"...Isaac Dickins."

Their ringleader is going to die. No 'if', 'and', or' but' about it.

Isaac was their leader, their commander, their absolute head of their hierarchy. Not because he was stronger. Not because he was smarter. Not because he was wealthier. And most certainly not because he was more good looking. No none of those were the reason he led their five-man-band of rising criminal kingpins.

He simply knew how best to apply an individual's skills and connections to get his way.

There was no other reason than that. They followed him because he knew ways to take advantage of their respective strengths in the most effective ways possible with minimal resistance to getting what they wanted. And in doing so, they helped get him what he wanted.

Now, those pillars of support have been cut. It's getting close to noon, and I need some lunch. Going to the plaza just a few blocks from Dickens Biotech Industries main office building, I find a nice little small food stand, just outside their little external illegal security camera network. I find it laughably easy to hack into their systems and find all their blind spots. As I'm eating, I can't help but think how the hell I seem to be so skilled at hacking and net-running.

I was always top of my class in the IT course, despite Shaw's best attempts to sabotage me by stealing my work, yet even I find these skills a little too good to be normal. Becoming a techno-organic construct could be part of it, but it doesn't fully add up in my mind. As I consider this line of thinking, I then feel the need to facepalm at a simple realization I hadn't thought of until now.

There was this old game franchise about five centuries back called 'Watch Dogs'. It was a game where you stepped into the shoes of an improbable genius hacker. Why 'improbable' you ask? Because he had the bullshit ability to recode the programs on a simple everyday smart phone you could buy in any store, from any city in the world, anywhere, and turn the apps on it into special hot keys allowing him to hack into any electronic network instantly, so long as they were within ten meters of line of sight from him and connected to a network he could piggyback into to extend the hacking range. He could even hack into classified security networks as long as he could get close enough to one of the electronics hardwired into the same system.

So, with that thought in mind, picture a bullshit level of impossible-seeming hacking and coding skills done via a simple smart phone you can buy from anywhere.

Now replace said smart phone in this equation with your mind.

That's basically what I am doing with my technopathy.

Normally, a technopath only has a limited range of ten meters, just like in Watch Dogs, and is not so fast at hacking through secure networks without some form of external aid or device to serve as a medium to piggyback off of.

Normally, same-said technopath is not a techno-organic construct with a literal omnitool, which has a portable high-data processing computer terminal as part of the package, built into their fucking chassis to piggyback off of and amplify their networking and interfacing through a constant feedback loop.

As for why the programming Isaac and them were using made me feel almost insulted, I also realized it actually was decent. At least, by current standards of human technology of the year 2566 A.D., anyway. By the alien standards of both my Cybertronian and MIB tech tree's beginner knowledge, even at its most basic, it was incredibly primitive and lacking. On top of that, Isaac and them actually outsourced to other companies who specialized in coding and programming, since none of them were proper programmers. Not even Shaw, and he was the closest they had to one.

Realizing this, I suddenly decide I'm going to need to be careful to avoid accidentally dismissing something that doesn't meet my current knowledge base's standards simply because it was of pure human origin, and consider whatever the tech level is of the time frame I encounter it before dismissing it. That's going to be a headache and a half just trying to avoid acting like a pretentious asshole to everybody around me. Isaac and his goons acted like that, and now they're paying for it. The last thing I want or need is to become no better than them.

Still didn't stop me from bashing on them for such shitty programming skills. I mean, what dumbass even coded half their shit? A trained monkey could do a better job than they did, and that's me being generous by low-balling my bar for standards on coding, before the whole reconstructed body deal.

As I ate my lunch, Evelyn gave me an alert. Seems Isaac just got word about his inner circle's sudden culling over the entirety of last night, with only himself as the last living member of his little criminal empire. Also, NDPD effectively locked down D.B.I.'s office building and placed Isaac under heavy guard...fuck, they called in MAX-TAC to guard him. That's gonna suck. I really do not look forward to risking getting anyone from those guys killed.

Killing a regular cop?

They'll call MAX-TAC on your ass, and then everyone's screwed. Including whoever called them in.

Killing a member of MAX-TAC?

You will be lucky if they do not call in the whole goddamned precinct to murder your ass. If not the national guard.

So guess I'm going to need to carefully deal with all of them, non-lethally, to avoid any political shit-storm from blowing back on my plans. But now I just have to wonder a very simple question...

