10:32pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

"What the fuck?"

The bikers that Aiden found himself face to face with were not the 'cut' wearing outlaws common in the west in the previous century, but rather members of the high-tech youth gangs who raced and fought through the night streets of Kanto, rebelling against corporate tyranny and the oppressiveness of the modern high-surveilance state. Each of them wore jackets and pants coloured a deep, dark purple, and several of them, especially the women, wore skin-tight bodysuits of the same colour that seemed to be high-grade synthetic leather and latex.

Aiden couldn't think of what to tell them, or how to reply to what he figured was an acceptably alarmed response to the back door opening. He examined them all in silence for a time and as one by one the bikers stood up from their seats he took a step back to feign fear. "He... Tried to kill me," he revealed, deciding that the truth seemed appropriate.

The bikers seemed to slow a moment and passed each other unsure glances. It was then that Aiden noticed that each of the bikers wore the exact same logo somewhere on their person, a white and grey centipede holding a japanese sword in its mouth-parts. "He tried to kill you?" Asked one of them, a young japanese man with unnaturally white hair that fell to just above his eyes. Aiden noticed how this white-haired man stepped forward and the others looked to him to see what they should do.

"He told me that he could give me a safe place to sleep and then he tried to kill me," Aiden repeated, putting increased emphasis on a fearful tone of voice.

"Mikio, Hiromi, go and check," said the white haired man.

Two bikers, one man and one woman, and both a little younger than their leader, pushed past Aiden and went over to where Sarratt lay upon his back with one of his own throwing knives sticking out of his forehead. "Yuji, it's fucking Sarratt," called back the woman, long, silver-blue hair falling down over her shouluders. "There's a fucking knife in his head."

"He tried to kill me so I.. Stabbed him," Aiden explained.

"In the head?" Asked Yuji, the white-haired man. "You don't seem wounded."

"I was... Lucky," Aiden said.

"Bullshit, you lured him back here and murdered him," said the woman who watched over his body. "No blood though. Weird."

"How could I have lured him here?" Aiden asked. "I don't even know where I am."

"He's got a point," said the other man. "The back door is maglocked and I've never seen the guy before. Even if he knew where this place was, how'd he get through? How'd he convince Sarratt to go through with him?"

"Just let me go," Aiden pleaded. "I don't want any trouble. It was self defence. You'll never see me again."

"Just wait a second," Yuji told him. "We need to figure out what the hell happened here."

"I told you. He lured me here and tried to kill me."

It was then that the girl with silver-blue hair, Hiromi, walked up to him from behind. "How'd he lure you?" She asked, as her hand suddenly reached towards the rim of Aiden's hospital trousers and pulled at them so she could see inside. Aiden pushed her hand away and she rolled her eyes. "He's not even wearing underwear," she said. "And those are hospital trousers. This guy's from Fukaya General."

"Oh what the fuck," Yuji groaned, rubbing his head with one hand and sitting back against the edge of a table. "Well we can't just leave Sarratt there, and if this guy's from Fukaya the KCPD could be here at any moment. What is he? Victim? Witness? They'll be looking for him."

"The cops are already on high alert, Yuji," said Hiromi. "Not to mention Kumo. If we ride out tonight we could attract a lot of bad attention."

"Got no choice," Yuji said. "We gotta dump the body."

"Shit," the woman grumbled. "Want me to go get the truck?" She asked.

"No, you'll look out of place driving it at this time of night," Yuji told her. "Mikio, you take it."

Mikio nodded. "Sure thing. What about this guy?" He asked, gesturing to Aiden. "Want me to pop him in the back of the head?" He asked, lifting his jacket to reveal the handgun in his belt.

"Nah, we'll take him with us for now. Decide what to do with him on the way," said Yujio. "Put a bag on his head so he can't see."

Suddenly everything went dark for Aiden. Someone behind him, perhaps the bartender, pulled a thick sack over his head and the dozen or so bikers in the room became relegated to nothing but the sounds of breathing and throat-clearing. He felt a strong hand press into his shoulder, and he found himself being pushed through the bar with no way of knowing where his destination was. All he knew is that he did not want to get into another fight, and would go along with them until he found the chance to escape or was let go.

Aiden heard little of the next few minutes. At first he wasn't sure if some kind of audio-suppressing tech was being used to prevent him from overhearing them, but he eventually realized that the youthful biker gang had an impressive level of discipline. They seemed to know what they had to do, and did it without wasting their time speaking. It led Aiden to wonder: how did an anarchist, anti-authority biker gang in the underbelly of Kanto recognize a man like Sarratt, whoever he was?

Over the next few minutes Aiden was taken outside into what he assumed was some dead back alley, where some kind of van or small truck pulled up to him. He heard a door open, then he felt hands guiding - and then pushing - him down into a back seat out of view. Someone sat down beside him, then the door closed and the engine started with a whirring hum. Outside he heard the similar whirring of bikes, then Aiden rolled against the back of his seat as the vehicle began to accelerate.

