Jim Slinger pt. 1

 It's been a while, but Jim came to mind. So here's some Blue Lights featuring Jim the Slinger. 

******

"....Thanks Mike! Tonight here in the market district of Sector Three, a lone, armed man barged into a local clothier and slaughtered more than two dozen civilians, injuring fifteen more, and finally expiring when Cherubim units were called in to end the horrific rampage. We're here at the scene with a representative from the local branch of the Blue Light mercenary corporation, commander Weiss-"

The camera pans across Susan. She is wearing a bright, some-what revealing yellow sundress, her tan skin brightly lit by the Texas sun - the storefront is a burnt husk of a building, although four more stores on either side, making up nearly half of the storefront block destroyed along with it, with the crater of building's foundation being cleaned out by local garbage men who pick across the debree, tossing polycete blocks into a nearby cement boiler. The commander is wearing an advanced mach four version of the usual Blue Light corp armor suits, fitted with built-in machine gun wrist mounted guns, shoulder cannon grenade launchers, full five digit actuator durasteel gauntlets, and standing over eleven feet tall, wide and tall enough to not quite fit his head or his left shoulder into the frame of the shot. The crowd watching the footage in Hel chuckle, half the bar quieted down and the music cut just to see what the hell had happened today. The camera pans up and back.

"Can you - can you see- am I in the shot? Shit-" Susan moves a too-heavy, sizable piece of polycrete to stand on. The Commander's military facial glow-tattoos, along with his synthfibre mohawk, are a violent green-blue, and his eyes swirl with synthetic colors pulsing at his heart rate; he grins looking down at the newswoman. She met his gaze with her usual stern, and neutral face.

"Mister Weiss, your company is claiming that the suspect was, in fact, not within the legal liability contract of your company. How can you justify the kind of carnage that occured here today, and yet your corporation expects the store owner, the mercantile, and the greater city of New Dallas to pay for what can only be described as a terrifying and bloody murder spree by one of your members?"

The commander rolls his eyes at her, a smile never leaving his lips, "Blue Light corporation takes no responsibility for an off-duty mercenary using stolen hardware to commit whatever crime, be that robbery, or murder, or destruction of property. This man was obviously a deranged psychopath, and our records indicate that he had gone off grid more than twenty-four hours prior to entering Sector Three. Anyone found with our hardware and not connected to the network is a rogue agent and therefore a threat to our hardware security, be they member or otherwise, and he was reported to the local police once our operatives realized his armor was missing from company property while he was not on duty."

"But this so-called psychopath was using equipment and training developed by your company, commander. Why wasn't his suit tracking information sent to the authorities earlier? At what point did you know that he had gone, how did you put it - off grid?"

"Every unit is seperated into core groups with a commanding officer, and the grid tech in Blue Light suits uses state of the art neuraltech networks, which function on a local basis to avoid wireless intrusion - better to lease the privacy of our off-duty members during work hours than risk misfiring weapons because of some chemhead deck-jockeys, who prefer to get a suited mercenary to do their killing for them. His commanding officer was killed by the suspect early yesterday, so the report never went through, and the police were informed only minutes before the incident about a rogue from our membership and to be on the look out, which didn't give NDPD enough time to react accordingly to the threat of a Blue Light anyway."

"So the suspect managed to bypass the neuraltech security? How often does this kind of thing happen?"

The Commander sighed. Although Susan was picking up on wireless comms access from the commanders head units through her own nueraltech implants, she logged the thought for later, and gave him a moment to 'think.'

