Blank cracked open his drink and put the rim to his lips. He gave an exaggerated sigh of satisfaction as he wiped his lips clean with the back of his glove. He actually didn’t really care for light beer. He generally preferred his drinks to be a lot darker, a lot stiffer, or a combination of the two. He lazily eyed the others from underneath his hat, casually lifting the can to his mouth. He didn’t really feel personally hurt by those who had set down his drink, although it would refrain from him mockingly acting insulted later on. Perhaps they were teetotalers. Blank could see someone boasting about how their body was a temple and alcohol was a poison, all the while splicing themselves with further and further unstable augments. 

Still, sharing a drink was a sign of camaraderie; the least they could do was be like him and pretend to drink the pisswater. Pretending was Blank’s new pastime. From his voice to the smile on his face, nodding along as Gorgon pseudo-promised to protect Gaze, everything was just like his augmentations—artificial and barely more than skin deep. Toasting to their health and calling the ragtag group of C-Freaks friends? Yeah, to call it a little superficial would have been an understatement. It’s not that he didn’t like them, he did (well, most of them). He just wouldn’t be going to their funeral unless they offered a baller buffet and promised to speed through the rosary. 

He pondered Gaze’s point: some of them wouldn’t come back alive. It was good to see that he wasn’t the only one who noticed that perhaps Kybuashi actually knew of some likely trouble instead of just being an overprotective investor. [i]Scratch that, some of us wouldn’t come back alive,[/i] thought Blank, not putting his chances of survival above the others. He probably had more experience than most of the team, but experience meant jackshit when somebody could install an augment that allowed them to shoot a coin out of the air from over a mile away while running. He knew more than anyone that the only reason he made it so long was because of a hot streak when it came to rolling dice, and they were slowly being loaded against him.

Although he wasn’t above cheating if his luck did run out.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” said Blank after Phantasm offered a sound reason as to why there were so many of them. He didn’t know much about the woman, but he could appreciate someone who put in the effort to remain unknown. It was a good quality in a Diver. He glanced over at the quiet man, Jag, as he shifted back and forth like he was fiending hard for some Neurotop. There was a chime.

“Time to go,” said Jag.

““I’m sure our biggest threat will be boredom. Should’ve brought cards,” said Blank, discretely placing his full beer into a trash can. Former corporate killer or not, he didn’t like littering. Perhaps his nanny did raise him right; more likely it was a force of habit from covering his tracks while on a job that had just become second nature.

Following the others into the train, Blank made a conscious decision not to sit next to Crash. It wasn’t that the man didn’t appreciate the Diver. Sure, they had completely different styles from what Blank could find out, but whatever got the job done, right? The reason was a much simpler one. If he was going to be on a train for over half a day then he wanted to have a window seat, and taking the one next to the big guy meant he was at best giving up his armrest and at worst having a metallic elbow dig into his gut for the entire trip. Sliding his satchel carefully below a seat in the front of the railcar, he casually kicked his foot up on the seat across from himself and leaned against the window as the maglev kicked on and the city turned into a blur.

After meeting the Divers early, Blank had dug through whatever resources he had to find out information on them. It was an old habit, back from the days when he took large jobs that split the pay between the remaining Divers as opposed to individually paying each an agreed upon sum. It was a recipe for disaster, and more than once had Blank found himself at the end of a “friend’s” gun for his share of the pay. Fortunately, the practice had fallen out of favor a few years back, and Blank had double checked with Kybuashi Enterprises just in case—their payments were freezed until the mission was complete, and any assets owed to deceased Divers would instead be returned to the Corp.

Still, finding out about his comrades had proven to be a daunting task (he once thought about creating a company that licensed and catalogued Divers, before realizing that it would exclusively be used by Corps), but scanning some of their hardware awarded with at least some basic knowledge about what they could bring to the table. He tried his hand at quickly categorizing the group—loud or quiet, tactical or instinctive, lethal or nonlethal—and tried to think of who he would mesh the best with if, no, when things derailed. He pulled himself out of his thoughts as Crash walked past him and stepped into the room with the box. [i]I’m sure it’s not going anywhere,[/i] he thought as he leaned out of his seat and looked into the room. [i]Yup, same old box.[/i]

“You think they’ll show us what’s in the box when we’re done?” asked Blank to his neighbor across the aisle. “I bet it’s going to actually be some p—shit!”

Blank jerked his head out of the way of getting smashed to bits by Crash, appropriately enough, crashing through the door. He didn’t need to hear the big guy to know what was going on; the Oracle Eye had just picked up the loud engines followed by a good number of signs of life. Footsteps overhead confirmed it, and explosions from the front and rear confirmed that they weren’t just some cybered out hobos hopping on a train to avoid buying a ticket. 

[i]Not exactly the way I would start the assault, but I gotta give them some credit,[/i] thought Blank.

“Not to be that guy, but I told you it’s bad luck not to share a drink,” said Blank loudly, smiling. Part of him was glad that things had so quickly gone awry; easy jobs were nice, but they just lacked that special something. He pulled his submachine gun and his baton from his satchel, leaving behind some of his heavier ordnance. Blank did not know what an EMP would do to a maglev train, but he didn’t want to risk sending them off course at several hundred miles per hour.

There was screaming from the car behind them, loud and shrill. His smile faded as Crash bolted towards the car full of civvies. He didn’t like the idea of collateral damage any more than the next man, but Blank had been hired on by Kybuashi Enterprises to protect a box—not publicly play bodyguard to help guard their PR. The feeling of doing a good deed did not put a roof over his head, buy him dinner, or provide him with intel and gadgets; if the package got grabbed when he was off playing hero then he was screwed. 

Still, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t assist Crash, and they would have to take out all of the interlopers anyway. Blank turned his comms on, knowing from experience that plenty of runs had gone sideways because a lack of coordination between unfamiliar Divers. Sure, some knew how to move around other Divers like a talented dancer can avoid getting their toes stepped on by a nervous partner, but some sure as hell didn’t. Blank wasn’t going to simply hope that everyone knew what they were doing. He would have to hope, however, that none of his new friends had an ego; or if they did, at least knew when and where to flex it.

“The bastards are split into two groups; we should do the same and push back before they completely pincer us in here. Alpha can push back the pricks in the passenger car, Bravo can guard the box,” he said calmly over the comms, quickly running the numbers. There were eight of them, so two teams of four.

“I need three people to go with Crash. Preferably people who are good shots; I don’t want to have to throw any more bodies overboard than we need to. Gorgon, you and two others come with me. Call out your team over comms and keep this channel open. We don’t want a clusterfuck,” he said. 

He would normally have picked Crash serve as his bullet sponge just on size alone, but the man had already incidentally volunteered himself to lead team Alpha. Gorgon would serve as a fine, if not even a better, alternative. His radar informed him that none of their attackers had entered the car holding their package yet. Good, that gave them time to set up an ambush. Tossing a piece of gum in his mouth, Blank gripped his Overloader as his mouth filled with the taste of cinnamon. He wrinkled his nose at the gross taste. It was a necessary evil as the chip in his mind vanished him from the sights of his allies. He had until the taste disappeared to be hidden; pushing anything beyond that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.

“Stunning the first guy who comes through. We’ll want to know if they have anything else planned for us later,” said Blank over comms as he sidled up to the door at the far end of the almost empty cargo car. “Don’t shoot until he’s out of the way, and try not to get any bullet holes in their damn box.” Blips on his radar from the next cargo car moved closer to them. "Okay, here they come."