a 9mm with a silencer and took out an engraved desert eagle that read, ‘To my favourite person in the whole universe. Love Eryn’. Wolph’s charcoal tungsten hand griped the barrel of the 9mm and said, “If anything happens and you make it out before me, bury this with my sister.”
I stared into their icy eyes, “I have no intention on quitting now. You got it.” Wolph let go of the barrel and smirked. I started loading up the 9mm and pocketing the magazines. “Hey besides, you have more of a likelihood of living through this thing than me.”, I chucked slapping their tungsten arms.
After loading up, we come around to the end of the alley way that lead to a parking lot behind the hospital. We crouch behind a dumpster and Wolph heads up to two doctors and knocks them out. We steal their clothes, key cards and head into the building. I take my key card and attempt to log into the hospital’s database searching for clues on Beta’s whereabouts. We check everything from the guest logbook to data on new patients. Nothing. I overheard a nurse talking to med student about a nurse that needs him in Neurology on the 7th floor. We take the stairs and upon entering the 7th, it was ominous and quiet. No one was at the front desk. I see the computer was opened up to a patient’s file named Sergio V in room 780. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up.” Wolph whispered. I nodded and headed to the East of the building. Wolph headed West.
The hallway seemed to loop into semi-circle because I met Wolph at the end of the hall staring back at me to signalling me to the door between us. Amongst the doors in the hall was 780 with a sign over it that read ‘NCC Recovery’. We approach the door and I discreetly attempt to turn the knob. “Locked” I mouthed to them. Behind the frosted glass door, we heard a weakened groan.
“My dear, you are quite a specimen. Your brain will auction for enough TUs to last me a lifetime. The head of the Dr. Sergio V. Casavaco who over a millennia pioneered head transplantation and at the end of his career, faced with criticism managed to transplant his own head from body to body. You my dear are an antique.”
Rage washed over Wolph’s face and stood in front of the door, retracting their boot to release it into the door and shattering it to pieces. They reached in and unlocked the door from the inside. Guards lunged at us stopping us from getting to Beta. One guard stepped out from behind the curtain that resembled Wolph but bigger. Crimson hair, Titanium skin and eyes like the Sun. She ran into us picking us up from our shirts, the throwing us across the recovery room. The back of my head pounds into the heater and blood drips down my neck. Wolph gets up from beside me stumbling to their feet in a defensive stance and they get into an explosive fight. Though my vision blurry, in my peripherals, I see Beta finishing up surgically removing Sergio’s head and placing it into a jar filed with liquid. I aim my pistol at her head and shoot her shoulder and she drops the jar. It doesn’t break. She orders another one of her guards to pick up the head. They attempt to leave the room and I start to come to and fro in consciousness. I let out another shot from my chamber putting both hands on the grip trying to steady my aim. It hits her in the back and a guard does nothing but leaves her with the head. I get up dazed in a blurry haze, my focus now like a labyrinth. The red-headed humanoid mecha pulled the pin on an incendiary grenade and tossed it to the heater and it exploded.
I wake up across the room in the hallway planted against the wall facing a busted wall and what used to be a doorway to the NCC Recovery room. My left shoulder and stomach burning from the blast. A acidic haze filled the floor and I look up to the hospital set ablaze from the explosion. I see Wolph bleeding on the floor and impaled through the chest in front of me. I pick up what’s left of me and stumble over to Wolph, “Hey get up soldier. We ain’t done yet.”
“You know,” Wolph coughed. “I think I think what I came here for. Guess I was to bashful to accept what was knocking at my doorstep this whole time. You know me and your client, Greta served back in the War of 3000. She knew Eryn back when she was a medic. I should have told you this earlier but I didn’t want to deter you from your mission… I mean your investigation. Greta and Beta were senior surgeons during the war.”
“What!”