"Blue Light Corp uses modern neuraltech to create sensory information grids between mercenary units, and we have adaptive chem-induced emotional regulators, along with the best monitering software available, made by the Corp. Commanding officers are trained to watch for irregularities to prevent just such a thing as what happened here today. Besides outright murdering his commanding officer and finding a nutjob to hack his suit, we have no information in regards to how the suspect managed to trip the neuraltech, fall off the grid, and find his way into the Sector Three mercantile. I would deduce that the deckjockey fried his neuralnetwork in the process of trying to stop the tracking software, likely causing enough brain trauma to send him spiraling into criminal insanity. So far as how often this may happen, this is the first incident in six months of a member going suited, off-duty, and so much as daring to leave the local neuralnet radius of their commanding officer, approximately one-point-one-two-five miles."

Susan knew it was a stupid question to finish with, but Circuit 61 New Dallas News demanded it. Even if her boss would be pissed later.

"There are also allegations that the Blue Light Corporation recruits unstable, criminally insane individuals as well, commander. This reporter, for one, wonders if this neuraltech software wasn't inhibiting that behavior, so when it glitched or outright failed, the member went rogue, killed their commanding officer, and tried to flee in order to be free from the corp and the suit neural tech."

The commander had stopped smiling at the word allegations, his expression slowly becoming more angry, but speaking with a calm and monotonous tone, "Our recuits go through intensive training, are constantly monitered while suited, and are tracked better than most luxary cars flying the hi-ways of these Texas skies. We are a zero-discrimination mercenary corp, ma'am, and I will not have people, like this reporter, for one, bismirching the good name of my corp as unsafe, or some subdued, criminally insane maniac. These allegations are likely from criminal elements which fear the good our corp does for companies who need to hire the best, most effecient military corp without the federal red tape of involving Cherubim, who tend to work more in ultimatums like the burning rubble behind us, rather than the quiet, clean operations the likes of which our corp is so beloved for."

The body and suit of the suspect and member had not been recovered, and Susan knew that the Church had sent three Angels - just another nearby patrol unit flying the skies of Sector 6 - to deal with the Blue Light who had begun gunning people down across a busy storefront. People knew he was insane and had begun to flee prior to his opening fire - his babbling, incoherent screaming vaguely sounded like wails of pain, begging 'not to go back,' 'not another mission.' The Cherub had missiled the area, blowing out the market, which had already been cleared of living civilians, or so says the Church's report. They had reduced the blown out storefront into a mass of molten polymer and burnt ashes.

"Thank you for your time, commander."

"Thank you for having me, Susan."

* * *

The music in Hel went back on full blast. The deep thrum of the electronic dance music thudded across the bar, quieter due the the dampening field Cerf usually had to have fixed every other week. He drank from a nearby flask, which was his handy work flask number three. Wednesday, he liked to have called it some thursdays, or even mondays. And today was definitely a Wendesday - not far enough along to hope for the weekend, and not enough corpses through the week for a Monday.

"You okay, Cerf? You drank half that bottle, man."

Cerf stared at his costumer. Jim sat at the bar, covered in blood, a bundle over his shoulder. He looked ragged, like he had been running only minutes earlier, and stank like a wet bag of greasy rags, so like he usually did. "The fuck are you doing in my bar, Jim?"

Jim held up his hands defensively, "Look, I know what it looks like-"

"You owe me like sixteen thousand for the last time Jim, I told the-"

During the broadcast, Cerf failed to notice his doorman bouncer missing. Byter number Two's vitals were out of action, be they unconscious or dead.

Byter Three walked up to the bar sheepishly, "I'm sorry Cerf, he tricked the door gun. You want I should kill him now?"

Jim stood up, but the hulking mass of Byter, whether him or his six identical android brothers, gingerely pushed Jim down without breaking his spine, shoulder, or neck with one hand. The music goes quieter, and people nearby get ready for a show of violence.

"How much have you-"

Cerf looked and saw three empty bottles, top shelf, empty at the bar in front of Jim. Jim looked positively plastered.

More impressed than angry at this point, Cerf knew Jim well enough to know he was in serious trouble.

"I'm going to do the next guy a favor, Jim. I'm not going to let B-Three tear you into small pieces and throw you in the back dumpster - instead, I'm going to let you go about your business today, in fact, here-" the barman turns and gropes drunkely at the bottles behind him for a moment.

