Cast of Characters:

INTERSEC:
Sergeant Hevael; INTERSEC Officer-on-Call, Interceptor Team Lead
OFC Castleton; INTERSEC Officer First Class, Command Interceptor
OSC Treseaux; INTERSEC Officer Second Class, Data Substrate MONITOR
OTC Kelvi; INTERSEC Officer Third Class, A.I. Liason, TRIPWIRE Anti-Data Substrate Tech

ARCOS "EVICTION UNIT":
Alexei: Neurotech, Datamancer, ARCOS Team Lead
Sadge: DS MONITOR, ARCOS Team Second-in-Command
Eduardo: Strongarm, ARCOS Enforcer
Theresa: Psy-Ops, ARCOS Psychic Intercessor

-------------------
Rain poured down on the Hab-Grid above them like the city was overproducing boiled sweat. It was one of the worst days in pre-Summer, when the City was generating humidity to better circulate precipitation to its further boroughs. Temperatures across the City were rising, personal and public. It turned this part of CENTRAL into a sweltering cooking pot, the veritable armpit of the entire Arcology. Hevael hated it here.

Beside her, Castleton shifted his PDW in his arms, hawked and spat a huge wad of phlegm onto the asphalt.

"Nice," she mocked. Behind her, Kelvi almost dry-heaved. Treseaux gave Kelvi a cynical chuckle.

Hevael's visor fogged up almost immediately. She reached under it, wiping the sweat and hot rain from her brow.

"This fucking sucks, Hev," Castleton agonized, his dark gray hair matted to his forehead as he stared at her with his beady, concrete-colored eyes. He slung his PDW over his shoulder and flipped his visor up.

"Tell it to the Cap, Castle," Hevael barked. "Shut your hole already."

Around them the neon flickered to life. Night was coming, not that you'd notice in this part of Central - most of the SUNDOME was invisible unless you looked straight up, and by that point it was shrouded in a thick haze of inversion made up of projected carbon monoxide and atomized bird shit that the filters hadn't gotten around to handling yet.

At this point in the evening the rain clouds would be in the first part of their transition stage according to the meteorology stabilizers, transferring to a mid-point before becoming cumulonimbus and belching out a majority of their rain production. Hevael mused that growing up in an AppDy Freeschool had given some advantages. Too bad none of them had been worth anything.

"Do you seriously trust these yokels? They're not even from here," Castleton's ability to opine was equaled only by his inability to listen. Hevael once more swore to herself that she was going to request a transfer to WEST-CENTRAL after this Op.

"They're from all over," Kelvi mumbled at him in response, leaning against the concrete-and-brick facing of "Humboldt's Bar and Deli", her Autorifle parked up against the wall beside her hip.

"Well, hoo-dee-doo-hoo," Castleton mocked, giving Kelvi a dirty look. She just rolled her eyes at him. Hevael wasn't one to look down on fraternization in a Unit. Sometimes it made things work where the otherwise wouldn't.

"Here they come," Treseaux announced with a nod of his head to his right. Hevael turned to face in that direction, finally spotting three of them emerging from an extremely dark alley off of the street, behind the Calliope Corner Club, which was just flicking on its glittering lamps.

They were three - unique - individuals of varying heights. The tallest was at least 7 to 8 feet tall, and maybe 3 to 4 feet wide at the shoulder. An absolute monstrosity, from what she could see of him. All three of them wore black or dark-green rain slicks covering them, shrouding most of their identifiable features except for the things that stood out or straight-up glowed.

A short, narrow one stood in front of that giant, hunched over and gazing up at Havael from beneath the shadow of their hood. "You're from INTERSEC, yeah?" - it was a woman.

"S'right," Hevael answered. "Captain told us to meet you here. You're with ARCOS?"

The girl nodded, nudged the second man to her right with her elbow. "I'm Alexei," she said. "That's Eduardo," she gestured behind her. "This is Sadge," the second man to her right.

"You hear anything yet?" Hev asked her.

Sadge the second man, an average guy who looked like he could blend in anywhere - dark, bored-looking eyes, slightly lined if somewhat bored-looking face, narrow chin - 5 1/2, maybe 6 bored-looking feet tall - spoke up.

"Three in the Hab," he answered her and Alexei. "Two in the top floor of the apartment above the Deli. Maybe six in the floors between, but I can't be sure - can't see them with the Inner Eye, which means Spook A/V Inhibitors are in effect or close enough to not matter. Armed across the board, lots of antique shit, but there's at least one Cyberpath with them, and he's got ripped GESTALT gear. Might be a heavy weapon too, but can't get a fix from this distance."

