Nah, he was fine. A man had to stay lean when his sport of choice could be so demanding.
He watched as the technicians, engineers, guards, and designers walked around the lab and briefed one another on their findings, their latest projects, and their theories. It must have been so much fun.
His focus moved to the party of four that had caught his attention when he had first snuck in, and specifically to a blonde-haired woman who seemed to hold a special place among them. He could sense something similar among those scientists, something akin to how he felt whenever he and Magellan were in the same room. It was an undertone of barely constrained animosity and amusement, of excitement and hate. He somehow knew that while they joked and amused one another, they all harbored grudges.
It’s sweet that they think they can hide it. It was doubtful that anyone in that group was fooled. He certainly wasn’t, and he was far away and unable to listen in. For a brief moment, he wondered why he took the time to observe the people below when they wouldn’t be around much longer. Well, most of them wouldn’t. He had to admit, for all the building rage and wrath he had felt as he made his way there, he had cooled rather quickly.
Which wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t stain this place with as much blood as possible. That was necessary to leave Zubanz one last reminder of who Gin really was. The chairman was fond of telling him that he was less than he was and always seemed so proud to have found and played with him as if he were a toy.
He’d therefore break every other toy the man had, not because he was angry necessarily, but because he needed to set an example for potential future customers.
No, that wasn’t right either. He probably wouldn’t have any new customers in the near future. Word traveled rather quickly on this planet.
Gin shook the thoughts from his head for a moment and studied the apparent comradery below him once again. To some degree, it made him recall moments from his life before—like those bastards in the Star Killers. The generic name for a merc company should have tipped him off, but the Red Suns didn’t align with his interests, and the Omega Horde wouldn’t bite. That was ironic, considering they were the reason for his old company’s downfall. Nah, it wasn’t fair to put all the blame on them. The SK’s weakness—that pitiful, infuriating weakness—was in all of their blood. That was why he’d had to get it out of them. Even in the ones who weren’t there, it was obviously inherent. Perhaps it was something in the bottled water they drank.
He watched as the denizens below continued to make the rounds. It seemed that everyone there was in some sort of gathering or party. Not much work was done right now, he could safely say, but that worked for him just fine.
The killer activated his cloaking tech and leapt from the ledge to the top of a stack of crates, climbed down quickly, and sprinted to a dangling crane in the middle of the room. He vaulted up to it, balanced the middle of his left foot on the point of the hook, and looked down and around the room. Sentries paced underneath and cameras literally focused directly at him. The merry little workers continued to talk and drink. This was always a favorite part for him—to take the time to bask in the irony of it all. Humans, himself included, always wanted to live life like they had complete control, thinking that nothing happened without consent.
A foolish notion, unless there was a load of people determined to get sick, go broke, or have any numbers of miseries befall them. The best you could do was train, prepare, and be willing to accept the things that came your way, but also have the courage to defy them. Some, such as him, were simply better at that than others. There he was in the middle of a crowded room, and yet no one knew.
A lone man in a black coat sat in a corner and focused on a tablet. Gin felt an odd urge to move closer to see what he was reading and what kind of person he was.
Perhaps he was one of the broken ones? He sensed melancholy begin to swirl within him—one less person to play with—but the apathy left him quickly, replaced by nonchalance. He didn’t enjoy playing with broken toys, and as upsetting as it was to see one that looked so shiny and promising fall apart like this, it meant he could focus on what he had actually come there to do.
He jumped gently from the crane, landed on the point of a machine’s seemingly superfluous pyramid-looking top icon, and launched off that to land on a beam a few feet ahead. This enabled him to jump up back to the ceiling and wend his way through the bars and beams to the other side of the lab and the private offices.
Gin smiled and wondered why they would take a device of such potential and hide it in a drawer. He remembered not believing something like it existed when he first heard of it, and to a point, he had been right. It had never had an effective test, but even as a so-called defective item, possibilities were astounding. Many scientists and technicians had tried to use the device to its full capacity, and many great minds had applied everything they knew to it without success.
Now it was his turn.
A trio of lab techs ran beneath him, and the killer instinctively stood as motionless as possible. Without the proper equipment, they shouldn’t be able to see him, but they were three supposedly experienced scientists. That was why he would never remain too long on a crane, for example. A squeak from a lonely hook that swung in a room with no breeze would look rather suspicious, and maybe someone was superstitious, too. In any case, the one with the wavy red hair looked like he wanted trouble, and it would be rather embarrassing for him to be discovered right now because of his own mistakes.
Gin waited for the men to move away and finally crossed the entire length of the lab. He surveyed the surprisingly simple-minded group of geniuses and allowed himself another moment to take it all in. His gaze shifted to his transparent hand. It was almost completely clear, only a slight haze visible. The stealth generator was fantastic and had a long energy span, no notable dip when he moved, and no traceable emissions. When he’d heard about it at the Kioto Station, he knew he simply had to have it. It wasn’t as hard to acquire an experimental piece from a station far out in space as one would think, at least not there. And as his previous outings had proven, it wasn’t that difficult on Earth either. A station that focused on scientific pursuits screened all their employees and onboard passengers. He had made his way in on a distressed shuttle, one he was responsible for distressing. He’d planned to simply restock when they brought him in, but had found an even greater prize. Things sometimes worked so beautifully in the great abyss.
