Carl Maslow. Jack Holloway. Daniela Andrade. Nikki Atkinson. Joseph Kusanagi. Janice Mason. Witnesses to history, to the shift in power. The Psychwatch officers sat in armored vehicles barreling towards the Multi Man's hideout, towards the explosion.
An Assault Fatemaker rested in the hands of every officer but Nikki, their eyes obscured behind the lens of their ThoughtControl pieces. Body armor coated them from head to toe, with a Blur hanging on their belts, the real shield from the danger that awaited them. Whatever the Man had aimed at them would render their body armor weak as paper. They all knew it. With each passing year, humanity grew more efficient at killing. The trick? Boost the firepower, wane the defenses. For everyone.
Equality in death.
There was vacancy in each officer's eyes, a great loss. Family, friends, coworkers, direction in life, gone. One day down, maybe another on its way. Mortality stood at their doorstep and handed them their guns, told them to use it to cope. Psychwatch or the masked men, life or death.
The thoughts exhausted Carl especially, wherever he was. The alter at the helm remained perfectly still, almost animatronic. Finger off the trigger, barrel trained away from him, arms tight around the Fatemaker. It seemed as if every alter in his mind had their hands on the weapon. Catalina and Loki gripped the gun as if finding a lost child while Carl and Vince carried the experience and the target, their rage subdued. Though many officers imagined Carl dropping to his knees in the dark, shrieking until his vocal cords wore down to the thinnest of strings.
Jack Holloway sat across from him with glassy eyes and perfect posture, his pointer finger hovering above the trigger of his Fatemaker. He didn't move a muscle, but his curious eyes searched the vehicle, explored his fellow officers, detecting their pain and sorrow despite how foreign such things were to him. The wound digging from his gut to his back that left his blood smeared on the wall of Psychwatch's halls did nothing to him. They sewed him up like the rag doll he was and plopped him back onto the stage.
Andrade couldn't remain stoic, not anymore. Her organic arm trembled around her gun, and her breath resisted her control. The tips of her cybernetic fingers rapped against her gun to a beat, the only sound within the van. Beyond its armored exterior, an audience of sirens and booming news reports displayed on holographic screens assaulted the vehicle, muffled but reaching the ears of Psychwatch nonetheless.
"Andrade," said Mason, and Andrade kept her fingers still. Mason raised a finger to her ThoughtControl piece. "How much closer?"
"Three minutes, Commissioner," replied Kusanagi, riding in another armored vehicle. "Ready for drone deployment. Medics following behind us."
"Good. How's Atkinson?"
A pause, the two officers awaiting a word from their younger colleague. But they received nothing.
"She's fine," said Kusanagi. "She'll be ready. You know she will."
"She better be," said Mason, and she killed the signal, returning her sights to the officers in the van.
"Hey, Maslow," said Jack, though silence was the response he got. "Maslow."
Nothing again. Gloves hid Carl's hands, obscuring his ring from his officers.
"Maslow!"
Carl blinked. Whoever had control did.
"Empty shell," said Jack. "Imagine how he'll be if we don't reach his sweet little girl on time."
The heads of every officer in the vehicle pointed in his direction. Silence remained.
"Maslow, if you can hear me...you should know that whatever happens to Sandoval is nothing compared to what I've done to her in Wonderland. That shit Slater gave me down in the Rabbit Hole? Boosted the fuck out of my imagination. I'm honestly proud of the things I came up with that I did to her."
Carl blinked again. The alter blinked. A flicker of light through a window into a vacant room.
Jack grinned. "He's there. He can see me. Hey, Maslow, you're gonna have to come back out at some point! Someone's gonna have to attend your nephew's funeral."
"Holloway!" barked Andrade. "How about you shut your mouth before that becomes the next thing we replace with cybernetics?"
Jack glared back at her. "You say that like you're not on a leash like the rest of us."
Andrade curled her finger around the trigger.
"Andrade," Mason said, and the officer's hand slipped away from her weapon.
