Welcome to the IDPD (Chapter 5)

"It's the Scars." Mari walked away from the unconscious Yerbol, who was still stuck in the wall and stated with absolute certainty.

"How do you know?" Cillian glanced back at the block leader with at least some sympathy for his pain. He knew now not to get on Mari's bad side lest she did the same to him in her anger. "Or are those the only ones wearing black suits and shades around here?"

"No, there are three elite units that fit the description. But I know of only one person who could be aware of the IDPD." Looking left and right upon exiting the alleyway, Mari searched for something while explaining.

"How do you know so much about the syndicate?" Catching up to her with a skeptical look on his yellow face, Cillian inquired further. From her interaction with Yerbol, he thought she was only a low-ranking member of the Vyrath Syndicate before she left Goria.

"I used to be cleanup. There!" Mari replied in an offhand tone before spotting her target. It was an illegally modified blue sedan that must have been a regular street car before being fitted with antigrav technology. No matter how one looked at it, it couldn't compare to any of the more modern-looking vehicles in the vicinity.

"What about it?" Cillian, ever the model citizen, didn't understand why she walked toward the car with such determination.

"We're going to take it." Not in the least concerned about her companion's straight-laced personality, Mari declared casually.

"Still talking about stealing a car?" Of course, the yellow-skinned recruit would oppose her plan if he perceived it as a violation of his morals.

"If you have a better idea, let's hear it." Not stopping, Mari continued onward. "And don't you say hitchhike. Nobody is headed where we're going."

"Where are we going?" Tilting his head, Cillian asked with a frown.

"Vyrath Tower, two hundred twelfth floor." Mari replied while pointing in the general direction of where that building was located. It wasn't visible from where they stood because it was near Goria's equator. The leader of the Scars, Galinka Vyrath, was the daughter of the reigning boss. With nothing to fear from authorities, she could order kidnapped people brought to her floor in broad daylight.

"Don't tell me..." Cillian stared at Mari as she eyed the blue sedan and ran her hand over one corner of its relatively blocky design. Then his mouth dropped when the dog-eared girl suddenly appeared to get sucked into the car. He blinked his eyes a few times, but the result was the same; she had disappeared.

Then, the car's motor came to life with a low-pitched electrical humming sound. Its side window was lowered, and Mari peeked out from inside. "You coming?"

"Hahahaha! Nohoho, hahaha!" Deisha's laugh echoed through the room. She had been taken away and strapped to a torture rack. However, instead of inflicting pain on her, they had undressed her and subjected her to an all-around feathery assault. It was transmitted to the big screen in the room, and Memory was forced to watch as her companion could barely catch her breath under the continuous tickle torture.

"You monster!" Memory spat at Galinka, who sat in midair as if it was the most natural thing to do. However, the police recruit still wore a deadpan look on her face; this was nothing more than a farce.

"Well, that's not going anywhere." With a shrug, the leader of the Scars switched off the screen and turned to Memory. "And here I thought she would break quickly. I'll have to make do with you then."

Raising a hand and snapping a finger, Galinka gave the order to her men. The two standing to both sides of the double-winged door opened it to reveal a stick-like person in a lab coat. Two glowing red lights floated in his empty eye sockets and exuded malicious intent. It was a skeleton, walking inside while accompanied by the sound of rattling bones. In his hand, he carried a leather bag that doctors used for house visits.

Clearly, he wasn't a doctor who cured people, though.

"You called, Lady Galinka? Pryscor is at your service." He asked in an unexpectedly deep, ethereal voice.

"How long was he waiting behind the door?" Memory asked with narrowed eyes.

"Nekonya here needs some work." Galinka ignored Memory's interjection and gestured for the skeleton named Pryscor to come over. He approached as he was told to, looking at Memory, who was holding back her laughter with his expressionless skull.

"Oh my, what a beautiful specimen. If only she lost a little weight, she would be perfect." Pryscor commented when he scrutinized the almost unhealthily skinny girl. Then he turned to Galinka with a respectful bow. "What do you need from her, my lady?"

"Information about those living in the void." Looking down at Memory, Galinka replied with a dark smile that extended all the way up her cheeks due to her scars. If Pryscor had any thoughts about this, he kept it to himself. "Also, you have a time limit."

"Oh? Why is that, if I may ask?" Although he had no facial muscles, Memory could practically see Pryscor raising an eyebrow.

"You have one hour. Mari Nova will be coming to save these two by then."Galinka responded while waving her hand as if to say that it was a minor inconvenience.

