Chapter Text
I have my own war to fight.
Though his old team still kept backing him up, Raiden was otherwise entirely on his own.
After letting another politician die by his blade, he had become a wanted man. It was impossible for him to return to his family any time soon, although he had played with the idea.
Now even coming close to New Zealand though felt uncalled for. Rose wasn‘t keen on him continuing to fight from the start and hearing about what he had done, she was understanding of his reasonings but still mad at him because it meant the time Raiden was going to spend away from his family would be lengthened to an uncertain amount.
Raiden‘s hunt for corrupt PMCs and other companies that dealt with the bodies of innocent children brought him to southern Spain this time. The strait of Gibraltar built a bridge between the African continent and Europe. Refugees from poverty and war often took this route to make their way into Spain, in an attempt to find a better life there. It was a dangerous boat ride that often ended in unnecessary casualties. Even more so, a predatory company had settled just nearby to prey on these same exact people, trying to source body parts to sell off and brains to take to make new cyborgs, just like they did in Guadalajara.
The cyborg had travelled to Europe via container ship, hidden inside a cardboard box just like the good old days. It was draining having to travel that way but he had no other options, being a wanted man. Thankfully, no one ever noticed him when he’d left his small hiding place and he had safely arrived in Lisbon eventually. From there, it was a long travel completed by hiding again on unsuspecting vehicles carrying cargo across the Iberian Peninsula until he made his way to La Línea de la Concepción—the border town to Gibraltar—in which the company he was trying to tear apart from the inside out resided in.
It was raining that night. Without making any noise, Raiden climbed swiftly out of the truck‘s back and quickly hid underneath another car parked nearby. He waited for the truck that brought him here to leave again, before he dared to open the cameras of his system to scout the area.
Though the borders in Europe were open everywhere, the area was of course patrolled by a small group of Gekko units and cyborgs, which walked down the street that would lead him into Gibraltar as well. He had two choices: the stealth route to make his way past, or to start a bloodbath right away.
He could feel the Ripper thrash underneath his skin just thinking about it. Stealth would probably be the better option though, so Raiden could keep the element of surprise.
He studied the Gekko units and cyborgs patrolling the area, trying to figure out the best route around them. Perhaps he could stab one in the back, too; maybe if he was fast enough, he could even make it to the town just in time before they would notice a corpse.
Eventually he found a weak point in their patrols, crawled out from underneath the car and snuck past them.
The more difficult part was getting past the Gibraltar International Airport unseen. It was too risky to take the street that crossed right through the only runway it had, which—by the way—was the only path inside the city, so Raiden would have to find a way around it.
Climbing secretly over the fence and crossing the runway that way sounded the most reasonable in this situation, albeit quite dangerous given the incoming air traffic.
With a quick glance on his digital map of the area, he hurried in the direction of the beach. Thankfully, it was in the middle of the night, and the buildings nearby didn‘t shine too much light on his path, reducing the likeliness of him getting caught as he made his way in the runway’s direction. There was going to be a parking lot that he’d have to cross, and the likelihood of more cyborg patrols coming there was a possible issue. As he reached the beach, he made a quick call to his former team.
“I need to know the intervals of planes taking off and landing,” he explained in a low voice.
“Jeez Raiden, that’s going to be a bit risky,” Courtney said, shaking her head in disbelief as she typed on her computer to get him the information he needed.
“I’ll need to use it to my advantage,” Raiden replied as he made his way further in the direction of the parking lot. “If I take the route we discussed, the chances of me getting caught are higher. The security around the safer street is impossible for me to take. I don’t exactly need the entire city of Gibraltar to know I’m here.”
“Things would‘ve been a lot easier if—” Courtney tried to counter, but Raiden interrupted her immediately.
“I don’t need a lecture, Courtney. Now tell me if you can find how much time I’ve got.“
“Fine,” she grumbled, the clack of her keyboard confirming her search. “About 15 minutes each. Should be enough to get across safely. Thankfully, Gibraltar is not the busiest airport out there. The next plane should take off in about 5 minutes.”
