Tales from Crossbones - The Problem with Encorp

July 2066. Skeleton is "gracefully invited" by Encorp's chief executive Edda Martens to discuss the events happened several years before - events that resulted in the disappearance of Jerediah "Red" Horowitz. Held at gunpoint, together with two close collaborators of his, Skeleton recollected the events of that night, unveiling the mystery behind Red's actions and his legacy.

(Proofread and edited by Kaleb O'Halloran)

The room was rather dull and uninteresting, for all the alleged security it promised to offer to its occupants. Plain, thick concrete walls covered by almost thicker gray plaster, plain black tiles uniformly comprising the floor. The ceiling, too, was made up of those same plain black tiles, this time interspersed with small, circular lights — ancient-looking bulbs shining dimly, arranged as an unimaginative, checkered constellation, embracing the enclosed space in an aseptic, bluish tint.

Beneath the lights sat a black sofa with far too many years on its back, its cover torn in several spots, its white entrails peeking out of small fissures and scratches.

In front of the sofa, a black, metallic table. Heavy. Bolted to the floor itself. One monitor standing on the surface, a thin layer of dust freshly removed. Several piles of documents and papers, with dates and words marked in red and blue, ink smeared all over them. One woman sitting at the table, her fingers intertwined. A light complexion, short brown hair with several white outliers. Inquisitive, piercing blue eyes.

And on the sofa, three people sitting, looking back at her — or at least, pretending to. It was hard to gauge where their gaze was wandering. It was hard to read their expressions too.

The woman at the desk didn’t blink. She kept her eyes trained on them, as if locked in a sort of awkward, silent, one-sided staring contest. Then, finally, she spoke.

“Ange Skallen, I suppose.”

One of the sofa-dwellers nodded in response. He was a rather muscular, dark-skinned man in his late thirties, sporting bizarre white armor with a skeleton insignia engraved on the chestplate. His face was hidden by a similarly peculiar white skull mask, on top of what looked like a jet black head cover. The man was sitting with his legs spread, carelessly leaning on the backrest with his arms open.

“Correct, Ms. Encorp CTO.”

“Ms. Martens, if you will.”

“That Edda Martens?” Ange whistled with admiration. “It must have been hard to cover for the Jackson scandal, back in 2055 — a sudden promotion out of nowhere, after your predecessor pulled a Houdini on you. Encorp stocks sinking deeper than the Titanic, pen pushers calling you every hour of the day, all eyes on your company for your questionable methods, and every lawyer-of-the-week suing you left and right for human rights violations. Stressful times, I take it?”

Martens’s fingers stiffened with rage, the veins on her hands popping out for a short second.

“Business as usual. But thanks for reopening that old wound. I was almost going to give you a chance, despite my prejudices. Now I feel no remorse in freely stating just how much I despise people like you.”

Ange shrugged.

“Whatever. Now, could you please tell me why you sent a small firing team to graciously invite us to your private party, fifty meters below ground? An appointment request through our PMC portal would have done the job just fine.”

Ange casually pointed his finger at the crowded space behind Martens. There were five more people standing behind her, guns in holsters, wearing bulletproof jackets. Two had small submachine guns. Two had regular pistols. The fifth held a portable plasma rifle. Two women, three men. All looking coldly at the trio, without saying a single word. Martens grinned.

“You know why, Skallen. Your people put their noses where they shouldn’t have. Especially that woman.”

The second occupant of the sofa stared back at her — or at least she assumed so, as the target of her ire was donning dark black sunglasses, even in the dim light of that fortified basement. The woman in question was in her late twenties, had very distinctive purple hair — obviously dyed, thought Martens — and a beauty mark on her right cheek. Her fit was very different from that of the man sitting next to her. She wore a camo military outfit, with a black bulletproof vest and several pockets. Simple and functional, without the excess of strange, bone-related symbols. Her manner of speaking was significantly distinct as well. While Ange clearly came from some dilapidated French suburb or former colony, this woman’s accent was harder to identify. Sometimes it sounded like Irish, sometimes Scottish, sometimes American, sometimes none of them at all. It felt as if she could change her diction on demand, without ever offering any clear hint to the listener. But one thing was certain: she was precariously charming, in a unique way. She had a sort of magnetic allure that everyone in the room was enthralled by, underscored by a faint, imperceptible aura of danger.

The woman laughed at Martens’s remark, started playing with her slick hair, making short locks out of it.

“My, my. Did our innocent investigation upset you that badly? We were just looking for a long-lost friend.”

“Sure, while also accidentally decrypting top secret, internal documents about Project Medusa, Project Schwarzer Blitz, and the Jackson scandal? Next, you’ll tell me you believe in Santa Claus too, right? If so, I have some bad news for you.”

The purple-haired woman smirked, her red lips crowning two rows of perfectly white teeth.

“Well, if Santa doesn’t exist, then with whom did I spend some quality time inside the chimney, last Christmas? Was it you, Ange?”

Ange shook his head.

“I wish. Nah, I’m pretty sure it was Vince. You know, he can pass for anyone with that stupid face of his. Worst-case scenario, it was his dumb shark friend instead.”

The third person sitting on the sofa chuckled. It was another woman, around twenty years old. She had waist-long brown hair and a very pale complexion. Her eyes were covered by what looked like a blindfold, with a sort of junction right above her nose. She was wearing a suit of armor similar to Ange’s, minus his obnoxious, signature skull mask. A rusty peace medallion, something that looked like a piece of Woodstock memorabilia, was hanging from her neck, creating a weird dissonance with her clean, brand-new tactical outfit. She had been silent the whole time until now, but it seemed she couldn’t help bursting into a short fit of laughter over the other two’s playful banter.

The purple-haired woman rolled her eyes under her sunglasses.

“His dumb shark friend is gay, in case you’ve forgotten. Which I don’t think you have, since a couple nights ago you seemed to have quite the fun time together, in the room near mine. Tell me, how did you like stroking his sea monster?”

“Oh, please! As if I would ever sleep together with a disgusting mutant.”

Her index finger reached for his mask, pushing on the white, pearly surface.

“Aaaand this is why you are still single! For your information, that disgusting mutant is very well-endowed — you shouldn’t be so closed-minded. Quit being so picky or you’ll end up sad, alone and frustrated. Just like that stuck-up, frigid old lady sitting across from us!”

