When Mora stepped outside, she froze.
Raden was slumped stiffly against a pole. His hands were covered in blood.
Mora rushed over, panic rising in her chest. She slapped his cheeks rapidly.
"Toki! Toki! Hey, wake up!"
Raden's eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. He coughed, a wet, hacking sound that sprayed flecks of blood onto his chin. Slowly, painfully, he turned his head toward her.
"I... I was swarmed," he rasped, his voice barely a whisper. "A group of people in masks..."
His right hand trembled as he tried to reach for something on the ground beside him. Mora scanned the area, her head whipping left and right. Pedestrians walked by, indifferent, but there was no sign of any masked gang. She turned her attention back to Raden, cradling his head with her left hand.
"Who? Who did this to you?" Mora demanded. Her face was a mask of panic and rising fury.
Raden didn't answer; he just coughed again, his legs stiff and unresponsive. Finally, his shaking right hand grasped the object he had been reaching for. Mora looked down.
He was trying to give her something.
Mora gently lifted his hand and took the object. It was a book. She held it up, and the moment she saw the cover, her eyes widened.
"This is... Information Technology Guide Part 731?!"
She flipped through the pages. It was exactly the book she had been looking for. She looked at Raden, offering a faint, confused smile. How in the world had he managed to find this?
As she thumbed through the center of the book, she found a thin slip of paper tucked between the pages.
Mora pulled it out and flipped it over. The handwriting was jagged:
Tell Michael to meet me at the Pink House. If he doesn't, your life will never be peaceful again!
-Rossie
"Michael? Why does he need to meet this creature at a brothel?" Mora muttered to herself.
She shoved the note into the left pocket of her trousers and snapped the book shut. Gritting her teeth, she hoisted Raden onto her back. He was completely limp. The drones that had been trailing Mora descended, hovering at eye level. They projected a holographic UI in front of her face. Mora tapped a rapid, complex sequence on the floating display, and the interface vanished.
She adjusted her grip, struggling under the weight. Raden was an eighteen-year-old kid who only weighed 56 kilograms, but carrying him as dead weight was an entirely different beast.
Fortunately, relief arrived a few minutes later. Mora's flying vehicle—a Xeon Car descended beside them. The doors slid open automatically. Mora eased Raden into the back seat, then jumped into the driver's seat.
The dashboard lit up, projecting a dense array of holographic controls.
[Do you want to disable auto-pilot?]
[Yes] [No]
Mora hit 'Yes'. A physical steering wheel materialized from the dashboard. She tapped her wristwatch, and the drones outside zipped into the car, docking neatly in her lap before powering down.
Mora gripped the wheel. She pulled the car into a vertical ascent, and a moment later, they were streaking across the sky.
---
They arrived at the rear of the Indi(e)go building. As Mora lowered the car, the garage door yawned open. She guided the vehicle inside, parking it smoothly before killing the engine.
The garage door sealed shut behind them, and overhead, rows of orange industrial lights flickered to life, bathing the space in a warm glow.
Mora swiped across the face of her square wristwatch. A dial tone purred, and a moment later, the call connected.
"Michael, I'm in the garage. Get down here and carry Toki to the med-bay."
"Ah, right. On my way," Michael's voice crackled through the watch.
Mora tapped the screen to end the call. She walked over to a small door in the corner of the garage, pressing her thumb against the fingerprint scanner beside it. The door hissed open.
She stepped through and walked down the corridor to the elevator. She hit the button, arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently. When the doors slid open, Michael was already inside. He stepped out, headed straight for the car, and hauled Raden onto his back without a word.
They took the elevator up to the first floor and hurried to the medical room. Michael laid Raden onto a wide, clinical bed.
Directly above Raden, a massive, intricate machine hummed to life. Michael left the room and entered the adjacent observation bay. Through the glass partition, he watched Raden's prone form. He began typing rapidly on a console, initiating a deep-scan sequence.
A hologram materialized in front of Michael, a full-body X-ray of Raden. Red indicators flashed across the anatomy, highlighting damage.
"Stab wounds on both shoulders, fractures in both legs, hairline fracture in the skull, and gunshot wounds through both palms..." Michael muttered, rubbing his chin as he stared at the grim display. "What the hell did you just go through, Toki?"
