The attack sent Officer Kena crashing to the ground. A dazed Officer Romi, still dizzy, had a hard time following Rez’s fast attack. It seemed like with every strike, Rez fists lit up a bright turquoise color. Rez was moving so fast she could have sworn she saw his after image as he attacked. Mox was down, and Kena was also down. Romi received the least damage, but was still severely injured. She was sitting down with her back up against the corridor wall to keep her upright. She was breathing heavily while her right arm was cupping her mid torso. All she could see through her blurred vision was the frightening silhouette of a dangerous man with glowing turquoise eyes standing before her.
Rez glowered at Officer Romi. Her heart rate was off the charts. He watched her squirm into a defensive position, as if she was expecting the worst to come. She had a cracked rib and her jaw was swollen. He stared back at her. Through his eyes an overlapping image flashed before him. It was an injured Yvora from that fateful night! There she was, sitting upright against a support beam. He shook his head as if to shake off the illusion. Officer Romi was too exhausted and too injured to speak. Rez gave her one last glare with his intimidating gaze before he quietly walked off into the darkness toward the executive elevator bay. For whatever reason, he spared Romi. She was confounded by his sudden magnanimity.
As she watched Rez walk away, she witnessed Rez’s gunblade fly to him from the ground where it lay after being dislodged from his hand during combat. It moved as if it were connected to him by a magnetic force. She then saw a bright turquoise light shine, before the gunblade disappeared into Rez’s arm. Who is that guy? she asked herself, before she passed out.
Rez finally found the elevator bay. He also checked the time; three minutes past eleven at night. Man, Psi-Corp responds quickly when they’re getting attacked, he thought to himself. He looked through the ceiling with his NOVO Lenses to scan for any heat signatures. He couldn’t see anything. The main menu prompt of the OS began to ripple and phase in and out. There must be some sort of jamming device up there. I’ll need to be extra careful, he thought.
“Marx, you there?” he asked via the communications channel. There was a lot of static.
“Yeah, I’m here. Is everything okay?” Marx replied through the static.
“There’s a jamming device somewhere nearby. I need only powerline TxV1.1 activated,” Rez said.
“On it!” Marx replied.
The message was clear despite the interference. Rez took the elevator up to the executive levels. He was one step closer to reaching his goal.
***
General Cain was in a hover tank in the Sun Desert on Neon District’s city-state border. It was almost ten past eleven and he was sick of waiting around.
“General Cain, please, come in, sir!” a soldier said over the hover tank command center communications line.
“What is it?” Cain growled.
“Sir, I apologize for bothering you.”
“Just get on with it!” Cain interrupted.
“Sir, we’ve received word that the first COGLIM frequency generator is beyond repair. We also just received word that TEAR special agents Romi, Kena, and Mox are down. We’ve also lost communication with Lieutenant Daav, sir. What are your orders?” the soldier asked.
“What? Damnit!” Cain yelled. “How many men do we have available on site?”
“Sir, we have twenty-four Psi-Corp security officers on site searching for the intruder right now,” The soldier said.
“Shit! Send in an additional twenty-five Psi-Corp officers to the building. I’m turning back and heading to HQ now,” Cain replied.
“Right away, sir,” the soldier replied, before Cain ended the conversation.
“Ensign Merrick, connect me to Dr. Stein when I enter the commander’s quarters,” Cain ordered.
“Right away, sir,” Ensign Merrick replied. Cain stood up and stormed off to the commander’s quarters in the hover tank. Upon entering Stein was already waiting via holo-call.
“Yes, Mr. Cain,” Stein asked.
“We have a problem. It may concern the Fayte boy. I may need you to send in the white knight,” Cain said.
“Oh? Are you certain that the Fayte boy is behind this?” Stein excitedly asked.
“Yes, I’m sure! If you had followed the plan in the first place, he would have been in our custody by now!” Cain yelled.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. If he is anything like his mother, I bet he is defiant. Stubborn like a mule, and will sacrifice himself before allowing me to work on him, or you to question him. Hmm, I digress. I will get Michael ready,” Stein said.