Cerf hands Jim the cheapest bottle of alcohol above 60% he can find nearby.

"-take a handle while you're here, but do your business, get it over with, and the NEXT-" Cerf didn't mean to scream the word, but he did anyway, "time one of my bouncers SEE'S YOU, you will be DEAD, if you don't have my CREDITS!"

Jim graciously takes the bottle, and Byter slowly, although as sadly as his robotic face can look, lets his heavy hand off of him.

"How much was it Cerf? Ten thousand, right?" Jim smiles.

"Twenty four thousand, after your tab today. And another twelve for B-Four's repairs. Goodbye."

The dramatic pause in the music ceased, and Jim walked away from the bar, barely able to see straight. He shoved the bottle into his secondary pack on his back, and fished around in his synthfiber rain coat for a couple of uppers to feel less like the world was spinning. Three pills later, he felt stable enough to remember he was here to work.

The client was the usual mix of shitty and poor - but Jim had to get rid of the piece he had gotten today. It was heavy on his back, the sweat from all the liqour pouring into his already partially wet clothes only making it all the more of a burden. The crowd was a bustling mix the usuals, plus all of teens who had followed him in through after he had busted the door, before two more Byters rushed to stop some of them flooding the dance floor with underaged chemheads. The music away from the bar was all you could hear besides the laughing, giggling fits of the dancers, or the screaming patrons trying in vain to speak at the tables.

One table he knew was bad news was the Blue Lights. Just like the broadcast, they sat in armor too big for normal seats, sitting in the bench seats near the VIP tables in the back. The captain glared at Jim after he barged in at the front of the crowd covered in blood.

Jim only hoped his reputation didn't precede him today as an arms dealer, picking up bits of military grade and hawking it to whoever still bought from poor ol' Jim. Poor, poor ol' Jim who just wanted make a decent living in Zero, bouncing from sleeper hotels to blown out buildings, scrounging enough to keep his head above water. Jim never believed in implants, took his nano-vitamins, and tried to eat something besides literal trash most days. Jim had been to a real bath house this week. Self care wasn't in the vocabulary of most slummies, but Jim was looking for a change.

The cold durasteel of the Blue Light helmet on his back, carefully wrapped and padded to look differently, was heavy on his shoulder, and that damned captain was still glaring at him like he knew. How could he? Jim knew to take the nuclear power cores out - he'd hawked those for rent before breakfast. He'd woken up to a gun fight in the hotel last night, and when it had gone quiet after an explosion, he could hardly believe the helmet laying the floor surrounded by burnt corpses. 'What luck!' he had thought at the time, 'things are really looking to turn around for poor ol' Jim!' he had believed.

Jim had checked the tracking against his deck's monitering softwares, but the helmet was deactivated. No locals, no long range wireless comms, just a dead helmet.

The visor of the captain panned when he walked across the dance floor, meekly shuffling his feet in an attempt to act natural, all the while sweating enough to smear gore across his face when he went to wipe it. Nearby people smelled him and cursed, muttering about burning garbage or heaps of refuse, but Jim danced all the harder, clearing a small circle while he skimmed the crowds for his guy.

A man sat at a table opposite the dance floor. He had horns on the top of his head, fur around his neck and the backside of his hands, and a rather loud shirt showing a tuft of groomed hair from his chest. He raised his eyebrows at Jim, suddenly looking a little sick.

'Thank the fucking Church!' Jim casually danced toward the table, eventually sitting opposite of him, pulling out the bottle Cerf had given him and a stolen glass from the bar. He poured himself a drink, and offered the Chimeran a drink, who shrugged and let him pour some into his cocktail glass.

Jim drank some down, and eyed him up. "You Pofferus?"

Pofferus nodded at Jim, tasting his drink and frowning, "Church, that's awful. Jim, I take it?"