Jack forced himself to chuckle as he returned to Carl. "We're all just utilities. The same goes for whoever the fuck's kicked Maslow to the backseat. You hear that? You're just his bulletproof vest."
The stare Carl gave Jack would've pinned any other person beneath the weight of a falling building. In a million years, Carl could never express such a thing, in fact. It took only a second for them to realize Vince was in the light.
"Fuck are you looking at?" said Jack.
Vince tilted his head. "What exactly do you tell Psychwatch that somehow convinces them to keep a thing like you around?"
Jack sat back.
"We're all gonna run out of things to say," said Vince. "Meaningful things. You're almost there. We can hear it. We can feel every word that comes out of your mouth dumb us down until we get lightheaded. You have nothing to fight for but a life that means absolutely nothing in the end. You're the only utility here, Holloway, and when you're gone, Psychwatch can and will replace you with another empty man whose only contribution to the lives of the people he comes across is the inconvenience he causes them. I'd say no one will remember you, but no one even knows you. No one ever will."
Silence pursued the officers until the vehicle came to a screeching halt. Jack's face lacked any expression, and his eyes remained hollow like that of a porcelain doll, but his finger was always curled, even when the gun rested by his side in his holster, begging for its release.
"Carl will eventually return from wherever the fuck he's gone," said Vince, "and if he sees that you've done something to Margo, he's gonna go away longer. And leave me here to ensure the outside world is approachable again by any means necessary. Even if it means removing some unwanted company."
"And what if Holloway is not the one responsible for our failure to recover Officer Sandoval?" said Mason, leaning forward in her seat. "What if circumstances get in the way?"
Vince flashed his haunting glare at the most powerful person in the city. "You're Psychwatch. No circumstance gets in your way. Only you do."
Dozens of feet stomped against the pavement outside the vehicle.
"You're like anyone else," Vince continued. "The less you care, the less you protect. And I'll bet no one in this van remembers the last time they felt protected by Psychwatch."
Mason rose from her seat, and the rest of the officers followed suit. All but Nikki, who remained sitting down, her head low and her ThoughtControl lens hovering half an inch before her shell-shocked eyes.
"Then how about we make a little challenge out of this, Mr. Vince?" Mason said. "You find Sandoval first, she's all yours. We find her first, she spends another four months in the psych ward."
"Commissioner," Andrade said, "let's just go. The other officers are—"
"They're fine, Daniela. Unlike you, they're not embarrassing themselves. They're doing what they came to do."
"And you're not embarrassing yourself? And you are doing what we came here to do?"
Mason froze. Her eyes saw through the thickest of concrete walls. She took her eyes off Vince and stared toward the door out of the vehicle, waiting. She didn't even have to look at Andrade to make her writhe around in her seat, retracting that brief moment in which she'd believed she had a voice.
"Told you, Andrade," said Jack. "You're on a leash."
"Everyone out," ordered Mason, and every officer but her, Carl, and Nikki stayed behind. Mason glanced down at Nikki and said, "Choose whoever's side you want, Atkinson, but understand what's at stake."
Nikki said nothing again, wishing she could shrink down to a speck small enough to evade a microscope.
"You should probably head off if you want to find her," Mason told Vince, and he rose from his seat and walked out of the van, only breaking eye contact until he'd dropped down to the street.
Psychwatch officers swarmed the entrance to an abandoned mall, firearms trained on the forsaken building. Drones filled the sky like vultures, and two blocks behind them, citizens gathered. Their support, their opposition, all colliding together in a cacophonous mess. Useless, disorienting background noise.
Kusanagi and Andrade stood at the frontline, guns at the ready. They watched drones zip around the sky like hummingbirds, mapping what they could. Rooms, bodies, circuitry, so much power yet only so many drones.
Vince marched through the officers. He sensed Jack prowling behind him like the apex predator he wished he was, and when Vince slowed to a stop beside Andrade, he felt Jack shove past him with a spiteful nudge from his shoulder. The two of them exchanged piercing, rancorous gazes before Vince turned away, studying the makeshift stronghold before him while Jack cracked his knuckles.
