"AAAA!" three feminine shrieks resonated in harmony.

With an audible thud, a towering, headless body collapsed on the floor.

"What... What have you done!" Raúl exclaimed while the colour in his face drained at a visible rate.

Simon sighed, turning towards Rhona who was holding a smoking gun in her extended hand, "Yeah... what have you done?"

"I- I-" Rhona struggled to formulate a reply as she shakingly pointed the weapon at Raúl.

"Put it down before you kill someone else," Simon reminded sternly.

"But- But- They'll kill us!" Rhona managed to stammer out a reply.

Simon signed once again. He turned towards his LChair and saw that the secret compartment he added to it was left agape. Seemingly, Rhona had smuggled the weapon into the cruiser by hiding it within. What surprised him was that she managed to sneak it in without his knowledge.

"They can definitely try," he said and then proceeded to tap a sequence of commands into his comms causing the room to come to life once again.

With the final flourish of input commands, the panels on the ceiling slid aside and a battery of weapon turrets descended.

It was at that moment that Raúl realised that he had completely overlooked the existence of the hi-tech security systems installed in the cruiser. For a moment, his dead eyes gained clarity as hope sparked within them. But they were summarily extinguished when the turrets trained their barrels in his direction.

When the turrets pointed at Raúl and the three women, the lingering shrieks were doused completely.

"We don't appreciate getting threatened," Simon said eerily while staring directly at Raúl.

Raúl entire life flashed before his eyes as his situation dawned on him. An encroaching sense of danger washed over him causing his mind to plough through the stage five stages of grief at record speed.

He wanted to deny the possibility of his imminent death. But he quickly realised the stupidity of that thought. Multiple turrets were pointing at him for Pete's sake!

He then started to feel anger. It boiled from within him, but that too was quelled in its nascent stages. He couldn't do anything with the anger or fury. It wasn't like unbridled rage could let him outrun the speed of an energy beam at point-blank,

He wanted to bargain, but the words wouldn't escape his mouth. Simon's apathetic and cold gaze made sure to block off any points of escape.

Depression quickly took over as his mind, which had just processed the tumultuous rollercoaster of events, started to question all the events that led up to this point in time.

'Why didn't I report to Raymond's father that time?'

'Why didn't I talk Raymond out of his ridiculous decision to come to this planet?'

'Why didn't I just work quietly like a slave under that slimy board member's nephew?'

'Why did I work so hard during my youth?'

'Why was I born?'

Alas, those questions would forever remain unanswered. Because he knew deep down that even if he had done things differently he would have ended up in the grave one way or another, filled with resentment, emptiness, and regret. Maybe he could have lived longer, or maybe he would have died much earlier.

Who could say for sure?

But what he did recognise was that regardless of his decisions, he was screwed the moment he was born. Right as he faced his own mortality, Raúl recognised the sheer futility of life.

In his lifetime, he worked himself to the bone like a pack mule. Yet he ended up like this.

What if he slacked off? He would have ended up in a similar predicament, albeit on another planet.

This world was not meant for the upright and incorruptible. The path to the top was just an illusion - an adorned staircase designed by MC Escher.

If he wanted to escape from this brutal endless stairwell, he had to take a leap of fate. He lamented the fact that he hadn't done so sooner.

Raúl closed his eyes in defeat.

His mind had given up completely. His body recognised this and collapsed onto its knees.

He took a deep breath and waited for the darkness to take him.

Byron slid his fingers into the pristine hole right at the centre of Raúl's forehead and commented, "Shit, this is clean! Did you cauterise it?"

Simon shook his head and replied, "The weapon did it automatically. Most turrets meant to be mounted indoors come with that functionality."

Byron whistled in amazement.

"So what's the deal?" He asked as he placed his toolbox on a table nearby.

"These four bodies have a bunch of cyber implants," Simon replied as he tapped on the tablet in his hands. "Based on the scans I ran on them, there are about 33 in total."

Simon pointed at Raúl's corpse and continued, "This one has Nakamura CoreTech's SC11 cerebral implant, Qilin Sight's XX Mk.1 optical implant, AUG's custom immune system reinforcement, GlutONE's M13 metabolism regulator implant, and ClariT's last-gen flagship aural implants."

He then swept his hand over the corpses of the three deceased women nearby and commented, "They've way too many implants to list. Metabolism regulators, corneal modifiers, this one even has a bone restructuring augment, and all three of them have interfacing augment that directly connects their intervaginal walls to their cerebral implants."

