06-03-2014, 11:00 PM
The arrival of the man on the motorcycle was acknowledged somewhere in the back of Hood's mind; the man was seen, and watched, but Hood didn't actually pay him any conscious attention, focused instead on the various hidden cameras and his drone. The battery life on the civilian model toy was impressive.
His disinterest in the biker ended when he followed one of the men from the apartment block to the parking lot outside the coffee shop. The slaver approached and spoke briefly with the biker, and then the two returned to the apartment.
And with his interest peaked, he pondered the man's business. Most of the clientele that visited the apartment block were on the lower end of society; the product housed there wasn't broken in, and were often wasted on drugs. Dirty, broken. Not the sort that well off men with fancy bikes would usually waste their money on sampling. So maybe he was working for someone else?
If that were the case, then it opened a whole new angle with which he could chase the bastards out of his neck of the woods. Hood set his paper aside, and indicated to the barista that he was stepping outside for a smoke. Which was partly true; he could still watch his cameras from outside, fed to his Landwarriors as they were. And he could feign interest in the man's parked bike without drawing too much attention.
Hood crossed to where it sat unattended, and knelt as if admiring it. And by admire it, he of course meant to get a good look at the license plate, and more importantly, engraved registration number, saving the image in his glasses. With that, and a few hours work, he could track it back to it's owner, or if he were very lucky, track it if it had a built in anti-theft tracking signature.
He savoured a cigar as was his excuse to wander outside, and many minutes later wandered back inside to return to his coffee and cake. Minutes passed as he tracked the pair's return to the apartment building, and then their movement within. Eventually, the fellow was shown into a room with some of the captured children and left to his own devices. And, unsurprisingly, went to the smallest body in the room.
And then things turned odd. The biker lingered in the room without any of the usual activities going on. Time passed, the goons sticking to their card game, the others complaining about the cold in their van, and nothing seemed to change.
And then another man showed up at the building, let himself in, and was shown to the same room as the biker. They lingered there for a time, moving to an adjacent room, to more of the captured kids. Perhaps the second man was the biker's boss? Unusual, considering the fellow had arrived on foot, and alone to boot. More likely then they were just a pair of sickos who liked to get their kicks together.
Probably spent the entire time looking into each other's eyes, dreaming of doing the very same acts to their comrade as a child. Brothers maybe, with some pedophile father figure? Eh, who cared. If he got the chance, and had some spare time, maybe he'd deal with them. Probably not...there'd been no shortage of work lately.
So Hood sat. And watched. And pondered. Until things took a turn in a direction he really didn't want to deal with. The two, the biker and his boyfriend, gathered a group of the kids, then moved to an adjacent room. The one where one of the slavers was breaking in some new product. Aggressively, from what he could tell. The thermal imager wasn't the best he'd ever used, but for a black market acquisition, it was better then he could have hoped.
And then there was a fight. And then one of the kids darted. And a moment later his audio from under the van had something interesting to say. Trouble stirring in the apartment block. Two men were trying to bust out the product.
Hood sighed, setting his paper aside after folding it neatly. He stood, and threw back the last of his coffee, then shrugged into his jacket and headed for the door, offering the usual pleasantries to the late night barista before he went. The place wasn't exactly bustling at so late an hour.
He left the coffee shop and moved into an adjacent alley, stopping to drag a dumpster out from the wall, and dug a dufflebag out from behind it. It was soaked with garbage juice; how was it there was always garbage juice, even in the dead of a Moscovite winter?
The van was already on the move, barreling towards the apartment block. Hood took control of the little RC car that had been seated beneath it, and boogied the toy into a pile of trash to be picked up later. And the drone was landed on the roof of the apartment building in question; he hadn't the bot programs to keep the thing running on it's own without his constant attention.
He dug through the bag and ditched his jacket to shrug into a vest, then pulled the coat back on before walking towards the apartment building. The two trouble makers had stirred things up. His entire plan had hinged on the slavers realizing it was a good idea to pull pin and move to another part of the city. Now there was going to be a bunch of shooting. And bodies. And that would lead to police.
