Thread: The Vulture and the Butterfly

Nathan Wallace had long ago learned that the outside world was no place for precious little innocents, and as far as he was concerned, his Shilo was made of spun sugar - he wouldn't allow her to be corrupted or damaged by the horrors that waited on her doorstep, and he knew he could never tell her the truth. What she saw on the television and the city she saw from her balcony was all she would ever see, and that was how it had been for seventeen years, and the only exception had been the times he allowed her to visit her mother's tomb, wearing her gas mask. But recently she had gone outside when he'd been busy with a - - patient. Seeing his little girl collapsed on the ground with guns pointed at her - she was so helpless, she wasn't a threat - Nathan had seen red, and he'd had to resist the terrifying urge to murder every one of those men just for standing that close to his daughter. Rotti told them to stand down, and Nathan had shoved them out of the way, lifting Shilo into his arms - she didn't know it was her father, she was slipping out of consciousness, and the Repo mask obscured any features, the visor making even his eyes difficult to recognize. He'd taken her home, brought her around, convinced her it was all a dream - she hadn't been outside, she just forgot to take her medication and hallucinated. Her curiosity had got the best of her, and as he sat on the back of a patient and absently-mindedly sawed through the man's leg, he found himself worrying about whether she would do it again some day. What if she left the house again when he wasn't there - what if she got further this time, and got lost? What if Rotti didn't call them off this time? What if she ran into some pervert? Screams of terror brought him back to the present, and the Repo Man irritably brought the thick handle of his knife down onto the back of the man's skull, knocking him out while he dissected the detached leg and fished out the femur, eyeing the barcode on the joint before shoving it into a bag. Wiping his vinyl gloves off on the front of his coat, he dialed for Shilo. And meanwhile, not so terribly far away from the Repo Man, another dark figure sat amongst the dead, but with the distinct difference being that this particular man was not the cause of death, he merely cashed in on it. As far as the Graverobber was concerned, there was nothing wrong with what he did - the dead didn't feel it, and they had a marketable product that benefitted the living. He was just the go-between, getting the product from point A, to point B, it was just that point B tended to be the veins of some back alley junkie, or the occasional Wall Street junkie like Amber Sweet - who, he noticed, was becoming more back alley every week. He put his chin in his hand, pursing his dark lips at the decomposed body in front of him, She's not very nice, you know, Graverobber said in a conversational tone as he jammed the needle into the nasal cavity, and he continued to talk to the dead man, but predictably got no response, She keeps cleaning me out, she's got more replacement parts than original ones these days. Some of them are very nice, mind you. He removed the vial from the gun, tucking the Zydrate into his pocket he'd been in this graveyard many times before, it was one of his favourites because of the mass graves - it was a massive and untapped source for his product, and it would take him years to get to all the bodies. He'd had to stay away from it for a little while, since the last time he'd come by, he'd nearly been swept away by the security, and that girl - sweet little thing - she'd been yanked away. He'd felt a little bad about it, so he'd stuck around to see if they actually killed her and while it was a relief that they didn't riddle her with bullets, the most bizarre thing happened when the Repo Man had appeared. Instead of tearing her apart and removing bits like Repo Men were hired to do, he had - picked her up. Cradled her, even. Normally he wouldn't concern himself with the lives of others, but the entire thing had left Graverobber confused and just a little weirded out had the girl had some connection to Rotti? Was that why she had been let go, was she being brought back to GeneCo, was she even still alive? She had been too clean, too well-spoken and far too naive to be a street rat or a vulture like him - in fact, when he'd first seen her, she'd been chasing an insect. It had made him feel like he was in some twisted version of Neverland, standing in the cemetary, digging through bodies while a sweet, wide-eyed teenager chased fireflies, not knowing what else she would find there. And oh, the things she could have found. The things that lurked in cemetaries these days went beyond the horror of just a few dead people - junkies and dealers hung around the area, but so did the Harvesters, the twisted people who had realized there was money in fresh organs, and who had begun to lurk in the cemetaries to get their hands on the junkies who were too basted on the glow to fight back. The Harvesters would mercilessly hack them apart, take their organs, and sell them to the highest bidder - it was just another black market that had risen in an attempt to escape GeneCo's reign. Usually Graverobber would find the remains of the Harvesters' victims - which was never much - and he would sift through for any useable bits for Zydrate. But that particular night as he weaved his way through the headstones, following the sound of a ringing phone, Graverobber found himself in an awkward situation - he came up unexpectedly behind a Harvester who was clearly preparing to get a little work done, and for a moment, Graverobber considered quietly backpedalling to save his own skin. He considered it up until the point he peered around the Harvester's shoulder, and realized that the potential victim was the same girl from before. Graverobber's wide, mascara-rimmed eyes shifted from Shilo to the Harvester and back again, and he silently removed his Zydrate gun from his pocket and jammed it into the Harvester's throat, injecting a vial of pure air directly into the guy's jugular. Immediately, the man collapsed into spasms, and Graverobber immediately grabbed Shilo's arm, running.