"Where are we going?" Aiden asked through his hood.

"Nowhere you need to worry about," said a voice he didn't recognize. The speaker didn't have a natural Japanese accent and Aiden figured he must have been a foreigner raised in Kanto.

"I was telling the truth. He tried to kill me. Look around that room and you'll see the evidence."

"I don't care, man. I was enjoying a drink with my friends, and whatever happened back there has shit on our whole evening."

Aiden sighed and went quiet, and felt the vehicle turn, and then turn again, and then stop at some junction before heading on. This continued for nearly thirty minutes, and the whole while Aiden's hands were crossed over his naked abdomen. They didn't tie his wrists and he could have at any moment tried to remove the bag, but with the unknown man sat next to him he decided it wasn't worth it.

"Shit, I don't like this," said the man - not to Aiden, but to the driver. "Kumo could see us at any time. We could be in a fight before we even know it's coming."

"Don't worry about it," replied another, a voice Aiden recognized as Mikio. "We're moving fast and quiet, and we have guys out ahead to make sure there are no surprises."

"That doesn't make me feel any better, man," said the unknown one. "These streets are basically sewers. You know, I heard this from my cousin, there are thousands and thousands of people who never even touch the road? They spend their entire lives on the upper floors, taking those walkways that go between buildings or those flying cutters. Think about how many people stand on those walkways, looking down at us? We live in a forest of brick and steel and who knows when there might be a spider in the trees watching us?"

"Well luckily for us, we're here," said Mikio. A few seconds later the vehicle paused, then drove on again, then about a minute later turned into a spot and came to a compete stop as the engine died.

The man next to Aiden leaned over and pulled the bag from over his head, and Aiden looked up and blinked in the light. The door by his head opened and he saw Hiromi standing there with a long knife in her hand, and Aiden thought she was going to stab him until she gestured for him to climb out. Aiden did so, and when he finally stood again he found that they were several miles away from the nearest of Kanto's skyscrapers.

They seemed to be on an old shipping dock and decades old and abandoned containers stood around them, piled two or three high and arranged in a haphhazard, maze-like manner. Old cranes reached high above them like towers, and around them were abandoned warehouses that were large enough to be small towns, with distant fires and signs of squatters in their windows.

"What are you going to do? Kill me and dump me here?" Aiden asked them, looking around as each of the dozen or so members of the gang stood by their slick, dark bikes and kept an eye out for trouble.

"No," said Hiromi, "but it would be a good place for it. Stick you in one of these old containers, deep in one of those warehouses? It'd be a hundred years before you were found."

Aiden closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to focus on the surrounding skyline. Kanto City was all around them, its buildings reaching into the sky like a forest of great spires. Even though the waterfront was a large and far flatter area, those buildings were like a wall around them - and they made Aiden feel trapped.

Behind him, from the bed of the truck Aiden had been riding in, two members of the gang pulled away a tarp cover and opened the bed so that they could reach the body inside. Each grapped one of Sarratt's legs, then after sliding him towards them they supported his entire body and lay him down again on the ground. The knife was still in the forehead, and Aiden had to turn away from it.

"How did you guys know him?" Aiden asked. "He didn't seem like a biker."

"He sold us guns," said Yuji, who had been talking to members of his gang but was now walking towards Aiden, Mikio and Hiromi with a submachine gun hanging at his side by a strap. "Didn't know much about him, but he had powerful friends. Friends who'll want to know what the hell happened to him."

Aiden suddenly realized why they were there. Rather than being killed and dumped, he was being handed to whoever Sarratt's allies were so that they themselves could kill and dump him - after presumably torturing him first. Aiden began to look down and closed his eyes, knowing that, if he started running now, he could probably get away. They wouldn't be able to stop him, and though they might slow him down a little they wouldn't be able to hurt him.

Or perhaps he should just kill them all... He could do that too, couldn't he? He killed those mercenaries after all...

"Hey, boss?" Asked one of Yuji's men.

"What is it?" Yuji replied.

"Sarratt. I swear he just moved."

Aiden suddenly froze in fear, hoping that whatever the biker had just said was some kind of exaggeration, or some kind of lie. He opened his eyes slowly, then turned to look at where Sarratt lay on the ground - and twitching.

"Should we help him?" Asked Mikio.

Yuji was speechless for a long time, but after someone nudged him in the shoulders he shook out of it and answered, "yeah, check his pulse. Maybe he's just convulsing - like after death nerve shit."

"Who, me?" Mikio asked, clearly not wanting the job.

"Yes, you. Damnit just do it," Yuji ordered.

Mikio went over to Sarratt, then slowly and with as much fear as caution knelt down by his shoulder. He reached a hand down towards his neck and used two fingers to feel for a pulse, then after several seconds and a look of clear confusion he placed his ear down towards Sarratt's heart. "I don't understand... He has a pulse but..."

