Chapter 4

2 days before

Jack Vesputchi sat in his study. He was a full-time Freelance reporter, and a good one at that. He reported what the average reporter doesn't and does deep detective work to uncover large stories. He earned a reasonable living this way. Today, he sat looking at evidence for something he knew could be the biggest story of his life. A picture of a girl carrying a Violin case next to a man, the suspicious death of a man who had worked at the Social Welfare Agency due to a hit-and-run a couple years back, before his famous reporting career kicked off. There were many others as well.

"I need more, damnit, more!" Jack said to himself. He still couldn't draw much from the relatively small amount of what he had gathered. He couldn't do this for much longer, he knew. The feds might catch on. Reporters had the potential to be the Government's worst nightmare, especially Freelancers.

*Sigh* He couldn't do this anymore for the night. He packed up all the stuff in a briefcase, went up to bed, put it under his bed, and plopped down on the bed.

Present

The Chief Director of the SWA from earlier was now alone. He was simply working on some paperwork when someone knocked on the door.

"Come in." He said.

"Sir, we are in a situation." The man who came in said.

"Tell me."

"A reporter has caught wind of our operations. He has already managed to gather evidence, though it would be very inconclusive."

"Who is this man?"

"Jack Vesputchi. He's a Freelance reporter, one of the best. He's almost like a real detective."

"Hm, who else has he contacted?"

"No one else to our knowledge. But he may have contingency plans we don't know of."

"Then we'll get it out of him. If nothing is drawn from him, then we cast him aside. If we finish drawing things from him, we cast him aside."

"In what manner?"

2 days later

James Antolini, a handler in the Social Welfare Agency, was sitting at his desk doing some paperwork of his own when his phone rang. Annoyed, he picked it up.

"Hello?"

"James Antolini, we want you to report to the debriefing room in 0100 hours. Bring your cyborg with you."

"Ah, great. Fine."

He hung up. Damn, he thought. Another mission. He got up to go to the Cyborg Warehouse. He cringed at the name. It made the girls sound like machines. The worst part was, the name actually made sense.

Serina was the last first-gen cyborg. She was also one of the best trained. She was skilled in every aspect. She was, say, Rico and Hennrietta put together. In terms of combat only, of course. Her personality was less girly and more mature and serious compared to some of the others. Easily comparable to Triela, actually. Minus the Teddy Bear obsession. She was sitting in a room with Henrietta and Rico in Triela's room. But, as usual, she hardly said a word, while Henrietta and Rico rambled on and on. She felt quite distant from them, and the room full of teddy bears certainly was not helping. She didn't exactly think of herself as a tomboy, but the room was kind of pushing it. Then, someone knocked on the door.

"Serina?"

"James! What is it?"

Antolini let himself in.

"We need to be at the debriefing room in 01…..0055 hours."

"Yes, sir."

28 Hours Earlier

"Urrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhh…"

Sarah opened her eyes and found herself lying on her side, her vision initially blurry, but it slowly cleared. She looked around the alley she had been sleeping in bit and slowly tried to sit up against the wall behind her.

"Unh…not one of my better ideas in hindsight." She groggily said as she eyed the cocktail bottle next to her. She was just too depressed by recent events. She wearily got up, and finally realized it was raining. "Ah, damn it." She said, but she didn't actually care much. She didn't even bother to use her sweater's hood. She took her backpack and walked out of the alley. She didn't really care how soaked she got. She quickly recollected what had happened the previous day.

The day before that

Sarah was leaning against the wall, watching pedestrians walk by. She was having another smoke, as she was particularly stressed lately. She had to do something about her life. This wasn't going to do. But what COULD she do? It wasn't like that she could just bar-. She suspended that thought for the moment as she noticed a well-dressed man along with a young blonde girl in a green short-sleeved shirt walking by on the other side of the road. She had seen them a couple of times before. This time, she wasn't going to sit at the side. She picked up her backpack and followed them as inconspicuously as possible. She pushed through pedestrians as she tried to keep them in view.

"Alright, have to plan this out. I have to somehow…" her mumbling trailed off.