A larger holographic screen appeared before Kusanagi, and he rested an ear on his ThoughtControl piece. "Alright, drone team, keep them stable," he said, and he cupped his hands around his mouth. "WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!"
The streets went silent. All the officers heard was the whispering wind.
"We know you have a hostage!" Kusanagi said. "By order of Psychwatch, dispose of all weapons and surrender yourselves! Or we will bring you out by force!"
Glass cracked beneath each footstep within the building. The inhabitants moved about, quick as mice.
"K-K-Kusanagi?" said Atkinson through her piece.
"Yes, Atkinson?" he replied.
"The d-d-drones have detected Sentients in the building. Circuitry modeled after the human nervous system, movement on all three floors. One of them is standing at the entrance."
"What?" Kusanagi said. "How many are there?"
"I'm c-c-counting thirteen so far. Fourteen. Uh..." She gasped. "Sixteen!"
"Shit, look," Andrade said, raising her gun toward the building, and the Multi Man stood at the mall's entrance.
Fifty-five drones and the guns of sixty Psychwatch officers trained on the most dangerous stranger they'd ever come across.
"It's about time we're on equal footing," the Multi Man said.
"It's over now!" said Andrade. "You have nowhere left to run! Cooperate peacefully and let Margo Sandoval go."
"Cooperate peacefully," the Man repeated. "Two words Psychwatch has never known the meaning of. Yet somehow it still pretends that it does. That's no longer an option anymore, not that it ever was. So I'll give you options this time. You can die believing you're a lighter shade of moral gray, or you can die knowing that you are nothing more than another side of the same coin. Consider this your last chance to stop calling yourselves 'protectors' and start embracing the pain you've caused."
"We will take what we came for," said Mason, "and bury what stands in our way."
"No, Commissioner. All you do is bury. But I understand. That's what I'm here to do, too. That's all I'm here for. If only you had the guts to admit the same thing."
Mason raised a finger to her ThoughtControl piece. "Fire."
The Multi Man's Sentient stumbled back two steps, a gaping hole blasted through its chest by a Fatemaker modded into a sniper rifle. Sparks and black fluid sprayed from the wound, yet the Sentient didn't scream nor collapse. It blackened its gloves with its own lifeblood before gazing back out at the cautious officers.
Then it started beeping.
The officers raised their weapons, a commotion rising. Vince activated Carl's Blur, coating the body with a transparent shield.
"If this is what you call 'saving'," the Sentient said in a voice mangled by distortion, "then Margo might be safer with me. I think I'll keep her a little longer."
The Sentient bolted forward, the shots from the Fatemakers grazing its artificial skin. Only a lucky few officers managed to retreat with their Blurs activated before the Sentient took an enormous chunk of the street with it, the explosion reducing everything in its blast radius to pieces beyond sight and comprehension.
Vince and Jack returned to their feet, unfazed by the smoking crater between them and the derelict building. Andrade, Kusanagi, and dozens of other officers struggled to climb back up, their Blurs deflecting the worst potential injuries. They only had another second to react before a slew of gunfire rained down on them, reducing the strongest materials to smithereens.
Even with the Blur on, the air reeked of smoke and blood. Vince and Jack's eyes darted around, watching bullets shred through their fellow officers, tear through Blurs as if diving into water. They raced toward the building, Fatemakers in front of them, fingers around the trigger.
"See you in Hell, Maslow," Jack said to Vince through their pieces, and he opened fire, discharging a cavernous hole across the building's exterior.
Duck somewhere, Vince, the alter heard Carl say. Duck somewhere now! Wait for backup! Or the drones! Anyone! We have to see Margo again, even if it's the last thing we'll ever see.
Vince jumped away from Jack's impromptu entryway, crouching low, eyes vacant but hands ready to open fire. He watched the other officers charge toward the building, firing at the shooters positioned at the building's windows. Some left a mark. Others vanished in rapid spurts of red mist, reducing their Blurs to shreds. Stray bullets caught many of the drones in the sky, their shattered remains descending upon the officers below.
