SKYNET - UTRU Greyhound

(If you comment "TL:DR" I will passionately hate you. If this is too long to read, skip it, but you don't need to tell me about it.)

 

"Do you ever thinking of getting into a different job?"

Salem glanced up from his arc welder, a sense of dread creeping in. He

never knew what to expect when Anvil started like this. It could be the

lead up to a painfully stupid pun, or it could be the start of a question

about something mundane that somehow reveals a soul jarring truth about

society. Salem was slowly adjusting to Anvil's strange ability to be

absurd one moment, and frightfully insightful another. It was a fitting

parallel to Anvil being Salem's partner in business and yet quite

possibly also a spy for the enigmatic Green Corp. Anvil was a double sided

coin.

Sighing deeply, Salem finished his cut and turned his welder off. "Like

what?" he said, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

"Something that isn't run by a company who shares name with a villian from

a movie."

"You watch to many ancient vids. Skynet may be almost on par with a

villain from a vid, but that could be said of all the corporations. And

they pay good."

"Other jobs might pay as good."

"I say again, like what?"

"Like-" Anvil grunted, helping Salem lift the large square of metal away

from the roof and drop it off to the side, "Garbage men."

Salem dropped his end of the plate a little too fast. "Garbage men?" he

asked, surprised. He and Anvil stopped for a moment to look around and

make sure no one heard the loud crash of the plate falling.

"Yeah, y'know, a job where people don't notice you, or shoot at you." If

Anvil was making a joke, his face didn't show it.

"Is this still about Tokushima posting a bounty on us? Skynet has made

sure that it won't be a problem." Salem lowered himself through the hole

they had cut in the building's roof. Anvil crouched on the edge beside

him, covering their rear, "No... well, maybe yes. It just seems like we

are working in a very dangerous field."

Salem looked up, wondering if Anvil was serious. "We're being paid to

shoot things and acquire valuable items. Of course it is dangerous. But we

get to shoot things, and buy gear and armor not available to normal people

like garbage men."

Anvil dropped down into the hole, his feet thumping on the metal grating

of the maintenance room they had cut into.

"Okay, fine, so maybe not garbage men... what about being mercs? They

still get to shoot stuff."

They slowly crept down a narrow passage way leading to a discrete door

that would open out into their target room.

"How is that any less dangerous then what we currently do?"

Salem leaned up against the wall beside the door, Anvil took the other

side.

"I don't know, at least they don't get sent in alone, or when they do it

isn't against the odds we get put against," Anvil whispered to Salem,

nodding that he was ready.

"Yeah but if you are a merc..." Salem turned and ferociously kicked open

the door, pausing the conversation to line up shots on the surprised

guards of the room he was entering. Anvil followed right behind him,

taking the other side of the room. Their Greyhound rifles punched neat

holes through the low-grade armor of the armed guards. The room was

spacious, being almost a full two floor tall, decorated in the round edged

cube fashion that currently very popular. Everything was either a clean

pure white, or a vibrant solid color. Accents were a polished black

chrome. It was the typical highrise penthouse of someone with current

tastes. Which struck Salem as strange, as he thought they were supposed to

be raiding a laboratory. However, the guards were all geared in the

appropriate uniforms, with the right badges. This had to be the correct

place, though why someone would do research on experimental wet-drive data

storage in a penthouse instead of a laboratory didn't make much sense.

Shaking his head free of these thoughts, he finished checking the room.

All clear.

"You were saying?" Anvil asked over his shoulder, holding his rifle aimed

down the hall towards the entrance in case anyone else was in the building

and may have heard them. This was supposed to be the only occupied room at

this time of night. The scientists were all at home, main security was

off, just leaving this guard room that separated the rest of the penthouse

from the room that held the prototype that Salem and Anvil were sent to

"acquire."

Salem paused, remembering what he had been in the middle of saying before

the strangeness of the room had distracted him.

"Ah... yes. Mercs don't get the privilege of having morals. If you want

to be a professional merc who gets hired to do anything interesting, you

most likely need to be willing to throw ethics out the window. In our line

of work we do similar jobs, but all that the suits paying us care about is

that we get the package, they don't care how."

"So we can be careful, avoid innocent casualties... or be reckless and

blow everything up. Doesn't matter which?"

"Exactly."

"That is what I was thinking, this is a good job."

Salem shook he head, "Then why did you even ask if you didn't actually

want to change jobs?"

Anvil shrugged and thought for a minute, then grinned, "Oh, there was a

pretty girl working with the company who picks up the garbage from our

apartment block."

"Anvil... I swear, if you weren't so freakishly gifted at this job, I'd

kick you out this penthouse's window this very instant."

Anvil winked, "Probably, but I am, so you won't. Besides, you've said

yourself that life was fairly boring before I came and-"

"Started intentionally making jobs more complicated and dangerous?"

"-made jobs more interesting."

"Yeah, that may be, but that doesn't mean I can't be angry with you at the

moment." Salem gestured to the door that lead to the package, "After you."

Anvil plugged a hacking module into the keypad and turned back to face

Salem with a grin, "You can try."

"I hate you."

 

(Comments and notes are welcome, desired even. On both the gun and the story.)

(Like, seriously. Comments make my day.)

(Especially on the story.)

Done