This is my neighborhood.

Looks pretty peaceful in the dark doesn�t it. You would never know from this picture that this place is a kin to a battle field. That each day people fight for scraps of food and sections of the place to call there own. That gang�s rove the streets dispensing there own brand of �justice� with an unmerciful hand wielding death and punishment all in a simple contraption of cold steel and composite plastics.

At night it�s deceptively calm on those mean streets. The dark of night hides so many cruelties, barbarism, and what can only be equated to pure acts of evil. How the shadows hide the run down buildings like empty shells discarded by some absent minded child who grew wary of there charm. Hiding the depravity that fills the air like a thick fog that you can feel tainting your very skin like a thick coat of oil you just can�t get off.

People struggling to survive hiding in the nooks and crannies of those abandoned buildings. Living like animals, fighting each and every day for some food, warmth, and a peace of humanity. All while trying desperately to remain invisible to gang activity so they don�t become just another statistic to some cheap punk looking for easy street credit.

Once good people tried to fight for this neighborhood, hoping they could push away all the crime plaguing these streets. Renovations of old buildings, neighborhood watches, petitions for corporation help. All of it futile in the end and just served to further fuel the jaded desires of these gangs looking for a cheap thrill.

With the corporations fighting for control with the U.S. government for control of this nation, neighborhoods like mine where quickly forgotten by law and military enforcement. Unless we �acted up� that is, then maybe we would see some kind of help to control the unruly. With that any sense of decency and pride for this neighborhood was thrown out as the unwashed masses turned this into a crime filled version of Sodom and Gomorra.

No longer is everything controlled by the fat cats of Washington, but by the people with the most stock and assets. If you don�t have a decent portfolio then you are just another walking sack of meat waiting to be bumped off by whatever means and become �parts� for those with money.

My neighborhood is now known as the combat zone, an area of city given up by the town proper. Where even the most hardened police officer dares not venture without body armor, a cache of weapons, and a battalion of police officers. Even then they never dare enter this zone during the darkness of the night. The shadows are free reign for the truly depraved of society. Seeking out every dark and vile wish that�s ever passed through there brain and relishing in the freedom of doing whatever they want without repercussions.

The year, 2020, the time a setting only seen in movies and read in books by people like William Gibson. A �dark future� romanticized in fiction then made into a harsh reality created by the global decline of all of humanity. You want to be safe, then you carry a gun and wear some body armor and keep your nose out of other�s business. You wish to be a hero here, then I give you three weeks tell I find your name printed up on the local body count lottery. Just another pile of parts waiting for some rich corp in need of a new arm or a matching colored eye to there brand name cyber-optic.

My name is Jack Robinson, but I�m known as Doc. Oc on the streets. Anyone worth a grain of salt has street credit and a handle, a name, other then there own. You do enough to catch attention; people are going to want to know you by something. Never give your real name, enemies desperate for retribution will trace down your family, everyone you love or ever loved, and use them against you. You can�t trust anyone on the streets anymore no matter what your gut tells you. This is a life about style over substance, where a gun gets you what you want and lets you keep some scrap of your dignity.

This is my story. About when I threw down the gauntlet and began fighting the good fight.

A few years back I was a med student on his way to his PhD. With hard work and a sensible head I finally found my �golden ticket� out of this hell hole of a neighborhood. Good grades got me scholarships and corporate representation to get me in a decent college away from the war that is this place. I was on the fast track of living the comfortable life in some little corporate security patrolled suburb. The old dream of a wife, kids, white picket fences, and a sense of security that makes you forget to lock your front door at night filled my head.

I was out of there and as soon as I could do it so was my entire family. Mother, Father, and baby sister Kali where going to ride that train out of a comfortable, safe life along with me. No longer would we be subjected to whatever gang controlled our little piece of the neighborhood that day. No longer will we fear going out or front door and never coming back again.

I thought I had it all. Tell the day, during mid-terms, that I got a late night call from my baby sister weeping uncontrollably. After a long time of trying to get her to settle down, I finally got her to let me know what had happened. It seems our house was sacrificed to what ever warring gangs that rule the streets we lived on. During a particularly nasty skirmish, a incendiary grenade missed its target and landed on our front porch. The fire that ensued spread like it had a mind of its own, like a starved animal desperately seeking for food.

My baby sister Kali woke up from the sounds of the explosion, but as hard as she tried she couldn�t get our parents awake. Before she was trapped inside the burning building, she fled into the dark night. Shaking with fear and uncertainty, she crawled through the back alleys of the neighborhood tell she could find some kind of refuge. Something not easily found in the combat zone, especially when the gangs are itching for violence.

