Phase Seven: Part One
Jin and Daniel found the nearest sewage drain and submerged themselves into the underground tunnels. They could hear, as they passed by various gang hotspots, that the Hanz gang was at full recruitment and they had nearly doubled in numbers by the sounds of it. Everyone was ready to jump on the bandwagon of a sure thing. Rumors had even started that Hanz himself had killed Kane Z and he would not stop until he was king of the hill.
The boys knew better than to believe it but the fact that all these nomads did made the streets just a little more dangerous for members of the wrong gang. They continued to walk for hours until familiar underground markings from the Sniper gang started to appear on the wall. Jin allowed Daniel to lead as he knew more about the gang and the markings than he had. They used their S.C.A.N. cards as lights to illuminate the dark underground as, for some odd reason, their plasma lights were not working.
Most of the walk had been rather silent. The symbols to indicate directions to the current Sniper gang location were starting to grow more intricate and were now dully illuminated with a light, blue glow. Daniel started to grow more confused by each simple as they passed.
“What is going on?” Jin asked as he ran his hand over the most recent marking the two had found.
Daniel didn’t reply at first. Instead he continued to think over and over again in his mind before the thoughts started to pour out.
“It doesn’t make any sense!” He final shouted as they reached another marking, this one much closer than the others had been to their previous. Jin did not speak but waited for the boy to gather himself. He then spoke, “The markings are starting to be symbolic of some sort of victory. And blue is a color for peace. Genevieve told me that this was what they were like in the beginning. It was… damn… something to do with the purity of Ethernet… if it had ever been pure that is.”
Jin fought back the urge to show emotion. While he had been in a constant state of worry for both Kade and Genevieve since they had left, he couldn’t help but wonder what battles they were facing while submerged into a digital realm. Having been someone rather oblivious to the extent of technology, it was harder for him to wrap his mind around. More so than many others.
“She taught you about their gang?” Jin asked as he watched Daniel continue down the corridors.
Daniel lightly nodded his head as he tried to remember all she had spoken of the markings.
“Of course. Stopping Ethernet meant stopping the gang which revolved around the worship of it. I had to know what their strengths and weaknesses were, goals and teachings, in order to help her defeat them.”
Jin nodded his head as they came to an area which seemed to have been smashed in. If they had not seen for themselves the battle which took place they could have easily mistaken it for an explosion of some sort.
They froze momentarily as fear surged through them both. Then, unwilling to show one another that very same fear, they marched forward ready to fight any creature willing to charge.
The smell of old blood grew very strong as they reached the circular area where Kade had been held. The beams and floor were all very dark and glowing only a dim shade of blue, barely noticeable if it had not been so dark. There, dead center of the platform was the dead, or nearly dead, remains of one Sniper.
Daniel stepped back for a moment at the sight as Jin continued on. The blood and gore was something he saw every day of his life. He was not only comfortable but curious about his particular wounds. The torso and head were still connected, torn up a bit as if thrown through a meat grinder and then spat out mid process, as the remaining limbs were in pieces around the area.
Jin turned the head of the man who’s breath’s had been so shallow it was a wonder he still functioned, to find that from the ground came a black cord which was now lodged into his brain. He turned back to Daniel to show him what he had seen and the boy finally overcame his fear and entered the bloody mess.
“He is submerged into the Ether.” He stated simply as he pulled the cord from his brain, “This aught to finish him off.”
As the cord left the man’s brain so violently, blood started to spew out like a faucet. Immediately afterwards, his eyes popped open. The jaw of his face had been hanging just near his face so he could not speak. One last moan was able to escape before the horrid Sniper was no more.
“You killed him.” Jin said simply. Daniel shook his head.
“This man was dead a very long time ago.”
Footsteps from behind them caused both boys to jump up and flash their scan cards in the direction of the tunnels which they had come from. Two women were now standing at the wreckage which lead into the sacrificial room.
From their appearance, they both knew exactly where they had come from. Both were very tone and tall women, in leather with weapons at their sides. The taller of the two was a black woman with long, red hair trailing down her back and green eyes. The other was an Asian girl, probably Japanese in decent, with long black hair trailing down her back in a ponytail. They stood strong in battle stance. They were Candelaria’s assassins.
“She told us you would be here.” The black woman spoke in a stern, emotionless voice. She was eye level to both men.
“Who?” Daniel then asked. She shook her head.
“You know who I am referring to.” The Asian girl now spoke, “I am TaeYin and this is Blood. We were sent here to find the two of you and deliver you to our Mistress.”
Jin laughed and stepped forward. He continued to hold his knife in his hand, unwilling to adhere to the women’s commands.
“And who says we will be going with you?” He asked.
Blood stood forward and outstretched her hand. From it came an image of the girl from before. Her face was patched up but there was now a permanent scar across her cheek.
“You exposed her, cut her and then released her. Pardon the Mistress for being curious about both yours and your master’s intentions.”
“You don’t understand, we…” Daniel was cut off by the blade in his mouth. TaeYin had moved behind him so quickly he was unable to stop his sentence before the weapon now inched at his flesh.
