Hi-Tech, Low-Life (Alpha and Echo)

[AlphaZero]

At the age of eight-teen, Max Archer joined the millitary, not out of some misgudied sense of patriotism, but because he had no other options in life. Less than a year after completing basic he was shipped off to war for reason that still escaped him to this day. He did his duty overseas, fighting his enemies, excelling at it, and he kept doing it right up until the ambush broke him. He lost limbs, was afflicted with perminant nerve damage and blinded in one eye. The powers that be took him and outfitted with the newest cybernetics they could, made him whole again and sent him back into the field, promising that he wouldn't be forgotten when he got home, that they'd take care of him when it was all done. They lied. Once his service ended they ripped out all the advanced tech that had made him into a functional human being, leaving him more broken than he had been before.

That was four years ago.

He wasn't sure how he'd ended up in autonomous streach of coast simple called the city. Not because it was something out of place for him but because of minor brain damage that effected his memory, as a result there where mornings he woke up not even remembering the things he had been through. He didn't mind those days, being able to exist in blissful ignorance of the horrors of the war, the things he had done and the people he had killed.

These days he lived a simple life, living in a small apartment and taking dirty jobs from the criminal elements of The City, simple tasks, acting as a bag man for pick ups and drop offs, or just needing to stand around looking intimidating. Even with his various handicaps Max cut an imposing figure, standing at roughly six foot five with broad shoulders and the kind of physique one may expect from a former solider he normally didn't need to do much than stand there and throw a thousand yard stare around to keep people in line.

That was how he had met Sam Lind, another any dirty job hand for hire who he found himself enjoying working with. If she wasn't involved in the current job he found himself on, probably wouldn't have taken it.

"Some rich assholes daughter goes and parties in the wrong part of town and we have to deal with it." He muttered as he squinted at the elevators display, trying to read the floors as they ticked past.

The finger of his left hand, a cheap price of crap with pale rubbery skin that attempted to, and failed to look human, convusled as his arm hung at his side. A faulty nerv connection that just couldn't be fixed the cause of it.

The broken down parts where the reason he avoided jobs like this, jobs that would end in violence no matter what, he wasn't sure his body was up to the task. He ran his good hand through the shaggy main of dark hair topping his head before digging into the deep pocket of the weather beaten comdat jacket he wore and pulling out a cheap plastic pistol that had come off a 3D printer earlier that morning and checked the magazine was loaded.

He didn't like this at all. But the money was too good to pass up.

 

[AlphaZero]

The money was good, he wasn't going to argue about that. But Max knew it wouldn't last very long. He had already decided that he would pick up a double supply of the cocktail of perscription drugs that kept him functional incase funds got low. Last time he had run out he'd barely been functional between the constant pain, the lack of motor control brought on by nerv damage and the damage to his brain made it impossible for him to remember even the most basic tasks. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to do any kind of work to get paid that week, let alone do enough to pay for his meds.

He had been fully aware of the kind of connections Sam had around The City. It was one of many reasons he kept working with her, finding something better than the Saturday Night Special in his hand would have been easy no doubt but he was also sincerely hoping that this wouldn't turn into a firefight. The other reason he enjoyed working with her was that she understood that descrestion was sometimes the best route. He watched as she stepped out of the elevator, jamming the syringe into the thugs neck before letting him slump to the ground in a convulsing heap.

"Jesus Christ Sam, I understand wanting to keep things quiet but a knife would have been more merciful instead of pumping him full of that shit."

The elevator opened into a junction of sorts, like the bend in a U with short hallways on either side with four apparments on either arm, the intel they'd been able to recover lead Max to believe that the Harvesters had claimed the entire 37th floor for themselves which, wile minimalizing the number of civilians in play also meant he couldn't tell how many hostiles where in the area. He stepped off the elevator into the dimly lit hall, limping badly, an actuator in his one knee had sezied up that morning limiting his mobility for the task at hand.

