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The Murder of Mr. Patrick Tarkell
My name is James Watts. I used to work for a major hospital on a patrolling med-team, one of the high-speed armed flying ambulances that drop down anywhere a subscriber has an accident, or an attempt made on their life. Same thing, more often than not. The pay was good, had a bit of adventure every night, saved lives. I was living fairly comfortably in the Corporate sector and had everything I wanted.
Then one night, I went out on the job, typical work shift. Our patrol route took us into the middle of the Non-Corporate sector, and a little before sunset we got a call from the border of Non-C and the Outskirts. That was out of our range, normally, but we were the only team close enough to get there in five minutes (or your money back, guaranteed).
The scene was not pretty. It never is, but this was decisively on the high end of ugly. If the fight had been a block further into the Outskirts, we wouldn't have answered. Against company policy. As it was, the call came from right where the buildings turn from run-down to ruins of rust and old concrete. There was a man with some substantial tech in the middle of the street being attacked by three guys with even more tech. Bodies of four other people were scattered around, beaten to a pulp. There was no way to know, but I had a feeling they'd just been bystanders when the cyborg fight broke out. We fired on the attackers, drove them off a distance, and landed.
I was working ground crew duty. The familiar smell of blood and burned out wires assaulted me as we rushed out, the ambulance's siren wailing a monotonous soundtrack to the job. The one who had been ganged up on was the client. I could tell from a distance that he had cyberlimbs from the shine of the chrome, but up close I saw the whole left side of his artificially tanned body was cybernetic. Cables were plugged into the back of his head, but the weapon they would have attached to was missing. The targeting scope in his eye sealed it for me; our client was a professional killer. We stabilized him, and rushed him back to the ambulance. Stupid me, I stopped when I heard one of the bodies talk to me. His young face was covered in blood, limbs askew at unnatural angles, barely alive, and asking for help.
I remember he passed out as I lifted him and carried him toward the ambulance. My teammates screamed something at me, I felt a hot searing pain in my thigh, and I collapsed. Everything went black.
Then one night, I went out on the job, typical work shift. Our patrol route took us into the middle of the Non-Corporate sector, and a little before sunset we got a call from the border of Non-C and the Outskirts. That was out of our range, normally, but we were the only team close enough to get there in five minutes (or your money back, guaranteed).
The scene was not pretty. It never is, but this was decisively on the high end of ugly. If the fight had been a block further into the Outskirts, we wouldn't have answered. Against company policy. As it was, the call came from right where the buildings turn from run-down to ruins of rust and old concrete. There was a man with some substantial tech in the middle of the street being attacked by three guys with even more tech. Bodies of four other people were scattered around, beaten to a pulp. There was no way to know, but I had a feeling they'd just been bystanders when the cyborg fight broke out. We fired on the attackers, drove them off a distance, and landed.
I was working ground crew duty. The familiar smell of blood and burned out wires assaulted me as we rushed out, the ambulance's siren wailing a monotonous soundtrack to the job. The one who had been ganged up on was the client. I could tell from a distance that he had cyberlimbs from the shine of the chrome, but up close I saw the whole left side of his artificially tanned body was cybernetic. Cables were plugged into the back of his head, but the weapon they would have attached to was missing. The targeting scope in his eye sealed it for me; our client was a professional killer. We stabilized him, and rushed him back to the ambulance. Stupid me, I stopped when I heard one of the bodies talk to me. His young face was covered in blood, limbs askew at unnatural angles, barely alive, and asking for help.
I remember he passed out as I lifted him and carried him toward the ambulance. My teammates screamed something at me, I felt a hot searing pain in my thigh, and I collapsed. Everything went black.
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