11:29pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

The rain that began to fall bounced from the tops of metal shipping containers with a distinctive thudding sound, and ran down their sides and over their edges to coalesce as puddles and running streams of water on the ground. All of a sudden, the lights of the distant cityscape were reflected on wet tarmac, which lit up as a post-impression of blues, reds and purples that constantly shimmered in the downpour.

One of the corpses, disfigured in that the side of his head had come apart, slowly and quietly pushed himself up from his limp place on the floor and used the tips of his fingers to roll his eyeballs back to the front of his head.

He sat there in silence for a while, watching the rain wash away the blood from the bodies around him and feeling it pool into the side of his skull, and into the holes that littered his limbs and torso. After a while he blinked to snap himself out of some half-awake dream, then reached his hand into his dark coat and pulled out a small screen of glass. He tried to swipe it with his thumb but realized that it had been cracked and shot through, and casually tossed it away in the rain.

He leaned around him then and checked the nearest body for a similar piece of technology, with his body stretching in awkward and unnatural ways. The next one was cracked slightly, but it still shone with the light of a screen, and he took the corpse’s thumb and pressed it against the print lock until the main screen scrolled into view. He sat back up, crossed his legs beneath him, then pressed the call button and entered a number.

A few seconds later, silence answered.

“He got away,” said Sarratt.

“Can you pursue him?” A woman’s voice asked him, her tone monotone and factual.

“Not possible,” he answered, a slight grin on his face. “I took a beating, and he could be miles away by now.”

“You sound like this is amusing to you,” the woman said. “Whose phone are you using?”

“No-one’s anymore.”

“I see. What did you think of him?”

“He shouldn’t be underestimated. He might have been a failure, but he was still one of us, and he is still just as smart. Perhaps even smart enough to be a problem. You were right though – he doesn’t remember anything.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I could see it in his eyes. He had no idea who I was.”

“I see. Do you think, if you were being serious, that he could defeat you?” Asked the woman, which caused Sarratt to laugh.

“No,” Sarratt said as he calmed. “I do not think. His regenerative capacity is impressive, but even that would wear quickly.”

The woman’s voice went silent for a time, then returned with a newfound domineering quality. “Make sure there’s no mess left behind,” she commanded.

“Fair enough,” said Sarratt, glancing around for a moment at the bodies that had accumulated around him. “So, who are you going to send to find him in my place? The angel? The furry? Or perhaps spider-woman?”

“We need to find him, first. Then we need to know the extent of his abilities.”

Sarratt grinned. “The furry, then.”

“Do not be disrespectful, Sarratt. They are your companions.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” he replied, though he still sounded amused.

“Don’t be sorry, just follow your orders. Oh, and get rid of that biker gang. They’ve seen too much,” said the woman, before she ended the call and left Sarratt there with nothing but the noise of the rain.

Sarratt then stood and went to the nearest body, and by its arm he lifted it to his mouth and sank his teeth into its flesh. Slowly, he began to devour it, and with each swallow the wounds on his body began to seal shut and repair themselves. When he was as good as new, he piled the bodies into the back of the abandoned truck and covered them with the tarp, then climbed behind the wheel and drove them away.

11:38pm, Thursday the 9th October, 2132.

The black motorbike rushed through the backstreets of the city, a 2120 J.M Seax with a hybrid engine and custom modifications to make the accelerator roar. Aiden held on to Hiromi tightly, and stayed close to her with his hands around her hips like a lover as she gripped the handles and leaned her body to the sides in rhythm with her bike’s turning. Looking over her shoulder Aiden could see a display between her arms, which then pinged in alert of a newly received message that showed on the screen as a single word: ‘Scatter.’

The biker turned suddenly with the aid of her breaks, and soon they drifted around a corner, rainwater spraying upwards from the traction, and began to speed down a narrow alleyway that held no life except a single, white cat taking shelter. The cat watched them as they passed it, then rode up a set of concrete stairs and flew out onto a slightly larger side-road where a car had to suddenly break and swerve to avoid them. Yet like a fearless vanguard Hiromi kept on, skilfully navigating traffic on both lanes as she weaved between them to best suit her needs.

