Cyberpunk: Ultimate Cyborg System-Chapter 514: Way Too Easy.

Minutes passed, and the man with the skull tattoo returned. He wasn't on his own, however.

"You're in luck, miss," he said in a cheerful voice. "This one might not be entirely fresh, but she didn't have a visitor in days!"

Standing beside him was a slender girl with short blond hair, dressed in a light night gown. The bruises on her arms and legs seemed to be fading, and her face was no longer swollen, but there was something clearly wrong with her.

"I told you between ten and fourteen."

Though she was a little on the short side, one could still tell that she was in her late teens.

"I-I-I thought something clean would be more to your t-t-taste," The man stammered for an excuse. "You wouldn't want one in a worse state, would you?"

The brown-haired beauty stared at him for a moment, then turned to the girl who kept staring at the floor with dead eyes.

"Well, this can be fun, too," She took out her red card and tossed it to the man. "Just be sure to remember my reservation."

"S-sure! I will definitely save the best toys for you to choose from!" He said, his face split with the same unsettling grin he showed at the entrance. "I will go scan this for you. You can find me near the entrance when you're done."

The man turned around to leave, not even sparing the girl he brought a glance. The client needed privacy, so the sooner he left, the better. With all of his attention on the red card, he had no way of noticing the woman raising her right hand to the collar of her jacket. She grabbed the small snap button at its end and pulled, drawing out a thread so thin it might as well be a strand of hair.

Before he could step out of the door, the man noticed several strands falling right in front of his eyes. Before he could wonder where they came from, his body was suddenly yanked backwards. The card fell to the floor as his hands reached up for his neck, but when he tried to grab whatever was strangling him, he found that it had dug so deep into his skin that all he could do was scratch at it.

"You… bi-"

Before the word could leave his mouth, both ends of the thread were pulled with incredible force, and the flesh under it instantly gave in. The thread sank into it like a hot knife through ice.

The brown-haired woman moved aside and let the man fall. The instant his body hit the floor, his head rolled away as if it were never connected to his neck. Crimson liquid sprayed from the clean cut, turning to a stream soon after.

Watching it happen with an impassive look on her face, the woman then turned to the bruised girl. Strangely enough, only a look of surprise was on the girl's face.

"Not gonna scream?" The woman asked.

The girl looked up at her, then the surprise slowly turned into a mix of sadness and anger.

"He…" She tried to speak only to feel like something was stuck in her throat, causing her eyes to tear up. "He… he got off… too easy…"

The woman watched her as she began to sob, then turned her gaze to the beheaded corpse.

"You're right," She said. "He got off way too easy."

As the blood began to pool up, the brown-haired woman crouched down and began searching through the man's pockets, producing a small phone. She then went and grabbed his head and held it up to the screen, unlocking the device.

"Sit in the corner and pretend to be scared." She said. "If no one comes to get you in thirty minutes, feel free to get out of here on your own."

~[ ]~

For the first time in a long while, a caravan of police cars and ambulances gathered on one of the old roads of Bell Street. The place had been Black Skull territory, but one couldn't see the infamous face tattoo anywhere in the crowd forming around the scene.

Hours passed, and the crowd thinned out. Dante watched as a number of vehicles left the scene. He didn't like what he was seeing, but the look on his face showed boredom more than anger.

"Guess we were too late," Riot said.

The big guy made the truck they were sitting in feel cramped. Dante tried to not pay him any mind, but focusing on the task at hand was proving to be difficult. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The police seemed to have only recently disabled the jamming on the lower floors of the place they were investigating, which meant Volcan could finally obtain the feed from the drones used for the investigation.

"Damn…" the sights definitely weren't for the faint of heart.

"So… you think this was your friend?"

"She can be a little cruel, but…" Dante sighed. "Don't know. This feels a little messy for her."

Rose had her strengths, but she wasn't the kind who would take on an entire enemy base on her own. That's what Dante thought, at least.

[Forty-two dead,] Volcan said. [Only seven belong to Black Skull. Two seem to be Level 2 Intermediate Cyborgs.]

Screens with the faces of the gangsters in question popped up. Most only had tattoos that covered the bottom left side of their face, with only two having half of their face covered.

'You don't need our help, huh?'

As the thought crossed his mind, a tap on the window snapped him back to reality. An officer was standing outside. Dante was sure he couldn't see him through the one-way glass, but maybe it had seemed obvious that he was leaning against the window.

"Let me handle this," Riot said as he slid the door open. The officer recoiled when the giant came out to face him, the took another step back as he realized who it was he was facing. "Can I help you with something, officer?"

Dante turned his attention back to the drone footage, only listening to the conversation passively. On the side, Volcan was running a simple face recognition program to identify the corpses filling the underground hell.

[Dante, I have obtained a transcription of the testimonies taken from the rescued victims.] Volcan said.

'Does it say anything about who was behind all of this?'

[A woman with long brown hair.]