***
The elevator door opened on the seventy-seventh floor. Without pausing to see who was in it, Lt. Daav fired an RPG. The explosion rocked the elevator car so violently, that the thick metal cables supporting it snapped. The elevator car plummeted toward the seventy-fifth floor ablaze in all its destructive glory. “Yeah!! What a fuckin' wet snatch of a light show!” Daav laughed hysterically.
He continued to display his unique gift for interpolating unrelated curse words into regular sentences. The sounds of twisting, clanking metal metal along with the crisp peal of flames flickering in the distance reverberated through the elevator column. A loud thud came after Lt. Daav dropped the bulky RPG. Dust, smoke, and steam filled the elevator column and flowed outward into the seventy-seventh floor en masse. It didn’t matter much, since the entire building was still suffering a severe blackout. But Lt. Daav’s augmented eyes were able to make out where he could walk.
He went to inspect the inside of the elevator column. His body, being specially trained and enhanced with the Scion serum, was virtually immune to the effects of severe smoke inhalation among other incredible things.
“Looks like I fried the cupcake this time!” Daav said laughing hysterically at his own joke.
Daav briefly opened his eyes from his laughter to suddenly find two feet planted in his chest from a powerful double kick. The force of the kick sent him flying backwards into a glass framed painting! Sensing an ambush on his way up to the seventy-seventh floor, Rez had preemptively climbed through a ceiling panel of the elevator car. He rode up to the floor and secured his E-Grap to ensure he wouldn’t fall. Before Daav had fired the RPG and before the elevator car broke off from the support cables, Rez had shot them off so he could safely climb up to the higher floors.
“Ow! Shit, man! Is that any way to treat an officer of the law, Cupcake?” Daav said. He was slow to get up, but still sported that crazy grin on his face.
“You’re in my way,” Rez said.
“I can’t believe you’re actually standing there. Huh! Who would’ve ever thought that Amiko’s son was still alive?” Daav said mockingly.
Rez sent his fist toward Daav’s head. He felt the wall crumble as Daav dodged the punch. He tried for an open palm strike toward Rez’s jaw. Rez blocked him, but Daav grabbed the shoulders of Rez’s jacket. Gripping him tightly he tried to knee Rez in the stomach. As he looked down he saw Rez’s left arm stave off the powerful blow. Rez pushed himself away, putting space between him and Daav.
“You’re a lot tougher than I thought,” Daav said. Rez attacked Daav once more, feigning a punch with his right hand. “Oh, man. You sure are predictable, kid.” Daav said. Rez’s right hand was a diversion, and Daav lifted his hands to block the punch.
Rez’s took a half step back and sent a powerful kick to Daav’s exposed stomach. Daav was winded and brought his hands down to clutch at his torso. Rez connected with a powerful left hook that sent Daav landing head first into the floor. Rez was merciless, picking up Daav by the throat and holding him up with one arm. Daav’s feet were dangling; his opponent’s strength was far more monstrous than his own.
“My name isn’t ‘Cupcake’. It’s Rez Fayte. You can tell your boss that I’m coming for him next!” Rez said.
“You really are a tough mother fucker,” Daav said, before receiving a debilitating punch to the stomach which caused him to black
out. His body went limp and Rez callously let him fall.
“There’s gotta be a staircase somewhere around here,” Rez said to himself.
Static came from Daav’s walkie-talkie. “Sir! Sir! We’re sending backup to the executive floors! I repeat, we are sending back up to the executive floors!” an officer said.
I gotta hurry, Rez thought. He ran to the emergency executive staircase, he E-Grapped up to the ninety-fifth floor. The jamming signal seemed to cease. Rez concluded that Daav must’ve been the source of it.
“Xandra, locate the server access control room,” Rez commanded.
“The building’s main server access room is seventy-five feet away. Take the first left at the end of the hallway. It is the third door on the right,” Xandra replied.
