Walker scoffed. “Did you talk to him for more than a minute?”
“I have reached the top speed of this ship,” Genos said fretfully.
Kaiden crossed the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot’s chair. “Is there any way to give this thing more juice?”
“I’ve had Viola turn off all non-essential systems and reroute the power to the boosters,” Genos explained.
“Will it be enough?”
“It should suffice, but that will be up to the Animus. Once the base is destroyed, we should get a mission complete.”
The ace looked at the dash and switched a screen so he had a view of the station behind them and could watch it fall apart. Chunks of the station drifted into space, while others exploded or shattered. Finally, once it was almost too distant to see, the station erupted, their mission complete.
Kaiden sat back and grinned at his teammates as the banner appeared in his view. He turned in his chair to Walker. “If you get reused, I hope they don’t stick you in as the big bad. You might end up with the same fate as Swarn.”
“I wouldn’t want that, now would I?” Walker asked, and Kaiden frowned.
“I know they are supposed to be lifelike, but do they have to be so snarky?”
“We’re de-syncing,” Chiyo warned. He looked over as the world went white and disappeared around him and waved a cheerful goodbye to Walker.
Once they had left, the man remained and smiled as three bodies slumped over before their suits flattened as dust poured out. He picked a few specks up and rubbed them between his fingers.
Interesting.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zubanz strode through the lobby and into the reception area in front of his office without even a glance at his secretary. “Liya, cancel everything for the rest of the evening. I have something I need to deal with.” He shoved his office door open and entered, slamming it behind him.
He made his way over to his desk, put down the object in his hand, and activated his monitor to access the list of bounty hunters, mercs, soldiers, and killers—all he could muster who were under the organization’s thumb. He sent messages to each of them with one order: kill Gin Sonny. He added all the information he had on him and sent the messages before he opened a compartment on the underside of his desk and removed a bottle of whiskey. Forgoing a glass, he drank straight from the bottle.
It had been barely ten minutes since he had received the report. Everyone at the lab—every guard, scientist, assistant, and anyone else working that night—had been killed and mutilated. Some had tried to escape, but no one on staff had been able to get out of the building. The doors were all locked, and the emergency seals activated.
Forty-seven people gone in a night.
Gin hadn’t even been clever or subtle. Zubanz reached for the object he had placed on his desk. It was Gin’s knife—the one he’d named—found in the corpse of an engineer near one of the emergency exits.
The chairman, despite himself, felt the loss. That lab was one of the few that had an active staff who knew what they were working on, and, more importantly, who they worked for. They might have been below the people on the board like himself, but they shared the vision.
But what got to him more was the sense of failure and the feeling that he had been made to look like a fool. Gin was a psychopath, but he had worked with people like him before. They always wanted the same thing—their vices catered to and their sick fantasies realized. Do that, and they would do anything you wanted.
But Gin? He was like a child. If he encountered any rule that forbade him from doing something, he did it. What was worse was that not only had he spat in his face, but he had promised the board that he would handle everything when he suggested they use him. He knew he would have to pay, and he could only hope his rank wouldn’t be stripped as a result.
They wouldn’t do that—risk letting him go. They would be worried he would talk, so they would probably simply have him killed. He looked at the bottle of whiskey in his hand and flung it against the wall with a pained shout before he collapsed in his chair again.
Where did he go from here? He had already sent teams to the condo he had set Gin up in and sent out over a dozen search parties to comb the area around the lab and city. The killer could have been long gone by this point. He would be found. He wouldn’t risk leaving Earth right now, not with all the equipment he had stolen. It would prove too much of a risk. He had already sent a tip to the world council about the thefts and they would already be on high alert, knowing that he was on Earth due to the incident in Brazil. He wouldn’t get away.
The chairman drew a ragged breath and reminded himself that he needed to calm down. This wasn’t something he had to concern himself with now. Instead, he needed to figure out what to do about the organization. They would want answers, but what could he say? He should have acted faster. When Gin first showed signs of being out of control, he should have had him doped up then and there, broken him, and made him follow commands. But that hadn’t made sense to him at the time. He’d chosen the man for his talents and skills, and he wouldn’t get those with a serum zombie.
He was thinking about Gin again, dammit. Focus.
His first consideration was whether he should turn himself in to the organization. Perhaps it would be better to do that willingly rather than have them send an escort. He wondered if they would even bother with an interview or trial. The mission—that was what was important, and despite his loyalty, he had potentially compromised it, even if only slightly.
Gin couldn’t be traced back to them, not as a whole. Maybe to Zubanz personally, but he had been careful to cover his tracks. What if that nutcase openly stated he had worked for him? That wouldn’t hold up in court. The man was obviously insane.
The chairman checked his messages. Nothing had come back from the people he had sent messages to, and his teeth clenched so hard they could have cracked. They were under orders to reply as quickly as possible when given orders. Was everyone defying him now? He began to feel like a joke, and his anger surged again as he smashed his fist into the monitor. It broke and cut his hand, but he ignored the wound and slammed his palm on the desk. Defeated, he rested his head on it and scratched the back of his head rapidly in frustration.