He tapped his watch, calling Mora.
"Yeah, what is it, Michael?"
"Fire up the auxiliary generator. The automated repair systems won't cut it. This is too messy."
"Ah... is it that bad?"
"Yeah. He's torn apart."
"Poor Toki... alright, turning it on now."
The line went dead. A moment later, the heavy clunk of a lever echoing through the building signaled the power surge. Michael grabbed a pair of high-tech glasses from the desk. The frame read: Oxy mark II.
He slid them on. The glasses zoomed in microscopically, syncing with his gaze.
The X-ray hologram expanded, splitting into three distinct interfaces. The right panel displayed a surgical tool selection; the left monitored Raden's liver function and heart rate; the center showed the live, detailed view of Raden's internal injuries.
Michael's fingers danced in the air. As he selected tools on the right holographic panel, the robotic arms above Raden's body moved in perfect synchronization. When Michael made a motion to suture or repair on the central display, the machine executed the command on Raden's body in real-time.
---
Hours later, Michael emerged from the medical room, drenched in sweat.
The surgery had been intense, but he had watched Raden's heart rate and vitals stabilize. He had double-checked everything to ensure the boy would make a full recovery. He placed the Oxy mark II glasses on the table and wiped his forehead.
He walked down the hall to Mora's office.
The door slid open automatically. Mora was lounging in her chair, watching a movie on her laptop and crunching on a bag of chips. She spun around as the door hissed.
"Is it done?"
Michael peeled off his latex gloves and hung them on a wall hook.
"Yeah." He massaged the back of his neck. "My neck is killing me."
He walked over to a nearby lever and pulled it, powering down the auxiliary systems, then collapsed into the chair next to Mora. He let out a long, heavy sigh.
Mora stopped eating. She paused her movie and swiveled her chair to face him. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the crumpled note.
"Michael, I found this in the book I was looking for."
She handed him the paper. Michael took it, his eyes scanning the message. He lowered the paper slowly.
"Well? Do you know this person?"
Michael narrowed his eyes.
"Rossie... who is Rossie?"
"But you remember something?"
"I don't know. Just a name... maybe. Might just be a feeling."
"Him? Or her? Who do you mean?" Mora leaned in closer, her curiosity piqued.
"I have no idea. You were jogging with Raden, right? You should check the city's drone archives. Maybe we can find a lead."
Mora snapped her fingers. "Right."
She spun back to her desk and woke up her massive main monitor. She pulled up the scheduling list and location logs for the city's surveillance drones. The list was endless thousands, maybe tens of thousands of files. Mora scrolled through them at breakneck speed.
"Stop there," Michael said, pointing at the screen. "You stopped at Marlin's Book and started yelling during your jog. Play that footage."
Mora selected the file: Spectre-City-Marlin's-Book-08.13-8196.bbv
The video played. It was clear as day. A group of women wearing masks had approached Raden, offering him a book. Raden had tried to refuse. But then, in the background of the footage, Mora could be seen screaming in frustration about needing a specific IT guide. Hearing this, Raden accepted the offer from the masked group.
The moment he opened the book, a cloud of gas sprayed into his face. He slumped, his limbs going weak.
That was when the brutality started. While he was half-conscious and helpless, they stabbed him, shot his hands, and broke his legs. They rifled through his pockets, stealing his TWS earbuds. Then, one of them dipped a finger into Raden's pooling blood, wrote the note on a slip of paper, folded it, and tucked it into the book.
They scattered into a narrow alleyway and vanished.
Mora paused the recording.
"What do we do, Michael?" Mora asked, slapping her own cheeks in distress. Panic was setting in, sweat beading on her forehead. "Raden is going to recover, but the problem is-"
Michael's reply was cut short by a shattering crash.
Something smashed through the reinforced glass of the building, sending shards flying across the room. Both of them scrambled to identify the object that had breached their sanctuary.
When Michael's eyes locked onto it, his face went pale with horror.
Rolling to a stop on the floor was a severed human head. But it wasn't just a head.
Someone had carved out the top of the skull and placed a lit candle inside it, the wax dripping down the dead flesh.
"My god... what the hell is that?!"