She followed them for about ten minutes. Finally, they entered a subway station She quickly moved as fast as she could. She entered the station and saw them heading for the gate. She had a card with some money on it, so she just skipped the machines where you purchased a card. She pushed through civilians trying to get the next place in line through the gate as fast as possible. She stood only two people behind the two, though in different lines. She kept her eye on them as they passed through the gate and headed for one of the lines. She quickly passed through the gate as well and jogged to catch up, following the same path they took. She took a flight of stairs down to the line, and quickly scanned the area for them. She noticed them a distance to the right, and so moved over there to make sure they got on the same car. Now, she stood practically next to them. Then, as she reached them, she remembered something. She quickly put her hood on and put on a pair of sunglasses. She waited for the right moment.

The train arrived not long after that, and Sarah followed the man and the girl onto the same car. This was where she got lucky. If the two sat next to each other, this would be harder since the man would be in too close proximity. But they had to sit in completely separate seats, across from each other, since they couldn't find two next to each other. She remained standing and took the rubber ceiling handle right next to and front of the girl. Sarah looked at the girl in her eyes. Full Heterochromia irdis, right eye blue and left eye green. Then, the girl turned to look at Sarah. Sarah turned away. She partially removed her backpack and retrieved a book from inside it.

"You've been to America?" The girl asked, noticing the book was about sites in New York City.

"Ah, that got her attention." Sarah thought.

"Been there? I'm from there."

"Really?"

"Does my accent say otherwise?"

"No, but your clothes do." The girl said, pointing out Sarah's dirty clothes.

"Oh, yeah, um, bad day, don't ask."

Then Sarah realized something.

"What about you? You sound American yourself." She asked, noting the girl's own American accent.

"Oh, yeah, um… I was raised in America, then we moved here, where my parents are from."

"I see." Then Sarah looked around to make her next question seem reasonable. She then removed her sunglasses and looked back to the girl.

"I'm not seeing someone who looks like they could be your mom, or brother, or sister." She said.

"Yeah, um, my mom doesn't like going out. And I don't have any siblings."

"Hm, speaking of siblings, you do remind me of my younger sister. Even your eyes."

"Wow, even the eyes?" Heterochromia wasn't very common.

"Well, from a certain point of view."

"That's interesting."

"What's your name again?"

"I didn't say, but it's Serina."

"Well, then, its nice meeting you Serina." She said, the name feeling alien to her, not because it wasn't a common name but because of something else. She tried not to think about it.

"My name's Sarah." She continued. Serina just nodded.

It was just some quiet conversation until Serina and her father had to get off.

"Well, it was nice to talking to you."

"You too." Sarah said to Serina as the latter got off the train with her father. Sarah watched them as the train doors closed.

"Ahhhh, #$%&. Well, what did I expect?" She thought.

Present

James Antolini and Serina, along with Jean Croce and Rico, sat in the debriefing room. The man addressing them spoke.

"Hello there. We have called you together for a little mission. Its about the very secrecy of this organization." The man said.

"Yeah?" Antolini asked.

"Yes. A reporter has caught on to us. He's gathered notable evidence to spark much more suspicion among the civilian populace than there already is. If allowed to go any further, he could potentially destroy the Social Welfare Agency."

"Well, just buy him out or force him to sign a contract or something!" Antolini said, annoyed.

"We can't risk that. We're talking about Jack Vesputchi, one of the best Freelance reporters we know of. Easily as good as the last guy. A lot of Feds and other people really don't like him. He's too god at what he does."

"Hm, nice creative use of words." Jean said.

"So anyway, we can't assume it will be that simple. We have to resort to a takedown."

"So we just go and kick his ass?" Antolini asked.

"Yes."

"So why the hell we here? Section 1 alone can handle this." Jean asked.

"Ehehehehe…about that…"

So there you have it, Chapter 4 is finally up. Don't worry, the questions raised in here will be answered soon. But you are free to try and figure it out.

Actually, I have content surplus, meaning I have more than this already written out, but you have to wait a random amount of time to see the next chapters. That's just in case if school slows down my progress, I'll still have something to upload. That said, updates will probably be more regular now.