Chapter 1

  2024—

  Los Angeles, California, USA, Earth—

  A hulf-drunken man exited the bar from the back door. His walks stumble and his eyes droopy.

  He bumped his head on a light pole in the dimly lit alley. A feeling of vomit nearly reaching his chest.

  “Aarghhh!!” The man groaned to hold the rising feeling of vomit. “Shrimp and tequila ain’t the way! Fuck me…”

  He nearly lost his footing again before he heard the sound of someone whistling at him.

  He turned his head to the direction of the sound…

  …there was a girl walking towards him.

  Not much older than his own daughter. She appeared to be around late teens or early twenties.

  She wore a black hoodie. A band merch of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse.

  On the front side was their third studio album—Tomb of the Mutilated. Such a vile and visceral image printed on the front for anyone to see.

  The way she made up her face made him believe that she is this goth.

  Pale finish, eyeliner and the amount of piercings on her ears—her Chucks being the only contrasting feature as most goths would wear boots or a Vans.

  The weirdest part of her fashion were the red ice box and what appears to be a sword sheath slung around her shoulder. She doesn’t look like she sold ice cream or yogurts nor does she look like a sales rep.

  …She walked closer to him with eerily quiet footsteps.

  “Hey… I’m” A smile tugged from the corner of her lips. “...Wanna have some fun?”

  “...Eh?” The drunken man looked at her in confusion. “What the…” he stumbled back, “...What are you… talki… talking about?”

  “Come on. Don’t play dumb with me.”

  She began to lift her hoodie with her left hand and lowered her skirt slightly with her right. Showing bits of her underwear and bra.

  “Come… Give me company,” She said with a soliciting tone, winking at him.

  The man gasped for a moment before he shook his head. Clearing his thoughts of dirty mind.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. His face plastered with worry.

  “Sorry, kid,” He said softly. “I don’t roll with underaged girls. I mean—you’re practically not much younger than my own baby girl. Imma have to pass—”

  Rather than backing down discouraged, the girl seemingly flashed a wicked smile in return.

  “It matters not, old man…”

  She pulled a Japanese-style single edged shortsword of menacing sharpness.

  “My mom and dad always said, If you want shit done, you gotta do it on your own.” She flashed another smile.

  The man gasped in horror. Was he about to get killed? He dragged himself back frantically.

  The girl paced towards him while letting out a mad cackle.

  “I want to play a game or however John Kramer said it…”

  The half drunken man shrieked. His legs moved as fast as they could but the alcohol inside his blood made him stumble again and tripped on an uneven chip on the alley street.

  The girl got down and swept him with her leg. He fell forward and butt his face against the ground. His face slightly dipped into the puddle of rainwater.

  She twirled the wakizashi then kicked him in the face. He rolled to the side. Pain shooting everywhere on his face as he lay flat on his back.

  His eyes shooting towards the sky. Groaning and mumbling incoherently.

  The girl held the sword behind her back, wielding it with her right hand. The spine of the blade pressed against her skin.

  Its metal was cold and smooth. Like when a sanitizer made contact with a skin.

  With a quick downward motion to the left, the razor sharp front end of the blade slashed through his throat.

  He gurgled and bleeding uncontrollably. Both of his hands touched his neck, trying hard to press the wound to stop the bleeding.

  After a minute of useless struggle the man stopped moving altogether. His body motionless like a statue as he let out his last breath.

  The girl quickly gets to “work.”

  From inside the fold of her hoodie she pulled a rolled up cloth. Inside it were her tools. Everything she needed was placed inside, ready for use at a moment's notice.

  Surgical scalpels of all sizes. All neatly arranged according to their number.

  A chisel for bones, also known as osteotomes.

  A rib shears and a general use scissor.

  And the almighty tool of multiple purposes—the wire saw.

  She begins by cutting through his clothes with the scissor. As his abdomen was completely exposed she began to pick the #10 blade.

  Lining her dominant hand perfectly on the top of his sternum, she pushed the blade into him, slowly dragging the knife downward.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  After the vertical cut was made, she proceeded to make a horizontal incision.

  She lined her hand on his left collarbone and dragged the scalpel to the right.

  Once she finished the two incisions, she pinched the skin on the edge of the vertical incision and pulled each to the side.

  Pulling the skin and fat with her left hand, her right moved the scalpel. The cut begins to widen slowly, cut by cut.

  Finally she went through his muscles and tissues, slowly pulling the intestine out. Carefully she severed both of his kidneys ureters then picked the two up and into a plastic bag she filled with ice cubes.

  She sighed and wiped her sweat off her forehead.

  “...Now THIS is where the hard part begins.”

  She took the rib shears and proceeded to cut through all of the bones making his ribcage. The cracking sound they make still hasn’t felt familiar to her even after dozens of times doing it.

  Minutes later she finally reached his heart. The most intricate and complex organ in the human body to harvest.

  Severing the blood vessels required extremely stable hands. One wrong cut and the entire heart will turn useless.

  She sweated through the whole time consuming and mentally taxing process.

  But her patience and care paid off. The heart is now finally severed from his body without any damage.

  She placed the harvested heart into the red ice box, cooling it in temperature transplant organs meant to be stored.

  She took off her gloves and tossed them into a nearby garbage bin.

  …Her “work” is now done.

  She headed straight to her contractor’s base. A storage unit a few blocks away from the alley she harvested the man.

  The alley around the unit was dark with zero lamps illuminating it.

  Cold breeze of the night blew at her but she was used to the cold night air.

  She banged her hand against the rolling door of the unit and whistled. Due to the dangerous work she had, her contractor had to enforce different knocks as signals.

  One for a stalker following her.