Byron chuckled as he lifted the final rack in his toolbox revealing a secret compartment with pristine and sterilised surgical equipment, "Do you think Karina would want some of those?"

Simon glared at Byron momentarily and shook his head.

"Should I hit up Minato? Oh man, I miss that guy! I'll have to dig up his contact info though. Last time we used it was what... 5, 6 years ago?" Byron rattled out as he tilted his head. "I wonder what happened to him...."

"He was unstable. It's better to just use him as a fence. You conveniently forget the shit he got us into after he kidnapped the heir to Kiyoshi Orchards. All for the sake of a custom tongue augment," Simon added.

"But the man was a Picasso with the scalpel! I guess that's a bad analogy... Anyways, I remember how efficiently he bisected the boy's tongue. The suturing didn't even leave a mark!" Byron remarked while expressing his awe.

As Byron finished reminiscing on his past endeavours, he noticed a headless corpse deposited at the far end of the room. Pointing at it, he asked, "What happened to that one?"

"Rhona's handiwork..." Simon replied offhandedly.

"What the hell did she do with its head? Hammer it with a crowbar?" Byron retorted amusedly.

Simon reached into his LChair and retrieved the rudimentary gun from the hidden compartment.

Byron inspected the weapon and muttered, "Blue Blood's blunderbuss!"

"It seems she took my advice to take precautions quite literally. Damn near blew up Colin's head off!" Simon chimed in.

"No Shit! We've seen how it works first hand. Those brutes don't give a damn about collateral damage or friendly fire. How they manage to recruit so many people into their ranks is beyond me," Byron blurted out.

After amusing over the weapon he continued, "It would be a shame to waste such grade-A material..."

He turned towards Simon with a sparkle in his eyes and hinted, "I'm still in contact with Negan."

Simon frowned when he heard the name, "I thought we agreed to stop dabbling in organ harvesting? I've already told you that it isn't safe. Cyber implants can be reprogrammed and reformated, but DNA is permanent. It is near impossible to cover up the footprint it leaves."

Byron waved his hand and assuaged Simon, "I know, I know. But here's the thing. Negan's now gotten himself a contact in a Rank 2 system who operates an organ transplanting clinic. It's a complicated process, but according to the info he sent me, they can legitimise any organ regardless of its source. It's like laundering money, but with organs - organ laundering."

Simon showed visible hesitation as he pondered on the matter. "Forward it to me later. I'll talk to Negan and confirm it myself."

Byron mocked grievance as he pouted, "Don't you trust me?"

Simon snorted in reply, "I don't trust anyone. Anyways since we're already considering it, you should extract his organs quickly. I've filled him up with preservers just like these four, so the organs should still be in pristine condition."

"What about implants? A scion from a Rank 1 system ought to have some dope tech in him!" Byron interrupted.

"He had one, but Rhona did it in," Simon replied.

"Just one?" Byron asked incredulously.

"Gene modification and augmentation is the trend in the upper rungs of society. Longer lasting and hereditary," Simon clarified.

"Ah, sweet capitalism. By the way, why are we doing this in a bedroom? Isn't there an infirmary in this cruiser?" Byron retorted as he finally noticed that they were currently in Raymond's master bedroom.

Simon curved his lips and answered, "You wouldn't believe this, but this room is as sterile as a semiconductor manufacturing cleanroom."

He then added, "Here, watch," took a scalpel from Byron's 'toolbox' and slit his wrists horizontally.

The wound started to bleed profusely. But right as the first drop of blood touched the ground, a robot flushed into the walls of the room detached itself, rolled over to Simon, applied a quick-hardening foam on his wound, and cleaned up the blood-stained floor thrice over.

"Holy. Shit." Byron gawked while he observed the whole process.

"It even cleans right down to the particulate matter in the air. You know what usually happens in people once they die, right? Let's just say that we were fortunate to have moved these bodies here before the floodgates were opened," Simon added.

Byron hummed in amazement, "I don't get why there are all these functionalities in a bedroom?"

"I'll show you something later. It will make sense once you see what the surveillance systems in this room captured," Simon replied as he tapped the tablet in his hand.

When Byron began his work, he voiced out a question, "Were you planning for this to happen?"

Simon shrugged in reply, "Not really. If they were willing to fulfil their side of the contract, I wouldn't have gone this far."

