4. Angel Of Retribution

-----ANGEL OF RETRIBUTION-----
A cyberpunk short story by Peter Whitmore

Hugo rushed on through the hallway at a brisk pace towards the elevator, trying to catch it before the doors closed. "Wait for me!" He called out as Larry, already in the lift, obliged in keeping the door open until he finally made his way in.

"Thanks, Larry." Hugo replied, a little short of breath as he now stood in the elevator alongside his coworker, staring at the Los Angeles skyline out the window as the lift ascended. "The commute was a real bitch today. The planning is so poor that my AutoCab couldn't figure out where to go half the time. Not to mention all the broken roads and the unsafe routes plagued by gang violence..."

He glanced over from the skyline to Larry, who simply shrugged. "Well, that's what you get from the Winterton sector, Hugo! What, you came here from one of the cushy corporate sectors, didn't you?"

"That's right, Larry. Summer Heights sector near San Francisco for nearly a decade. Then I asked for a raise, and they transferred me down here."

Larry could only laugh at this. "And do you know why they were willing to pay you more, Hugo? Because they knew they could get you to come all the way down to Winterton. This is the only part of Pacific City that isn't controlled by any of the Big Three. All we got are a few offices out here, and the rest of the sector is just a few small businesses here and there, every man for himself. None of the corporate law enforcement is willing to touch this godforsaken land. Every police force that's tried has been completely eradicated by the gangs, the cartels, the mafia, the yakuza, the triads, you name it, they've all got footholds here when the corporations failed to deliver."

"So the pay raise I got is, what, hazard pay?"

Larry chuckled at Hugo's inquiry. "Well, let's just say that the turnover rate for anyone working down here in Winterton, corporate or syndicate, is very high!"

Hugo sounded quite incredulous as he heard Larry speak. The elevator came to a stop and the two of them continued their conversation in another hallway. "So why establish operations this far out in such lawless territory? Seems like a waste of assets..."

"Are you kidding? Winterton is prime gathering grounds for special resources and experiments. The experiments we do here at Asclepius Medical? We need lots of human test subjects, and this sector is crowded with criminals, gangbangers, thugs, homeless, widows, orphans, people that won't be missed if and when they do go missing. After all, if you end up living in Winterton, you've already long since fallen out of relevance to Pacific City."

"So then, what kinds of experiments do they perform on these people?" Hugo asked, sounding unsure of himself as he looked away from Larry towards the office space around them. The physical computing monitors appeared to be in the process of being slowly phased out in favor of AR terminals, as more and more employees were required to wear AR apparatus, like Hugo's cybernetic eyes.

"All kinds!" Larry replied. "Or at least, the ones that aren't normally allowed in the corporate controlled sectors. Here in Winterton, it's a bit more of a free for all. Here we can actually afford to try out all the experiments that have the lowest rates of success and survival otherwise. For instance...have you ever heard of the Psycho Squad? If you're working on this level, I do believe you should have the clearance for it..."

Before Larry could finish this line of thought, however, a loud crashing sound was heard, followed by the roar of gunshots and people screaming as everyone in the area began to panic, running for cover. Hugo was looking around quite frantically before Larry grabbed him by the arm, pulling him into one of the office cubicles where the two of them hid beneath a desk.

"Oh god...oh god!" Hugo exclaimed, trembling as he saw sparks flying and lights flickering out of the corner of his eye. "What the hell's going on!?" He looked over to see the feet of armed corporate security guards shuffling by, followed by the noises of more gunshots and screaming.

"The hell if I know!" Larry shot back. "Just keep your voice down!" The two of them would remain hidden there for a few more minutes, the sounds of gunfire and the shuffling of metallic footsteps continuing in the distance before eventually stopping.

"Is...is it gone? Is it over?" Hugo asked, trying to peek out from his vantage point beneath the desk.

"Stay here...let me check." Larry said as he slowly crawled out from under the desk, leaving Hugo alone for a while longer.

Eventually, however, Hugo heard nothing more and slowly got out from under the desk as well, looking around for Larry. The rest of the office, on the other hand,  now looked much worse for wear. furniture and equipment had been torn apart, thrown across the room, riddled with bullet holes, or some combination of the three, not to mention much of it covered in blood in addition, especially where the bodies of his coworkers now lay, their corpses appearing to be mutilated by heavy caliber rifle rounds, twisted apart by industrial strength pneumatic arms, and sliced cleanly into pieces by finely sharpened blades.

