Epilogue

Hanzo Shotozumi sat behind his relatively new nuveau-antique desk and regarded the man who sat before him with only thinly veiled contempt. Thomas L. Strickland, the mercenary swine who had been sent to him as an "asset" had turned out to be a mole with designs on using Hanzo's organization to further his employer's own ends. Hanzo had been played, used, and bled. Forty of his men had been left to rot in the rim, the Dragon had disappeared, and Miko now lie feeding through a tube. Now, here, this man had come to flaunt it.

"Don't sweat it Hanzo, they'll be able to piece together her face and body again. These days they can grow you a new one in a couple of weeks."

Hanzo's eyes went wide with anger as he quickly considered killing the man right here. It would be the end of Hanzo but it would be little price to avenge his honor, and hers. But he knew this man was simply pushing his buttons, twisting the dagger a little deeper, playing his last play. Such was the nature of Gaijin when they had nothing else to leverage. Ultimately Hanzo knew Strickland had been hurt just as bad if not worse than Hanzo. Strickland was a mercenary and as such had very few true assets. When this passed over Hanzo would still be Gumi no matter how damaged, Strickland would be a Merc with a huge failure in his past. Words, no matter how distasteful, were all Strickland had left and Hanzo knew it. Shiawase had dumped him the second the Rim exploded like the deniable asset he was.

"I am sure you do not want to miss your appointment with your corporate allies. We are through here." Hanzo flashed that polite grin-and-nod that was the heritage of his people, refined over centuries for just these "get the frag out of my sight" moments. As he watched the Mercenary walk out of his office he still pondered the garish idea of having him killed. It would be indulgent though satisfying.

Davis Gentry walked gingerly down the main hallway of subfloor three of the Beta Complex. He was heavily favoring his left side where he was nursing four cracked ribs from where the white-haired super-hero had crushed his combat armor with a spin kick. His right shoulder was covered with third degree burns from whatever Ari had defeated his magic shield with and he had a seven centimeter deep hole in his left hamstring from a dikote throwing knife that the elven chica phys-ad decided to leave him as a going away present. He started tonight with a full platoon of Yamatetsu's most elite black-ops soldiers. Between the other-worldly massacre in the vault and Professor cyberzombie and his X-men Gentry now had two and a half men left. The computer had calculated an 87% chance that by dawn he would have only two men left. Their deaths didn't matter to him much, just a very small line item on a collateral expense sheet he would end up submitting with an 11 digit total to Buttercup herself.

The female ghost standing in front of the door nodded to Gentry and then pushed it open behind which lied the small detention cell. The ghost wasn't Yamatetsu ... third parties were so much more reliable these days ... and more importantly deniable. Gentry used Yamatetsu resources when he needed overt but for jobs like this even their best corporate assets had higher failure rates and simply cost more. They had been a three ghost team and as far as Gentry had been informed one was confirmed dead in the back of the trailer, one was in rapidly declining critical condition from the apprehension of the man behind that door and this was the last. Gentry wondered if this woman would lament the loss of companionship when she cashed her three-times larger paycheck. He wondered if she'd ever met the other two before this mission.

Inside the storage room sat their only captive, Gentry's only known leverage on those that had taken so much from him. But on his way over from the rim his Decker ran the man and found few meaningful ties to the others. Truth was this man, this Mafaer, was hardly any leverage at all. He was their deniable asset. Subcontracters subcontracting ... how useless. Gentry had been warned the man was an apparently talented combat mage but he had declined bringing in a specialist. This man was no fool and it would be obvious to him that he was still alive for a reason. This Mafaer wouldn't risk that on an assault on Gentry unless he felt cornered.

Gentry closed the door behind him and sat down across the table. Mafaer was pretty badly banged up but he seemed to be holding himself together fairly well. Gentry placed the folder he had been carrying flat on the table and opened it, shifting a couple of prints around of the various suspects. He pulled the one he wanted out and wordlessly placed it in front of Mafaer.