...what fucking special kind of dumbass calls in MAX-TAC for goddamned bodyguard duty!?

Evening, D.B.I. CEO's Office

Isaac P.O.V. Shift

I am a total dumbass.

The moment I got called by the cops, asking if I knew why four of my founding board members were all dead in their respective dwellings, each one in a very different way, I practically shit myself and in a blind panic, requested MAX-TAC to act as my security to deal with the killer behind it.

When asked for the reason, I explained I knew who the killer most likely was, and they were after me next. MAX-TAC only agreed to do this unusual job because of the state my friends were found reduced to...

Shaw McCarthy, tortured to death after his home security got turned into a goddamned fun house of horrors by a hacker. His body was literally hacked apart piece by piece, while he was still awake, alive, and fully aware what was happening, for hours before his killer finally ended his misery...

Vladmir O'Reilley, reduced to a brain-dead vegetable of a living biohazard by an extreme mutation born of a botched biochemical cocktail that was deliberately and forcibly injected into his bloodstream, only just barely qualifying as alive...if you can even count no longer being able to even think of anything at all as being 'alive'...

Johanne Kreuer, dead in his home from hemorrhagic shock via his crotch being blown off with a .50mm caliber hand cannon loaded with an EMP round and his face literally shredded to bits after evidence of having tried to force himself on his neighbor...that fucking moron...

Leonardo Dantellion, crippled for what is left of his life as his body was blown up with a blast strong enough to level his whole fucking private sanctuary in the form of his personal man-haunt, destroying all his limbs, leaving them charred stumps and his guts completely wrecked by the shrapnel that tore through them. He's still alive, like Vladmir...but he's been put into a coma and the docs all said the same thing: he's got only about a month left to live, at most...

The worst part of all?

Every one of them had a message left for the authorities when they arrived. The first three were written in their blood, the last one, however, was spoken by Leonardo just before he passed out from his wounds, but the cops who heard it were confused.

I was not, as I knew what he was saying. Or rather, what he was being made to say...

'Six years.'

'Six months.'

'Six days.'

'Right on the dot.'

There's no other way to say it, but I'm the last target to be killed. This is something even I have a hard time accepting. How the fuck did that scrawny egghead turn out to be someone so fucking dangerous!? He never fought back, no matter what we did to him. He never struck out at us, no matter how much hell we put him through, and yet...a memory comes clawing its way back to the forefronts of my mind...

A series of memories, in fact...

...now that I think back on it, no matter every time I think back to him, his eyes...they were-

Bam-whud!

" Sir, a situation has arisen! We need to escort you to safety. Now."

The MAX-TAC captain for this operation barges into my office on the very top floor, over fifty stories up. He keeps moving his hand to his radio chatter, responding and issuing orders, but his other remains glued to his rifle. My heart begins to sink as a heavy realization weighs down upon me. I don't bother to rise from my seat, drawing the irritated confusion from the captain.

"SIR! We need to-"

"There's no point, captain..." I look straight towards the door he barged in from, as a figure strides into the office with a calm gait. Slow. Deliberate. Calculated. That eerily familiar leather jacket. The cargo pants. The work boots. The only unusual thing I notice with a mental eyebrow raised is the belt buckle, but I simply shake the thought aside. It doesn't matter anyway. The MAX-TAC captain turns in shock, disbelief coloring his muttered 'impossible' under his breath. "...my killer has already arrived."

The captain raised his rifle, preparing to shoot my assailant, but with a move that makes me widen my eyes at the sheer experienced fluidity of it, I suddenly understand. I've been friends with Leonardo long enough to understand the sheer finesse of martial disciplines and how implants affect them at a glance. His movements aren't that of an implant doing the work. They were his body's own natural movements, ingrained from years of muscle memory and actual combat experience.

The captain isn't killed, but I could tell he could have been if my soon-to-be-killer had desired to, easily. Instead, he simply nails him to the floor and walls, through each of his four limbs using hard-light blades impaled through his joints. Enough to keep him down and out of the way by hindering his movements, but not enough to actually kill him. The captain was cursing and screaming bloody murder at his attacker, but my words simply doused the fires of his rage at my resigned acceptance of what I know to be my fate.

"...I see..." My death turns to me, cold, calm, and focused. "...ten years...we made your life a living hell for ten years...you could have killed us at any time you had wanted to, during those ten years...yet why?" I whispered, just loud enough to be heard, yet in the deathly silence that had fallen over the building that was once the seat of my influence, it carried far louder than it would have otherwise.

