Undercity Gotham - Part 3
Sylvie had been cut off mid sentence. Alex’s prospective assassins must have set up a commlink jammer that cut out the cemetery’s remaining wifi service. That Kawashira-san would spend that expense meant that Alex had been right to arm himself for war back at his penthouse. He just hoped that his assault rifle, armor, and body would hold up against the pounding they were about to take. He had a couple of nasty surprises literally up his sleeves and, if he was lucky, his feigned limp would initially make some of the yakuza soldiers overconfident initially. Alex figured he could use every advantage he could get.
Undercity Gotham - Part 1
Undercity Gotham - Part 2
Sylvie had been cut off mid sentence. Alex’s prospective assassins must have set up a commlink jammer that cut out the cemetery’s remaining wifi service. That Kawashira-san would spend that expense meant that Alex had been right to arm himself for war back at his penthouse. He just hoped that his assault rifle, armor, and body would hold up against the pounding they were about to take. He had a couple of nasty surprises literally up his sleeves and, if he was lucky, his feigned limp would initially make some of the yakuza soldiers overconfident initially. Alex figured he could use every advantage he could get.
As he approached the cemetery gate, Alex saw yak soldiers wearing combat armor and packing assault rifles leaning up against the dead oak tree, next to the ruined chapel, and more over by the crematorium and the crypt. As Alex strode toward his wife’s gravesite and deeper in to the trap, he IDed several more yaks between him and an out-of-place delivery truck just outside the north cemetery wall. He also heard at least two rotodrones powering up their jet turbines. The delivery truck screamed “command center” and the antennas on the truck’s roof were the kind used for controlling remote drones and for comm jamming. This wouldn’t end until either he or Kawashira-san was dead, but Alex figured that the oyabun wouldn’t be in the truck. It was too obvious a target.
There were also dozens of freshly dug earth circles scattered throughout the cemetery. Probably buried explosives, Alex thought. They got a lot done in a short period of time. Surviving this’ll do wonders for my rep - if I survive.
The headstone was a double wide made of highly polished black granite, and it hadn’t been vandalized this time, meaning that the local residents had apparently got the message to leave the cemetery alone. Alex’s lips moved as he read his wife’s epitaph for what seemed like the millionth time. “Catherine Sarah Jackson, devoted wife and mother of two, who died inside the day she lost her husband, b. December 4, 1981, d. May 19, 2029.” He tried to ignore the other epitaph, for it was a cruel joke. “Alexander Matthew Jackson, devoted husband and father of two, b. March 16, 1976, d. November 1, 2013.”
Only one of the coffins buried below contained a body. The body that belonged in the other had not been recovered from the rubble of the freak natural gas explosion.
Alex recalled planting the small thermite charge on the gas main as if it were yesterday. He remembered the pain of shrapnel stripping flesh from his bones and fire burning him alive. And he remembered his amazement at surviving the experience due to his regeneration ability. I’d hoped to die that day, Cathy, to truly die, Alex thought. All I have now are the burn scars, and even those are slowly fading away. Soon I’ll have only Sylvie to remind me that I’m human.
The sound of rotodrones approaching broke Alex from his reverie. Kawashira san would wait a few seconds more to unleash his attack, but he couldn’t afford to linger. It was time to focus.
He hated to do this, but without the loathed predator within himself, he would die. Not could – would. So Alex calmed his breathing, brought his own pulse and fear under tight control, and expanded his senses to the remarkable limits of his predatory nature.
He heard the heartbeats of the yak soldiers through their armor, the whine of high energy capacitors from laser rifles aboard the rotodrones, and the clinking of some unknown weapon within the crypt. Alex smelled fear in a woman’s sweat oozing out through improperly sealed milspec armor and explosive caseless ammo from the yaks’ assault rifles. And Alex saw the cemetery cast into sharp relief, the edges hardened and the contrasts widened so that the shadows were deeper and the highlights brighter.
The predator within strained against its mental chains, and, taking one last breath, Alex released those chains as much as he dared. When he heard the rifles’ safeties click off, he reacted almost instantaneously.
Adrenaline surged as Alex snapped up his rifle and cut down the first yak with a burst of armor piercing explosive ammo. Alex dove behind the relative safety of several mid-sized headstones, fleeing the bullets that blasted through where he’d just been standing.
The cemetery around Alex erupted into geysers of dirt, dead grass, and superheated gas as half the buried explosives were remotely detonated. The vomiting earth fouled one rotodrone’s air intakes and it fell dying among the headstones. Alex, crawling quickly among the graves to avoid the crossfire flying over his head, smirked and mumbled, “oops.”