Jim nodded, his eyes never leaving the goatman as he swigged for a solid two seconds from the liqour, not bothering to drink from his full glass yet. He leaned back, lidded and then slipped the bottle back into his pack. "We can't deal here, too many eyes."

The goatman scoffed, "Bullshit. Tanaka military ops don't-"

"This isn't Tanaka corp hardware anyway." Jim said plainly, crossing his arms and his eyes.

"I'll be the judge of the that." The goatman waited, impatiently tapping one foot-hoof under the table, frowning and scrunching up his face at the taste of his drink, "That really is awful, how can you-"

Jim drank his glass. The whole glass. It was a water glass he had taken from the bar when Cerf wasn't looking, and the sudden whoosh of drunkenness washed over him like a hammer to the face. He couldn't tell which goatman he was supposed to be staring at anymore, but he glared at him with every fiber of his being, stony faced and green as he was.

The five goatmen sighed, and waved at the barmaid, "a private room, please?" She whispered something back, and he sighed deeper and more sadly, "Yes, yes, my tab, of course."

* * *

The two made their way toward the VIP tables and beyond, all the while Jim fished out his last few pills to feel something, anything besides how sick he was. He popped three more, slowly widening and closing his eyes as the world shifted above and below him. The piercing screeches of the crowd washed into focus, a sharp dancing shape laughing into his head, banging deeper into his ears than he could feel.

"Come on Jim, you fucking drunkerd chemhead-" goatman looked pretty wasted too, and he pushed Jim through the crowd toward their private room.

"Keep yer filthy hooves offa me, goddamn Chimeran bastard-"

Pofferus pushed him harder, and the two made their way off the dance floor, "This is the last time I deal with racist a piece of shit like you, Jim."

"Can't trust non' animal man, man, not a one-" Jim mumbled, half willing himself to sound more drunk than he actually was. Acting was part of bargaining with a shit head like Pofferus, wait for him to feel like he has all the bargaining power, like Jim was out of control. Little did he know, Jim had never actually controlled a thing in his life, much less himself.

And maybe the Blue Light Captain would forget, maybe stop staring at him over that visor, just like the helmet slung over his shoulder, but different. Captains had differen't helmets, more additions of tech smattered over it, thicker armor here or there - each piece of armor was unique with their corp. The shoulders bore rank, and they rarely if ever removed their helmets like the man on the TV had. They were here, but they weren't drinking.

The captains helmet panned to him and stared.

Jim let Pofferus push him into a room, acting stubborn, "No! No, I don't think you actually have the credits, man! NO!" Pofferus kicked him in, hard enough he'd probably have a hoof print on his ass, and slammed the door when they both got in.

"SHOW ME, JIM! NOW!"

Jim sighed, lugging his burded off his sore shoulder. His hand wouldn't open, still crusted from where he had been gripping the bundle tight enough that he had long since lost feeling in the digits of his left hand. He slowly managed to let go and uncover the helmet, and the goatman gasped when it was revealed - a bit singed, but still fully intact, the gentle blue hue of paint scuffed with blackened marks enough to reveal solid durasteel, and a network of complex neural interfaces lining the inside.

Pofferus covered it back up, and Jim immediately clung to it like a precious egg that could crack at any moment. "Fifty thousand."

Pofferus scoffed, "Are you insane? I can't move that. Shit, you are crazy Jim, how did you-?"

"Just my lucky day I guess. I didn't hear a no?" Jim smiled, sweat and blood still running down his face.

"I'll give you five."

Jim stared at Pofferus, his mouth agape, "I can't believe you would insult me like that. I seriously can't even believe it. Fifty for this is a STEAL-"

"What, for a death wish? Jim, I'm not sure I can even get out of here alive being SEEN with you today, let alone trying to deal with you about it." Pofferus stands up, and walks towards the door slowly. Too slowly. So slowly, Jim knows he's bluffing. The headpiece is a hundred-thousand credits in cost to the corp making the helmet, which is completely unique to each Blue Light. The helmet Jim cradled like a loving mother was worth hundreds of thousands of credits to the right buyer, and he knew it. Pofferus knew it.