It was a good thing that Hugo's cybernetic eyes had night vision capabilities as well, as the power had gone out, and what little light remained was heavily obscured by smoke from dying fires set throughout the building. As he looked down to the floor to examine large bullet shells left behind by corporate security and their assailant, he started to call out for his coworker, only to be met with the sound of thunderous metallic footsteps in response.

These footsteps got louder and louder as Hugo started to panic, looking for a place to hide. Eventually, a pair of glowing red eyes cut through the darkness and the smoky haze, gazing right at him. A massive dark silhouette approached him as he tried to back away, until a huge metallic hand suddenly reached out from the darkness, immediately grabbing Hugo by the throat, tightening around his windpipe in a vice like grip as he struggled to breathe for a few moments, before letting go and tossing him across the room instead, sending him flying through a cubicle wall, a glass desk, and a workstation that crumpled around him as he fell.

He landed on his face, half buried in computer equipment as the thundering footsteps began to approach him again. No sooner had he manage to pick himself up from the wreck had he seen the tall metallic figure bearing down upon him again. It held up one of its metallic arms, and it folded away into the form of a rifle cannon, pointing itself right at Hugo's torso.

"CONSIDER THIS A WARNING. RETRIBUTION IS COMING." A low, mechanical growl boomed out from the figure before its rifle cannon unloaded a dozen rounds into Hugo's body at point blank range, quickly turning everything below his neck into something resembling chunky salsa that splattered across the area.

Hugo was already dead, but his cybernetic eyes remained undamaged, continuing to record the scene as the mechanical monster turned and walked out of the area, its metallic footsteps slowly fading away into the distance.

---

These were the events that I had seen unfold through the footage recorded from Hugo's cybernetic eyes, recovered from the scene of the crime mostly undamaged. I had a feeling that parts of this would be making the news stations sooner or later, albeit with the conversations about the company's practices edited out. Luckily, Vykarius was able to work out a trick or two to get me on Asclepius's investigation team before the truth could be completely erased, just as he did before with Icarus. Now I was standing right about where the killer had been last seen, over Hugo's body, or what was left of it. It was quite a miracle that his optical implants survived the carnage, considering the fact that almost nothing else did. Most of the crime scene had been the way Hugo had seen it in his last moments, now with a corporate investigation team on the case, and myself assumed to be a part of it.

I had just finished watching the playback of the video feed recorded from Hugo's eyes as an Asclepius guard approached me. "Based on everything we've gathered so far, it's more than likely that the Angels of Retribution are responsible for this."

"Angels?" I turned to them. "I only saw one suspect in the footage. You think there's more than one of them? What does the surveillance footage show?"

The other investigator simply shook their head. "Not more than one at the same time, or perhaps at all. But do you really think that one lone wolf terrorist could do all this?" They gestured around to the debris that used to be an office floor.

"Yes, under the right circumstances." I was quick to reply, feeling no hesitation.

"And what circumstances would those be?"

"Well, you see, based on the Hugo footage alone, this suspect was augmented with cybernetic limbs, possibly way more. I'm thinking they had to be a Class VIII cyborg, minimum. At least three quarters of their body must be made of metal. There can't be much organic parts left of them. This would make them extremely strong and durable beyond even the best muscle and bone treatments Asclepius Medical has to offer, no offense or anything."

The other investigator shook their head. "That's impossible. This is the Winterton sector, with the lowest average income of all four sectors of Pacific City, by far. Nobody would be able to afford military grade pneumatic limbs or skeletons. Second of all, mechanical implants are primarily the domain of Icarus Industries, who primarily operate in the Gibson Springs sector way up in Washington and Oregon..." I held my hand up to cut them off right there. My mechanical hand.

"I'm already well aware of this, as you can see. I used to work for Icarus, myself. It's quite possible that our suspect did too, at some point or another. Might even be ex-military, considering the nature of their hardware."

"You don't think they could still be working for Icarus? You know, corporate sabotage?"

I gave a shrug at this suggestion. "I suppose I can't completely rule out the possibility at the moment. At least, not until we can discern the suspect's motive..." The playback window on my AR feed was still active. I shared the video object with the other investigator and rewound the footage back to the one part where the killer spoke. CONSIDER THIS A WARNING. RETRIBUTION IS COMING. "Do any of these seven words mean anything to you?"

"I mean, I would still go with my first suggestion, the Angels of Retribution. They've been active in this area, and this incident has the same modus operandi and everything..."