There was a magroad up ahead now, with midnight traffic that moved so fast upon its rails that they appeared as barely more than a blur of light. Hiromi took her bike towards it, jumping through the air over a sudden downhill slope that led down into a tunnel beneath the highway, and suddenly the noise of the bike was echoing back to them off of tunnel walls that were bathed in a neon orange glow.

They rode through the tunnel for another five minutes or so in complete solitude, until eventually their lane began to split off into two. Hiromi turned off onto the outermost lane that was sign-posted as ‘NO ACCESS’, and it narrowed at the same rate she slowed her bike until suddenly they were in an area of the tunnel that seemed barely large enough to fit a car. “What is this place?” Asked Aiden.

“Nowhere,” Hiromi answered. She kept going until a road barrier lay across the tunnel that had been raised at one end and propped up onto a tall, concrete block, and by staying low to the bike they passed under it and into a large, disused parking lot. There were spaces for maybe 200 vehicles, yet besides Hiromi’s bike there were only three, and they were clearly abandoned. She drove her bike through the lot, cutting across empty spaces and weaving between structural pillars until, at the far end, they came to a set of double doors made of thick steel.

“Get off here,” Hiromi said, as she reached her hand to her silver-blue hair and squeezed some of the water from it. Aiden did so, his bare feet feeling cold against the concrete floor and his tattered clothes sodden. After Hiromi also dismounted she took an old keycard from somewhere in her bodysuit and pressed it against a scanner, and with a hefty clanking sound the doors unlocked themselves and began to open inwards into an old maintenance service area. “Follow me,” said Hiromi.

She pushed her bike through the doors, then when Aiden had followed her through, she pressed a button that caused them to shut and lock again behind her. They found themselves in an old corridor, with several looted workshop rooms with busted open doors veering off from it and an old-fashioned service elevator at the end.

“This is one of our safe houses,” Hiromi explained. “I don’t think even the government knows this place is down here. Well, they obviously do, but they’ve stopped caring enough to check. Besides, we changed all the locks.”

They stopped in front of the only remaining door in the hall that was still closed, and Hiromi unlocked it with her keycard and propped it open. Inside was a comfortable enough looking den – with a sofa, a bed, a fridge, a desk with an old computer, several lockers, a working station and even a TV. It wasn’t clean, but it was surprisingly homely, and after leaving her bike propped up in the hall outside Hiromi stepped in and walked over towards the fridge.

Aiden followed and shut the door behind him, and stood there as though waiting for permission to relax as Hiromi took a beer from the fridge and cracked the can open. “You want one?” She asked him, and when Aiden shook his head no, she shrugged and began to drink from it.

“Why’d you bring me here?” Aiden asked. “I told you to just drop me off wherever.”

Hiromi paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Because some of my friends died tonight, and I still don’t know what I saw. What I do know is that you saved my ass, that I’m alive because of you, and I guess I brought you here because I’m still shit scared and I don’t want to be alone,” she revealed.

Aiden suddenly felt like a bit of a dick. He hadn’t realized it until just then, but all of a sudden he knew he was becoming desensitized to the strange and horrific circumstances that kept on happening to him. He began to realize that Hiromi wasn’t like that; she wasn’t used to the violence and the fear, and most importantly she wasn’t… Like him. Then suddenly, as Aiden stood there like a fool, he noticed that Hiromi was shaking and doing her absolute best to try and maintain her posture.

“Are you alright?” He asked her.

“I’ll be fine. This is the life I’m involved in, after all. Crime, violence, gang wars. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a bad situation, it was just the first I’ve been in one with an actual monster,” she said.

Aiden walked over towards the sofa and stood there, wondering if he should sit down or if that might somehow antagonize her. “I don’t even know who he is,” he said. “This Sarratt person.”

Hiromi looked at him cautiously. “He seemed to know you. Kept calling you ‘King’.”

“That’s my last name,” Aiden told her. “Aiden King. I don’t even know what I’m doing in Japan, or what that name means to the people here. I don’t remember anything from the past few years.”

“This sounds utterly ridiculous,” she said as she began to pace.

