Black Market Merchant

Chapter 180: Factory (3)
Wayne was speechless. Pretending to be a part of this vicious gang and walking shoulder to shoulder all these Mad Dogs armed with knives, guns, bulging muscles, and who knows what else, was absolutely crazy! However, after a few minutes of doing just that and walking unopposed with Lisa down the open hallway, he was dumbstruck that her plan was working! The gangsters here only took one look at them and kept on going about their business.

“How is this possible?” Wayne thought as they passed another pair of tough looking men both holding rifles. The two-armed men nodded in silence as they passed, and Lisa returned the nod. Wayne however, remained stumped. “Why aren’t they asking us who we are or why we are here?”

Lisa looked next to her at the very confused Wayne and could guess at what he was thinking. A smile spread on her plush face and continued to stride confidently onwards. She planned on explaining things to him, but now wasn’t the best time.

There were a few things Lisa had learned from her times being with the gang that drove her to try out this plan. Firstly, the gang’s membership numbers were numerous. So many in fact that she still hadn’t come to a conclusion as to how many there might actually be. This fact worked to their advantage. If she hadn’t yet seen every Mad Dog than it was more than likely that the members themselves hadn’t met everyone as well. Thus, they could pretend they were one of them with a good chance of success.

Secondly, because they were wearing these stolen arm bands. Lisa had noticed that there were two types of arm band that members of the Mad Dogs wore for identification. The lower ranking members, likely those new to the gang or common ruffians, had black or gray colored arm bands with a white or black colored snarling dog symbol painted on them. The majority of the Mad Dogs that wore these were mostly found outside of the Mad Dogs compound from what Lisa could determine.

Then there were those that held a higher ranking or were part of a special group; one example being the guards that Lisa had seen guarding Xander. These gangster’s bands were solid red with a pencil thin black ring circumnavigating the top and bottom of the band. Then in black was the gangs snarling dog symbol pressed officially into the fabric. With the way Lisa walked confidently through these halls while wearing this colorful band, showed that her assumption that no one would mess with them, was right.

After they had tied up and gagged the two men Lisa had knocked out, Lisa and Wayne had turned left from the office to see what rooms were further down the passage. They had gone past several unlabeled rooms that looked to be either near empty closest or storage rooms. There were also many office rooms like the one they had broken into. Unfortunately, still no other signs of where the serum might have been being made.

The metal pathway was way longer, wider, and more intricate than Lisa or Wayne expected. Especially considering that it was being maintained by seemingly simple gangsters. Lisa wanted to know how things came to be this way just as much as she wanted to know more about the serum. If the gang had truly made this than she had sorely underestimated Martinez’s capabilities or those that worked under him. Though seeing how much differently this place looked in both design and style compared to the main walled compound, Lisa doubted that he really came up with building this place.

The straight hallway came to a T-intersection, the first turn that the passage had in it. To the right was a closed and guarded circular doorway that looked like it could open like an airlock from some space station. The four guards stationed there were armed with rifles and from their suspicious glairs it didn’t look like they would let them get any closer. Looking the other way, the two infiltrators saw that this way looked remarkably similar to the path they were currently on, but with one differentiation. There were far more people gathered outside of one of the double doors dozes of meters away.

“Let’s go see what they are up too.” Lisa whispered to Wayne.

“O-ok.” Wayne replied nervously.

As the two approached they could here jeers and cheer that sounded similar to what they had experienced in the Warehouse Arena. Wayne was unable to see above the crowded doorway but with Lisa’s height she could see just fine. Inside was what they assumed, there was a roped off ring with two men grappling on the metal floor. After a few seconds of watching, Lisa could tell they were amateurs.

“Is this some kind of screening for new MFA participants to try out? Or just something they are doing to kill time?” Lisa wondered.

Then someone caught her eye, it was Tio. Looking past him Lisa saw lining the wall was an assortment of boxes, vials, and needles. These vials looked remarkably like the same vials she had found in the storage unit. Finally, a solid clue!

Lisa then turned to Wayne, “Come on, we need to get closer.”

Then muscling her way between the crowding gangsters, Lisa started making her way towards Tio and the table he was sitting at. Wayne did the best he could to follow in the wake she had created. The smell that this room emitted was an unpleasant mixture of body odor, cigarette smoke, and blood.

After the two of them made it around to the same side that Tio was on, the crowd thinned some. Tio was being flanked by many other red banded gangsters so Lisa decided to play it safe and just watch for a few moments. The fight ended moments later as one of the men fighting was choked out.

“Bring out the next two.” Tio called out over the shouting to the bald shaven man next to him.

The bald man pointed at two others across the rope ring and pointed at the fighting men inside the ring. They complied by hoping into the ring and proceeded to forcibly drag the two exhausted men out. Once outside the ring both the fighters were tossed into handcuffs and then rushed roughly into a side door. Inside Lisa could barely make out what looked like jail cells or cages.

“Hmm, seems like they aren’t part of the gang. What exactly is going on then? The Mad Dogs wouldn’t need to resort to this kind of fighting if they already have the MFA.”