Andrade fired through the cavern, squatting down to avoid shots in her direction. She maneuvered over the side and stopped beside Vince, gasping for air.
She looked him in the eyes and said, "We'll find her."
"And if we don't?" Vince said.
"You have to find something. For Maslow's sake. You can't hide him in there forever. He'll miss out on an entire lifetime."
"He won't be in there forever." Vince paused. "He can't be."
* * *
Kusanagi forced himself against the wall, flinching with every shot that flew past him. He saw terror in the eyes of his fellow officers, each of them knowing their Blurs were nearly impractical now. One bullet could bounce off. The next one could scrape their skulls clean of brain matter. He watched Jack walk on, blasting cavernous breaches through the building's walls, marching through the dust clouds that sprouted from each new entryway.
"Holloway!" he said. "You find Sandoval and anything happens to her—"
"You're not Maslow, you don't have to pretend to care," Jack said.
"Just neutralize every Threat Level 5! Leave Sandoval for the ones here who know how to prevent collateral damage!"
"Oh yeah? I've never met those fuckers before. When are they coming?"
"Jesus," Kusanagi muttered, and he raised a finger to his ThoughtControl piece. "Atkinson, have you located Sandoval?"
"S-S-So far, nothing, sir," Nikki whimpered. "There are still fifteen Sentients roaming the area. P-P-Please be careful."
"We will, Atkinson. We'll find a way to neutralize them. Are any of the drones equipped with electromagnetic pulse emitters?"
"At least a dozen of them, sir, but they could knock the power out of our weapons and any nearby Scans!"
Kusanagi took a moment to breathe. "Then we gotta know when the gains outnumber the losses. Stream your drone footage to my ThoughtControl. I'll let you know when to set..."
"S-S-Sir?"
Kusanagi trained his gun on a silhouette hiding behind a curtain of dust. In the silhouette's hands glowed two daggers, and with each step he took, his ghostly-white skin pierced through like a moonbeam. The Fatemaker's laser sights hovered between Whitey's eyes, and suddenly Kusanagi felt as if he were the one in the line of fire.
"Ku...Kusanagi? A-A-Are you there?" said Nikki.
"Get me P3S data on this boy," Kusanagi whispered.
"What? W-W-What boy, sir?"
"It's one of the ones responsible for the attack on the headquarters."
"You won't find anything," Whitey said. "I'm no one."
"How old are you?" Kusanagi said.
"I'm dead. It doesn't matter."
"That other girl who was with you during the attack. Was that your sister?"
"No," said Whitey.
"Is she just another person working for the masked man?"
"No."
"Then what is she?"
"She's no one. Like me."
Kusanagi groaned. "Listen, buddy, you don't have to be doing this. We can get you out of here."
"Are you gonna take me to a doctor?" Whitey said.
"You sound scared."
"I'm not."
Kusanagi tilted his head, moving the laser sights away from Whitey. "You sound very scared."
Bullets ripped through the walls again, dousing Kusanagi in dust. He watched Whitey vanish into the shadows once again, his fast-moving footsteps fading out into distant smacks against the concrete floor. When Kusanagi looked down, a sharp, needlelike pain stabbed through his gut, blood seeping out of a new wound in his stomach, dripping out of the torn Blur down his pant leg.
The man could hardly stand. He stumbled toward what remained of the wall, wedging his fingers into one of the bullet holes to keep himself up. He heard screaming. Distant screaming. In his left ear, Nikki, crying and cursing herself for letting her superior walk into the line of fire. In the right ear, a man with a gravely voice begging for help, begging for understanding.
Then the gravely man's voice went out with a cough. When it returned, it wished only harm upon everyone within arm's reach. Screams were heard again, but they belonged to Kusanagi's fellow officers.
"Atkinson," he grunted, covering his wound with his hand. "Where are the others?"
"Th-Th-The other...the other what, sir?" she said.
"The officers. The Sentients. Where's anyone?"
"Th-Th-They're everywhere, sir. I...I wish I could help. But I can't. I...I ruin everything."