"You never bothered to even ask, so you wouldn't have known." He answered my question by beginning to tell me a tale. I simply removed a glass of whiskey from the top of my desk, preparing a glass as I decide if I'm going to die anyway, I might as well have one final drink to send me off with. I am a Brit after all. "I was the son of two unsung heroes. My mother, a genius in the field of supertech, who designed military-grade hardware for the government. My father, a black-ops soldier and modern-day cyber-ninja, who dealt with threats to protect the masses from them. Both were never known or credited for their respective work, yet neither minded it. They never did not care if they were."

"They taught me as much as they could, as much as they had the time for before they were assassinated, just before I entered middle school. They never said any details about their work, but just enough to know it was only a matter of time before someone sought to end their lives. Yet, the most important thing they taught me, was our family Creed. 'Act never for glory's sake, but for the uplifting of those around you'."

"I always acted with this lesson in mind. To honor their memory, to make them proud of me, I endured all you had put me through, simply allowed you to keep your positions as the 'strongest' among our peers, for I never cared for such. It was not my family's way." He started to walk closer, slowly pacing back and forth between the door and me, as the pinned Captain simply grunted as he tried to pull his arm free, yet I knew it would be in vain. "I had just a single semester left before graduation. I had just a short few months left before I could simply put you behind me and move on with my life. Start my company. Patent my designs. Make my parents proud of me." He paused right before me, a single jump's distance if he so desired to just end me if he wanted to at any time.

"But then you lot had to just screw me over once more." His eyes narrowed as the MAX-TAC captain stopped struggling, wondering why he said that, his body language showing confusion. His answers were about to be received, it would seem. "You five jumped me on my way home. Stole my phone, my wallet, and my bag, the one containing my original designs. Then you dragged me to that recycling plant, and locked me in that container. The one slated to be disposed of later that night." The captain froze, breath held as he realized the implications of this tale he was hearing, and the implications behind them.

"I had screamed myself hoarse. Banging on the door, begging for someone, anyone to let me out, until I passed out hours later from exhaustion. Only to be rudely awakened, as the container was lifted..." His glowing electric blue eyes glared right into my own, as I simply closed my eyes, exhaled, and took a long sip of my liquor. A silent admission of acknowledgement as him speaking the truth. "...with me still inside it." The captain simply froze. Dead still. I can already picture what he's thinking. I must have done the same thing at least five times the number he has.

"Do you know how it feels, Isaac Dickens? To be crushed to death, feeling your body as it is being pressed inward, wishing to die yet not be able to? Do you know how it felt? To have broken circuit boards stabbing into your flesh, embedding directly into your bones? To have those same bones grounded into powder by the pulverizing force, only for metal scraps from junked machinery shove itself into the gaps of your skeletal structure? To have burnt out electronics be shoved into the spaces originally occupied by your now-ruptured internal organs?" His calm eyes narrowed as his anger flared in his cold gaze. "To have the remains of your limbs torn to pieces as they were ripped from your body. The white-hot agony searing your mind, craving the sweet, sweet embrace of oblivion's mercy, yet denied it all the same?"

"Do you know how it felt? To have a loose wire, exposed to the elements, zap you full of enough volts that the very same electricity that resuscitated you back to life was the very same that electrocuted you to death? And then, only then, did my mind finally shut down, unable to take it anymore. Six years. Six Months. Six Days. Right on the dot. I was rendered into a death-like coma for all that time, while all the pieces of broken supertech shoved into my body worked to rebuild my body and bring me back. I would have been pissed at you just for that alone. But I wouldn't have necessarily killed you for it. No, it's what you five did after murdering me that sealed your fates." The captain seemed to gasp as I knew what was coming. I lifted my glass back to my lips, grateful he at least allowed me to be drunk first before carrying out my execution.

"You stole my designs. You stole my planned future. You stole my life. I would have ruined yours, but that wasn't why I decided you five deserved to die. No, it was what you did a year and a half after you killed me." I simply paused when I heard this, put down the empty glass, and simply took a deep swig straight from the bottle. I won't even deny it. There's no point in doing so. "My best friend since childhood. My brother in all but blood and name. When you announced the founding of your company, using my stolen designs, designs that went missing when I died, he was pissed. You five claimed to not know anything when I vanished without a trace, yet the fact you all had and claimed credit for my designs that were on my person that day, advertising it as your pilot product, proved you all lied."