“Thanks. Raiden out,” the cyborg confirmed and ended the call. For the fact that it wasn’t a busy airport, the amount of cyborg patrols were giving off some strong signs that something important must‘ve been hidden there.
A short ‘pling’ sound notified Raiden of data having been successfully transferred to his systems. Courtney had sent him the schedule of the airport’s takeoffs and landings for the next hour. He glanced at the file from the corner of his single, functional eye, then quickly swiped the file out of his sight.
4 minutes until the next plane would take off. Another 11 minutes for one to land. Raiden continued to make his way along the beach to the nearby parking lot.
He could make out at least 3 cyborgs patrolling the area. Unfortunately, there weren’t any good hiding spaces besides a few parked cars, so he couldn’t wait too long without the fear of getting detected. For a moment, he studied their pathways whilst hiding in the shadow of a car; then, he quickly rushed to the other side of the parking lot, climbing the fence that divided it from the nearby runway. It was too bad that he couldn’t do this without making any noise, so he hoped for the upcoming takeoff to take away the enemy’s suspicions. His feet landing in the gravel on the other side of the fence of course startled the nearby cyborgs, and they came rushing over to where the noise came from.
One minute until the plane sped up on the runway.
Raiden ran across the tarmac, adrenaline pumping in his artificial veins as he heard turbines from a few hundred meters away getting louder by the second. Sparks of electricity crackled from his feet as he rushed to the other side. He could hear the airplane rushing with the full force of an entire 300 kph in his general direction.
For a moment, the noise was all he was able to process as his feet carried him across the tarmac as fast as possible.
His artificial heart pumped loudly against his chest as the Airbus A319 flew over him with a deafening roar.
Panting heavily he came to a standstill on the other side of the runway, he needed to take a moment to catch his breath. He turned around and watched the plane flying up in the air, thinking about the possibility that it could have almost strafed him if he’d hesitated for even a second longer.
“Raiden, are you alright?” None other than Doktor Wilhelm Voigt called him immediately, watching Raiden’s vitals as per usual.
“Yeah. I had to run under a plane as it was taking off but other than that, yeah,” Raiden reassured him, holding his chest as he was still panting. “Who the hell thought it was a good idea to build an airport in this area, anyways?!” he lamented.
“You had plenty of time to wait for that plane to take off first,” Courtney joined the call, her tone of voice indicating worry.
“Not without getting detected,” Raiden replied. “There‘s a whole bunch of cyborgs and UGs at every corner, so keeping a low profile is pretty difficult. I used that plane‘s noise to distract them.”
“Fair,” she gave in. “But don’t try that again on your way out.”
“Promise. I don’t even want to,” Raiden reassured her. By now he was back to breathing almost normally again. “I’ll go make my way through the town now and find that goddamn lab. Raiden out.”
He climbed over another wire fence onto the football field of one of the sports clubs that bordered the runway, making sure not to be seen by any security cameras. His visor came in handy once again by highlighting their infrared lines.
According to his map, the nearby streets were quite narrow. It would be possible for him to climb up a building and jump from roof to roof to avoid any patrols in the streets, just so long as none of the enemy cyborgs had the same idea as him.
He made his way across the football field, climbed over another fence and landed carefully on the street. No cyborgs nearby. Raiden still didn’t want to risk it, though, and walked towards the nearby building and climbed up with ease.
From the roof, he could study the new area he’d entered. There were definitely less patrols around here, but still suspiciously enough cyborgs for him to be concerned about.
Jumping from roof to roof, he made his way around the enemy patrols for a while until he reached a roundabout that he needed to cross to get closer to the city centre. The laboratory was somewhere near the rock of Gibraltar—built somewhere within the massive rock, shielding it from unsuspecting eyes.