Martens clenched her fist, cursing under her breath. She had to keep her tongue in check — her self-control just barely kicked in there. That impudent wench was quickly getting on her nerves. She browsed the files on her personal computer, line by line, until she found her profile.

There she is.

Jennifer Lynn Cloverfield — if that was even her real name. No amount of research had been enough to identify her beyond any reasonable doubt, all background checks leading to a dead end. The only one-hundred-percent verified bits outlined her as an occasional cooperator of the Crossbones PMC, but her actual identity was almost completely unknown. Her nationality, age, even her appearance, had all been impossible to retrieve until now. Martens’s subordinates went through every single social network profile on Imago, Myrror and Lifeshare, in the hopes of finding any shred of evidence as to who she was, but all their efforts resulted in a big, fat nothing. She was a literal shadow, with little to no presence on the Internet. The small breadcrumbs she left behind weren’t nearly enough for a proper identification. An intriguing mystery that left the whole intelligence department in shambles for two entire weeks.

In stark contrast, finding information about Ange Skallen and that other woman sitting with them, Chai Constantine, had been a walk in the park. Skallen was a French-Algerian man of Swedish ancestry, former soldier, now full-time bounty hunter, de facto leader of Crossbones. He had an adoptive daughter, Cyphr Wolfchild, German, twenty years old, who was living in New Langdon and was the biological offspring of the mercenary known as Der Wolf. There was almost no challenge; Skallen’s life story was an open book. The cyber sleuths even joked about how easy it had been to find some of his more intimate details by analyzing his Singloo profile — like his preference for older women and some pretty embarrassing pictures he apparently sent as a private message to the wrong person.

Constantine was a boring case too. Blind since birth, abandoned by her parents in a backwater orphanage in Denmark, expelled from school for regularly smoking weed and sending her bullies to the hospital, joined Crossbones soon after becoming a legal adult. She had been almost too easy to track, thanks to the inordinate amount of time she spent on Lifeshare (with her sex toys automatically posting regular updates of their usage) and her active side job as a not-safe-for-work streamer on Booner, under the moniker of BlindSeraphim. Nothing truly remarkable about her — just another good-for-nothing societal failure, with a brain clouded by drugs and a total slave to her addictions.

Martens bit her lip. A former foreign legion soldier, now grumpy single father. A Danish handicapped cyberslut. A mysterious purple-haired, sharp-tongued phantom. This was the best that Crossbones could send to their meeting? They weren’t taking Encorp seriously, were they?

A sigh of relief.

This is almost too easy.

She cleared her throat, glared at the unlikely trio sitting in front of her.

“If you are done with your puerile bickering, I’d like to get down to business.”

She tapped her finger on the desk rhythmically, as if to accentuate the impact of her words. The forceful sound echoed in the windowless room, bouncing between the insulated walls and the pitch black tiles of the floor and the ceiling.

“I wish I could have disposed of you lot through more direct means, but Encorp needs to keep a low profile. Our investors and stakeholders wouldn’t be happy to hear about an encore of the Jackson scandal. Had it been up to me, I would have ordered our top security commandos to raze your HQ, then I’d have bought the charred ruins of your property and turned it into a toxic landfill for used diapers. Sadly, I’m not the one in charge.”

Yet, she thought. But that wasn’t going to be the status quo for much longer.

“So, here we are, in this secured room, face to face, to discuss in a civil manner about your… less than welcome intrusion into our walled garden. The question I have now is simple.”

She glanced at them, her eyes burning with resentment.

“Why were you so adamant in seeking information about that damn night?”

**

LeJarme went through the resume of the new hire once more. A Mossad reject, court-martialed twice for insubordination and killing a superior officer. A wild dog who murdered his father for money. Someone who had literally no moral compass whatsoever and would do anything for the right incentive.

Absolutely perfect, for what LeJarme had in mind.

“Jerediah Horowitz, correct?”

The man in front of him looked like a homeless bum, with his unkempt red hair, bruises, unshaved beard, and long jacket patched one too many times. His eyes were dull, expressionless, seemingly staring off into the void.

“Say, are you French? That accent of yours is killing me, penguin.”

LeJarme squinted his eyes, pushing his glasses up against his nose. This hillbilly clearly had no respect for authority, no respect for the head of the technical division of Encorp. LeJarme ran a hand through his slick, black hair. He had so many other issues to worry about besides dealing with this newly hired idiot. Unfortunately though, it was unavoidable. Martens was busy coordinating the new Medusa test… and Jackson was certainly not going to cooperate nicely, however LeJarme put it. The plaster on the bridge of his nose was a sad reminder of how their last “discussion” went. He rolled his eyes. That ill-fated altercation cost him an almost-brand-new pair of Rivera glasses, now reduced to a mere pile of shattered glass and bent metal.

“I didn’t hire you to argue about my diction, you swine! You just happened to be the right person at the right time.”

LeJarme was strangely thrilled to have found someone like Horowitz, despite his personal disdain for the individual in question. Not even a month prior, someone had tried to access the Medusa laboratory, disabling all their security cameras and killing four guards in the process, but thankfully not being able to force the door open. LeJarme had been lucky to have taken extra security measures. It was his own acumen that saved the situation from getting worse, after all. Outside of working hours, that gate could be unlocked only with fingerprints and a retinal scan — either his or Martens’s. Nobody aside from them could access the room, not even the CEO himself, Mr. Ramanujan. The success of that ultra-secure system was his peak achievement, and one he kept on boasting about in the C-level meetings for seven days straight. However, those guards had to be replaced, and had to be replaced quickly. In an incredible turn of fate, Horowitz had just submitted his resume for a job at Encorp, after being fired by a PMC he was working for — only to be rejected by that idiot Jackson.

Yes, Jackson was obviously too dumb to see what he had let slip between his fingers: an experienced, money-driven killer with little to no moral qualms. The perfect hire for such a dangerous yet mission-critical job, LeJarme reasoned. He wouldn’t have asked questions, wouldn’t have had access to the labs, wouldn’t have needed to know anything about the project — all he had to do was keep a gun in his hands and stand firm in front of the door for ten hours a day. Moreover, an uncultured reject like Horowitz could never be a threat for an intellectually superior being like himself.

And if this decision pissed off Jackson, that was even better.

In spite of all of this, Martens wasn’t convinced about hiring him — even going as far as calling him a rabid maverick — but when had LeJarme ever been wrong? His track record was too good for this to be just a capricious twist of fate, he had to be right even this time.

