Child of Hades

18. Round 3 (Leo)

"Oh boy. I feel sorry for YOU.", Charon giggled provocatively inside his cell. Psychological warfare was the only weapon he had left. I felt proud but simultaneously his words were aggravating me.

"And why is that?", I asked, trying to hide my anger.

"You see this little stunt you pulled, threatening me, killing my mercenaries, arresting me... It is not going to end like you think it does." He paused to laugh. Black eyes examined me once again. His recklessness was sealed deep inside his eyes. "What do you think your superiors are going to say about this?"

I was walking nervously in front of the cell, trying to maintain a calm expression. "Arresting you was the right thing to do."

Charon could not contain himself, tearing up in laughter. "The right thing to do, ha. Well kid, let me teach you a lesson about doing the right thing. You want to go through with this, you want to see me executed or sentenced to a life in slavery. Firstly, I have videos of your superiors. If my people don't hear from me, guess what is going to happen? You cannot even begin to understand the damage you will do to your own people. Secondly, do you really think your career is ever going to recover from this?" His entire being was fueled by hate. The way he talked, he enjoyed it. "No no. My people will find you. If you let me go, maybe you can still save some part of the career you could have had. Do you want to do the right thing? You won't be able to do anything anymore once you're dead. You'll be replaced by someone more corruptible. Don't think that your little charade will change anything." Charon smiled contentedly. His avatar was covered in scars, making his smile even scarier.

It took me a moment to process. "Thank you.", I said. Then I rushed to my office, picked out a proper avatar, and requested 4 soldiers to come down with me to Chaus. We teleported behind Charon's club, hidden behind a dried-out bush. Peter and Nadim had volunteered to come with me. Only officers were provided with avatars, mostly for economic reasons. It felt strange that other people were putting their lives on the line under my command.

We took out the mercenaries stationed at the back without any struggle. Nadim and I kicked in the backdoor. The building was emptier than I remembered. Perhaps they had cleared out some people when we threatened to blow up the club. My techdevice scanned the area for surrounding technology. The first few rooms we searched were filled with weapons and torture devices. We also found a teleportation block and disabled it. Finally we found the surveillance room. We were lucky enough not to lose any more soldiers, my avatar sustained only mild injuries on the arm. I requested a mechanic to be teleported to the surveillance room. With the help of Charon's techdevice we secured most files on the video station. Some things had already been deleted automatically, probably when we broke into the room. Our plasma guns burned through every last piece of equipment we found before we teleported back to our ship. I exchanged a few fist bumps with my soldiers. It felt good to still be alive. I held onto that feeling for a few minutes before returning to work.

I went into my office to watch the videos. Using basic facial recognition software, I managed to identify most of the officers shown in the videos. Most were simple foot soldiers. A few were ranked significantly higher than me.

I made some calls and then I went back to Charon's cell.

"I found your videos." I smiled smugly.

"You really think I don't have a backup?"

"I think that I can blackmail anybody that you would have been able to blackmail. Is it really so important to you to protect Lié?"

Charon was notably upset. He took a few moments to go over his options, then decided to talk. "I have been trying to get my hands on Lié for decades. She is one tough female to catch. You see many of my clients would pay good money to be with an elf."

"Do you have any information that might actually be helpful to me?"

"I know Lié came from some orphanage in Chaus. Too bad I didn't catch her then. An elf child? There's real money in that."

Charon noticed my discontent and smiled sadistically, he kept talking: "I have heard that nowadays Lié often works with some real tough guy. They call him KM-13. I don't know where he came from, but they say there's actually no species like his. Some kind of cyborg. Sadly, he meddles in different businesses than I do, so I don't have any contact information on him. If you let me out, maybe I could.."

"I am not letting you out without getting any proper information.", I interrupted him.

"Hmm. I do have the contact info of one of Lié's former flames. It's saved on my techdevice. Name's Nicholai."

"Mhmm.", I went into my thoughts.

"So when are you letting me out of this cell?", Charon said annoyedly.

"Oh. I already got in touch with the head of the Lex. I am never going to let you go. You will be dealt with by a higher ranking officer. Not one of the ones from the videos, of course. Those will all be dealt with according to the severity of their crimes."

Charon's expression was priceless.