“First aid kit! Where da first aid kit?!” Sam questioned as she frantically searched the back seat.

  “Glove compartment,” Cai yelled.

  Mei reached over the passenger seat, trying to maintain her balance as the van swerved around corners, and she retrieved the first-aid kit, tossing it to Sam, who hastily ripped it open. It didn’t take long for the backseat to be soaked in blood. Garett continued to moan in pain, clutching his leg when Sam smacked his hands out of the way to start tending to him.

  “Argh!”

  She poured rubbing alcohol on the wound, dumping the whole bottle out before packing the wound with gauze and unravelling a lengthy bandaid to wrap it all up. Garett cried out each step of the way and sat back, groaning in agony when she’d finished.

  “Gotta get him a docta,” Sam said.

  “Working on it.”

  Cai repeatedly glared out the windows and at the mirrors, unsure of whether or not they were being followed, and after he turned a corner, the car skidded to a halt.

  “Sam, Mei, remove the logos,” He said as he stepped out of the driver's seat to remove the ones on the bonnet.

  Sam and Mei jumped out of the car, tearing off the stickers on the side doors of the van and tossing them on the ground before slamming it shut and driving off again.

  “Is he going to be alright?” Mei asked Sam, concerned as Garett looked paler than usual.

  “A don’t know, he losin’ alotta blood.”

  “Argh, I’m not gonna die in this shitty van,”

  Sam and Mei chuckled nervously, and when they looked out the front window, they saw the barricades of a toll gate, where a soldier was waving down the van.

  “Lev, get him out of sight,” Cai ordered.

  Lev pushed the politician to the ground, and both of them lay in the cargo space. In the same motion, Sam threw a large rag over both of them. The car slowed down, and Cai rolled down the window, acting as nonchalant as he could.

  “Papers?” The soldier ordered.

  “Of course,” Cai said, briefly searching for it before he found it in the side of the door and handed it over.

  “You finish what you came for?”

  “Yeah, change of shift for the help.”

  The soldier flipped through the papers, glancing at Cai on the ID page and holding it up beside his head.

  “I may have put on some weight since then,” He said with a grin.

  The soldier raised an eyebrow and handed the papers back to Cai.

  “You’re free to go,” He said.

  “Thank yo–”

  “Halt!” Another soldier ran from one of the makeshift office containers along the side of the street.

  “They’re clear,” The soldier tried to clarify.

  “Search that vehicle!”

  “Shit,” Mei and Sam mumbled in unison.

  “Cai?” Mei asked.

  “Our friend is very sick, and we need to get him to a hospital,” He glanced over to the backseat. “He got a flu.”

  The soldier looked into the van, noticing Garett. Three soldiers were now on their way to search the vehicle, and Cai gave the soldier a concerned look.

  “Wait here,” He said, walking over to exchange information with his colleagues.

  “Cai,” Mei said in reaction to the soldiers all looking at the van, raising their weapons in unison.

  “Get down!” He yelled, slamming on the accelerator.

  The van shot off, and the soldiers opened fire as they zoomed past them, smashing through the boom gate. Two of the tyres burst with a loud pop as they went over the spike traps. Nearly sending the van into an uncontrolled drift, but Cai managed to regain control and continue driving away.

  There were no security vehicles at the toll, likely on patrol or attending to another incident, allowing the van to gain enough distance to lose whoever may have been in pursuit. The front left and back right tyres were damaged by the spikes, but the damage wasn’t bad enough to disable the vehicle, despite slowing it down significantly, and although the soldiers had sent a drone to track them, they lost it amongst the highrise building of the city–topping underneath walkways and overhangs to lose it.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The drive back to Otewo was long and filled with anxiety as they constantly searched their surroundings, expecting an Atlas vehicle to tag them or for the drone to reappear, but fortunately, neither arrived. They stopped at the same abandoned apartment block in Shatzi as they did when they were planning for the mission, and chose to ditch the car and walk back to Otewo. They’d inform the gang of its position and have members in charge of cleanup handle whatever evidence they may have left behind.

  The walk was significantly less nerve-wracking, as they knew they would be alright in gang-controlled territories. The Otewo and Shatzii gang may be competitors, but they were united in the conflict against the Atlas and politicians. The last thing they’d do is snitch, even if it served their interests to do so.

  “How did you know I had smoke grenades?” Mei asked Sam as they walked, reflecting on her mistake at the manor.

  “Ya had dem on da last job A did with ya… A figured ya brought dem again, but A wasn’t sure… Glad ya did,”

  The last job they did together was simple, an assassination of a gang member who owned a club in Visai. The smoke grenade wasn’t for a getaway as much as it was to stir up chaos the last time she used it, but she was glad Sam remembered. She knew Sam was clever, considering anyone who played with explosives needed the right mix of craziness and book smarts. But she hadn’t realised she was such a quick thinker.