Horowitz’s annoyed voice interrupted his train of thought.

“So then, what did you hire me for, exactly? You and that other penguin haven’t been all too talkative ‘bout it, Tony.”

LeJarme stared at him, his voice cold.

“It’s LeJarme, to you. Antoine François-Marie LeJarme.”

“Tony sounds better and is quicker to say. Or would you rather I call you Ontuan-Fronsuah-Maree Lejorm?”

LeJarme shivered. Horowitz had butchered his name in a way few other people had ever managed to. He had to keep his composure, though. It’s okay, he said to himself, he’s just a simpleton.

“Fine, Horowitz. I’ll explain it in a way even you should have no problem understanding. You just need to come here every night at 9PM, stand in front of a door on the second floor down until 7AM the next morning, and kill everybody who tries to get into the room. With extreme prejudice.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody. If they trespass or manage to get in, put a bullet between their eyes. We will take care of the rest.”

**

Ange turned his head first toward Jennifer, then towards Chai. The former seemed mildly annoyed at Martens’s inquiry. The latter didn’t look fazed in the slightest. He continued to stare at them for a few more seconds. He didn’t want to be the one doing all the talking, so he sincerely hoped one of them would step up to answer Ms. Martens’s question instead.

As if to second his unspoken wish, Chai’s voice broke the silence.

“Oi, old hag! Mind your own business, huh? What happens in Crossbones stays with Crossbones! You Encorp cronies can shove your damn questions right up your–”

“Thank you for your precious insight, Chai.”

Ange sighed, his hand reaching for his face, sliding down his white skull mask in an exasperated motion. That short interjection reminded him why he was the one doing the talking. For a second or two, he even questioned his own decision to bring Chai along for this meeting. However, he quickly dismissed his second-guessing. No matter the stakes, she had to be there with them.

Chai turned towards him, following the sound of his voice. Her blindfold highlighted her furrowed eyebrows, making her seem even more irritated.

“Come on, Ange, you can’t let this slide! This bitch is bossing us around however she pleases and you don’t say a word?”

Martens stared at the girl with the coldest gaze her eyes could produce. She knew that the brown-haired blind slut wasn’t able to see such a glare, but she poured all her anger and willpower into it, hoping she could at least feel it. Whether that actually worked or it was just a coincidence, Chai turned towards her again, without being prompted to. That’s when Martens began to speak.

“This bitch can hear you loud and clear, Chai Constantine. But, you know what, let me humor you. You want to know why your boss isn’t yapping like the dog he is? That’s because you three are in dire straits. There’s no proof of you being here. No camera footage, no audio recording, no evidence at all that you even entered this building. This room is completely insulated, no electromagnetic signal can escape, even if by chance one of your hidden microphones eluded our scanners. For all that anyone outside this room knows, you could be booked on a private plane to Novosibirsk, accidentally crash-landing and leaving no survivors in the ensuing explosion. That’s why he doesn’t say a word. Contrary to you, he knows his place.”

Chai gritted her teeth, her fingers closed around her peace medallion, fidgeting with it out of frustration, bending it forward and backward. Ange patted her shoulders. Her heavy breathing began to get slower, calmer, until she finally regained her composure. Martens was surprised that such a mad dog could have some residual self-control. She looked at Jennifer, then at Ange.

“Now that that is settled, I’m still waiting for an answer. What is so important to you about that damn night?”

Ange cracked his neck, leaning forward, the black lenses of his skull mask meeting Martens’s inquisitive gaze. She felt as though she was staring into deep abyss slowly consuming all her light. A bottomless, unfathomable darkness. Peering into that void, Martens felt her confidence waver for an instant, until Ange’s voice broke the spell.

“I’ll keep it short, Ms. Martens. The morning after that damn night, as you call it, my friend and colleague Red was arrested by the police, with several gunshot wounds… only to be released less than twenty-four hours later, and to disappear out of thin air from the hospital room he was brought to. Two years ago, we found out that not only had Red survived, but that he was later kidnapped by your company and used as a test subject for the Schwarzer Blitz project… for no less than twelve years. Twelve. Years. Do you have any idea how long twelve years are to a guinea pig, Martens?

Martens squinted her eyes. She looked at the man, at his hidden face, trying to take him seriously and to not care about that silly skull mask of his.

“Your point being?”

“I… no, we want justice for him. The whole of Crossbones. Red was a son of a whore, a weed-for-brains, but he was one of us. We can’t leave things as they are. He… we deserve closure. This is why we started seeking information about that damn night. In our place, you’d probably have done the same.”

Martens sneered, looked at him with contempt, her face twisted in a violent grimace.

“Ignorance is bliss, Skallen. Had you not played with forces beyond your comprehension, you wouldn’t be here, fifty meters below ground, surrounded by five armed soldiers without any weapons of your own, in this insulated room without windows or any other way out.”

With a sudden gesture, Martens threw open her jacket and began to unbutton her shirt.

“But let’s hear it! Let’s hear what you found out about it, about that damn night! I’m curious, Skallen, I’m curious to hear your… opinions! Justice, you say? Justice for Red? After twelve years as a guinea pig? Tell me, Skallen…”

She spread her shirt apart, revealing a deep scar that ran through her chest, traversing her left breast. Stopping right where common people believed the heart was.

“…Didn’t he deserve it, for doing this to me?!”

**

That night, LeJarme was pacing around his office, despite the late hour. He should have already been meeting Apoorva, Mr. Ramanujan’s daughter, at a rather expensive restaurant downtown. But something just wasn’t right.

The previous night, someone had tried to force open a locked elevator, the only one that was able to access the underground levels… right as a shipment of fifteen new child test subjects was due to be delivered to Martens. And at the same time, while all hands were on deck to determine how the breach happened and if there were any intruders in the main building, the unmarked transport that was bringing the kids to Encorp was stopped by the local police.

The driver had the decency to off himself instead of getting caught, but those fifteen orphans were seized by the authorities and moved to a safe place. There was no way they could connect that transport back to Encorp, no way. They left no trace, every document was shredded, there was no electronic trail to speak of. Yet, the situation made him feel uneasy.

That couldn’t have been a coincidence. Someone was maneuvering in the dark to stop Medusa. Someone with a lot of connections. Someone like… Jackson.