Then as if to answer her thoughts, Tio called out again, “Bring out two more with AB+ blood. We are going to test vial 2-Y.”

Moments later visibly worn out and handcuffed men with presumably AB+ blood were brought before Tio. They were dressed in filthy and torn clothing, like they had been wearing them for weeks on end. The guards bringing them then kicked the backs of the handcuffed men’s legs forcing them to kneel before Tio. Lisa watched everything they did carefully.

Tio got up and picked up two needles and then proceeded to pick up a vial labeled 2-Y. Tio then filled up the needles with the vials red syrup looking liquid and turned to the two kneeling men. They both shifted nervously on their knees and one tried standing back up. The guards roughly pressed down on his shoulders and replanted him on the floor.

“There is nothing to worry about gentlemen.” Tio said revealing a bright smile from under his bushy mustache. “These shots will only provide a short-term Inducement to your bodies for you to fight with. But first, to measure your natural strength.” Tio then pointed at a nearby dummy torso placed on a device.

One of the guards grabbed the arm of a handcuffed man and hoisted him over to the dummy. Then releasing the man of the cuffs order him to punch the dummy as hard as he could. Unsure as to why the man hesitated and looked dumbly around him. The guard wasn’t going to be patient and pulled out a cattle prod and jabbed the man to induce a quick shock.

The man winced and got the message. The man then punched the dummy torso activating a number panel on the device to calculate the power of his punch. The number just barely surpassed one hundred. This cause a round of laughter to ripple across the gangsters watching.

“Next.” Tio called out as he scribbled down this information onto a clipboard.

The second man punched the dummy as well to produce a similarly low score. Once Tio had written what he needed too, the two men were brought over to him. While the guards held the men still, Tio then administered the red serum to them.

A few moments passed with no visible effects until one man started visible sweating, a lot! His breathing rate increased, and he started to act extremely restless. The guards holding him also seemed to have trouble holding onto him.

“Alright, get them in there. We got ourselves a match!” Tio shouted to the crowd.

The two men were then thrust into the roped ring as Tio explained what was going to happen. “Now this is just a fight, no need to kill each other. Just knock the other out and you win. Simple right? Be glad I am running this test now and not the triplets, at least I will let you live.”

The two men seemed relieved by this and took sloppy boxing stances. It was clear that these two were also complete amateurs. “Fight!” Tio shouted and the two men nervously advanced at each other.

Then something unexpected happened. The man that was sweating heavily struck first, only now his swing was far faster than before. The other man took the full brunt of the swing to the jaw and was literally lifted off the ground and sent spinning like a ballerina into the ropes!

“Match over!” Tio shouted seeming pleased by the results. As he wrote down the results on the clipboard he spoke excitedly to the bald guard. “Looks like the 2-Y batch works 25% of the time on those with AB+ blood. I would also say that the Inducement level is still at B-rank or possibly B+ rank. We are done for the day. Go ahead and put them back in the cells.”

The bald guard nodded and waved to the other guards to lock the men up. Hearing that the fights were over the crowd started to file out of the room and back out into the metal hallway. Lisa, however, remained here. The other twenty or so red armed banded guards weren’t leaving, and she wanted to try and push her luck again by pretending to be one of them. Now that she had found the serum Lisa had to know more.

“Let’s get back to the laboratory and get tomorrows batch started.” Tio ordered as he gathered up several papers and stacked them onto his clipboard. “Everyone, clean up this mess and don’t drop any vials this time!”

The red armed banded guards did as they were told and started cleaning up the vials and needles. Lisa and Wayne, not wanting to be obvious, started to collect the vials and load them into a foam lined box. Once they collected a full load, they joined the others that were already leaving the room with supplies. Still, no one questioned them!

As they filled out of the room, they were headed for the mysterious circular doors they had seen before. Lisa’s luck was bound to run out sooner or later, but now seemed to be not the time. When the doors opened, Lisa was flabbergasted. There was an actual full-blown lab buried under the ground and it was equipped with some serious looking equipment and several lab coat wearing individuals to boot.

Glancing about as un-obviously as she could, Lisa noted that Liquid handling equipment, cryogenic storage refrigerators, countless pipettes and beakers were scatted everywhere. There was one particular device that Lisa knew right away to be the most important thing here. It was a large metal trapezoid shaped device that had what looked to be a large press on top of it that then connected to a second device via clear plastic tubing. The second device was already active and mixing what looked like blood into an assortment of other liquids. Lastly, a third device was also connected with clear plastic tubing and here it was spinning like a centrifuge.

Finally, Lisa had found where they were making Inducement Serums!

Lisa couldn’t look at it for too long, the guards were putting the items they had onto a nearby table and leaving. Lisa and Wayne did likewise and hurried after them. They had only just left the lab when two lower ranked gangsters came running towards them.

“There she is!” One of them called out pointing at Lisa. The red armed guards looked curiously at Lisa and the two lower ranked gangsters hurried towards her.

Lisa balled her fists in anticipation. “Crap! Did they find us out already!”

Then the other gangster spoke, “We need your help with one of the female workers back at the meth lab. Come with us now, uh, please ma’am.”