Never Fade Away: Tatted on My Face (ch. 38) (Patreon)

"Y'all might remember me talking about folks using the many, many Sandevistans floodin' the streets for races and such. Well I got an update."

"Apparently races are too boring for some, so they're hunting posse's of gangoons and using their Sandys' to kill them… with style."

"I'm talking throwin' knives and grenades and parkour and all sorts of things - one fella even used a spoon. I'll let you decide whether or not you wanna find out how - plenty of vids and BDs of these high-speed shenanigans floating around."

"All recorded with some snazzy songs as a soundtrack. Not quite enough country music for my taste though - 'preciate it if any speed freaks listening feel fit to changin' that. And I got just the song."

"Here's Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce"

~

Five gallons didn't seem to be that much. It wouldn't look particularly impressive in a bathtub, for example. However, five gallons of milk spilled out on the floor would be an incredible mess. As Kaiden stepped into a club, he saw that five gallons of blood was enough to seem like a horror show. The club had something of an airlock where the first victim was killed.

Like the ones in the hotel, he was ripped into pieces. Blood completely covered the small hallway. While River grimaced, Kaiden's gaze went to a marking on the wall. Four claw marks that cut through the thin steel on the roof, which was covered in blood splatter. It honestly made his stomach clench, before he looked down at the corpse. The torso was separated into chunks, cutting through a biotic spine, bones, and flesh.

"What kind of shit show am I walking into?" River asked the cop that greeted them at the entrance. A woman. Average height, orange hair that was cut short. And cyberlines near her eyes that were covered in sunglasses.

"A messy one. Got twenty bodies, or thereabouts. Kind of hard to tell given all of them look like they got put through the shredder. Got the call a few hours ago that there were gunshots on location, but no one decided to pick it up." She began and Kaiden stole a glance at her patch. Samantha R. Rains. "Some gonks looking to have a preem night stopped by, found this mess, and one of them had the brains to phone it in."

"IDs?" River fished, sounding like he didn't expect to find anything, which would explain why he looked surprised when Samantha flicked him a file.

"One of them is some Militech corpo. So… L?" Samantha ventured, which made River look to Kaiden.

So any time a corpo died, people just assumed that it was L behind it? "He doesn't do messy like this. When L kills a guy, he just pops 'em in the head and that's that. Wasn't him." It was meant to be a reassurance, but for some reason, River's eye narrowed.

"Are you certain of that? Where would he have been yesterday-"

"A coma," Kaiden interjected, an edge entering his tone. "And I know he doesn't kill like this because I've killed alongside him. As much as you might want to drop all your problems at his feet, you're going to have to find someone else else for this mess." River held his gaze for a moment while Samantha's hand went to her gun the moment that she heard that he worked with L.

L was beloved by the kids. He was their hero.

He was feared by gangsters and corpos.

The average citizen, though? They hated his guts.

River held his gaze for a moment before offering a further nod in acceptance. He didn't offer an apology, and Kaiden wouldn't have believed it if he had. Instead, Kaiden turned to the body again. The claws that killed him and the others were sharp and tough. It wasn't easy to cut through metal. The easiest way to do it was with some kind of thermal blade, but based on the corpse, that wasn't the case here. There weren't any burn marks.

"Take a breath and try not to puke over my crime scene," Samantha instructed, opening the door. River followed after her and Kaiden followed after him. He nearly bumped into River when he came to a sudden stop and when Kaiden peaked out from behind his shoulders, he understood why.

The air was heavy with a metallic scent and rot. Crowded around the door were a dozen bodies, all of them looking like they were fleeing towards the door, only to be slaughtered before they managed to reach it. No. Not before. One of them had managed to get through it. The night club was naturally dark, but there were a number of lights set up to give a complete view of the cramped club.

Kaiden reached out to the security systems, and the Skeleton Key started to work its magic. It slipped through the systems of the club, working on getting camera footage and anything else Kaisen thought might be relevant. All the while River cursed under his breath. "Footage?"