"True. You aren't the vindictive type. But aren't you worried that his daddy will come looking for us?" Byron asked while slicing a perfect Y-shaped incision down Raymond's corpse.

"That won't be a problem. This one's father wasn't particularly... familial."

Byron chuckled while carefully truncating the blood vessels around the lungs. As each new one was sliced, a robot from the walls would rush over, cauterise the region precisely, and clean the area profusely. Once he fully isolated the lungs, he slid them carefully into a separate bag that he retrieved from his 'toolbox'.

These bags were similar to plastic airtight bags, but with additional functionalities that were tailor-made for organ storage and transport. It would perfectly maintain the internal temperature and would fill up with artificial preservers that would elongate the integrity of organs once the bag was sealed. In fact, it was common in the repertoire of tools of any relevant organ harvester.

As Byron moved on to the livers, he asked, "So? What's next?"

Simon thought for a while and replied, "First, I'll need to scrub this cruiser of any trackers and tracers. You'll notice that those two women have tracking and monitoring implants hidden within their intervaginal implants. I've masked them for now, but I'm planning to clone their signals and route them to a different location to throw whoever is subscribing to them off track. Next, we'll need to do something about the cruiser's exterior and interior. A white stealth cruiser with golden wings doesn't scream subtlety."

"That's a lot of stuff on my plate. Let Rhona handle it, she knows most of my contacts," Byron affirmed.

"After all of that, I guess we're good to go. We've got ourselves a ride out of this planet. It comes with some advanced equipment to boot. We could go legit. Maybe start ourselves a small security company. Every start-up needs a security package. Most of them can't afford the expensive ones, so there is always room in the market for it."

Byron smiled as he pulled out the liver from the corpse, "I never thought that I'd get to leave this system in my lifetime." With a rare, sincere smile, Byron added, "Thank you, Simon."

Simon tapped Byron's shoulder and smiled. Although it wasn't truly sincere like Byron's, there was nothing Simon could do about it. He was unable to process and equivocate that emotion, but he did know how to replicate it closely.

However, Byron didn't get hung up over that. He knew Simon's shortcomings and had accepted them all from the very beginning. Byron recognised that their partnership wasn't built on sincerity, empathy, or some mushy and flimsy emotion. Benefit and survival was the glue that kept them together.

Once he lost his father, Byron relied on his instincts to survive. But when Simon found him scavenging through trash, Byron's instincts, for the first time, urged him to latch onto Simon if he wanted to thrive.

Evidently, his instincts hadn't lied!

A stark-black and sleek cruiser lifted off from the surface of Eaton I at midnight OET on the 31st of December 2450. It rose gradually and breached through the planet's atmosphere within 10 minutes of lift-off.

The thrusters activated and propelled it through space. Due to the presence of the binary stars orbiting around the planet, it wasn't possible to initiate warping. The gravitic interference made it difficult for the warp drives in the ship to initiate a mini Einstein-Rosen bridge between its current location and a destination.

The cruiser travelled at sub-light speed for half a day, before exiting the border demarcating the region under strong influence from the binary stars. The thrusters dimmed causing the cruiser to propagate using its existing momentum.

Following a short pause, The space at the cruiser's tip started visibly to warp. Slowly, a void-black disk grew normal to the cruiser's velocity vector, just large enough to allow the entire cruiser to pass through it. Once the disk stabilised, the cruiser drifted through it.

Starting from the tip, which first breached the disk, the cruiser started to disappear into the void, until none of it remained.

In the darkness of space, silence reigned.

From the location where the cruiser disappeared, a pod slowly drifted in a velocity opposite to the cruiser's initial momentum, towards the gravitational field of the binary stars.

The pod looked similar to generic garbage disposal units installed in most spacefaring ships.

The pod drifted aimlessly until it experienced the strong gravitational fields of the binary stars. As if being yanked by an invisible string, the pod arced and sped through space, slowly approaching the closest binary star.

As the pod approached the star, it started to heat up. The cold metal started to adorn a red hue, which quickly turned blinding white as the pod encroached closer.

The pod lit up in a glorious flame as it touched upon the star's surface. Within seconds of contact, the pod exploded magnificently and disintegrated into nothingness.

The contents of the pod assimilated into the burning, main-sequence binary star, adding an insignificant decimal value to its gargantuan mass.

In the year 2410, Raúl Hernandez entered this world, and in the year 2451, his body left this world in a blaze of glory.