Indeed, it had to be Jackson. Who else had any interest in tipping the bobbies and putting a spanner in his works? But what if it wasn’t him? That bald idiot was too powerful to be attacked without evidence.

He needed to find out more about it, preferably when nobody else was around… even if that meant straining his relationship with the CEO’s daughter. He clicked a button on his office phone, a button with the label “Home AI” taped on.

“Okay, Kiko. Call Apoorva and tell her I won’t be joining for dinner. There’s something I need to take care of at work. Also, stop all calls to my private phone until further notice.”

A synthetic voice replied from the other side of the receiver, confirming his requests. LeJarme sighed. He hated dealing with such trivial matters in person — an AI-relayed message would hopefully be enough for her.

He glanced at the clock. Half past nine. It was late, but he couldn’t shake off that bad feeling. The loss of new potential specimens left him and Martens with just one living test subject — the original Medusa. What if the same people who orchestrated the first attack came for her next? Would Horowitz be enough to deal with them? That red-headed moron was a powerhouse, but he stubbornly refused to get along well with his colleagues. Promoting him to head of the lab security team after just one month had been a mistake.

A ringing sound, monotonous, irritating. His office phone.

It was Horowitz.

Speak of the devil.

“LeJarme speaking.”

“Yo, Tony, have you sent the guys down there back home? My elevator key isn’t working and nobody is answering me.”

LeJarme’s mind needed a couple seconds to elaborate on that sentence.

“…Shouldn’t you be down there with them already, you moron?”

“I’m late. It happens, ‘kay? I gave notice to Martens, she said it was all fine.”

“You should have given notice to me, for chrissake! And obviously your key doesn’t work, the personnel elevator has been out of order since last night! Tell me, did you skip your shift yesterday evening, you unreliable swine?”

“Oh, come on, Tony! From floor minus-two everyone can freely take the management elevator, you know that, right? But the problem is that I can’t get down! I thought you geniuses fixed that shit up already. Now, question time’s over, ‘kay?”

LeJarme bit his lips almost up to the point of making it bleed. Horowitz’s voice kept on coming out from the speakers without giving him any time to construct a proper retort.

“Come on, what am I supposed to do, twiddle my fingers while nobody answers? Why aren’t Gambetta and the others picking up their goddamn phones?”

LeJarme growled into the microphone, raised his voice by some fraction of a decibel.

“How should I know? Ask Martens, since you are clearly so buddy-buddy with her!”

“I tried, Tony. But Martens ain’t answerin’ either. Funny that, huh?”

LeJarme blinked. Once, twice in a rapid succession. Martens should have been available 24/7, there was no way Horowitz was telling the truth. He was playing him, that homeless bum was absolutely playing him.

“One second, I’ll call you back.”

He hung up the call, pushed the button with Martens’s name on it, waited for the connection to get established.

A repeated beeping noise welcomed his attempt with its mocking monotony.

No signal.

Surely it was a blip in the system. A connection error. LeJarme pushed the button again. But the result didn’t change.

No signal.

Martens was unreachable.

LeJarme cursed in French. Not being able to contact Martens at such a critical time was the last thing he needed. In that instant, a horrible thought crossed his mind. What if Martens was down there, in the lab? What if…

He started sweating profusely.

He frantically booted up his office computer, entered the management program, used his retinal scan to unlock the confidential section. In a hurry, he typed the wrong command three times, before finally reaching the correct tab — the security entrance logs for the Medusa laboratory. However, instead of the familiar camera feed and list of accesses, he was met with a different message, written in blinking, white, capital letters.

No signal.

LeJarme stood still for a second, staring at the screen in disbelief. There couldn’t be no signal. The system was wired, guaranteed to work unless someone physically severed the cables. He clicked on the refresh button.

No signal.

He clicked again.

No signal.

Again.

No signal.

Again.

No signal. No signal no signal no signal NO SIGNAL NO SIGNAL NO SIG NO SIG NO SI NO S NO NNNNNNNNNNN…

LeJarme screamed at the top of his lungs. His face turned into a mask of melting wax, his muscles aching and twisting, sweat rapidly pouring out of his skin pores. He reached for the phone again, missed the keyboard twice, pushed the red button, panting like a caged animal.

One ring.

Two rings.

Three rings.

“DAMMIT, answer, you idiot! Answer! ANSWER!”

A beep. Someone picking up.

“Horowitz.”

“I’ll be on the ground floor in a minute. I’ll meet you in front of the management elevator! Quick!”

**

The corridor was dimly lit, neon lights flickering on the ceiling. Some not working well, some outright broken. The budget for the light appliances had been cut for several years in a row, and this was the result. LeJarme’s eyes hadn’t yet adapted to the bluish light, scattering across the bare, concrete walls and along the floor grid. Every time he came down there, it was always, always the same story: he would make a mental note about diverting some of the monthly allowance of the Medusa project to renovation works, only to forget about it ten minutes later.

However, this time his brain had something far more important to process. Contrasting, bizarre signals coming from his eyes. Signals that were overloading his cognitive functions. Pictures he didn’t want to believe. Blood. Bodies. Scattered around. All dead. Four men. The guards.

LeJarme was drenched in a cold sweat. The guards to the Medusa lab. Dead. All of them. How was that possible? How could that happen, without anybody noticing? It had to be an inside job, it had to be. There was no other explanation.

Horowitz was kneeling down, inspecting one of the corpses, the man he previously referred to as Gambetta.

“Knife wounds. Fresh. No sign of retaliation. They didn’t know what hit them. Whoever it was, they were too fast for these guys to react.”

LeJarme was standing terrorized in front of the carnage. He had never seen a dead body in such a state, never. He wasn’t a man of action, he was just a white collar clerk who happened to be brilliant enough for a management position, gaining leverage by dating none other than the CEO’s daughter. His most adventurous, bold action in his entire life was telling his ex-wife one time that he was refusing to go buy groceries for her. How did it come to this?

“Who… what…”

Breathe, Antoine. Just breathe. It’s okay, soldiers are expendable, right? It’s okay, as long as the door is sealed, as long as everything is closed. You can find more guards, it’s barely a problem. You can replace them with a sneeze, Antoine. As long as Medusa is safe. As long as she is in your hands, everything else can be fixed, bought, replaced.

