EP.2 A Mountain of Corpses, a Sea of Blood (6)
"Kraaagh!"
The man let out his final scream and collapsed.
When Ash cut down the last of the security detail, a chilling silence settled over the lobby. It was hard to believe that not even a minute earlier, the space had been filled with gunfire and screaming.
Blood and viscera. Severed cyberware scattered here and there. That was all that filled the lobby of Club Inferno now.
"All cleared out. Shall we move on?"
Zero had appeared at his side without a sound. He was drenched in blood from head to toe. Ash was no different.
Gazing at the blood dripping from the tip of his blade, Ash recalled the conversation they'd shared back at the safehouse before setting out.
"The fastest route to the VIP lounge runs through the main stage — we enter the private rooms through the staff-only corridor behind it."
"The Room of Contemplation is there?"
"According to the intel I obtained. Yes, sir."
"Then our path forward is decided."
'So this is the second phase.' Having run through the plan once more, Ash gave a small nod. That was the signal. As if bound by a silent pact, the six swordsmen slipped out of the blood-soaked lobby.
Jack Five was in a foul mood.
'That damn chip, chip, chip! Fuck, what's one lousy piece of silicon matter?'
At the moment, he was perched in the DJ booth — the highest point of the main stage. Sunken into a reasonably upscale sofa, one hand endlessly groping the prostitute at his side, he cast his gaze out over the stage.
Some hundred mercenaries and ninjas stood in a disorganized mass across the floor — gutter rats who'd come crawling at the smell of money. Just looking down at them made his irritation boil over, and Jack Five scrunched his face into a scowl.
"What the hell is this circus in the middle of the night?"
The reason for his foul temper was simple enough. He'd been in the middle of a job when the call came, and had been forced to sprint over at a moment's notice.
"We have to recover the data chip. I'm releasing credits to hire mercenaries, so you'd better come down here and whip them into shape."
"Who does that bastard Maestro think he is — my boss? Honestly, I can barely stomach this job."
Not that he could have refused. He paid well, after all.
There was a time I ran rampant across the Outer as a Pathfinder. How the hell did I end up rolling down here to the bottom of a gutter, playing errand boy for scum?
The thought only sharpened his irritation.
'Let's just get this over with.'
He intended to wrap up this insufferable briefing as fast as possible and put the woman beside him to proper use.
Hauling himself up from the sofa, he stepped to the front of the DJ booth and seized the microphone.
"Looks like everyone's more or less here, so let's begin. Come on, come on! Shut the hell up! I'm about to tell you what your job is!"
His gravelly voice boomed through the speakers, and the murmuring crowd of mercenaries quieted down.
"You can probably guess already, but your target is one thing and one thing only! The data chip! You retrieve it, and you're done!"
Still addressing the floor below, he turned his head toward a club staffer.
"Put the photos up."
At his word, the staffer scrambled to work the console. Moments later, the massive screen behind the main stage lit up with the faces of five men and women — and one humanoid.
"These are the ones carrying the chip! Six targets! Nobody gives a damn whether you kill them or take them alive — just bring back the chip! Do that, and Maestro will double the credits he promised—"
And that was the exact moment it happened.
BOOM.
A muffled, heavy impact — and a tremor that rattled the main stage down to its bones.
"What was that?"
The noise continued for a while. Listening closely, gunshots seemed to be mixed in as well.
"Hey! Somebody go out there and check! What kind of lunatic stirs up a ruckus while I'm running a briefing?"
At his gravelly command booming through the speakers, a pair of mercenaries standing closest to the main stage entrance moved toward the soundproof door. One of them had just cracked it open to survey the situation outside when—
SPLURT.
With a bizarre wet burst, bright red blood erupted like a fountain. The mercenary who'd opened the door collapsed without even managing a scream.
"Fuck, what the—?"
A strange, chilling sight sent a ripple of unease through the main stage. Every eye turned toward the soundproof door.
There, six figures in the shape of human beings stood in a line. Bathed in the relatively brighter light of the lobby behind them like a halo, the six silhouettes all held blades.
The one standing at the center — a humanoid whose entire body was machine — spoke. A low electronic voice rolled across the stage.
"I was wondering why the lobby seemed so understaffed. Turns out you were all gathered here."
The slender woman beside him answered.
"Good for us. We can clean everything up in one sweep."
Next, the one wearing a tiger mask picked up the thread.
"They're not as numerous as I expected. As the young master said, striking first truly was the answer."
A remarkably calm exchange. And that calmness was what Jack Five absolutely could not stand. The composure of people acting as if he and his men weren't even worth a glance. His temper snapped.
"Who the hell are you people!"
It was the humanoid, of course, who answered his roar. He tilted his chin toward the screen directly in front of them.
"Even with it right in front of you?"
Jack Five involuntarily turned to look at the screen. The wanted photos of six individuals — the very ones he'd put up moments ago — stared back at him.
Only then did Jack Five realize who his uninvited guests were. The targets he was supposed to have captured had come to him. Struck dumb by the sheer absurdity of it, he finally leaned into the microphone and laughed until it seemed the speakers would tear.
"BWAAAHAHAHAHA!!"
After a long bout of laughter, his eyes flashed with killing intent.
"This just got easy! Hey! You bastards! There they are! Those are your targets, right there!"
At Jack Five's shout, everyone filling the main stage drew their weapons and readied them.
"FIRE! Kill every last one of them!"
As if his roar had been the signal, the hundred-odd bodies crowding the stage raised their muzzles.
But the swordsmen who'd been standing before the entrance had long since vanished without a trace.