But the Chimeran was at the door. He sighed, and turned, "Good luck, Jim. Die fast, not slow." Pofferus walked out the door and closed it behind him.

Jim gulped hard, wrapping up the helmet as closely as he could to his body, making it look more like a lump than the military contraband that he threw over his shoulder.

Jim slipped an earpiece into his ear. The listening device was one of the few things he'd decided to keep - discreet enough to look like an earplug, but useful enough it was better to be found dead with it still on his corpse. Radio chatter across the sector quieted down into a casual hurricane of noise as he focused, the neuraltech interfacing with his plug he'd had since he was born. He could hear the captain in the other room talking about a possible suspect, still waiting, "....the buyer wants to talk?"

Pofferus was going to sell him out. Again. Poor ol' Jim had been to risky, barging into Hel the way he did today. Pofferus wouldn't get a second chance with those Blue Lights, though. They were going to hunt him down and take back that beautiful piece of hardware - military tech was, after all, Jim's speciality. Why not sell the most expensive thing on the market? Why not steal the best of the best, and try...

Try to survive. Jim shook his head - he had to go.

Jim slid the door open, and could hear across the Captain's comms as Pofferus explained what Jim had on his back. Damned if he didn't even have a headstart - but Hel was different.

"Have confirmation - tracking target." Jim heard as a wireless outbound, "Jim... the slinger? Empty records indicate a real slummie boys, keep an eye out if we-"

The captain stopped speaking and glared at the open door, but couldn't see Jim already on the dance floor. The stupid kids barely noticed that they were stomping him, stepping on hands, feet, back, head, everything Jim had, even his soul, he felt.

"Target is missing. Comms?"

"Checking-"

Cerf was calmly trying to clean a glass. Pofferus had paid before hand to use the room for five minutes, and now it was empty again, and he felt relief wash over his body. A sigh even escaped his lips. Jim had slunk out of there like a spider, and although the strange creature was nowhere to be found, at least he wasn't in the private room, where maybe B-four or Five could throw him out easily.

A nearby security screen lit up with automated privalage. The Blue Lights drank here because they very rarely caused real trouble, and because Cerf actually let criminally insane psychos like those Blue Light freaks drink at his bar, they could take control of his security at their leisure. Cerf wasn't even sure he could stop them, anyway, be it drinking or hacking, so better to just bend over and let it happen, maybe take their credits when they decide to pay a tab. He felt his heart drop a little with the Captain in the VIP seats glaring at him from the security moniter system, mouth-to-typing the words, "Where is he?"

"Who?" Said Cerf to his own security moniter.

"Jim the Slinger."

Cerf reached for his flask as a cold sweat started in.

Jim had made it across the dancefloor, bruised and bleeding some his own blood at this point, bottle broken, a few sprains or possible cracked bones he might feel if he could feel much of anything at this point, hiding under an occupied table of three teenagers in a passionate moaning contest to see who could get who's clothes off first. Jim pulled his second-to-last medical vial out and shoved it into his leg, and although the copious mixture of alcohol and uppers began to fade, he could already feel the horrors of the last two minutes begin to subside into the usual waves of euphoria following a well deserved medical nanostim. He could feel the three shattered ribs from last week slide into their proper place, the taste of metal and salt went away, and he suddenly vomited nearly a gallon of toxins under the table, a wash of compounds the nanites simply couldn't abide. Jim could physically feel the nanites drawing moisture from the blood, sweat, and gross water drenching his clothes, actually drying him partially as they restored him to peak hydration. A fool might have needed a gallon of water, but ol' Jim just needed ten minutes outside and a lack of any semblance of hygene.

