Chapter 35: Marking Guilt

  "The underground of New-Montreal can get extremely dark."

  --City of NM electrician on the state of public lighting, 2055

  ***

  Altany started showing me pictures and videos and my face darkened with every. Fucking. Second. “How did we not know?” I wasn’t accusing but still absolutely mother fucking furious.

  Every floor’s shelter is more protected than the last. With the net down, wireless antennas are the only method of communication. These have a very short range with these protections. Even with your receiver being higher end, I only just received these videos. I’m not certain anyone none-vanguard would be able to without a powerful array.

  I nodded as rage turned into wrath. Wrath was focus. Wrath was purposeful violence, not mindless destruction. “Altany, something that won’t leave the target for my Bearier… Actually, no, pack some non-lethals in that one and gimme what I asked for the rest.”

  How non-lethal?

  “Not very…” I said calmly. I wasn’t calm, but my outside needed to be. My mind needed to be clear and focused. “Wrath, not rage, Wrath, not rage.” I muttered as I exchanged magazines. “Got something for my shield to prevent ricochet? Don’t want to hit friendlies.”

  Of course, I have a self-expanding polymer that should do, however it will be single use after you deploy your shield.

  “That’s fine…” I said, focusing on my tasks. Johnny arrived before I was done.

  “Hey, ready to get to work?” I didn’t stop.

  “Johnny, can I tell you a story?” He looked at me funny but nodded. “When I was a teenager, a minor, I got hired by a shitty, and I mean shitty, PMC. I got training at least, which is more than some will give you. Thankfully, my parents trained me better than they did. I did okay on my first couple jobs, survived a firefight against assaulting gangers which gave me some cred.”

  “They took shitty jobs and the pay was crap, but it was pay, you know? One day, when I was done with training and after a couple missions, we were sent to a ‘public assault on corporate property’. Then, I got asked to shoot a protester.” Johnny didn’t look happy with the turn of the conversation but he didn’t interrupt me. I kept doing some checks and verified my armor was properly repaired.

  “I said no. I wouldn’t shoot some guy for no reason other than wanting to make the world a less shitty place. Didn’t want to be that person, didn’t give a fuck about the money or, fuck, even my own safety. My boss threatened me at gunpoint. I didn’t know if it was a bluff, but I also didn’t give a shit. The protester died in the end, but I didn’t shoot him.”

  “I lost my job, they didn’t pay me the time I’d worked so I had nothing. I went back home to my mom. She worked online since the cancer kept her in bed a lot of the time. It came in, we got shitty meds, it came back a little bit after. Classic cancer story if you’re poor, you know? More money for the pharma corps that way.”

  I was looking straight at the door now, at the people that needed me, and needed me to handle the other people in the bunker.

  “Then, one day, I got a knock at the door. I’m not stupid, in my building you grab your gun when you answer. I kept it hidden but still. It was a decent-ish pistol, from my dad’s army days. It turned out to be four guys with guns, Kais. They’d heard I got work at a PMC so I had to have credits.”

  “They wanted those. I showed them my credit bank and discharge paper. They decided they were amped and wanted to get something. That would be my mom and I. For sexual stuff, to be clear. One of them felt really interested in trying out a ‘cancer bitch’.”

  I looked Johnny straight in the eyes. No hint of uncertainty or hesitation in my body.

  “So I shot them. Killed all four. Quickly and efficiently. I struck hard, fast and when they didn’t expect. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t doubt. After? I didn’t really feel bad about it. They wanted to rape my mom. I had to kill them. That’s how I got picked up, one of the guys wanted to jerk off to a recording later or whatever and the bosses were impressed.”

  I couldn’t interpret the look on Johnny Law’s face, but I wouldn’t call it disgust, shock or horror. However, I sucked at those.

  “Anyway, when we first met, I told you I never killed anyone I didn’t have to. That’s my definition of ‘have to’. Some people I have to kill because they’re going to hurt others I can’t allow to get hurt. Some people I had to kill because, well, they were shooting at me. Some because they shouldn’t live, period. Some… to provide for my mom, or for my survival… I never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it to some degree. Now, I plan on going in there, and I don’t plan on leaving many alive, mostly because of that.” I said as I flicked my finger his way, sending what Altany’d showed me.