So if the cops were going to get involved anyway, he may as well have some fun with it.
-----
The van pulled into the dilapidated apartment building's parking lot, and the sliding door was pulled open. Four men piled out counting the driver, and each pulled AK103s (a mid-90's variant of the classic AK47). Gang punks at heart, they hadn't anything by way of a plan, asides 'find the trouble makers and make them pay.' Of a one track mind, they paid little attention to their surroundings; these weren't cops they were dealing with so they weren't worried about being caught with their pants down in the parking lot of their own turf.
With their comrades on the west side of the building, the four men rushed for the east side entrance, and were ready when the door was flung open. Jensen emerged, and one of them opened fire before the other three could stop him; Jensen had the product with him, and while it was easy to get more, their bosses wouldn't be happy to find out any had been killed for such a stupid reason. It was only one guy, unarmed, and a bunch of stupid kids.
They didn't notice Hood. He'd stopped to pull a few toys from the dufflebag he was carrying, a delay that had worked to his advantage as he didn't have to work too hard to take the reinforcements by surprise.
He crossed the open parking lot towards the four men, and leveled an old Israeli-made Uzi PRO as he walked. The compact weapon was tucked tightly into his shoulder, and looked almost comical for the overly large silencer that was screwed to the barrel. It was a bit of a moot point, considering they had already opened up with the AK103s, but he wasn't in the mood to bother unscrewing the thing. It was a throw-away anyway.
The weapon chattered; it was still loud, weapon silencers had seen plenty of advancements in the past many years, but at the end of the day, it was a still a damn challenge to totally silence a barrage of tiny explosions. Short, controlled bursts peppered the four armed men before they could bring any more violence upon Jensen and the rescued kids.
Two were killed instantly, 9mm rounds peppering one man's back and opening an artery in a second's thigh. He bled out quickly and painfully; the round had entered his thigh and exited somewhere in his crotch, as the police would later find.
The other two spun, and a third was dropped by yet another burst of fire, and the last lost his cool upon realizing his three friends were already dead. He brought his weapon up and tried to fire, only to find the safety was still engaged. He panicked, throwing the weapon aside and tried to run, but Hood dropped the empty Uzi and pulled a pistol.
He fired twice, one round catching the fleeing man in the knee, more by fluke then intent, while the second punched into the sidewall of the van he had been running for.
The man dropped to the ground screaming in pain as Hood walked over to him, paying Jensen and the kids no mind. He holstered the pistol and drew a knife, a rather unpleasant looking kukri, and kicked the man onto his back before grabbing him by the hair and tugged him up. The man unwisely grabbed at Hood's hand, trying to pull some of the tension off his scalp, screaming and begging, and only realized the rise and fall of Hood's other arm when it was too late.
The blade of the kukri easily pierced the man's flesh between two ribs, burying a good four inches of black steel into the man's torso. Then he dragged it free, slicing him open from back to front before wiping it clean on the still screaming man's clean pant leg. As an afterthought, he rolled the dying man onto his bad side, eliciting a fresh round of screams as flesh tore and punctured organs shifted, and dug the man's wallet out before it got soaked in blood.
That done, he left the dying fellow and walked towards the west entrance, tossing the wallet to one of the cowering children as he went. "Grab the other three, kid. Or don't."
Jensen was left with the dead boy and the crowd of terrified kids, and Hood walked into the building's west entrance where he was met with the ongoing sounds of gunfire from above. For once he decided to show some degree of interest in the situation, and took the stairs at a jog, passing a few of the building's inhabitants as they had wisely chosen now as a great time to go for a walk. Not all had decided to leave, but a few were smart enough to not want to be around when the police showed up.