But of course, Antoine. Of course. No need to worry about it. Unless…

LeJarme snapped out of his trance, frantically running towards the door console, the one which managed the entrance to the laboratory. He first inspected the door. It was solid, seemingly untampered with, still standing. His heartbeat slowed down. It was the first good news of the evening. But what if…

He unlocked the console with his fingerprint, pulled up the entrance logs. They were there, still working. The computer was alive and well. Only the connection to his office was severed, somehow. He clenched his teeth, typing like a madman on the sturdy, mechanical keyboard.

It hadn’t happened, for sure it hadn’t happened, but he had to check, he had to.

“Hey, Tony, what’s up?”

“Silence, monkey!”

Finally, the log he was searching for appeared on screen. The log detailing the last access.

He gazed at the time.

Ten minutes ago.

Then, he saw the name.

“NO!”

LeJarme screamed, a primal yell that echoed inside the corridor, his head compressed between his hands, his eyes closed, his lips bleeding profusely.

“That gaudy bastard! That gaudy bastard thinks she can fool me?!”

Martens.

Edda Martens was inside the laboratory.

Alone.

With the only Medusa specimen left.

LeJarme fell to his knees, breathed deeply, before standing back up.

“I’m not… I’m not an idiot, Martens! I’m not an idiot!”

He turned towards Horowitz, his pupils reduced to tiny dots, his face distorted by a manic expression.

“Horowitz! Get your gun out and be ready to shoot at my command! Come with me, I’m opening the door! That slimy traitor is getting her comeuppance!”

Horowitz shrugged, shook his head.

“And what if she isn’t alone? What if she has a small army with her? I’m not paid enough to die like a dog for you.”

LeJarme didn’t even listen to him. He looked into the retina scanner, a bleep in response, marking the success of the operation.

“You are paid to follow my orders! You are paid to kill all trespassers, compris? Now, ready your damn gun and get into the room!”

The door locks clicked, one after another, slowly, second by second.

Horowitz cocked his handgun, disengaged the safety.

“As you wish, Tony. I’ll follow your orders to a T. All your orders, ‘kay?”

“Good.”

LeJarme wiped the sweat off his forehead, breathed nervously. Martens. That wench, that wench had to pay. This was all her plan, all her doing. She was ready to sink her teeth into his throat the whole time. One last click. The security door retracted inside the wall, opening upon a vast hall, filled to the brim with weird machinery. In the middle of the room, a woman in a business suit, with short brown hair, stared at the newcomers with a puzzled expression.

Edda Martens.

“Antoine? I didn’t know you were still around. Why did you come down here? Haven’t you seen the corpses outside?”

LeJarme grinned, a spark of fake courage, the faux bravado of a man who felt on the top of the world. It was Marten’s doing all along. She wanted to steal Medusa. It was clear as day. And he would be the one to tell it to Mr. Ramanujan. He would be rewarded for his loyalty. He, Antoine François-Marie LeJarme, would become the next rising star of Encorp.

“I’m doing what’s right! How could you betray my trust? How could you betray the company that saved us from the streets, Edda?! I was expecting this from Jackson, but not from you!”

“Wha… what? That doesn’t make any sense, you absolute cretin!”

She then glanced at the man behind LeJarme, the red-haired guard in a trench coat. She gasped.

“Wait a min– Horowitz?! Where is the support team?! I ordered you to–”

A loud bang broke her sentence in half.

First, she felt the shock.

Then, it was the pain, radiating through her chest.

And then the blood trail, under her left breast.

Edda Martens flinched, lost her balance, falling to the ground with a loud thud. Her nape hitting the tiles, her eyes stuck wide open. LeJarme stared at her, his tongue frozen, his muscles stiff. A voice came from behind him, a cold, inflectionless whisper.

“Kill everybody who tries to get into the room, with extreme prejudice. Those were the orders, weren’t they, Tony?”

LeJarme turned around, slowly, speechless, completely dumbfounded. Horowitz was looking at him with those dull eyes, that dumb smile painted on his face.

And a gun pointed at LeJarme’s forehead.

**

Jennifer closely examined the wound, looking at it with interest — a plastic surgery operation gone wrong, scarred tissue crossing a prosthetic breast implant, reaching all the way to the sternum. She closed her eyes, pushing her sunglasses against her nose, deep in thought.

“He shot to kill.”

Ange nodded, crossing his arms.

“Yeah. Nice aim. He went straight for the big target, as he should have. I knew Red was a gun nut, but hot damn, that kind of precision with so little time to aim? I wish I was that good.”

Chai turned her head around quizzically, her blindfold getting in the way.

“Oi, come on! Big bro Red scored a perfect hit? And the wound is still visible? Dammit, if only I could see it…”

Jennifer shook her head with a sigh.

“Maybe if you spent your money on prosthetic eyes instead of a new array of vibes…”

“Oi, shut ya mouth! You sent me the link to that sale! And all my old ones broke after that short circuit that burned half’a all the electronics at HQ!”

“Well that begs a different question — why were you charging your sex toys at HQ?”

“Because I live there, ya old hag?! Do you have any idea how much it costs to rent a one-room flat in Shard?”

Martens blinked once. Twice. Were they joking? At a time like this? She couldn’t understand these people. She buttoned up her shirt, without saying a word. These clowns couldn’t really be members of Crossbones. These clowns couldn’t have been the ones who violated their archives. And yet…

“I do, in fact, have an idea, since I live in one myself. With your Crossbones salary, you should easily be able to afford it.”

“Oi, well guess what? I can’t! Either our expectations are different or the old man here is too stingy with his money!”

The guards chuckled, started to talk amongst each other, buzzing in the background, slinging sarcastic remarks. One of them called Chai cute, another commented on Jennifer’s body. Martens clenched her fist, slammed it onto her desk.

“This is not a goddamn graduation party! I don’t know if you have realized the precariousness of your situation!”

Silence fell onto the room. The guards stopped talking. Chai stopped talking. Jennifer stopped talking. Martens was livid, her gaze was burning, her face contorted in pure, unbridled rage.

“You are all just like him! All like that bastard, that filthy mutt that almost killed me! You’re all just faking being morons, but you’re planning to play dirty! Do you think I’m stupid?!”

She pointed her index at Jennifer.

“You! There was no information about you on the entire Internet! We found everything, absolutely everything about your two partners here, but you were just a black hole of nothingness! You must be the one who hacked our archives, an external professional hired by Skallen! And there’s no way in hell you haven’t read those records yet!”

She snapped her fingers. Her soldiers promptly stood in line, readied their weapons.