"What? Where did—"
Jack Five — and everyone else present — was caught off guard. But they couldn't afford to stay stunned.
"Kraaagh!"
Because someone's scream had begun to ring out. A mercenary at the edge of the crowd crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from his neck. No one had seen who attacked, or when.
That was the beginning.
Across the dim main stage, screams and the horrific sound of flesh tearing erupted simultaneously, bursting out from every direction at once.
"Uwaaagh!"
"Behind me! There's something behind— hurk!"
The mercenaries floundered, unable to decide what to shoot at or where to aim — and even in those moments, lives kept vanishing.
"You— you fucks! The lights! Turn on every damn light we've got! NOW!"
At Jack Five's bellow, the staffer in the DJ booth frantically worked the console. Under his fingers, every light rig installed on the main stage began blazing at maximum output.
And that was when the chaos doubled.
The lights installed on a club's main stage were, by their very nature, nothing like ordinary illumination.
Restlessly sweeping moving heads and laser units, along with strobes blinking without pause, all began flashing at full power.
The darkness was certainly gone. But what replaced it was a storm of light that scrambled the senses. Under the dazzling chaos, people died screaming.
A pandemonium without warning, without mercy. The mercenaries caught inside it — and terrified by it — ultimately made the worst possible choice.
"Fire! Just blast away!"
"Over there! Something moved over there!"
They began firing indiscriminately at the shadows flickering through the riot of light — without so much as a thought for whether their bullets were finding friend or foe. The screams, which had been breaking out intermittently, multiplied sharply from that moment on.
There was no music beneath the dazzling lights. Instead, that empty place was filled by the screams of countless human beings. The situation drowned in chaos past all control.
"Goddammit!"
Spitting a short curse, Jack Five violently shoved away the woman who'd been clinging to his side all this while.
"Kyaaagh!"
Her scream didn't register in his eyes at all. He thrust both arms forward. The armor plating on his forearms split open with a mechanical whine, and from within them, heavy barrels emerged.
"Good! Die! All of you, just die!"
FWAAAM!
Flames bloomed from the thick barrels jutting from both arms as he poured a furious hail of fire across the main stage.
There was no friend-or-foe discrimination in the torrent of Jack Five's bullets. He simply pulled the trigger at everything that flickered between the frenetically moving lights.
"Kwahaha!"
Once he got going, he even decided this had worked out for the better. Trying to put these gutter rats to any real use was nothing but a headache anyway. Mow down friend and foe alike, grab the data chip, and there'd be nothing left to worry about.
"That's it! That's more like it! I'm Jack Five! A first-class Pathfinder! I'm the man who carved his way across the Outer! I was never meant to be rubbing shoulders with trash like you in a gutter like this!"
Without warning, his past self surfaced in his mind.
It had been like this back then, too. Whatever stood in his road — Grotesque, Sentinel, or human — he ground it all to paste and pushed onward. He'd never had to answer to anyone for his violence. Nothing to weigh, nothing to deliberate.
Jack Five had been free.
"That's it! THIS is it!"
At some point, he had started laughing. A vicious, twisted, thoroughly depraved grin.
"Hm. Unable to make up for your subordinates' shortcomings, and now pouring bullets down on top of them instead. Truly a depraved creature."
"...!"
An electronic voice, from directly behind him. Every one of Jack Five's movements froze. His pupils dilated wildly.
'When? How?'
The brief question flickered through his mind — but there were more important things right now. Jack Five twisted his body with all the speed he could muster. He meant to swing the machine guns mounted on his arms and shred whatever was at his back.
But the one who'd spoken — Ash — was faster.
SPLURT.
Before Jack Five could even finish turning, Ash's blade had already pierced his heart.
"Gah— hah...!"
The blade punched clean through, its tip jutting from his chest. Staring down at it, Jack Five barely managed to turn his head.
"You... are...?"
"I have no name worth offering to a scoundrel such as yourself."
The blade slid free from his chest — then drew a horizontal arc through the air. Along that clean stroke, Jack Five's head left his neck in one smooth cut.
With a wet thud, Jack Five's head hit the floor. His body swayed for a moment before toppling in a fountain of blood.
Ash gazed briefly at the heap of meat that had been Jack Five, then spoke to the man cowering in the corner of the DJ booth.
"Come out."
At the low electronic voice, the staffer lifted his head, hiccuping uncontrollably. Ash aimed the tip of his blade at him and gave a small nod.
"Kill the lights. Not all of them — just the ones that move and flash."
The man nodded frantically, scrambled out on all fours, and worked the console. Under his hands, the storm of light that had shredded the stage like a madman vanished in an instant. All that remained to illuminate the space were a few steady work lamps.
"..."
The main stage, finally revealed, was a picture of hell itself. Corpses heaped into mountains, blood pooling into seas — the very image of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
And yet, some had survived.
After regarding the scene for a moment, Ash picked up Jack Five's severed head, walked up to the microphone, and shouted.
"All of you — STOP!"
Then he raised Jack Five's head high overhead.
"Your leader is dead! So lay down your weapons, and I will spare your lives! If you are still holding a weapon when this head touches the ground, it will be taken as your refusal!"
With those final words, Ash hurled Jack Five's head high into the air.
The head soared in a parabolic arc. At its apex it seemed to hang suspended for a heartbeat before gravity dragged it back down.
It was an exceedingly brief span of time — and the surviving mercenaries moved fast.
CLANG! CLATTER!
They frantically flung their weapons to the floor. And then—
THUD.
Jack Five's head struck the center of the main stage with a heavy sound. Around it, not a single mercenary remained armed.