DC Technomancer: Chapter 12

Thankfully Victor managed to get Stella home without any problems, and after making sure she and her father would be cautious he took the back roads back to his hotel. Once he was inside Victor locked the doors and braced a chair underneath the handle. 

“Nexus what have you found out Diego and the six hands?” 

[Despite being one of the oldest gangs in Gotham Las Seis Manos had a fairly small scale of operations, and was considered a low threat priority by the GCPD] 

“I'm hearing a lot of past tense in your wording, what changed?” Victor asked, cutting straight to the point as he started to undress. 

[As Ms. Rivera explained the criminal group has undergone a change in leadership. Louis Rivera suffered an extreme medical incident providing Diego SanAntonio an opportunity to execute a mostly peaceful coup. That was until he started replacing the various officers and captains with his own men. Since then the gang’s activities have ramped up significantly, before they mostly dealt in illegal gambling and distribution of Schedule I drugs. Now there have been multiple shootings and stash houses with links to the gang, but the police have been slow to react.] 

Victor grunted as he shrugged off his shirt, “Perfect, they shouldn’t have access to any heavy weapons yet and they haven’t managed to branch out. Start locating their stash houses and any other relevant locations and come up with a priority list. I want to do this all in one go, make as big of a splash as possible.”

[Very well, I should have the list shortly] 

Feeling Nex retreat from the front of his mind Victor took a moment to calm his racing pulse, “And so it starts again.” 

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For the next three days Victor hardly got any rest, his day started before the sun rose and ended after it set. During the day Victor did reconnaissance, tracking the Las Seis Manos gang and their operations, getting a rough count of their scope, including their major stash houses, and all their personnel. By the end of the week Victor had a list of every single member along with their personal history and background. 

When he wasn’t talking about the gang and its activities Victor was at The House either gambling or fighting in the ring. Both activities accrued him money and a reputation, two things that opened several conversations which led to the most important thing for Victor, networking. 

Before long the moniker Nex was known throughout The House and several crime lords had asked for personal favors looking to hire him as a contract killer or muscle. Victor refused all of them but he did manage to secure a few resources he would have been hard pressed to access otherwise, including but not limited to a small armada of weapons and ammo. But Victor had his orders on hold as he couldn’t exactly store several pallets worth of illegal arms in his hotel room. That was until his big event on Friday. 

Like he promised Victor stepped into the cage at nine o’clock sharp, things started off slow, not many people were available so early in the day. But after five, things ramped up and it got to the point where Victor would drop one opponent only to have a second charge right out the gate hoping to end the fight with a quick blow and claim the thirty thousand dollar reward prize. 

By the end of the night Victor was covered head to toe in bruises and bleeding in more places than not, but he was still standing. The entire House was packed shoulder to shoulder with people frothing at the mouth not able to believe the scene playing out in front of them. Ten seconds from midnight people started to count down like it was new years, roaring at the top of their lungs and screaming their heads off. When it reached zero the roar was actually deafening but Victor was barely conscious by that point, his body was running on literal auto-pilot. 

After collecting his earnings, over five hundred thousand dollars plus the thirty thousand dollars worth of reward money, Victor booked it out of the city finding a completely random roadside motel. He couldn’t risk going back to his hotel in this state, Victor was at his weakest and most vulnerable so he took every precaution possible to avoid someone following him looking to rob his hard earned winnings.

Victor spent the night tending to his wounds, thankful he could mute his sense of pain as he stitched himself up and disinfected his cuts with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. No matter how strong his mind was Victor was still ultimately a human he could punch through solid concrete or melt steel with his eyes…at least not yet. 

That night Victor went to sleep with a new plan unfolding in his mind, one that would take far more resources than he had access to now, but Victor was nothing but a thorough planner. 

Waking up to the sound of his phone Victor sat up with a muffled grunt as his freshly stitched wounds reminded him of their presence. Ignoring the agony Victor reached over and looked at his phone only to frown when he saw it was from Stella. They had talked through but outside of catching her at the front desk they hadn’t interacted much in person. 

Answering the call Victor held the phone up to his ear, “Stella what going-”

“They burned it!” 

Victor sat up right as he heard the panic and anger in Stella’s voice, “Stella calm down what’s going on? Are you and your father alright?” 

“My home!! Victor my apartment!! One moment I’m smelling gas then I see a puddle by the door and…” Stella trailed off as she broke down into tears, “We managed to get out through the fire escape…but It’s all gone…I lived in that apartment for all my life Victor…and they set it on FIRE!”