Chapter 6: CHAPTER 6 - MADMAN HIGGINS
"Is he the one" asked Feng as he stretched his neck to look at the person sitting at the corner of the bar.
He is wearing a V-neck cream coloured t-shirt which is full of grease and oils. Maybe once the shirt was white. He has dark brown hair, which is in a total mess hanging down his face even covering his eyes. Feng couldn't see his eyes partly due to the low lighting of the bar and partly because his eyes are covered by his hair.
The place is a well known bar among the soldiers and the scouting teams. Not in any way a place for government officials or high class people. The place is rowdy and noisy. Often witnesses one or two bar fights every night.
The six surviving members of unit 37 gathered in this place. Their injuries from last week are now all healed up. If anyone sees them now they will not be able to tell that Roger's right shoulder was half stripped open last week.
A medicine pode could heal you back up to full health from any injury unless it is damage to brain tissue. One of the wonders of medicine bay. Rogers was placed in one of those medicine pode immersed in a nutritive liquid. It is a very gooey substance.
Doctors say that that yellow gooey liquid is similar to amniotic fluid. It stimulates the cells near the injuries to undergo controlled cell division. Basically your body is healing itself like a natural process but in an exaggeratedly fast way with external help.
All of them are present in this bar to meet a new mech designer. His name is Linn Markel, only surviving member of the wiped out unit 235. The meeting was arranged by their wing commander Mark Russo.
"Yeah he is the one."
"I know it looks bad, but he is the only one we have got to work with." Michael is clearly disappointed in what he is seeing. A drunkard who is still gripped by his losses.
More disappointed when he remembered the plan he and commander Russo came out with to get their hands on the Mecha.
He hasn't told his team the plan yet.
He looked at his team members. They are all indulging themselves in enjoying the food that the barmaid delivered. Not caring what meat is put inside their sandwiches.
Predator meat?
No. That will be too expensive since taking down a predator includes risks and losses. Losses in both men and resources.
Most probably rat meat. Yeah, there are lots of rays in the abandoned tunnels of the bunker
Hell...who cares. As long as it is edible.
It has been two days since his meeting with this wing commander. He had thrown him a life line for his unit that day. If they succeed in this venture they will enter the metal corps. If they fail .....no need to think about it, they will all die without any doubt.
Operating a mecha with six or seven people is clearly asking for death. His only hope is that the mecha that the mecha that drunkard made is a small version designed for a half team. A ten person operating mecha.
Michael has no idea what the drunkard was thinking while designing it.
Half the unit in the mecha taking the brunt of the attack and providing heavy artillery support while the other half of the unit stay on the ground agile acting as moving assets?
Michael could see the advantage of this strategy. Rather than cramming all of the twenty or twenty five members of a unit in a single gigantic mecha, providing a single target for the predators to attack. This method will put forward the mecha as a solid strong front and foot soldiers as agile moving combat personnels who could respond rapidly to the changing battlefield.
Or maybe he is overthinking it, the drunkard is a fool after all. He may have just designed it that way because he was short on funds to make a proper mecha for a team of twenty five.
Michael has a feeling that it will be the latter. Michael looked at Linn Markel who was halfway to his fifth beer.
"He is too young to be a mecha designer. What is he thirty? Probably thirty two" Stella guessed. The dim light of the bar not giving her enough clarity to guess his age correctly.
"He is twenty five" a voice said from behind them and wing commander Mark Russo walked toward their table. Rogers suddenly pulled a chair from the next table and everyone scooted a bit to make room for their commander.
Russo nodded his thanks to Rogers and sat down. He placed a manila coloured folder on the table and slid it over to the centre as if telling them to take a look.
" At least that's what the police report says."
That got everyone's attention. They know there will be a story behind it otherwise Russo will not pull up the file from the police department.
"There was a break in attempt on his rented warehouse six months ago. A three member gang. They were vagrants looking for scraps from the workshop. They thought it to be empty and abandoned. They didn't know that he sleeps there.
"Two dead bodies and one mentally deranged person is all that left when the cops arrived at the scene."
Everybody paused what they were doing hearing him say that. Sebastian even has a cabbage cliche hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"WHATT....." Riyya is the first one who came out of the shock.
"You are telling me he killed two civilians for breaking into his property?"
"Why the hell is he still out here and not in a cell?" Riyya cursed out.
There is a deep frown in Michael's face as he hears Riyya cursing loudly. But his frown is not only because of Riyya cursing. He has a feeling that trouble is coming and he knows he can't avoid it.
"There was no evidence showing that it is Linn that is responsible for the murder" Russo said as he took a sip from his glass of water.
"For God's sake there is a witness to the whole incident. The third man, you said he is alive" Riyya exclaimed as if she could not comprehend that the cops couldn't arrest a guy for murder even with an eye witness.
Russo pointed to the manila folder to a mugshot of a person who looks like a beggar. "A mentally deranged witness who says only one word 'Higgins' from that night onward."
"What..." Sebastian whispered as he looked at the drunken man at the corner table. Sebastian felt disturbed and he wanted to be at any other place but here, in the same place where Linn is.
"The third member, he has been placed in a mental hospital cell facility since. They call him madman Higgins there."
"Apparently he screams 'higgins' all throughout the night from dusk to dawn." Russo said.
Everyone felt very disturbed after hearing that and kept their silence.
"Is it safe to make a deal with this kind of person? Who knows what kind of mad things he could have come up with while designing the mecha" Feng said as he swallowed his saliva. He is clearly nervous to get into a mecha designed by a psychopath.
Russo remained silent as if he didn't hear what Feng said.
"The question you should be asking is whether you want that kind of person as your teammate" said Michael in a quiet tone.
Every one looked toward Michael as if he had said the dumbest joke in the world.
Feng laughed and said "Really? Who wants an unstable person to be your partner while facing monsters out there" He is laughing inside imagining himself with Linn as his team buddy facing the wolf predator.
A psychopath besides him, as dangerous as the predator before him. That would be fun. Who knows who will kill him first, the predator or his buddy.
Riyya is the first one who noticed that Michael is not laughing. There is no smile on his face or his eyes. There are no wrinkles on the edges of his eyes. They usually show when he is laughing or smiling.
She knows her father and she knows him better than anyone. That look he is giving means he is dead serious about what he said.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone