Akima returned with the first aid kit to find Des having handcuffed both perps, their chrome shut down by the sophisticated devices. Akima walked past the pair, both thugs sat back to back in the living room and into the room they'd found the parents. Des was standing silent watch as the couple hugged each other.

  Akima, without speaking, moved over to them and opened up the first aid kit by pressing a button on the large bright red case. While it did have manual clasps in case of electrical failure, the button was faster, the large case exploding open quickly with a hissing sound. Akima quickly took out some gauze and alcohol pads and began cleaning the open wounds on the bleeding man's face, his wife watching quietly.

  "I suppose I don't need to reintroduce myself?" Akima asked the pair. She eyed them, going over what she remembered from the file. Kaze and Jade Kaneda. Adopted parents of Yun and Layla.

  "Akima, right?" Jade asked, her eyes hardening. She looked at the thugs. "Who are they?"

  "Criminals," Des said. "Chrome jackers, mostly, but they've been arrested for assault, possession, and more. They are also fairly prominent bounty hunters."

  "Criminals and bounty hunters?" Kaze, the father, said with a very hazy look in his eyes. Akima wasn't sure if he was concussed or if it was because of his chip removal. Either way, she answered.

  "It's more common than you think. Bounties are easy cash, and there is no loyalty on the streets. They'll turn on their friends, and have someone without a record put in for the money."

  Jade and Kaze shared a look. For a moment, Kaze's eyes cleared, filled with warmth and intelligence before it faded. Jade turned to look at Akima, eyes still hard. "We don't know where they are."

  Akima crossed her arms. "Not even a clue? Places they would run to if they needed help?"

  "I can think of some. But they wouldn't go there. They care about the people who live in those places." Jade crossed her arms, looking down at the ground. Akima pretended to not see the droplet of water that slid down a cheek and landed on one of her arms. "They're good kids."

  "Good kids accused of robbery, assault, and most importantly, terrorism." Akima regretted it, but she wanted to get a true assessment of the parents and their own impression of their children.

  "They aren't terrorists!" Kaze snapped up to his feet, only to wobble. When Des moved a robotic arm to help him, Kaze tried to push him back, only to nearly fall over. Despite that, he kept his eyes on Akima. "I know how this looks, but they just do petty shit to help with the bills, the same way everyone in this shithole does."

  "He's right," Jade said more calmly, though she still rubbed at her eyes before she could continue. "Everyone does it. But the stuff they're saying in the news is insane. Yun and Layla aren't terrorists. They just… need to help us sometimes."

  Kaze and Jade shared a look. Akima tried not to read into it too much, but both looked ashamed. Akima stood up. "Can I look inside their rooms? Please? I'll do my best for them, but I need to have some idea of who I'm dealing with."

  "S-Sure," Kaze stuttered. He reached out for his wife's hand, clenching it tightly. "Through there."

  "Des?"

  The robotic officer nodded, rising up and joining her. They entered what must have been Layla's room first, with a few old stuffed animals and posters of things Akima would have enjoyed when she was younger. Including an AKIRA poster.

  Taking a look around, Akima began searching the room. Quickly and efficiently, rummaging through the trinkets Layla had collected. Des went to the computer, bringing up the cheap holoscreen and hacking into it with ease.

  The impression of Layla was more normal than Akima had expected. A smart, cheery girl, with books bent towards fantasy and sci-fi on her shelf, footage of her own martial arts sessions on her pc (presumably to study and perfect her techniques) and a few awards from her former school, gymnastic primarily.

  And nothing about being a terrorist. Even ignoring the fact a terrorist wouldn't just leave evidence laying around, Des didn't find anything on the computer, and there were no secret compartments in her room.

  Leaving the cheery room behind, they entered Yun's next. His room was more spartan than his sisters. No posters either. It looked almost unlived in. Just a bed and some bits and bobs.

  "We're moving out," Akima looked over at Kaze, the one who had spoken. He was leaning against the door, smiling sadly. "It's what Yun always says. Why he doesn't decorate his room. Why would he? We're going to move into something better soon."

  Akima looked around. Yeah. She could see it now. Everything was packaged neatly away, the walls were clean, and the bed was set up in a military style. There were two photos hidden away in a drawer. One was a digital video set in a durable plastic screen, showing Yun, Layla, Kaze, and Jade, all holding each other and laughing in the looping footage. The other was, to Akima's surprise, an actual photograph, printed on instant film.