Rez found the room. He used his special access keycard to get in. Bingo, he thought. Rez pulled out a codec with the second virus he developed. He plugged the codec into a port in the computer and uploaded the virus. He opened a terminal window and typed in the initiation sequence. A loud sound tore through the room Rez felt a burning sensation in his side; he’d been shot. He instinctively summoned the gunblade and took cover.
“So, we have an intruder in our midst!” a man called out. “Not much for words, eh? No worries. You’ve been giving everyone trouble tonight, intruder. I’ve been watching you on our backup security channels. You’re quite gifted, it seems. But apparently you still bleed!”
Yeah keep talking, Rez thought to himself. He calibrated the NOVO OS to detect sound in conjunction with the layout of the room to triangulate the proximate position of where the sound could be coming from. The NOVO OS was closing in on the location of the voice.
“Target located,” Xandra said.
The man was hidden in the far corner, behind a server rack. Rez snuck over to the other side of the rack.
“I’ll definitely get a promotion for taking you out! Ha! Even tech guys behind a desk can be hero!” the man said, before Rez startled him. In typical intimidating fashion, his silhouette and glowing eyes were all that this person saw before he blacked out by a simple punch from Rez.
Rez bent down to check the man’s building ID. Agent Bloodfall? Hmm, I think I’ve heard rumors about him on CWR. Not much of a shot though, Rez thought, before rushing back up the emergency staircase and toward the rooftop of the building. Rez’s second virus was a nasty one. Using the infiltration nodes he implanted, he issued a command to release the all the data in Zonos’s network as public information on CWR. The data included signed contracts, policies, emails, records, information on the clone farms and COGLIMS, criminal offenses that were swept under the rug, and a host of other damaging documents that the government would’ve want to be kept away from the public.
The virus also served another important purpose. Rez had used a powerful overriding interruption protocol to take over every available open channel and airwave using the power of Zonos’s extensive networks. While he raced to the top of the building, the rest of the city was viewing his video announcement. It was a pre-recording of Rez under his CWR identity, VseR. He was uncharacteristically animated in this recording, mostly to throw enemies off.
“Good evening, fellow Neonians. I go by the name of VseR and this is a public service announcement. As you can tell, I’ve hacked and have taken control of all the broadcasting airwaves of this city and you’re probably wondering why. Well, for starters, I’ve come to you to dispel the myth of fear. These so-called leaders who run this great city-state have been controlling our lives with fear; the fear of economic disparity, the fear of social injustice, the fear of being ostracized and not being accepted, the fear of being too poor to feed your families, and the fear of those whom they deem to be dangerous and violent. You must fear them, they say, unless you buy into their system. For far too long we have bought into their bogus system. For far too long, thousands of innocent people have suffered because of Zonos’s greed.
“This government is not designed to work for the people. It was designed for the people to work for and benefit the system. But what do the people get in return? A government that imposes bogus policies. They want you, the people, the most powerful resource in this city, to continue to be blinded by your ignorance. After all the capital this sovereign nation produces, there should be no poor, hungry, homeless people, or people without the essential necessities required to live comfortably.
“This government thrives off your hatred of one another; your division. For the rich, it is your distaste of the lower class. For the poor, it is your distrust of the rich. The government is the creator of all this. It takes the heat off them! It allows them to do backdoor deals with criminals, like the Chimera Crime Syndicate.
“The corruption has taken its toll on the lower class. It’s time we change that. By now, you will have seen Zonos's dirty laundry and all the things they so desperately tried to hide! I implore you, great citizens of this city, to rise up! Fight back! Take back what is yours, once and for all! You have the right to live happily! The revolution awaits you!”
The announcement was shown on all television channels, and all feeds online, across multiple devices. Rez, atop the building, smiled as he caught the last of his broadcast on a holo-billboard on a neighboring building. He clutched at his side where he was shot, as the high slicing winds almost toppled him over.
If I’m not careful, these winds might fling me off this damn building. Can’t stay here too long, I got work to do, he thought, before he got to work, disarming the COGLIM frequency codes, then preparing to destroy the generator.
***
Nami, Hitomi, and Vantz had just watched the broadcast at Home-base.
