Interlude: The Ex-Husbands

Six Days Later, Neo-Detroit

Dickens Biotech Industries Board of Directors Private Meeting Room

Third-Person P.O.V.

It had been a week since the wives of the five primary chairs of this company's founders left for their monthly spa retreat. The five men in question had all arrived at the company in question, smiling and acting like nothing was wrong. They seemed their usual selves, giving out their usual orders, and then proceeded to enter their private meeting room, the one reserved for important decisions on what policies to introduce, what investors to seek funding from, or what projects to prioritize. As far as everyone in the company's rank and file, that was what the room was for, thus they were not too surprised when the five men made their way to the room for a discussion.

Those same employees would be absolutely flabbergasted at just how thorough the masks these five men wore to hide their true emotions and thoughts so effectively, or how seamlessly quick the transition from amicable boss to absolutely fucking murderous crime lords leading the biggest secret criminal empire they were unknowingly working for. The moment the soundproofing and shutters closed off the room from the outside, all hell broke loose. All five of the men held the most utterly focused looks of sheer, directed murderous rage, and it all had to do with some documents they received alongside footage all five of them had received just that morning.

They'd been cucked.

For years.

And only just found out now, when their now ex-wives, who had sent them the signed and officially filed legal documents effectively severing their marriage contracts. On a time delay. To ensure they only received it this morning.

To say they were pissed was an understatement. The issue, however, was the one they were all cucked by.

Novak Neumann.

That was a shock on top of a shock, finding out their wives had all been secretly hiring escorts to sleep around with. On top of that, the recording showed they all had secretly held desires to become Neumann's women, and they were forced to watch the cottage, in an accelerated play-by-play, as he spent all day fucking them. IMPREGNATING them. And they were not able to stop it nor could they do anything about it, all because it had already happened a week ago. What's worse, they also received an encrypted e-mail straight to their Cyberware implants immediately after the footage completed, seeing a continuation of said video, as each of them proceeded to then spend an entire day getting continuously railed individually for the next five days.

And then yet another group orgy as he took them all together all day again once more.

The problem, though, isn't just the fact their wives had effectively chosen to run away with another man. At the same time. With the same man. No, that's not the biggest issue here. That's the other eye-opener that completely almost gave fatal heart attacks. And the reason the five men are currently in the middle of a war council, the likes of which will shake up the criminal underworld of Neo-Detroit.

Novak Neumann was alive.

That was the true threat to their schemes. How he survived and where he's been for these last few years, they don't know. Nor do they care. The fact still remains he's a threat that must be eliminated. They stole quite a bit from him, and beat him to force his silence as well as threatened the orphaned tech genius' few friends and isolated him from others.

His friend, Dimetreus 'D-Ray' Bellaire was already dead. They made sure of it. They were clean and careful about it to ensure they could not be tied to it or connected to his death in any way. The Bellaire's were still trying to get to the bottom of their son and original heir's death, but they left no clues to follow and what clues were left are merely circumstantial at best.

Until Novak Neumann decided he wanted to come back from the fucking dead.

The five men seethed in outrage at the blatant disrespect, the blatant strike at their prides, but most of all, the sheer fact they themselves brought this on themselves by juicing themselves up and then forcing Neumann's silence, when he said it himself in that video. He did in act say the risks of what they were doing. They simply ignored him, and now their wives decided to simply stop hiding the truth of the matter of their infidelity and officially divorce them.

It was the words Neumann said towards the end that worried them most though.

'...you're next.'

Taking deep breaths and then exhaling, Isaac Dickens looks to his four oldest, closest, and most trusted friends. One by one, gauging their feelings on the matter. First to his direct left, he looks at his chief enforcer, Leonardo Dantellion.

The muscular brute is a six-foot-seven giant of a man. Bioware enhancements coupled with Cyberware enhancements make him an intimidating sight to those he wishes to send a message to anyone he wishes to ensure complies with the implied threat of violence what would happen if they opposed him. Salt and pepper hair naturally styled into a slicked back combed fashion with a typical mustache stereotypical to those of his heritage. His hair wasn't due to aging, but premature graying due to the sheer amount of experimental physical enhancement Cyber and Bioware he stuffed his body full of to the point of barely straddling the across the edge of cyber-psychosis. His Italian features are twisted in a strange mix of shame for failing to please his woman, frustration at his inability to properly please her, and vexed rage twisting his face in a snarl of indignation and righteous fury of his woman being stolen by another man.

The armrests of his chair can attest to just how much of his anger he's barely restraining, judging by how twisted his own grip had crumpled the solid reinforced metal. Metal that was supposed to be stronger than a fully armored military-grade combat mech's steel plating, yet it still could not hold against his sheer strength which bordered on the realm of the monstrous. Eliza's look of raptured surrender as another man bred her got his blood completely boiling.

Only Novak ever had a knack for managing to find ways to piss him off like this without even trying, and the dead man came back to life just to do that in the most epic middle finger he could possibly give him.

Then turning to the next person over, Isaac took a closer look at his primary forger and corporate infiltrator, Shaw McCarthy. To say his face was the perfect picture of shocked outrage and disbelief-filled terror was an understatement. He was Isaac's key figure and one of the vital pillars to achieve his plans to create his criminal empire, due to his knack for figuring out the basics of other's technological innovations and how to usurp them from their original creator's ownership. All without leaving a trace of the forgery or getting caught.

Shaw was a lean man of clear Caucasian descent with reddish-brown locks of hair in a neatly combed and trimmed short pony-tail style haircut. His natural southern drawl was a clear indication of his original birthplace down in New Orleans as well as his Cajun roots. It's this very 'Southern Charm' that allows him to perform corporate espionage so easily.

No one ever suspects the Cajun.