He made a decision. He would head to the manor tonight, prostrate himself before the other members of the Arbiter Organization, and vow to right his wrongs. Even if they didn’t demand it, it was his mess to fix.
His choice made, he placed a finger on the button of his call pad. “Liya, call Jorge and have him ready a team and prepare my ship,” he demanded, but there was no answer. “Liya? Do you hear me?”
The lights in Zubanz’s office flickered. Was there a malfunction? Suddenly, they went out and plunged the room into darkness. When the shutters fell into place over the large windows in his office, he jumped, and his heart thudded painfully within.
“What’s going on?” he shouted into the blackness.
“Why soundproof the room if you’re going to yell like that, Zubanz?” a mischievous voice asked.
The chairman’s heart almost stopped. He opened a drawer in his desk quickly and drew out a heavy pistol. Without hesitation, he fired into the shadows. Brief flashes of light illuminated the surroundings, but he saw nothing and hit nothing but what he owned.
“Where are you?” he demanded as his hands fumbled to vent the pistol.
“Here, obviously,” Gin replied. His voice sounded as if he was both in front and behind him, but when Zubanz spun and fired once again, he hit nothing. “I’ve played with the different settings on the Wormwood device. I like this one—the voice projection. It is rather cinematic, for lack of a better term. Actually, perhaps ‘haunting’ works better.”
“D-do you r-realize what y-you’ve done?” Zubanz stammered, and closed the vent on his pistol.
“What I normally do—the thing that got your attention in the first place,” the killer responded. His voice made it sound as if he had
answered a mundane question. “I will admit, most of my actions in the last few hours have been more malicious than usual, but I was dealing with some issues stemming from you.”
The chairman crept toward the door to his office. He tried furtively to open it with no luck, then slammed against it in the hope that it would either break or someone would hear him.
“I would imagine you paid top cred for those doors so they wouldn’t budge an inch whenever you had to take your frustrations out on them with all that petulant door slamming,” the intruder mocked. “I only got in rather recently. Talked to Liya. Lovely girl,”
“What did you do to her?” Zubanz demanded.
“Oh, I sent her home early,” Gin stated. “And before you take that to mean I sent her off to the afterlife before her time or something, I’m not so… Well, I would say cruel, but I think I’ve demonstrated the ability to be. I’ve worked my anger out, for the most part, though.”
“That wasn’t Liya. When I came in that wasn’t—”
“To think I spent all that time messing with the setting on this thing for nothing. You didn’t even spare me a look. I so badly wanted to know if I had it down.” Gin sighed. Silence ensued and stretched for what felt like hours to Zubanz. It was more distressing than hearing him speak.
When Gin finally spoke again, the disturbingly playful tone was gone, replaced by a grim, hissing voice. “Tell me, Zubanz, what did you think I was when you hired me? A potential pet? A fancy toy you could play with because you had the cash? I had hoped that this would be an interesting new direction in my life, the closest I could come to going straight.” He drew a long, forced breath. “I would laugh if it didn’t piss me off so much.”
“This was because of you!” the chairman snapped. “I told you I would let you do what you wanted, that I would pay for anything you needed. You only had to do one thing!”
“We’ve already had this discussion, Zubanz, and I didn’t like how it went the first time,” the killer stated in a flat tone. “If you or any of your friends in your little club really had had any sort of plan to deal with your current problem, I would be far away from here, not troubling you.”
It went quiet again, but a shocking noise erupted and a searing pain burned into the chairman’s leg. He cried out, fell, and immediately tried to stand, but he couldn’t find his balance. In the darkness, he fumbled around him to figure out what was wrong and his hand landed on something. He brought it to his face and recoiled. It was a shoe, one that was filled with his foot.
As the horrifying realization hit him, a boot slammed against his chest. He winced and looked up. Gin stood above him with a glowing plasma blade in his hand. “But you brought me here, Chairman, and had the audacity to not know your place.”
Zubanz tried to respond, but only mumbled words formed around his hitched breathing. The killer knelt and held his blade up to his face so he could see it in the darkness. He was emotionless, and stared sharply but blankly at him as if he were staring through him. “I kill for sport, to fill a void, to achieve something I couldn’t do as a ‘normal’ person. That’s why I go after those we generally consider warriors of some kind, although I suppose I’m not too picky in some areas. If there is one thing I absolutely despise, it’s having to deal with those who believe themselves to be better than they are.”
Gin pushed away from Zubanz, who tried to suck in as much breath as possible as the other man walked over to his desk. He picked Macha up and slid it into its sheath. “It was kind of you to bring her back. I was concerned I would have to make another stop to retrieve her if you let the cops take her. At least you proved somewhat useful.”
“A-a-are, y-you going t-to—” The chairman couldn’t form the words. The killer looked at him and twirled the plasma blade in his hands.
“Speak up. Isn’t a proper voice something they teach you in business?”
“A-are you g-going to k-k-kill me?” Zubanz asked, and tried to compose himself as he pushed up to sit on the floor.
“Eventually…perhaps.” Gin admitted coyly. His mouth formed a small smirk as his macabre happiness returned. “I suppose how this all ends is up to you, but you shouldn’t really be all that surprised if I do.” He held up a few fragments of the broken monitor. “You tried to kill me, now didn’t you?”