He glanced at Alexei. "Seems pretty heavy for just an Anarchist meet, boss."

"How the hell do you know?" Castleton demanded. "We've been here two hours and haven't seen shit. Don't get why you rednecks think you're such hot shit since INTERSEC took you in, my God..."

The bored guy tapped his temple, his eyes glittering with stardust. A sneer edged his voice as he looked Castleton up and down. "I'm blue-blooded UCC-born. I've got hereditary GESTALT ACCESS, you braindead bluesuit fucknut. We recognize our own."

Castle's hackles rose. "You piece of-"

"Castleton, cease." Hevael held her hand against his chest and shoved him away. She flicked her fingers at Treseaux and Kelvi, who moved to take positions at the corners and rear of the building, respectively.

Got a confirmation from VALUE DOGMA, Sergeant Hevael, Kelvi said across her comms. Says the ARCOS are spot-on about that hacked GESTALT combat drone on the top floor. Scans confirm it.

"Shit," said Hev. "Why didn't we detect it on the first scan?"

"Data-blocker," gigantic Eduardo said. His deep but surprisingly mellow voice sounded like a Hispanic mountain falling down the side of a skyscraper. "Somebody gave them Data Substrate hacks, probably cloned the peripherals and printed out the prosthetics."

"Un-ACCESSED, which means cheap," said Alexei, "Dirty. He'll be hurting. Ed," Alexei said to Eduardo, "You see that 'Path you snap him right up." At his nod, the diminutive woman looked up the entire length of the apartment complex, staring, turning her head slightly as if she was listening to something. Hevael caught an unusual bit of weird static-hiss across her COMMS to the INTERSEC A.I. Hev watched as Alexei narrowed her eyes.

"Ah. There. Gotcha, you bastard," she whispered, as if the rest of them weren't even there. After a moment she returned her attention to Hevael.

"Your people cover the perimeter and back us up if necessary - make sure I-SEC's Local connection knows we're going in," Alexei told her. With those words and the whipping sound of his rain poncho snapping around him, Sadge bolted down the building wall and entered it through the darkened foyer.

"Sadge will set up in the foyer. His Drone's already done a once-over of the building. He'll link up with your JAFO, Treseaux. Once he's got an I.D. of whatever's in-house, we'll insert."

"Hey, hold on a second," you-know-who demanded, "why do we have to play second-banana to your asses?"

Behind Alexei, Eduardo took a single step forwards, crossed the threshold to the wall, crouched on the balls of his feet, and leapt 150 feet into the air, roughly a quarter of the height of the building. His enormous fingers ground into the concrete-and-brick siding as he began scaling the building with his own bare hands.

"Holy shit," Castleton mumbled, hanging on to his helmet as he watched the enormous man climb.

"What about y..." Hevael turned to ask Alexei, but she was already gone.

"I'm not up for this shit, Hev, seriously..." He looked down at her. "What now?"

She shoved him in the direction of the Patrol car, already spooling up its GESTALT Unit strapped to the rear of the frame. "Get in the fucking car and monitor the Unit. No lights yet, though. God knows we don't want to blow this Op after what happened last time."

Castle frowned at her, obviously chagrinned. "Yeah, yeah, alright."

Sighing, Hevael cracked her car door open and got out of the rain to radio a hardline back to Dispatch. This was going to be a long, sweaty night.


****

Five minutes of basically nothing. Above their heads the clouds had merged, beginning their timed vomit of torrential rain. Hevael could barely hear her comm chatter over the roof-blunted roar.

Five minutes, Officer, - Alexei said over her PSYCHE earpiece, from... somewhere. Hev's own Substrate ACCESS wasn't deep enough to even begin to identify where she'd holed up. Hevael surmised that she was probably ex-SKIDDS, or maybe UCC, but the most she'd been able to determine - with Kelvi's help - had been that she'd buried herself up to her neck in Data Substrate Blocks and was using them as some form of encrypted detection countermeasure.

Never seen anything like it, Sarge, Kelvi told her over the comms. Nobody uses the DS like that. Nobody. Substrate manipulation shouldn't even work that way. Kelvi sounded smitten. She was actually blushing.

"I don't give a shit," Hev mumbled in response. "Just keep an eye out. Even if it's just a quarter of her, we need to watch for -"

There, Treseaux spoke up suddenly. As their sole Joint-Assisted Forward-Observer, Treseaux was the only one even qualified to scope out the entire complex other than the ARCOS squad.

