"Get him!" commanded Schoff in fury.
The nine bodyguards immediately pulled out guns and started firing at Melbourne, forcing him to take cover behind a nearby desk through a somersault.
"Kill the intruder!" roared Schoff furiously.
Melbourne lifted his head and proceeded to empty his clip against the rushing thugs.
Five thugs died with his remaining clips, leaving four left plus Daniel Schoff.
As one thug jumped over the counter, Melbourne grabbed his combat knife and proceeded to stab the attacker.
He took the corpse and used it to slide down a nearby corridor to avoid more incoming bullets before he proceeded to load another clip into his gun.
"After him!" cried Schoff from the operation room.
[Ammo: 20/20/60]
"Hey, did you here the commotion upstairs?" yelled a thug from below. "I think the intruder got up there somehow! Let's go check on the boss!"
The sound of thudding footsteps could be heard running upstairs through a nearby door with an emergency neon "EXIT" sign as Melbourne fired on the three remaining bodyguards emerging from the operation room.
[Ammo: 15/20/60]
This was the display in Melbourne's system HUD after he had dispatched the remaining thugs.
Melbourne proceeded to find a nearby bookcase and pushed it in front of the exit door to slow down the approaching thugs before rushing back into the operation room to find Daniel Schoff throwing oil all over the room amid the forest of screaming captives. Luckily, the reckless cyborg was yelling so loudly that he didn't hear Melbourne's return.
Melbourne's eyes caught another oil canister near a lighter, triggering an idea.
He picked up the gas canister and smeared the floor with oil amid the sound of the thugs banging on the bookshelf with batons used as battering rams.
As the thugs came rushing down the corridor with handguns firing, Melbourne jumped around the corner of the entrance to take cover as he awaited their approach.
Just as the large band of gangsters entered the room, Melbourne lit the gas, consuming every single one of his assailants in the maelstrom.
Daniel Schoff screamed in horror as he saw the scene of most of his personal syndicate being destroyed.
"You!" cried Schoff in furious hatred. "What are you to be able to pick off my ten best men and a significant fraction of my gang? What gang do you work for?"
"I don't work for any gang." said Melbourne, opening his hands in innocent. "My people definitely don't do the types of crimes that traditional 'gangs' do though we are technically classified as criminals. Thank you for doing about half my job for me. I thought I was going to have to clean up your mess myself. Unfortunately, you'd be tied into our network if the government discovered you've been researching cybernetics. What you've been doing here, it would make us look really bad. Sorry, I can't let you live after what you've done to these people."
"You are with the Red Cybers?" asked Schoff in shock.
"Just a man who seeks justice." said Melbourne, giving Schoff a half truth. "Doesn't matter who I was sent here by, you're about to die nonetheless and so it won't really matter if you know."
"Enough!" demanded Schoff. "You may have defeated my men, but you will never defeat me!"
Melbourne shot Schoff straight in the chest, to which Schoff reacted by clutching his chest in deep pain.
"You annoying little bug, your weak bullets barely sting!" cried Schoff, standing up and drawing his own gun.
Melbourne hesitated in shock at seeing Schoff take what would normally be a fatal bullet and keep standing. He hesitated long enough for Schoff to fire his own bullet at Melbourne's drawn hand to force him to drop his MS-20 on the floor.
"If you are a cyborg, then we battle with fists!" demanded Schoff. "I wish to see how powerful the scion of the Red Cybers truly is!"
Schoff charged at Melbourne, sending him flying against a nearby wall.
[H.P.: 15/20]
"Yowch!" cried Melbourne as he turned to look at the crater he had made in the wall. "That was one hell of a tackle!"
Schoff came rushing at Melbourne again, but Melbourne proceeded to somersault out of the way. He drew his knife and made a slash at Schoff's leg, causing a deep cut to penetrate the mixture of tissue and circuitry buried beneath his skin.
"You wasp, I said no weapons!" screamed Schoff, slamming his fist into Melbourne's right hand and knocking the knife onto the floor.
[H.P.: 13/20]
"You do not listen!" exclaimed Schoff. "You have no honor!"
Schoff punched Melbourne in the gut, sending him flying into the operating room to land on one of the empty tables.
"Now I will capture you and kill the rest of these test subjects! I'm sure dissecting you will be far more valuable to my ultimate goal than more years of ceaseless experimentation with these useless humans!"
"I'm flattered, Schoff, really, I am, but I don't think I want to be going anywhere with you." said Melbourne.