The steel rain let up as the yaks waited for their target to reappear out of the smoke and debris. Alex suspected that they were looking for his corpse, already lying broken by the explosions. Unfortunately for the yaks, Alex’s armor had shrugged off most of the explosion debris, so he had suffered light burns and momentarily deafened. Both wounds would heal in seconds, and well before the smoke cleared enough for the yaks to spot him.
Unfortunately for them, Alex made the soldiers through the smoke before they saw him. Crouched low behind the headstones, Alex slunk close and then paused to let adrenaline supercharge his muscles. When he leapt, Alex’s razored forearm sliced through armor and severed one man’s head. Alex spun behind the slowly collapsing body and blasted the other soldier from point blank range.
Alex scampered away from the two dead yakuza soldiers as and found momentary safety behind another row of headstones, but before he could get any further, he smelled jet fuel exhaust. The clouds of smoke didn’t block radar, but they did make lasers ineffective at range, a limitation that wouldn’t last forever. Alex cleared his still-healing ears as best he could and listened intently. Making his best guess of the drone’s range and speed, Alex set his grenade launcher to airburst at 40 meters and fired three grenades.
The first grenade’s shock wave cleared the air around the drone enough for Alex to see it, but the concussion didn’t appear to have done more than scratch the drone’s paint. The second grenade, however, went off within one meter and shredded the rotors, sensors, and fragile control electronics with shrapnel. The third grenade sprayed the drone with burning thermite, melting parts of it to slag. The rotodrone smoked and bubbled as it fell out of the air like a brick.
Alex ducked as the yaks sent a hail of bullets screaming by. As crossfire tore around him, Alex realized that his position had been made and he heard several yaks circling around to flank him. Suddenly, Alex realized that the noise coming from the crypt was a suit of light powered armor, and a distinctive, high pitched whine told him that it was equipped with a minigun. Oh shit.
The roar of explosive bullets detonating around Alex kept him from tracking the gunfire by hearing alone, so he refocused on his vision and smell. His caught a lucky break in the form of a muzzle flash reflected in a large shard of polished granite that had been blasted off a nearby headstone. Alex knew the cemetery well, and he fired two grenades at the sepulcher near the muzzle flash. The grenades flattened the soldier and Alex scrambled toward the gap in the crossfire he’d opened.
Fleeing death by minigun, Alex suddenly found himself running straight at a soldier who had moved to cover the ruined sepulcher. The soldier, his rifle already in position, unloaded into Alex’s armor. The impacts tripped him up, sending Alex into a tumble that he converted into a roll. He rolled until he was able to put a headstone between himself and the soldier. The recoil nearly tore Alex’s assault rifle from his hands when he fired full auto into the headstone, cutting it and the soldier in half.
The stench of blood struck Alex like a body blow and drove away all rational thought. He knew only hunger and a thirst for blood that pulled him toward the upper torso of the dead soldier. Then the rest of the buried explosives detonated and threw Alex into a headstone, slamming his intellect back into control over his instincts.
After he cleared his head as best he could, Alex crept on hands and knees toward the fake delivery truck and its comm jammer. Pausing, he assessed the routes available to him. The fastest route had no good cover, but the safer route would take some time and a lot of ammo. He checked his grenade clip and swore. Only two left, he thought. The short route it is.
Alex leapt to his feet and sprinted up between rows of headstones. Explosive bullets gouged craters out of his legs and torso and drove a roar of anger from his lungs. Alex used his inner predator to drive him to his destination and then he collapsed behind a couple of small headstones. Alex forced his torn muscles to fire his last two grenades and he was rewarded with an explosion that tore apart the truck and the three yaks guarding it, and that sent a fireball rising toward to the ceiling of the Undercity thirty meters overhead.
Alex was pinned down behind a rapidly disintegrating tomb when Sylvie finally connected. “Alex, are you ok?”
“I’m shot. I’m healing. I’m hungry.” he muttered. “I need to eat, drink....”
“Snap out of it!” Shouting didn’t usually work over a commlink, but somehow Sylvie made it work.
“I’m fine, dammit,” Alex spat back at her, annoyed that she thought he was about to lose control. Alex was into his last clip, so he couldn’t fire wildly to keep the yaks at bay any more. But he also couldn’t move again until his muscles, ribs, and intestines finished knitting themselves back together. “Find me Kawashira fast.”
“Scan enabled,” was Sylvie’s only response. She wouldn’t speak again until either her scan for his RF commlink signal was complete or until Alex talked to her.
It took Alex’s body less than thirty seconds to finish healing, but it was too long. Four grenades detonated all around him, sending Alex flying like a rag doll and pulverizing his assault rifle into ceramic powder. He landed in a heap twenty meters from where he’d been an instant earlier.
