A storm was brewing in community G.

A storm that no one saw coming, a storm that Parasite didn't predict, a storm that the Zmer gang didn't anticipate.

Within just a few minutes after Audrey paid the tramps, the boys did what they were best at as they ran across the whole community for easy 5 Cents.

They ran till their lungs hurt, spreading the pamphlets across the community.

The people who lived in the Wastes didn't have the time or the willingness to read or listen to news. Most of their lives were numb, closer to death than life. They were used to living life on the go.

One of the core reasons why they didn't listen to news was because they're not free. A holo-newspaper cost half a Cent.

No tramp in his/her right mind would spend half a Cent on something not food. But today, something that had never happened before in community G happened as free pamphlets rained like manner from heaven.

In the end, despite how monotonous the life of people in this community was, they were still curious about free things.

A few of them picked up the pamphlets, and those that could read did.

As for those that couldn't read, the pamphlet stayed inert for 50 seconds before suddenly beginning to speak!

You would think they'd be scared, but no. Despite staying in the Wastes for most if not all their lives, these people were not unused to technology.

Audrey didn't just print the pamphlets, she used a special digital format in the print that could automatically translate the words into audio like an audio-book, and it was coded to trigger after 50 seconds of inactivity and no clear signs of being read.

Audrey had everything planned out. She did the final interview today, but she had been gathering facts for months. She had been preparing for months.

Today was just the day that she finally pulled the trigger.

And soon, murmurs began to spread among this numb community.

"The Zmer gang is involved in slave trade?"

From scared whispers and murmurs, it turned into silent outrage.

These people were not unused to suffering, afterall, every year some of them sell their loved ones into slavery to turn their lives around and leave the Wastes, but to most of them, life was still worth living so long their family was there.

To them, family is the only light in this dark and unforgiving world.

The Zmer gang oppressed them, but at the same time the gang was their only shield against the tyranny of the Federation.

To now learn that not only was the gang not helping them like they promised, but were actually secretly capturing them and selling them as slaves sent a ripple that silently spread through this previously numb community.

Not everybody who lost a family member committed suicide like the woman yesterday. Most of them, their lives became numb and meaningless, but they were still living no matter how miserably.

And now, these lives were finally beginning to regain meaning.

A gleam returned to those lifeless and numb eyes, fire slowly returned to the cold and dead embers of their heart.

The fire of silent outrage, the flames of anger and revenge.

It was not fast. It was silent, slow, but it was insidious. It was spreading like a disease, like an unstoppable plague.

A storm was brewing.

…

At a corner of a street, an ugly-faced Geneform casually leaned against a pole, relieving himself by the roadside when one of the pamphlets was thrown on the floor beside him.

'Huh?' He was confused.

As soon as he was done taking a piss, he walked over and curiously picked it up. His eyes quickly widened in shock and horror as he looked through its contents.

Within a few seconds, his face darkened considerably as his sharp eyes kept a close watch of his surroundings.

He quickly noticed the boy that threw the pamphlet.

Secretly, he followed him and then cornered him in an alley. "Boy, where did you get this magazine?" He growled in a deep voice.

The boy was scared.

"I-it's not me!" He stammered and quickly spilled the beans.

"A weird Synth lady did this?" The man's eyes glinted with murderous intent.

…

Late in the afternoon, Talia and Brick prowled the streets in a disguise as they waited for Ghostwire's feedback to indicate that the truck was moving so that they could secretly track it to Parasite's secret second warehouse.

As they walked, a teenager ran past them, screaming as he threw a magazine at them. "Free magazine!" he shouted.

Curious, Talia caught the magazine before it could fall down.

The title caught her attention.

[#Justice for Emilia]

She was surprised as she quickly read through the pamphlet's contents and within a few seconds, her eyes suddenly turned deep, dark, and pronounced as her ADE instantly flared up and became unstable.

"What happened?" Brick was alarmed as he quickly took the pamphlet from her and read through its contents.

Brick's eyes constricted. He stayed silent but his dull gray eyes reflected the upheaval in his emotions as he finally realized the reason for Talia's uncharacteristic reaction.

But he quickly became worried as he turned his head to look at her.

"She's in danger". Talia muttered in a dark tone.

She wasn't saying it to get his feedback, she already made her decision. Her ADE flared even more as she activated 2 abilities.

Overclock Mind!

Ping Scan!

Talia didn't hesitate. Overclock Mind doubled her mental processing while Ping Scan enabled her to detect all nearby neural devices, including computers.

After becoming E Rank, her Ping Scan didn't just grow to also include detecting neighboring computers, the range of her Ping Scan also grew enough to cover as wide as a small community like community G.

The reason she didn't use it while searching for the cell tower base which clearly had computers was because she wanted to test Ghostwire.

With both abilities, she quickly locked down the few computer devices in the community with her E Rank NetRunner powers.

Using a simple rule of division and elimination, she eliminated unlikely places where a reporter working for the Freegrid Collective would stay, and within seconds, she locked on to a target.

Immediately, Talia erupted in a sprint.

Whoosh!

Brick wanted to stop her but it was too late.

Left with no choice, he ran after her till they arrived at an inn.

The inn looked intact. Seeing that no commotion happened here, Talia heaved a sigh of relief as with Ping Scan, she located the signal to the specific room where the computer was.

Brick followed her as she entered the inn and climbed upstairs.

When Talia got to the door, she hesitated for a few seconds before she knocked on the door.

There was no response.

Talia's heart sank. She knocked two more times and when she got no response, she pushed the door open.

She looked inside and saw a table, a chair, a bed, and its inhabitant. Talia saw blackened oil on the titanium-skinned body and her gray-green eyes glazed over.

A beautiful Synth lady sat on the bed, resting her back against the wall with a still-serene look on her mechanical face.

A knife stabbed through her chin, piercing all the way and emerging from the top of her head as black oil filled everywhere.

Her cybernetic emerald green eyes were still open but they no longer had any signs of life, she was dead.

Silence reigned for a few seconds as Talia stared at the corpse, then she looked back at the table where she noticed a paper.

With her enhanced perception, all the way from the door she was able to see its contents. The first sentence was written in bold.

["I HAVE 0 REGRETS."]

Talia clenched her fists, then unclenched them.

She focused on the last sentence.

Since she didn't print it but wrote them with a pen, her handwriting was uglier and the pen's ink was deeper here, showing the heightened emotions of the reporter in her last moments- the fear she felt as she wrote this sentence.

["I don't know if anybody will see this, but my name is Audrey Ross. It likely won't happen, but if you ever meet my mom, tell her I died doing something that I believe in."]

Talia's eyes glazed over again but they quickly regained their focus this time as she calmly walked towards the Synth corpse and ignoring the mess, she easily lifted her up and carried her on her shoulders.

The blackened oil spilled over on her clothes, but Talia paid no attention to it.

Without saying a word, she turned and walked back towards the door.

Brick blocked the door with his hand, forcing the NetRunner to look at him coldly as her eyes glowed neon green.

Brick hesitated, then he said. "We're in Zmer gang territory. Doing this, they'll see you". His mechanical voice sounded exasperated.

"And what if they do?" Talia snapped back coldly.

Being talked to with such a tone made Brick flinch; he looked at her with a complicated look in his eyes.

Talia didn't even look at him as she continued. "If they have the guts, let them attack". Her eyes gleamed with madness and rage. "I'll show them the might of an E Rank NetRunner".

With that, Talia walked out the door with the corpse on her shoulder.

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