Ah, yes, he hummed across the PSYCHE comm. Data Prods. Highly sensitive observation countermeasure. Very old. Very, very illegal. Like walking through a minefield twelve blocks wide.

Gottem; good eye, JAFO, Sadge responded. One sec... holy shit. No way.

A gasp from Treseaux, then: I don't believe it.

"What's he bitching about now?" Castleton mumbled, always trying to have his say. Hevael swallowed a retort, forcing herself to listen instead.

It's a T.P. Entire floor's mapped. Second we touch that level to access the GESTALT Unit, we're burned for sure. We can't touch it.

"Is this guy serious?" Castle demanded, slapping the keypad for the car's GESTALT monitor. "All this waiting for what?"

"Can I get an I.D. on that, please?" Hev asked as politely as she could handle.

I've got it, Trez, Kelvi answered. Sadge is right. It's lined with T.P. - Transluminal Phlogiston - local hardline antipersonnel countermeasure. The floor of that level is mapped out with a network of high-explosive superconducting line. It's old - Pre-INTERSEC, even. The second we hit it with anything attached to the Data Substrate, the entire building goes. It's not picky, either.

Place must've been an old holdout from one of the Inter-Division conflicts. Linked up enough to be an info hot-spot, rigged to blow the second somebody messed with it.

Castleton scoffed. "Why don't we just hack the Drone and walk it out on our own?"

Can't, Sadge said. The GESTALT Drone Unit they've got in the apartment on the corner is definitely ripped, and might be hard-wired into the poor bastard who had it plugged in. I was right too. It's heavy. Four 14.5×114mm assault guns, probably using Retinal or Thermo-tracking. If he goes, the GESTALT goes from Green to Red when it loses its friendly I.D. marker and links up with the local DS. Pretty obvious they don't want anyone else getting their hands on equipment like that, no matter how old it is.

"Which means?" Castle stared.

It's old, so old that the Data Substrate wouldn't recognize whether the Drone accessing it was friend or foe. If the TP is detonated via a simple good/bad inquiry, regardless of who sets it off?

"Boom," Hevael groaned, leaning into the driver's seat.

I may have an idea, Alexei intoned.

****


"You're fucking shitting me," Castle said, shaking his head and holding his hands out in disagreement.

"No, it has to be you," Hevael confirmed.

The Sergeant is right, Alexei agreed.

Hev insisted. "I have to monitor COMCON until backup arrives, which means I need to stay with the car and our GESTALT Unit. Treseaux is on OPS and you outrank Kelvi, who's our Monitor tripwire - trainee, I might add. You're the only one who can do it."

You also have to go in raw, Sadge responded.

Oh, he's used to that for sure, Kelvi fired at him. Hev heard her laughing and let her keep on.

"Shut the fuck up, Kel!" Castleton's face was turning red. Hevael raised her hand at him.

'Alright, alright, cut the shit. Naked Op, Castle. No DS, no hookups. Raw BodyCam and Audio only."

Like a little baby... Trez intoned, which sent Kelvi into another rip of nervous, uncontrollable laughter.

"I swear to all that is Holy, I'm going to..." Castle spoke mostly to himself as he began to unhook male connections from female ports in his neck, ear and left arm. Hevael handed him a Walkie, which he hooked to his black vest next to his Flashbang and badge.

"Sonofa..." he huffed, yanked the rear sliding door of the Cruiser open and stepped out in the rain. "It's fucking quiet. Too quiet. I hate this shit."

"Alright, Castleton, you know the drill," Hevael ordered him.

"Yeah yeah, standard Welfare Check, I got it, I got it." He reached behind the Cruiser's back seat, pulling out an ankle-length raincoat and an old INTERSEC Patrol cap, both of which he threw on. Hevael heard Kelvi whistle and she suppressed a chuckle.

Beneath the coat he secreted his personal favorite: a good old 12 Gauge sawed-off pump-action quadbarrel. He racked it before shoving it under his jacket.

Officer? We've got your back. I'm on Monitor, Eduardo will be right outside their window. Sadge and Treseaux can hold off any emergency feeds they try to get out along the DS line. Alexei's tinny voice squawked from the talk-box at his shoulder.

"Yeah," he said, throwing his PDW into the back seat before confirming that his sidearm was loaded and had one in the chamber.

I'm here, as well.

"What the shit was that?" Castleton spun on his heel, staring at Hevael, who shrugged and shook her head with a look of confusion on her face.

Sorry, that's Thyresa. She's our Psi. Alexei answered. And yes, she'll be monitoring us as well.

"Great, shitty ARCO spooks monitoring my mind now. Just what I needed. Try not to spy on memories of Kel giving me a blo..."