"Is that so?" I went to search the GRID's information networks for these "Angels of Retribution" as I then asked my fellow investigator, "Tell me about this MO of theirs."

"Well, it's pretty much exactly as you see it here." They gestured once more to the ruined offices. "They pick a target, a corporate establishment, to be specific, and then they ravage the whole place top to bottom. Primarily they seem to attack with heavy caliber cyborg rifles, but have also been known to use flamethrowers and explosives. Most of their arsenal is too heavy for most non-augmented people to carry, necessitating the use of cybernetic limbs."

"Right, and as noted before, the use of cybernetic limbs of such a military grade would certainly limit the suspect pool in this area. How long has this gang been active in Winterton? Are they ex-military?" As I was asking these questions, I was searching for the answers myself on the GRID.

"There have been scattered reports of lone cyborg attacks over the decades, particularly from disgruntled former soldiers, including cybernetically enhanced soldiers from Icarus, but nothing completely concrete until the year 2080 or so, following in the wake of the Goodman bombing, where repeated incidents of lone cyborg attacks on corporate property really began to take hold, and continuing onward to this day."

Ah yes, Reynold Goodman, perhaps the last genuinely good politician in the world, or so I liked to believe, until he was murdered in what was ostensibly a terrorist plot while he was campaigning for the office of the President of the United States. I knew the truth behind that incident, or at least part of it. Enough to know that wasn't the only good person that was lost on that fateful day.

"I don't think the Angels were behind the Goodman incident." I immediately told the investigator.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"I was there when it happened. I didn't get these cybernetic implants willingly."

They gave me a nod, presumably a sympathetic one. "Well then, now that you're working for Asclepius, maybe you'll be able to afford organic body parts. They can make you a new arm and eye using your own DNA and stem cells as a base. They'll be just like the old ones you used to have, I guarantee it."

I shook my head at this. "I know, I know, but I can't do that. I won't."

"Why not? The failure rate for synthetic organs is less than one in--"

Before they could finish their sentence, our conversation was interrupted when I received a call on my local AR interface. It was from Vykarius. "Get back to your office ASAP." It said. "You're going to be wanting to be sitting down for what I've found for you."

With that, I turned back to the rest of the investigation crew. "Sorry, but something just came up for me. If any of you find anything, send it to my GRID inbox. For now, I've got some more paperwork to take care of." I smiled to myself as I turned to leave. Paperwork. What an antiquated term. Almost nothing was ever written on paper these days, yet the word remained in common use. Perhaps the spoken and written language was due for an update soon.

---

The streets of Winterton were even rougher than I remembered the last time I was down here. Most of California that was south of the San Francisco Bay, all the way down to the ruins of what used to be the Mexican border wall, consisted largely of mile after mile of run down urban sprawl struggling to not become completely backwards and outdated in the late 21st century, suburban enclaves protected either by gangs or local law enforcement companies, most of which had ties to crime syndicates, and outright slums cobbled together from machine and building scraps. Quite a few abandoned factories left over from the SoCal industry bubble of another era now found new life as gang hideouts. Abandoned shopping malls were repurposed as apartment complexes. And getting anywhere was a real pain since quite a few roads were deteriorating from decades of neglect. Corporate bodies simply couldn't find any profitable way to build roads that went anywhere other than places that got them more business, so it was a roll of the dice whenever you got into the AutoCab.

I made sure that I had at least one place in every sector of Pacific City that I could call my office, and the one I had in Winterton was actually located in the office building of a detective agency whose name had been long forgotten. The location wasn't so bad for me since I was on good terms with the Razers, the gang that protected the area. Sure, that wasn't very reassuring to a lot of outsiders, but I rarely held my first meetings with my clients in person; they could send me GRID messages for that, and if we needed to talk, I had my own private virtual GRID to invite them to.

There weren't very many traditional street lights outside the office building I worked at, so when I arrived there from the AutoCab that evening, it was primarily lit by the surrounding neon lights, since the rest of the street consisted of strip malls and restaurants, or at least most of them still did. A few small business owners, myself included, found ways to survive and sometimes even thrive in even the roughest parts of Winterton if they made the right friends and connections, in this case with the Razers. But enough about them; I had to get to my office proper, which was on the third floor of the building. The elevator shaft was a wreck, so I had to take the stairs.