“Oh My God! That was definitely Caiden!” Nami said excitedly.
“The source seems to have come from Zonos Tower,” Hitomi said.
“What in the hell is that crazy bastard thinking?” Vantz asked.
“We gotta help him!” Nami said.
“Help him?” Vantz asked.
“Yeah! He needs our help,” Nami said.
“How do you know that? Why would he be there, of all places? How? Tell me how you would know?” Vantz interrogated them.
“I dunno. I just do,” Nami said.
“Look, I think you two are pretty awesome and all, but heading to Zonos Towers is like the worst thing we could do right now,” Vantz said. “Look! Look at the news feed! The authorities have been sent there to investigate! What in the world would could we do to help?”
“I think we should listen to Nams,” Hitomi said meekly.
“Oh man, you too? Damnit,” Vantz said, throwing his hands up in the air.
“We have to, Vantz. We owe him so much. He saved our lives. It’s only right that we return the favor,” Hitomi said.
“Yeah, and he still didn’t fulfill his promise yet,” Nami added.
“Okay, when do we leave?” Vantz asked, giving in.
“Now,” the twins said in unison.
“You guys are lucky you’re cute,” Vantz said.
“Whatever,” the twins said together as they prepared to leave. The twins packed their new weapons. They loaded the guns and got their things. They all got into Vantz’s car. Vantz slammed his foot on the pedal and they tore off toward Nova Central.
***
With the second COGLIM frequency generator destroyed, all that was left for Rez to do was escape, go back to his hypercycle, and get back to Home-base. With the executive elevators out of service, Rez took to the stairs. clearing each flight with heightened urgency. He didn’t go undeterred for long. There were soldiers running up the stairs. Rez was forced to go to the ninetieth floor and look for an alternate escape route. As soon as he opened the door, another large group of soldiers passed in the adjacent hallway.
“Hey, you! Halt!” the last soldier of the group yelled to Rez. The commotion caught the attention of the other soldiers and they started to run after Rez. He took off. A shot was fired, and the bullet grazed his arm. Rez kept running. He tu
rned left, down a hallway. He could hear the footsteps behind him. Shit! Gotta be close to thirty of those assholes after me, he thought to himself. The pain from the gunshot wounds didn’t faze him. He was running on pure adrenaline. He turned down another hallway; another platoon of soldiers blocked his path.
There was a door to his left. He kicked it in, hoping to find another way out. It was a dead end. He run into large executive conference room with reinforced windows overlooking the city. Shit! he thought to himself. The conference room was lit by holo-billboards outside. The building was still recovering from the power grid malfunction caused by Marx’s Gunners. The troops flooded into the room.
The fifty Psi-Corp soldiers stormed the room and took aim at Rez. Instead of panicking, Rez took a deep breath and prepared for battle. Rez began to take small steps forward. The soldiers began to feel uneasy, and were still awaiting orders. Right before the squad leader could tell them to fire, Rez threw the reverse shock wave grenade into the formation.
The environment around them started to warp out of shape. The soldiers began to lose balance and were forcibly pulled toward the vacuum vortex that was created by the grenade. An explosion of translucent energy sent the soldiers flying outward in all directions. Some of the soldiers were unconscious, some had their bones broken, and others were incapacitated. The result of the blast also left massive crevices around the walls of the room, and the floor was disjointed and full of cracks.
The ceiling began to gradually crumble; it was only a matter of time before it would cave in. There were almost twenty remaining uninjured soldiers. Despite their shock, they moved back into formation and began to fire at Rez. Under the intense downpour of gunfire, the smoke from the pulse-laser and explosive artillery engulfed the room once again along with the unsettling scent of seared human flesh . After approximately one minutes of constant gunfire, they stopped. As the soldiers waited for the smoke to clear, a deathly calm followed. “Confirm status the of target!” yelled the squad leader. No one could’ve survived that onslaught, the squad leader thought to himself. Two soldiers walked cautiously toward the smoky area where Rez’s body should have been.
Neon District: ALPHA (The Neon District Trilogy, Book 1) Page 40