Mafaer looked down at the photo for a moment and then rolled his shoulder, the pain of the movement splashing across his bloodied and perforated face. "Yeah, so?"

"How much did she pay you to be here?" Gentry laid the trap.

Mafaer's eyes narrowed in confusion, a flash of fear crept into his eyes. "I don't understand."

Gentry nodded. Oh but now I do. Clever ... clever girl.

The Dragon let the bloodied trenchcoat fall to the floor upon entering the flat. Underneath the surface of his flesh was ripped and shredded much like a piece of meat at a butcher shop because he had worn no armor besides an indestructable tactical harness to the firefight. The bioware had been overwhelemed and so much of the soft tissue was mangled and displaced that even his nanites didn't know where to begin. He knew as chewed up as his torso was his face and head would certainly incite far more terror in any onlookers. He estimated he was missing forty-five, maybe fifty percent of the flesh from his head and face. One of his eyes had been disabled as well, the high impact plasteel armor defeated by the shrapnel from a close range grenade.

As he crossed the small kitchen he left the rest of his clothing and combat harness behind, his predator the only thing left in his hands. He walked into the bathroom and with a handful of calculated gestures and scans opened the secure chamber behind the false wall. The small room beyond would be dark if not for the dozen or so consoles and dials as well as the dull-green glow of the 2.5 meter tall protein vat. He laid the predator down beside the main console and words began to race across the screen.

"Your course of action out there wasn't exactly optimal."

The Dragon stared blankly down at the screen for a moment banging out the reply. "Dr. Evans calculates I have 20,000 years before my will fails and my body dies. Without more nights like tonight I just may end up sitting here talking to you for the next 200 centuries. I'm not sure I could abide that so I take my chances."

The screen replied. "So I guess we see sarcasm is not strictly tied to the soul."

The dragon would have mimed a smile if he had lips left as he typed in return. "You yourself proved this already the second your consciousness left your body behind. I was there and it was the biggest joke I'd ever witnessed. It was the first and only time since my death that I nearly laughed."

A mute "..." was all the response The Dragon got in return. He punched out a couple of commands into a separate console and the vat lit up. He walked up to the vat and hanging down from the top of it were various hoses and wires. He sighed visibly for a minute before he plugged the dataline into his jack. It would take him all night to program the repair suite by hand, specially since there was so much hardware damaged, so instead he had to use the dataline but that also gave his invisible friend access to his consciousness.

"Had to think about it eh?" The voice had computer perfect inflection.

The Dragon began programming the full repair suite as he connected the rest of the tubes and leads to his body, laying out a complete order of operations for the various nanites that would spend the next ten days repairing all of the mechanical systems as well as regrowing the soft tissues. He'd spend the time in various states of meditation as well as running data operations for additional Nuyen. He didn't need to earn money, his AI companion could spawn money at any point, but without that goal to focus on his 20,000 years would grow short very quickly. His daily burn rate was around 12k nuyen so he made that his simple aim.

"What's the team's status?"

The AI voice piped up. "They got picked up on 90 by a Yellow Jacket but Zer0 had cooked up a wireless override which he used to lock the Jacket's auto-pilot into chasing his bike and then lead it up 5 and away from them. I wiped their ID's, rearranged some bodies at the morgue, and arranged some secure dropboxes for them. If they lie low for a month the screamsheets will forget about them completely. You should consider that a success."

The Dragon climbed into the top of the vat and lowered himself slowly into it, the cool protein bath warming quickly to his body temperature. He issued the command to seal the unit and began to watch the various status monitors race as the first round of flesh-eating nanites were released. They had to remove the dead flesh first before the new could be grown. "Then it is done."

The voice quickly came back. "If for the value of 'it' you mean a multi-billion dollar secret immortality experiment has been destroyed and all parties involved and knowledge therein completely eliminated ... then no ... it is not done."

The Dragon issued the frown command to non-existent lips. He had 200 centuries left to exist and his only companion would be this bodiless ghost in the machine haunting him with literal translations of his every whim. Maybe next firefight he won't bring his gun.