“Maybe we should cut you up and see how much your Jin-ko enjoys it.” She asked him.
Jin threw the knife at Bloods feet and raised his hands. He then helped Daniel up and bowed his head to the women.
“Take us to your Mistress.”
Jin, as well as many other higher level gang members in the city, knew very well the rumors about Candelaria’s trained assassins but it wasn’t until that moment had he actually witnessed how deadly they really were. He was not one used to submitting but he also knew it was better than ending up dead and leaving his friends alone in the real world after they risked their lives to save what was left of it by submerging themselves back into Ethernet.
The women silently guided the men out from the tunnels and escorted them to an expensive hovercraft which had been waiting for them on the filthy streets of poverties side of the city. A craft like that so rarely graced the streets of that part of town that the boys had to pause momentarily to take in the wealth Candelaria and her gang really had.
“Get in!” Blood demanded as she held her hand over a pad which seemed to cause the door to disappear and reappear.
They got in and both boys instantly knew it was the most luxurious place they had ever been. The women then entered a code into the seats where they sat and the vehicle was off taking them to an unknown destination.
As the city went from being filthy, disgusting, poverty ridden and poor to suddenly bright, full of lights with moving advertisements, people dressed in fancy clothing with expensive vehicles of all sorts zooming around. There was life on the streets and in the shops which all seemed to be booming with business and the buildings themselves traveling for what seemed to be miles into the air.
On their side of Tokyo, only on special nights after a rain you might be able to see the rich side illuminating behind the toxic clouds which traveled throughout the dark skies. Most cared to avoid looking for it as it was only a reminder of something they could never have. One citizen of this part of the city could triple what they made throughout their entire lives in one day. That’s the type of money it took to be high class. That’s the type of power they held in their hands.
They also knew that each and every citizen voted every term for the poor to stay poor. Once every term, which was once every ten years, the citizens were able to make the choice of expanding the city and allowing taxes and jobs to become equal and fair so that they could expand and assist in the poverty. It was a universal no across the board.
Food and water given to the poverty stricken side of the city was provided because of the work, very scarcely found legitimate work, done by citizens there. These citizens who weren’t able to buy into the nice side of town after the war were forced into small apartments and homes in crumblilng neighborhoods and assigned jobs like creating energy for the northern city and cleaning the tunnels which lead into Tokyo. Other than that, everything else was imported. The citizens were then taxed 70% of all income which was donated to the northern city.
This was where the gangs came in. Unwilling to continue paying to basically starve to death, lower level citizens turned to corrupt high class citizens like Kane Z and Jin-ko to get food in their mouths, drugs in their veins and a place to live. The higher class citizens then gave up entirely on that part of the city and since have wanted them to do nothing for them but die off and be a sad story heard about once every so often in the news.
“They had their chance.” Jin could hear one woman saying after the war. She was being interviewed on TV, “They could have gotten educations and paid into this way of life just like most of us did but instead they wasted it. People like that, poor people, they wanted to be that way. So let them stay like that!”
He grind his teeth at the thought and avoided eye contact with the girls.
“Something on your mind?” TaeYin asked. He didn’t look at her. While he feared what she could do, he did not fear her.
“No.”
Both women laughed as they entered into a large, empty parking facility. The ship docked and the door opened to expose a platinum set of steps leading to the concrete ground. Blood stepped out first, then the boys, and then TaeYin. They then escorted both boys into the building.
They traveled silently through a maze of brightly lit hallways before they were in front of two vibrant doors. They seemed to glow and move with all colors of the rainbow. TaeYin stepped forward and mumbled a code word which was followed by the doors swinging open.
Jin was unable to move for a moment. The vibrancy of the room and the warm comfort of it all seemed to be a completely foreign concept to him. It was clean, new and shiny. There were rows of unscarred, unmarked, unpierced men and women in form fitting white uniforms and hair jointly straightened and fashioned according to their body type. They were all fairly pale and looked like the faces they could see on advertisements on the screens which worked on occasion back home.
Up the walls to the left and right were long, white curtains and across the room you could see a large window which peered out into the city. It also seemed to lightly glisten in a rainbow. In the center of the room near the window was a bed the size of a house. There were soft pillows and blankets surrounding what seemed to be a woman in the center. Two women were on either side of her, a man in the chair next to them and a machine above her head. That machine seemed to be similar to that which his mother had been attached to but a thousand times more advanced.
As they drew closer, Jin could see that the machine was not only monitoring her heart and brain activity but the speed of her blood flow through each vein, the PH levels of her body, her temperature, and a series of other stats he couldn’t begin to understand without further knowledge of medical related issues.
When they were finally close enough to see the woman, both men seemed to be shocked by what they saw.
Candelaria was in a white robe which covered her arms and body exposing only a small amount of her chest. On her rather supple chest was a small, silver necklace. At both sides were long, dark brown locks of hair. Her skin, which seemed to be once dark and exotic, was nearly gray. She was the most beautiful woman either man had ever had the pleasure of being near but she also seemed to be extremely ill. She was watching them carefully with very light, honey colored eyes.