Gin lowered his hands and tapped a finger on Macha. What was he doing again?
Ah, yes—the BREW device. He almost had it, and once it was his, he would be free to begin the second part of his night. As he prepared to make his way into the wing with the private offices, he allowed the screen on his visor to change. It displayed the lines of energy that fueled the area, the small orbs of personal equipment humming on the guards, and all people.
He loaded Vinci’s program. While he wouldn’t begin his spree just yet, it might be all right for him to initiate a panic. He thought it over carefully. They might see it as a possible attack—and they would be oh, so right—but they would also ruin his evening if they decided to evacuate or simply leave the area. On the other hand, in corporate labs like this, malfunctions certainly happened, more often than they would admit in their reports. He could have his fun, but he would have to make it seem like an entire generator had gone offline.
And with his new toy, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Gin watched as the waves and beams of light in his visor turned black and crept through the trails of energy until they all pooled around their main target. With a snap of his fingers, he killed the power in half the facility.
Someone shouted, and people scrabbled and grunted to force a door open below him. The security guard hustled his four partners through the doors and moved to meet the scientists in the middle of the lab. The killer waited to see if the doors would close before he hurried after them.
He flicked the fingers of his bionic hands, and sma
ll spikes emerged from the ends of his fingers. He used them to cling to the wall, and quietly but quickly he made his way down and into the hall. Once there, he climbed the wall once more and made his way along the ceiling. Two men peered at a box farther down and tried to restore the power or determine why it had gone offline.
The killer found a place above them and observed them for a moment. It would have been no problem to take them here. No one else was around, and it would afford him a brief interlude of entertainment. His finger slid across Macha, but he calmed himself with the reminder that these weren’t his normal targets. They were simply the unfortunate sheep who had to be sacrificed because the wolf was a rabid, snarling idiot.
Gin continued to the lead scientist’s office. He finally found it at the end of the corridor, far from the other staff offices. After a hasty glance confirmed that he was still alone, he dropped from the ceiling, crouched, and made his way to the door. He remained alert for the traps or devices he was almost positive littered the entrance. Even with the power out, the lead tech would surely still have a few toys that would be effective. He studied the wall and the entrance, but there were no devices that he could see. Apparently, the answer was no, which really was disappointing, to be honest.
He pushed the door open slowly and entered. It was rather sparse and drab for a lead scientist’s office, with only a desk, one chair, a monitor, and two tablets haphazardly strewn on the desktop. He scanned the room for the BREW and found nothing, but he hadn’t expected it to be in plain sight. Once he checked the desk and drawers, he turned his attention to the walls. As he approached one, an oddly darker patch showed a faint flash of light on his screen.
The killer knocked on the wall a couple of times and grinned at the unexpected clang. He pressed his fingers against it and confirmed a metal surface. With his blade, he cut quickly through the thin material that covered the wall to reveal a metal cache behind the canvas wallpaper. The man hadn’t even bothered to put a painting up. How boring. He shifted a little closer and pressed a hand to the cache to obtain a reading of its materials, then nodded. A plasma blade would do. Deftly, he flipped a switch on his Omni-blade to change the cutter out for the necessary blade. When he drew and activated it, the blade hummed with a soft red light.
He dug the blade into the cache to make a small, circular hole, turned it off, and held it in one hand as he reached into the cache for his prize with the other. It looked like nothing more than a cylindrical drive not much wider than his hand, but he knew what the device was capable of. He wondered if he should pay another visit to Vinci and have him examine it. The man would be most appreciative.
But that was something to think about later. He had someone else he needed to see first, and something else to do.
As he grabbed the device, he noticed that it was attached to a wire. Gin studied it for a moment and an amused smile formed on his face. It was a simple little alarm system—when the wire snapped, it would send out a silent alarm. How quaint. He wondered if it still worked. Something that small might have been missed by the program.
Gin ripped the BREW device from the wire and gave it a final glance before he placed it in the compartment on his left leg.
A beeping from his wrist warned him that his generator needed to recharge. So be it. He wanted to be sporting anyway, he decided as he deactivated his cloak and walked back to the entrance to the room. His primary purpose accomplished, he wondered how he should begin the second part of his night. Should he be loud and boisterous? He intended to send a message, so perhaps something more subtle—more like an assassin, since half the lab was dark already. No. He’d played stealthily far too much, and he wanted a change. His gaze drifted back to the wire, and he wondered if the silent alarm had indeed gone off. If it had, he hadn’t detected anything, but it would be a nice surprise to have him waiting there. He could enjoy a little of both options in that case.