He reached the third floor quickly and passed the room the guards had been playing cards in. The next room held a woman, calm despite the gunfire and talking on her Wallet, likely to their boss. Hood paused to eye the woman, who after a moment realized he was there and looked at him in confusion then alarm, before dropping her Wallet and quickly moved to her computer, trying to enter a code to wipe the computer of it's data.
He frowned at her a moment, then pulled his pistol and shot her, before continuing on to the hallway. The smart ones were always the most dangerous; who knew what sort of trouble she could have caused had he let her live.
The hallway was long and not terribly wide, and he was quickly met with the backs of those very guards, all pushing towards a closed door at the end of the hallway, presumably where the biker's boyfriend was trying to escape out the east exit.
With them distracted, again (Hood could appreciate the bout of good luck, but it certainly made things boring for him), he pulled kukri and pistol and walked up behind the rear most man, whom had apparently stopped to check into a few of the rooms and let his comrades have the fun of being shot at.
He had hung out a bit back from the others, his weapon held almost casually, and only managed to turn his head before Hood was on him, having taken a moment to realize that that one gunshot was from behind him, not ahead. The kukri met the man's eye, and the curve of the blade gave Hood the balance and fulcrum point he needed to hook it deeply into his skull and pull him to the ground, leaving him to convulse and die with the blade embedded in his skull.
He pulled a pistol and sawed off double-barrel shotgun from a sling tucked under his arm and now casually shrugged off. Up came the pistol, the weapon barking loudly in the narrow hallway as he planted three rounds into the next man's back. That one died with a surprised yell, drawing the attention of the remaining four. They glanced back, and three spun to meet him with the barrels of their guns.
The sawed off barked far louder then the pistol had, and buckshot peppered the walls and anyone ahead of him in the hallway with equal measure. It wasn't nearly enough to kill a man, but it was certainly enough to get yelps of pain and force them into cover; they ducked into adjacent doorways, and one bolted into the east stairwell, apparently where the biker's boyfriend had made his escape in the confusion.
The sawed-off was dropped next; it was a showy weapon, but took two hands to reload, and he hadn't the patience or interest to do so. When the three remaining slavers looked into the hallway, realizing none of them were dying, just very sore and bloody, there was no sign of Hood. And alarmingly, the body of their boss was minus the wicked knife that had been dug into his face.
They shared a glance, then after some bickering one of them stepped into the hallway and walked carefully towards their dead boss, his rifle held closely to his side at the hip, rather then at the shoulder as should have been proper.
The man edged forward, glanced back at his friends, then stepped over his dead boss and peeked into the closest open door. Hood grabbed the barrel of the man's weapon, tugging it into the open doorway and dug the kukri into the man's stomach, wrenching the blade to hook it onto his ribs. Using the knife as a handle, he tugged the man's rapidly failing body around as a shield and stepped partly into the hallway, aiming over the dying man's shoulder with his revolver this time.
The dying man's slaver friends let out angry curses and brought their weapons up, but Hood fired first. They had the benefit of cover, hiding part way in doorways, but Hood wasn't firing standard rounds from his favorite handcannon. Cop killers, of the 2045 variety, made short work of the cheap interior building materials, punching through 2x4 and plywood with ease. Flesh and bone were no trouble, and the man dropped to the ground as a second and third round found their mark in his torso.
He dropped to the ground, weapon firing madly, scattering rounds across the hallway and, most importantly, into the exposed flank of his remaining friend, bullets ripping the man's flesh, but he managed to put one shot down the hallway. It flew true, striking the dying man Hood had used as a shield, punching through the man's sternum and spine only to meet a far less yielding surface in Hood's bodyarmour.
He grunted in annoyance as the heavy round punched the wind out of him, then dropped the corpse that had served to soften the impact, wrenching the blade free of his torso and again wiping it clean on the dead man's clothes before tucking it away. He took a few experimental breaths to make sure nothing was broken, not that there was much he could have done had it been, then he picked up his dropped sawed-off and it's sling.