The trio had long since stopped their lovemaking to wretch and Jim and his stench. He felt a boot kick his back, sending him sprawling into his own noxious vomit. The fresh bruise brought him back to reality, eyes darting across the bar.

Byter's Two, Four, and Five were walking through the dance floor, pushing people and barking something, which he assumed was his description or stench. Both could lead them toward his table near the front door, where Byter Six stood bouncing, waiting, looking for anyone to bother him or get near the door. Another shotgun turret was mounted near the upper wall, but this one Cerf would be watching. The bartender looked busy, sweaty, and aware that somehow, for whatever deranged reason, finding and killing poor ol' Jim would be in his best interest.

B-Six looked at the rushing pool of vomit leaking from under the table, and saw the teens complaining at whatever they had just kicked.

Jim rushed the door.

B-Six came bearing foward toward him, and Jim did his practiced slide. There may not have been any rainwater here, but the vomit let him slide in a disgusting line across the floor, his steel durasteel shoes slamming into the bottom hard enough to make his teeth rattle. The shotgun bore down on him, but paused instead of firing. Jim looked up at Cerf at the bar holding the joystick, finger on the trigger, as if waiting.

B-One slammed open the doors and barged in, knocking Jim away before the shotgun fired. It nearly blasted B-One, but instead blew a hole through the door, smattering Jim was bits of plasteel and polycrete as he crawled out toward Sector Zero and out of the bar.

The drenching smell of the endless rain washed over Jim like a hug across the back from an old friendly waterfall running out of the side of a sewage plant. For all he could, he got to his feet and plowed down the sidewalk, barely dodging a lightpole playing commercial headlines about the newest neuraltech finger implants for sensory enhancement and broadcast. The crowd of overarmed and chemmed out kids rushed the bar past Jim, forming a kind of chaotic wave that tried to shove him back toward the robots, or the angry mercenaries, or the alarmed but silent shotgun pointed at him in a crowd of teenagers.

It never fired, and he got down the street, tripping and shoving who had to to get by.

* * *

Jim walked as casually, yet fast as he could manage, which looked more like a panicked sprint. It was four blocks deeper into the southern reaches of Zero to find his sleeper hotel, which he could pay for tonight. The crowded streets here were flooded with other slummies trying to get to work, trying to get north toward the Zero mercantile, or find a way to get out of the rain. Ahead, he could see an Autocop skimming the crowd for suspects, and so he was already fumbling for his credentials by the time it spotted him and flashed its overhead light.

People around Jim got out of the way, some sprawling into others or over into the streets, where hovercars rode close enough to cook passerby. They all made a circle around the person who just got caught by an Autocop. Jim walked stoically toward the machine, a rough rectangular box on large treads. It had a head like a television that displayed whatever it said in six languages quickly enough that nobody could usually read it, "HALT! Citizen, please present-"

Jim was practically rubbing the card on the faceplate, then carefully stepped back when alarms started blaring on the thing and it revved whatever nuclear engine ran the damn Autocop. Its head flashed and went dim for a moment.

A few seconds passed while Jim stared behind him, the crowd rushing away to get as far as possible from the incident. He looked back and could see huge figures moving quickly in this direction. Maybe other mercenaries, maybe Blue Lights, but Jim couldn't tell.

"...Slinger... hotel three-three six, Sleeper Heights Motel-"

The address to his primary bed at the sleeper hotel rang out across wireless comms, the very same transmission frequency the Blue Lights had used earlier.

They were coming.

Jim impatiently waited for ten full seconds for the Autocop to process his identity and confirm him as a citizen of New Dallas. He may not have credentials to make it higher than Zero, which took more money in the bank than he had left, but it would be enough just to have the ID for him not to get paved today. Somewhere else, he could hear the screaming of someone who wasn't so lucky as poor ol' Jim as they were being ground to bits, slowly mixing with the grime washing down the gutters of the nearby street.

