New Blood

[Glass]

The dim, wretched bar at Buffalo has not changed for decades, save for the newer scratches and scorch-marks. A lowly Rogue, Ed, sits drinking counterfeit Liberty Ale at the bar. He grumbles, and pulls a flask from within his jacket, pouring rum into the third drink of the morning - or was it the fifth? As he repeatedly attempts to return the flask to its discreet pocket, he sees over his shoulder - a flash of alarm strikes him. Is that... a Liberty Security Force emblem? He stumbles from his stool to stand, and - sure enough - a stranger is sitting hunched, alone at a table, wearing LSF standard issue. Stepping forward, he-

“Whoa, hold on there.”

A hand grabs the collar of his jacket and hoists him backward. Groggy as he is, his balance obliges, barely landing him on the stool, his side clumsily catching onto the bar.

“I don't know what you think you're doing, but I've mopped up enough idiots' blood today, so sit your ass down. I don't need a full corpse-worth on my floor.”

The grizzled face of the bartender glares at the drunkard, his hands planted firmly on the bar. The bartend's beard does little to obscure the large scars carving voids into his facial hair.
“What the **** are you doing serving LSF rats in here?” barked the drunkard, turning to stare at the stranger, still hunched over a table. Her features were sharp, in contrast with her faded LSF uniform, which could not have been up to dress standard, if Ed could have conceived such a thing. Her expression was dull, her face pointed squarely at the centre of the table, only one of her eyes visible between strands of messy, dark hair. She holds her hands in loose fists, each of her forearms resting a good portion of her weight on the table.

“I wouldn't stare, neither.” The bartend speaks softer, now. Ed turns to look at the bartender, now meekly polishing clouded, mis-matching mugs, staring at the floor. He turns back to the stranger.

The narrow pupil of her eye meets Ed's stuporous gaze squarely. She has not moved an inch, but her stare drills into Ed, her iris almost entirely obscured by the corner of the eye into which it is so inhumanly driven.

Ed flinches and turns back toward the bartender, who meets his briefly fearful expression.

“I don't serve many rats in here save you, schmuck. That there's one of Liberty's finest - or formerly was, depending on your thinking.”

The bartender waits for some flash of recognition in Ed, and soon realises that 'thinking' isn't to be expected.

“You don't know, do you?”

Ed slurs, “what the hell am I supposed to know about ******* -”

He takes a moment to quiet himself, still feeling the eyes of the stranger driving into the back of his skull like sewing needles.

“what's she doing here?”, he asks.

“That one's not LSF anymore, kid, not really. Do you remember back when there was that blow-up in the navy? Navy on navy, the LSF mixed in, all sorts of chaos?”

The bartender's question is met only with more of Ed's blank expression, the origin of his ignorance not certainly the ale.

“It was all over the news! The radio? There were announcements?”

Ed's expression is as dull as it was before, if not more so.

“Well, that's what went down. The navy came down on some battle-group, and the LSF too. Whole lot of officers died, battleships wrecked, the whole lot. Got something to do with artefacts, too. I could tell you more, but...”

Ed hiccups.

“...anyway, the hackers got involved, helped out the battle-group and the LSF, arranged escapes and defection, hid them, and recruited some. But by the time it'd blown over, LSF officers were still missing - and not the ones that had been recruited. As you can imagine-” the bartender's grin fades as he again looks at Ed.

“...as could be imagined, some of these agents weren't too pleased about becoming hackers. Word is, the hackers kept them anyway - took the pick of the rat litter, and held onto them until they were willing to sign up. Encouraged them in the usual ways.”

Ed's eyelids flicker as he gradually slumps backward.

“Long story short, that there is one of the 'recruits' they really wanted. God only knows what she was put through, but there's not much of what you'd have called 'her' left. 'She' is a hacker, now.”

The bartender looks up from Ed to take in the bar at large, and looks with awe at the woman. She quietly stands, and walks towards the exit as another freelancer walks in. Passing him, she deftly draws a dagger from within her jacket, and jams it into the freelancer's rib-cage, swiftly withdrawing it and lowering the weapon to her side as she continues sidling away. As she walks, the freelancer collapses to the ground, gasping, blood spurting from between his fingers loosely clawed at his chest, his body landing with a thud against the cold, unfeeling floor.

Ed, now slumped dangerously backward on the bar, startled by the noise, falls off his stool and lands hard on his side, his leg tangled in the stool.

“DAMN IT!”, yells the bartender, quickly emerging from behind the bar with rags and duct tape.

“TIM YOU BASTARD, GET THE MOP!”

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