I picked this particular room on the third floor because it required the least amount of repairs and refurbishing to get at least presentable. First thing I needed was a door with a frosted glass window that read OFFICE OF DET. JOSEPH STONE, INVESTIGATIONS INTO PRIVATE MATTERS in order to make a good impression for anyone actually going through the effort to actually look for me in person. Next was the window. It offered a good view of the surrounding cityscape, dilapidated as it was in Winterton, but at least it was facing north, so the sun wouldn't get in my eyes whenever I gazed out of it. Once I got a working pair of blinds for it, I was finally able to adjust the mood as I saw fit. Facing away from the window and towards the door was the chair that sat in front of my desk, a chair that held a VR rig for whenever I did my investigations in the virtual GRID, and a hidden compartment in the right armrest where I kept a loaded holdout pistol secured just in case the company in my office turned out to be less than cordial. Even though I had Goldhart's cyborg revolver kept with me either under my coat or in the top drawer of my next, I could draw the holdout much faster.

Ah yes, my desk, the literal centerpiece of my office. It looked like a bar piece of steel at first, but in reality, its jet black top surface was capable of projecting holograms, so that not everyone in the room needed an AR overlay interface to see them. It was a rare luxury to have, especially in Winterton.

Sitting down at my desk, I reached beneath it and flipped a switch that activated its holoprojector, causing the outline of a human hand to appear in the center of the desk's top surface. I placed my left hand, my organic hand, into the outline to allow it to read my hand print, and soon enough the projector whirred to life, a series of holographic objects and windows popping up into the air above the desk, exactly as I had configured them the previous time. The objects were...rather cluttered, to be honest. I had been working on a lot of case notes and had fallen asleep before I could get them organized, so I simply waved my hand to push them aside as I set up a call with Vykarius. "Okay now, Vyke. Show me what you found. Is this about the Angels of Retribution?"

"Angel, actually. Singular." Vykarius's voice came through the speakers on the sides of the desk. "I've been looking through the less restricted parts of the GRID, and from the evidence and testimonies that I've been able to verify, there has only ever been one 'Angel' present on the scene at a time. Here, take a look for yourself."

Vykarius began to send various photograph and video files to me via the GRID, which were now set to display on my projector desk. I manipulated them around the projection space with hand gestures, taking a closer look at each one as I got a better idea of what this Angel of Retribution was all about. Its body was entirely mechanical in nature, a metallic frame covered in some kind of lightweight yet heavy duty armor that was developed and used for the most heavily cyberized soldiers during the Cyborg Wars. The parts of him looked to be Icarus made; cybernetic bodies were their bread and butter, after all. The Angel had to have been a Class X cyborg, the highest grade of cyberization, with over 90% of the body being synthetic. Any more than that, and people would start to question whether you're still human or just a machine.

Speaking of humans and machines, the Angel's head just barely resembled that of the former, while being made up mostly of the latter. The faceplate bore a pair of slit shaped red eyes, lit up more like LED lights. They didn't look nearly as convincing as the electronic eye I possessed. No, these were much more...inhuman, much like the rest of the Angel's face, which only tenuously resembled a human's, but without any discernible nose, mouth, or chin. It was as if it were designed by someone who had never seen a human being before, and only had a blurry photograph of a person wearing a gas mask to go off of. And on its head was a series of black cords, some of them connected to other parts of the Angel's body. A few of the photographs that Vykarius sent me revealed these to be cables that would be connected to various devices, which struck me as a bit strange, since most electronics these days connected to each other completely wirelessly. Perhaps this Angel must have still been running old cybernetics technology from during the war. The black cables sticking out of the top of his head now resembled dread locks.

For the past several years, the Angel had a penchant for suddenly appearing around corporate properties and installations, killing as many employees on site and causing as much property damage as he possibly could, then disappearing as quickly as he came. There was no way to identify the Angel based on DNA evidence, because he didn't seem to even have any organic components that would provide such things in the first place. The only things the Angel would leave behind were bullet casings and a bloody trail of bodies. A one man army waging war against the corporations themselves. I wouldn't have believed it myself until I had seen some of the video evidence.