"Welcome, Citizen! Welcome!" it chimed happily, as if in celebration. It turned and began skimming the nearby crowd immediately, and Jim started into a run down the road.

The Sleeper Heights Motel number Seventeen-B was poorly lit. Jim slipped his earpiece into his pocket, turning it off. Several gangsters eyed Jim up as he walked toward the door, and one of them held up a hand, palm up, waiting for the toll. Another nearby goon pushed his arm down, "He paid this morning. We'll collect later, when you get back out, right, Jim?"

Jim said nothing and walked in quickly, and the thug who had his hand out followed him as he swung past the front desk. The robotic teller at the desk barely seemed to notice either of them, greedily eyeing them up to see if they came for his cables in the wall. So long as nobody bothered the teller, Jim knew he'd just sit there and wait, not doing anything except charging the same battery that never quite fully charged. The teller had been that way for months here, with his jagged metallic arms sharpened to razors and held out, ready to cut anyone down that threatened his access to precious energy, like the corpses that often littered the hallway, thinking they might hawk the android for a quick cash grab before they saw too late that it was ready to tear them apart.

Jim rushed up the stairs, the dark-blue polycrete walls scrawled with enough graffiti to look like a scribbled canvas of anger, slurs, hate, and gang members. People crouched in the hallways asleep, and the security cameras followed Jim up the first four flights. He was careful not to disturb the sleepless chemheads blocking the stairwell in numerous places. The long halls of rooms had casket sleeper units lining all the walls of its rooms, six-to-ten stacked, floor to ceiling, with dozens of stacks to a room, and dozens of rooms to a floor. By the fifth floor, the cameras had been broken or ripped out of the walls, and the freaks were awake. Higher up still, they were actively shooting drugs, cackling, moaning, vomiting across the filthy floors, wretching and crying, wailing and screaming throughout the building. But Jim was dirty enough that he looked like a resident, and although they wailed at him, shook him, grabbed at him as he passed, he kept moving, kicking and shoving as he went, hardly noticed in the shrieking abuse of a dozen fights with cheering, kreening maniacs laughing as people brawled on the disgusting floors of emptied out rooms.

Floor thirty-three, room six, was more quiet. His name was on the address board across the front panel of the room, but it would be anyone's guess as to which casket was his. His only chance at this point felt like a trap. He walked across the hall toward his spare casket in a different room, the one that had a fake name he'd rented out for storage. He paused at it, trying to find the thug that followed him in the darkness, hoping he'd lost him floors below through the crowded motel halls. People were here, sure, but the dimmed lights, the noise, the smells and sounds made everything feel like a wave of human suffering, faceless and agonizing. Jim slipped into his casket as quickly as he could, cuddling his food stores and turning the temp of the foam insert up to feel less like a fridge. He split the wrapper on a mango nutri-sludge pouch and cut his earpiece back on, and carefully tuned his mind to the right frequency. He heard a grizzly voice in his head midsentence, fading in and out.

"...fifteen... fl... sixteen, by the Church... filthy motel-"

The captain's voice cut in suddenly, "Quiet, Leuitenant... a read on floor three... some kind of device-"

Jim cut his earpiece off in a panic, choking on the sludge pouch, caughing it up. The dim hum of the casket unit masked anything but the wailing down the hall outside of his sleeper casket unit. Maybe they couldn't pinpoint the earpiece from here - the walls were thick polycrete and durasteel framed, so signals tended to read poorly in a place like this. Jim waited for what felt like hours, listening to the screaming, cackling madness that haunted the outside of his prison, desperate to use his ears to hear his death approaching.