“That night, Horowitz tricked me, he tricked us all! I survived out of sheer luck, just because his projectile happened to get stuck in my prosthetic breast! To think a cancer mastectomy saved me from a bullet to the heart. That’s rich, isn’t it?”

Ange shrugged, remaining seated nonchalantly on the sofa.

“Oh, absolutely. Nevertheless, Red was darn smart. He kept the whole operation a secret, even to us. Only Jackson and him knew the details. Interesting, isn’t it? And he performed wonderfully, beyond anyone’s expectations. Killing four armed men, severing the connections with the central server, tricking you into opening the laboratory door to check on Medusa, convincing LeJarme to open the door again while you were already inside…”

Martens’s face lost color, her mouth agape.

“Wait, how…”

Skallen couldn’t know that. She had taken personal care in removing each and every detail of her involvement in the facts of that night. She had erased them from the archives. It wasn’t possible, nobody could have had access to the whole story. Nobody except…

“Now, Ms. Martens... Would you also like to know what happened afterward?”

**

LeJarme fell to the ground, his butt on the cold tiles, his voice broken, his arms moving wildly.

“Ho… Horowitz! What… what is the meaning of this? What does it mean?!”

“I’m just following your orders. Relax, Tony.”

“You didn’t have to shoot her yet! That was… that was…”

Horowitz pushed his gun right up against LeJarme’s forehead.

“Alright, Tony, you know what? You are right. That was barbaric of me. But you know what else is barbaric?”

Horowitz pointed his finger at the small bed behind them, at the child laying on it, sedated, her ankles and wrists locked in place with chains.

“The shit you sickos are doing here. Creating bioweapons for profit… and keeping that profit all for yourself. Ever thought about sharing some of that money with your star performer, Tony? What if we sold Medusa to the US and went to some remote island with loads and loads of cash and a new name? What would you do about that?”

LeJarme couldn’t move a muscle. His tongue was stuck, his eyes as wide as humanly possible, his breath, his heartbeat going crazy.

“Oh, wait, first you want to know how I did it, don’t you? Like, what about Gambetta and the others? How did you get rid of them, Horowitz?!”

He spit to the ground.

“Amateurs. You scraped the bottom of the barrel with them. They weren’t soldiers, they were kids playing with expensive rifles. Disposing of them was easy. As was convincing Martens that we had an incursion. I used the exact same tactics as with you, Tony. But she was smarter, see? She didn’t allow me to enter the room. She sealed it as soon as she stepped in, remaining alone with Medusa, ordering me to alert the security. Not that it was a problem, Tony. In fact, I needed you down here. Had one or two loose ends to tie up.”

LeJarme crawled backward on his palms, trying to put distance between the armed man and himself, but whatever movements he made, Horowitz followed closely. The gun barrel was still planted firmly on his forehead.

“You made my life difficult, Tony. I should have done everything in one night — one single night. Force the door open, take the kid out, and collect my money. Simple and clean. But your goddamn fingerprint scanner ruined my plans. That practical joke cost me one month. One. Whole. Month. Of pain. One month of being bossed around by a worm like you. Someone who never touched a weapon in his life, someone who was handed his success on a silver platter, someone who never had to make ends meet.”

Horowitz opened his jacket. An old, rusty medallion with a peace symbol shone in the dim light of the laboratory. LeJarme looked at it, as if hypnotized by its regular oscillations. Then, the cold embrace of steel on his skin reminded him of his situation.

“Now, Tony, think about this. How about a 50/50 agreement? We sell the kid and go on living the good life. What’s your answer, Tony?”

“…”

“SPEAK, TONY.”

LeJarme felt something hot flowing down his pants. He realized in horror that he was soiling himself, a yellowish liquid leaking onto the floor. A sign that his body was giving up, and his mind was following suit. He tried to collect himself, he had to. After all, he was Antoine François-Marie LeJarme, the creator of the Medusa project, the most brilliant mind that ever graced Encorp. He had never been wrong, ever. There was surely a way out. His teeth clattered, kept moving, but slowly, slowly, he managed to stop his muscles from contracting, and got his groove back.

“Ho… Horowitz, I…”

A loud bang echoed in the chamber. A shower of blood and brain matter followed soon after.

“Wrong answer.”

Horowitz stared at the headless, decapitated body in front of him, glanced with curiosity at the remnants of the lower jaw, trying to count how many teeth were still attached to it. Then, he kicked it down, making it fall to the ground. He cleaned off his trench coat with his hand, removing some of the entrails that splattered onto it. He hated the smell, but whatever, he had grown almost accustomed to it. Offing LeJarme in such a spectacular way had been cathartic — extremely cathartic. Knowing that Jackson was going to pay extra for that made it even sweeter. He pranced lightly around the room, ignoring the screens, ignoring the machinery, ignoring Martens’s hemorrhaging corpse. Nothing was worthy of his attention right now, except one thing.

The small bed at the center of the room, or more specifically, the girl lying on top of it. Dirty, malnourished, pathetic, wearing only a gray gown. But alive. He smirked. His colleague Roger was waiting for him back up on the ground floor with his van — he had promised him a share of the cake. It was time to leave Encorp behind forever, change his name, and maybe his face too.

The last odd job of Jerediah Horowitz. The first step in the new life of Donner Misterkay, an eccentric entrepreneur from Tel Aviv, living in a luxurious penthouse in Cuba, surrounded by money, weed, and top models. All his documents were ready, just waiting for him.

He unlocked the cuffs, freed the child, and carried her on his shoulder. The job was almost done, he just had to leave the building.

Unfortunately for him, though, Fate had another development in mind. In the shape of a concealed emergency button in the hand of a woman whom he thought to be dead.

**

“You are resilient, Ms. Martens, I’ll give you that. In your place, after witnessing a head exploding right in front of me, I would have never thought about trying to stop the man who shot that bullet. But you did. You faked your death, and alerted the guards. They closed in on Red before he could get out, riddling him with bullets. But you didn’t find the girl, did you? And you couldn’t stop him from being saved by the police. It was Roger who had alerted them, you know. Better to be put in prison than killed in action, for us Crossbones.”

Ange stood up, looking Martens straight in the eyes.

“The rest is history, right? Red escaped from the hospital, your company faked LeJarme’s suicide — you didn’t want the cops to investigate too deep into Encorp’s dark secrets, after all — and the Medusa project was axed for good. A sad story for everyone, but you recovered, and later managed to snatch up Red — pardon, Donner Misterkay — during one of his trips to Shard. That idiot should have kept a low profile, but no, let’s go right into the wolf’s den! What a goddamn moron!”