"The only way I'm going to get that video within a month is if I start blowing people," Samantha seemed to dismiss the possibility entirely. "No eye witnesses to the slaughter as far as we can tell. Did manage to pull some data off the door -- outside of us, and the potato brains  that showed up to find the bodies, no one has come or left through the front."

As she spoke, Kaiden stepped around the bodies and found that it was next to impossible to step onto the floor without stepping on dried blood. Testing kits were advanced enough that stepping on the crime scene wouldn't contaminate it, but something told Kaiden that the police wouldn't be using the expensive testing kits. Once he was past the mass slaughter, he turned to face the door.

"The claws are retractable. And extendable," Kaiden said, miming a slash that would explain the pattern that he saw on the bodies. The one in the door was savaged. These were killed quickly. "A single slash killed these three," he ventured, gesturing to the bodies in question. Their corpses were… cleaner, for lack of a better word. A single slash starting at the one on the far right, cutting him into pieces, continuing through the girl in the center. The last one was still mostly intact, though his arm was cut off, his guts spilled out, and his spine seemed severed -- but he was still more or less intact.

One big swing with some long claws. They had to be retractable because they would be about five feet long otherwise, and claws that long would have done a lot more than scrape the ceiling in the lobby.

"Actually, River -- who the fuck is this kid?" Samantha questioned as he took a step back. Looking around at the surroundings, he tilted his head. Walking over to a couch that was splashed with blood, he checked the blueprints.

"I'm taking him on a field trip to see how screwed we are," River answered.

"Are you sure this is a club?" Kaiden asked, the blueprints not matching up. He did find a serial number on the couch, though, and when he ran it through the net… "These couches are bulletproof and they give perfect cover. You're standing in a kill box." The military training shone through -- the couches, the pillars, the DJ booth…. All of it set up the perfect crossfire zone. The air gap hallway ensured anyone coming in would have minimal cover.

That caught River's interest, but he also didn't seem too surprised by the knowledge. "It's common enough for back door meetings," River explained, stepping over bodies to stand with Kaiden to see things from his view. "Neutral grounds, more or less, where neither side trusts the other. Some places make it their target customer base by setting up places with a clear defender's advantage. Which means…" River muttered to himself before he started looking for something. "Sam, who was our corpo?"

Sam just looked amused and rather pleased with herself. If Kaisen had to guess, she had been hoping that River would take the case off of her hands. "William Emherys -- Middle management. Or special forces. No way to tell with them. Nothing really stands out about him beyond the fact that he had a meeting with the mayor a few weeks ago when Arasaka was pulling out of Night City."

Ah. She was dangling bait in front of his face.

"He met with the mayor?" River asked, biting and swallowing it whole. Probably knew and didn't care that he just got played.

"Hm. No clue about what. Which is why I think he's higher up on the ladder than his papers say. That, and the fact that he's still here despite being recorded leaving after the meeting. He should be back in the NUSA right now." Samantha continued and the Skeleton Key started to open up the files. He jumped to the video recordings.

A video feed of before the attack appeared in his vision. He saw a number of people -- a handful dancing on the floor, while the rest were in the private booth. There was no camera feed there, so he couldn't hear what anyone was saying. As for what he could see… well, the first thing he noticed was what he didn't see. The people inside of the private booth all had heavily encrypted faces that prevented them from being recorded.

The Skeleton Key started working on the encryption while the rest of the video played out as River tried to get the little information that Samantha had. However, there wasn't much video left. A door opened from a back room before the video feed was filled with static. The same kind that he saw in the apartment. Kaiden tried switching video feeds, but no matter how he cycled through them, they either didn't see anything at all or they were full of static.