The kinds of people the harvesters nabbed weren't like Max, they weren't the cripples scraping by with barely functional cyberware, it was always the rich one, the people who had it installed as a fashion statement or because it somehow made life more convenient for them. They always had the most expensive, most high end commerical parts. Arms with high end gold chases. Mods that where installed just for the flash of it. If he had still had a proper stomach and not some synthic bag of chemicals it would probably be churning at the thoguht if such gross excess wile people like him suffered.

He couldn't help but feel there was something karmic about the whole thing. These people living their excessive lives, being drugged and dragged off to human chop shops and dismembered. Their cyberware sold off on the black markets around the city. It was a dark train of thought that he quickly shut down to focus on the task at hand.

He dug his phone from his jacket, his hand shaking slightly due to the nerv damage he had suffered and raised it up, sweeping it back and forth, eyes locked on the screen. Like any caring father might do the client had been smart enough to have his family implanted with trackers that could be followed using a simple smartphone app at close range. A green triangle appeared in the screen and quickly a readout of the girls vitals. She was alive from the looks of it, barely, but still alive. The fixer had only said she needed to be brought in alive, long as she had a pulse they'd get paid.

"If these guys have the whole floor, you think they look their doors?" He asked Sam as he started to limp towards the right Branch of the floor. He peered around the corner, expecting to see another sentery and seeing nothing, "they only put on guard in the hall...." He muttered to himself, "how dumb are they?"

He stopped at the end of the hall. A door to one unit directly across from him and another to his left. According to the tracker the target was in the unit directly infront him. He sucked in a deep breath, swapping his phone for the pistol and counted backwards from 100 in his head, trying to steady his breathing. With any luck this would be clean, minimal hostiles, they could probably get the girl to a balcony, call in a pickup from a med service and get her out.

"I got a bad feeling about this Sam."

 

[AlphaZero]

There a point in time that felt like a life time ago, and a version of himself that felt almost like he had never really existed, that would have felt a thrill at a leather clad woman pressing up against him would have drawn excitement out of him. Even a gesture as devoid of any sexual tension as Sam's would have illiaicted some kind of reaction. But the frequent pain, the disconnect he felt from his own body made it impossible to feel anything other than the dull throbbing pain deep down in his bones.

He knew she was right. He knew he wasn't in any condition to try and stage a firefight and on some deep level he knew it too, that's why he brought her along. But they where junkies and thugs, probably not able to shoot straight if their lives depended on it, but a bullet fired by a burn out could still be lethal if by some chance it found it's mark. And dispite his current condition, Max had no desire at all to die.

He let out a heavy sigh, "Just don't die in there. I kinda like having you around."

The crack of the wood giving way reverberted through the small corridor and Max tightened his grip on his pistol, waiting for someone lured out by the sound to funnel into his field of vison . He was exposed out here, anyone who came around would have the advantage of being able to use the bend for cover and take potshots at him. He scoweled at the peashooter in his hand, wondering if he would have been able to hand a shotgun or a scatterpistol in his current state.

The stench eminating from the unit took him back, conjuring images of bodies in Mass grave baking under the South American sun, the whine of flies drowning out the engines of the overhead choppers.

The telltale clatter of an automatic weapon firing snapped him back to the here and now. He flung himself backwards into the unit, bringing his weapon to level as he rounded a corrner, passing the mohawked body with a syringe burried in his head.

Three tangos presented themselves to him, two of them harvesters in dirty scrubs and the third, the one with the gun in a well tailored suit. He attempted to sight on the man with his gun but his hands wouldn't stop shaking, regardless he squeezed the trigger, sending a trio of shots wildly in the general direction of the he man in the suit, the barrel of the cheap pistol melting after the third shot.

He swore, loud and clear as the man in the suit turned his attention towards him and raised his weapon and Max threw himself to one side, tackeling Sam and dragging her behind a counter.

"I don't suppose you've got something other than those damned needles on you?"