***
Dante's eyes shot open and he took a deep breath of air. He jerked forward and snapped back hard into the thin padding of a transport seat. The straps of black recoil fiber tightened maliciously around his arms and his legs, binding Dante closely.
Dante looked around wildly, his eyes wide and frantic, his head pulsing with pain in a straight line down the middle of his forehead. He was in the belly of a metal beast, lit from above by bare white bulbs and below by the neon of the city.
People in combat armor were scattered all about the inside of the transport, holding guns at the ready and patrolling this way and that about the metal belly.
"Now this is a night's catch!” yelled a gratingly harsh voice from Dante’s left, “Boys, we caught runners! These pesky bastards have been houndin’ us since the early days, and now we finally catch one!"
A soldier sauntered up in front of Dante, his back turned to the runner and his arms spread wide as he finished his exclamation. An assault rifle dangled off his arm by its strap, a pistol unsecured at his side.
"Well, caught one anyway,” responded one of the soldiers, jerking a thumb to a bin near the ramp of the transport, “Shame about the girl."
"Aye,” the soldier in front of Dante sighed, hooking his thumbs in his fatigues, “It's a pity, really. She was quite good looking."
Dante’s eyes fell on the bin slowly, his hearts beginning to pound with a manic intensity. He wanted to turn away, wanted to keep his hope alive, not wanting to know.
His eyes landed on a slender, grey thing slung over the side of the bin. An arm. A woman’s arm, sheathed in GIACA matter.
They killed her. Aaliyah is dead.
Dante stared at the arm, lost, numb, his eyes burning and his vision blurring. The soldier in front of him sighed and turned around, bending down to inspect his catch.
The soldier let out a satisfied grunt, cracking his neck. "Good,” he muttered to himself. “Very good.”
He looked over his shoulder and shouted to one of his squad, jerking a thumb at Dante.
“He’s conscious, Mason!” he bellowed, “What’d you say you were gonna do again?"
“I’m gonna cut him up and tear that armor out of his bones,” replied a cross, slightly Welsh voice, “Don’t make me say it again, Carter.”
Carter laughed and turned back to Dante, a sickeningly ugly grin spread across his unshaven, scarred face.
“Tough times in store for you, boyo,” he guffawed, “Had best say your prayers now, sonny-boy, ‘cause-”
Carter silenced suddenly, his eyes widening in incredulity as he stared at Dante. A tear had fallen loose from the runner’s eyes, dripping to the recoil fiber and absorbing into the black fabric.
The soldier looked at it disbelievingly, then broke into throaty laughter.
"A runner? Crying?” he exclaimed incredulously, “I thought ya’ll were nothing but piss 'n vinegar, tougher ‘n leather and twice as thick, and I see a runner crying?! This day just keeps getting better!"
Dante glanced at the runner’s arm, unable to stop himself, a second tear dropping out of his eyes. The soldier followed his quick glance with perfect accuracy, and again he laughed that sickening laugh.
"Oh, li'l baby!” Carter crooned, slugging Dante across the face. Blood spattered across the wall of the transport and Dante felt his jaw pop slightly.
“Li’l crybaby runner!” Carter laughed, giving Dante another shot to the stomach.
“Was that cunt a friend of yours, free-range?” Carter asked viciously, grabbing Dante’s chin and forcing it up, “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Was she your bitch, your little-?"
There was a sound like steel cables snapping and whipping back as the recoil fiber snapped, and then the sharp crack of snapping bone as Carter flew across the transport. He smashed into the wall with metal-denting force, thudding down to the floor silently. The other soldiers jumped in shock, and once they caught sight of his face, twisted completely around, they began to shout in fear and ready their weapons.
Dante stood immobile, his eyes downcast, his fists clenched at his sides. A cloud like black smoke and water combined swirled around his body, emanating from him in a constant stream. His face had turned deathly pale, drawn and gaunt, skull-like. His body seemed to have shrunk, becoming skeletally thin while keeping his imposing height. His fists were like clubs of grey bone.
All he could see was her face, fixed in his mind’s eye, that beautiful grin on her face, giving him the last smile he would ever get from her. It burned in his mind, scalding him, torturing him.
The first shot banged out around the transport, the rifle bullet flying straight and true to the center of Dante’s forehead. It bounced off his flesh with a slight pinging sound, ricocheting off the walls of the transport.
Dante opened his eyes slowly, staring at the frozen figures of the retrieval squad. His eyes, once a deep sapphire blue, had become unfathomably and completely black. He stepped forward, eerily silent, and the soldiers drew back, their guns falling to their sides, terror overruling their training.
Dante stared for a suspended moment in time at the murderers, regarding them, weighing them. All except one froze as his gaze fell on them, blanching white, their guns falling from their hands.
All except the squad leader, the Welshman, who drew a knife and hurled it at Dante’s head with a scream of furious terror.
The runner caught it almost without thinking, his arm reaching lazily up and plucking the knife from the air. He snapped the blade clean in two, then took one last look around the transport. His eyes fell on the box with his mother’s body in it, her arm hanging limply over the side.
And anger exploded in a wrath that could cow Satan himself.