Frowning to himself, Kaiden rewinded to see if he missed anything. A reflection or a shadow -- something. By the time he did that, the decryption on the people in the booth was done, letting Kaiden see their faces-

Kaiden paused. Then he counted. "We're missing someone," Kaiden realized and he only notice he spoke the words out loud when both River and Samantha gave him an odd look. He responded by flicking the video feed over to them as he counted out the corpses. There were twenty-one people in the club when the murderer arrived. However, there were only twenty bodies.

"Wait- how-" Samantha began to stammer before she sighed. "That blowing remark wasn't a promise. It was just a saying-" she back peddled and Kaiden just frowned her way.

"What-" he began but he was interrupted in turn by River.

"He's right. We're missing a body," River voiced before he started checking the faces of the corpses. Kaiden helped out, but he already suspected who they wouldn't find -- the man that was meeting with William. Taking another look at the private booth, Kaiden saw three figures there -- William, and a person that seemed to be his bodyguard. Then there was a woman with light blue hair dressed in a business suit. She was pretty, but Kaiden had enough experience by now to know it wasn't natural.

Alicent Driver. The name that Kaiden got from the security footage didn't mean anything to him. But, given that she was the only potential survivor…

"She's Biotechnica," River spoke up, bring Kaisen's attention to him. "Don't know much more than that beyond the fact she has a mention in the NCPD's database. We don't know enough to place her, but she was connected to an espionage case a while back." River informed, and that was useful information, Kaiden thought as his gaze turned to the door that the assailant had entered through. Heading towards it, the door slid open…

"This was an ambush," Kaiden summarized, seeing a supply closet. "They had him inside here," he ventured. There were a few shelves with chemicals, a vent, a broom, and a mop.

Samantha let out a sigh. "Fucking corpos. You'd think with L on their asses, they'd wisen up."

River, however, was frowning at the bodies. "This feels sloppy," he voiced his opinion. "We have a connection between the mayor and Emherys. Or, rather, Militech. Now we have a connection between Militech and Biotechnica. Working theory is that Biotechnica sent someone after the mayor and William -- too early to say why, but my gut tells me it's connected to Arasaka's departure and L." That theory sounded reasonable enough to Kaiden.

"But it's sloppy. Why kill the girls in the apartment? Why kill everyone in the club? If the mayor and Emherys were the targets, then why stack up so many bodies? With the way things are, we probably wouldn't have touched this case if it was only the Militech corpo getting bumped off." River continued, looking at Kaiden.

That was a really good question. "Maybe it's not just about the connection? Maybe the bodies are a part of something?" He ventured, but he couldn't imagine what.

They had a lead now. The signs were pointing at Biotechnica and Alicent Driver. If they kept pulling on the thread, Kaiden was confident that it would start to unravel. To that end, he shot L a message asking about the name. About three seconds later, he got everything short of her social security number. "I got an address on Alicent," he informed, making River's eyebrows shoot up.

"Fuck. I can't even imagine how nice that is," Samantha commented while River pointed a finger at her.

"Stay here and get what you can from the scene. I'll send over the projectors to get a better idea of what happened while we follow up on Alicent," River decided, gesturing for Kaiden to follow him. Kaiden simply nodded, accepting that he was along for the ride at this point. They headed out of the club and before the doors closed behind them, he spared a glance at the corpse in the hallway. River thumped him on the shoulder, "You're a big help, Kaiden. You just shaved at least a week off of the investigation."

Kaiden offered a shrug before his attention was drawn to a car that sped up as they left the building. He nearly put it out of his mind until the windows rolled down, revealing heavy assault rifles. Instantly, Kaiden threw up a barrier but as soon as the first bullet smacked into it, he knew that the barrier would break like glass before the drive-by was done. Grabbing River, he threw them both to the side, taking cover behind his truck that was shot to pieces.

Bullets tore through the car, showering them with glass, before striking the club behind them. River didn't seem to know what was going on but still managed to cover his head as they laid on the asphalt. Beneath his truck, Kaiden saw the car driving on by, speeding up to get away from the scene.

It was the same car that he saw following River.