“That was fast.” She smiled as she raised up her delicate hand. Blood and TaeYin both rushed over to kiss a silver ring with a red gem which sat on her middle finger. They then moved back to guard the boys.
“They were not hard to find, Mistress.”
Candelaria waived her hand once and the women were then standing next to the other assassins, these two with very white skin and long blonde hair, there they kept their hands on their weapons.
“Have you brought us here to kill us?” Daniel asked.
“You do not speak when you are not spoken to!” Blood shouted. She motioned to attack them when Candelaria waived her hand once more to calm the guards.
“Forgive them. They are not normally so touchy. It is a rare occurrence to bring people from the lower city here. I have heard about what your conditions are like and so I try and make the best possible impression.” She watched Jin or a moment before doing her best to sit up on her own. One of the blonde assassins tried to help but they were quickly motioned away, “Jin, you don’t seem to be as pleased by what you see as your friend here.”
Jin was startled that she had addressed him directly. He then bowed his head and tried not to look into the eyes of the dying woman. She did not have to make it verbally known to him. He was all too familiar with death both by hand and by disease.
“Daniel is not from here natively. He comes from…”
“I know where he is from. I can tell by his accent.” Candelaria smiled. The boys looked to one another confused when she continued, “All of my followers wear devices which allow them to record what is happening around them. They are implanted into their arms at the time of recruitment. I listened in to my dear girl to what it was you said to her while she was in your capture.”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but if you do not intend to kill us then what is it you would like to do with us here?” Daniel then asked.
Candelaria sat still for a moment when one of the curtains fell from the ceiling to their right to expose a long tube filled with water. Inside of the water was the girl who they had freed before. Her face had been attached to an oxygen tube, her body stripped of clothing and deep cuts all throughout her body. Tiny tubes seemed to be sucking the blood away from them.
“We did not do that to her!” Daniel shouted at the horrific sight. Blood now charged him slamming a fist into his face. She then retreated.
“I know. This is her punishment for acting on behalf of me and nearly disgracing my name. I like to think that my followers can come up with more creative ways of assassinating someone. They are, after all, trained in the best facilities money can buy.”
Jin spat. Candelaria had to once again all off the assassins before they charged him. She was curious about his resentment. She found it fascinating that she held one of the top members of Jin-ko’s gang right there in her very hall.
“I cannot pay for the type of loyalty you hold, Jin. If I were to have done to you what Jin-ko did to your mother to one of my followers I would never again see a honest face again. I admire that about you and yet I find it beneath you. Under the circumstances I would love to have you on my team and yet something tells me you would be uninterested.”
“Excuse me?” He asked. She laughed.
“I am dying, Jin. I am not sure what you people know of medical advancements in this part of the city but looks are about the only thing they can keep up with. I have had seven organs replaced twenty-three times in the hundred or so years I have been alive. My body is finally giving up on me and no matter how much money I throw at the hospital they just… cannot fix it.
“I am most vulnerable now and probably could not survive a war so I intend to prevent one from even occurring. If this means wiping out every pathetic gang member of the Jin-ko gang then so be it. I also find it a good time to be surrounded by loyalty of a different breed. It is sad I will not be able to convince you over.”
Jin rolled his eyes, “So they why are we here?”
She took in a deep breath and then smiled once more to the boys, “What you did for this girl, while caught up in the act that is the lower city gangs, is more than anyone would do for another person in this world. Don’t think I can’t see the way this game is played simply because I have the money to live this way. So I am offering you immunity. If you assist in removing Jin-ko from this war, however necessary, I will make sure that you and the ones you love are never harmed again.”
“And this new gang?” Daniel interjected, “They are on the rise.”
Candelaria took in a deep breath, “Yes, them. I have a feeling they will not be around much longer. Just handle your master and I will do my best, from where I sit, to reward you graciously. I want your trust. It is something I cannot buy and I love having things that I simply… cannot buy.”
Jin remained emotionless for a long time. He could not pin point the emotions traveling through him. Jin-ko members were planted in the Candelaria gang and were probably listening to everything that was happening. One wrong move and no matter what he did, he could not be trusted. He would already be looking at execution when he came back for merely being there without Jin-ko’s permission.
He couldn’t die. Not now. He had to be there for Kade. He had to keep the world at war in peace long enough for Ethernet to be destroyed. He had to find a way to get them home safely. Then he could die. He didn’t care about his life. Only theirs.
“Jin-ko is a fearless leader. He is my fearless leader. I cannot betray him. If it is a war he wants I must do as told to fight in his honor.”
Jin and Daniel were taken into custody immediately. Tightly wrapped around their arms were meat wires used for slicing through animal bone. Blood and TaeYin made the wire so tight that Jin could immediately feel the hot blood rushing down his fingers.
“I thought you might say something like that. Unfortunately, you were also trespassing on my new territory.”
“Excuse me?” Daniel shouted, “That was Sniper territory, this is unpresidented.”
Her bed began to turn as it started to submerge into the wall behind her.
“This is a war, boys. You better rethink who’s team you are on.”
_
Report: Once they have nothing left to live for they won't want to return. We will have his friend soon. And then we will have him.
Soon... we will have him very soon.