He glanced in a few of the rooms to make sure the place was empty, then pushed open the tattered door that led to the east stairwell. There was still one slaver left, and of course the loving couple of would-be rescuers to be dealt with.
His disinterest in the biker ended when he followed one of the men from the apartment block to the parking lot outside the coffee shop. The slaver approached and spoke briefly with the biker, and then the two returned to the apartment.
And with his interest peaked, he pondered the man's business. Most of the clientele that visited the apartment block were on the lower end of society; the product housed there wasn't broken in, and were often wasted on drugs. Dirty, broken. Not the sort that well off men with fancy bikes would usually waste their money on sampling. So maybe he was working for someone else?
If that were the case, then it opened a whole new angle with which he could chase the bastards out of his neck of the woods. Hood set his paper aside, and indicated to the barista that he was stepping outside for a smoke. Which was partly true; he could still watch his cameras from outside, fed to his Landwarriors as they were. And he could feign interest in the man's parked bike without drawing too much attention.
Hood crossed to where it sat unattended, and knelt as if admiring it. And by admire it, he of course meant to get a good look at the license plate, and more importantly, engraved registration number, saving the image in his glasses. With that, and a few hours work, he could track it back to it's owner, or if he were very lucky, track it if it had a built in anti-theft tracking signature.
He savoured a cigar as was his excuse to wander outside, and many minutes later wandered back inside to return to his coffee and cake. Minutes passed as he tracked the pair's return to the apartment building, and then their movement within. Eventually, the fellow was shown into a room with some of the captured children and left to his own devices. And, unsurprisingly, went to the smallest body in the room.
And then things turned odd. The biker lingered in the room without any of the usual activities going on. Time passed, the goons sticking to their card game, the others complaining about the cold in their van, and nothing seemed to change.
And then another man showed up at the building, let himself in, and was shown to the same room as the biker. They lingered there for a time, moving to an adjacent room, to more of the captured kids. Perhaps the second man was the biker's boss? Unusual, considering the fellow had arrived on foot, and alone to boot. More likely then they were just a pair of sickos who liked to get their kicks together.
Probably spent the entire time looking into each other's eyes, dreaming of doing the very same acts to their comrade as a child. Brothers maybe, with some pedophile father figure? Eh, who cared. If he got the chance, and had some spare time, maybe he'd deal with them. Probably not...there'd been no shortage of work lately.
So Hood sat. And watched. And pondered. Until things took a turn in a direction he really didn't want to deal with. The two, the biker and his boyfriend, gathered a group of the kids, then moved to an adjacent room. The one where one of the slavers was breaking in some new product. Aggressively, from what he could tell. The thermal imager wasn't the best he'd ever used, but for a black market acquisition, it was better then he could have hoped.
And then there was a fight. And then one of the kids darted. And a moment later his audio from under the van had something interesting to say. Trouble stirring in the apartment block. Two men were trying to bust out the product.
Hood sighed, setting his paper aside after folding it neatly. He stood, and threw back the last of his coffee, then shrugged into his jacket and headed for the door, offering the usual pleasantries to the late night barista before he went. The place wasn't exactly bustling at so late an hour.
He left the coffee shop and moved into an adjacent alley, stopping to drag a dumpster out from the wall, and dug a dufflebag out from behind it. It was soaked with garbage juice; how was it there was always garbage juice, even in the dead of a Moscovite winter?
The van was already on the move, barreling towards the apartment block. Hood took control of the little RC car that had been seated beneath it, and boogied the toy into a pile of trash to be picked up later. And the drone was landed on the roof of the apartment building in question; he hadn't the bot programs to keep the thing running on it's own without his constant attention.
He dug through the bag and ditched his jacket to shrug into a vest, then pulled the coat back on before walking towards the apartment building. The two trouble makers had stirred things up. His entire plan had hinged on the slavers realizing it was a good idea to pull pin and move to another part of the city. Now there was going to be a bunch of shooting. And bodies. And that would lead to police.