  “If you want to stop me, I get it and I won’t blame you. If you want to turn your head I get it too. Hell, if you want to get the fuck out of all of this, the incursion is almost handled, I won’t blame you there either. However, I have to kill some of those fuckers, no matter what. I’ll leave some alive, but a fuckton of them, I can’t allow to live. I’m sorry.” I finished as I turned back towards the door.

  “Bytal, gimme some non-lethals on these four and somethin’ that won’t penetrate on these six…” I looked back at Johnny as he unloaded his pistols, letting the caseless ammo fall to the ground.

  “You know, I ain’t got more than… six big arrests on the feeds? Those big drug dealers that were just hard to find and got put away for insane levels of tax fraud. A couple were big execs, but those partially served as insulation for the real big bad.” He said with a short laugh.

  “I went after a lot more than six. Arrested eight more, but I caught twenty-nine.” He looked straight into my eyes, then we nodded at each other.

  “Some had too much money for normal justice, some never got caught hard enough for a warrant or bounty. Some silenced everyone that could’ve talked. They all deserved justice, and I was the only one to deliver it. I always made darn certain, of course. Someone’s gotta do it, and I ain’t lost any god damn sleep over it.” He closed up his guns one by one, putting them back in place.

  “As the sheriff of this building, I should ask what the council says on this sort of… individual?” I shrugged.

  “Kill the fuckers.” We shared a short, very dark chuckle.

  “That’s that then. Got a fancy bit of software, highlights criminals by levels of guilt according to the evidence we got. Want the targets?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Fuck yes, that’ll be helpful. I want to keep some of them alive, at least. I’d like to ask some mother fucking questions.” A link came my way and I accepted. I didn’t say it out loud, but I also appreciated being able to spare some who weren’t responsible now that I could tank quite a few shots.

  “Think we oughta knock? Message on all the augs that there’s a samurai?” Johnny asked, which made me think…

  Your antenna is powerful enough to make that possible, I’ll give Bytal permission.

  “On one hand, with my name they might recognize I’m on the warpath, but your name doesn’t sound very gang friendly… At the same time, it’ll get them all in the doorway to shoot us… I play bullet magnet, you take them out?” I asked.

  “Sounds just dandy!”

  NOTICE!

  This shelter is being evacuated by Vanguard Johnny Law!

  Prepare for an orderly exit!

  Anyone obstructing this evacuation will be judged by a jury consisting of the vanguard. If needed, he will also act as executioner.

  I snorted. “Good one.”

  -Thank you.-

  Then, the doors opened, and I moved to the center as Johnny stepped to the side. For a second, I thought I wouldn’t get shot. All the gang kids looked nervous and were highlighted a bright green. Probably new kids, grunts, not lost causes yet. Then the first red appeared and raised their gun. I sighed. “Of fucking course…”

  Since I had to be the ‘bullet magnet’, I didn’t see a reason to not extend all my plates and turn into a wedge. One foot went back, spikes planted for anchoring. Then, I lowered my upper body and put my arms in front of my face. My pauldrons connected to create a steeper deflection angle.

  My stomach had a bit less protection, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t have heavy machine guns or railguns, just low caliber assault rifles and a lot of SMGs.

  Hell, my turtling might have been overkill, but I didn’t want to waste the coating at this point. Actually, I hadn’t been shot by bullets yet, what if my armor needed replacement parts? These guys weren’t worth points, or spending points for that matter.

  The doors opened rather slowly, but once they were all visible –and shooting–, Johnny went to work. Seven of them, the greens and a couple of yellows, were put down by some LTLs.

  The rest all had rather bloody holes in their foreheads. If the high-powered bullet didn’t leave the head, pressure had to go somewhere I guessed? Whatever. “I’ll go after the kids and company, I got anti-ricochet stuff and better medical shit, the rest is a larger area, better for you.”

  He nodded. “On it partner.”

  We both took off. I had a very specific target, but I took a few shots on the way. Quite a few reds with their belts undone. All my shots would be lethal… eventually. Then, I arrived close to my destination and stopped, letting an idiot shoot me with a low powered pistol.

