The flight finally landed in the city of Aux, Greenland. It became one of the hubs of the present post-apocalyptic world, as when the ice melted it revealed the beautiful land waiting to be inhabited in scorching average temperature of earth.
The Green and unaltered nature has become the benchmark for the establishment of rich cities like this. Clean air, clean water, minimum skyscrapers, and limited vehicles. This is one of the luxury cities on earth. Only the mega-rich could live there, people like Crey were not even allowed to enter the premises of the city normally.
Though this time was an exception as he was departing a supersonic flight Airport, it was quite conveniently free of checks by Enforcers(police of this era). Woes of human society - If you are rich, you are practically a privileged exception everywhere anywhere.
He landed here at the space hub because honestly any other place was out of his financial constraints.
This hub was established at the boundary of the airport, in the outer city that was connected with the inner city quite securely, for linking major transportation channels all over the world.
Due to its proximity to Aux, this place had emerged out to be one of the core nuclei of interplanetary route to any part of the solar system. You could choose to travel to not only any location on earth, there are even private or commercial space shuttles available to visit the Moon or Mars from here. It was basically the only space airport in Greenland and surrounding continent.
After five minutes of walking, Crey found himself in front of an online Credits Machine. He entered the number of his private bank account where he had stashed his secret money. This money was his hard-earned credits that he had saved for exactly this purpose especially concealing it from his uncle, for starting a new life in a new city.
And regarding the letter of his uncle,
"F*ck you! This is for devouring my food…..I am not going anywhere near that tough military to waste away my restful and lazy youthful life"
Crey chuckled to himself as he harshly stomped on the parting message of his uncle three times in his imagination. He then proceeded to delete the online registered ticket of a maglev train to the Terra academy, also left by his uncle.
The old man was clever and influential but he seemed to have forgotten that he had taught Crey the same way of life,
"He used the letter almost perfectly to push me in his intended direction. From the sudden departure to an expiring aircraft ticket among other items, to this masterpiece letter. It starts perfectly with an easy greeting to lower my guard, to naked threats, then glorifying Fighters to stir my ambitions, to showing sympathy and regret of his past to make me submissive, then finally coming to the main point that he had left no other paths for me. He gave his all to make me choose his wish whether emotionally, practically, idealistically, or financially. But it still fell short."
Crey grinned silently as he entered password for his account.
"Because I am not going there no matter circumstances, to leave my present uneventful life for a strained, strenuous, and vigorous life of military Academy. To become an Evolved Fighter and jump into army life, No thanks. As for the penalty, I think I can take it with my savings."
*************************
Just as Crey was thinking of making his ends meet with his meager savings after paying the penalty. At the outskirts of the Night City where Crey and his uncle had a shop, a mysterious facility was operating in the underground of wastelands. Presently, this facility was in a hectic state due to the latest delivery of a shattered specimen to them.
This was a genetic research facility, one of the most common and essential research facilities scattered all across the solar system Federation. For as long as this epoch of humanity has known, human genetics has been the single subject that is pursued with the dedicated objective to strengthen the human race. Therefore presence of such labs were not something weird or out of place in today's world. On the contrary, people welcomed all kinds of research after getting fruit of enhanced gene recombination drug that could make someone almost like superhero.
But the strange thing regarding this facility was its location. It was established secretly and was working in a hushed and confidential manner, with the location being the underground of lifeless radiation-infested wastelands outside the city. Therefore to conclude that it is not working on some taboo research topic was almost ignorant thinking.
Currently, in the red lab section scientists and researchers were scrambling along to run various tests on a damaged corpse lying on the operating table. Three experienced surgeons were operating an autopsy on the corpse while others were using various unknown machines in the room to take several samples and tests. While several others were observing them from outside theater through observing glass.
Suddenly the door of the observing room opened and a senior position holding woman with large old tech specs on her face walked in. She began to wear her working gloves quickly while she asked the already observing scientists,
"Who is this? "
The young man who was collaborating the data obtained in real-time from the autopsy room into the database, nodded at the woman in greeting and answered hurriedly,
"Test subject 468"
"Hmm, did he get mad too in the end? "
"Yes madam. But the frozen state of his still mutating cells tells us that he wasn't able to reach the peak of his mutations. They were stopped in between the change."
"What do you mean?"
The woman frowned while taking over the transparent screen showing the data from tests and its predictions laid out by a supercomputer. Her frown got more and more pronounced as she reviewed all the data. After a few seconds, the annoyance on her face had completely turned into unrestrained anger.
"Ma'am this means he had been put down even before he was able to completely mutate and get a chance to stabilize. He got neutralized even before starting. It was a huge loss..."
The woman was now practically fuming with anger. She looked behind the holographic screen towards the glass window to see surgeons operating with highly complex machines and running tests on the dead body.
"What a f*cking waste! But how is this possible? If he isn't entirely mutated he wouldn't have killed many people, so how did he get put down by a team of enforcers? Or was there some wandering Fighter who ran into him?"