  Two for the police stake out.

  Three to ask his men to go full guns blazing to protect her.

  Four followed by a whistling of September by Earth Wind and Fire to safely open the door.

  The rolling door lifted up and there stood a tall man with a shotgun in his hands.

  He peek his head out and look around the alleyway before asking her.

  “Password?”

  The girl snickered and raised her middle finger at him.

  “Go fuck yourself, Hector…”

  “What took you so long? The boss is waiting for you.”

  “You are very welcome to try harvesting them organs next time, asswipe. Now move.”

  He nodded and shook his head, groaning, “Puta madre.”

  She continued to follow him inside. “Pendejo,” She whispered to herself in annoyance.

  She entered the unit and pulled the rolling door down, closing it. The door automatically locked from the inside.

  The interior was barely habitable. Only items or appliances that serve their organ trafficking work are allowed inside.

  Inside were multiple professional, restaurant grade coolers, an array of tools for cutting and dismembering hanging on the walls with a magnet, and a map of the city.

  Though in the middle sat a cheap PVC desk and two plastic stools.

  Nine coolers on each side of the walls, stacked in 3x3 arrangement.

  Her contractor, a cruel yet fair man formerly of a mafia family, Bradley, sat behind the cheap PVC desk.

  His eyes fixed to Krista the moment she entered the unit.

  He gestured at one of the plastic stools. “Krista, sit. Hector, get the ice box and put her merchandise in a cooler.”

  Hector nodded and took the red ice box from her hands.

  Krista pulled the stool back and sat down, leaning back slightly.

  Bradley placed an envelope filled with money and slid it forward to Krista.

  “Here,” Bradley said, crossing his fingers, “Your payment as agreed. 20 grand cash, 380 grand wired to your second account, and 52 Benjamins to your Chase main account.”

  Krista took the envelope and peered into the inside, shaking it slightly to see the money jiggling.

  She nodded and put the envelope into her hoodie front pocket and took her phone out. The sound of her game screen loading blurted out.

  Bradley eyed her through his crossed palms on his desk.

  “Kris, I gotta ask. Why’re you splitting your stacks into three different pools? What’s a college girl like you doing with that kind of money?”

  Krista turned to him and flashed her usual grin, shrugging nonchalantly.

  Hector too called out for her.

  “Yeah—You are by far the most insane 20-year old I have ever known,” He nodded. “Aren't you a little too young to be in the organ trafficking business? I mean most kids your age don’t even have the balls to cut a fish open during cookouts—And you’re out here killing motherfuckers and taking their innards out. Don't you have an assignment to do? Isn’t engineering a hard major to enroll in? Where the hell are your parents anyway?”

  Parents. Such foreign word to her.

  Her parents weren't even hers to care about.

  They were nothing but absentees who actively ignored their children and gambled their savings. Idiots who thought that they could control how fate really works.

  Krista wanted nothing to do with them. They meant nothing to her after what they have done to Olivia. They are dead to her—metaphorically and literally. Though as much as she wanted to despise them, she can't seem to be able to.

  Her sister's love for them kept telling her that they were loving parents—just misunderstood. But Krista just doesn’t have the guts to tell her that she’s wrong and they aren’t—They will never be.

  She hummed and cupped her chin for a moment, figuring a way to explain it to Bradley without telling too much about herself or her own sister.

  …Then an idea grazed her head.

  She showed her phone to Bradley and Hector. A highly detailed background from a fictional female anime character.

  A smiling girl with orange hair and horns smiling wielding a large lance. To her bottomleft were two symbols.

  Six stars in italic and three lines diagonally down to the left.

  The two looked at the character on her phone. Wondering why Krista showed them that.

  “This is Bagpipe,” Krista gestured at the character, “She is a 6-star vanguard operator and arguably one of the best starter units in the whole game—beating even Siege and maybe even Saga.”

  The two men glanced at each other confused.

  “This game—Arknights—costs real money.” She waved her hand half-unsure. “I mean technically you don’t have to but many of the skins are locked behind paywall so I’d say it is critical for people to spend their hard-earned money if they want their favorite waifus or husbandos to look cool.”

  Bradley curled his brows at her statement.

  “So you’re telling me—you pay money for in-game cosmetics…” Krista nodded, causing him to sigh in disappointment. “Your generation worries me, Kris. The things you do to escape reality…”

  Krista chuckled but secretly laughing madly that they decided to probe no further than her game addiction answer.

  “I appreciate your concern, Danny DeVito, but it’s none of your concern.” She paused for a bit before continuing, “Brad—about the thing I asked you about—”

  “I already asked around. Old guys of mine have been doing their diggings. The stuff you're asking about is not out yet—It’s not even out of its prototype stage.”

  Krista noticeably snickered again. “How long?”

  “I talked with an old pal of mine—Gremlin—he said that he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy who can get a prototype design of the thing.”

  “How much?”

  “His guy asked for 15 mils. But if you want the company's newer rendition, he wants 25 mils of clean dough. I know his insider—He’s clean. I can vouch for him. But with quality comes cost.”

  “That expensive, huh…”

  “Listen, Kris…” Bradley turned towards Krista, his eyes curious and confused. “What are you doing with this… inter something something—”

  “Inter spinal nerve extension cybernetic replacement implant.”

  “Yeah that's the one… What exactly do you want with it? Be honest with me. You've been working for me since you're 15. I deserve at least a portion of your life story.”

  “They're none of your concern, B. We agreed to keep things on a need to know basis, ain't we? I'd like to keep it that way.”

  She stood up and put on her earphone, plugging the wire to her phone.

  “Now if you excuse me—I have places to be, games to play, and sleep to catch.” She winked. “Ciao!”