  “Altany, what’s purple?” I asked, absolutely unconcerned by this dumbass as he reloaded and for some reason thought the second time would be different.

  Pedophiles, or more specifically, evidence of sexual assault on minors. It is a special designation by Johnny Law, but it fits within the software’s parameters.

  I might have shot him a few more times than strictly necessary. I might have also started with the legs. Necessary so he wouldn’t run… before I shot him a few more times. One more in the head, just to be sure.

  I believe he is dead.

  I nodded then moved forward. As I got closer to my destination, I saw more purples. I wasn’t that surprised given the footage. What it showed wasn’t that, it was…

  Targets ahead, they may be hit by ricochet if you are shot five meters further.

  I deployed the shield. Some… black coating of some kind expanded on it. Given the bunker type of confines this was, I could tank any small arms fire at the moment. Good thing too, since some idiot had dug up an old LMG and apparently kept it at the back of the shelter. What a dipshit. Although, that was the least of this purple’s many faults.

  What I’d found on the recordings came partially from an enforcer who’d been recording a prolapsing pig’s asshole who wanted to have fun with the kids. There were actually a few of them. Then, it showed that enforcer along with quite a few others, some prostitutes (not Bear-Yakuza), civilians and others making fun of, insulting and taunting them. A few’d been shot, but the others kept on going and ended up being dragged to this room and tortured… and worse.

  They kept distracting them away from the kids, even bloody as all fucking hell and barely cognizant, waiting for samurais to show up. Waiting for me. “Wrath, not rage… oh so, so much wrath…” I reminded myself. These fuckers would die, as horrible a death as– no, they would die. What mattered were the kids and the civies.

  I kept moving forward and being damn impressed by the coating! It didn’t stop bullets, not at all. The shield stopped the bullets, the coating just acted as… sticky? Fucked if I knew but they fell to the ground instead of going into civilians, so I was satisfied.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I kept moving forward yet stayed alert. When the chaotic echoes of the room shifted, I adjusted my plates. The shotgun blast only a meter away simply threw me off balance. I replied to it with my Grave Digger! The rounds Altany had selected flattened a lot to dump all their energy after penetration. A shot to the arm? Well, it definitely disarmed him!

  I chuckled at my internal joke as I shot the purple piece of shit in the face. As the asshole with the LMG finished his magazine –or ammo box fuck me he had a lot of rounds!–, I angled my shield up and shot him in the tibia. There. Non-lethal. It would take a while for him to bleed out.

  However, there were civilians in the room. Wait, why was I trying to keep him alive? Purple equals dead. Easy peezy! I finished the job… meh, a few more just to be sure.

  As I lowered my shield and looked around for a quick inspection, a high-powered shot bounced off my helmet and threw my head to the side! I thought I heard a few shocked gasps. I focused on returning fire into what had looked like a janitor’s closet. As I destroyed the wall a bit it looked like it was a storage closet. Fucking fascinating.

  Someone laughed manically but I kept my attention on medical shit. “Altany, who needs treatment the fastest? Buy all the medical shit, I don’t care!” I said while heading for the tied up people.

  Enforcer Rosalie is bleeding internally according to her augs. She is the most urgent case, but not the only one. Place the leads here and here.

  I followed instructions to the sound of cackling from one of the survivors. After the last critical patient was taken care of (stabilized and on the way to healing quickly at least), I turned to the person that was still chuckling. Before I could say anything, she spoke first in a gravely voice I knew already!

  “Heya boss man, got a fucking promotion eh?” My eyes went wide, and the ones on my helmet probably went wider!

  “Fucking hell, Synthia!?” She had… two less limbs than I remembered. Since she only had two to begin with…

  “I’m fine, tourniquets are over torqued if anything. They wanted some sort… fuck if I know, some fetish shit about fleshlights? Focus on the other ones so they can help out.” She still had a fucking smile on which… Fuck it, in this situation I’d call that fucking good, fuck it, why the fucking fuck not!? Fuck!

  “Kept telling ‘em you’d find us. Hey, don’t make that face, they needed somethin’, and hell, you fucking did. If you didn’t we’d all be dead soon anyway.” Man that fucked with my heart, hard.

  “Didn’t get here soon enough for…” She didn’t let me finish.