"This happen to you a lot?" River asked Kaiden, brushing glass off of his coat as he got up. He seemed genuinely clueless. So clueless that any thought that River had arranged this immediately went flying out of Kaiden's head.

Kaiden looked at the car, then at him, "I don't think this was for me. I think this was for you," he answered, flicking him a still of when Kaiden noticed the tail. "He's been following us all day. I thought he was with you?"

As soon as River saw the still, he started cursing.

Kaiden swallowed a sigh as he looked off in the direction of the car.

It seemed like this was getting more complicated by the second.

…

For as long as Becca had known Punchin' Judy, Judy had always been one of the good ones. Feisty, but with a good heart. L hadn't meant to, but when he inadvertently put her in charge of the Mox… that was probably one of the best things that he had ever done. Which is why it meant something when she sat across that desk where she usually fine tuned porn and asked for help.

"Evelyn is missing," Judy informed, her expression tight. Evelyn… Becca didn't really know her beyond the fact that she was something of a flame for Judy. Becca didn't know if they ever actually got together, but based on the pain on Judy's face, it was clear that Judy still had a candle lit for her. "She went missing yesterday, at Clouds. My girls over there said that she never showed up for her shift."

Based on Judy's expression, it seemed likely that Evelyn tried to take a sick day. "Alright. What makes you assume she's missing?" Becca questioned, stealing a glance at Jack, whose foot was bouncing in place.

"Because of the fucking Voodoo Boys," Judy half snarled, her hands curling into fists. "Jackie gave me the story -- Evelyn was contacted by them for a brain dance of Yorinobu's apartment and she went and turned that into a whole ass heist."

Jack nodded, "Then L." She offered, making L sound like a thing that happened to people.

Judy let out a bark of laughter, "Yeah. Then your choomba went and threw down with Smasher and wrecked half of the city. As far as Eve figured, that was that, and the Voodoo Boys were none the wiser about the attempt. Until Jackie reached out to me about the Voodoo Boys pressing him for answers about what happened in Konpeki Plaza -- they shouldn't even know that he was there in the first place. And, now, Evelyn goes missing."

Becca saw where this was going. She had been in the game long enough, even if it did feel like the rules were all rapidly changing. "So, you want us to knock on the Voodoo Boy’s front door?” She asked, making Jack lean forward.

“Fuck that. Let’s kick it in,” Jack decided and Becca swallowed a sigh. What the fuck? When in the actual fuck did she start being the responsible one? Is this what David saw her as? A bloodthirsty gremlin? Shiiit…

“There’s no way for sure if the Voodoo Boys are actually behind it,” Judy continued, catching Becca’s attention. “When she went missing, I asked Jackie to look into it. No offense, but you all… well… all of you are connected to some heavy shit,” she offered an apology with a shrug. That was fair. More than fair. Becca almost wished for the days when her biggest worry was scrounging enough eddies from solo work to treat herself to a decent meal of actual meat and greens. “Jackie found out that Eve was in contact with some Scavs operating in Watson and, as far as he can tell, she’s with them.”

Oh. Fuck. Evelyn is dead.

You don’t spend a day with Scavs unless you were one.

"She's dead," Jack spoke her thoughts out loud and Becca wanted to face palm at the lack of tact. Judy's expression pinched, and despite clearly holding out hope, she wasn't blind to the odds. And the odds were sure as shit stacked against Evelyn.

Judy clenched her jaw, "She's not. Jackie and T-Bug -- his netrunner -- have confirmed that. They're holding her for something. I want to get her out before whoever had her kidnapped in the first place gets their hands on her. Now, Jackie and T-Bug are on-site, but there are about thirty Scavs, and they didn't think they could take them without something happening to Eve."

Becca nodded, "That's where we come in. Flick over the adress." She stood up and Judy didn't bother hiding how relieved that she was.

"I'll pay you for this-" Judy began, but Becca cut her off with a wave of her hand. Which then proceeded to flick Jack in the ear when she tried to jump on the eddies.

