As Arron and Kix started to walk back to the APC, a loud cry rang out from a nearby street.
“Save me Kix!” “Save me too Kix!”
“What now?” asked Kix, with a loud sigh.
Two men ran up to Kix and hid behind him.
Kix looked at the two men cowering behind him. One was a tall lanky youth around 20 years of age while the other was a short plump bald man nearing 60 years.
“That man has gone mad!” said the short old man.
“What are you doing here Slappy? Shouldn’t you and Pappy be scamming people in the shopping district?” Kix asked the short older man.
“Kix! I’m hurt that you would call me a scammer! I run an honest business! Right Pappy?” said Slappy, with a poorly faked hurt expression.
”Right! The sign on the front door says so,” said Pappy, the young lanky youth.
“Our business is even cleaner than…” Seeing Kix glare at him, Slappy changed the topic. “Anyways save us! That idiot is trying to kill us!”
“I am sure he has a good reason,” said Kix.
“The idiot spent all his savings on gambling and lost. Now he is trying to kill us! How is that our fault? He shouldn’t be this stupid.”
A man stood across the street glaring at the two who were hiding behind Kix. He did not dare do anything after seeing Kix and Arron were M1 officers.
All he could do was send death glares in Pappy and Slappy’s direction.
“Who are these two characters?” asked Arron, standing next to the opened passenger door of the APC.
“Zone 3’s biggest, small-time scammers. They run a gambling shop called treasure trove. It’s where people choose a main item they want and then play many gambling games to try and win it. Of course, they have to pay to play the games,” explained Kix.
“Hey, we’re a legitimate business, we even pay our 60% tax to mother and father on time, every time. We also have to pay 35% to the boss which leaves us with only 5%. How can we not tighten our belts?” asked Slappy.
Just when Kix was going to reply, he and Arron both received a NerViz notification message.
The helmet’s visor screen began flashing Red with a robotic voice booming out of the speakers.
“Red alert! Code 3!” “Red alert! Code 3!”
The warring continued to blare in their helmets until they opened the message.
Both Arron and Kix were not worried since out of codes 1, 2, and 3, Code 3 only meant that there was a minor problem in their local area and they had to take care of it.
[The System has detected several dozen calls originating from Zone 3’s civilian district, all of them have described a major disturbance of the peace. Check with HQ for more detail.]
“Sorry Slappy, Pappy, we have work to do,” said Kix as he entered the APC.
Before closing the door he looked over to the man still glaring at the two men.
“If I find out that the two somehow died, you will be detained and normalized by the Office of Reason,” said Kix.
The glaring man gave up on his thoughts of killing the two after hearing those words… but there were still other methods to vent his rage.
“Kix, take us with you!” shouted a worried Pappy as he watched the APC drive away with its flashing lights and sirens blaring.
Inside the APC.
“Were just going to leave them like that?” asked Arron.
“If we had to save those two idiots every time they got into trouble there would be no end to it. Maybe a bit of pain will wake them up and they’ll stop picking fights with people stronger than them,” said Kix. He tapped onto the dashboard’s holographic menu and started a call with HQ.
“Tooth, what information do you have for us on the Code three?” asked Kix, when the call connected.
“One second…,” said Toothbrush. He started accessing menus and typing in a few things in order to bring up the requested information.
“Looks like all the calls are from Zone 3’s central district Mega-partments. A note was left saying a Social worker from the Office of Reason has already been sent there. The orders state that you are to meet up with them and help them with whatever they need. I’ve just sent you all the information.”
“Got it. If you can, let them know we’re on our way right now,” said Kix before ending the call.
***
The Mega-partments got their name because the owner, when building it, had combined 4 normal 300 story apartment buildings into one. There were a total of 8 such Mega-partments in the central district all made out of cheap para-concrete.
The two exited their vehicles and looked at the massive Mega-partments all around them. Each one of them looked ready to crumble at any moment.
“Which building do we have to meet the social worker at?” asked Arron.
Kix took a quick glance at the info opened in the corner of his visor before replying to Arron, “Building 4, that one over there.”
The building he pointed to looked to be the one in the worst shape out of the 8 Mega-partments.
They walked over to the entrance of the building but found no one waiting for them.
So they waited a total of five minutes before Kix called Tooth again.
“Tooth, when will the Social worker get here?”
“They should already be there.”
“We haven’t seen them yet, we have been waiting for over 5 minutes. Can you just tell us which floor the call came from?” asked Kix.