And what those videos had shown, among the rest of the things I had described, was that the Angel was certainly armed to the teeth, or at least, to the arms, with all manner of military grade firearms, most of which seemed to be stored in compartments in his arms, as well as his chest cavity. I began watching the leaked surveillance footage to figure this out. In the majority of the footage, the Angel's right arm would take the form of a minigun, complete with eight rotary barrels forming a circle. In the center of that circle, however, was another, different kind of barrel. In a few instances, I saw the Angel lob a different kind of projectiles from this, concussive grenades, to be specific. The massive amount of force they generated was used to clear away a path on the Angel's trail of destruction. And what a trail it was, as the Angel's left arm contained even more weaponry within. According to self proclaimed experts on the GRID, the left arm was apparently equipped with something called a plasma capacitor, which is what allowed the Angel to torch their targets with streams of hot flame, or in this case, hot plasma, in addition to launching it like projectiles. Finally, I watched some footage showing the Angel on a rooftop, surrounded by corporate police drone copters. They fired their onboard cannons at the Angel, but none of the bullets seemed to even as much as dent his armor before he retaliated by opening up his torso cavity to reveal a rack full of small missiles, which were immediately launched in a full salvo and chased down the drones, blasting each one out of the sky. The last I could see of the Angel in this clip was of what could only be described as a pair of metallic wings unfolding from a compartment in his upper back, making this figure look a bit angelic, indeed, as the jets located on the wingtips were enough to lift the Angel off the ground as he suddenly soared over the skyline and out of sight. It was leaked clips like this that served to confirm many suspicions of what kinds of soldiers were crafted during the Cyborg Wars. And now, it seemed, one of their most intricately built weapons was now using itself against them.

"Fascinating." I shook my head with incredulity as I was poring through the footage. "Is it really a lone wolf attacker, though?"

"If there was more than one Angel, why would they only be attacking alone? Why not overwhelm the corporates in numbers?" Vykarius replied.

Because there only needed to be a single Angel present in order to carry out such a thing, evidently. Still, Vyke had a good point, so I moved on to my next question. "So what is the Angel trying to accomplish through all of this? What is their motive?"

"Why do you think, Joe? You've seen for yourself what the megacorps are guilty of. You've fallen victim to them yourself. I'm a victim of their corruption too! They killed everyone you cared about, Joe. I can imagine that a similar thing happened to the Angel. He must be a Class X cyborg. When there's almost nothing left of you, what have you got left to lose?"

"All right. Here, Vyke, get me a list of all the attacks on corporate property that have been attributed to the Angel. Are you noticing any patterns here? Where do you think he's going to strike next?"

"Most of the Angel's early attacks had been on military installations, but it varies after that. For example, you remember that controversy over the mining operations in Gibson Springs, when the way that Icarus was treating its human miners had gotten out? A week later, there was an attack on the mining headquarters, and that's what shut their operations down at that location for good. There's plenty of other examples of this, too."

"Examples of what, exactly?"

"Whenever word got out of some less than scrupulous corporate behavior on the GRID, there would be an attack on a facility related to it within the week, almost always the work of the Angel."

"So he must be someone who has his finger on the pulse of the corporate happenings. Don't suppose we could trace his GRID presence?"

"Not exactly..." was Vykarius's initial response. "But by following the underground news reports, we can probably get a good idea of where he may strike next."

"Well now..." I said as I stood up from my chair. "Go find that out, Vyke. We can't afford to waste any time."

---

The recent string of the Angel's attacks all seemed to concern the existence of the Psycho Squad, a rumor that persisted on the darker parts of the GRID. And based on what I've witnessed for myself, I was more than compelled to believe that they were all true.

Before he became a musician, Aaron Steel would tell me that he spent a part of his childhood as a psionic test subject. Being the second son of his family, he wasn't exactly the favorite child. And when his older brother was killed in an accident, life at home didn't exactly improve for him, and he eventually decided to get away from it all by running away. It was when he wandered the streets homeless that he says he was abducted by some armored men in an AutoVan, taken away to live in some laboratory complex where they performed experimental surgery on him. The other children he met there would develop extraordinary abilities: remote viewing, precognition, levitation, telekinesis, all the stuff of fairy tales and more, unlocked by messing around with the functions of the brain enough. This would cause all sorts of mental problems, too, but that never stopped Asclepius Medical from their mad pursuits. Aaron would sometimes tell me stories of a girl who could see and hear distant things, and quite accurately, at that. However, once her schizophrenia took over and she began seeing and hearing things that weren't actually there, she was deemed no longer useful for Asclepius's purposes, and was promptly euthanized. Aaron tried to stop them, but he was locked away in solitary confinement for misbehaving. He remained there until, in one of his fits of rage, he ended up starting a fire that melted the door off of its hinges, allowing him to escape. He told me that he doesn't remember all the details; While he remembers encountering lots of armed resistance while making his way out of the facility, he doesn't recall how he made his way past all of them, at least, not without remembering images of these scientists and soldiers suddenly bursting into flames. Aaron later showed me that he had the ability to control the temperature of the air around him to some extent, enough to create fire, a talent he began applying to his mercenary career. Perhaps I should have called him over, now that I think about it. I had to wonder if the Angel of Retribution was among his bounty targets.