  "Jesus," Akima lifted up the photo. "I've never seen one of these out of old movies."

  Des walked over to look at the photo. His eyes flickered, scanning the image. "Yun and his biological mother. I estimate he was around ten then."

  "Six," Kaze said, smiling just a bit. "He grows fast, that kid."

  Akima stared at the picture, focusing on the image itself this time. Yun, as Kaze said, was large for his age, wearing what looked like Muay Thai gear, a wide smile on his chubby cheeks as held his hands up. The woman next to him was average in appearance, fit, wearing Korean military gear and kneeling next to him.

  Putting the photo down, Akima looked around as well. Des hunted through his computer while she did. In the end, nothing.

  It was possible that Layla and Yun were hiding things elsewhere, but it still didn't add up. The attack had been vicious. Calculated to cause damage, fear, and death on a massive scale. That required more than just two random kids with a penchant for petty crimes anyone else would do for survival, that required…

  Conviction. Whoever had done the attack had an ideology. Even if it was just for the sake of killing people, that was still an ideology. Nothing about Yun and Layla showed they had that sort of insane conviction. To go from killing no one to killing hundreds wasn't so easy.

  Social media agreed. Yun barely used it, but Layla still updated her own profile. Both were devoid of anything that would display any terrorist tendencies.

  Akima left Yun's room with Des following, her arms crossed. In the living room, Jade and Kaze waited.

  "We'll need to take you down to the station. For your safety."

  Jade bit her lip and nodded. "Okay… what about our kids?"

  "They'll… we'll find them. And we'll bring them in alive. For questioning."

  "You believe us?" Kaze asked, a desperation to his voice.

  Akima didn't answer, instead leading them away with Des. Her robotic ally didn't speak, but she could feel his eyes on her all the while.

  The Kaneda kids weren't innocent. But someone was playing a bigger game than she'd realized. That, or maybe she just felt too sympathetic.

  The ride to the station was long. It would give her enough time to think it over.

  Yun Kaneda

  More reports of the attack flowed across the internet. I watched them with a dead stare on the wall of Arne and Zgura's wall. The medics were cleaning their tools, speaking softly in the background. I rubbed my face, trying to think even as my mind raced. My body felt fuzzy. Almost like I was filled with something. I'd always been very aware of my own body, but this was worse. Everytime I tried to think I'd feel some new 'zap' sensation fill my chest.

  I looked over at Layla. She was cross legged on her own medical table next to mine.

  "What do we do?" I asked her.

  "You're asking me?" Layla said, not looking away from the carnage we were being blamed for.

  "I can't focus… It's like I'm still full of that stuff. It's in my head," I rubbed my forehead, groaning. "God. How can I feel this good and this bad at the same time?"

  "Magic, probably," Zgura walked over, the large redhead slapped something on the table. "At least, that's as close as anyone has come to explaining pure aether."

  "It's not 'magic'," The other man, Arne, said as he walked over. The black man pulled a chair over, setting it next to us and swinging a leg over it to look at us. "Aether has consistent effects. You both are lucky. Kinda funny, you being on opposite sides of the spectrum for the effects."

  "Opposite sides?" Layla asked. I stood up and began stretching.

  "Aether, the pure stuff, is deadly. It either fills you up with so much energy it explodes your implants, or turns your organic parts to cancerous rubber," Zgura said, sitting down and pulling an e-cig out of his pocket.

  While Zgura began puffing away, Arne continued. "There are two ways to get away clean. First, have enough energy expending tech inside you that instead of overloading you just get a boost of power," he nodded towards Layla.

  "Or have nothing at all, and just the right genetics. Which, we're guessing, you have," Zgura nodded at me.

  "The right genetics…" I mumbled.

  "That's the guess." Zgura said.

  "It's the hypothesis, one with some grounded resea-" Arne began to say before a loud snort cut him off.

  "Oh come off of it," Zgura punched Arne in shoulder. "If we knew exactly what made some people come away from the stuff without turning into giant tumours, they'd write it down. It might as well be magic. Or luck, in your case."

  I looked at them. Then at the screens displaying our images, along with desperate crying faces, before looking back at them. "I don't feel lucky."

  "Matter of perspective," Zgura shrugged, puffing at his cig. "So… I'm guessing you both are going on the run."

  "We don't have much choice," I winced as another burst of light seemed to fill me. Like my heart briefly pumped energy instead of blood. The screen displaying news footage flickered, something it had been constantly doing. Might need fixing.