I can only blame myself for this. If I had been there, it would have been different, but all the what ifs I ask it still remains the same.

As soon as I heard that phone call I packed all my clothing in my car and drove back home. No warning to the professors, no extensions on my mid terms. I had to be there for my baby sister and that was that.

By time I got there she was passed out in the hospital�s waiting room with a police escort keeping an eye over her. She looked so sweet and gentle curled up in that chair, as if her world hadn�t just been crushed hours before. I didn�t want to wake her up, sending her back into the reality where are parents where burned alive because gangs made there home a causality of there turf wars.

So I knelt in front of her, reaching out and softly caressing her forehead, and just watched her sleep. Knowing that this will be the closest to peace of mind either one of us will have for a very long time. Shortly after her little forehead furrowed as she began to whimper in her sleep. She was having a nightmare and I knew what it was about, I didn�t even have to ask. Soon the tears where rolling down her cheeks as she cried out for our mom. It nearly broke my heart watching her in so much pain. With a loud cry her eyes flow open, darting back and forth frantically.

�sssshhhh baby girl, I�m here.� I tried desperately to calm her down as I hugged her tightly to my chest. She fought against me, still confused from the dream. Then slowly she realized it was me and began openly weeping into my arms as I rocked her back and forth.

Over and over in my head I kept thinking the same thing, some one will pay for this. Someone will pay for this with there blood.

Many months have gone by and I never went back to school. I received my warning e-mails that if I didn�t return soon and make up for past work that I would be dropped from the program. I didn�t care; I had my baby sister to take care of and a job to do here. As to be expected I was dropped out of the program and lost my corporate sponsorship and scholarships. No cushiony corporate job for me, no wife and kids nor a house with white picket fences. I was back in the combat zone and fighting to survive again, fighting for a place to call home and some food to put in our stomachs.

With some money I had from a part time job during college and some left over �house funding� scholarship money, I managed to get a loft in a building that should have been condemned years ago. It was run down, leaky pipes, cracks in the foundation, but it had four walls and a roof over our heads.

From there I ran a small �medical practice� with the skills I learned during med school. What it breaks down too is I bandaged up punks who dare not walk into an actual hospital in fear of explaining how they got the bullet holes or ducking existing arrest warrants. I was good, I�ve always had a natural ability of fixing up people and the word soon spread that I was reliable and fair.

I kept my true identity secret, it had been a few years since I was in the neighborhood and I had grown quite a bit. No one seemed to recognize me by face, and I wanted to keep it that way. I had all my patients refer to me only as Doc tell one day a punk jokingly referred to me as this twentieth century comic book villain Doctor Octopus because when the clinic was overload I had my hands in everything like I grew an extra set. Since then my street name has been Doc Oc and I prefer it that way.

Soon the �practice� grew, and fast. From simple bandaging up scrapes and cuts to full out emergency surgery, I did it all. The money was coming in hand over fist and I was making good contacts. I didn�t have a license to practice so I had to get all my medical supplies on the black market. Working out trades of lowered prices for free medical, I was soon building a full clinic in the middle of the roughest neighborhood in town. The punks I had a charge scale based upon the seriousness of the injury. The more I had to patch you up, the higher it cost, but for good people down on there luck I did the service for free. I helped them as much as I was capable of with the knowledge I had and the supplies I could procure.

Quietly on the side I investigated all that happened on that night. I had to be very discrete about it; I couldn�t just ask anyone what they saw that night. Around here you ask too many questions and your body is liable to be found six months later crammed into a waste disposal drum. So I had to take it slow, find reliable people I could pay to hunt down the info for me. I began working out a small network of information brokers in the neighborhood, people I found who had the right skills to find what I needed. People a bit down on there luck, but still have some kind of moral standard which to live by. Them or the truly desperate, either way I was working with people I could keep quiet as long as the money was good.

Though still I was playing it safe, never had one information �broker� ask too many questions that led back to that night�s events. Set each one on specific tasks, pin point information gathering so they wouldn�t be able to put two and two together and realize what my true identity is. They where good at finding information, maybe a little too good. Somehow the word got out that I had this list of information brokers on the street that could get the low down on anything. Surveillance photos, background histories, eye witness accounts, black market products, you name it and they could find it.

Some people started approaching me for more then medical needs, but hoping to pay me for my information services. I couldn�t turn them down; it would arouse too much suspicion. The word is already out I have these people at my disposal, how am I to explain why I�m not utilizing them to earn some extra cash. To easy to arouse suspicion, I must keep this as low key as possible.

