Chapter 43

Monkey turned to Ajax with rage seething from his eyes after contacting Bomen "Brother Ajax, I just talked to the Boss and he said that he issued a total of 100,000 eddies to be given to the family. 50,000 was from the pension, 40,000 was what you earned and another 10,000 from his personal savings. He wasn't free, so he tasked Alex with the delivery..."

"That motherfucker. Grab the kid and come with me." Ajax put on a poker face, picked up the zombie knife with a 20cm-long blade beside him, and walked out shirtless.

Monkey knew shit was about to go down, but he didn't have the balls to try and stop Ajax, so he could only follow behind with Lily.

***

The evening was approaching, and under the setting sun, all the operators who had been busy all day were enjoying a delicious meal near the cafeteria. Alex was no exception.

He had just finished his meal and was humming a song as he walked towards the door. He was going to spend some eddies in the business district tonight. Life was good.

Just as he was thinking about where he could go to burn the eddies when he caught a glimpse of something that made his heart skip a beat. He saw Ajax walking towards him with a zombie knife in his hand and looking pissed.

Ajax was shirtless and bandaged, no one would pay much attention to him after the things that had happened in the past few days. Many operators were injured, so his appearance wasn't one that would draw attention, however, Alex was able to recognize him due to his fierce gaze that sent shivers down his spine, causing him to subconsciously freeze.

Before he could come out of his trance, Ajax threw a quick jab with his right and hit Alex on the nose, followed by an uppercut with his left and using his right leg to knee him in the stomach, sending Alex tumbling to the ground.

Ajax stood over him and stomped on his stomach twice before asking: "Where's the fucking money?"

"*Cough Cough* Hey man....what the fuck? Who the fuck do...do you think you are to put your hands on me?" Alex said out of breath. He subconsciously stood up and was about to take a swing at Ajax when he saw the knife in Ajax's hand and thought of Ajax's deeds. He stopped himself and stood slouching forward while holding his stomach in front of Ajax.

"WHERE. IS. THE. FUCKING. MONEY?" Ajax jabbed his finger into Alex's chest with every word he spoke and on the last word, he threw a right hook and clocked Alex on the jaw.

It was suddenly quiet as the commotion had attracted the attention of everyone near the cafeteria. "It's Ajax" one of the operators muttered, which caused everyone to recognize him as he had become a legendary figure on the border within a day.

The operators also recognized Alex who was Bomen's cousin, but apart from eating, drinking, playing, and gambling, helping Bomen pass on messages, and running errands, he didn't have much sense of existence.

No one had ever thought that these two seemingly unrelated men would have a conflict.

"Wh-what mon-ARGH" Alex's response was cut short as Ajax kicked him on his hamstring, causing Alex to lose balance and scream in agony.

"Where's the fucking money?!" Ajax's tone grew colder by the second, his patience diminished every time he repeated himself.

Alex then saw Lily who was behind Ajax and holding onto Monkey's hand, and the blood seemed to drain from his face as he realized what was going on. He did take 80,000 eddies from the 100,000 that Bomen had given to Lily's mother. He is an addict, gambling was in his nature both before and after coming to the border, but it only grew worse once he arrived. 

A little while back he had lost a lot of eddies and was worried that someone would do something to him. So when he saw that Bomen had tasked him with delivering so many eddies to Lily's mother, he greedily pocketed as much as he could. Before he left, he even threatened to have them kicked out of the camp if they ever spoke a word.

He knew that a newly widowed woman wouldn't dare make any trouble. Being kicked out of the camp at the border would be a death sentence, no one would dare to take such a gamble. But he had ignored Lily, he didn't know whether it was on purpose or not, but she told Ajax directly...

"I'm warning you, this is a camp. It's in the rules that you can't make trouble, let alone just randomly attack your own people..." Alex pointed at Ajax and tried to slide himself back in horror. He knew he was in the wrong, but the money was already gone with the wind, most of it already spent, he had no choice but to try to use the rules of the camp to suppress Ajax.