  “Don’t you fucking dare do that! That blame is fucking theirs you hear me!? Don’t you fucking dare take any of it away from them! Also, have you considered I thought it might be at least a day before you tracked me down, if at all!? Don’t fucking do that shit! It’s their fault, daughter fuckers…” What an apt yet insanely horrifying adaptation of that expression. “Told them we’d have some space for them if they made it out, sorry, hope you don’t mind.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Are you fucking serious? I’ve seen your fucking vids Syn! They’re all qualified for enforcers as far as I’m concerned!” Most had missing clothing. I wouldn’t mention it. Same for Synthia. If she wanted to talk about it, or take revenge, she’d do it in her own time and at her own pace.

  I sure as fuck was not the guy to determine any of that shit! I’d be there for her as much as possible while trying not to be in her way or suffocating her. I used a lot of online guides.

  Fucking hell, I’d have to buy some super therapy AI for… everyone, really.

  She chuckled. “Yeah, they fucking are at that. Brave fuckers, some of them to the end… Should have their names on a god damn monument. Sorry boss, I’m not going to be useful until you get me a couple more prosthetics, although I think they might have trashed my old ones…”

  I laughed at that. “You know you’re getting a massive bonus for protecting that many kids that fucking hard, right? What do you think of buying you four high grade samurai prosthetics?”

  Now it was her turn to be surprised. “Uh… You fucking what?” I smiled wide as I finally got to treating her. I injected some Hemo-Restore and a class 2 Medical nanite suite since she’d been more fucked up than she let on.

  “Don’t worry! It’s on top of all the other stuff I’ll be equipping you with! Hey, Johnny Law, I'm going to need to borrow that prosthetics catalogue. High quality shit for a friend, my treat.”

  ***

  It took us a little bit of time to mop up and I made sure to clear the room… and then throw a medical utility Altany proposed called a ‘Full Room Explosive Sanitizer’ in there after everyone was out. The kids would have to pass by here to get out after all, they didn’t need more trauma and that room was… traumatizing. Even without all the people.

  Johnny and I were very happy to give Synthia a bonus for her insanely heroic actions in defense of children. Same for Rosalie. Synthia actually chose that name because she really wanted amazing prosthetics and augs!

  Those things cost money though. She had a pretty fucked up life and it might have just doubled in levels of fucked-up. I’d make sure she at least got her dream out of it. Her last prosthetics had been… good-ish by human standards. Her current ones? Class 2 samurai tech, impossible to replicate on earth. I also replaced her cybernetic eyes and now they had fully programmable retinas and sclera, which had been a big goal of hers!

  Rosalie had more classic tastes. She’d always been big into old long range rifles, but more world war one than western. Oh, and swords! She ended up with something similar to Bella’s rifle but straight pull, along with a bayonet that could be extracted to act as a sword –a vibro-blade sword!– with amazing optics and a super undersuit. It helped with reflexes, speed and a bunch of shit I didn’t have time to ponder. We spent 600 points each and felt fucking happy about it!

  That was, of course, aside from the guns, armors and aug upgrades we gave them as an enforcer starter kit! Overall, they’d protected One hundred and fifty seven kids from fates I did not want to think about. If I did, this next part would be short.

  Everyone had been extracted, except for the Kais. Johnny and I held them all in a single room, well bound. We still had twenty-eight of them, all green or yellow, except for two. The extras were there mostly for bluffing purposes. “Hi guys! I’m Mad Panda, this is Johnny Law. If you want to live I suggest you do as we say. Now, to those of you who think ‘they’re samurai, they won’t shoot unarmed prisoners’, I say–” I shot purple number one. They panicked but we’d made sure they couldn’t do much.

  “Now, all of you who act real nice and answer our questions are going to live through the next few hours, unless you fuck around. In that case you’ll find out. Now stay still and act nice or–” I shot purple number two since, unsurprisingly, he tried to make a break for it…

  With his feet tied together and his hands behind his back. Dumbass. The other ones got real quiet after that! I didn’t mind killing purples. Might be fucked up but I’m not a psychiatrist, how would I know?