  I focused as best as I could, stretching my arms over my head. "Mom and dad are probably being questioned, if bounty hunters didn't go after them. If we make it clear we're leaving the city, maybe they'll get left alone."

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Layla bit her lip. "Yun, that's a big maybe."

  "I know. But we don't have a choice," I looked around for my things after I finished stretching. Zgura pointed at a table behind me, where my jacket lay. I picked it up and put it on. "We can head south, towards the slums, then out into the desert. Once we're out there, we can disappear."

  "The desert?" Layla asked, looking at me like I was insane. "Yun, we won't have water, food, or anyone we know out there."

  "Well what do you WANT!?" I exploded in rage, slamming my fists down on the table. Behind me, the screen showing my face shut down in a flicker of sparks. I ignored it to meet Layla's shock-filled eyes. I tried to breath, to get rid of my tension. "We don't have any choice. We leave. Or we get caught, and sent to prison. Or worse."

  A lot of people had died. In Machitou, people didn't wait for the police to catch the ones who killed their family. Revenge was best at your own hands.

  "We got pulled into something we didn't expect," I took a breath again. "Ramirez screwed us over to blame us for-" I cut myself off as the screen flickered back to life behind me, the images of death shining once more. "Yeah… I'd love to go back home, Layla. But we don't have that option."

  I stand to my full height, putting my gloves on and clenching them tight. "So we run. We leave Machitou. While we run, we can grab supplies if we get the chance, maybe steal a car."

  "Oh good, they're planning more crimes," Zgura grumbled, Arne punching him in the leg. "What? Look, you hooligans, I'm happy you aren't going to die, but we kinda need you to leave."

  "...Okay," Layla stood up and bowed towards Zgura and Arne. "Thank you for all of your help. I'm sorry we can't pay you back. We owe you everything."

  "You are most welcome, little lady," Arne said kindly.

  "Yeah, welcome to my expensive gear," Zgura grumbled again. "Take care of yourself, all right? I gave you some upgrades and defenses against the electrical impulses that damaged you."

  "You did?" Layla blinked, then rushed over to give him a hug. The large man grumbled again, but he patted her back with a little bit of embarrassment.

  "All right, all right… And here," He reached for the table behind him and pulled a jacket out of the hole in the center, handing it to her. When she unfolded it, it was a bit too big for her, with a floppy hoody on the neck. "You'll want to hide yourself. You're like me brat. Distinctive hair."

  Layla put the jacket on and grinned at him. He smiled back, but quickly put on a grumpy face that fooled no one.

  "...Thank you," I say simply. Bowing to the pair, I begin walking out, Layla following. We exited the shop and I looked around, then back at Layla. "Which way should we go?"

  "South, right? That way should be good." She pointed at an alleyway. We started walking side by side. As we entered the street, I pulled my hood up, Layla joining me. Moving together, we walked through the crowds, rain beginning to fall on our heads.

  "We're in the Norse section?" I asked, a little dumbly, as we walked past the low slung buildings

  mimicking Viking architecture. I'd been in the Norse section a few times, but not recently. I liked it more than the other downtown areas, with their shining and glittering spires stretching up for hundreds of feet, or fancy pyramids made of false marble.

  The Norse sections of the city was fancier than the slums, but it felt less like I was walking around somewhere I would get jumped by security or cops for looking scruffy.

  Layla roamed along with me, her eyes slowly looking around. I felt… sad, for a moment.

  Layla came from war. Not like me, who just had a mom in the military, she was truly born in it. When she joined the family, I wanted my sister to be happy. Safe. Instead, we became criminals, and now fugitives.

  "Lay," when she looked over, I wanted to speak. To tell her how sorry I was. That I wished I could give her a better life. Instead, I said, "Your eyes are better than mine, let me know the second someone attacks us."

  "Mm, mm!" Humming and nodding happily, Layla kept her cybernetic eyes moving. I did the same with my own more human eyes.

  The crowd around us became slowly more rowdy as we walked towards the center of the Norse section, past the sloping buildings, some shaped like large boats turned upside down. We crossed over a bridge with a river running under it, with boats of various types moving under it.

  Once we were back on solid ground, we began approaching something I'd rarely seen. A Viking Ring Fortress. It stood like it was the center of the world, with lights shining from within it. I'd learned about them in school, and they dotted the Norse section. Massive metal fortresses made of fake wood, circular and imposing, with entrances pointing in each cardinal direction. The top of it, hundreds of feet up, had men and women walking along the top, dressed in similar brown furs and carrying techno swords, axes, and bows.