The killer shut the door to the room and withdrew into the darkness as he readied Macha and flipped his Omni-blade in his hands. The silence and darkness stretched into minutes, and he began to feel rather silly. He wondered if they would come at all. Had he been too deceptive? He felt that perhaps he should have left a trail of corpses. It would probably have been a significant clue.
He had all but given up his vigil when the silence was broken, although only slightly. A skitter was followed by the pounding of boots on metal from the lower floor. They seemed to circle, and Gin smiled. They were coming, and quickly too, with much enthusiasm to retrieve their sacred device. He readied both Macha and his Omni-blade and waited for them to burst through the doors.
What a wonderful night this would be.
Chapter Nineteen
The trio continued down the hall, and Kaiden and Genos ripped open any malfunctioning doors in their path. From what they could tell, however, they had simply moved to another part of the sewage system. All of them groaned almost in unison.
“On our next mission, my orders are that we simply go through the middle.” Kaiden sighed and took point as they pressed on. “It worked for me in the Division test.”
“True, but may I make the point that we had multiple lives during that test?” Genos reminded him.
“And from what you told me, you were down to your last one,” Chiyo added.
“I also took down a giant warbot,” the ace muttered. “A hell of an accomplishment for one life.”
“We are in our second year,” Genos said tentatively. “Perhaps we should make resolutions?”
“That’s typically for a new calendar year, Genos,” Kaiden explained. “And they aren’t exactly hard and fast rules, either. I’ve already broken mine.”
“What was it?” the infiltrator asked.
“I don’t recall specifically, but it was something about going to the medbay less due to injuries sustained because of Wolfson. That happened before this year even began.” He held a hand up as they approached a corner and walked forward to peer around. When he saw that the coast was clear, he motioned for them to follow.
Genos tapped his neck. “Well, either way, I wanted to suggest that maybe you should focus on dying less? We are training for future conflicts, and there isn’t a reset button once life is lost in reality.”
Kaiden chuckled. “Not yet, anyway, and when they do make something to fix that, you can bet they will charge an arm and a leg for it.”
The two humans looked at the Tsuna, neither expecting him to understand the metaphor. In response, Genos simply looked at each one in turn. “That means it will cost a lot of credits, correct?”
The ace nodded. “Indeed, you are learning. Ah, dammit to hell.”
The group approached a chamber that was sealed off and barricaded by a large grate. Kaiden knocked on the exterior. “I can probably blast through it, but it would make a hell of a racket. And without my souped-up helmet, I have no idea what’s behind it. Although, considering our little tussle a few minutes ago, maybe stealth isn’t in the cards anymore.”
“It doesn’t look like they are pursuing us, neither mutants nor pirates,” Genos stated.
Chiyo opened a holoscreen. “I can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t appear that any alarms have gone off, at least not in the systems. The best we can hope for is that if they did hear something, they chalked it up to the mutants. If we still have cover, we should continue to use it to our advantage until we find out exactly where we are.”
The ace rested his gun on his shoulder and examined the grate for any possible weaknesses before he shrugged and turned to the others. “There was another path back there. Let’s see if it leads somewhere different or at least to a hatch or exit of some kind. Otherwise, we will probably have to go loud.”
She closed her screen and nodded. “Agreed. At this point, we’re burning time, and having to backtrack would mean that we risk fighting any remaining mutants in that maze-like area.”
Kaiden nodded and set off back the way they had come, with the others close behind. Genos tappe
d the rim of his helmet again. “Chiyo, you mentioned before that much of this station isn’t in use. Should we be worried that we might end up in a section with no life support?”
She shook her head. “No, the main systems of these colonies are programmed to feed all sections of the station with the minimum energy and LS necessary to function, with back-up systems in place in case of power failure. The only time that would be a concern would be if there was significant damage to a part of the station.”
“Hey, we are dealing with pirates,” Kaiden interjected. “They might have gotten bored or drunk enough to spend a few nights blasting apart a few of the unnecessary sections of the station for their amusement.”
“Despite their reputation, there is some semblance of order in pirate groups,” the infiltrator argued. “Otherwise, no one would really fear them, and they would simply be a problem that would eventually take care of itself. Besides, it’s not something we need to worry about. If such a thing did happen or there are massively damaged parts of the ship, they will be sealed off.”
“We’ll keep a lookout,” the ace promised, adding casually, “Did I ever tell y’all that I could have ended up in a pirate group?”
Genos looked surprised. “Really? How did that occur?”
“Well, when I was about sixteen, I took a trip to Baton Rouge and—” He stopped, shook his head, and sighed. “Another dead end, guys.”
The others stepped up beside him and stared morosely at the obstacle—no grate blocked their path this time, only a metal wall. They glanced at one another and turned their attention to the walls around them in the hope that they would see something they might have missed.
Animus Boxed Set 2 (Books 5-8): Revenant, Glitch, Master, Infiltration Page 15