“But it’s true.”

“Sarratt’s an arms dealer,” Hiromi explained. “My gang – I mean, the gang I’m in – we’re called Mukade, or Centipedes. We’re in a war against our rivals, the Kumo, or Spiders, over territory. Sarratt has been selling us guns for over a year now.”

“A gang war?” Aiden asked. “Why would a biker gang be involved in a gang war?”

“Protection, racketeering, smuggling. We even deal in illegal augs – not the expensive cybertech but the real cheap, unlicensed amateur stuff. Sometimes we even mess with chems.”

“Jesus,” Aiden mumbled. “But I don’t get what I have to do with this. All I know is that Sarratt knows who I am, he knows what happened to me.”

“You don’t have any augs, do you?” Hiromi suddenly asked him.

“What? Augs? No, why?” Aiden asked.

“Not even the high-tech, expensive shit?”

“I don’t think so,” Aiden said, looking over himself to make doubly sure.

“Then what happened to your wounds?” Asked Hiromi.

“My wounds?”

“You were injured. Your hand, your shoulder, probably more. You were injured and bleeding but now you’re not. There aren’t even any scars. I’ve not even heard of any implants that can do that and you… Don’t even have any.”

Aiden paused for a moment and was about to try and explain himself when, suddenly, the door to the room opened behind them and in-stepped the gang leader with white hair. “Yuji?” Hiromi asked.

Yuji looked at her, then at Aiden. “I wondered where you were, I hadn’t heard from you. I thought you might be here,” he explained.

“You told us to scatter,” Hiromi reminded him. “So that’s what I did.”

“You brought this guy here?” Yuji asked her, gesturing to Aiden with a thumb.

“He saved my ass after you all left me there.”

“We didn’t leave you, Hiromi. I ordered everyone to retreat,” said Yuji.

“Well I couldn’t. King here saved me, and I couldn’t repay my debt by leaving him on the street, could I?”

“Well, you have my thanks, King,” Yuji said. “But we’ve got big problems now because of you.”

“Because of me?” Aiden asked. “I wanted none of this. I was just trying to defend myself!”

“Well whatever your reasons, the results were the same. Sarratt was connected, and I don’t know how the fuck he did what he did, but it’s not just him we have to worry about,” Yuji told them. “There’s been word put out on the street that Mukade are fair game. A price is out on our heads, and there’s no doubt that Kumo are out there right now hunting us. We need to stay underground until I can fix this.”

“A price? Shit,” mumbled Hiromi, and from where he was Aiden could suddenly smell the fear in her. He shut his eyes tightly and tried not to, but it was impossible.

“I need to find him. I need to go after him,” Aiden suddenly said. “Or at least someone who can get to him.”

“What?” Yuji asked. “Get to who? Sarratt?”

“Yes. If I don’t, he’ll just keep coming after me. Maybe if I can meet with him, or the people he works with, I can fix all this. They must want something - there’s got to be a reason they’re doing this.”

“Going after that guy is crazy after what happened tonight. He’s got some serious enhancement,” said Yuji. “But… There was a guy I saw him with once. A corpo guy from Naka-Sura.”

Hiromi looked at them in disbelief. “You’re seriously suggesting we go after a corpo from Naka-Sura?” She asked. “He’ll be even more impossible to get than Sarratt. They have a private army. Not just security guards, but an actual private military.”

“We don’t need to harm him, or even kidnap him,” said Aiden. “We just need to speak to him.”

“And if he’s connected to Sarratt, perhaps we can buy him off and get rid of this bounty,” Yuji said. “This might be worth a try, Hiromi.”

“The two of you are being ridiculous. We’re going after this man based on what, the fact he was once seen with our arms dealer? He might not have anything to do with the man – it might have been a fluke,” Hiromi argued.

“Maybe, but it’s the first time I’ve actually had a lead that might be able to tell me what the fuck is happening to me,” Aiden told her as he looked down again at his still bare feet and his torn, bloodied hospital trousers. “And besides, WE are not going after anyone. Just I am.”

Yuji and Hiromi looked to one another, then Hiromi sighed and slid down onto the sofa in defeat.