By using a customized AutoCab that Vykarius had hacked, and with the help of some of the Razers to modify the hardware, I was able to intercept vehicular signals transmitted through the GRID, allowing me to know if I was being followed, at least by a vehicle, and if there were any corporate vehicles in the vicinity. The mere presence of any of the Big Three in Winterton was often a curious sight due to the territory belonging to none of them, and since the Angel exclusively targeted them, I figured that following any of them, particularly Asclepius Medical at the time, would inevitably lead me to the Angel sooner or later. Inside the cab, I checked the vehicle signals on the AR map, and noticed a collection of Asclepius vehicles gathered around a certain point of interest just a few miles away from my office. Fearing the worst, I immediately set that location as my destination and the AutoCab sped away.

Parking just a block away, I tried keeping a low profile as I made my way towards the one place I should have figured where the Asclepius scientists would have gone: a local orphanage, the prime target for finding potential test subjects. Several vans bearing the trademark green colors and Caduceus of Asclepius Medical were parked around the entrance to the orphanage, completely disregarding the nearby parking lot. A rather high ranking official stood talking to the owner, accompanied by several armored soldiers, each one holding an assault rifle in their arms.

"Surely you must have more troubling or problematic children that you wouldn't mind parting with. We can even pay you quite handsomely for your troubles." The representative said.

"I said no!" The owner of the orphanage was clutching an old shotgun in his hands. "Look, I regret ever handing over anyone in the first place! I'll pay you back if you give them back to us, please!"

"How about we just buy your entire establishment, Mr. Oliver?" The representative suggested as he looked to his men with a nod. A dozen rifles were now pointed at the owner. "I can assure you that the children will be very well...taken care of, and you will never have to worry about money again yourself."

"Fuck no!" Mr. Oliver screamed, pointing his shotgun at the representative. "I'd rather die than give anyone away to predatory slavers like you fucks!"

"So be it, then." The representative ducked out of the sights of Mr. Oliver's gun, the gesture setting off the armed guards, and before I knew it, half the street was lit up with muzzle flashes and drowned out by the reverberation of gunfire as the owner of the orphanage was mowed down right in front of his establishment.

All I could do was watch in shock as this happened, and as the administrator sent his soldiers into the orphanage proper. I couldn't bear to think of what would happen to the children that were less cooperative than their caretaker...it made me feel ill, and yet, I was getting used to it at this point. Sure, I had been recording every moment of this on my cybernetic eye's camera, and I could have uploaded the footage to the public GRID to expose this atrocity to the general public, but the Big Three had recovered from far worse public relations disasters in the past, and I knew they would continue to do so. The vast majority of the public GRID, the parts of it that mattered most in the court of public opinion, were owned by the Big Three. They had the final say over everything that went up. Since they all controlled the biggest media outlets in the world as well, they could spin the news in whatever direction was most profitable to them; the truth didn't matter if it was bad for business. As far as they were concerned, the definition of truth was whatever was good for business. History was always rewritten to make the Big Three look the most virtuous, and the public at large was too complacent to do any digging for the actual stories. Private investigators like me, who sought the truth, were short in supply and even shorter in demand these days. And what could I do about it myself? I would be gunned down in short order if I approached.

Just as the first of the soldiers were returning from the entrance to the orphanage, body bags draped over their shoulders, their return trips to their armored vans were stopped when a series of explosions from nearby suddenly launched the vehicles into the air, causing the soldiers to drop their bags as they attempted to flee in separate directions. A second series of explosions rocked the street, and this time, I could see that they were being caused by a salvo of small missiles coming down from the sky, as if someone had just called an air strike on the street's location...

Two soldiers were still scrambling to reach one of the vans that had remained unturned, at least until a large metal object suddenly crashed down onto its roof, caving it in. The soldiers hardly had a moment to look up and assess what this object was before it sprayed out a torrent of bullets to put them down for good.

This figure then leapt off the roof, caving it in even further and making a small crater in the pavement when it touched down. It was seven, maybe eight feet in height. Humanoid in shape. Appeared to be armored entirely in a metallic alloy that was in heavy use throughout the Cyborg Wars...if this wasn't the Angel of Retribution in the flesh, so to speak, it was definitely a Class X cyborg outfitted with the same chassis and arsenal as the soldiers of his unit. As more of the soldiers poured out from the front door of the orphanage, he proceeded to extend his right arm, in place of a hand was the rotary barrels of a minigun, and quickly turn the door into a pile of smoking splinters, and the soldiers into perforated masses of bloody pulp.

