NOVEL NEXT Chapter 125: Retribution
The drizzling rain occasionally splashed onto the screen.
The tablet bearing the Eden City Police Station emblem was playing footage from a body-worn camera capturing the scene.
The gang warfare had reached its peak.
The ground was littered with corpses.
Drone lights swept across a large pool of blood beside the broken bridge, with more sirens approaching from afar, rain saturating the neon and gun flames...
An unexpected event unfolded on-site.
A heart-wrenching scream that chilled the blood caught everyone's attention.
An Owl Town gang member knelt clutching his head, neck raised in a howl, while both arms clawed backward as if something terrifying clung to his spine.
His hydrophobic suit was burned through.
A bright red Sianweistan was exposed, followed immediately by arcs and flames appearing on his limbs.
The moisture soaked into his clothes evaporated into smoke.
The Owl Town members showed surprise, and even armed thugs stood stupefied in the rain, then most turned around to look behind them...
The police drone's camera rotated.
A man named Sato Kei, leader of the Xia Ming Group, stood in the rain.
From his right arm sprang a Mantis Blade, while his left hand held a double-barrel shotgun emitting smoke.
Sato gasped heavily, his eyes wide, blood mixed with water trickling from his prosthetic body and shirt hem.
His eyes showed shock and disappointment.
BANG!
A rifle shot struck Sato's chest.
His bulletproof vest and subcutaneous armor saved his life but shattered some sort of balance at the scene.
RAT-TAT-TAT, RAT-TAT.
The Black Gold Gang didn't know why the boy was screaming hysterically.
But in such a deadly situation, the smartest choice was to seize every opportunity to kill all enemies.
A hail of gunfire swept in.
The Owl Town gang surprisingly abandoned resistance, executing Sato Kei's orders to retreat continuously, occasionally firing back as they fled, with even more members falling to their knees and wailing during the escape.
The footage began to shake.
Dark clouds shrouded the dead-end road.
Sparkling streams of light flickered through the torrential rain.
The Owl Town killers who were howling just seconds ago suddenly went berserk, launching indiscriminate attacks.
Sianweistan spewed bright flames.
These madmen's joints smoked intensely, their skin bubbling and shining, while clothes left on metal structures ignited until put out by victims' blood.
They felt no pain, ignoring the hail of bullets.
The remaining twenty-some Black Gold Gang members became live targets for these Butchers, like live food thrown to beasts, cut to shreds by sharp blades and arm-mounted guns.
John frowned as he watched the video.
He knew this was a phenomenon of prosthetic body overclocking, and several experimental implants were simultaneously going off the charts.
Did the Owl Town send human bombs to the scene?
The Black Gold Gang punks were minced into meat paste.
Even those experts equipped with Sianweistan were killed by beasts in suicidal one-time slaughter tools, dying miserably with no backup.
[All units in the area, attention: Reports confirm cyberpsychosis at the crime scene, on-site personnel must follow dispatch instructions, redeploy lockdown perimeter...]
The police radio began its broadcast.
Events started escalating.
The Owl Town madmen, bloodshot from their rampage, began to duel each other until every joint in their bodies broke, the residual electronic signals still driving their implants to twitch and attack.
Some madmen jumped onto ten-meter-high bridge frames, crossed the highway sound barriers, and started slaughtering passing drivers.
Uncontrolled cars continuously rushed off the overpass.
The flames and explosions swept through everything.
The video footage continued to rise:
All police cars with flashing red and blue lights had left the scene, erecting isolation barriers on the highway sections, each LCD screen showing the forbidden sign.
DOO, DOO——
The huge siren resounded suddenly.
After being disturbed, police drones lost their signal, and before the footage vanished, red searchlights appeared along with oversized military-grade hovercars skimming over the city.
The special task force took to the scene.
"We retreated quite far, but I saw with my own eyes a cyberpsycho being blasted to bits by them, the kind with blood and flesh scattered, you can't imagine those killing machines clad in pitch-black heavy armor crushing these out-of-control hoodlums like stomping on cockroaches..."
The sunglasses officer recounted with a shiver.
Clearly, every cop who's been through an A-grade disaster site would carry some shadows from the special task force's methods.
Legal lunatics is the apt description.
"I don't care about that."
John shook his head. "What about the fleeing Owl Town punks?"
The sunglasses officer pointed to the distance.
In the brightly lit city, there was a pitch-dark area, on the coastal section along the circumcity road behind the cross-district bridge, filled with abandoned equipment and a waste-stone-stuffed shore representing the best hiding spot.
John stood up to leave.
"Hey, buddy, wait up, I think you don't understand, I have to remind you."
The sunglasses officer called out to him.
"You saw those cyberpsychos in the footage too..."
The Owl Town went a bit overboard.
Those who fled the scene, including Sato Kei, although seeming fine in the footage, with so much time gone by might have also turned into lunatics.
You never know where they might kill.
Sirens sounded again.
[Mission objective update]
[Track Sato Kei. (Not accomplished)]
John thanked the officer for the reminder, checked his weapons and gear, and climbed onto his Glaive.
He raised the front wheel and sped away over dirt mounds.