Raiden climbed up another building and continued his stealthy approach for a while until his visor picked up the shape of an UG he didn‘t recognise. He stood still for a moment, watching the thing move through the nearby street. It had the legs of a Gekko Unit, but the body didn’t resemble one at all. Something round sat on top of the body like a crown, but even from here, it didn’t seem to be of solid matter. It looked more like an energy field than anything else. Raiden decided to investigate it, not wanting to be caught off guard just in case more of these units were patrolling the area he was trying to scout for the lab‘s entrance.
If it was similar to a Gekko it shouldn’t be a problem, he thought. It was the energy field placed on top of it that had him concerned, with him not knowing what it was. And since Gibraltar wasn’t a place of any political tension or war, having an UG like this patrol the streets at night reeked even more of foulness. He approached it from the rooftops. More of these UGs were picked up by his visor. The laboratory must be close, Raiden inferred, kneeling down on the roof to study the Unmanned Gear circling another roundabout. He unsheathed Sam’s Murasama, ready to attack. It wasn’t possible to land on top of it; the suspicious energy field on its topside would be in the way. Neither did Raiden want to alert the machine and give his position away, so he waited for it to circle again. If he dropped right behind it and stabbed its body from below, he should be able to destroy it, with the added benefit of not being hit by the energy field. Patiently, he waited for it to walk past him, then he made his way down from the roof to the street, walking confidently underneath its legs and stabbed the UG’s body with the high frequency blade. He pulled the blade out again and green blood splashed out of the cut as the machine’s feet gave in. Raiden quickly evaded the falling body but was unfortunately grazed by the energy field.
It shocked his systems and he felt a sudden dizziness reach his head. He staggered back and leaned against the wall of the nearby building to not fall over. “Fuck,” he hissed through gritted teeth, holding his head. His vision became blurry. Whatever that energy on top of that UG was, it seemed to be an anti-cyborg weapon. It was as if they expected him to appear.
Raiden stumbled into an alleyway, using his free hand to lean on the building’s wall to wait out the dizziness but he soon had to slump to the ground. He should’ve tried to avoid the new UGs instead, he thought, a glaring headache making itself present.
Unable to see, he tried to make a call to the doctor, hoping that he could manually restart his systems from afar—but the moment before Raiden’s finger could press ‘call’, darkness came over him.
Mission failed.
—
There was a distant noise reaching Raiden’s ears.
He blinked once, twice. Sunlight hit his face, which made him flinch. The glaring headache came back immediately, hitting him like a truck. Raiden groaned and held his head with one hand, using the other to prop himself up from the ground.
How long had he been gone?
As his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light, he found himself—to his surprise—at the same place that he was once knocked unconscious before. Which was truly odd, given that the city of Gibraltar had been overrun by enemies the night before. It was impossible for them to miss him lying in that alleyway. He picked up the Murasama lying next to him and sheathed it back in its scabbard.
Confused, Raiden leaned against the wall, needing a moment longer before he found his strength again. The headache slowly started to go away as he got used to the brightness around him. He slowly made his way out of the alleyway, still very much wary of his surroundings.
But all he could find were normal people walking around; some chatting on their phones, others listening to music or just plainly doing whatever mundane thing a person usually did on a sunny weekday. Raiden couldn’t find a trace of what had happened the night before. No corpse of the UG that hit him last night with its energy, nothing.
Still not trusting the peace, he returned to the alley and opened his system’s integrated codec to reach his former team for some intel. It was odd that Raiden couldn’t find any missed calls over the night. Normally this would happen if he didn’t update them about his position. Things started to get even weirder. Even though it should be the middle of the night for them, Raiden expected them to still at least somewhat be available for him, as he hadn’t reached out to them either for several hours as it seemed.
He clicked on Kevin’s icon to call him. But as the system tried to find a connection, it immediately broke up. Raiden made a noise in disbelief, then called again.
Call failed.
With an annoyed look on his face he tried to reach Boris instead—perhaps Kevin had just gone to sleep.
But, he just got the same error message again as he tried to call. “What the…” slipped from between Raiden’s lips as panic started to creep into his head.
He tried again, then tried to reach Courtney and the Doktor but none of the calls got through.
Error message after error message followed and each made Raiden’s heart sink deeper and deeper.