Several soldiers were still inside the building, evident as the front windows were suddenly shattered with rifle fire, trained directly on the Angel. These bullets didn't seem to do much beyond scratching his armor, however, as he proceeded to return fire by lobbing grenades into the windows, sending several more Asclepius soldiers and their charred bodies hurling through the air. The weapons and their ammunition these Asclepius soldiers had equipped clearly weren't fit for taking on armored or cyborg targets. Normally, this would have been a good idea since most people in Winterton couldn't afford mechanical implants or cyborg armor, and those that could had to go through smuggling rings to do so. Clearly, they appeared to be unprepared for an ambush from a heavily armored cyborg.

After several more minutes of exchanging gunfire, everything fell eerily silent as the Angel seemed to run out of targets. I didn't see the administrator among the bodies. Perhaps he had fled the scene, or was still hiding somewhere in the building. I took this opportunity to edge closer to the scene, hiding behind one of the wrecked vans.

"Why do you persist?" I heard the voice of the administrator blaring out through the speakers inside the vans that were still functioning. Wherever he was hiding, his mouthpiece clearly still had wireless access to the speakers through the GRID. "What do you hope to gain from all of this mindless, senseless violence and wanton destruction? How is this a productive use of a life?"

"THIS IS THE LIFE I WAS GIVEN. THE ONLY LIFE THAT REMAINS FOR ME." The growling, synthesized voice of the Angel responded, his glowing red eyes scanning the ravaged building, appearing to be looking for any sign of movement. "THE CORPORATIONS TOOK AWAY MY BODY, MIND, AND SOUL. THEY MADE ME INTO A SOLDIER, A MONSTER OF THEIR OWN DESIGN. THEY WISHED TO CREATE THE ULTIMATE FORCE OF DESTRUCTION. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL WHAT THEY WISHED FOR."

"I get it, I get it now." The administrator's voice came back. "You're mad because you were promised glory when they stripped away your flesh and bone, replacing you piece by piece with a war machine. Now that there are no more wars left to fight, there is no more need for war machines. No more need for you. It makes you feel superfluous, obsolete, like a relic of a bygone era, doesn't it? There is no fate worse for a man to suffer than to no longer be useful to anyone. You just want to be useful again, don't you?"

"A SOLDIER'S ONLY PURPOSE IS TO FIGHT AND KILL. I HAVE EXPERIENCED FIRSTHAND THE EVIL THAT ONE MUST BE CAPABLE OF, TO HAVE NEED FOR SUCH TERRIBLE THINGS AS SOLDIERS." The Angel began approaching the building with thunderous metallic footsteps. "THERE IS NO END TO THE HORROR AND SUFFERING CAUSED BY CORPORATE GREED. FOR THE SAKE OF MANKIND, IT MUST BE ERADICATED AT ALL COSTS."

The administrator's voice started to sound a bit more fearful as he spoke again. "You only feel that way because of the cybernetic body you've been stuck in! Don't worry, cybernetic psychoses can be treated! We just need to give you a new body! You shouldn't fight Asclepius Medical! We're the ones that can provide you with your salvation! We can replace every part of your body that you've ever lost! Build a new one from scratch! You would be able to live a normal life again! Please, consider!"

The Angel seemed to hesitate for a moment, and it was that moment's hesitation that was all that the administrator needed, as a curious looking grenade was suddenly dropped in front of the Angel, which immediately detonated in a massive blue flash of electric sparks, knocking out all the lights and electronics in the area. I must have been standing too close to the detonation zone myself, as I found myself blinded in my right eye, and I could no longer feel my right arm. It was the fabled EMP grenade, normally banned from civilian use. With my cybernetics disrupted, I couldn't see the AR overlay anymore. I was left to rely on my remaining natural senses as I peered over the wreckage of the van. The administrator had emerged from wherever he had been hiding, and was now standing over the Angel, who was now slumped over in the middle of the street, his cybernetic body disabled. The suit was now placing another explosive device on top of the Angel's head.

"What? Did you really think we were going to make you such an offer? Rogue soldiers like you are not profitable. You're bad for business. Your services aren't needed anymore. You're obsolete, soldier. It's high time you joined the scrap heap like the rest of your comrades." The administrator set the timer on the explosive device, and began to walk away calmly, as if he was used to procedures like this.

