“…like I was before, I don’t know why we had to be suspended for a week. I would have thought they would want to keep us working without pay,” said Arron.
Arron turned onto sector 11’s main food market street and slowly made his way through the night crowd made up of tens of thousands of workers who had just gotten off of work.
“I’m happy that we actually got a week off of work. With all that was going on it was best for us to lay low for some time to let everything cool down,” said Kix.
The two had just finished their first shift back on the job and were talking over a holo-call catching up on everything that happened to them after their suspension.
It was only recently that Arron had discovered a new setting while fiddling with his wrist-datapads menus. The setting was for securely rerouting all calls to compatible devices and even implants. This feature was highly regulated by the office of reason for fear of misuse. Surprisingly his new eye implant was one of such models that was supported.
Now whenever he received a call no matter what the device was, a screen would pop up on the right in front of his face showing the caller. Although it was only in 2-d, the call felt far sharper than the calls when viewed from his wrist-datapad, the APC dashboard, and even his helmet.
Arron had to guess that it had to do with the eye implant having some sort of solid connection to the NerViz system that the other systems did not have.
The best part of using his implant to accept calls was only he was able to see the other person. This was a huge step up from the cheap wrist-datapads that only had a flimsy privacy-screen that obscured the view from nearby people.
The only downside to this was that it made Arron look like a crazy person who was talking to himself.
“You never did say what you did with your week off,” said Arron.
“Not much, just stuff. You know, with that 10k fine we all had to pay, there isn’t much we can do for a while. The hardest hit by this fine were Knox and Ward,” said Kix.
“Luckily I saved up enough that I was still able to pay it off without having to rely on loans. But now the credits in my account are almost dried up. Looks like I won’t be able to hang out at The Roach till next month,” said Arron as he continued to weave his way through the large crowd.
“Is that why you’re out there looking for ‘Food’?” asked Kix.
“As much as I love my energy jelly pouches, if that is all I eat for a month I will go crazy. I need to spice it up a bit even if it is not as healthy,” said Arron as he squeezed past a group of old ladies who had stopped walking and were gossiping in the middle of the road.
“Either way, I say our first day back was successful. I have a few errands to take care of so I’ll have to cut this call short.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Arron! Behind you!” shouted Kix suddenly. Because Arron had chosen the default zoom Kix was able to see the surroundings behind Arron.
Thunk!
Even with the warning, it was too late. Arron felt a heavy blow to the back of his head. The blow knocked him off his feet and onto the para-concrete street.
He pushed himself up off the ground and onto his hands and knees while trying to regain focus and block out the immense pain he was feeling.
His vision was swimming around him with multiples of the same thing all in different colors. This added to his blurred vision and made him want to puke from dizziness. His ears were ringing loudly causing all nearby sounds to become a muffled white noise.
Arron could see multiples of Kix each with their mouths moving but heard no words.
With his dazed mind unable to properly think his military training kicked in as his instincts told him to move.
As he rolled to the right, he received another glancing blow to his left rib cage from the attacker who had been aiming to break his back with the attack.
The sudden fight breaking out in the middle of the street was treated as nothing big by those nearby. They just created a wide path around them, staying away and not wanting to be a part of it.
Arron used the momentum of his roll to spin himself into a low crouch and raised his metallic Thermal gloved fists into a boxing pose to guard his head as he faced his attacker.
The thermal gloves had become a main part of the ERF’s uniform and was not as expensive or high-tech that they had to leave them in their lockers back at the HQ like their armor and helmets. So they were allowed to wear them even off duty.
Even so, every time they were activated the data it collected was sent to the information room’s database at the M1 HQ.
This was part of a compromise with the Party of Mother and Father that was put in place during the bloody beginning of the mega-city.
Back then the law enforcement was unarmed both on and off of duty and were hunted down by the criminal gangs who wanted to eliminate law enforcement from their territory.
Now that they were allowed to use their ancient sidearms and low-tech equipment to protect themselves, the death rate for most agencies had dropped with only M1 still having a high percentage of deaths.
