Something had nested, moulted and departed before he woke up leaving Sandy's mouth tasting disgusting. He wasnt thinking very clearly and a screaming headache launched itself from his frontal lobes down to his groin causing him to vomit in pain on the threadbare carpet. Contributing to the many stains already there, a steady thudding in his head began increasing. He was too tired, drunk and sick to care.
Thump Thump Thump
Lie down and sleep. Hope for death to take him before the demons did.
Like they did every night.
The thumping of his pulse stopped abruptly with a cracking sound which made Sandy wish that perhaps his heart had given out or maybe someone would just kill him. A shrill noise replaced the screaming headache with more pain in the back of his head.
"He's still alive", the familiar if unwelcome, pretty face of one of his two partners appeared in front of him. The Brainwaster female with the pretty ice blue eyes, white hair and voice like a pneumatic drill released her hold on his hair and let him fall back in his vomitous, "its fucking disgusting."
"Serravalen, dont do that to him." Church the Ebon obscured the bare light bulb above him with a wash of sweet smelling black hair, always nice to him like his mother had been. Though his memories where badly fractured sometimes he still remembered her kindness as she began using her healing to clear the toxins from his body because by his own admission was too far gone to do it himself. There was some more stomping about the squalid apartment by Serravalen as she inspected the rooms one by one, he had no idea of where he was but judging by its condition it was in Downtown somewhere.
"Well, forget about using the bathroom to clean him up!"
"Whats wrong with it?" Church said softly expecting all amount of disgusting mold type things in a downtown bathroom.
"Looks like a queue, Mom, Dad and the kids are using it", Serravalen stepped out of the bathroom door looking more palid than usual and her voice was quieter. "He's done it again, the bastards gone and done it again." Church stopped her detoxification and and went to look for herself but Serravalen stopped her. The look on the vetran detectives face doing more to disuade her than the outstretched arm and decided that she didnt really need to know. But both pairs of eyes turned back to him expectantly to get an answer, Serravalen pulled her hand cannon out of its shoulder holster and chambered a round into its enormous barrel.
"I havent killed"
"Then that isnt your MAC knife I found in there", Serravalen threw the combat knife at his feet. "Sure looks like yours, even has that peice of the tip that broke off', Church looked disgusted at the gore covered blade and then back to Sandy. "Im sure that saying I didnt do it is going to be beleved by Cloak division", Serravalen added sarcasticly before continuing her verbal torrent while pacing about the room.
"Kick Murder trained Brainwaster gets drunk in Downtown and decides to cut up a family of five. It happens, I live here you know. He's an experienced Operative with a history of getting drunk out of his skull lately and making people dead. Maybe he's finally gone over the edge and its time to file the termination warrant."
Sandy managed to get to his feet so that he could use his height and size to intimidate his accuser. So far it seemed to be working as the smaller female backed off, giving him time to collect his thoughts.
"I kill because the company tells me too and unlike you I dont enjoy it"
Serravalen looked slightly embarresed for her own reasons, diplomaticly Church stepped in before it came to blows. "Look, its done,we can deal with Cloak, we have the authority to do so. Now its just a case of clearing up the mess and bugging out before it gets complicated." She got sick of being the referee for these two sometimes but they where her friends even if they didnt like each other. Sandy was a trained killer but there was also compasionate, gentle man, morso than most humans and ebons with a sense of honour even a Shaktar would be proud of. She had seen it under all manner of adversity over the ten years she'd known him, lately he'd been drinking worse than usual because of something on his mind. The killing for SLA always disturbed Sandy and he drank to forget it, but it was the only skills he had and retirement was out of the question.
"Whatever", Serravalen muttered "we'll sort this out as his place", she pulled out a long, flat grey slab out of her handbag and began setting up the HBX-7 and ancillary detonators while the other two looked on curiously.
"Get out and get the car! Dont get seen on the way down" Serravalen snapped. "What about the other tenants?" Church appealed to her.
"What about them? So call a bomb threat in 25 minutes if it really matters..."
While they piled out of the apartment Serravalen got to her work, this was the second time this week they had to cover up one of these little indescretions and she'd used a lot of Flux tracking Sandy down. Just out of spite she set the timer to 22 minutes, the mysterious Darknight Bomber would have to get his kill count up this week anyway. She could write it off as extra expense and maybe get it back out of the Dept of Misinformation for the cause of making Darknight look bad.
Populated tenement blocks like this where bad for the rebels cause and gained a negative amount of publicity, a family of 5 dead killed by a rouge employee is a tradgedy that people sympathised with. 2000 dead in a bomb blast and ensuing fire was just a mind numbing figure that the average TV veiwer didnt get their little mind around.
She interdermalised the deathsuit armour underneath her skin, put on the dark sunglasses to cover the blue glowing eyes with charred lids, closed the door and walked away. Just another cheaply dressed downtowner in a sea of millions. This type of work used to bother her conscience but he was gone now and nothing really mattered anymore, at least she could spent the night in classy Uptown. The cold, lonely Downtown apartment was unbearable by herself.