The atmosphere was tense. Five guards with weapons readied, a very disgruntled woman between them and the Crossbones trio. Martens breathed heavily. There was no way, no way Skallen had access to those facts. She had never told them to anybody. She closed her eyes shut, trying to collect her thoughts. Something was amiss, terribly amiss.

Suddenly, she laughed. Yes, she laughed. She had no idea how that had happened. That should have been impossible, by any metric. Yet she couldn’t do anything else but laugh. She went on laughing for a couple minutes, before finally stopping. One last deep breath, before moving forward, before trying to take control again.

“That's amusing, Skallen. Medusa wasn’t a very bright idea either. I think it was greenlit just because LeJarme slept with Ramanujan’s daughter. That bastard has gone senile, he listens to all the wrong people. I jumped on that train for fear of missing out on its results. In case it didn't work, there was Jackson's signature on that document and a pathetic French butt on the line. But thanks… Thanks for confirming to me that you three are too dangerous to be left alive, Skallen.”

Martens snapped her fingers again. The firing squad disabled the safety on their guns, stepping towards the sofa. Ange raised his arms into a surrendering pose, nodded in the direction of Jennifer. She mirrored his gesture, raising her arms too. Then, Chai stood up. She moved between them and the armed guards, touched the tip of the plasma rifle with curiosity, much to the shock of its wielder.

“Oi, old man, you really think they're gonna shoot? Come on! This is a Sachson Bandera, an anti-robot weapon! If the poor sod pushes the trigger, there won't be anything left of the whole room, let alone us. Nah, this one is just here to make a scene. I bet the bitch wants to scare us and force us to sign something.”

Martens blinked, staring at the girl. The guards stared too, exchanging weird glances towards each other. Chai was prancing around the room, examining each of their weapons, avoiding every obstacle with grace, behaving like she could see them. She turned back to her starting point, with all eyes on her, in a weird, almost respectful silence. She reached for her blindfold, pushed the clip on her nose, splitting it in half. The cloth fell to the floor.

Then, she opened her eyes.

Martens tried to scream, tried to avert her gaze, but she couldn't. She was stunned, hypnotized. Her irises, Chai's irises, were a dazzling show of ever-changing colors, patterns, shapes, all dancing around her pupils, fluctuating at impossible frequencies, without ever stopping. A glimmering frenzy that caused the nervous system of anyone who looked at them to shut down, paralyzing the entire body, save for the autonomic functions.

Medusa.

An apt name for a weapon that could petrify humans with a single glance.

Martens desperately tried to move her fingers, her lips, her eyelids. She tried to speak, to shout, to scream, but no part of her body responded. Only her brain was awake, forcing her to look in awe at the girl standing in front of her, the same girl that fourteen years ago was used as the first test subject for the project.

Ange patted her head in an affectionate gesture.

“Good job, Chai. You know that you can close your eyes now, right? They're all out of commission for the next half hour or so, anyway.”

“Oi, old man, shut ya trap! I've waited for this moment for fourteen fuckin' years, ya got it? Let me savor it!”

Ange ripped a gun from the hand of a paralyzed guard, weighed it, cocked it, all while whistling some long lost French pop song.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Take your time, while aunt Jenn and I shop around a bit. Hey, Jenn, do you prefer an uzi or a handgun?”

“A handgun is fine. Uzis are too noisy and impractical in such a cramped space.”

“As you wish, princess.”

Martens's mind was racing. Jennifer's super dark sunglasses. Ange's tacky mask. It was all for that, for protecting themselves from Medusa's — from Chai's — immobilizing gaze. Then, she noticed it.

Chai's medallion.

A rusty chain with a peace insignia, which looked like an old piece of Woodstock memorabilia.

The very same Horowitz used to wear.

**

Ange was still a lower-ranking member of Crossbones, when Roger brought the kid there. She was around eight, nine years old at the time, and looked quite tiny and inoffensive when wrapped up in her long, pink dress and dainty shoes, wearing very thick, dark glasses. Especially in a hall full of grown up, grizzled war veterans in skull armor.

At least until she started talking.

“Oi, old men! Why do you all dress like it's Halloween? Isn't it out of season for grandpas like you? Or are you just a bunch’a pedo freaks?”

The first impression was certainly not the best. Ange would have liked to strangle her and throw her into the Thames, then look for her body, strangle her again, and only then bury her six feet under. Roger and Blazer had to stop him from slapping her in the face right then and there. Ange didn't understand them, he was just trying to educate her the same way his father educated him, with the same effective methods. But apparently the damage was already done, in an almost irreversible way.

The kid had lived one year alone with Red.

One year.

With Red.

One full year, together with Jerediah “Red” Horowitz — the Crossbones member with the uncontested record of most racial slurs uttered in a single sentence and hashish joints smoked in one hour.

As an eight year old child.

No wonder things went sideways so quickly.

Blazer, the founder of Crossbones himself, had tried to defuse the situation by taking it into his own hands to greet the newcomer.

“Hello, Chai. Name's Blazer Ikata. I'm a friend of Red and I'm the boss here. I want to welcome you to your new home.”

“Blazer Ikata? Oh, that shitface that pays pennies for slavery-levels of working hours, only to give you an extra pat on the shoulder as a tip? Red talked a lot about you. He said he was happy that you only had five years left to live. I hope cancer takes you sooner, though.”

That time, it was Roger and Ange that had to restrain Blazer from kicking her, even if they both shared their boss's sentiment. If Chai had been an ordinary girl, they would have thrown her out immediately, and she probably would have ended up in some backwater orphanage in Botswana.

But Chai wasn't a normal girl. Chai was a bioweapon. Chai was Medusa. And, unbeknownst to Encorp, she was still alive and kicking. She was also the last person to have seen Red, after he disappeared in Shard without notice, leaving her behind. But he was smart, and instructed her well. Once she realized he wasn't coming back, she called Roger from her burner phone, addressing him with the N-word out of the blue, for good measure (his number was saved under that word in the phone’s contacts too).

