Carth had seen the whole thing happen. He'd cursed his day job for making him wait an extra minute. He arrived in the lower levels in time to see his charge be gunned down.<br/>Gunned down by another gray.<br/><br/>Carth had been working with the upper-deck well-to-do here and elsewhere for the better part of three decades. Before becoming a Hex-Corp Freelancer he'd been trained as an assassin and deployed on high-risk operations against high-value targets, usually posing as an independent body guard, all the better to get close to his targets. Not bad for someone born into the life. He'd since turned what was once a cover into a full-time job, protecting the same type of stuck-up, genetically-engineered, biosculpted eternally youthful pieces of uselessness he used to kill for a living. But they paid well, especially his current 'charge'.<br/><br/>The pale, redheaded waste of resources that was the daughter of some upper-middle-upper manager at Hex-Corp gleefully wasted momma's money on weekly full-body medical treatments rebuilding a body beaten to a pulp by his own hands. Who was he to argue, she paid him quadruple his corporate rate to rape and mutilate her body. Hed enjoyed it the first time, but not it was just another part of the job.<br/><br/>He watched his opposition scurry back into the darkness and punched a wall panel with blood still embedded in his knuckles from earlier in the day. The dent didn't help the fact his newest side job was a bust. He slipped both of his Hex-Corp semi-automatic sniper pistols back into their holsters on his hips and decided to forget the new client who'd given him the job, but couldn't.<br/>The patch on her jacket was identical to the tattoo on his bare, bulky shoulder. Corporate propaganda said Hex-Corp was wholly united. He knew better, but didn't think even they would do something like this. Or would they?<br/><br/>He shook off the thought. He was not not nor ever paid to<i>think</i>. The corp had genetically-engineered walking calculators and supercomputers the size of the station for that, but curiosity, he admitted to himself, had gotten the better of him.<br/><br/>He followed the other gray at a discreet distance.