June 7, 2045 - 11:40 AM

Crimson hummed a song to herself as she dragged Jack's body up the stairs, giggling as his head walloped against each step. She studied every inch of him, the process slowing her down. The way the mask fit his face, how his BufferSuit clung to his skin, the small stream of blood pouring out of his left eye socket. Hundreds of thoughts filled her head, and she couldn't decipher the meaning behind a single one. Nor would anyone else, she decided.

"Help me out," she snapped at two masked nobodies as she reached the top step. "Psychwatch is here. Or this guy anyway."

The three of them hoisted Jack above the floor, only his feet remaining in contact with the grated surface beneath him. The suites aligned the second floor to their right like a hotel hallway, crammed into the wall from one end to the other. Some occupied, some vacant. Some far more vile than others. In one rested two corpses, one with its torso sliced open from the mouth down to the crotch, and the other lying off the edge of a bed, white fluid dripping from its mouth and eye sockets.

Her brother guarded the door to their room alongside three other masked youth. Whitey didn't care to sport the club's mandatory attire, instead shielding his face with a plain gas mask. Hatred burned bright in his blood-red eyes. His hands gripped around the guardrails as he peered out over the sea of partiers beneath him, the gas mask transforming his heavy breaths into sharp, fuming gnarls.

The memories are coming back, Crimson thought. He's definitely gonna kill someone again.

She and the two masked men heaved the doctor-cop's body into the suite, their vigilante colleagues nudging the door open. Inside was a king-sized bed positioned in the middle of the room, dark blue sheets riding up to the knees of the catatonic body of Arthur Cohen. At the far end of the room, the Multi Man sat on a stool, bloodstains blotching his suit and his back. A corpse strung from the ceiling by a rope around his neck swayed beside the veiled madman.

"Hello, sir!" Crimson said. "Check out this guy. Didn't think doctor-cops could be this hot."

The Multi Man lifted his head and glared at her, wiping the grin off his young subordinate's face. He shifted his sights toward Arthur, the poor bastard's eyes wide but glassy, gazing out into space. Another dosage or two of the drugs they fed him could've put him out forever. The Man then returned his sights to Jack.

"Lay him beside Cohen," he ordered, and his lackeys did so. He rose from his seat, marching over to study his new prizes closely. "Haven't seen this one in a long time."

"Yeah, I remember him from the rally," Crimson said. "Isn't he one of the guys Asch shot? Or am I thinking about the other one?"

"It's him." The Multi Man turned to her. "Don't you remember where the other one is?"

"Oh! Yeah, I remember now."

The Man nodded his head. "Where did you find this one?"

"That Slater guy gave him to me. Said he's loaded up on Wonderland Mist. Although, I don't know why one of his eyes is missing."

"Anything else?"

"He says this guy's a maniac." Crimson paused, smoothing her hand across the doctor-cop's thigh. "I kinda like that."

"Stop touching him." The Man's subordinate pulled her hand away. "He does anything to you when he wakes up, I'm not responsible for it."

Crimson forced out a hesitant chuckle. "Nothing I can't handle, sir."

She froze as his gloved hand gripped her shoulder like a trap. "A seventeen-year-old girl," he said, "versus a brute in Psychwatch's captivity under the influence of the hallucinogenic infamously referred to as the consent drug. How do you think that will play out without my interference?"

Not a word from her. The Multi Man towered over her, watching as she drooped her head and melted into putty in his hands. Petting her hair, he added, "My dear, you know I'd believe in you any other day. But considering his state, my expectations for you are rather low right now."

He paused, resting his hand on her head, no longer smoothing his fingers through her chalky white hair. He felt her trembling in place, watching emotions and memories she resisted with her life emerge back to the surface.

"We don't want a repeat of those days," the Multi Man said. "Do we?"

"No," said Crimson, her voice a quivering, seething whisper.

"I need him alive for now, Crimson. And I can't have you getting in his way when I've unleashed him into the club. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." She gulped, remaining still to hide from an invisible threat in her mind. "He's your weapon...right?"

"You are correct, my dear." He traced his hand down her hair to her shoulder. "He's still got that BufferSuit on. Take your anger out on that in the meantime. But avoid his head and neck at all costs."

Crimson exhaled. Her superior sensed she'd found the slightest bit of inner peace because of that offer.

"Yeah, go crazy with that machete of yours," he added. "Nothing can tear through a BufferSuit. And when he wakes up, run for cover. I don't mind losing the others. Just as long as you and your brother are still around."

