Chapter Three: Ignition

[Leo]

New York System
Planet Manhattan
Northern Districts

"We are arriving at the Northern Districts. All passengers please exit, this is your stop, thank you for riding." said the intercom.

I stepped off the tram and looked out over the city from the balcony. The docks district hardly on the horizion. I looked around a bit more and saw the core of Manhattan very close, along with ships coming and leaving the planet. It was truly a sight to behold. I ruffled my coat a bit to get as much warmth out of it as I could and walked down the catwalk down to the lower levels and eventually the street.

Here is what I had figured out so far...

• Tainted was a group that for some reason or another edited people they captured and wiped their memories of who they were before. This was to brainwash them into believing something else. What I had no idea yet, as I had very few memories of what they implanted into me, thanks to Black Company.
  
• On the subject of Black Company, they were renegades to the cause of Tainted, they faught them with what appeared to be Guerrilla warfare. They couldn't take them on head on, because there were far too few of them.
  
• Sarah had either a hate or love for me, I couldn't tell. Takashi was Tainted's current strongest member, Autumn, if that was her name, wanted me captured and was once my wife.
  
• The Dragon tattoo's, including the one on my upper shoulder blade, showed who were the commanders of Tainted. I apparently was one of them.
  
• The Order, in one way or another, were monitoring both Tainted and my progress, for some strange reason.
  
• The list known as "Keyhole" was a list of people that were to be killed or captured by Tainted. I was on the top of the list and Takashi was listed as "captured" That meant that one time or another, he had escaped the grasp of Tainted and fled, similar to how I had.
  
• Shan-Katacuchi was captured by Tainted and possibly being forced to change into whatever the hell I was now, or as a barganing chip to get me to come to them and save her, which I was in no shape to do.
  
• The implants that they put in me were working on and off, and when they worked, I was unable to keep a sane state of mind, I seemed to want only blood when in that mode, I had gone through what Sarah called "Ignition."
  
• The people that freed me from the prision I was in when I first woke up with my amneisa, were Black Company, but Autumn was with them, seemingly a spy, but she faked her own death to get out of them, and resume her leadership of Tainted. But, why would Black Company welcome her presence?
  

The basics of what I had figured out were for the most part cluttered. But some worked together to make sense. The only thing that puzzled me was, Autumn was with them when I was freed, why was she there if Black Company swore her their enemy?

I made it to the bottom and hailed a taxi.

"Where you heading?" he asked.

"Take me to..." I thought long and hard about it.

"A Hotel, I don't care which one, just make sure it's a five star at least."

"Yes sir." he said and the taxi took to the sky.

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
The Banished Legion | Astral