Alex shook his head to clear the fuzziness and sat up to face a spinning six barreled minigun just 15 meters down the row of graves. The impact of dozens of bullets drove Alex into oblivion.
Regeneration saved his life. Had the two remaining yakuza soldiers been more aggressive, they could have killed him before he recovered. But they’d been overly cautious, and by the time they were in range, he’d nearly healed. His instincts all but submerged thought, but when his hearing told him that the whine of the minigun was close enough, he sprang.
He lacked enough presence of mind to aim and fire his autopistol, so instead he flung it like a missile into the minigun’s delicate drive mechanism, destroying both weapons. He leapt upon the power armor and tore into it with his bare hands, sending steel and ceramic and plastic and flesh and bone flying. The dead soldier collapsed with Alex, ravenously licking the gore from his dripping fingers, crouched over the carcass of his kill.
Catching movement, he spun toward the last soldier who had dropped his rifle and was fleeing the cemetery. Alex hurdled over the rows of headstones and chased down the yak, slamming both hands down onto the yak’s shoulders. The sudden impact stove in the military armor and snapped the soldier’s back and neck. That’s when Alex heard a familiar voice say “Kawashira san is by the chapel with his bodyguards.”
Alex sprinted toward the building that his blood hazed mind recognized as the chapel. Only two elderly men stood between him and his prey. The first waited patiently for him to arrive while the other ushered his prey through the chapel toward the chapel’s exit and safety.
Alex’s mind had returned enough that he didn’t simply charge Hiro. Instead Alex slashed and lunged with his claws, but Hiro blocked Alex’s attack and followed up with a spin kick aimed at Alex’s head. He caught the old man’s leg, drove his clawed fingers into the man’s femur to anchor Hiro in place, and then slashed out with all his strength. The old man fell in two.
Yoshio, the second bodyguard, met Alex when he tried to bolt through the chapel. Armed with a samurai sword that glinted of diamond, Yoshio smelled more of iron and oil than of flesh and blood, and Alex couldn’t just charge through him without losing his head to Yoshio’s blade. Instead, Alex prowled around the man, outside Yoshio’s reach, looking for a weakness he could exploit. He sensed that this master would not attack unless he was certain of the kill, so Alex provided an opening.
Yoshio leapt at Alex, his blade slashing at the speed of wired nerves. Alex spun wildly, sacrificing an arm and one forearm guard to a blade sharp enough it could cut through a car door. The partially successful feint threw off Yoshio’s attack just enough that Alex was able to bury his other razored forearm guard in the sword master’s reinforced titanium skull.
Alex listened for his prey as his nearly severed arm reattached itself. He heard the sound of panic in the awkwardly slow footsteps probably backing away from the closed chapel door. Alex burst through the chapel’s exit to be met with the boom of an autoshotgun emptying its clip of explosive flechettes. Barely a dozen of the explosive needles hit Alex, causing him no more than minor discomfort, while the rest tore massive scars of stone from the chapel’s exterior. The look on Kawashira-san’s face said that fear had killed the oyabun’s mind. Now it was the body’s turn to die.
Alex walked up to the paralyzed oyabun, pulled back Kawashira san’s head, and bent to eat.
With his fangs sunk deep into the neck of the most feared syndicate boss in the city, Alex stopped. Self revulsion mixed with Alex’s hunger, and as bile rose up his own throat, Alex ripped out Kawashira san’s larynx out with his teeth. Kawashira san’s corpse collapsed to the pitted pavement as Alex vomited out the dead man’s throat.
Alex, his gore-soaked clothing stuffed into a bag he’d pulled from Kawashira-san’s limo, walked back into his penthouse dressed in the late oyabun’s spare outfit. He stripped and threw all the clothing from that night into the incinerator. Sylvie’s lit LED told him she was watching, but she said nothing. Dana approached tentatively for a quick rub against Alex’s legs but backed away from the stink of smoke and death.
Alex showered quickly, washing himself clean of the night’s violence. Still Sylvie said nothing.
After the shower, Alex stood before the coming dawn, watching the pollution filled sky turn pink with the anticipation of day. The first rays of daylight had started turning his skin to ash before he hit the shutter’s emergency close button.
He sat on the bed, looking at the only remaining photo of his long lost family, and then laid himself down to sleep - if he could. But his mind raced with dread and his body quaked with silent sobs. Both were suddenly interrupted by the loud growling of his stomach.
Sylvie whispered, “Sleep well and recover your strength, Alex, for tomorrow night you need to eat.”