Kusanagi slid to the floor, panting. Sweat layered his brow, and his heart pumped enough blood to save a dozen people, or so he felt. He heard more of his fellow officers in the distance, saw their laser sights cut through the dust and smoke.
"Atkinson," he said, "if you can get most of us out of here, then you haven't ruined anything at all."
Nikki didn't respond.
"Look out for us. We're not going down yet. We have to find Sandoval, and we have to give these masked men what they have coming."
Kusanagi paused again, hearing a man scream for help dozens of rooms away, followed by gunshots. The building shook, and glass shattered. Confusion rattled in Kusanagi's head, however, as he listened closely to the man's pleas for helps.
The gravely, masculine voice called himself Margo Sandoval. And he swore over and over that he was trapped.
* * *
Jack scurried through the halls, Fatemaker directed forward. Anything obstructed the road ahead, he'd pull the trigger, change up the gun's mode. Some masked men had their chest mangled by a rapid-fire onslaught. Some had something blown clean off, a limb or even a chunk of their head. Others crumbled to dust upon impact, their scream cutting off as if dragged underwater.
Mask or no mask, Jack would've fired anyway. Deep down, he wanted to see what the inside of a Psychwatch officer's head looked like, specifically one popped open by his doing.
His ears endured the same barrage as Kusanagi's. Voices in one ear, voices in the other. His ThoughtControl piece and the distant screams of a raspy-voiced man refused to let him be, though he let them brush past him like the innocuous breeze they were.
Blasting another hole in the wall with his Fatemaker on Eradicator Mode, Jack stumbled upon the Multi Man positioned before an open window. Sirens blared outside, and the moon peeked out from the horizon's edge.
The Man glanced back at his armed trespasser and waited, feeling the wind from outside blow dust off his suit. "When was the last time you saw the stars?" he said.
Jack curled his finger around the trigger.
"They used to say stars were souls, and every time someone died, another would appear. But I haven't seen them in years. What could've happened to the souls?"
The blast from Jack's gun destroyed half the Man's skull, spraying the walls with black, oily fluid. When the Sentient finally faced Jack, the officer saw a chrome skull shaped exactly like an organic one beneath a layer of synthetic flesh.
Jack fired again, into the Sentient's heart. Where the heart should've been. Black fluid sprayed the floor, and manmade inner workings came into sight.
"You don't care much for souls," the Sentient said. "You don't care much for Psychwatch. Existing is enough, isn't it?"
The beeping started. Jack lowered his gun and activated his Blur.
"This is funny," said the Sentient. "Two soulless creatures talking about souls. Doesn't sound like we have the right to that kind of discussion."
"You're the only one talking, pal," Jack said, and he jogged out of the room as the Sentient detonated.
A blue wave of light consumed Jack, and his Blur heated up against his skin, searing like a ray of sunlight. The floor and walls returned to dust, and he sank through the pieces, colliding with the floor beneath him as the portion of the building within the blast radius came down with him. Bricks, concrete, glass, metal, everything joined him in his descent to the next level down.
There was no longer a wall by his side. The city of Philadelphia greeted him, told him he could start running, disappear, pretend he could escape Psychwatch. He rose to his feet, waited for dust and cold water from a burst pipe above him to stop running down his Blur to his feet. And he turned away from the outside world and retrieved his Fatemaker.
"Jack, what the hell is wrong with you?" shouted that same raspy male voice, and Jack realized it'd belonged to the Multi Man. One of them.
He readied his weapon, activated Eradicator Mode. He curled his finger around the trigger.
"Jack!" said the Man. "You can't just shoot the Sentients! They'll blow the whole place away!"
Jack followed the voice, pinned it to another wall about twenty feet away. He fired his gun and blew a new hole through it. The Man screamed and swore, and Jack saw him through the breach, the masked man planted on the floor with his hands hovering in front of him.
"JACK!" he said. "It's me, it's Margo! I'm trapped in this body! Hold your fucking fire!"
Jack laughed quietly as he aimed the gun at the Man. At Margo. Multiple people dead with one shot? A golden opportunity.
