Bobby took some deep breaths to calm himself down from the sense of primal terror that James’ scream had evoked in him. Then he looked down at the prone body of his new thrall, which didn’t seem to be waking back up anywhere as fast as his thralls normally did. I wonder why that is, does he need to reset or something, or did performing the process while he was awake damage him in some additional way?

  Bobby scratched his head and leaned in closer to inspect the cybernetic implants. He’d gotten a look at them before, but not a close one and he found himself more intrigued. They were definitely the sort of thing that you wouldn’t be surprised to see in cyberpunk, but how the hell were they real, the world hadn’t got that technologically developed yet, last time he’d checked they were still struggling with the brain-computer interface.

  Which they’d been struggling with for the last two hundred years…

  Hmm, that is a long time to go without any discoveries in a field. Bobby mulled, Odds on one of the megacorporations has perfected the technology and kept it under wraps so no one can compete with them?

  It was a big, big sort of secret to keep. The kind of secret that involved lots of people dying in experimental development and having to silence a lot of other people who would try and go public with the information, or at least stop them interacting with the world while they worked on it.

  Bobby shivered, why then are random criminals running around with this tech in the undercity?

  He was brought out of his train of thought when James sat up straight. “What is my name master?”

  “You’re called James and I want to ask you some questions.”

  James stared at him inhumanly, showing no emotions or body language. “Okay”

  “Where did you get these implants?”

  “The Undertakers,” James replied concisely.

  “Who are the Undertakers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bobby stared at him, but knew he was telling the truth, no thrall should be capable of lying to him unless it was a lie they wholeheartedly believed in before they died. He was about to continue his line of questioning when Gary’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “Bobby, I need to show you something.”

  Bobby got up and after commanding all his minions to follow him, including James they descended the stairs. Gary met them half way up, out of breath and with only a few escorting skeletons.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “What did you find?” he asked the older man curiously.

  “I’m not sure I can—or want to explain it… You need to see it for yourself,” he replied slowly.

  Bobby had a slightly bad premonition, but followed Gary anyway, they went down to the first floor and then descended another two, before coming to another cyborg. This one (who Bobby assumed was James’ brother) was modified high heaven, with a sword coming out of his arms which Gary had ziptied behind his back and then to one of the stairwell railings. He also had some unnatural looking bumps poking out from his skin on the top of his head and around the shoulder of the arm which had transformed.

  As the cyborg saw them walk past him he struggled as much as he could, even managing to break one of the heavy duty zip ties. Sadly it was reinforced with a few more and the skeletons all grabbed him to stop him breaking any more.

  The cyborg then saw his brother mutely following Bobby and his face filled with relief and hope, “James, quickly kill those two, they’re in charge of these skeletons, if you off them then we’ll probably be fine.”

  James coldly addressed his brother, “You are not my master, do not order me around.” before following Bobby and Gary.

  The cyborgs face paled and did a complete reverse as he throttled his restraints once more, rather ineffectively. “What the hell did you do to my brother?” he yelled, anger and madness seething within his tone.

  Bobby and Gary ignored him though as they progressed further and finally reached the bottom floor of the basement. A long corridor, seemingly the length of the building met their eyes with glass windows at regular intervals. Here and there along the corridor were guards in various states of consciousness, all lying on the floor.

  Bobby felt his heart beat begin to quicken as he approached the first window and looked in.

  For a moment his eyes dind’t register what he was looking at and then he leaned over and vomited, before his grimm fascination made him wipe it away and take a closer look. A family of green skinned people cowered in the corner like animals in a zoo, what little clothing they had failing to hide the horrific scarring of their skin.

  Bobby’s brain didn’t seem to work as he mutely went and looked through the next window. In the room was a woman who seemed to have eyes all over her face and arms, all places where the human body was not meant to have eyes. Some of the eye cavities were bleeding and hollow, surrounded by the scratch marks where she’d removed them. Somewhere around thirty of the remaining eyes focused on him, before they all blinked at the same time.

  Bobby stepped away from the window and went back to Gary, not able to bring himself to look at any more of the mutated humans. “They are experimenting on humans?”

  “It seems so, the cyborg up the stairs wouldn’t tell me anything though.”

  Bobby turned to James, “What is this area, why have you been doing this to people?”

  “The Undertakers gave us tasks and paid us with things we could by nowhere else.” James waved his hand where one of his finger blades was still failing to retract itself.

  Bobby paused trying to get his thoughts in order. “Is this this place unique?”

  James seemed to think for a bit this time, before saying the one thing Bobby didn’t want to hear. “No, all the gangs in the undercity work for them.”

  +++++

  https://discord.gg/Y9VndA9eW