A muzzle flash in the dark

[saadow]

The orb of light danced with a sway, held steady as one could in their steps. The ground was damp, from humidity and low temperature in a dance, swirling together and condensing on the walls and ground. A puddle caught his footstep and splashed out gently. Outzone was dark, dreary, and damp. Simon tapped the side of his halogen flashlight, brightening up with a jostle of the batteries inside. Seedy types could be seen; a junkie recoiling into the darkness, with his teeth holding a tourniquet on his arm. "What the hell am I doing out here?" Thought Simon to himself. Hacknet was not a populated place, it was difficult, in the city of Neocron, to find hackers that were willing to part with their secrets and their software that they used. No, Simon had to dig deeper. He hadn't received a reply from the head of Information Security in Tangent, so he figured if he could find some chipheads in the slums, he'd have a shot at tossing them some credits, or some freshly acquired x-strong to get them a quick flash. Currency of the underworld, these pills opened doors, to the person who sold them and the person who took them.

Passing a Pepper Entertainment sign, he slowly began to head down a ramp, walking into a deeper darkness that his flashlight barely managed to penetrate. What stopped him in his tracks, was the sound of a bolt cocking on a rifle, and a gravelly voice calling out from the dark, "I see that hack-tool on your wrist, kid. You don't walk out here with that kind of hardware." Slowly, Simon sank back against the corner of the concrete building he was descending down around, and held the flashlight up, while reaching his hand for his laser pistol. "Look man, I don't want any trouble."

A light barked from the darkness, with the report loud and persistent, three shots in a row, given to a powerful assault rifle. The shots kicked off of the concrete, one biting through his jacket and grazing his side. Oh no, there was blood! Simon recoiled back further and dropped the halogen flashlight, pulling the laser pistol from his hip and holding it aimed ahead at the hip. A voice came around the corner, with it's owner, whipping around the same concrete which just saved his life, "Should have thought of that before kid!" A beam of cohesive light burned from the emitter on his Ryker "Glare." Though the beam of light was fast, it didn't sit on the target for very long, singeing at the skin and causing a smoldering burn. Immediately, the pain response caused him to bark out, and recoil back around the corner. Simon began to scoot up the ramp on his back, keeping the pistol out and firing a few warning shots with no aim. The beam hit some of the wall and sizzled, then skipped off the corner with an audible sound of the capacitor pack discharging.

Simon rounded the corner of the railing when shots rang out, one bullet glancing off of the durable metal rail, shooting sparks off as it glanced free of the handhold. The others whizzed by, hitting concrete and disappearing into the darkness. Hiding behind the corner of the railing, to obscure the shot, Simon got down on a knee and held the pistol against the side of the rail, firing back down. More cohesive beams shot down and one grazed his assailant's arm, "It doesn't have to end this way, man! Just leave me alone!"

His attacker leaned up on the corner and reloaded, "The name is Jock, kid, that's the last name you're going to hear!" He rounded the corner and fired off a few rounds, yelling up at the hacker taking cover. A sharp pain bit in deep and he gasped at his leg. Diving off on his good one, he slid back around the corner and pulled into the dark. Stepping out, his attacker called out, "Now where'd you go? Nobody wants to play with me!" He fired off a shot into the shadows, which grazed by Simon. He bit his lip until it bled, wincing through the pain. Opening up a first aid kit, he fumbled with an injector of pain killers. Sinking back into the dark, he got the needle to a vein and pumped it in. The pierce hurt, but not as much as the stars he was seeing from his leg and side. As the pain numbed and his eyes flickered with bright light, he grabbed at a trauma pad and bound his leg with it. Standing up, he limped back out into the hallway, took aim, and fired at Jock's back!

The cohesive beam of light fired out, and bit deep into the flesh, piercing between two ribs by sheer luck, and biting deep into a lung. The man cried out and coughed up a crimson red, turning around and wildly firing the burst of his rifle out at the offender. He dove as he turned, and the hail of fire bit at his clothes, but met only air as he fell down the ramp. A spark of something dull through the haze of chems as he landed. Rounding the corner, Jock was met with yet another cohesive beam of light, biting this time at his chest and shoulder. He tried to level the gun, but his attacker was skirting away. It was hard to hit a moving target, especially from the hip.

The two were locked in a firefight, Simon in a haze of chems, and Jock jacked on adrenaline. Reloading a battery pack and the other a clip, both rounded a corner and returned fire. After several shots bit in but not very deep, Simon felt the pain start welling up again. Jock was bleeding heavily himself, burned in several spots, some of them bleeding out from the deep bite of the laser's beam. rounding the corner, Simon leveled the weapon and shaking hands pulled the trigger, the beam bit in at his shoulder, and the capacitors hissed. Bullets fired out and ricochet off of the concrete. The hacker, in a chem haze, advanced further, firing again. This time, the beam bit in deeply at the neck, burning on the side of Jock's throat. Finally, one last shot came from the laser pistol, and bit deeply into the eye of his assailant, causing him to convulse, and fall down to the ground, lifeless.

Bleeding fairly bad, the hacker stumbled to the fallen man, weakly leveled his pistol on him, and fired a few more times at his face. The beams bit in deep, and without any wobble or movement from an unsteady hand, they bit in fatally. In the beam's glare, a glint of silver caught his eye. Reaching down with a bloodied hand, Simon grasped a pair of dog-tags from the neck of the fallen genetank, or so he seemed from his sheer size.

