Vancherion Dust

There was a young woman in the hallway. She had light blue skin and black, lustrous hair. Her eyes were black as night. I think she was a Seer, a long lost species. Regardless of what she was, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. For four years I had roamed the cybercities of this planet: Akai Chikyo. The translation was Red Earth. Due to my planet being a giant intergalactic hub, I met all manner of women from all over the galaxy; none had ever my heart beat as fast as when I saw this woman. She was wearing a cropped red leather jacket and underneath was a black tank top with an image of an Aka-Popstar on it. The beautiful young woman wore dark navy jeans with boots. My infatuation must have been obvious as the man next to me pumped my elbow with his.

“Like what you see?” He smiled revealing his silver half grill on his teeth. His comment brought me back to reality as I stood in the hallway of a run down apartment. The man was around my age, clearly from Nimenya due to his skin complexion, however his accent was of Kossian descendent.

“Maybe,” I smiled back.

“Hyperion Zenith,” the man responded extending hand.

‘Vancherion Dust,” I shook Hyperion’s hand. “Zenith? Like the Zenith Pattern?”

“Yeah that’s me,” he responded. The Zenith pattern was a particular structural layout of explosives that destroyed any surface, regardless of how strong the surface was. “Not who you were expecting huh?” Hyperion’s question caught me off guard.

“No um,” I stumbled. “I just wasn’t expecting someone so young. I was expecting some old general.”

“Everybody does,” Hyperion Zenith responded. Zenith had slick back, brown hair with a skin fade. Along the skin fade was an orange electro tattoo; it was simply a thin band wrapping around the back of his head. He wore a brown and white oversized tech-wear jacket with matching tracksuit bottoms. His shoes were trendy. The latest Tredx street trainers in orange and chrome. I noticed the next man over in the hallway was staring at Hyperion’s gun that was strapped over his shoulder.

“Like what you see?” I asked. Hyperion laughed as the man smiled nervously.

“Sorry. It’s just such a nice piece. Type 7 isn’t it,” the man asked. Hyperion nodded. “You see it’s all about the nose of the Type 7. You see how it triangles towards the barrel. It helped compensate for recoil as well as the weighted fore-grip.” Hyperion gave me a look as if to say ‘look at this know it all’ which made me smile. The know it all was younger than us maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. His appearance was strange mainly because all I could see were guns. There was a submachine gun and short barrel energy shotgun attached to his tactical vest. The tactical vest also had all manner of grenades, ammo clips and several knives. Along his ornate belt was two holsters with two heavily customised pistols. On his combat trousers was another holster holding a small extendable scout rifle. There were at least three more larger weapons on the man’s back, but they were covered by his mini poncho wrapped around his neck. What topped of his ensemble, was the cowboy hat the teenager wore. While I was in a mixture of shock and confusion, Hyperion seemed to have seen this all before.

“You’re one of the Chaste aren’t you?” Hyperion asked.

“You’ve heard of us?” The young man said excited.

“What are the Chaste?,” I questioned.

“We are revol-,” The young man began to explain but was cut of by Hyperion.

“They are a cult of mentally deranged maniacs who worship violence,” Hyperion stated loudly enough for the rest of the group to hear. The other two Chaste members, dressed similarly to the young one, turned around and glared at Hyperion and I.

“Don’t waste your time with these lot Bastion,” one of them said. “They don’t want to be saved.” The young man, who was apparently called Bastion, shrugged off the other Chaste member and continued to try and convert us to his crazy religion. That was when the blue skinned woman interrupted the conversation.

“Hey, one of the tech-heads is waking up,” she said. Her voice was smooth. Every word carried itself with confidence. Her interruption brought us all back to the reality of the job at hand. We were in one of the many ghetto apartments of the cybercities; specifically in the Upegu city. The hallway of the thirtieth floor we were waiting on was dirty and old. The lights flickered and flashed at every rumble of hyper-train that passed. On the floor below, we heard a couple screaming at each other, while a baby cried into the night. The apartment next to the baby had people entering then leaving after a couple of minutes. The apartment that intrigued us, however, was number 3009 to the left of the stairs. The mission was a simple hack of a data hoarder. We were there to protect the tech-heads as they grabbed the information from the computer. However, there was a strangeness of the job which made everyone uneasy. There were too many of us. With the three Chaste members, myself and Hyperion that already made five of us. As well as that, there were four more down the hallway. There were two at the entrance to the building on the street. Then there was the blue skinned girl who stood by the open door to the apartment. There were three more street-bangers in the apartment with the hackers. Our three hackers were Proctur Nur, Chimie and Girvana Swingler. Overall, there were eighteen of us for one hack. The Prime Agent that set up the job failed to mention this to all parties involved. The worst part of the tension between everyone was how people were going to be paid, and whether it would be equal to what they were worth.

Hyperion, Bastion and I entered the small flat with the blue skinned woman who introduced herself as Hera Constantine. Behind us two other bounty hunters leant on the doorway. One was in a black and silver suit, while the other was in white and pink combat armour. The three street-bangers, who stood watch over the hackers, looked us up and down as we entered. They seemed to be threatened by everyone they deemed extra in this gig. They wore typical gang-affiliated clothes along with tacky electro tattoos, flashy silicone upgrades to their guns, and cyborg hands. The street-bangers stared at us for a moment with hostile intent before one of the hackers, Proctur Nur, woke up. Proctur had brown short hair with a round, metallic device wrapping around his head, almost like a wreath, with small circular pads touching his face. He also wore a black, long sleeve top with dual mini computers on his wrists. Proctur took a second to regain his bearings then spoke.

“We have a problem,” he said in a serious manner. “This isn’t just a simple hack. Whoever this data hoarder is, has a custom DCL box.”

“What’s a DCL box?” Bastion asked. The man in the suit behind Bastion answered. He had jet black hair and held a sophisticated sniper in his arms.

“Well the DCL or digital cerebral link is the implant that gives us use of electronics without the use of a phone. It gives us everything a mobile phone would’ve done back in the day. A mini-computer in your brain. What a DCL box does, it allow you to store information from your brain into the box,” the man explained.

“Yes, Martial is right,” Proctur said. Apparently, the sniper’s name was Martial.

“Can you hack it then?” One of the impatient street-bangers asked. He wore a chrome chain which read his name: Jung Di.

“I can but something like this was customised to have an incredible defence,” Proctur responded.

“What kind of defence?” The man next to Martial asked. I was informed by Hera that his name was Zu Jirosanki. Zu was a Tenta, a species of humanoids originating from the planet of Hlayten. They had distinct features: brown leathery skin, a protruding mouth and an armoured chin.

“The defence could be anything the owner wants it to be. In this case, it is a bomb,” Proctur informed us. I sensed everyone tense up and slowly move away from the DCL box. “It is not a literally bomb you idiots. But, that is what the manifestation is. It has a series of wires and switches. It also has a timer of thirty minutes. Now in the Cybernet, we can slow things down, but we still need to work fast.”

“Yeah but you can hack it yeah?” Jung Di asked again more intensely.

“Yes but I need you’re help while I’m down,” Proctur stated. Jung Di got annoyed at this kissing his lips in frustration.

“Come on bro, how difficult can it be?” Jung Di said rolling his eyes to his friend.

“What do you need from us?” Hera asked ignoring Jung Di.

“Two things. If things go sideways, I need you to wake us up obviously. The second is find out any information you can on this data hoarder. Any names or passwords would help. They might well be the key to opening up the box.”

“Got it,” Hera replied.

“I’m going back in,” Proctur said as his eyes rolled back into his head, descending into the Cybernet.