He had been running for just under three hours, trying to evade the crime lord's grasp. He sat now outside of his territory, against a metal wall in an alleyway while citizens walked back and forth just outside said alleyway. "Damn you to the void, Zen." He whispered and shook his head. The plan was supposed to be easy. Slice the systems, have Iisska and Cheshik steal the money while Marquis assassinates Radon and Zen acts as the getaway driver in an armored hovercar outside. Easy. But there he was inside the Casino, walking through the crowd while Marquis lined up the shot. A patron spilled a drink on his suit and he threw him across the room in anger. That's what started it all. The security systems had activated from a guard hitting the alarms, Zen was electrocuted by four different guards and they tried to corner Marquis. He barely made it out of there alive. Void, he even lost his arm in the process. One of the guards happened to be an obscenely lucky shot and hit a joint between the arm and body and severed the connection in the weakened metal. He didn't even have a chance to go back for it. He sighed and shook his head again. This was all his fault. He trusted Zen to actually play this part...he arranged this huge heist in the name of revenge, to try and make the nightmares stop.
It was a hotly debated topic for many of the galaxies' scientists. "Do droids dream." With the advancements of AI in the galaxy, many were attaining true intelligence, Marquis included. This came with the obsoletion of periodical memory wipes and many unique circumstances started to come about. A few of the older droids and A.I. matrices were telling their masters and companions that they were dreaming of events around them while powered down. They would reactivate later with new memories in their system that had been formed while they were deactivated. Nearly every scientist immediately dismissed the claim at first, but more and more droids were saying the same thing and immediate denial started to become doubts then quickly became fierce debates between leagues of scientists and A.I. specialists.
That was what was starting to happen to Marquis. Some nights he would dream of he and Trinity no longer on some rust bucket ship and instead on some beach somewhere. Other nights he would dream of Radon. The most recent one was from a few nights ago. It was a dream of his target. He was in an old decrepit jail cell deep below the planet. Four shadowed figures were shackled to the wall while Radon stood over a pile of golden scrap...which was Marquis.
He shook his head again and snapped out of it, his eye glowing bright red with hot rage. Now, because of him, the entire crew was captured and was either being tortured to death or were already dead at Radon's hands. The droid stood their feeling a strong mixture of rage and guilt wrack his metal body. "This is my fault." He said to nobody in particular. "Time to make things right." He announced and went back out into the street.
_________
It took another hour to reach the Casino again, but when he did he went to the back to where the garbage was dumped out to be collected. If he remembered the blueprints of the casino correctly, there is an entrance to the kitchen at the top of the garbage chute. Normally, Marquis would be a prudish droid that avoided disgusting places like this, but this was no time to be prude, so he waded into the filth. As he did so however, a bit of fortune shined down onto him from above. He kicked something long and metal in the garbage. He reached down with his surviving arm and fished it out. For once, something went right for him as he found the arm that the hotshot guard had shot off earlier. It was dirty and disgusting but Marquis didn't care. He found his way to a wall where he forced the arm to line up to the socket before his good hand flipped back at the wrist to reveal a soldering tool. He spent several minutes performing self surgery to reattach the arm to his body. Once he had finished he tested it out by punching the wall. It made a resounding dong that echoed down the alleyways. "Excellent." he said aloud.
Now with his arm reattached to his torso, he looked up and spied the garbage chute that spewed out rotten food and debris at an almost constant pace. He spied a ladder leading up to it and took it up. Normal people would never have been able to do anything with this chute other than look at it and barf. But the magnetized palms on his hands said that he was
a determined type of person.Latching onto the inside of the chute, Marquis took a face full of rotten food as he climbed inside and started to haul himself up a ninety degree angle to reach his mark. In addition to his entire attire being ruined beyond recognition, he took far more time than he would care to admit to finally reach an opening for him to crawl into.
He was in complete darkness the entire time, only the light of his eye guided him on his journey through the chutes that made up the catacombs of Radon's casino. Marquis would have cried if he was human when he saw light at the end of the tunnel. Coming up to the opening, he poked his head out and saw that there was nobody around. He pulled himself out of the chute and stood up fully for the first time in a long while. He felt slow and sluggish because of the junk in his systems, but there was a droid service cabinet nearby for him to use to at least loosen up.
Going off of memory, Marquis made his way down the halls, going towards a part of the casino that was being labeled as highly restricted. He frequently saw signs that said "Unauthorized personnel will be shot on sight.". Ignoring them, he made his way deeper into the Casino. The glitz and bright colors started to appear much less frequently as he made his way through the relatively empty halls. What was left in their place was a foreboding prison-like area. Marquis summarized that this was most likely where Radon "Disappeared" people to when they opposed his will.
There were very little signs of which cell could be where the crew is being held prisoner, so he checked each one. Thankfully, it wasn't a very difficult search as he came to the conclusion, as he turned a corner that is, that the crew was being held behind the door with ten guards posted outside of it.
___
"Haha! Is that the best you got, calamari breath?! I've eaten Quin's cooking! This is nothing!" Zen hung from the wall, twice the chains around him when compared to the others. His clothing was gone save for some underwear, he had no less of than seven knives dug in various places in his body, one in each limb and three in his chest. His right shoulder was missing a mouth sized chunk in it and he was bleeding profusely. His Hair was mated and blood soaked and he was still kicking and kicking hard. Radon put down several tools that he as using on him and gave up.
The crew was in bad shape. Zen might as well be dead, Iisska's missing part of a lekku and looks more red than white, Nyrette is comatose almost, Cheshik had one of his legs skinned to the point where it is just some muscle and bone in addition to having a pain enhancing drug pumped into his system. Meanwhile, Quin was forced to just watch, untouched by Radon until he was ready for her. He approached her now, knife in hand. He raised it to her neck and pressed it, drawing blood. "I am going to make this slow and agonizing. The pain I inflicted on your friends will be nothing compared to what I will do to you." he flipped the blade and ripped open her shirt, bringing the blade close. He slipped it underneath her skin and started to skin her, ignoring her screams.
He stopped suddenly then as muffled sounds of blaster fire made their way into the room. Radon withdrew the blade from the weary Quin's skin and approached the door slowly. He placed the knife down and grabbed Iisska's blaster from the table. The other three guards raised their rifles and took aim, slowly approaching.
The heavy metal doors opened slowly from the outside. There was darkness outside the door for but a few moments before Marquis stepped through, rifle raised. He fired three times, each guard taking a bolt to the chest before they could react. They dropped to the ground with smoking holes in their chests. He pointed his rifle at Radon and kept his eye on him. Radon didn't move to fire as Marquis closed the metal door behind him. "Put it down. Now." Radon didn't move to do as the assassin said, so Marquis did it for him and shot at the blaster, shooting it out of his hand, making Radon yelp in pain and grab at his scorched hand.
Radon glared at his attacker but didn't move. Marquis placed down his blaster and started to grab at the leather fingers of his gloves and pull them off. "I have been savoring this moment since the day Trinity ripped out my Assassination protocols." He reached for his turncoat and unbuttoned it, placing down on the ground on his gloves, followed by his bowler cap. He balled up his hands into fist and put them up, taking a fighting stance. "I am going to enjoy this."
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Hanomai