  “Coolsies. You’re first buddy!” I said as I picked up an older guy by the armpits. He looked like a lifer, someone who’d been in the gang, kept his head down, didn’t make waves or stupid moves. I also had another reason…

  ***

  We’d taken him to a detention center, pretty far away from the prisoners room, which was locked up tight. Why tempt fate. After a bit of unbinding, I removed the gag. “Fuck you corpo pig!”

  I looked at him askance. “The fuck makes you think I’m corpo, corpo rat?”

  “I’m not corpo, you are!” I decided to stop the ‘duck season rabbit season’ skit at its root.

  “Really? I’m not the one that got paid a fat stack of credits to whore myself out and invite aliens into the place to kill off street people.”

  That got him to shut up. His eyes went wide and he recoiled. “I’m not saying shit, torture me all you want corpo scum…” I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Don’t you remember me? You fuckers have a bounty on my head. Hell, it wasn’t so long ago you were sending squads to attack my fucking gang. Jesus I’m not even two levels down from here.”

  His eyes widened further. “What?” I retracted my helmet and smiled at him. It was predatory, and vicious, but I didn’t give a fuck. He blanched. “Fuck…”

  “Yeah, not so corpo now, am I?” He had nothing to say to that! I put my helmet back. “Since you’re the corpo rat working for some big cheese in this building, why don’t you illuminate me? What was the price for selling your own people?” He got a lot quieter. I didn’t get what expression he made, but I wouldn’t work based on that. Play to your strengths!

  “You know, I rarely see guys like you in the Kais. Gangers don’t live long, don’t I fucking know it. Someone like you, even with falling in a bit late, you’ve been around a while. Even if you weren’t told the whole story, you know most of it. Hell, you probably got more knowledge on the operation than most of the people who planned it.”

  “I told you I’m not saying shit! I’m no fucking snitch! Bring out the torture shit I can do this all god damn day!” I smiled at him, which my helmet somehow communicated as he seemed to get confused… I think.

  “Did you know that torture doesn’t work?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “It doesn’t work. Everyone talks, and the problem is, when they don’t know shit, they make it up. Half the info you get is bullshit even if the prisoner knows all the shit you want. I mean, you don’t always know the right questions to ask, right? If you ask the wrong ones then torture until you get the info you want, you just forced bullshit. That is, if the tortured doesn’t try to bullshit you. I mean, seriously, under torture, a terrorist gave the recipe for an H-Bomb he’d taken from a comedy site! The interrogator bought it too!” That seemed to stomp him.

  “So, you’re not going to torture me?”

  “Nop.” I said, my smile not going anywhere. “There are many methods that work. The first is simple deductive reasoning, asking probing, unbiased questions and comparing previous answers to catch lies. Comparing two people’s accounts, asking for info you already know, then checking who doesn’t know, plenty of shit like that.”

  “I’m not telling you shit!” I chuckled.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. The second method, which is most useful for insurgents and terrorists since you need them to start talking, is making deals. Simple deals, like packs of cigarettes, better cells, blah blah blah, those are the classics. Plenty enough to get actionable intel. Powerful deals can be ‘I’ll let you walk out of here free’ but that doesn’t fly a lot of the time for obvious reasons. ‘Tell me or you die, period’ kind of counts but it doesn’t work as well as you’d expect like, well, right here. Nah, you require the other big one. The reason why I picked you, buddy.”

  He looked extremely apprehensive. He probably imagined something horrible! “You have a son right?” He leapt at me… or tried to. My super augmented armored hand made it pretty ineffective. “Woah there friendo. Not gonna ice your son. Unlike you, I don’t murder innocent people.” An edge of steel entered my voice at that point and he quieted down.

  “No no no, I knew you’d be torture proof. You’d never give me good intel since the Kais are protecting your son in prison. He’s been there… what, five years? On some very bullshit charges at that. You had him before you were a member. Given how much you’ve been keeping clean, sending him money, trying to pay off his debt, I think you love your son. Deeply. It kills you to see him hurting in there… Is mom still in the picture?” He looked down, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry. I mean that, I’m a father too. It would fucking kill me to lose my partner. I don’t know what I’d do if my son was in that situation. I’d honestly have done something extremely stupid to try and help him. Like taking a contract that I really shouldn’t, especially if he’d been in danger. Gang violence in prison is a bitch. Even if you survive, your sentence is longer, so you’re still fucked.” He looked further down. He sniffed slightly, with damp eyes.

