SONS OF WAR - COX'S OFFICE – NIGHT
Cox sat in the dimly lit office, Imagawa's old space. The silence was loud. Dust particles floated like ghosts in the air. She leaned back in the chair, arms crossed, mind swirling.
She hated this. Not just the silence—but the way it had ended.
No footage. No trace. No explanation.
Just gone.
They'd called it a malfunction—some mid-flight moon bus explosion. But she knew better. Explosions like that didn't happen without leaving something behind.
But Bineth… CoreTech… cover-ups were what corpos like them excelled at.
Still, she wouldn't leave it alone.
She didn't work that way.
Imagawa wasn't just a colleague. He meant something.
And damn it, he deserved justice.
John had asked her not to let it go. And when John asked like that? Well… history had proven that people ended up in body bags if she didn't handle it first.
The comm-link blinked alive.
Firewall and Feline popped up—digital projections, each with their own eccentric touch. Firewall was their sharpest forensic analyst. Feline? Hacker, cat enthusiast, conspiracy chaser.
"Boss, we got something," Firewall said. His voice was stiff, concerned.
Then another ping lit up the screen. Atsumori.
Cox straightened, eyes narrowing.
If anyone knew anything—anything—about Imagawa's past or whatever led to his end, it'd be Atsumori.
"Come to spill secrets? I could use some," she said, waving Feline and Firewall off the channel.
Atsumori's image flickered. His face looked tired—older than she remembered. "Still can't believe the old bastard got it easy like that," he muttered.
"Easy?" she replied, dry. "We have to make do with a pile of debris just so there is something inside his coffin, that isn't easy!"
She poured herself a drink—no hesitation—and downed it.
"You should be careful with that stuff," Atsumori warned. "You don't want to—"
"What do you want, Atsumori, I like to grieve alone," she cut him off cold.
He sighed. Then chuckled, bitter. "Secrets… they never stay buried, do they? Either some asshole shows up with a shovel or the corpses dig themselves out"
She didn't blink. Just listened.
"It started back in 2081. The Horde had just been taken offline. The whole world was in cleanup mode—media sanitized by the military. But the real work? That was us. Paramilitary. Private security."
He looked away for a moment, jaw clenched.
"Thunder Storm Inc. That was our crew. A way out for those sick of the system. Me, Imagawa and a few others joined our old buddy and mentor Katashi—Ex-military. Decorated. Burned out. Hungry to do something of our own."
She leaned in slightly. The name Katashi rang faint bells.
"Then Bineth came knocking. Offered us a contract. We'd handle their mess—the things that never made headlines, the world wanted answers and they werent prepared to give any. Rogue experimental Manuals, unsanctioned researches and bio-weapons, Labs that didn't exist. It wasn't always dirty work… but it sure as hell wasn't clean."
He paused. The guilt was building.
"We were good. Too good. That's when it happened. We got assigned a decommissioned lab on the moon base. High-priority flags—heat signatures, signal pings. The place was supposed to be offline, no personnel, no systems. A ghost shell. our job was simple, make sure no one was snooping around,"
"What did you find?" Cox asked, her voice steady.
Atsumori swallowed. "At first, nothing. A false alarm. Glitched tech. We made our report—but that old fool, Katashi... he had a gut for these things. Said something felt wrong. So we stayed."
He rubbed his temples.
"We pushed deeper. And that's when we found it. The box of Pandora. Rows of cryo tubes. Bodies. Half-formed children. Some deformed. Some alive. Barely."
Cox's jaw tightened.
"Human experiments?" she asked.
He nodded. "Bineth was playing god. Secret advanced projects. The oxygen systems were still running."
"And you didn't stop it?"
"When you work for bineth, turning a blind eye is part of the job," Atsumori said, voice breaking for a moment. "But He couldn't take it. Katashi, He went dark. Started missing ops, he was'nt himself poor guy had lost both of his kids during the war so he left Thunder Inc, Imagawa took over. But one day, we got a call—same lab site, now burning. All subjects dead."
Cox stared.
"Bineth said Katashi was responsible. Activated some fail-safe. Bineth wanted Katashi silenced—off the grid, final solution."
"Did you do it?"
"No. I… couldn't and so it seemed at the time with Imagawa" Atsumori shook his head slowly.
"Katashi had fled in oblivion. Set up something else. A group—The Cyber Wisteria. Their goal? Expose Bineth's many secrets unsanctioned experiments and all that. Tear it all down. Of course Katashi tried to get me in on it, called it the RIGHT THING TO DO but I was skeptic about a lot of things, "
He clenched his fists and nodded dully.
"You see at that time, The Council were calling for Major Sanctions over the activities of major private security bodies, no doubt our buddies at the state police weren't too keen on sharing after the whole war, many private security bodies were already folding up, Thunder Inc was the last frontier, Imagawa knew I never stopped communicating with katashi, told me katashi could help us if we could find him, so I made the arrangement,"
"And he made you lead bineth to him," Cox said.
Atsumori nodded in animatedly.
"Not just him, the whole thing, they were caught unawares, in the frenzy, katashi tried to escape, he was with someone , a boy, called him, his evidence and how he was going to bring everything crashing down on bineth with the kid, "
"What happened to him?" Cox asked.
"Imagawa happened, I couldnt do it, You would think a man who had stared death in the face could but I couldn't, I just stood there, there was a fight, The boy was a fighter too, You have him to thank for the scars on old bastard's face but Once katashi fell, the kid lost hope, in exchange for that, We had all this," atsumori waved his hand around.
Cox sat still for a long while. The office was colder now.
She looked at the whiskey bottle but didn't pour another.
"You think this is connected, all of it?" Cox asked.
"I think someone has found a big shovel and is raising a storm," Atsumori said.
Cox returned "We then, let's go digging"
Atsumoi scoffed thoughtfully.