“Part B, the 253rd floor.”
As soon as Arron and Kix entered part B of the Mega-partments, they were surrounded by a group of thuggish brutes all wearing black synthetic leather jackets with each of their hairstyles looking outlandish.
“Who are you?” asked the biggest man in the group of ruffians.
Arron just pointed to the white M1 on his chest armor.
“We control part B and we don’t allow cops inside this building,” said the man, puffing out his A1 parasteel plated chest.
Kix was not in the mood to play with them and just asked, “Did the Social worker from the Office of Reason already enter?”
“Yeah. You with her? Too bad you still can’t come in…what are you doing!” he shouted angrily as Kix pushed him aside.
“He pushed the leader! Block him!”
The man and his underlings keep blocking them every time they tried to move forward. While doing this they were constantly shouting insults at both Arron and Kix.
“What’s your badge number and name! I’m going to make a complaint about you to your chief!”
Arron tapped the small metal piece on his chest and his badge popped up.
“Okay Officer Wynterz, expect to get a complaint from me!” said the leader.
“Move!” ordered Kix glaring at the man.
“What? You think because we have D rank SCS that we’re afraid of you? We got connections with big people, we ain’t afraid. Show us your badge.”
Kix tapped on his badge which shut the loudmouth up. They all had a weird look on their faces as they stepped aside allowing Arron and Kix to reach the stairs.
“Damn it, more stairs! Why can’t these damned buildings build a mag-shoot!” grumbled Arron as they started to climb the stairs.
“They had a choice between stairs and installing a cheap no-name brand that would kill anyone who used it. Since that would just bring them more problems than it’s was worth, they picked stairs,” said Kix.
When they had reached floor 252 and were at the bottom of the stairs to the next floor they saw a worried man pacing back and forth near the top of the stairs.
“Sir, is everything alright? We received several calls about a problem here. Are you one of the callers?” asked Kix.
The man stopped pacing and looked at the two standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes,” After answering, the man muttered a few sentences they could not hear.
“Sir?” asked Arron.
“One second, I’ll get the person who needs your help,” said the man as he walked away from the top of the stairs.
Arron looked to Kix who nodded to him before he started to walk up the stairs to the 253rd floor. Kix followed behind him only a few steps below.
When Arron reached the top of the stairs he heard the man’s voice coming from the only apartment that had its door opened.
“Sir?” called out Arron.
“Is everything okay?” asked Kix, who was still standing on the stairs.
A second later the man returned to the doorway…
“Sir! Put the…”
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
…and started shooting at Arron and Kix with an illegally modified stubby.
Arron received two hits on his chest armor knocking him back into the wall behind him.
The impact caused a large hole to appear in the weak wall.
“What the f***!” shouted Aaron, as he dislodged himself from the wall and rolled to the side dodging several more bullets that landed where he had been standing just seconds before.
Kix cursed as he ducked down back into the stairwell to dodge the hail of bullets shot at him, pinning him down and preventing him from joining Arron.
Arron came up from his roll into a crouching position with his right leg’s AB V.3 boot protecting his lower body. A bullet flew by and grazed his exposed arm as he aimed his Fatboy and fired one shot.
BAM!
With that one shot, a large hole was blasted through the man’s chest immediately dropping him to the ground and stopping the shooting.
Kix quickly rushed over to Arron, and after seeing blood on the ground, he checked to see how badly he was wounded.
“Looks like you’ll be just fine. You’ll have a few welts from those two hits to your chest, and just a small cut on your arm,” said Kix, as he took out a first aid bottle from his utility belt and poured some of the contents onto Arron’s bleeding arm.
“Why did he do that?” asked Arron, still jittery from the rush of adrenaline.
“How am I supposed to know what or how a crazy person thinks?” asked Kix.
“You saw he had a gun, are you one of those idiots who think they’re knights in shining armor? That’s the reason you got shot. People like you are the first to die.”
Arron didn’t say anything. He didn’t even know how the person managed to have a gun which was illegal to own.
“Whoever he was talking to probably knows what was wrong with him,” said Kix.
Arron was pulled up back onto his feet and he followed Kix to the open door. They both had their guns drawn ready to react to another ambush.
Inside the apartment were two bloody bodies.
One was a male body that had been stabbed several 100s of times while the other was a female body missing her head.
Arron looked at the information that popped up on his visor after a quick scan.
“Well, looks like we found the social worker and her guard,” said Kix.