"No need for that. Call it a friends and family discount," Becca said, ignoring the dirty look Jack shot her as they both headed towards the door. "If you're going to be a pain in the butt about it, then call it paying back the favor from us dumping a couple hundred troublemakers in your lap."

Judy offered a feeble smile, looking more relieved than words could convey. "When you put it like that, you still owe me a couple hundred favors." She tried to joke but then her expression fell, "Just bring her back. Please."

Becca nodded, giving Judy a thumbs up as both her and Jack climbed the stairs. She could tell that Jack was annoyed with the pro-bono work, but she didn't actually voice her complaints, letting the two of them get into the car and drive off to the address that was given. It was as they drove off that Becca spoke, "Judy is a friend. To me, to L, and to you. You don't kick someone while they're down unless you're trying to keep them there."

A mentor. What the fuck was happening to the world when she was in a position to mentor anyone?

Jack grunted, but a hard look from Becca later, she relented. "Fine. If you say so," she backed down with some reluctance. Jack hadn't said it with words, but whatever she went through in the Orphanage was a very different deal than what L or Kaiden did. She viewed everyone through a lense of prey or predator… and anyone that wasn't a predator got eaten.

She would come around, Becca knew. Jack was already getting better. She just needed more time, more experience and more… well… time and experience not having her guard all the way up.

Minutes later, the two of them neared the address that Judy gave them, and as they did, Becca got a ring. Answering it, she saw the ID was someone named T-Bug. "You two need to get in there fast," a woman's voice informed them and, almost as if to punctuate the statement,  Becca heard gunshots coming from inside of a foundry-looking building. Getting out of the car, T-Bug continued, “Someone is attacking the Scavs and I can’t see shit. Jackie is trying to extract the target, but he could use a hand.”

Sounds like they arrived at the perfect time then. Becca looked to Jack to see that a hungry grin was on her face, already grabbing her shotgun from the back of the car. Leaving Becca to grab her Mk. 31 HMG -- her favorite heavy assault rifle. She hadn’t met anything that she hadn’t been able to shoot through with this gift from L. Shouldering the weapon that was about the size of her, Becca walked towards the door. “So, T-Bug, any heads up you want to give?”

The closer they got, the louder the gunshots became. From the sounds of it, it wasn’t a small battle going on within -- Becca’s trained ear picked up at least six or seven different weapons all being fired. No. It wasn’t just that they were getting closer. Whoever was inside was B-lining toward the exit.

“Whoever is attacking isn’t being picked up on cameras. I can track them because of that -- they’re in the middle of the foundry,” T-Bug informed, her voice level. No panic, no rush. Professional. Kinda lame, but whatever. A level head probably was important in Netrunners. As she spoke, the foundry doors exploded open, the Scavs jumping ship. Jack wasted no time reducing them into a fine mist before they even took a step outside. Before their faces were vaporized by a slug -- they seemed scared to her. “Evelyn is in the basement with Jackie on his way, but he’s in a fire fight. He could use a helping hand.”

Becca just chuckled before Jack ripped the doors off their hinges with a biotic pull. “That’s why we’re here,” Becca said, looking into the dull walls of the foundry that were splattered with old blood. Jack took point as gunfire echoed through the halls before being cut short with a pained scream. Whoever was attacking the Scavs was someone tough. That much was abundant when they came across a body that looked like it had been hacked apart.

T-Bug guided them forward, but they wouldn’t have needed her to. The foundry sounded like absolute chaos and the sounds got louder the deeper they went until they stepped through a door to a large room where they did the metal pouring stuff. Becca quickly went to the railing, intent on firing on the attacker and the Scavs alike.

What she didn’t expect was for her optics to be filled with static, rendering her blind as she stumbled back and nearly tripped over a corpse. Through the panic and the gunfire, she heard Jack yell… and for the first time since Becca met her, Jack sounded afraid.

“What the fuck is that?!”