"Enough, Castle. Get your ass in there," Hevael demanded, reaching into the Cruiser to get her SMG out of the front seat.

With a grunt and a yank of his raincoat, Officer First-Class Castleton got a move on.

*****

Jack stared out the window. This high up, the rain was a bit cooler, spattering into a fine mist that glazed his face. He blinked. Did he just see someone climbing the fucking wall?

Nah. Couldn't be. He blinked again. It was gone.

The sound interrupted his thoughts.

He looked back over his shoulder, turned and walked to the kitchen.

"I'm telling you, shut up already, you're giving me a damn migraine."

Vistger was grinding the ratchet across that same bolt again. Jack didn't know how much longer he could take that damn noise before his head split into a thousand pieces.

Jack groaned as he slid up onto the counter.

The ratcheting continued.

He slapped the palms of his hands on the countertop.

"Vistger, I swear to whatever God runs this shithole that I'm going to stick your head in the microwave and cook it until it explodes." Jack couldn't restrain the disdainful sneer that appeared on his face. Nothing on Earth could make him appreciate someone like Vistger.

"Yah, yah, yah," Vistger wrinkled his nose at Jack. He put down the ratchet and hefted the dual-barrels of the huge assault rifle, shaking them in their moorings to the rest of the GESTALT Unit. "Looks tight now, finally. Damn thing nearly stripped. Thing's shi-shi-...shit." Vistger's head twitched sharply to the right.

"Cripes. You got overcharged for that install, Vistger. I mean, they really ripped you off. Made you poor and it's going to screw you up for life." He raised his head at him. "Just make sure you get that piece of shit set up before your brain goes numb from all the meds you're on."

Jack lit a cigarette, gesturing with its burning end at Vistger.

"And hurry it up, will ya? The buyer'll be here any minute."

Vistger snickered, wiggling his hands at Jack. "I already can't feel my fingers," he said with a snorting chuckle.

"Stupid asshole..." Mumbling, Jack started as a hard rapping sound bashed at their hallway door, followed by a firm, deep, muffled voice beyond. His head darted and he slid off the counter he'd been sitting on, sliding the dumbfire rifle off the nearby table and into his hand as he did so. "Stay there," he said to Vistger, who ignored him.

He approached the door, cigarette burning between his teeth. The peephole was already cored and filled in with putty, so he slid the door open a crack on its eight chains just as the hammering started up again. He put a narrowed eye up to a crack in the door, scowling at what he saw.

"The hell you want?" he asked the imposingly sized INTERSEC Officer on the other side. Rainspatterd hat and coat. Badge clearly showing in the dim light of the complex's hallway. Guy's face looked like it'd been chiseled out of the side of a city block. He was here for business.

"Welfare check," said the ARCOP with a knowing tone of voice. "Neighbors said they haven't heard from the old lady who's lived in this apartment for a good three, four weeks now."

"Nobody here but me and my roomate," Jack answered sternly, sliding the dumbfire rifle up underneath the middle trim at the back of the door. He knew damn well the caseless round would penetrate that, no problemo.

The ARCOP's eyes glanced past him, into the room beyond. "Need to check, just to be sure. You mind opening up, please?" At Jack's sneer, a weirdly dead look came across the Officer's face.

"Ain't nobody here but us, ARCOP. I know my fuckin' RIGHTS, and they say you can't enter here unless you've got a Warrant anyway, so... bye." He slid the door closed.

Instantly the door exploded, fragging into a thousand pieces as a shotgun blast that sounded like a bomb going off caved it inwards, Jack's grip on the dumbfire sending it flying across the room as he was rocked backwards from the impact. The rifle smashed into the sink. Bits of door were kicked off of him as the Officer rested a knee right on his spine.

"Reasonable suspicion, asshole. Don't need a warrant," the Cop whispered in his ear as he went to slide a pair of resistors across his wrists. Jack bucked his legs hard, which twisted his hip and forced it to turn 180 degrees. Heaving, he hurled the Cop off of him and back into the hallway. The enormous handgun the Officer had drawn flew down the hallway, out of his reach.

"Bad idea, piggo." Jack reached up as the rest of him oriented to face his lower half, one arm flying out as the Micro-SMG he had stashed beneath his coat panned over and sent a rapid-fire burst shredding into the hallway where the Cop had fallen. As he did so, his other hand was tapping the button behind his left ear that sent the emergency signal across the DS line to the rest of the crew in the building.

...and found no response.

Jack swallowed.

Something was seriously wrong, here.