Pryscor dropped his leather bag, the contents of which clanged audibly metal as they hit the floor. Even though he couldn't make any expression, his entire being exuded terror. All the bones of his body were clattering in waves of fear.

"Mari... Nova? W-who are these to her?"

"That's not important."

"But don't you remember? When her girl was killed, she-"

"Get to work, Pryscor." In a firm tone, Galinka put an end to the conversation with a glare that shut the skeleton up. He nodded and picked up his bag with shaky gloved fingers. Fear of the woman before him won over his fear of the approaching Mari.

"You messed up big time." Memory suddenly declared with an unexpected show of emotions. She wore a dark grin on her lips as she shifted her gaze from Pryscor to Galinka. "We're Mari's best friends. If you hurt us-"

Before she could finish her sentence, something hit Memory across the cheek so hard that she could hear her neck snap. It wasn't a matter of speed, as not a single person in the room had moved a finger. Whatever hit her had been entirely invisible and made no sound.

Although it felt as if her neck had been broken, she was not only not hurt but also still conscious. However, she couldn't move a muscle in her body except for those in her face. It appeared that this had been intentional, as Galinka stepped on the carpet onto which Memory had slumped down. Her feet were touching the ground for the first time since her appearance.

"You don't understand." The Vyrath scion and leader of the Scars loomed over Memory with a less than amused expression on her lips. "If you were truly friends of Mari Nova, I would have never taken you."

Upon these words, Galinka walked away without sparing Memory another glance. Her men opened it for her, then followed her out. Still, a dozen more remained to make sure that Pryscor would complete his job without interruption from without or within.

"She just had to make my work harder, didn't she?" The skeleton doctor complained when he looked down at Memory. She had lost all sensation in her body from having her neck snapped; physical torture would be useless on her.

"You could bring me to a hospital." Despite being unable to move the rest of her body, Memory could still talk.

"Oh, that will not be necessary." Pryscor opened his leather bag and unrolled a holster for all kinds of surgical tools. Some looked like regular items one would find in an operation room; others were custom-made for more sinister purposes. "I am better than any hospital."

"I'm relieved to hear that." Memory muttered with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

"Careful, you're going to crash! No, go left! Right- no, up!" Cillian pressed out with his jaw tensed and eyes wide open. He was grabbing onto the handrail and his seat while sitting shotgun in Mari's illegally appropriated hovercar. She weaved through traffic haphazardly, sometimes entered the opposing flight lane, and never employed the turn signal.

"Shut up and let me drive." Mari growled while suddenly pulling back the steering wheel to rise to a higher lane. Although Cillian started to suspect that she never learned traffic rules, he did realize that she switched gears and steered with impeccable timing to avoid touching other cars. Maybe she had never driven a hovercar before, but her reflexes and spatial awareness made up for the lacking experience.

They shot past a cruising police car at twice the speed limit. Cillian turned his head to look back, finding that it exited its lane and started up its sirens.

"Driver of the modified blue Retro Skyline! Slow down and land your vessel now!" The patrol car's directional speakers roared after Mari and Cillian. Even with their windows up and the naked antigrav engine humming loudly on their backseat, they could hear the police warning. "If you do not slow down, we will be forced to shoot you down."

"Yes, I heard that." Mari preempted the words Cillian's glare implied were on his lips. "Not gonna happen."

With this simple statement, Mari shifted up and pushed the gas pedal all the way down. The hovercar jolted forward like a horse stung by a bee, pressing her and Cillian into their seats. The sirens grew distant for only a moment, but Mari looked into the rearview mirror to find that the patrol car sped up as well to chase them down.

"We don't have any weapons or defensive capabilities." Cillian pointed at the console between the two seats. It had only an oversized multimedia player and an ashtray filled to the brim with the real owner's cigarette butts. There were no signs of hidden armaments on this ancient car, and a single shot would most likely swat them out of the sky.

"We only need to be faster." Mari replied with a glance in the rearview mirror again. She licked her lips, shifted to the highest gear with unexpectedly practiced but also exaggerated motions, and accelerated once more.

"Don't tell me you learned that from movies." After seeing her movements, suspicion rose inside Cillian. Mari acted as if she didn't hear him, only confirming it. "Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you."

"Driver of the modified blue Retro Skyline! You have been warned!" Even though they had sped up considerably, the police car quickly caught up to them. That was the insurmountable difference between a hover-enabled ground car and a purpose-built interceptor.