  “Father to father, my kids are in danger. That’s because of the corpos you helped. Here’s the deal I’ll make you, I can get him out.” His head snapped up.

  “What? Fucking how?” He looked at me and I knew hope when I saw it. Probably tinged with disbelief.

  “I just learned you’re here less than, what, ten, fifteen minutes ago? Yet, I already know a fuckload, including all that shit about your son. Do you know why? That’s because of Altany, the super alien AI that picked me to be a samurai.”

  To be entirely too pedantic, you were selected as a candidate, and then I was chosen to pair with you, but it is neither here nor there.

  I kept going through Altany’s little info dump that really didn’t change much. “If she can do that, she can do basic shit like fill out a bunch of forms and check all the laws and legal bullshit. That also means getting those bullshit charges dropped since, as we both know, they’re fucking bullshit. It’s not hard. Your son shouldn’t have been in jail in the first place. If you give me the info I need, he gets out. Then, he comes here, where the protection of two fucking samurais will beat the ever living fuck out of anything the kais can throw. I’ll take him as a Bear-Yakuza, he seems like a good kid.”

  “You saw how fucked you guys were. I have a god damn army of samurai-grade equipped militia and enforcers. Do you think that even in the weird fucked up case where the Kais figured out you gave me the info and go after your son instead of you, he’ll be happier and safer in prison? If you know me, you know life’s good in my territory, better than in yours, and a fuckload better than prison.”

  That stomped him, hard. It took several seconds for him to start formulating any kind of a response. “I… There’s no… What? No, no, he’s… He’s done things since he got thrown in there, minor shit but…” I interrupted him.

  “Time served. Plus my super AI can make it look like someone important is getting him out of prison since, you know, samurai. Hell, I can upload everything on the warden’s computer with a nice threat that if anyone fucks with him he’s dead and no one can stop me. It’s kind of like cheating, really, but it’s nice when it’s for your family.” I said with a chuckle. It really was.

  “You… How do I know you’re not lying?” He said with apprehension. Deals this good didn’t exist… Unless samurais were involved, which he knew. You didn’t make it that long without knowing the rules, and especially who was above them. Those were the ones you couldn’t fuck with, no matter what.

  Plenty of younger gangers made that mistake when it came to samurais. The majority died. Encountering a samurai was rare, and the dead don’t learn lessons or warn the next fucker.

  “Here’s the documentation.” I said as I flicked a finger. “Read it quickly though, I got corpos wanting to shoot my people on floors eighteen and up, I don’t have a lot of time here buddy.” He read pretty fast but clearly concluded that he wouldn’t understand shit. I didn’t blame him, especially since I sure as fuck couldn’t. “Also, you know how important rep is. Fucking with you on this? I’m not alone in the room, and I’m not going to ice another samurai. I’m putting my name on the line, in front of a witness. You know what that shit means.”

  That was ganger language, something he could understand. His eyes flicked towards Johnny more than once. “What… what about me?” That made me sigh.

  “Honestly, I’m not going to promise shit on that one. No matter your reasons, what you did was fucked, and you know it. You’re not leaving this building, I’m not even sure you’ll survive right now. Your chances are going to be a fuckload better if you help, but still, that’ll be on the council to decide. I’ll make you one promise. I’ll make sure you get at least a day with your son. Let’s be honest, it’s more than you really expected to have. Am I wrong?” That was the reality.

  There needed to be something imperfect about the deal or it’d be way too fucking good to be true. If I said ‘oh you’ll be fine, you get to stay here forever, leave whenever!’ It would have sounded like a scam. Also, I told him the truth. I didn’t know what would happen to him, or the others.

  “Like I said though, I don’t have that much time here. You have to decide, and quickly.” More restrictions, making the deal less appealing yet more real and less fairy-tale.

  ”Come on, father to father, tell me what I need to know to protect my kids, and I’ll protect yours.” That gave more grounding and a morally decent way of looking at it, rather than just ‘betraying his boys’. It created a tangible ‘I gain and you gain’ mentality instead of a gift from the heavens.

  “What’s your choice?”