So if the cops were going to get involved anyway, he may as well have some fun with it.
-----
The van pulled into the dilapidated apartment building's parking lot, and the sliding door was pulled open. Four men piled out counting the driver, and each pulled AK103s (a mid-90's variant of the classic AK47). Gang punks at heart, they hadn't anything by way of a plan, asides 'find the trouble makers and make them pay.' Of a one track mind, they paid little attention to their surroundings; these weren't cops they were dealing with so they weren't worried about being caught with their pants down in the parking lot of their own turf.
With their comrades on the west side of the building, the four men rushed for the east side entrance, and were ready when the door was flung open. Jensen emerged, and one of them opened fire before the other three could stop him; Jensen had the product with him, and while it was easy to get more, their bosses wouldn't be happy to find out any had been killed for such a stupid reason. It was only one guy, unarmed, and a bunch of stupid kids.
They didn't notice Hood. He'd stopped to pull a few toys from the dufflebag he was carrying, a delay that had worked to his advantage as he didn't have to work too hard to take the reinforcements by surprise.
He crossed the open parking lot towards the four men, and leveled an old Israeli-made Uzi PRO as he walked. The compact weapon was tucked tightly into his shoulder, and looked almost comical for the overly large silencer that was screwed to the barrel. It was a bit of a moot point, considering they had already opened up with the AK103s, but he wasn't in the mood to bother unscrewing the thing. It was a throw-away anyway.
The weapon chattered; it was still loud, weapon silencers had seen plenty of advancements in the past many years, but at the end of the day, it was a still a damn challenge to totally silence a barrage of tiny explosions. Short, controlled bursts peppered the four armed men before they could bring any more violence upon Jensen and the rescued kids.
Two were killed instantly, 9mm rounds peppering one man's back and opening an artery in a second's thigh. He bled out quickly and painfully; the round had entered his thigh and exited somewhere in his crotch, as the police would later find.
The other two spun, and a third was dropped by yet another burst of fire, and the last lost his cool upon realizing his three friends were already dead. He brought his weapon up and tried to fire, only to find the safety was still engaged. He panicked, throwing the weapon aside and tried to run, but Hood dropped the empty Uzi and pulled a pistol.
He fired twice, one round catching the fleeing man in the knee, more by fluke then intent, while the second punched into the sidewall of the van he had been running for.
The man dropped to the ground screaming in pain as Hood walked over to him, paying Jensen and the kids no mind. He holstered the pistol and drew a knife, a rather unpleasant looking kukri, and kicked the man onto his back before grabbing him by the hair and tugged him up. The man unwisely grabbed at Hood's hand, trying to pull some of the tension off his scalp, screaming and begging, and only realized the rise and fall of Hood's other arm when it was too late.
The blade of the kukri easily pierced the man's flesh between two ribs, burying a good four inches of black steel into the man's torso. Then he dragged it free, slicing him open from back to front before wiping it clean on the still screaming man's clean pant leg. As an afterthought, he rolled the dying man onto his bad side, eliciting a fresh round of screams as flesh tore and punctured organs shifted, and dug the man's wallet out before it got soaked in blood.
That done, he left the dying fellow and walked towards the west entrance, tossing the wallet to one of the cowering children as he went. "Grab the other three, kid. Or don't."
Jensen was left with the dead boy and the crowd of terrified kids, and Hood walked into the building's west entrance where he was met with the ongoing sounds of gunfire from above. For once he decided to show some degree of interest in the situation, and took the stairs at a jog, passing a few of the building's inhabitants as they had wisely chosen now as a great time to go for a walk. Not all had decided to leave, but a few were smart enough to not want to be around when the police showed up.
He reached the third floor quickly and passed the room the guards had been playing cards in. The next room held a woman, calm despite the gunfire and talking on her Wallet, likely to their boss. Hood paused to eye the woman, who after a moment realized he was there and looked at him in confusion then alarm, before dropping her Wallet and quickly moved to her computer, trying to enter a code to wipe the computer of it's data.
