This stillness was suddenly disturbed by a short crunching of glass underfoot, somewhere beyond the door of her apartment. She held her breath, a metal hand reaching for the handgun beside her. Her eyes locked onto the entrance. Shadows suddenly blocked the light from coming under the door. She felt the intense thudding of her anxious heart, a drum grimly counting down to something yet to happen. She released her breath. The door exploded inwards, slamming against the opposite wall. She brought up her handgun and fired a salvo of slugs that pinged off the armour of someone in the doorway. As the dust settled she saw the looming figure. Easily standing seven feet tall, his helmet fanning out on either side giving him the appearance of a hammerhead shark. A leather poncho hung from his shoulders and an arsenal of weapons clung to his hips. "Gigs up," he said, thin columns of smoke rising from where the slugs had ineffectively hit his armour.
"So much for honour among thieves," Hacks spat back. "That was a lifetime ago," the former Red Raven replied, his hands whipped up from under his poncho. Blasters fired in rapid succession. The slicer dove, her cybernetic arm hurling her pistol with unnatural speed at the bounty hunter. It distracted him a second long enough for her to weave around his firing arc and close the distance. Her organic arms curled around his throat, tightened and squeezed. Her right cybernetic arm gripping his right hand and snapping it down, preventing him from firing with the nub-end of her left cybernetic arm began to strike him in the back of the head, once, twice. His knees buckled for a brief moment from the assault. He grunted, struggling to breathe.
The bounty hunter pushed his head out to the right, catching Hacks in the nose with the wide fin of his helm. Her grip weakened enough for him to break free. He followed through with an elbow to her face. A sickening crunch confirmed to him that he had broken her nose. He elbowed her in the face a second time, then a third. He brought his arm back then spun around, his left arm extended out wide with a curled fist. It connected to her temple and she was sent stumbling away, back against a wall. For a moment she thought she heard an electrical crackle behind her ear. The bounty hunter charged, dropping his shoulder and slamming her through the thin wall. The slicer crashed through the wall and hit the deck with a horrible thud. She glanced up, now in the small bedroom of her apartment. Old bags of delivered food littered her floor. Dust from the plaster settled around her. Forged documents arrayed on her bed. She was only a few hours from quietly slipping away off-world. So much for that, she thought in a confused haze.
Then she heard it again, the electrical crackle. The motors in her arms began to play up, her hand twisted around without her mental command. She realized with nauseating horror the chip inside her head was broken. She reached up and gently touched her temple, testing the damage. When she pulled her fingers away they were coated in thick crimson blood. "You-" she shrieked as the last thing she would see for a long time was a boot crashing down onto her head.