"Jock Hardwood." He read on the tag, before pulling it from his neck, and stumbling away from him. "I think, I need medicare." He grasped a hand onto the railing. Using the remainder of his medical kit, he found trauma pads and medical wrap, binding it in close to himself to staunch the bleeding, and another injector. A shaking hand put it to the nook of his arm, found the vein, and injected himself with more of the pain killer. Though addiction was common, this was an emergency; he would deal with the ramifications later. This man nearly took his life, had he not been quicker on the draw, he could have been laying in that gutter himself. It was a sobering thought, just like the guy down in pepper park Mr. Jones nearly lost his codes too. Seemed like he did the world a favor, getting rid of this dangerous element.

Medicare in Plaza 1 eventually found a patient that evening, using the recreation units to heal up. Just another runner, it seemed, nobody very important or noteworthy. Employee Simon Hawke from Tangent was there with some injuries. This was common in the seedy underworld.

[saadow]

It was not long since Simon had faced Jock Hardwood, a few weeks at least. Soreness from the encounter still hurt, though a few generep trips later left it only as a phantom pain, rather than a real and honest injury or failure to heal. In an age with such technology, often the wounds left were more psychological. It was one of the wageslaves at Tangent who he was talking with that passed him an Injector, "Here man, this will make you feel great, totally increase your focus, you'll feel ten years younger." Granted, this was a biotech product, so flashing it around wasn't considered the most couth behavior to exhibit, but discretion or when used out in the field, there was little to be said; some tools were more common than others. Memory of that encounter faded from his mind as he looked down and realized the injector was in his wrist again, the flood of nanines made those aches and pains in his mind be replaced with the tiny crawling synthetic creatures. The thought of it pleasing to his brain.

It was as this moment faded that he began to be aware of where he was standing. The sky was overhead, the wastes stretching out as far to his left, right, and ahead as he could see. The looming door of Neocron's Outskirt entrance shadowed over him from behind. He decided to explore a little bit of the cliffs surrounding the city, in need of getting out from the oppressive architecture for a bit of a vacation. In his exploration to the east, he headed down a sizable berm. Here, he chanced on a shady, but polite gentleman who was hanging out by a cliff with a cavern in the rock face. Some of the stones looked stacked, if not more brick-like. Approaching, he went in, as the figure had nothing to do but nod politely. The cavern became humid, but cool, damp with the sound of distant running water. Simon further walked in and turned to his Halogen flashlight, turning it on and illuminating the darkness of this secret passageway.

Within, Simon saw some metal grating set into the stone floor, darkness so thick, his light could barely penetrate it. He approached the corroded metal and found a ladder descending into the darkness. He became leery at the sight down into the dark and found himself fingering the injector at his side. Frowning, he let it go and slowly descended. The sound of each metal rung pealing into the otherwise still cavern was gradually joined by the sound of water and distant, eldrich sounding machinery. The cavern was cut in by metal gratings and passageways, littered with broken edifices of metal and concrete. Deep within, Simon climbed up a ladder and thought he saw something in the distance. The shape of a man down the far end of the catwalk, seemed to adjust his shoulders and arms upward. His optics focused on it and he ducked just in time. Stone broke apart as a bullet ricochet off of the wall, just a fraction of a moment faster than the loud report which rang out again. Biting pain bit into Simon's shoulder as a bullet tore through him. That really hurt! He could feel the torrent of red blushing through his shirt and he ducked behind the railing, which sparked at a jacketed round careening off of the metal handhold.

Reaching to his side, not for his injector, but for his Tangent Pulselaser Pistol. The company had given it to him for his service in recent work, in their preparation for their latest bid for a contract with City Administration. "In guns we trust, indeed." He muttered. Ducking down as another shot rang out. He couldn't even see his assailant, let alone get a good shot in. Leaning around the railing, and steadying the firearm against it, another shot hit the grating right in front of him, bending the metal with the force of the impact. He returned fire, a searing set of three bolts of light energy ripped out of the gun and pounded around his target, the light brightening up enough to see the reflection off of his eyes. Recoiled into defilade, the attacker and the defender were now in a careful game of chess. It was at this point, Simon realized his injury was worse than he thought. He couldn't sustain the kind of fight for long, "...I get by with a little help from my friends." The voice came up from the hacker, he was singing a little tune he remembered from a piece of data he had picked apart on hacknet, from deep within the outer network. Grasping the injector in his free hand, he pulled it from its holder, and pumped it against his hip. Calm entered his mind, the shaking stopped as the thought of them stopping the bleeding, stopping the hurt, came into his psyche. Breathing slowed as this calmness came over him. Bleeding stopped as the nanites gripped and tugged at capillaries, pulling platelets against the open injuries, clotting them, staunching the flow of blood even with their own tiny bodies. He stood up and another shot coursed by him. The pulselaser pistol leveled down and fired out a burst. Three shots burned in and a yell of pain remarked what happened. Another shot grazed him but he pulled the trigger again, and again.

All had fallen silent, a clattering in the distance was approached by a figure, melting in from the darkness. A trauma pad was pressed tightly to his shoulder and bound up with compression bandage. "I should have stayed on the network, would have been safer." He remarked. The dead man stared up with a grimace, burns across his body and a high power rifle lay nearby. "I'm lucky to be alive." Reaching down, a glinting dog tag caught his eye, which he grasped and pulled free. Looking at it, he read it aloud, using the glow off of the side of his pistol to read it, "Van Dyk. Interesting, just like Jock Hardwood's tag. I'll keep it right beside the other." On his belt, he had Jock Hardwood's dog tag tied to it, he tied this one next to it, before walking back into the darkness. The cave had shown him enough, and it was time to return home.