Mikio's words were cut off as Sarratt opened his eyes, then brought his hand up and around the biker's neck so fast that his movement seemed unnatural. Mikio's eyes were suddenly wide, and he was unable to breathe, and before anyone could do anything Sarratt's hands closed tighter as Mikio's neck was crushed between his fingers and the body slumped down in an instant display of murder.

The shock and silence of the watching crowd was like the death that they had just seen, but as Sarratt pushed Mikio's body away from him, removed the knife from his head and began to sit up with a grin, Hiromi broke that silence by screaming.

"What the fu-" Yuji began to say, but stopped himself as he raised his submachine gun and began firing into Sarratt, who was no longer there. He had rolled and moved in a distorted, broken way, and a group of three of the nearby bikers were suddenly being broken and torn by nail and tooth in a horrific display of gore. They tried to fight back, but Sarratt was too quick, too precise, and too strong, and he ended the final one by sinking his teeth deep into the unfortunate woman's jugular and letting her blood spray and rain all around her as she went to the ground in a deathly downward spiral.

"I must admit you surprised me, King," Sarratt said, turning now to where Aiden had been frozen in place. Around them the bikers scrawled around for weapons or got on their bikes, and Yuji yelled orders to try and bring his gang under control but his words were silent to Aiden's ears. "What you did was very clever. And right after I chastised you for lacking cleverness."

Aiden stepped back as Sarratt grinned widely and began to clap his hands in a disturbing applause. "It's unfortunate that these Mukade saw it, though. They were valued customers," the grinning man said.

Aiden turned and began to run and Sarratt would have followed him except several members of the biker gang began to fire on him with their guns, the bullets tearing through his body and prevented his advance. When the shooting ended, one of the bikers rushed at Sarratt with a crowbar and Sarratt caught it with his hand, pried it away and used it to break open the biker's skull. Aiden, rather than making his escape, had stopped and turned to watch this happen.

"Go home, little Centipedes," Sarratt told them, his right side being thrown back as a shotgun blast tored through his shoulder. "Or I'll step on you all."

"Everyone, run!" Yuji shouted, not as a response to what Sarratt said but rather because five members of his gang had just died, and he had no desire to lose another. He fled to his bike, as did several others, and climbed onto them in a hasty retreat.

"Fuck you!" Screamed Hiromi, taking a pistol and firing it at Sarratt until the trigger clicked, and then dropping the magazine from the gun to reload as she backed herself up against the truck. Sarratt, who had been as unphased by the bullets as Aiden would have been, grinned at Hiromi and began to approach her with the crowbar as the rest of the bikers began to ride away.

It was at this point that Aiden, who did not wish to see any more death and still felt the overwhelming guilt of what he had done to Nami, turned back and ran straight at Sarratt like some crazed bull. Sarratt swung the crowbar at him, but Aiden raised his arm and took the full force of the swipe with it. He then reached forward and grabbed Sarratt's wrist, but Sarratt pulled harshly and the curved chisel dug into the back of Aiden's shoulder and caused him to yell out in pain.

"You're not fast enough, not strong enough," Sarratt mocked, and Aiden stared rage into Sarrat's eyes as he pulled him around and tried to pry the bar out of Sarratt's hands. Meanwhile Sarratt used his free hand to pull a throwing knife from the inside of his jacket, and when he went to stab it into Aiden's shoulder with inhuman speed he found that Aiden's hand had already moved into the path of the knife and stopped it with his palm.

"Not bad," said Sarratt. "But you still can't win."

"I'm not trying to," grunted Aiden. A moment later Hiromi, who had been approaching Sarratt from behind, pressed her pistol against the side of Sarratt's head and pulled the trigger. Sarratt was immediately knocked sideways as the bullet passed through his brain, and his newly limp and silent body hit the ground as Aiden released him.

"... Shit," Aiden groaned, pulling the knife from his palm and dropping it to the ground with a clatter. Hiromi stared at him, almost in shock, as Aiden's wound healed before her eyes. "You need to go," he told her. "Before he gets up again."

Hiromi snapped out of the trance that watching Aiden had placed her in, and she turned and ran over to where her bike had been left. She threw her leg over it and clutched the handles, then started the engine and turned again to make sure that Sarratt was still on the ground. "You think he'll get up again?" She asked.

"Yeah," Aiden mumbled, moving from where he had been looking down at Sarratt's limp body and walking quickly in the direction that the other bikes had left in. He seemed to be planning to leave on his own, bare-foot and still half-naked, but before he could leave Hiromi pulled in front of him on her black bike.

"Get on," Hiromi told him. "It's the least I can do for saving my ass."

Aiden paused for a moment, the only thought in his mind being that Hiromi would be in danger for as long as he was with her. After a few seconds he climbed on behind her and placed his hands firmly on her waist for support. "Just get me out of here," he told her. "I'll go from there."

Hiromi nodded, then she hit the accelerator on her bike and they sped off into the night.