  I glanced upwards. Hundreds of feet up there, I saw a woman with braided blonde locks stop to look down. My eyes were good enough to see her watching the crowds roam into the fortress. She had a sword almost as tall as her, which was impressive since she was even taller than me. Her hair was shaved on one side, and her clothes were the same false fur skins the rest wore, with a cloak on her back that waved in the wind.

  For a moment it felt like she met my eyes. I looked away and sucked in a quiet breath.

  "What's wrong?" Layla asked me when she noticed.

  "Guard up top. She's staring at us."

  Layla didn't look up, simply panning her eyes across the fortress ahead of us. It was an old trick, using your peripheral vision to look at something. "Oh boy. Yeah, she's staring at you hard."

  We needed to move faster.

  Entering the northern entrance, Layla and I stopped momentarily.

  The inside of the ring fortress was like a miniature city in itself. It had to be around two miles across, sloping downwards to an open field in the center, all roads and buildings pointing towards the center in a ring.

  Walking downhill, Layla and I followed the flow of the crowd towards the center of the fortress, passing shops selling food, clothes, and electronics out of facsimiles of ancient Nordic architecture.

  I passed an advertisement shining above, displaying imagery of some kind of hovercar. That advertisement was cut off by a news report. A bounty for me and Layla, displaying our images.

  We tightened our hoodies and kept moving. "God, that's so much money," Layla mumbled.

  "Maybe we should turn ourselves in for it," I said dryly.

  "Who can even afford that?" She asked.

  I stopped at that. It was a good point. Bounties usually were created by the government to take down bail hoppers and terrorists… which, we were the latter, but still, that required time and money. Governments weren't good at giving up either of those.

  So someone private had put out the bounty? Who?

  We reached the bottom of the ring fortress, walking across the open field of stone together, ignoring people drinking, selling food, hanging out, and playing games.

  But the longer we walked, the more lonely the field got. The crowd thinned out more and more, people stepping away, some picking up their kids along the way. Until suddenly, we had a clear space around us.

  I went back to back with Layla, looking around. The civilians were eyeing us, backing away.

  And guards began to step out from the shadows. Varangian Guards, named after the ancient orders of guards made up of foreigners utilized by the Byzantine empire, made up of Norsemen. These guards, ironically, were mostly made up of non-Norse people, men and women of a variety of races and creeds.

  The logic was simple. It was easier to be a guard towards people you had no emotional ties to. You could be cruel if need be. And these men and women looked cruel, large and covered in false furs, carrying weapons of various types, mostly swords and axes.

  "Yun…" Layla whispered behind me.

  "I count five," I said.

  "Eight, for me, there's some on the roofs."

  "Kaneda's!" A voice echoed, followed by a burst of fire in the distance. Someone came dropping out of the sky, landing heavily before us. He was tall and powerful looking, with a wide grin on his face. He was also carrying a hammer.

  Vikings are some of the toughest people in Machitou. They trained constantly, had access to the best facilities, cyberware, and teachers. Gangs feared them, police respected them, and the city loved them. They were badasses.

  They were also fucking Norse legend weeaboos. They were obsessed with the legends, and dressed up to match the mythology of it. They didn't care about historical accuracy as much as looking really cool. The best of them carried a weapon matching the appearance of one of the gods. A spear like Odin or Loki, a blade like Baldur… or a hammer like Thor.

  And this guy looked like all of the stereotypes of a Machitou Viking rolled into a single man. He had a thick scarlet beard and long hair pulled into a ponytail with the rest of his head shaven, a grin on his face. His arms and legs were all cybernetic, while the center of his chest had a single blue glowing tattoo of the Norse rune Uruz to go with all the dozens of other tattoos across his body.

  He also had a massive rocket on his backpack that he tossed aside as he approached us. "So. You two are the terrorists of the hour."

  "We aren't terrorists," Layla spat, hands raised up as she looked around us.

  "God, I hope you are," the man said, walking over with his hammer over his shoulders. "I've been so bored lately. No one wants to fight anymore. I just want-"

  And suddenly I was ducking under a hammer. I instinctively punched outwards, smashing my fist into an abdomen of steel. With nothing happening. He grunted, but still grinned down at me. "-a good fucking brawl!"

  I fell back a step as Layla leapt upwards, a group of guards flying on rocket engines to meet her. Lifting my fists, I grit my teeth.

  So much for escaping without a fight.