He frowned at her a moment, then pulled his pistol and shot her, before continuing on to the hallway. The smart ones were always the most dangerous; who knew what sort of trouble she could have caused had he let her live.
The hallway was long and not terribly wide, and he was quickly met with the backs of those very guards, all pushing towards a closed door at the end of the hallway, presumably where the biker's boyfriend was trying to escape out the east exit.
With them distracted, again (Hood could appreciate the bout of good luck, but it certainly made things boring for him), he pulled kukri and pistol and walked up behind the rear most man, whom had apparently stopped to check into a few of the rooms and let his comrades have the fun of being shot at.
He had hung out a bit back from the others, his weapon held almost casually, and only managed to turn his head before Hood was on him, having taken a moment to realize that that one gunshot was from behind him, not ahead. The kukri met the man's eye, and the curve of the blade gave Hood the balance and fulcrum point he needed to hook it deeply into his skull and pull him to the ground, leaving him to convulse and die with the blade embedded in his skull.
He pulled a pistol and sawed off double-barrel shotgun from a sling tucked under his arm and now casually shrugged off. Up came the pistol, the weapon barking loudly in the narrow hallway as he planted three rounds into the next man's back. That one died with a surprised yell, drawing the attention of the remaining four. They glanced back, and three spun to meet him with the barrels of their guns.
The sawed off barked far louder then the pistol had, and buckshot peppered the walls and anyone ahead of him in the hallway with equal measure. It wasn't nearly enough to kill a man, but it was certainly enough to get yelps of pain and force them into cover; they ducked into adjacent doorways, and one bolted into the east stairwell, apparently where the biker's boyfriend had made his escape in the confusion.
The sawed-off was dropped next; it was a showy weapon, but took two hands to reload, and he hadn't the patience or interest to do so. When the three remaining slavers looked into the hallway, realizing none of them were dying, just very sore and bloody, there was no sign of Hood. And alarmingly, the body of their boss was minus the wicked knife that had been dug into his face.
They shared a glance, then after some bickering one of them stepped into the hallway and walked carefully towards their dead boss, his rifle held closely to his side at the hip, rather then at the shoulder as should have been proper.
The man edged forward, glanced back at his friends, then stepped over his dead boss and peeked into the closest open door. Hood grabbed the barrel of the man's weapon, tugging it into the open doorway and dug the kukri into the man's stomach, wrenching the blade to hook it onto his ribs. Using the knife as a handle, he tugged the man's rapidly failing body around as a shield and stepped partly into the hallway, aiming over the dying man's shoulder with his revolver this time.
The dying man's slaver friends let out angry curses and brought their weapons up, but Hood fired first. They had the benefit of cover, hiding part way in doorways, but Hood wasn't firing standard rounds from his favorite handcannon. Cop killers, of the 2045 variety, made short work of the cheap interior building materials, punching through 2x4 and plywood with ease. Flesh and bone were no trouble, and the man dropped to the ground as a second and third round found their mark in his torso.
He dropped to the ground, weapon firing madly, scattering rounds across the hallway and, most importantly, into the exposed flank of his remaining friend, bullets ripping the man's flesh, but he managed to put one shot down the hallway. It flew true, striking the dying man Hood had used as a shield, punching through the man's sternum and spine only to meet a far less yielding surface in Hood's bodyarmour.
He grunted in annoyance as the heavy round punched the wind out of him, then dropped the corpse that had served to soften the impact, wrenching the blade free of his torso and again wiping it clean on the dead man's clothes before tucking it away. He took a few experimental breaths to make sure nothing was broken, not that there was much he could have done had it been, then he picked up his dropped sawed-off and it's sling.
He glanced in a few of the rooms to make sure the place was empty, then pushed open the tattered door that led to the east stairwell. There was still one slaver left, and of course the loving couple of would-be rescuers to be dealt with.