“Yeah, While the use of mechas in the military was prevalent, they pioneered the one of the first synth organ transplant in humans. All Greta wanted was to help all those people who got conscripted into a battle of greed and selfish interests and win a noble peace prize while she was at it.” Wolph coughed grabbed the broken pole and pulled it out of their chest. “Beta just wanted to save her son who was conscripted at 13 years old and find him and young soldiers like him safe passage out this hellhole. But when the Tryterra Opposition Party found out their innovation, they told them that if they didn’t sell their patent to them to win the war they would throw both of them and their families in jail for treason.”
I take off my jacket and attempt to hold the open wound. “Don’t tell me you’re turning on me. Beta is a sack of shit and a wanted criminal.”
“True, some where along the way after they took her son, she got blinded by rage, and eventual greed just like Greta. Now the only reason why Greta wants her dead is because Beta is trying to make the funds to go up to Lakken Sky and take revenge.” Wolph starts to cough up clots of blood. “What ever choice you make, just keep that in mind. Personally, I would like to see them both get burned but I can’t judge. We call have skeletons in the closet.” Wolph hands me the keys to the car. “Peace is costly but it is worth the expense.”
Wolph’s body lays limp facing in a pool of their fate. I close their eyes and lay my coat over their face and body. As I was leaving the NCC I realized that Beta was still at large. I head outside the building to see a helicopter approaching the hospital roof. I run up to the roof panting and heaving as I neared the top. I started to cough clots of blood unto the steps. I make it to the roof and throw my weight into the crash bar to the door as it swung open from the pressure of the wind. As the helicopter was about land, Beta was approaching it with Sergio’s head in the container. I aimed and shot at her leg. She jumped and turned towards me. The pilot in hearing the gunshot elevated and departed from landing leaving Beta to her demise.
“Darling, I hope your timing is as good as your aim, or are you shooting blanks”, she said with a grimace smirk.
“Don’t worry babe, this time I won’t miss”, I said steadying Wolph’s engraved 9mm.
“You know, you look vaguely familiar.” She says approaching me and continued. “Yes, you served back in 3005. I remember that scar on your chest. I never forget my patients. Bullet to the brain.” She gestures a gun pointed to her temple. “They told me it was your own father serving for the Rogue Rykers Coalition Party on the opposing side. You probably don’t remember considering the surgery I did on you. He later was captured and beaten until he soil himself. Fitting for someone who would hurt their own child.”
I feel a dull sharp pain shoot through my head like a deafening migraine, “Aghhh!” Letting out a piercing scream, I fall to the ground holding the side of my temples with my hand still clenching the gun.
“Poor thing. And to think I took pity on you saving you from the wrath of your Father. When ‘Reta was too preoccupied with her newly funded ‘toys’, I was doing the grunt work of attempting to save lives. Yours being one of them. You were only 17 years old when you were conscripted. Tryterra mayor ordered us to keep any soldiers for selective experiments and evaluations. That’s how we developed people like Wolph and my new specimen Mwako.”
I look up at her in a blurry haze paralyzed by the pain, “Re-telling my shit-show of a family history isn’t gonna buy you time, Beta.”
“But aren’t you a little be curious to know what happened to your mother?”
I clenched my teeth. My Mother was killed 2 months after my father joined the RRCP. I had to run so I wouldn’t get drafted or worse killed too. Neither side cared about the citizens, just their turf. I spent the first 3 years on my own trying to survive before I got drafted.
“Aw. Did I stuck a nerve?” She turned to Sergio’s head as if to ask him. “Should I tell her?… No she doesn’t want to know that — ”
“Spit it out.” I said pointing the gun back at her head.
“Your Mother is alive. — ”
I shoot her neck and she drops to the ground “Enough lies! No one is coming for you. Your gonna die here!”
“No love! You are! At lease she won’t have to witness what a corp pansy you’ve become!”
The hospital roof collapses along with Beta and the head. I fall into a dark pits of echoes and screams of the people that have suffered, and sacrificed for the sake of presumed restitution.
The courtroom falls silent and the lawyer then asks, “Now are you aware of the whereabouts of Madame Qidist?”
“No. But I have a source telling me that she was spotted outside of the city in prosthetics.”
Judge and the lawyer quickly make eye contact then nonchalantly tells me to take my seat. “Court adjourned.”
