Three days later Arron once again arrived in front of the Ryu yakuza family’s building where the initial screening had taken place several days ago. Every person that had passed the first screening was standing around Arron.
Just like the last time he was here, several people were hovering around the area all at the far ends of the street or in front of local businesses as they pretended to do other things while they watched the gathering crowd.
Arron did not know who all of the people were working for, but by the actions of a few of them, it was clear to spot the agents from the Office of Reason. The others were most likely from rival gangs and other yakuza families.
There was no Office of Reason security drones flying around the area and that was because they were constantly getting damaged and or mysteriously going missing. This was not just a problem in this area but also in large portions of the entire sector 1 where the yakuza and gangs held more power than the local low-level party members of Mother and Father. Being watched by so many people made Arron feel very uncomfortable.
After a half hour of waiting, the crowd now numbered around 100 or more candidates who had passed the initial screening. It was at this time when the building’s solid metal doors slid open and the two guards from the other day stepped out and did a quick scan over the people who had gathered.
They did not pay attention to the obvious gawkers from afar who had given up the pretenses of doing something else and were now just starting to see what was going to happen.
“Everyone inside! No questions!” roared the guard that was standing on the right.
“We can talk more freely inside away from prying eyes,” said the second guard on the left.
Four security drones floated out from a hole in the building’s wall and hovered over the recruit candidates scanning them as they entered the building one by one. Inside the building, there were several more muscular men and another six floating security drones waiting for them. The drones blocked the hallway path while lightly zapping a few people who got out of line. Arron was one of the last to enter the building after everyone was scanned the large metal door slid shut behind them causing everyone to lose their sight as the hallway lost all the light from outside.
A few low flickering lights lit up on the bodies of the floating security drones as they started to herd the crowd down the dark hallway.
ZAP! Every other second random a bright flash lit up the hallway as someone in the rear was zapped for walking too slowly.
“No talking!” shouted a guard when one of the people that had been zapped tried to complain.
While they walked down the dark hallway which was now slanting down leading them underground, Arron could feel several more rapid-fire hidden scans being done to make sure that they were supposed to be there.
At the end of the long hall, there was a large open room that was only lit by a blank gray static holo-projection which was covering 90% of the room’s rear wall.
Over twenty other rough-looking gang members were waiting inside the room, and each of them watched the potential recruits like hawks. They were treating it as a game trying to spot anyone that had somehow slipped through the initial scanning.
There was a lot of low nervous chatter from the potential recruits as they were herded toward the center of the room where they were surrounded by the Ryu yakuza members who displayed their weapons on their hips openly as if daring someone to do something stupid.
A hidden door in the back wall of the room slid open and an elderly man in his 50s or 60s walked out and stood in front of the gray holo-projection.
Unlike several of the yakuza members in the room, Arron’s right eye was unable to identify the old man as there was no name in its database.
“Welcome. You all can call me Old Man if you survive the sorting. I have other things to do so let’s not waste each other’s time,” said Old Man. He held out his right hand and began taping a few options on his wrist data-pad. The gray static projection behind him lit up with a hundred or so floating 3-d faces.
Ping! At the same time, Arron and the rest of the potential recruits received a notification that a new document had been sent to each of them.
“You have all been randomly assigned to one of these targets,” said Old Man pointing toward the floating heads. “Your assignment is to teach them a lesson however you see fit. You can team up with others or go solo. The only thing that matters is that you complete the task given to you. If you don’t have the guts to do this simple task you can leave now.”
In Arron’s opinion, the potential recruits standing in the room all looked to be hardened criminals that had experienced many hardships. They were not afraid of such a simple task. Many of the people standing around Arron gave out sighs of relief after hearing something so simple. They had all been expecting something more extreme.
This task felt a little too simple to Arron, so he started to use his right eye to covertly scan and take pictures of the floating heads so he could send them to Kix and A.S later. With just a quick scan of the target’s faces, he could see that although many of them looked to be rival yakuza or gang members there was still a large portion who looked to be everyday average civilians.
Arron once again looked at the document that had been sent to him and slightly frowned after reading the details. He quickly returned his face to its neutral expression not wanting to draw attention to himself.
He was not sure if the targets were really picked at random, there was still a possibility that they were suspicious of him and gave him this target as a hidden test. But if this really was random then he had to have the worst luck of all time.
The target he had been assigned to take care of… was one of the Office of Reason spies that had failed to pass the first screening several days ago.
“You have one day to complete this task. If you can not find your target…you fail. If you find your target but do not teach them a lesson… you fail,” said the Old Man. He did not stay any longer and left the room that was now buzzing with low chatter from the potential recruits.
***
Arron was leisurely walking down an alleyway while quietly muttering to himself, or at least that was what it looked like to the yakuza’s hovering security drone that was monitoring him from a distance. He was actually using his modified NerViz implant’s connection to access a secure communication line that had been set up by A.S just for this mission.
“They want you to do what?” asked Kix.