"Maybe we should stop and explain our situation." Cillian suggested, earning him a doubt-filled stare from Mari. "Hey, eyes on the ro- sky!"

"Are you seriously still saying that? Goria is crime capital." She declared while performing a sharp turn. In the next moment, something exploded in midair where they would have been if she had not preemptively dodged. "You either get with the program or end up in an organ bank on minimal life support until nothing of you is left. Yes, even muscles and bones can be used."

"You seem to know a lot about that." Mari's earlier reply didn't satisfy him, so Cillian used this opportunity to bring it up again. "What were you-"

"As I said, I was cleanup." The dog-eared girl suddenly pushed the steering wheel into its socket and tilted the hovercar's nose down toward the ground.

"You want to surrender now?" Looking back to find that the patrol car was still in hot pursuit, Cillian asked in a skeptical tone. The police already shot at them, so even if they stopped now, their treatment would most likely not be pleasant.

"Do I look like the kind that surrenders?" Barking at her yellow companion, Mari suddenly turned the wheel and rolled the car into a vertical position. Then, to Cillian's horror, she flew toward an exceedingly narrow alleyway.

"That won't fit, that won't fit, that won't FIT!" He pressed himself deeper into his seat and screamed as the opening came closer.

"That's what he said. Heh." Mari commented, then laughed about her own joke. In the next moment, the top and bottom of the hovercar scraped against the walls of the alleyway. Ear-piercing metallic screeching drowned out the siren behind them, and sparks obscured their vision.

Finally, they were free of the alleyway, and Mari returned the car to a horizontal position. She glanced at the rearview mirror to find that the police interceptor was unable to follow them.

"You did it, you crazy bitch!" Cillian looked over his seat and cheered, then spun his head around to Mari with a shocked expression. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel with crushing strength, and she glared ahead as if trying to hold herself back from attacking him. He had blurted out those words even though they weren't close enough for him to talk to her like that. "I'm sorry. That just came out..."

"Eyes front." But a nervous smile appeared on Mari's lips as she shot Cillian a sideways glance. He did as he was told and beheld the fleet of police cars hovering before them.

"Surrender?" With a meek duck of his head, the yellow-skinned man suggested half-jokingly and half in despair.

"And that is how my grandparents got married." The elderly lady named Maureen finished the introduction to the introduction of her life story. A life story Vega would doubtlessly become acquainted with on his day-long journey across Goria.

Suddenly, heavy footsteps outside the cabin drew Vega's attention. He was acting the role of a child, so he made sure not to stare at the door in cautious suspicion. This was a public train, so it was more likely that they belonged to a passenger than somebody coming for him.

But when the owner of the heavy footsteps came into view, Vega had to turn his head and blink his eyes in surprise. A man wearing a black suit, with a body so tall and wide that his head and arms weren't visible through the glass door, stood in front of their cabin. With a massive finger, he pressed the button to open the electric sliding door before bending his knees and ducking his head.

Somehow, the man was able to squeeze inside in what should have been a physically impossible feat. He easily took up two-thirds of the cabin even though it was designed for six adults. His scarred face was hardened, and he glared at Maureen and then Vega in turn. Those were the eyes of a cold-blooded killer, and the mighty hand he lifted toward the gray-skinned boy promised death.

"Tickets, please." In a reverberating voice that shook the train, the man requested with his open palm in front of Vega.

For a moment, the boy stared at the hand and then up at the face of the man. He had heard the words but couldn't comprehend them in the given context.

"Oh, Lucas. Here you are." Maureen reacted as if nothing was out of the ordinary and opened her purse to take out the requested ticket.

"Thank you, madam." Scanning the piece of paper with a device entirely too tiny for his massive fingers, the train attendant named Lucas returned it to the elderly lady. His friendly smile belied the harshness of his features.

"What a nice lad. How old are you this year?" She asked while bringing out the candy box she had offered to Vega earlier.

"Thank you, madam. I turned nineteen last month." Taking a single piece of candy, which looked like a speck of dust on his palm, he nodded his head with a warm expression. Then he turned to Vega, who had produced his ticket with a blank expression. "Thank you, sir. Have a nice ride."

With an approving nod, Lucas backed out through the door and continued down the corridor toward the next cabin. Vega saw him popping the tiny piece of candy into his mouth and smiling at the taste before his face disappeared from view.

"Where do I even begin?" The gray-skinned boy muttered while rubbing the bridge of his nose.