"Vistger, you slagger, get your ass..." and then he saw one half of Vistger sail across the living room and out the window. In place of him was a huge... man, or something similar, holding the upper half of Vistger in his enormous hand. Vistger was swinging back and forth - not dead, but not exactly alive, either. At his feet, the half-assembled Assault Gun was bent in half, the man's huge foot standing astride the twin barrels.

"You sonofa..." his hand shot up with the Micro, only to feel his legs go out from under him as a huge weight slammed into his side. It was the INTERSEC Officer. The Cop smashed him through the counter and the drywall beyond, where they tumbled over eachother and into the next Apartment.

The Officer got up first, but Jack's left arm ratcheted backwards as he fell, the Micro still-in hand. He bellowed at the Cop and spat out a hundred or so rounds from the SMG's extended magazine, raking the cop up one side of his body. Jack rose to his feet again, the Officer collapsing to his knees in a pool of multicolored fluid.

"No benefits for you, ARCOP," Jack said as he pressed the gun against the Officer's temple.

Jack blinked. The sun was brighter than he'd ever seen it. All around him was a great valley of grass, beautiful blooming flowers interspersed between their great, green patches. It was the warmest, most pleasant Spring day he'd experienced and he wondered what Vistger would think of it.

He'd never seen anything like those flowers, before. All glittery like glass, with little drops of rain sliding off their petals. He reached down to pick one, and heard a thudding sound as he did so. He shrugged it off.

Above him, the sun began to turn red. Maybe it was getting close to sunset. He figured he'd have to get home at some point, but this place was so nice. He reached down to pick another flower. The thudding continued.

The sun got redder. He found it difficult to breathe, but didn't really mind. It was such a nice day out.

A pleasant breeze passed his face. He inhaled the spring air. Then the sun decided to set, which he was fine with. Not a bad day, all things considered.

---

Officer Castleton, are you alright?

Slumped as he was in Eduardo's arms, he nodded, the giant had slipped his jacks back in for him, which was nice. "I'm trying to be," he said. "Thank your Headspook for saving my ass there."

You're welcome.

Next to them the corpse of Folly Jack slouched, sans head.

We've been looking for him for a while, Alexei said. Just needed to set up the right situation to take him out. This type of high-Market-value Asset is just his style, so we had a feeling he'd try to be the middleman for it.

"Good call," Castle groaned as Eduardo carried him out of the apartment. He recalled the past few moments with some bit of clarity.

Sadge yelling into the apartment they'd made their way into - not even on comms, just yelling: "GUN! High-ROF!" and then the sound of the machine pistol making a racket right beside him as he tried to get out of the way.

The rounds tore up his left side, hitting the installs he'd worked for, so the Ablatives he'd had put in had already paid for themselves. There'd be minimal internal damage, mostly cosmetic, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell and make a huge mess.

"No benefits for you, ARCOP," and then the gun pressed against his head. Castleton had looked out of the corner of his eye to see Jack gain this bizarrely wistful, soft look on his face. Castle didn't hesitate to take advantage of it, as the rage and adrenaline blew through the pain, but it'd been like dismantling a mannequin.

"The T.P.?"

Treseaux spoke up.

Half dismantled. Thankfully the bit of it that Alexei was able to cut off from the rest of the floor was the side you were on. It was some backwards-ass install, so it took us a couple of minutes.

You and Jack toppling through the wall helped out. It cut off a section of the superconductor from the rest of it, rendering it inert. I got in through the openings there.

Eduardo lifted him with both arms and set him gently atop the gurney by the MEDEVAC Hauler. One of the techs started checking on him, but he waved them off with a scowl.

They're evaccing the rest of the complex, cuffing whoever else was assigned to this Cell of the Anarchists, Sadge answered. We got a good half of them, but a small group got out and fled into one of the drainage ducts. We're moving on to intercept.

He turned his head, spotted a hooded Alexei with a pair of jacks ratcheted into the back of Jack's disassociated skull. Something on her emitted a kind of glow.

Got it. We're out.

Then she rose from her crouch and made her way in the direction of that dark alleyway, Sadge appearing mysteriously from somewhere beside her. He raised his hand in Castleton's direction. Castle couldn't even nod.

"Thanks again, guys," Hevael said, striding up to his side and placing a hand on his shoulder. "You good?"

"I'll live," he groaned. "What now?"

"Now? I'm getting the shit out of this rain and you're on leave, idiot."

Rest. I'll make dinner, lover, Kelvi gently said into his ear.

Hevael shoved the tech at him then, who stabbed him in a couple of places and dosed him up good. He heard Kelvi whispering something to him, and then it was naptime.