The Seraphim: A Cyberpunk Novel

One - Taylor

Taylor Nisos closed his eyes as the rain started to beat down on him. The light from the holographic billboard danced over the alley. He pressed his back against the wall in the shadows. The billboard echoed down the late-night street; "Romanticorp, beauty, priceless". A slender half-naked woman twirled with a straight mane swirled in the air. He had seen it performed for the past half hour on a timed loop. According to the United Republic of Serapha, there was no Taylor Nisos who attended New City Primary School after his time of home-schooling provided by the orphanage he grew up in. His name, Jaymes Hermus, was filed into their system by his handler and drill sergeant. The year after he crawled his way through the jungles of Shariz completely dismantling a drug empire as a field test of their true abilities. Mid-way through their deployment a new war broke out and they were deployed to go fight it because the local country was too inept to handle their own civil war. Another year there - taking down the self-appointed dictator and clearing the capital city so URS Defense Forces could invade with minimal casualties - a deployment that made his skin tanned from the arid sun. Rain felt so good. In an arid country like the Democratic Republic of Dyspro rain never came too often...

Footfalls echoed through the alleyway. Heavy boots splashed in the puddles that collected in the center. Taylor opened his eyes and saw a silhouette of a wide-shouldered man. His long nylon coat brushed his knees. His head tilted up at the wolf-gray sky. He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Hey," said the man. His head panned the length of the alley.

Taylor raised the paper roll of moonleaf between his fingers. "Got a light?"

The man hesitated...

Come on, get closer, Taylor kept repeating.

The man raised his shoulders and closed the distance. He revealed himself in the glow from neon billboard. His hair flat with curled tips and his white skin beaded with raindrops. The man's saggy eyelids expanded with a starling realisation.

The pistol held beside Taylor's hip choked on the sound suppressor. A misty plume of blood erupted from the man's back. They weren't as quiet as people thought or as movies depicted. Even Taylor was surprised by the mechanical click of the pistol's firing action and the crack that bounced off the brick walls. The man dropped to his knees, feeling the blood crawling between his fingers. The man gaped at Taylor. The 10mm round ripped through his right lung and out the otherside.

Taylor dropped the roll of moonleaf into a puddle and stepped into the light that flashed over him.

"T-Taylor?" He craned his neck to get a better look at Taylor.

"Hey, Nate." Taylor held the pistol at his side, his finger tapped the trigger guard with incessant angst.

Nathan Cuzack looked down at his blood-soaked hands. His eyes glistened and scrolled up to Taylor. He could read Nathan's confusion. Nathan opened his mouth and the muzzle of the suppressed pistol flashed.

Nathan splashed into a pool collecting around hole in a concrete. The blood seeping from the coin-sized hole in his forehead washed away in the rain. His brains, hair, and pieces of his skull scattered down the alley. Taylor flicked the safety on his pistol and stuffed it into his trousers. He squatted down and patted down the pockets of Nathan's jacket... nothing. He pushed the body on its back and felt the pockets... a wallet and some keys. He opened the wallet and slipped out a photograph that was processed in a dark room. He wanted it to be state secrets or a doomsday device. Instead, it was a photo of Nathan, Taylor, Ayla, Myra, and Franziska, all standing in front of the Queen's River with smiles and arms interlocked.

Taylor rolled Nathan onto his back and noticed a large bump just above the bottom of his trouser waist-line. He flipped up the tail of the jacket and saw the black automatic pistol. He shook his head and pulled the weapon out and inspected it. Even in the cold rain it felt warm... it was recently fired, he ejected the magazine into the palm of his other hand... four silver-shell encased six-millimeter rounds of the twenty-two magazine were left.