As for Shaw's current disposition to this reveal, he was absolutely terrified about something, and that was concerning Isaac. What none of them save for Shaw knew, was just what Novak had intentionally revealed in that video, something he could never copy or attempt to usurp if he tried.

Novak created a completely new form of technology, centuries ahead of everyone else. And Shaw has no idea how it worked or how he did it. Techno-polymorphic Cyber-Bio hybrid enhancements. Novak had, in ways that his mind that excelled in figuring out the mechanism behind how technology worked in order to steal it, had for once drawn a complete blank in how it was done.

And that frightened him more than he knew or cared to admit. That someone out there was smart enough to find a way to keep him from stealing their tech. And Novak did just that. As a taunt. Using that very tech to cuck him along with his four peers in a recorded footage as he screwed his own wife, Eina, fucking her silly, and she willingly and gleefully had him impregnate her.

And that truly frightened him as much as it angered him to see.

Next to him on Isaac's right, he directed his observation to his PR Director, Johanne Kreur. The German-Jew was in clear disbelief over what happened, and appeared to be cycling through the eight stages of grief, though seemed trapped in the denial stage. That's not good. Isaac knew better than most what happens when Johanne refuses to accept reality.

In the past, Johanne had his wife Anastasia to help cover his ass and keep him from getting caught. After all, when he refused to face reality, the cause was often because he had found a beauty who caught his fancy for a little harmless fun in the sheets. When said beauty rebuffed his advances, he would drug and force himself onto her, then Anastasia would cover for him by making it look like she forced herself onto him and he was too weak-willed to resist. Then Anastasia would make him completely remain abstinent for a week before allowing him back between her legs.

That is no longer an option for him, and she no longer will aid his vices. Johanne's understanding and long-standing history of experience in the area of Public Relations has him with the best understanding of the PR nightmare this was bound to become once it came out. That was only a question of 'when', not 'if'.

He had not been prepared to be blindsided by this absolute utter cluster-fuck, nor had any possible countermeasures prepared to prevent the scandal from ruining them when it does finally get out.

Turning to his direct right, Isaac looked at concern at his best friend and most trusted subordinate, Vladmir O'Reilley. Vladmir was a Russian-Irish mixed blood, and Anastasia's older brother, as well as Aisha's husband and Shaw's brother-in-law. Vladmir had far more reason than most to be outraged out of the five of them, yet Vladmir was calm. Unnaturally, eerily calm. Like the eye of the hurricane.

And Isaac became all the more worried for it. Vladmir was the strategist of his inner circle. Their fixer, their financial expert, and most of all, their calm and collected defacto second in command after Issac. He was the one who was never to lose his calm for anything. The one who was meant to be the voice of reason, the guy who never stopped thinking and was supposed to be the one who kept them supplied with his 'contacts' as well as his connections giving them deniable armed enforcers in the form of the Chrome-Bloods gang.

And Vladmir currently looked like he could melt solid reinforced steel with his murderous glare alone.While the rest of them received Cyberware or Bioware designed to enhance their physique in some way, Vladmir got ones designed to enhance his mind and cognition. And right now, Vladmir was running countless simulations about the cost-reward scenarios in regards to what would happen if this information were to get out, as well as what would be the risks and rewards of trying to assassinate Novak again.

Already he was just a thought away from using his discrete internal comms package to directly call Brick-House to see about tracking down and eliminating Novak to keep this from getting out, while also disposing of their wives while he was at it. The financial gains and losses would need to be carefully weighed before he committed either way, but suddenly, something caught his attention within his mental network that completely froze his mind to a screeching halt along with his plans for orchestrating mass murder.

His constant monitoring of Brick-House was something of an association necessity. Given Brick-House's penchant for uncontrolled and unpredictable behavior, he had Brick-House approached with an offer for a mutually beneficial partnership. He and their company would retain his services for any dirty job they could not publicly be connected with, and in exchange, they let him rule over the criminal territories he conquered on their behalf. As part of said deal, he gave Brick-House a particular bio-moniter implant. One that Vladmir had kept him apprised of any and all injuries their mad dog suffered at any times to plan around.

And Brick-House's vitals just erratically spiked to dangerously high and low levels for five minutes straight before flat-lining. Along with the rest of his men, from what he managed to find through his illegal backdoor into their bio-moniters. How this happened, he doesn't know, as he just searched through their illegally patched cameras only to find static or missing footage before the video simply showed the aftermath of the resultant bloodbath.

Isaac saw the shock on Vladmir's face and frowned in concern. That was bad. The only time Vladmir ever frowned in the past, something unexpected he had not accounted for occurred that nearly got them killed. That's never a good sign from his oldest and best friend.

"What happened Vladmir?" Isaac asked, in wary concern with Vladmir's response. The other three noticed and grew tense as Vladmir spoke his response in a very concerned tone.

"Our mad dogs just all flat-lined, all at once. Within the span of five minutes of each other."

Novak's warning to them suddenly resurged right back into the forefronts of their minds. Its weight far heavier a thought than they liked as this made it clear just how royally fucked they were now if their illegal assets were being targeted first. Their legal assets would be too obvious to those who check for it, and their illegal assets were the only layer of deniability they had between them and their crimes being outed.

They began to discuss plans, countermeasures, any possible method they could try to turn this around. They discussed this for the rest of the day, before calling it a night and trying to remain at least a modicum of seeming normalcy to their daily lives. They had planned to start taking action tomorrow, thinking that Novak wouldn't take any direct action so soon after his threat.

They had no idea this would be the last day all five of them would still be alive to speak with one another, as by this time in tomorrow, all five of them would be found dead in various ways, having suffering poetically fitting forms of torture, both physical and psychological. And all five would have a message written in their own blood, leading the police to realize in the course of the rabbit hole they found themselves in what the motive behind killing them was...