Crimson nodded her head, machete in hand, her breathing increasing in speed.

"Have fun," he said, patting her shoulder twice. "If you excuse me, I have your brother and an EMP device to check on."

The Multi Man trudged out of the room, his young subordinate howling at the top of her lungs before slamming her machete down onto Jack's chest, chopping over and over but destroying nothing more than bits of the protective fabric. Not only would the poor girl get some catharsis...

Jack would be far angrier when he'd wake up.

* * *

"Margo!" Ellie called. "Margo, come find me!"

The world closed in on the young doctor-cop as she shoved her way through the feral crowd. Even with the BufferSuit, she could still feel the sensation of flesh against her arms, shoulders, legs, and waist; whether it was her own or that of the clubbers, she could not tell. Body heat and the wafts of Wonderland Mist permeated the surrounding air, a toxic wasteland of turbid lights and hedonistic savagery. Even with nearly all of her senses benumbed by her mask, she could still feel the worst of humanity ensuing all around her.

She just hoped her sister would save her from all of it. Somehow.

"Ellie!" she shouted. "Where the hell are you?"

"Over here, Margo!"

She elbowed and shoved through the horde of rabbit-masked partiers, abandoning a gentler version of herself in the past, a reality where she'd invested in a career with far less psychological repercussions. As the waves of light flashed over the inhabitants of the Rabbit Hole, the closest she could get to reading their minds without the help of a ThoughtControl piece was their eyes. Eyes fascinated her, she'd realized. She couldn't determine who'd planted that seed of enthrallment in her head, but it had blossomed.

Maybe Carl. The angelic green his eyes were, the astonishing way his pupils dilated when another alter took over. Or Dottie. The way one was gray and the other brown, each one representing a life before and after immense trauma and suffering. Or maybe it was her own. She'd developed a habit of gazing at her reflection in mirrors lately. Each time she saw her eyes, a little more of the light faded away from them.

Amidst the sound of her name being called, one partygoer got far too handsy. Their hand was on her breast no more than three seconds, yet it was enough to get her to scream. To send her heart beating through her chest. Fear and disgust overpowering her. It was as she presumed earlier. The BufferSuit was a mere extra layer of flesh, no more protective than a sweater, a physical extension that made way for further discomfort. When she slammed herself into them, the violator let go, tumbling several steps into the partiers behind them, but Margo knew it wasn't enough. This was the Rabbit Hole. This person would've torn her throat out if it meant having their way with her.

Unholstering her Fatemaker, Margo took her gun and smacked it against the clubber's jaw with all her might. Their cry and the sight of red liquid spraying onto her firearm gave her only the slightest bit of satisfaction. And when she glanced at the floor, there laid the bastard's teeth.

Margo vanished into the next wave of ravers behind her. Once again, she endured an onslaught of thrusting elbows, hands shooting toward the ceiling to the music, and sounds of all kinds supposedly hinting at pleasure. Crazed laughter. Sharp, high-pitched cries. She couldn't distinguish the terrified from the delirious. At one point, she heard a woman laughing and moaning sensually only to find her on the floor with no legs, just bloodied, mangled stubs; she rested only inches away from another masked man in hysterics, a bloodied machete swinging in his hands. Through the neon blue puffs of vapor rising from her nostrils, Margo discovered the Wonderland kept the woman's pain indistinguishable from pleasure, and she would spend the last few moments of her life unable to separate the two.

"Margo!" her sister called out again.

"Goddamn it," Margo growled, and she continued forward.

Too many voices assaulted her ears. To her right, a younger crowd cheered and cursed and uttered whatever nonsense they wanted as they jounced to the music, one young man so intoxicated, chunks of vomit smeared his face and dribbled down his shirtless torso. To her left, another girl far younger than her remained stiff and almost lifeless as a man held her up by her arms, using one hand to inject Wonderland Mist into her mouth while also trying to force her out of her shirt. She looked away before she could connect the dots any further.

Another set of hands grabbed her shoulders. She elbowed the invader away, but the hands came back every time. She did her best to remain composed, but the BufferSuit was useless to her. All she felt were fingers and sweaty palms making their way across her skin. Her arms. Her legs. Around her neck. Grabbing at her mask and her hair. She could only hold back from screaming for so long.

Fuck this place.

Before she knew it, shots erupted from her Fatemaker.

Blood splashed her hands and her mask. The screams sounded around her. Some of them even came from her. Bodies dropped to the floor before her. Some didn't go down. They stumbled back, now with holes seared through their chests and out through their backs. Anything went as long as she could end the sensations plaguing her own body.