Now people where coming to my �clinic� for more then medical attention, but to contract my network of information brokers. This was starting to get out of hand, the clinic and the network was shining a big spot lot right down on me. Anyone looks too closely; they might discover the truth and the truth could be the end for me. I�m not so worried they would kill me, but what they would do to my sister. I�m gaining money and power on the block, if any gang new I was plotting some revenge on some of them I would be taken out �just in case.�

I needed just enough time to get my revenge and make sure my sister was far away from here with plenty of money.

Just a little more time, and I will have it.

Night time has grown exceptionally hard on me the longer I keep this going. I dare not sleep; I fear they will come at my weakest moment. And the dreams, those plague me every night. I feel like I�m channeling Kali�s dreams through me, reliving that night right along with her. I can imagine that night as crisply as if I was actually there, and they haunt my dreams.

Instead every night I would lay next to my baby sister, give her comfort tell she was deep in sleep. Then I would slip slowly from her grasp and quietly make my way to my office. The rest of the night I would poor over the file I was building on the tragic night�s events. It was very detailed with names, pictures, background histories of anyone remotely involved with that turf war. I would read it over and over again tell each single word was burned into my memory tell I could recite it back to verbatim. I pinned the pictures of each of the gang members up the wall with detailed information on little sheets of paper under each one.

The night�s dispute, turf war between the Wolf Pak and the Crimson Razors over the neighborhood recently vacated by the more powerful, but now debunked Chrome Judas. Seems the gang Chrome Judas had built up more debts then there bodies could pay for, and with some very nasty crews on top of that. Discreetly they where taken care of, and after that there turf was open to any poser gang who dared called it there own. For a few years the Wolf Pak and the Crimson Razors where neck and neck for dominance in the combat zone, close in power to each other that it was hard to differentiate. Then came the deciding factor, who ever could take over and hold onto old Chrome Judas turf, was the �alpha male� of the neighborhood.

My family was destroyed for fucking street punk politics.

Recently I�ve gotten good information from three different eye witnesses on the punk who threw the thermo grenade at my family�s house. A Crimson Razor by the street name of Bloodhound. One of the most vile, putrid punks to walk the face of the planet, his rap sheet alone speaks all I need to know. Convicted of or connected too thirteen rapes, seven counts of vandalism, six counts of arson, forty three cases of man slaughter, under age prostitution, drug smuggling, and the list goes on and on. He has eluded a long term prison sentence by lack of evidence, more then one of these cases the eye witnesses came up missing or refused to talk, or ratting out other punks, even ones of his own gang.

I have a sneaking suspicion his fellow punks don�t know he is personally responsible for eight of there members serving consecutive life time sentences.

I am sure I can utilize this information to set my plans in motion.

Now that I knew who all the suspects where of that night and know more about them then there own mothers. I had to devise a plan cunning enough to fool both gangs to do what I want without them catching on. As if my plan was of divine intervention, my �first step� of the plan fell neatly in my lap late Friday night.

Turf wars rekindled, a pack of Crimson Razors showed up at my clinic�s door step that night. Each one of them bleeding profusely, panic swimming in there eyes and a fear of death permeating off there body like some vile perfume. And as it happens, Bloodhound was one of these people, and he was one of the worst off of them all. My fingers where quick and nimble as I attacked each critical case like a one man emergency room, my mind racing to push the final cogs of my plan into place as I fought of a seething hatred for this man. I came close of ending it all there, a simple thing. A heavy dose of anti-coagulant mixed with the morphine drip introduced to his blood stream while I patched up his liver. He would slowly bleed out on my table as I kept playing out saving his life.

That was too easy, too good for this scum.

So I patched him up just enough to keep from dying on me and then moved onto to his friends. I fixed them all up and filled them with pain killers, quick heal, and antibiotics then sent them on there way. Leave your buddy Bloodhound here, I have more work to do on him and he is to unstable to be moved tell the morning.

I had him; I had him all alone in my clinic laying out one of my tables. Slipping in and out of consciousness, barely aware of the world with the drug cocktail I had fed him. Something to keep him quiet, a special blend that would loosen his lips; make him more susceptible to my suggestions. I knew he wasn�t going to like what I had to say, for what I had in store for him to do. Though he doesn�t really have a choice, do as I say or I feed you to the sharks.