  Those are the exact scenarios she brought the smoke grenades for, and even she’d forgotten about them until Sam tossed one over her shoulder. It wasn’t often that Mei was the cause of what went wrong during a mission, and she felt more frazzled than she had in a long time. Besides having forgotten about her own kit, her blaster shots were all over the place, and her rootkit was slower than usual. She was lucky she hit that guard, or he might have landed another shot on Garett, who, for the first time, she didn’t actually want to see bleeding out on the ground. Well, not because of a mistake she’d made, that is. If anything, it sat better with her that she’d be the one to shoot him.

  “Good job,” She swallowed her pride, “I’m sorry for–”

  “No sob stories,” Cai murmured as they approached another apartment block, “We made it out.”

  Between the apartment building was an archway with a series of stores and neon signs above them. One of which had a large, red cross shining above it. The hospital would take them a while to reach, and Garett was looking worse with each step he and Lev took. Cai kept an eye on the politician, placing a bag over his head so onlookers wouldn't suspect it was a high-profile hostage, but rather the usual gang behaviour.

  “A never seen ya so scared before,” Sam chuckled as they entered the doctor's practice.

  “Me either,” Cai said, also chuckling, “Honestly, I didn’t think you had any emotions besides being annoyed.”

  “A didn’t tink hybrids made mistakes,” Lev added, “Ya’ll supposed a be perfect, neh?”

  Mei rolled her eyes, realising she wasn’t going to hear the end of it, and that this mission would be held over her head for as long as she knew them.

  “We aren’t robots,”

  “A mean…” Sam shrugged sarcastically, “Ya ninety-five percent there,”

  “Must be a bug in ya programmin’,” Lev added.

  “I never said we’re perfect,” She felt embarrassed, “I’m not a Ge-mo,”

  Garett mumbled under his breath, weak and with his eyes closed.

  “Huh?” Lev leaned in closer as he sat Garett in a waiting room chair.

  Garett mumbled further, and Lev told them, “He said Ge-mos be perfection, and da rest of us be scum.”

  They all kissed their teeth, even approaching death, he held his Ge-mo pride like they always would.

  “We need the doctor,” Cai said, approaching the reception table, “It's an emergency.”

  “He busy wid a patient,” The receptionist kept her eyes fixed on her invisible screens.

  “We can pay upfront,” Cai said, “Double his rate.”

  The receptionist looked at Cai, then at Garett, “What wrong wid him?”

  “He took a blaster shot to the calf,”

  The receptionist looked back at Cai, contemplating whether or not she believed him before getting out of her seat and heading into the back to speak with the doctor. Money talks, but if they were in an Otweo district, they wouldn’t need money and would likely get priority. Judging by the look she gave Cai, she was well aware of gang incidents that took place in the surrounding areas, and with the rate he offered, it became obvious.

  “Bring him ‘round back,” The receptionist said as she returned.

  “Thank you,” Cai cupped his hand, briefly bowing his head before waving at Lev.

  That was the last Mei saw of Garett and Lev before they continued their walk to Otewo with the politician.

  Once they returned, they made their way to a large, warehouse-like building, which was the Otewo gang's main base of operations. They approached a skinny, pale-skinned man with silver teeth and scars all over his face. Cai pushed the politician to his knees, presenting him to the skinny man. His name was Bez, and although he wasn’t the Big Boss, he was the Big Boss’ right-hand man, who everyone knew ran the ship that was the gang. If you had a problem, you went to Bez. If you got a job, you got it from Bez.

  “Ya did it,” Bez said, licking his shiny teeth and waving a hand to dismiss the four men he was talking to.

  “Yeah,” Cai said.

  Bez removed the bag over the politician's head, and a creepy smile peeled across his face. With the snap of his fingers, two large guys grabbed the politician and took him away, presumably to the Big Boss, but Mei knew this was likely the last she would see of him. He looked at each of them, familiar faces that he’d personally assigned to jobs in the past, but when he did a mental count, he noticed two were missing.

  “Where da rest of ya?” He asked, his smile fading.

  “With a doctor, just outside Otewo. One of us caught an injury.”

  “Dey alright?”

  “They will be,”

  Bez squinted at Cai, but his confidence was clear, and the smile that sent a chill through Mei returned in full force.

  “Payment been made,” Bez said, “And a little extra for timely work. Looks like ya still our best mutt, Cai,”

  “One hundred percent success rate,” Sam grinned, punching Cai on the shoulder.

  “So far, so good.” Bez nodded. “The big man wanted to see ya’ll personally if ya pulled it off, but since two of ya missin’, it gon’ have ta wait,”

  “It won’t be too long,” Cai said, “Tell him we’ll return in a few days.”

  Bez nodded and glared at Mei, who tried her best to hold her eye contact with her usual confidence. But something about the Bez’s eyes suggested that he saw straight through her poker face and simply didn’t care enough to pry any further.

  “Good work,” Bez concluded, leaving to continue with the many other things he had to manage.

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