Arron’s attacker was a middle-aged man with an unshaven face and highly dilated pupils. He was wearing a common black one-piece work suit. In his right hand, he held a rusted metal pipe that was raised in the air ready to attack again.
As the pipe swung down Arron’s left hand shot out and grabbed onto it. The glove let out a groan as the force of the attack caused a large dent to appear on the main components causing him to receive several error messages.
Arron pulled the pipe closer to him causing the man to stumble closer to him allowing Arron to grab onto his left arm.
The undamaged Thermal Glove activated sending a full-powered shock into the man’s arm…
…but the result he was expecting to happen did not occur.
“Hahahaha!” the man laughed in a crazed manner. “I knew my insulated arm implant would come in handy!”
Even though Arron could not understand what was being said he knew that something was preventing his Thermal glove from taking effect. So he was forced to struggle with the man trying to keep his hold on the man’s left arm while trying to pull the pipe away from his right hand so that he wouldn’t get clobbered again.
THUNK!
Arron was again blindsided and attacked in the back knocking him off his feet and on top of the crazed man who managed to wrestle free of Arron’s grasp and sent several punches, elbows blows, and kicks into Arron’s body before managing to separate from him.
Arron rolled away from both his attackers and stood up ready to fight the two attackers.
The second attacker was another crazed man who was in his late teens. The two attackers had dropped their metal pipes and activated hidden implanted weapons. in both of their wrists.
They both had a thin dagger pop out of each of their wrists which they hid from the crowd by cupping the palms of their hands.
They had given up trying to bludgeon Arron to death and decided to go with a bloodier option jabbing their hands toward Arron.
Arron did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed his concealed service weapon and…
BANG!
…shot the older crazed man before swiveling to the second man and normalizing him as well.
As he scanned the surrounding crowd of people with his gun drawn the sound around him was finally becoming clearer.
“HE’S GOING TO KILL US ALL!” a hysterical woman was screaming as she lay on the ground while still pointing her Wrist-datapad at Arron to record him.
Now that gunshots had rang out, the crowd that had ignored the melee fight, were scrambling and screaming as they tried to push each other out of the way to get even farther away from the shooter.
“Where the f*** are the security drones?” asked Kix who had watched the entire quick but brutal fight.
“Arron, this is pretty bad. I already contacted Captain Pointer. He just told me that the Office of Reason agents are already headed your way. Just cooperate with them for now until we figure out what to do.”
[Troubled suspect! Put down your weapon or receive justice!] said the robotic voice of a security drone that started flying towards Arron.
“Of course, now they come after everything is over!” said Kix angrily.
Arron complied with the security drone as several more started to appear from every alleyway.
[Troubled suspect! The Office of Reason will pick you up soon. Stay where you are or receive justice!] ordered the security drone that now floated next to Arron with its metallic claws extended.
While Arron waited to be picked up the news drones started to flood in after being tipped off about the commotion. They made sure to get the best shots of him being cuffed and herded into a black hovercar by three black-suited Office of Reason agents.
***
“… and you know the rest of what happened after you brought me here,” said Arron.
“…” the three Office of Reason agents silently stared at Arron for over a minute.
“What I am having a hard time wrapping my head around is what or how would they benefit from attacking you? Why would they attack you in such a way? Are you connected to some shady dealings that fell apart?” asked the female agent.
“He was wearing his uniform so of course, it might lead some nut jobs to attack him due to their anger issues. The two that attacked him were from the Patula family. A low-time crime family based in sector 7,” said officer Riol.
The Female agent only raised her eyebrow not really considering his words.
“Are we done here?” asked Officer Riol.
“Not quite.”
“What now?”
“We need to make sure that his wounds are recent and not old wounds or self-inflicted wounds. To do that we will be sending him to one of our local partner hospitals to do the checkup,” said the female agent.
“I’ll be accompanying Officer Winterz for this ‘Checkup’,” said Officer Riol.
“Of course. You can be a Peeping Tom all you want. Just don’t interfere with our investigation.”