And Chai took something with her, one last memento of Red — his rusty peace locket. She would always wear it, never taking it off, not even during showers, baths, or her most intimate moments later in her teens. That locket was her most prized possession. Touching it without her permission would result in her using her paralyzing gaze on the unsuspecting victim, leaving them stunned for at least thirty minutes and forcing Roger to deal with them, even if they were just an innocent passersby. Medusa's secret had to be kept at all costs — all damage was collateral.

From her, they learned about the last phases of Red's incursion inside Encorp, even if details about the build-up were lacking; apparently, Red never talked about Jackson with her, leaving him out of their conversations completely. But he did talk about LeJarme and Martens. Her favorite bedtime story was the recounting of LeJarme's death, which — according to her — became more and more gruesome as the weeks passed, sometimes adding impossible anatomical details like a second pair of kidneys or three buckets of brain matter.

Ange was sure that if any of that reached the ears of a social assistant, they would have all been jailed for child abuse, all of Crossbones, him included. Fortunately, with time, Chai learned to moderate her language and let go of most of the slurs, so that she could be sneakily sent to a school for visually impaired kids, but her signature “oi” never left her mouth.

And now, fourteen years later, she was standing there, in front of the woman that turned her into a monster. Only, this time, she was the executioner.

**

Ange cracked his neck, walked slowly towards the center of the room.

“It all went according to plan. Thanks, Jenn. Your participation was invaluable.”

“You can express your appreciation by increasing my bonus.”

“Oh, sure. I'll take it out of Chai's salary.”

“Oi, don't you dare, ya old fart!”

A burst of laughter, almost simultaneous. Ange looked around the room, at the six people standing completely still, like statues in a wax museum.

“Well, I guess this is it. We have a table reserved at Jackson's for eight PM. What time is it now?”

Jenn tapped the side of her sunglasses, looked at the info displayed inside the lens.

“Six thirty-seven. If we finish up in eight minutes, we can catch the bullet train to New Langdon.”

“Hear that, Chai? Eight minutes.”

She nodded as a response.

“Well then, start with the clean-up, old man!”

“Uh-huh.”

Without saying a word, Ange and Jenn raised their handguns, disengaged the safety, pulled the triggers four times each. Martens heard the shots, heard the infernal noises, but she couldn't react, she couldn't do anything. However, in the corners of her eyes, she saw the blood. She saw the bodies collapsing, falling down from the momentum transferred by the projectiles.

All her guards.

Dead.

Ange got nearer to her, looked at her in her stiff, fixed eyes, reading the fear in her immovable irises.

“I know what you are thinking. That we can't kill you, because otherwise we are dead meat, because Encorp and the police will find us wherever we go. But hey, you said it yourself. There's no proof of us even entering this building, right? No evidence, none at all. Incidentally, we could be anywhere else right now, with at least two dozen witnesses ready to testify. And you could also be somewhere else. Like, let's say... on a private plane to Novosibirsk. Which happened to crash land about ten minutes ago, killing you and your guards in the process. Ironic, isn't it?”

Martens wanted to cry, to shout, but she couldn’t, her body refusing to react. Then, she saw it. Ange passing the gun to Chai, Chai weighing it, passing it from one hand to the other. Then she felt it. The cold sting of metal on her forehead, pressed right between her eyes. Chai's finger on the trigger, her gaze full of resentment.

“Sayonara, motherfucker. Say hi to LeJarme for me.”

**

Jackson's wasn't the best place to eat, as the menu was rather poor in terms of choice, but it was the coziest place Ange knew. He was donning a nice tuxedo, his armor and mask left in the cupboard. Jenn was sitting at his side, with a red satin dress she kept for special occasions. Even Chai had time to wear something more comfortable, and for once she looked like a properly educated, high-society girl — albeit with a one-directional visor to avoid causing a ruckus as Medusa. Ange was going through the list of dishes of the day, while casually commenting on the outcome of the mission.

“...Masterful operation, if I may say so. They were so focused on trying to learn who this mysterious Jennifer was, that they didn’t think to verify all the information about Chai. Once they found her Booner profile, they even stopped looking. Morons.”

“And your Singloo profile, old man. Because I guess you couldn’t figure out how to use a more modern dating app, right? Or what, are you looking for women twice your age?”

Jenn smirked at them, taking a sip of wine.

“Shush, you two. No talking about work during dinner.”

Chai looked around the cafe. She had been there a couple times, once even because of rumors of a drunken shark stripping naked during a highschool party, but she hadn't had any luck in meeting him. She noticed the faceless manager in a yellow suit, standing behind the counter, who was also looking at them in turn, with the corner of his obscured eye, while talking with a waiter. She rested her cheek on her open hand, playing with her glass with the other.

“So, old man, you say that guy there is called Jackson? That ni–”

She quickly stopped herself in her tracks, rephrased her thoughts.

“...that banana mofo with the blurry face? And he was with you when you met Red again?”

“Jenn, him, myself, and about a dozen other people, yes. I even got to trade punches with him once more. Or, uh, three times more. I mean, Jenn, would you say any Donner counts as Red? Or only the huge, four-eyed one?”

“If every Donner counted, I'd have killed Red once too. Which isn't even that special, seeing as Elena killed him twice.”

“But you blew him to bits with a bomb.”

“That doesn't increase the score.”

Chai grasped her peace locket, watching her faint reflection in its rusty surface.

“Oi, you know what? Sometimes I miss him. He was a very, very bad surrogate parent, don’t get me wrong. He made me smoke weed when I was eight, taught me how to pickpocket people buying groceries at the market, how to pick open bike locks, how to steal toys from other children, and a lot of other... questionable things. But he also taught me... to live.”

She kept on stroking the metal, her last memento of the weird, violent man that changed her life, that gave her a life.

“In retrospect, I don't know why he didn't sell me to the US and move to Cuba, like he wanted to. Hell, I guess he became the “fancy millionaire Donner Misterkay” in the end — without the fancy and without the millionaire. But do you think… he had a heart, hidden in there somewhere? That he could feel attachment to people that weren't him?”

Yes.

Chai saw it for an instant. A reflection, a weird, sudden reflection on her medallion. Cold shivers ran down her spine as she glanced around in search of the source. But it was in vain — no object looked like what she saw on the metal. It was too sudden to be noticed, yet too slow not to be noticed. Her heart skipped a beat, her mind raced, but her soul understood.

“...Thank you.”

She closed her eyes, embracing that rusty, old locket once more. And just then, she felt the warmth of four, bright, sad eyes, watching over her. If only for a fleeting moment.