They no longer felt like cold, scrawny fingers or warm, sweaty palms. After a while, she felt insects crawling across her skin beneath her BufferSuit. Spiders, centipedes, roaches. Their legs tapping and trickling against her skin like hundreds of microscopic needles pricking her. Up her arms. Down her legs. All around her neck, deadly venom only a flinch away from entering her blood flow, destroying her.

"Margo!" her sister called out again.

Adrenaline blasted through her veins like electricity, her heart pounding. Most of the bugs died. She charged forward, firing her gun in all directions. The world was her target. Red mist sprayed her body. People were screaming. The room was spinning. Flashing lights. Deafening music.

Nonsense left her tongue, stretching her vocal cords to their limits. The room's edge stretched further and further away from her, the crowd an ever-expanding sea of people. Halfway into the infinite race she believed she couldn't finish, she noticed she was taking harder hits from the partygoers. Fists. Kicks. One even came at her with a switchblade. But it all bounced back off. She brought down half of her attackers, knocked them to the floor. But they were all just blurs. Faceless demons.

"Margo! Where are you going?"

The adrenaline decided she had enough. Margo soared through the air, diving through arms and legs with the strength of a boulder rolling downhill. The sensations returned. Skin against skin, bone against bone, pain exploding through her head and her neck, the parts left exposed. Soon she met the floor, her mask sliding off her face toward a clearer spot away from the crowd.

And in the open space stood the elevator and the barricaded stairway, her colleagues' way down.

"Margo!" her sister called again, somewhere around the elevator.

"Shit!" she winced as she stumbled back onto her feet, only to take a fist to the face, sending her back down to the grimy floor.

A foot met her chest, but it caused no pain or change of motion thanks to the BufferSuit. But the hits kept on coming, forcing her to crawl toward the exit. She shot one attacker in the foot, spraying her face with blood. The copper taste of blood made its way into her mouth, and her left eye stung.

Distracted by the mess, she failed to stop another kick heading her way, devoid of a painful impact but punting the Fatemaker out of her hand. She watched her firearm fly from her reach, her poor luck taunting her as it landed out in the open space not too far from her mask.

Crawl! Fucking crawl, you idiot!

Another incoming kick caught her in the shoulder, nearly grazing her neck. She hoped her attackers would learn, but she still felt the feet and fists against her body, distracting but otherwise painless hits. Fear was the weight restraining her to the floor now that her mask was off. She could taste the blood, smell death, feel that eventual crash against her face once her attackers learned. But she kept on crawling.

Returning to her feet, only a hop and a skip away from reuniting with her mask and gun, another fist collided with her cheek, far too powerful to be human. For a moment, the world vanished from existence in an instant. Just darkness. And she crashed into the floor with a loud thud, blood filling her mouth.

"Margo, get up!" her sister yelled.

"Ellie," she coughed, spitting a gob of blood at the floor. It was too much. Panic struck her like lightning when she spotted a tooth in the red mess.

Another voice came upon her. "Sandoval!"

The oxygen shot from Margo's lungs as the strong set of hands yanked her back into the crowd by her collar. She had no voice for screaming. Her throat was closing up. And the masked clubbers only watched in excitement.

"She's a cute one," said one masked man behind her, his voice garbled by static. "Get her suit off. Can't let her go to waste."

Too many rabbit masks around her. She punched and shoved away as many as she could, adrenaline returning to her with a vengeance. It was her mission! Swears and grunts sounded around her with each impact. Some even hit her back. But she could never stay still. Blood collected in her mouth, and she spat it on her attackers. A woman screamed as red splashed her face, but Margo shoved her away. All that mattered was the exit.

"Sandoval, duck!"

Margo and the crowd didn't lose their fighting spirit until the guns started blazing.

She dropped low just as the familiar voice commanded her. Rays of orange light surrounded her as the equally familiar sounds of Fatemaker salvo filled her ears, the only thing capable of drowning out that hellish club music. Red mist engulfed her view of the world like fog, and she covered her mouth with her arm as she bolted through the remaining clubbers toward the open space, her heartbeat filling in her own ears.

Then the gunfire stopped. Bodies tumbled to the floor as Margo emerged out of the crowd. Fearful, perturbed screaming sounded behind her. "Psychwatch! It's fucking Psychwatch!" she heard them say. And when she turned around, two rabbit-masked individuals sporting BufferSuits and brandishing Assault Fatemakers stood by the exit.