“Teach the target a lesson. I sent you the file, you should have seen the other targets as well right?” asked Arron. He was trying to move his mouth as little as possible to prevent the monitoring drone from using an AI program to read his lips and eavesdrop on his conversation.
“Yes, we received the several pictures you took. They should be able to help us with our investigation into the rival members of the other yakuza families and low-tier gangs,” said Kix.
“So what am I supposed to do about this situation?” asked Arron.
“That’s a dumb question,” said A.S. His head popped up in the call along with Kix. “You are to complete the assignment that was given to you. Don’t go soft and pull your punches as they will know if you are faking it or not.”
“But he works for the Office of Reason! He is one of your colleagues!”
“He’s just some low-level agent. The mission comes first!”
“Then can you at least let the local police and M1 officers in the area know that I am doing this for the Office of Reason? I don’t want to be chased and hunted through the entire sector 1 just because of this.”
“Can’t do that. It would jeopardize the entire mission if I did. We don’t know who is being paid off by the Ryu yakuza family so we can not let either of them know about this.”
“Then what am I to do if they get called or show up during my…?”
“Run.”
With that, the call abruptly ended.
Arron silently cursed A.S. He was getting himself deeper and deeper into danger which was something he did not want. If it were not for the fact that Chief Chesty directly gave the OK for the temporary reassignment of both him and Kix, he would believe that this was all a scheme to get him in trouble with every government agency.
“You punk! Who’s going to teach me a lesson?” shouted an angry voice from another side street.
As Arron was passing the side street in question, he saw three skinny thugs kicking and stomping on a person that he had seen a short time ago back in the meeting room. The drone that was following that person was hovering high in the sky out of sight of the thugs as it recorded everything.
Arron hesitated for a moment trying to decide whether or not to help the man.
Bam!
The door to a nearby dirty building slammed open and another ten skinny thugs all wearing the same spiked leather clothing and dark sunglasses exited the building.
Arron looked away not wanting to draw any attention to himself and continued toward the location that A.S had sent to him.
‘Himitsu Spion’, was a seedy bar that had no affiliation to any of the yakuza families or low-level gangs and was rumored to be a hotbed for rats.
Arron made sure to go on a roundabout way towards the bar while pretending to search for the target as he walked into several buildings and scanned the people inside. All this was done to make his act more believable while wasting time to make sure he did not draw unneeded attention to himself.
When he reached the ‘Himitsu Spion’ bar, he was deep in the lawless slums that were not under the control of any one faction.
He stood a good distance away from the bar and monitored it for some time. It seemed rather empty as there was no one entering or exiting which was to be expected since it was still late morning when most people were already at work.
But that didn’t mean much around here with many bars being occupied 24/7 by the local gangs as a hang-out area.
He waited several more minutes trying to gain the courage to enter.
Smack!
Arron slapped his cheeks with both of his hands and muttered, “Just do it! No point in dragging it out any longer and risking something changing for the worse.”
The longer he waited, the more likely the target’s allies would end up entering the building and they would definitely not let him do as he pleased.
As he walked across the empty street his mind was buzzing with hundreds of plans on how to quickly teach a ‘lesson’ to the target and then escape. The drone that was following him stopped at the entrance of the building and did not enter with him.
“Good, one less thing to worry about,” muttered Arron.
The inside of the ‘Himitsu Spion’ was rather small. It only had ten tables on the right side while there were several hovering stools in front of a long counter on the left side of the room.
There were only three people inside the bar. An old scarred man who was nursing his beer, one of many empty glasses covering his table. The bartender. And Arron’s target, the low-level Office of Reason agent ‘Hakmon’, who was sitting at the long bar.
The scarred old man and bartender payed Arron no attention after only a glance when he entered.
Hakmon felt someone staring at him and turned towards the entrance of the bar where he saw Arron who had just entered.
“Do I know you?” asked Hakmon with a frown as Arron slowly walked over to the bar.
“Sorry,” was all Arron said.
Sensing something was wrong Hakmon tried to stutter out something to stop Arron, “Wait! I wo…ughhh!”
Arron’s metallic right arm slammed into Hakmon’s stomach with force great enough to crack several of his ribs and sent him flying off of the hover stool. His body slammed into the wall that was only a few feet behind him.
Arron silently grabbed the glass mug that was still filled to the brim with a bubbling black tar-like drink and slammed it onto Hakmon’s head dumping the bubbling drink all over his head in the process.
Wack! Thump! CRACK! Arron continued to hit Hakmon with the mug until it broke.
Unlike in the holo-movies, the glass did not break as easily as one would expect, so Hakmon was now covered in bruises, cuts, and blood long before the glass mug broke.
Arron tossed the broken handle aside and turned to the door.
“You gonna pay for that?” asked the bartender, unafraid of Arron who had just brutally beaten a man in front of him.
Arron silently walked to the bar and swiped his bloody metal hand over the scanner before exiting the bar without even looking at the cost.
The last of his meager amount of credits that the Office of Reason added to this account was wiped out with that one transaction.