He leaned against the house’s wall, trying to keep himself together. What the hell happened to his codec?! Why did it suddenly stop functioning? Did the UG’s energy field cause this?
Raiden gave himself a moment to calm down before making his way back on the street. He was on full alert, his hand twitched, ready to grab the HF blade on his back any given second.
As he walked past the people going after their daily objectives, he could notice them staring. God, he should be used to it by now, yet he could feel the discomfort creeping up again, adding another layer of uncomfortable feelings to the mix.
Everything about his surroundings felt off. Too peaceful, too bright, too warm, as if the season had suddenly changed as well.
He needed to reach his team somehow, needed to know what the hell was going on. It seemed illogical for the enemy to only patrol this place at night.
Aimlessly he walked through the town, soliton radar activated to have an idea at least where he was. The more he walked, the more people appeared and one looked more harmless and innocent than the other. Some of them looked at him, some paid him no mind, but a lot of those that decided to notice him made him feel even more uncomfortable. They stared and he could sense that they feared him, with how he looked like—his body being made of polished black metal and carbon fibre, spikes and sharp claws making him resemble more of a beast than a man. He hated those stares, but could he really be angry at them at all, when the fear in their eyes was more than likely justified?
Eventually he found himself at the town’s centre. His first instinct was to get some intel through something like a newspaper, to get an idea of his surroundings and if anything was written in there about night patrols or curfews or anything really that could give him a clue about what was going on.
It didn’t take him long to find a kiosk nearby, hoping that his rudimentary Spanish was not giving up on him in case the owner didn’t speak English. As he entered the small shop he was immediately taken aback by how high-tech everything in there was, not even World Marshal’s Headquarters could compete with what could be found inside there.
A wide holographic screen was taking up almost all of the space on the yellow painted wall that was behind the counter and he was greeted by the friendly voice of a robot, which typed something on another holographic screen before asking him a question that Raiden promptly overheard, too distracted from observing the place he had just entered.
“Sir, can I help you in any way?” The robot asked once again.
“Oh, I-,” Raiden stumbled over his own words. “No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
Nothing was fine, though, of course.
Everything felt like a threat to him, even the robot behind the counter.
He glanced over to the big screen as the news started to play in Spanish on it, but the reporter spoke too fast for him to grasp what was being said. From the images that were shown on the screen though it seemed like she was talking about sports. Raiden looked around the shop again, trying to find something that could help him, glancing back at the big screen every now and then as he scanned each of the items for something he could make use of. He grabbed one of the holographic tablets displayed in one of the shelves and scrolled through it. It seemed like a digital newspaper—also in Spanish. Raiden scrolled through it but couldn’t find any particular keywords that would suggest anything about cyborgs or UGs in the area. However one particular word popped up several times in the texts he was skimming, one that he had never heard of. Omnic.
He scrolled a little further and a photograph of a war zone popped up, taking in almost half of the screen. Raiden stopped scrolling for a moment and pinched the screen with his clawed fingers, zooming into the text. La guerra de los Omnics en Rusia continúa .
A war in Russia?
Raiden raised an eyebrow in disbelief. There had been no war in Russia that he knew of. He knew about the ongoing attacks of Russia against the Ukraine that had been going on since 2014, but nothing about a war within Russia’s borders.
Yet there was it, in cold print, a convincing photograph of the Red Place in Moscow torn to shreds.
Frantically he continued to scroll through the newspaper, now his eyes were focused on the word guerra .
There. The Spanish word for war in combination with Omnic again. Over and over it popped up. It seemed to be happening to many places, some places that he knew hadn’t any wars going on at the moment. This didn’t make any sense. It didn’t add up. Raiden placed the screen with such carefulness back into the shelf as if it was a bomb that could go off any moment, taking a deliberate step back as well.
He could feel the Ripper thrash underneath his skin again, startled by how he felt thanks to the news he had read. Everything started to feel unreal around him.
The news on the screen concluded and a date appeared shortly after.
August 26th, 2076.
Everything went white.