The gun clicked empty. Max lowered Raiju, smoke trailing from its barrel, and exhaled.
"Efficient," he said, almost casually.
But the massacre had drawn attention. More Raffens were on the move, shouts echoing through the corridors. Their boots thundered closer.
Max smirked, shifting Raiju onto his back. "Time to end this."
His optics flashed, and his body shimmered—Opto-camo engaged. His figure vanished into the air, distorted only by faint waves of light. The door burst open, three Raffens storming in with rifles raised—only to find an empty, blood-soaked room.
Max was already behind them.
His hand gripped a Katanas's hilt, the blade sliding free with a soft metallic whisper. With a single, fluid motion, he cut once—then twice—then thrice. By the time the Raffens realized what had happened, their bodies were already falling apart, blood spraying across the neon-stained concrete.
The camo flickered, Max reappearing amidst the carnage, katana dripping crimson.
"Next," he murmured.
The katana hissed as Max flicked the blood free, crimson drops scattering across the floor. The echoes of the Raffens' deaths had barely faded when the next wave came rushing down the corridor—cyberware gleaming, implants buzzing, and rifles spitting sparks in the dark.
Max's optics lit up. "Alright, let's dance."
The first rushed him with a mantis blade swipe. Max sidestepped, his own blade flashing, carving through muscle and chrome like butter. Another raised a smart shotgun; Max's cyberarm snapped up, his palm flaring as an EMP pulse shorted the weapon mid-shot, frying the scav's optics. The poor bastard screamed, clutching at his sparking implants—then went silent as Max bisected him cleanly.
But Raffens weren't just muscle. One of them, a greasy-looking netrunner wired into a combat deck, jacked in on the spot. The world around Max flickered, his vision pixelating with malicious code. His muscles seized for a fraction of a second—quickhack incoming.
Max only smirked. "Cute. You picked the wrong Corpo."
He jacked back—his inherited Level 60 Netrunner perks lighting up like neon fireworks in his mind. Lines of hostile code rushed toward him… and he simply redirected them. The backdoor he opened was clean, brutal, and efficient. The netrunner barely had time to gasp before his own daemon rebounded, his nervous system overloading in a spray of sparks and blood.
And then it spread.
Max had injected a custom payload: Cyberpsychosis. The daemon leapt like a virus, riding wireless signals, jumping from one Raffen's deck to another.
Screams filled the warehouse.
Chrome-mad eyes flared red as implants went berserk. Raffens turned on each other in a frenzy—machetes flashing, guns roaring, blood spraying across rusted steel walls. One tore another's head clean off with gorilla arms. Another shoved his pistol under his own jaw and pulled the trigger, laughing as he died.
Max stood still, katana in hand, calmly watching the chaos unfold. The flickering neon reflected off his optics, painting him half-devil, half-machine.
One by one, the Raffens slaughtered each other until only silence remained. The last one, twitching and weeping, raised his own blade to his throat and dragged it across.
The body dropped. The warehouse went quiet.
Only Max remained, untouched, his camo cloak shimmering faintly as it disengaged.
He tilted his head, amused, a low chuckle leaving his throat.
"Hehehe… this is going to be fun here," Max murmured, stepping over twitching corpses as if they were trash.
Max stepped over another corpse, katana sliding back into its sheath with a metallic click. He was still grinning when the heavy steel shutters at the far end of the warehouse slammed open.
Boots. Heavy, coordinated, professional.
The silhouettes that entered weren't Raffens. Too sharp, too disciplined, too chrome to be scavs. Neon strips flickered across augmented arms, cyberoptics, and a hulking frame that Max recognized instantly.
Maine.
The mountain of chrome stepped in first, his massive cyberarms gleaming under the sickly warehouse lights. Dorio moved in at his flank, sharp-eyed and steady, scanning the carnage. Rebecca followed, twirling a shotgun half her size with a grin that was pure psycho. Pilar stalked in behind her, lanky and smirking, his smartpistol already leveled. And drifting a step behind, wristdeck alive with cascading datastreams, came Sasha—the netrunner's eyes blank, her mind half in the digital shadows.
Their weapons were drawn, all of them trained squarely on Max.
Maine's voice boomed like thunder across the blood-soaked floor.
"Alright, choom. You wanna tell me what the fuck happened here? Last I checked, this was supposed to be our gig. Looks like someone decided to clean house early."
Max tilted his head, calm even under the crosshairs. His optics flared faintly as he spoke, voice smooth, casual.
"You're late. I was only here for one person. The rest? They were just… noise."
Rebecca let out a sharp laugh, shotgun never wavering.
"Noise? You flatlined a whole Raffen Shiv nest and call it noise? Ha! I really like this guy."
Pilar snorted, sighting down his pistol.
"Or he's another chrome junkie on the fast lane to cyberpsycho. Maine, we drop him now, save ourselves the trouble."
Max smirked, brushing blood from the edge of his coat as if it were dust.
"These Raffens made one mistake," he said, voice calm, almost amused. "They kidnapped the wrong guy."
Sasha's voice cut through, sharp but detached, her gaze unfocused as datastreams scrolled across her optics.
"He's not lying. No ICE trails, no calls, no backup coming. Clean run. Solo op."
Dorio's eyes narrowed, her grip steady on her weapon.
"Doesn't mean he's not trouble."
Maine grunted, shifting his massive chrome arms, hydraulics whining in the tense silence.
"So what you're saying is… these scavs pulled the short straw, grabbed you, and you turned the whole place into a slaughterhouse."
Max's grin curled razor-sharp.
"Exactly. Wrong place, wrong time. They wanted prey… but they dragged in a wolf."
The crew exchanged wary glances, weapons still leveled but uncertainty creeping in.
Finally Maine looked to Dorio, then Rebecca.
"Well, shit. Either he's a psycho we flatline now… or someone who just saved us a pile of ammo."
Rebecca raised her hand, shotgun still steady, but a grin stretched across her face.
"My vote? We keep him. Anybody who dices scavs like sashimi and keeps smirking after? That's entertainment."
Pilar scoffed.
"Or a chrome-junkie seconds away from frying his own brain. Maine, we put him down, problem solved."
Max chuckled, optics dimming in a show of ease.
"Relax. If I wanted you dead, you'd already be flatlined."
"Besides, I'm leaving now—so go on, mind your own business," he said as he walked past them, slipping into the shadows like a phantom.
***
Support me at
patreon.com/boring_world
It's 22 chaps ahead