It was Andrade and Kusanagi. At last.

"Sandoval, behind you!" Kusanagi called out, and another hand dragged Margo back into the crowd by her collar. Fear consumed her no longer. Only frustration.

As her feet skimmed across the slick, bloody floor beneath her, she twisted around, facing her captor. She threw a punch, nailing him in the jaw. She felt as if she'd punched a concrete wall, compact and unmoving, yet her gloves spared her the pain of such an experience. When she drew back from the beast hunting her down, she discovered his arms, shoulders, and eyes were all cybernetic.

He towered over the young doctor-cop, growling, "I'll have my way with—"

A flash of green light rippled through his body, and every muscle in him twitched in unison. He bellowed a monstrous, infernal scream surging with static. The blood-red lights in his artificial eyes flashed like the surrounding strobes, and he dropped to his knees, denting the floor beneath him with a deafening crash. And with a swift move of gloved hands coming from behind him, his neck was broken, a waste of good cybernetics.

As his half-human carcass slumped to the bloodied floor like a puppet cut from its strings, Mr. W and Slater approached the three doctor-cops, the latter wielding his stun gun. "Goddamn Bod-Modders," he laughed. "They pay to modify everything but their brains. Dumb fucks in power armor, that's what they are."

"Whoa!" Andrade shouted, swinging her gun toward Mr. W. "Who the fuck is that?"

"Don't shoot him!" Margo shouted back. "He's helping us!"

"How? How the fuck is he helping, Sandoval?"

Margo nabbed her mask and gun from the ground. "He helped more than you've been helping us today! Where the hell were you two?"

"Bitch, what'd you just say?" The gun faced Margo now.

"Stand down! Both of you!" Kusanagi shouted.

"Put the gun down," Mr. W growled, and his slimy companion Slater broke down in a giggle fit beside him.

"What's so fucking funny, Slater?" Andrade hissed. "And what the fuck did you do to Holloway? Mason wants to know right fucking now!"

"What!" Margo exclaimed. "Where is he, Slater?"

Mr. W turned his head towards him as well, now having two Fatemakers and eight pairs of eyes trained on him. But he couldn't stop laughing.

"SLATER!" Margo shrieked, but he only laughed harder.

"Enough of this," Mr. W muttered, and he yanked Slater back by the shoulder and pulled him into a chokehold.

"Whoa, hey! Get your hands off him! Now!" Andrade declared, the rabbit man in her line of fire.

"Mr. W!" Now from Margo. "What are you doing?"

"I'm one of you," Mr. W said, constricting the bastard in his grip, silencing his grating laughs.

"What does that mean? Just let him go!"

"Sir, get your hands off of him!" Kusanagi said. "By authority of Psy—"

BANG!

A flare of light erupted through the crowd, waves of metallic screeches inbound. Sparks burst from the lights surrounding them, raining down on the club-goers like splashes of water. The pounding music went silent in an instant, and screams broke the silence it nearly left behind. The officers' Fatemakers caught flames before exploding into little pieces, sending them careening backwards in a shocked fit of curses and yelps.

The EMP! Margo realized. It finally went off!

Bolts of electricity crackled against the ceiling and walls where the light used to emanate from. But seconds later, the Psychwatch officers and the rest of the clubbers stood in complete darkness. Margo's heart dropped down into her stomach.

Fights broke out amongst the crowds, and the officers resumed their heated confrontation. Margo could still hear the sounds of people indulging in sex, but the anger building up was impossible to ignore. Shouts everywhere. "Who the fuck did this?" "Someone turn the music back on!" "Turn the fucking lights back on!" All trying to find something to blame.

Then a rumble sounded above her. A stampede. Her fellow Psychwatch officers ransacking the warehouse above. Fragments crumbled from the ceiling above them as funnels of blue flames burnt through. The corroders were in place. Victory was imminent.

But their masked enemy changed the game. "Here comes Psychwatch!" boomed the Multi Man's distant voice from the second-floor balcony. "Here to ruin the fun, as usual! You guys wanna show them a hell of a time?"

Their response was unanimous. The demise of Margo and the rest of her colleagues was only a sport now. The Multi Man raised a machete to the ceiling, pausing for effect as the depraved legion beneath him cheered him on like the false messiah he was.

And with a swing of his blade against the railing, he declared, "LET'S GIVE THEM A GREAT FUCKING TIME!"

Backup descended from the breaches in the ceiling as a tide of maniacs came charging in.