"He came here to confront you all. After all, his own family is just as wealthy and influential as your own, Isaac. More so in fact, in some ways. He thought and truly believed you would not do anything so stupid as to harm him. Yet the moment he showed up, demanding the truth of what happened to me, you had him killed, drugging him, then throwing him to the Chrome-Bloods to do you dirty work for you, and altered the records and footage through Shaw's forging skills to make it look like he never was there, and you all never saw him." The MAX-TAC captain was utterly silent, staring at the two of us as he spoke, expecting me to deny the accusations.

I simply didn't bother when it would change absolutely nothing.

"I didn't kill you all because of what you did to me. No, that's not what this is about." He then leaned forward, letting his killing intent out. The MAX-TAC captain actually choked and shivered from the sheer aura of death radiating from him. I simply emptied what was left of the bottle in my hand and didn't even flinch. It's rather impossible to put the fear of death into a man who is already going to die and accept it. "I did all this, because Demetreus 'D-ray' Bellaire did not deserve what you did to him, simply for doing the right thing by trying to confront you over his best friend's disappearance and seeking the truth from your own mouth."

That MAX-TAC captain suddenly bolted towards me, his body tense and shaking at that name.

Bellaire.

Those were practically modern-day high-nobility in this country, as close as you could get within the NUSA, anyway. I really should have known that would come back to bite me someday. I just did not expect it to be at the hands of a dead man. Opening my eyes, I simply looked at him, and spoke my final words. A final request from a man soon to leave this world for the next. I didn't expect it to be granted, though...

"...can you at least make it quick? This building would have a hard time gaining new owners if a murder is too bloody in the former CEO's office."

"Fair enough."

...though it would seem he's not without some mercy, at least. He pulls out what looks to be a blade for a hard-light chainr-sword, but instead of a chain-sword, it's a katana blade energized by an electric discharge. A single slice was all it took. I saw my view of my own body, its head severed so cleanly at the neck, and the window behind me simply falls inward as my consciousness fades. A single thought is all I have time for as death claims me.

'...ah...we truly...killed a...golden...goose...'

Third-person P.O.V. Shift

After ending Isaac's life, Novak does not gloat. He does not revel. He merely gives his primary tormentor a look of grudging respect as the light fades from his eyes, along with his life. Isaac was a piece of shit human being, but he at least understood why he was killed and simply accepted his fate for what it was.

Novak's father always taught him to treat all life, even that of your enemies as sacred, and to NEVER turn your gaze from their final moments. To do so was not only an insult to them, but an insult to the weight you bear of having taken their life, to never forget the value of it.

The MAX-TAC captain, who until that point had been stunned by the revelations here, suddenly struggles further to break free from the hard-light blades nailing him in place. Novak simply turns to give him a wry grin as he spoke up.

"You heard every word. You know why I did what I did. Why do you continue to struggle after your charge is dead?"

"You committed five murders! I cannot let you go!" the captain snarled out in indignant rage.

"You heard why they were killed. You would still try to kill me for slaying five crime lords you didn't even realize were rising within your own city?"

"I'll kill you before I ever allow you to go!! MAX-TAC is not to be looked down on, especially not by those who we're called in to deal with!!"

"Oh, my dear captain..." Novak chuckled at his as he spoke, amusement clear as day. "...and how do you plan to kill a dead man?"

"...what?"

The MAX-TAC captain simply froze at that as he turned his attention back to Novak...

The sound of the wind from the height of fifty stories up sweeps through the room, yet the MAX-TAC captain is only kept company by the now-cooling corpse of Isaac Dickens.

...only for Novak to completely disappear from the room, with no sign of him ever being there. Like a ghost that simply chose to fade away back into the aether. The only sign of his target ever having been real being the corpse on the floor, and the message carved straight into the floor where he stood just an instant before...

'Novak Neumann, Vengeance Achieved.'

Fifty stories and ten blocks down, in an alleyway, a figure moves through the shadows of Neo-Detroit. His black cargo pants, work boots, and cloth-hooded leather jacket are the only view anyone can see from the mouth of the alley as he fades into the shadows themselves. As if he never existed to begin with. Novak Neumann had finally gotten his retribution for D-ray's death, and even managed to swipe ownership of the company from Isaac in the process.

However, there is just one issue that remains, and thus the conundrum he must answer...