Remove their forger.

Shaw McCarthy.

That guy was a tactical choice on his part. Whenever they stole from or beat him, Shaw was the one who helped keep them from getting caught by editing any footage and forging an alibi for them in a manner that was able to fool all but the most scrupulously intense of scrutiny. Of the five meatheads, he was the only one who actually was half-decent when it came to tech and how to alter data in a subtle manner.

Just too bad he wasted such a talent helping such pieces of shit human beings by being complicit in their little criminal empire they built. And that he stole other's work to pass off as his own. If he were truly half as smart as he tried to make people think he was, then he would never have gotten anywhere near Isaac's little circle of criminal scum.

The fact that he had also helped cover up D-ray's murder in the one way that guaranteed their freedom for their blatant murder of someone just trying to do right by his friend's memory also sealed his fate.

Right now, they should be reeling, not just from the shock of his survival on top of cucking them, but also the fact that their little illegal partners in enforcing their rule from the shadows was also completely dismantled. The Chrome-Bloods are now just a mere shadow of their former glory, all thanks to Brick-House getting 86'd by Theresa, along with the vast majority of his flunkies who were actually loyal to the whack-job. Rather than simply kill him, we had a better idea. Brick-House liked being creative when he kills his victims so much? He didn't find it so fun when he was the one being killed so creatively by using him to test some of my experimental designs on.

The unstable ones.

Suffice to say, by the time we finally deigned to kill him, the whack-job had broken down into tears, a sobbing mess practically begging us to just kill him and be done with it. His request was met with an experimental piece of tech tested on him that wound up granting his request. Can't say we didn't take his pleas to heart with that mercy. It was more than he gave his victims. More than he deserved.

As I slowly made my way down the path towards the McCarthy manor within Neo-Detroit's more wealthy district, I can't help but shake my head at the sheer stupidity of his decision. Talented in editing and modifying data in such a seamless manner to the point it would pass off as genuine, capable of altering footage in a manner to fit whatever narrative he pleased to pass of as true. And yet, rather than become a special effects expert for films or an editor for them, Shaw chose to use his naturally talented skills to commit fraud and create forgeries.

I just could not help but shake my head at such a waste of potential.

Isaac was going to pay for corrupting such an invaluable talent, yet he would be for later. For now, I had someone else to pay a visit to and have a few words with. Approaching the gate to my destination, I hopped the fence then proceeded to hack his home's security to prevent him or anyone else from realizing I was here until it was too late. With Evelyn helping to keep an eye on every other target of interest's movements, I simply walked through the front doors of his home, completely unimpeded as his home security had been completely bypassed and usurped.

Didn't even take me ten seconds to do so. Seriously, for all his talent in editing data programs, Shaw is utter shit at actually coding new ones. I can't help but think he was the one who made their cyber-security firewalls. It would explain how laughably pitiful it was keeping me out. And this was before I became a Child of Primus. Now, it's just so pathetic it's not even worth laughing at, much less the consideration to do so.

Settling in for the long wait,I decide to play a little game with him once he finally arrives, and set up the board. Using his inherited home as the setting, and his survival being dependent upon his coding and problem-solving skills. The two things he never bothered to properly develop while constantly plagiarizing everyone else's work as his own. Now to wait. Oh, the look on his face will be priceless. I felt a sadistic grin form on my face at the thought of what he'll think of our little game.

Later that evening

Shaw P.O.V.

What. In the living fuck. Is this is fresh hell.

I came back to my manor, hoping to relax a bit as I needed to de-stress. Everything was normal the moment I walked into the entry hall. It was completely normal. I reached my study and began to open a brand-new bottle of five-hundred-year-old bourbon I got a couple months back to try and help calm my nerves. Then the moment I tried to connect to my home's net access remotely, I was suddenly hacked and my security access codes revoked. To my own home.

Then when I tried to find out what was happening, in a panic, I went to my office, only for the damn security system to attack me as an intruder. I almost got my own head sliced off by the laser grid activating the moment I reached the top of the stairwell. When I tried to reach the hard-line phone, I was zapped by the damn thing shocking me to the point of near death-by-electrocution. And when I tried to reach the security access panel on the hallway wall. the damn thing kept spouting some nonsense about old net memes. A security access panel.

What the fuck was going on in my own damn house!?

I tried to access the coding to see what the fuck was going on, and that's when it made my blood run cold at what I read.

'Six years. Six months. Six Days. On the dot. Novak Neumann lives again.'

That was not in binary coding. That was in human language.

"...oh...no..."

The hoarse croak from my mouth was all my Cajun mouth could utter before a final message was sent through the coding, in human language once more...

'Behind you.'

...right before a monstrosity of a weapon, a multi-bladed macabre horror show of machete, katana, and lives railed my through the chest as a signature revving noise of a hard-light chain-sword started, and my mind completely shredded into pure agony.

Third-person P.O.V. Shift

The worst part of Shaw McCarthy's final hours was not the fact that he died gruesomely. No, that was the fact he had been slowly tortured to death, killed in such a manner he should not have still been alive, yet somehow managed to do so until his vital organs were finally destroyed, his body slowly hacked and carved piece by piece apart to the point his body was barely recognizable as a human corpse and not a very macabre scene worthy of a butcher shop or a horror movie.

All over the span of five long, agonizing hours.

Then with his victim's own blood, his killer painted two words onto the walls. When the authorities finally came to do a welfare check a week later, they discovered this gruesome message, with Shaw's rotting severed head and pulped remains of his own body presented right before it.

'Six Years.'