Ciudades Del Cielo

The mighty capital of the Zenebas Empire, the very same empire that had ruled the planet for a century, not with an iron fist but with benevolence. The kingdom that was destined for greatness when it’s former king rose out of the ashes of a war torn world and united it into one singular empire. Yet, here it was, standing in front of an elite unit of four and there were the explosions that unit had planted and there rests the capital of the empire. Set ablaze under a dark and horrifying sky, their eyes reflecting every inch of the sky, that was now even starting to smell as bad as it looked. It was starting to look and smell like death itself with the bodies of soldiers, friend and foe, as they burned to nothing.

Sean awoke with a start, the same dream that had haunted him for seven years plaguing his dreams once again wresting him from his attempt at a peaceful sleep once again. He got up and sat on the edge of his bed, stealing only a look at the beauty behind him on the other side of the bed. He arose from the mattress, wandered wearily to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. He stared at his reflection, silently staring at his cybernetic implants; his right arm, his left arm, his eyes and three of his ribs. Once flesh, now machine like all of the war veterans who lost limbs, some were worse than Sean, some lost all their limbs at once; Sean lost his at separate times.

Erasing the dark, gory, death-filled dream from his mind, he trudged back to bed, using his sneaking skills to creep back onto the mattress and fall asleep once more. Though his sleep ended once more, as quickly as it seemed to come, it was ended this time by his girlfriend and not his alarm clock. It never hurts to awaken to a beautiful red-headed nurse, even if she isn’t yours, dressed in a scandalous nightgown, Sean was more than happy to wake up even if it was only to go to the hospital and get his blood levels measured. Refused to the last moment possible by his girlfriend Kay, Sean left the apartment without any “morning breakfast” though the bagel he had made his stomach content. Dressed in a red hooded-sweatshirt, blue jeans and wearing his favorite sunglasses, to hide his cyber-eyes and, making sure to avoid the steps that were decayed, Sean made his way to the hospital.

The outside world was never pleasing to Sean when he stepped out of his apartment, not when he had helped to created this city where you couldn’t walk down a street without seeing an unconscious, if not clearly dead, person on the street. Some were just drunks or drug-addicts passed out on the street whom Sean had always enjoyed watching their stupidity and so much so, he “accidentally” kicked one in the face as he tried to step over him. Ever since his days with the Special Operations Force, Sean had developed a bad habit of taking out some of his aggression on people lower than he was. He did this in both ways as well, both metaphorically lower and literally and these morons on the street took the literal meaning. However, Sean’s conscience took a turn for the worse when he saw a mugging of a young lady happening and Sean was torn between minding his own business and saving the poor women.

Three men down, one broken jaw, one broken leg, two broken arms and one concussion and all Sean got was a hug and a “thank you”? Bullshit. Least Sean thought that at first but he realized his mind was still on sex and since he failed to get any before he left. For some reason, eyes had always made Sean do things he didn’t want to do and the eyes of the lady had forced him into action. So desperate, so afraid and the eyes of the muggers looking vicious and hungry like a lion stalking its prey; fucking carnivores. He pushed it out of his mind and resumed his trek to the damned hospital and, before long, was in a patient gown, sitting on a bed waiting for the damn doctor to stop taking his sweet time.

However, what Sean didn’t expect was the medic from his S.O.F. squad to be the doctor as both stared at each other, one clearly more fiercely than the other. Sean had been deserted after he realized the truth of what was going on in their campaign and hated all of his old comrades. They were taught that the Zenebas empire was a disease infecting the entire world and that the S.O.F was the cure for this disease. The soldiers were lied to, blatantly and right to their faces and they killed the king responsible for uniting the world. Actually, Sean had killed him and without a shred of remorse or at least almost no remorse for the king had opened Sean’s eyes to the truth, Sean had just been blind to accept it.

“So commander…I mean Mr. Redstone, is there anything else you would like done today besides me checking your blood levels.” The contempt in his old medic’s voice was clearly outdone by his surprise at seeing his old commander and Sean knew why. To all the members of his former unit, Sean was dead and it was the words of the man now named king of this world that had claimed it so.

“No Dr. Kiruma, there’s nothing else that I wanted done today, just came to get my blood levels measured. So…this is what happened to you at the end of the war huh? Left as a commonplace doctor is this piece of crap city…Ciudades Del Cielo huh? Capital of the sky my ass, it should be Ciudades Del Muerto, this is nothing more than the city of the dead.” Sean’s contempt was clear and present and obviously frightened his old medic but the doctor, named Kai Kiruma, was silent for the rest of the interview. It was nothing more than five minutes before Sean’s blood levels came back and they were all fine so, without even a good afternoon or good-bye, Kai walked out of the room and Sean exited the hospital.

He had an appointment to keep with his new client and this guy was willing to pay some incredible amount of money Sean had dreamt about last night. It also brought a sense of excitement to the job because, if the client was willing to pay so much money, the job must be one of inhuman difficulty. Luckily, Sean was only about 55, maybe 60, percent human with all of his cyber-plants and Sean’s hacking skills were top-grade; why he was such the S.O.F.’s first squad commander. He entered the bar known as the “Cy-bar” and exposed his most hidden cyber-plant, a four-jack panel in the back of his neck, two jacks for input and two for output. He took a seat at a booth, pulled out one of his output jacks and “plugged-in” to the bar’s network where his cyber-self looked for his client.

From the description he received that his client would be wearing a mask with flames in the eye-sockets instead of holes to see their eyes. He easily located his client and the two got into details but not before Sean had erected what he had dubbed the “silenced bubble” which was just a soundproof barrier to prevent eavesdropping. When confronted with a question of his skill, Sean went back to his most famous hacking-job to re-assure his client.

“A silver tide of phosphenes boiled across my field of vision as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a 3-D chessboard, infinite and perfectly transparent. If anyone else had been jacked into that part of the matrix, he might have seen a surf of flickering shadow roll out of the little yellow pyramid that represented my computer (Burning Chrome, 168). I took down their defensive network in a matter of seconds; their top-of-the-line defensive network went down because of a simple program. Now if your faith in me is still misplaced, please find yourself another hacker but I doubt there’s another as good as I am let alone as elusive.”

When he said he was elusive, hacking was highly illegal, especially when you were hacking into the mainframe of the corporation in charge of the entire world; Dio-Corp. The corporation that controlled every bit of media and advertising, manipulated it and then published it when it was to their president’s liking. Their president, just his name struck the most violent chord imaginable within Sean’s heart and angered him to no end. Sorata Shinzaki, the man who was the commander of the second S.O.F. squad, the man who killed the one who was to be king, the man who declared Sean dead. There was no way Sean was not accepting a completely extravagant fee for this job as he was sure to run into Sorata somewhere along the way. In fact, the possibility of a face-to-face encounter was almost impossible to avoid; after 10 years, it was time for Sean to finally face his past.

After his meeting, he decided to take a little trip to the mind of his computer and, after ignoring the six-thousand advertisements, he finally made it to his home computer. He read the message that Kay usually left for him when she had to work late and then checked his e-mail and saw what he expected. What had been in his mind ever since his doctor’s appointment, the two things he had been dreading since his meeting, not only had his past found him, and it was Sorata who had found him. After Sorata had spewed his usual bullshit about not getting in his way, he gave Sean a final message that stuck in his head for hours afterwards. “It’ll be a pleasure to see you one more time old friend, oh yes, a pleasure indeed and we can finish things then” and that sentence haunted Sean for a good day.