I worked diligently for the next few hours fixing him up; he was a real mess after that last fight. Replacement lung, vat grown arm, and three hybrid plastic/alloy ribs later and the man was as good as new, maybe better then before. Then I fed him part two of my �cocktail�, mixture that would bring him awake, but keep him tranquilized from the neck down. Sure it would be a real chore for him to do simple things like swallow or even breath, but that was a risk I was willing to take.

Doc Oc: Wake up asshole, I got work for you to do.

Bloodhound: Uuhhh�whhha�what?

Doc Oc: That�s right, wake the fuck up. I got shit for you to do, and buddy, you are going to do them.

Bloodhound: What the fuck are you talking about, Doc? Why the fuck can�t I move?!?

Doc Oc: Oh don�t worry about that, it will wear off in a few hours. Tell then keep your concentration on your breathing and on what I say. Trust me, your life depends on both of them.

Bloodhound: I swear mother fucker, if you don�t let my ass up now I�m going to rip your fucking heart out�

Doc Oc: So impudent of someone who ratted out eight of his �closest friends�. My, I would think a few of your friendly Crimson Razors wouldn�t be happy if they knew you put them all up by testifying against them. Especially since three of them are currently serving sentences for crimes you, in fact, actually committed. Oh, they�ll get a real laugh out of that one.

Bloodhound: �what�what are you talking about? I did nothing like that.

Doc Oc: Oh but you did Bloody, its all right here in your file. You do know Lieutenant, and life long pal, Jack Corbin kept a record on you, didn�t you? You know who I�m talking about, the cop who set you up with all those cushy pardons. The same one who �lost� evidence or manipulated it for you, in secret no doubt, to get you to testify in his cases? Sure you do, how could you not remember your buddy Jack. By the way, did he ever mention that he never �lost� that evidence, but rather kept it all gathered up in case some day you decided to fuck him? Whoa, could the courts really build a case against you with all this evidence. Hell, its so damning I�m sure they�d bring back hangings just for you.

Bloodhound: �how did you get that?

Doc Oc: Well hell Bloody, you know good ol� Jack isn�t �by the books�. The man is more crooked the Supreme Court combined. Oh well you should know that already, he did get you off those charges for murdering an entire family after you raped there thirteen year old daughter. Seems Jack has been a little bit iffy about you for quite some time. Of course it probably helped I laid a suit case full of money in his lap.

Bloodhound: You fucking bastard!

Doc Oc: Ah, see you�re wrong about that. Officially you are the bastard. Child of a heroin addicted prostitute, father of unknown origins. Gee, sounds like the true makings a bastard to me. Me, on the other hand, came from loving parents who where happily married tell the day you took that all away from them.

Bloodhound: You can�t prove any of this shit! Now let me the fuck up!

Doc Oc: Don�t make me slice your esophagus open with a scalpel and force you to choke on your own blood. After all, you are not in a position to resist.

Bloodhound: What�.what is it you want me to do?

Doc Oc: Simple as this, I want you to keep your mouth fucking shut tell I give you your orders. Sometime in the near future you�ll be approached by one of my agents, which will be your cue to set my plan into action. That night you will ambush a group of your Crimson Razors, massacre them, then make it look like it was a Wolf Pak hit.

Bloodhound: I can�t do that to my fucking boys!

Doc Oc: Sure you can, you�ve fucked them over plenty enough. Just think of this as one more �pardon� for your crimes. If you don�t do this I�ll then have to send copies of this file to each of your �boys.� Let them deal with you in there own quirky brand of �street justice.� I�m sure you�ll be legendary after they get done with you.

Doc Oc: Just do as I say and I promise this file won�t fall into the wrong hands. And don�t worry about getting caught; just hire some outside guys to help you ambush them. Since the turf wars are on again, I�m sure your fellow Crimson Razors will blindly take the evidence you leave behind as fact. Oh and one more thing, if your thinking you are going to fuck me on this, don�t. Currently five separate people and three net runners hold copies of your file. If either my sister or me come up missing or dead, each of them have been well paid to make sure the files are not only distributed to Blood Razors, but also to be conveniently dropped in the laps of more diligent police officers.

He cracked like a week old saltine under the pressure. I had the man thoroughly in my pocket and there wasn�t a thing he could do about it.

To be Continued�

It's about time - Wednesday, Jul. 07, 2004
An Honor for Chrome - Friday, Feb. 20, 2004
A great loss - Monday, Oct. 20, 2003
a terrible announcement. - Tuesday, Sept. 09, 2003
Chrome speaks: - Friday, Sept. 05, 2003