Schoff pushed a button on a remote and steel cuffs attempted to restrain Melbourne. Luckily, his agility was high enough that he was able to launch himself off the table before he was trapped.
"You will not escape me, cyborg!" demanded Schoff, marching towards Melbourne as he was slowly backed into a corner.
[Analyzing…]
The System message appeared in Melbourne's sight without prompt, analyzing Schoff's body for any weakness.
Green reticles eventually appeared underneath Schoff's chin which Melbourne promptly proceeded to uppercut.
Melbourne continued to perform a front kick into Schoff's groin before somersaulting behind the juggernaut of a cyborg.
Schoff proceeded to kick his right leg back in fury, kicking Melbourne back into a wall near a human sized glass vial with a green liquid.
[HP: 5/20]
"You know what that is?" asked Schoff as he walked slowly and menacingly towards Melbourne's body lying against the wall. "That's hydrochloric acid. I use it to dispose of the corpses of my test subjects after they have deceased from failed experimentation. All of them so far have been failures over the past two years. After I have you restrained I'm going to let you watch me throw each and every one of these people you wanted to rescue into the acid alive and hear each and every one of them scream in agony as they are slowly dissolved! I will then cut off all four of your limbs and drag your torso and head off to a new hideout where I will proceed to dissect you alive! That is your punishment for killing so many of my subordinates!"
Melbourne glanced to his side and saw a beaker of the same green liquid sitting on a shelf dangerously close to the edge of a counter top.
"Hey, big guy, I've got an experiment for you." said Melbourne mockingly. "What happens if some of this green stuff contacts your face?"
Melbourne swiftly took the beaker and threw its contents into Schoff's face. Schoff immediately covered his hands over his face in agony and pitiful screaming as Melbourne jumped up and raced to grab a shotgun from one of the corpses he had created earlier.
"Please have a bigger kick than that useless handgun." thought Melbourne to himself as he fired it at point blank range into Schoff's head.
The head burst into a shower of blood and circuitry, showering Melbourne in disgusting residue as his opponent's lifeless corpse fell to the floor.
Melbourne proceeded to dispose of Schoff's corpse before he heard the most horrifying sound of his life.
Police sirens began blaring outside of the complex.
"Damn woman didn't listen to me back in that alleyway!" cursed Melbourne under his breath. "She called the police before I was ready. Shit, what do I do? I haven't destroyed the evidence of cybernetic research yet and I still need to erase the memory of all these victims so they don't accidentally implicate the Red Cybers in all of this. It would be easy enough to just burn the whole place with the fuel Schoff already laid for me, but I can't just kill all these people."
As he said these words to himself, a still more horrifying and far more haunting sound entered Melbourne's ear.
"Please, you're not with these thugs right? You have got to kill me! I can't live anymore with what they did to me? My limbs, my physique, oh God, my mind!"
"Kill me too!" cried another. "I can't get my sanity back! That big cyborg fucked my mind up so bad! All my pride is gone! All my reason to live is gone."
"Don't let the police save us! They'll just execute us anyway with the machines these people integrated into us!"
The room quickly became a horrifying chorus of pleas for death. Melbourne felt like he had just been put into a Christian film describing the horrors of hell with wailing spirits begging for one final release from their eternal misery. Normally, he would think they just needed psychiatric help after a good long session in a hospital, but the physical condition of most of these people was so horrendous and irreparable that he knew he'd rather be dead than in their shoes.
Just as Melbourne was thinking that it would be better for the rebellion, the victims and himself if he just took the short way out and set the room ablaze with these mutilated people inside, a final chorus of sounds sealed his final decision.
The sound of boots entering the corridor where the broken bookshelf lay in pieces was accompanied by shouts.
"It's the police! Get on the ground and keep your hands on your heads!"
Melbourne then made a decision he knew would haunt him for years to come. He picked up Schoff's flamethrower and lit the room ablaze, escaping into a ventilation shaft that would allow him a quick escape into the streets outside. As Melbourne retreated into the dark Ghetto under the light of Phobos, he looked back at the flames of the warehouse where the evidence of cybernetic experimentation was going up in smoke, and with it the broken lives of fifty kidnapped and mutilated victims and potentially a few innocent police officers as well. While Melbourne had killed before, none of the battles in these past two months had made him feel the weight of guilt quite like this one.
Melbourne removed his mask and walked in shame into the distance where he would catch the nearest flying train out of this gods forsaken slum.
It was time to return to his hotel and heal both physically and psychologically. He was sure that the psychological healing would take far longer.