“I’ll call it off,” he promised. “I’ll call it off. I’ll pay you what I promised. You can leave and do whatever you wish.”
“How thoughtful. But you know, sometimes the intention is more important than the outcome.” The killer took a few steps closer. “Besides, the messages never made it out.” He held the plasma blade over his own wrist, a compartment popped open, and the BREW device slid out. “This is my newest little toy, and I’ve already found that it works wonders.” He slid the device back into the compartment and looked at the tablet. “After I deal with that boy, I have a list of other people to meet—another plus.”
While Gin was distracted, Zubanz leaned back to retrieve the pistol. He turned and fired at the other man, who simply created a small shield with his palm to block the blasts before he formed the barrier into a ball and hurled it at the chairman’s hand to knock the gun away.
“So should I take that to mean you wish to die?” he asked. “You had better come up with a good reason why you thought that was a good idea.”
Zubanz lowered his head in defeat, and the killer sucked his teeth. “Disgusting,” he muttered, and stepped forward to finish the chairman.
“You said ‘that boy.’ Do you mean Kaiden Jericho?” Zubanz asked. “The Nexus Academy student, the one I hired you to go after to begin with?”
Gin knelt and placed the flat of the blade against the man’s cheek. He winced as it burned his skin. “Yes indeed, but not out of some debt or promise to you. Even if your mission were different, I have my own reasons for going after him now.” He released a cackling laugh. “Funny thing, that. If you had simply kept your mouth shut, the chips would have landed in your favor anyway.”
The chairman did something that caught Gin genuinely off-guard. He began to laugh as well. “Have you broken down now, Zubanz? Don’t be so boring.”
He looked at the killer and, despite the pain, blood, and sweat on his face, gave him a smile. “Then…the mission can still be completed.”
The man’s joy sent him over the edge. He stabbed him several times in his chest with the blade before he dug it into his throat and glided it across. Blood coated both their faces. Zubanz’ body slumped to the floor, and Gin stood over him, breathing heavily as he turned the plasma blade off and placed it in its holster.
“He can’t even die right. What a freak,” Gin murmured. With a flick of his hand, the lights in the office came back on. He sighed and looked at his latest victim. “I hated your face, and I’ll forget it quickly.”
“Sir? It’s getting late, do you wish for me to drive you home?” the steward asked as he knocked on Zubanz’s door. He knocked again when he received no reply. “Sir? Are you in there?” He turned the knob, walked in, and recoiled at the scent of fire and burnt copper. His mouth open, he surveyed the destroyed furniture and antiques and the laser burns that defaced everything. Stunned, he looked down and yelled instinctively at the sight of the mutilated body of his employer on the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Well, that was uneventful.” Cameron sighed as the advanced class left the auditorium.
“Nearly unceremonious.” Raul yawned. “Almost every test last year had some grand finale. This one had no fireworks or anything.”
“Hey, at least we have a feast waiting for us,” Marlo protested. “I’ll take that any day over pretty sparks.”
“It’s not like when we head off to our real jobs, they’re gonna celebrate every accomplished mission,” Silas pointed out. “I’ll be happy with a cookie and a bonus.”
“The cookie will probably be the bonus,” Izzy interjected.
“Do we get to choose the type?” Flynn asked.
“Don’t let it be raisin,” Luke pleaded. “What was your score?”
“Eight hundred and ten out of one thousand,” Silas answered. “What about you?”
“Seven hundred and sixty,” Raul answered. “We lost some points because we couldn’t find the target fast enough.”
“How does that happen?” Amber asked, “You’re a tracker, and Cameron is a bounty hunter. That’s like your thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s bullshit. We found the guy, but we had a walking tank with us. Not exactly built for stealth,” Cameron chided.
“Oh, you ain’t blaming this on me, hothead,” Luke retorted. “I recall that you were the one who fired at every dumbass in your way. How is that stealth?”
“What? Am I supposed to let them shoot me?” the bounty hunter retorted defensively. “And it’s not like you—”
“Kin Jaxon!” Genos called, and the group waited for Kaiden’s team to approach them. “Congratulations on your victory,” Genos complimented.
“To you as well, kin.” Jaxon nodded. “And to you two as well—a nine hundred, one of the top scores. You certainly keep your reputation up.”
“We do our best, but there are a few things we can work on,” Chiyo noted and placed a hand on Genos’ shoulder. “But at least Genos came out relatively unscathed this time around.”
“Yes, although that creature in the sewers was rather unnerving,” the Tsuna recalled. “Do any of you know of a mutant sea creature with long arms and four orange eyes? I meant to look it up, but I’ve been busy since the end of the test.”
“Hmm? Did those arms have little ridges on them?” Raul asked as he mentally went over his tracker glossary in his head.
“Yes, sharp enough to cut through skin, and they stick to you as well.”
“Yeah, those are samehada. Mostly found in Oceania, but the first was spotted around Japan. I’ve never seen one myself, but I hear they are nasty.”
“Damn fiends, they are,” Flynn spat. “They cause about ninety deaths a year back home. Did you take it out?”
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