Artemis tilts his head to watch the strange figure scamper up the building, and looks back to the rest of the group quizzically. He stares at them absently, not knowing if he should say anything more, or just to walk off. Artemis does the latter, deciding to walk off, and grumble to himself about lack of sleep.
So Artemis started walking towards the closest bar. As he stumbles along he notices a tall lady with pink hair push a tall man with pink hair into the wall, growl some threats, and then limp off. A noble thought crosses his mind, but he quickly smashes that to bits. Instead of doing anything noble, he pushes past Chris and Maggy.
“The fucking freak show come by recently? Or is your guys hair naturally the color of used tampons mixed with neon piss?” He barks laughter, though a pang of sorrow goes through him at the thought of his balding head.
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Somewhere in the skyline district, in a dark gloomy spire…
Three men sit in one of the upper level rooms of the spire, each holds a computer tablet, and are cast in shadow. They all sit in silence, engrossed in the data streams scrolling down their individual tablets. Finally one of the men speaks.
“You sure of this, Luther? This is the asset?” The man said with a hint of incredulity, and smashes his still burning cigarette in the local ashtray.
“We’ve had too many fuck ups, too many missed opportunities, I won’t accept another-”“Jerry relax.” The man addressed as Luther replied curtly, and leaned back in his chair.
“I know we got him, had some falling out with the cronies he was running with… they tried to sell him out to one of my ops. Things went sour, and he fled..” Luther clicks on his pad a few times, and a detailed holographic display appears before him showing a detailed map of the undercity.
“We think he’s in the undercity, I’ll have my men start searching, and put out a bounty on him. Maybe some of the lowlifes can be of use.”At last the final man in shadow speaks up in a low tone.
“We keep this in house, off the record. Find him, and get him by any means… We won’t have another debacle...”“Of course sir, it will be done.” Both Jerry and Luther replied, and with that the nameless man gets up and walks out of the room. They wait for the click of his shoes to be some distance before returning to their conversation.
“Debacle?” Luther says with a raised eyebrow towards Jerry, and closes his holographic display. Jerry sighs, and lights another cigarette before replying.
“Yeah… more like disaster. Bastard somehow weaponized his blood, docs said it was a mutated form the Marburg virus, highly infectious, and lethal.”“And? Don’t keep me is suspense...” Luther said, sounding a little more animated.
“And we lost a whole damn facility. Had to burn it out, lost some of the original doctors of the program too.” Jerry takes a nice long drag on his cigarette, and exhales the smoke through his nose.
“Fuck…” Luther replies, as he looks at one of the picture slides on his tablet. The picture displays a series of medical equipment surrounding a man stripped to his briefs on a gurney, the man has dozens of tubes going into his chest, and mouth. Patches of the man's flesh appear bluish, looking as though he is suffering from gangrene, while other parts show disgusting cysts weeping yellowish puss, and bright red rashes closely resembling the variola virus.
“Yeah… it’ll get messy, he’s a fighter with nothing to lose…” Jerry mumbled, before sagging slightly in his chair.
Luther smiles, and rises from his own chair.
“Oh… I’m sure we’ll get him this time… and then work may resume.” He says with a sly grin, and gingerly begins to walk out of the room only stopping for a moment to give Jerry a mocking salute.
Jerry watched Luther go, and can’t help but grin himself.
“Yes… then work may resume…” He said to himself quietly, and looked out of one of the glass paned windows towards the distant horizon.