Jim more felt than heard the thud of their footsteps. Four, maybe five, maybe more of them. People went silent when they came up the stairs, the unusual quiet haunting Jim as he listened to them walk down the hallway, slowly but surely making their way closer. He listened to them in the other room walking, moving around. A loud banging, then a knocking. More banging, and then gunshots. Jim cringed and slipped deeper into the foam insert of his casket, listening as gunshots rang out methodically, the time spaced out carefully, bang, bang, bang. He tried to count the shots, but after twenty, thirty shots, each spaced only a few seconds apart, it was all he could manage to keep breathing without crying or vomiting. Occasionally, he heard multiple shots and screaming, crying voices, followed by more gunshots. But eventually, silence dominated the area again.

Jim listened and heard things being moved around. Heavy caskets banging against the floor, the wrenching sound of metal being tore open angrily, as if a machine were tearing them open.

More of a long, dead silence.

Jim felt boots walked across the floor toward his room. He heard the heavy footfalls crossing the hall and entering the doorway, partially blocked by a mass of people who screamed and cowered. Gunshots rang out in the room, and the sound of corpses hitting the floor and washing it and nearby caskets in gore was all Jim could hear under the sounds of screams and crying, then silence. The heavy footfalls echoed across the floor, the crunch of bones snapping under the weight of ten feet of metal humanoid not bothering to step over the bodies of the dead or dying. A gunshot sounded close by, followed by the wrenching sound of metal as a casket was emptied of its contents. Jim felt his heart beating out of his chest when shot rang out so close, he thought that it must have been him, that he must be dead and not even know it yet. He waited but the sound of metal twisting under inhuman strength never quite reached him, instead content to ring out nearby as a wailing person dropped to the floor just nearby. Another gunshot followed by dead silence. And then another, and another - another casket, another casualty, another gunshot, another empty casket, another gunshot.

Eventually, Jim couldn't hear anything anymore. Whether he had fallen asleep or lost his mind, or maybe died and didn't know it, he couldn't tell. Dead silence dominated everything. How long it lasted he couldn't tell. Hours, maybe days. Jim didn't dare eat, or speak, or do anything besides breathe for a long time. He found himself falling in an abyss, watching in dead silence as people wailed and cried, torn apart by metal wolves, searching for him, looking for his face, sniffing his blood, the trail of blood from his head, his ears, his mouth, a vomitous pour of gore-

Scratching on his casket woke Jim up. The normal sounds of the sleeper hotel came back in a wash, but turned up too high - wailing, crying, screaming, and screeching. He popped the lid on his casket and knocked back a scavenger chemhead, with too many implants and a rotting face, who glared at him with a starving, mad look. The man lunged, and Jim used the bundled helmet to smack him across the face, sending him sprawling into a pile of refuse behind him.

No, not refuse. Corpses. Mostly naked, picked over, cut and shot, still bleeding mounds of flesh steaming in the middle of the freezing hotel room. The man nursed his broken jaw and scattered away and out of the room, where people were crying and screaming madness still amidst the gore and torn up sleeper caskets. Half of the caskets in the room had been checked, and his had been one of the lucky few that were left mostly untouched. He saw a bullet hole in the side, not quiet close enough to have taken off his head, but he was bleeding, and stone deaf in his left ear.

Poor ol' Jim had lucked out again, he thought. Although maybe it would be better to be dead so quickly, and end to all of it. But that wasn't the change Jim wanted today. Or maybe it had been yesterday.

It wasn't the change he wanted now.

Jim hardly remembered walking through the halls of the sleeper hotel, making his way down the floors where people had made themselves scarce. There were more bullet holes, more gore splattered across the walls, and fewer people around. But it was a blur of the same thing he saw coming in. Even after death had walked in and taken dozens of lives, they still fought and screamed, wailing into the darkness. They clawed and grabbed and screamed, and he pushed and shoved his way down the floors, eventually back to the front door, where the thugs had left. More bullet holes, more broken polycrete - the teller at the desk was missing, too. Jim saw the cameras watching him, and he stared at the one near the front door of the place for a while.

Let them see me. Let them know that Jim is still here after all. The lense twisted and focused on him, and Jim turned and left, running out into the rain of Zero to find the right buyer.