"Jack, put the fucking gun down! I'm telling you, I'm trapped in this body! He has me hooked up into a PACER somewhere, and I'm in his head! If you shoot him, I don't know what will happen to me."
A smirk stretched across Jack's face.
"Jack...don't."
"You'll probably be gone," Jack said. "But your body will still be there. It'll finally stop moving. It won't be able to run."
Margo lowered the Man's arms.
"Y'know, that Wonderland Mist was the best thing I'd ever experienced," Jack said. "I fucked you when I was under it. You don't know it, but I did. You didn't say much when I did."
Margo sat still in the Man's body. If she was even there.
"I wouldn't mind watching this place blow apart, Sandoval. I'll still do what I want with whatever's left of you."
"Margo Sandoval isn't here right now," said the Multi Man in a low, competent voice. "You might find her again soon."
An explosion rocked the building. Neither of them saw it, but they felt the tremors and heard the screams.
"Or someone else might," said the Multi Man, and he rose from the floor. "You fire that gun, you could get her the way you want her."
Jack lowered his weapon.
"Yeah," the Man nodded. "You want to hear her die. I knew you would."
Jack said nothing as the Multi Man disappeared into another room. An additional explosion shook the world around Jack, and he winced as a machete dug into his side, shattering the device generating his Blur.
He spun around to find Crimson's bright red eyes burning straight through him, her hands clenched around the handle of the machete. The incision on her cheek was still fresh, and streaks of blood seeped down to her chin like teardrops. She managed a grin that only amplified the pain inside rather than concealed it, and she breathed as if pinned to the floor by heavy debris.
"If I have to suffer to get what I want," she said, "then so will you."
She yanked the machete out, splattering the floor by Jack's feet with his own blood. He stepped back, dodging a swipe from her blade, and he threw the Assault Fatemaker down by the floor. Crimson screamed and swore, but the most she could do was graze his skin with the rim of her machete. She drew blood, but the officer remained standing and unamused, knowing his LaserShank would've gotten the job done faster.
He blocked the machete with his right forearm, grunting as he felt it cut through the skin, gnawing on the bone. Crimson yanked it away and stumbled back, gasping and sweating. She paced around, lightheaded, and the grin she'd forced herself to sport like a mask proceeded to slip away.
"You want her," she whispered. "You want the schizo girl. Isn't that right?"
Jack lowered his maimed arm down by his side, resting his left hand over the wound.
"You don't need her. I can give you what you want. Before we all die tonight. Wouldn't you want that?"
Jack moved his hand away, his palm and fingers smeared red. With his wounded arm, he reached for his holstered Fatemaker and detached it from its MagniSheath.
"You want what you can't have," Crimson said weakly. "Well, I'm only seventeen. You're not supposed to have me, but you can. You can have me knowing how wrong it is. That's what you fucking want, right?"
No intrigue in Jack's eyes or expression. He held his gun in front of his body. Crimson took the gun while it remained in his hands and rested the tip of the barrel against her forehead.
"You want me to be quiet," she said, forcing herself to chuckle. "I understand it now. Then fine. Go ahead. I won't make another sound. Then you can do what you want."
Jack's finger met the trigger again, hovering over it.
"My brother's not going to be happy when he sees you. But I'll see him again soon. And when he sees you, he'll rip you apart. And he'll never know that I let you have me."
You talk too fucking much, Jack thought.
"So come on," Crimson said, grinning far too wide. "Do what you want. You'll never get anything like this ever again. I'll never get anything like this ever again. So do what you want."
Crimson's smile faded as Jack lowered the gun down to her chest, pausing before her sternum. Her eyes filled with terror as the Fatemaker activated its Subjugate Mode, and everything in her body blew threw her back toward the wall behind her once Jack pulled the trigger.
With her blood sprayed across his face, Jack stepped back and watched Crimson feel around the gaping hole blown through her chest, reach out for a life she could no longer have. When the light left her eyes and every muscle went still at last, Jack walked away.
Two more explosions shook the building.