The software that controlled my cybernetics was starting to reboot, but the Angel looked to be running an older model from the war, so he was probably going to be out of commission for a bit longer. For the first time since I had arrived, I felt the compulsion to act instead of passively observe, so I quickly ran out from my cover, towards the Angel. I hoped that I could get to him in time since the suit had had his back turned to me, but he must have heard my footsteps, as he turned around, drawing a self defense pistol from under his suit. I responded by drawing my white revolver and firing a shot in his direction as quickly as my natural reflexes would allow. I must have missed this shot, however, as I had to use my off hand since my mechanical arm was still not quite functioning, and the fact that the administrator was able to fire a shot back at me immediately after. I drew a breath and tried aiming more carefully, my second shot hitting him in the leg, sending him to the pavement.

The Angel's red eyes were not glowing as I approached his mechanical form, grabbing the explosive device and tugging it away. It was little bigger than a golf ball, which made me wonder just what kind of explosive payload it had, if the suit was planning to blow up the Angel with this. I turned back to the administrator, who was now trying to get himself up off the ground and stop the bleeding in his leg, and began to step towards him, only to feel a sharp pain in my right side. I reached down with my right hand, and lifted it back up before my eyes to find it now covered in blood. The bastard must not have missed with his shot after all. And then I realized that my right hand was functional again, and my vision slowly coming back to my right eye. I looked up to see that the administrator was now trying to line up another shot with his pistol from his seated position, so I took my revolver in my dominant hand this time, aiming squarely for his gun and blasting it right out of his own hand. This bought me plenty of time, even in my wounded state, to bring the time bomb all the way over to the suit, grab him by the throat with my mechanical arm and shove the bomb into his mouth, walking back to the Angel just as the device's countdown timer ran out, completely vaporizing the admin's body in an erupting fireball.

By the time I limped back to where the Angel was, right as the bomb went off, the Angel's eyes were now lit up once more, his pneumatic limbs slowly whirring to life as he picked himself up off the ground, soon towering over me once he was on his feet. I had to wonder how conscious he was while his body was disabled, and if he was aware of anything that I had just done. The next words his voice synthesizer spoke, however, removed all doubt from my mind: "YOU ARE TREADING A DANGEROUS PATH."

"Look who's talking." I replied, looking through the wreckage of the Asclepius vans and finding a first aid kit, opening it and applying a medical spray to my bullet wound, closing it up. If the projectile was still lodged inside my body, the nanites in my bloodstream would break it down and consume it for energy within a few hours, repairing the damage it caused along the way. "You're the Angel of Retribution, aren't you? The vigilante soldier? You must have a death wish...you keep poking the three headed dragon...it's going to hit back someday, and hard."

"YOU WOULD BE WISE TO HEED YOUR OWN WORDS." The Angel replied. "BUT THE CORPORATIONS CANNOT TAKE ANYTHING AWAY FROM ONE WHO HAS NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE AND NOTHING TO FEAR. YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND."

"Oh, I very much doubt that." I replied, trying to keep calm. "You're not the only one who has lost something to them. Or who has lost a lot of people and things, for that matter."

The Angel did not reply to this. Instead, he drew out a pair of metallic wings from a compartment in his back, the jets on the wing's tips blasting him into the sky and over the horizon. All I could really do was watch, and then make my way into the orphanage to make sure all the children were all right. I called for the Razers over the GRID to come pick them up and take them to a new home, since this one was clearly compromised. If Asclepius still wanted to take them away, they would have to answer to the Razers this time.

---

A few days later, my news feed on the GRID started to light up a bit about a terrorist attack in my neck of the Winterton sector, at least, according to the media. The stories said that the owner of the local orphanage was killed by terrorists, and the residents kidnapped. I knew the truth, though. I uploaded the footage I had recorded of that day from my cybernetic eye, right up to the moment where it was interrupted by an electromagnetic pulse, where it started making circles around some secretive groups pertaining to the Angel of Retribution, which meticulously documented his appearances as well as possible before the corporations could sell their own version of the truth. The group was steadily growing now, with over a hundred thousand followers and counting. Many of them saw the Angel as an inspiration, a hero that stood defiant under the oppressive heel of white collar corruption. I don't know how true that was, but I was hoping that one day this might inspire some kind of change in Pacific City, and hopefully a change for the better.