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“Criminals. Citizens who didn’t pay a bill on time or couldn’t afford to. The poorer people, all of them. Someone who came here with the wrong papers. The immigrants. People with no proof of address. The homeless. People with unregistered jobs. Prostitutes, minors, illegal workers who couldn’t be employed anywhere. Even the very people who helped build the Core were kicked out as illegal workers. People who couldn’t afford medicine from the Core? Yeah, the junkies.”
The woman’s lip kept twitching as if she was out of words. Eden’s eyes were burning a hole through her, and she had no response. Not because she still didn’t believe it, but because Eden’s hazel eyes showed so much pain as if she had witnessed all this herself.
Eden stood back up and suddenly pointed at Dante.
“There are criminals like him. You kick out all the criminals, you say? No, you’re just letting new and more dangerous ones grow right on your doorstep. The monsters the Core created because people here needed worse monsters to protect them. You just created a lower level of hell to blind yourself in that fucked up little paradise of yours.”
The woman looked up at Dante, and suddenly, it was as if she was seeing him for the first time. Fear grew in her eyes. Maybe she had heard of the Zodiac, or she was frightened by Eden’s words.
The blonde sighed and took one step back. The Exiled one finally turned her gaze toward Eden, shivering. All of her beliefs were crumbling. Eden didn’t have the eyes of someone who was lying or spoke without knowing.
“W-what... what about you...?” she asked.
Eden frowned and glared back at that woman.
“I’m a hacker. The one thing your leaders fear the most. Someone who can cheat your system, wreck it, corrupt it. The one who digs up your dirt and exposes all the blood you shed. I don’t play by the disgusting rules that they wrote.”
A long silence followed Eden’s words as she swept her blonde hair over her shoulder. She had spoken arrogantly, but everyone in the room knew she was completely in the right.
“A h-hacker...?” muttered the exiled woman. “What’s that…?”
The people in the Core had no concept of what a hacker was.
They were never taught that the Core’s rules and the System their society was based on were only numbers and codes, a digital structure so fragile it could be modified by humans. Eden knew enough about the Core. The Architect, the founding father of all the Cores, had created the perfect artificial intelligence to control them all; a completely automated system with hundreds of agents. Since it ruled itself, there was no need for human interventions. Any kind of job related to the System had completely disappeared in a matter of weeks. The humans had been sent back to their role as consumers, and the rulers of the Core had made sure no one could alter or interfere with the Core in any way. They had understood how it was dangerous to let free agents modify the System when the System offered complete automated control of their lives.
It also meant anyone with any knowledge on the matter had been hunted down, and gotten rid of. There were no more black or white hats. Anyone who had the knowledge and ability to get into the System was a high-level threat and target. Some may have been hired secretly, but according to the rumors, most had been killed. The Architect himself had disappeared before the rise of the twenty-second century.
However, all this was a history Eden had no intent to give a lecture on. That woman had been raised to believe in a System: a System that had allowed her to live a privileged life, and she had been kicked out by that same arbitrary System.
“Something you’ll never know,” suddenly said De Luca.
The next second, that woman was shot dead.
Eden closed her eyes. It was one precise and deadly shot, making a quick job of it. Things were over in a second. She didn’t look, but she heard Dante’s men act quickly to get rid of the body while she returned to her seat. Eden took a deep breath and sat down. She wasn’t saddened by that death; death was so common in the districts, there was nothing about it that could surprise her anymore. Considering she had walked into a Zodiac’s lair, that woman had already exceeded her life expectancy by a few minutes.
“My apologies for the interruption,” said Dante, going back to his seat as well. “I fear my security has been rather... lacking, lately.”
He had said that with an ice-cold gaze toward his men. Surely, there would be a few more paying with their lives later on...
Eden didn’t reply and resumed eating, still hungry. It was amazing how her primal needs took over the stench of blood and death. The food was good, and she just couldn’t leave any when she had a chance to eat something so good. Plus, she was in a hurry to get this ridiculous lunch over with and get out of there. Being next to a Zodiac was like standing in front of a gun. She knew that man had a lot more money on his head than she did. Too many people would be happy to see the Italian Tiger fall.
“...What were you doing on the Dragon’s territory?” she asked, suddenly remembering the strange course of events.
“To piss off Yang. I already told you that.”
“You must have bigger prey to play around with,” hissed Eden. “Yang is... was annoying, but he’s an idiot. Old Man Long wouldn’t have picked him as his successor.”
“Maybe, but he was at least useful to make a clear statement.”
Eden stayed quiet this time. So that was his plan... not only to get rid of Yang but to intimidate all those who had eyes on the Chinese Dragon’s territory: the other Zodiacs, but also all those waiting in the shadows for the old man to die.
Old Man Long was one of the oldest and most respected Zodiacs, even among the Zodiac itself. Rumor had it that he was the one who had created the Zodiac, to begin with, using the ancient Chinese zodiac to give all the mafia lords a title to be known and remembered by. Hence, each mafia and territory leader could change, but they inherited their predecessors’ reputation and Zodiac title.
In a roundabout way, the Zodiacs respected their peers, sometimes even without ever meeting face-to-face. Even for the territory wars, they never went head-on against each other, and instead, they let their underlings fight for them. There was no open war, but dozens of little conflicts spread around the Suburbs. It wasn’t much better, but at least it kept it relatively peaceful.
“...You want the Old Man’s territory,” said Eden. “Why? The Chinese won’t accept someone of mixed race as their leader.”
Dante raised his golden eyes toward her. She wasn’t the type to judge people by their looks, but she had to say it. The communities were so cautious toward one another in those times they lived in; someone like him, someone biracial, couldn’t get to the top… It was already surprising he was the Italian Boss.
