And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Been away for a few days, now I'm back to pick up where I left off.
'When last we left our heroes'...well, there was stuff happening, that didn't make much sense at the time, so this won't help clear things up at all. Or will it...

Part XI – Closure

“P-please don’t,” Cameron begs.  “I’ll pay anything.  Just don’t kill me, please!”

            Standing at the door, he holsters his Kolt 700 and looks at Cameron groveling on the floor.  “Sobbing for your life.  You disgust me.  Do you know how many you’ve murdered?”

            “I’ve never killed anyone!” Cameron counters.

            “No; you paid someone else to do it for you.  Or your company did it, by forcing families off farms, or out of their own businesses.  You took something from them, and from me, that your money could never bring back.”  Just then, a security guard runs, bolter rifle at the ready, into the bright office.  The guard shouts ‘Freeze!’.  Instead of standing still, the man in the trenchcoat swings around, grabs the guard’s throat with his cyberarm, and breaks his neck with a twist of the wrist.  The guard’s lifeless body drops to the floor.

            “Oh, God,” Cameron sobs.  “No, don’t kill me, please.”

            “Shut up,” he says to Cameron as he drags him by the collar to the large window overlooking the harbor.  “Transluminum, right?”

            He taps the window with his fingers.  “We must be pretty high up.  Above most of the thick smog layers.  Must be one of the tallest buildings in the city.  Must make you feel good, being up here in the sun, above everyone else, all the little unimportant people down there.”

            He pulls out his old slugthrower.

            “No, oh no, please,” Cameron cries.

            “I’m not going to shoot you, don’t worry about that.  This is for the window.”  He takes three shots into the window, cracking and breaking it.  A punch with his cyberarm knocks out the broken pieces.  “I’m not even going to kill you.  I’ll let something else do that.”

            “What is-is it?”  Cameron asks, fearing the answer.

            “The ground,” he replies, and picks Cameron up with his cyberarm and tosses him out the window.  He watches Cameron fall until he gets into the smog layers and can’t be seen.  As he turns away from the window, he pulls a picture from inside his armored trenchcoat.  He looks at the image of the woman and the little girl, both smiling and beautiful. ‘I know you’ll never come back, but now neither will he.’

            A single tear falls from his eye onto the picture in his hand.

Next time around, you'll get to meet someone new.