"One of my own? Who the actual fuck do you think you are you son of a bitch!?" Ajax swung the zombie knife at Alex and cleanly cut off the finger he was using to point at him.

"ARGHHH!!" Alex grabbed his hand as it burned with pain and started wailing, "Yo-You're crazy! I'll fucking kill you!" He had originally thought that Ajax would beat him at most, but he didn't expect Ajax to actually use the knife he had on him...

The surrounding operators were also taken aback when they saw Ajax's actions. They didn't expect Ajax to be so violent and quickly chop off someone's finger over a disagreement. However, none of them came out to stop him. They instead enjoyed the show happily from the sidelines due to the fact that no one really liked Alex because he usually offended a lot of people. They only tolerated him due to his identity as Bomen's cousin.

Who knew that he would eventually meet his match and it would be someone who didn't give two fucks about his identity...

"Listen here," Ajax crouched down and started lightly slapping Alex on the cheek like a mafioso. "Im going to ask you one last fucking time, and if I have to ask you again," Ajax leaned in and whispered, "it will be Very. Fucking. Painful." Ajax stood up and looked around as he asked "Where is the money?"

"I spent it, I spent almost all of it...but I'll pay it back, just give me some time, please just give me some time...I-I-I'll pay ba-" Alex had tears running down his cheeks as he stammered out, but his words were interrupted by Ajax's chuckle.

"You'll pay it back...You'll pay it back. Now how the fuck are you going to pay all that money back?" Ajax stopped chuckling and stared at him blankly. "Money, money, money, it makes the world go round, don't it? Unfortunately for you, it just happened to be the thing that brought it to a halt. So why don't you just pay up with your miserable life?" Ajax held Alex by the hair and placed his knife on Alex's neck, making it draw a little bit of blood.

But before he could slice his neck, his arm was grabbed from behind by a heavily panting Bomen.

"Hey...hey..hey...w-why don't we just...take out time...talk things out. There's no need to...be so impulsive..." Bomen had gotten a premonition that something was going to happen when Monkey contacted him about the eddies that were supposed to be given to Lily and her mother, so he hurriedly led a group of people from the business district to the camp.

Their car almost flipped twice on their way here, but they managed to make it before things got worse.

"Help me! Look at what this bastard did to my hand! This motherfucker is crazy! He was going to kill me just now! He's fucking crazy, drive him out!" Alex attempted to grasp at the straw that was thrown in front of him to save his life, and crawled to Bomen's side, showing Bomen his missing finger.

Bomen smiled at Alex before abruptly sending a punch to his gut, "YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" He then shoved Alex to the ground, "You fucking disgusting worm!"

He was really angry, this was not the first time that this cousin of his had caused trouble for him. But usually, the troubles he caused were relatively small, and the operators didn't make much fuss about it. However, today, this moron had stolen the pension of a fallen pilot for himself. THIS. WAS. A. BIG. DEAL.

If the operators knew that their pensions would be embezzled after their death, and their wives and daughters would be bullied, then there would be no one willing to put their lives on the line for the benefit of them all.

"Ajax, I've been brought up to speed with the entire thing. This is all my fault. It's because I didn't manage things well. I will double the money given to the girl and her mother and I promise you that this sort of thing will never happen again. Please, just do me the favor of sparing his life. I'll explain things in detail later." Bomen patted Ajax on the shoulder as he made his request.

No matter how fucked up the things he did were, he was still his cousin, and one doesn't turn their back on family. *Insert FAMILY memes*

Ajax sighed heavily, "Sure, but you better have a good fucking reason. I won't kill him..." Ajax moved to Alex and grabbed him by the hair as he whispered into his right ear, "You are one lucky bastard. Make sure you remember the price you paid for your deeds today." He then swiftly pulled Alex's right ear and used his knife to slice it off.

"ARGHHH!!" Alex, who thought everything was over after Ajax's words, could feel a burning sensation on the side of his head. Then he saw his right ear in Ajax's hands.

"He deserved to die, Bomen, be grateful I only took his finger and ear." Ajax threw Alex's ear on the ground and crushed it with the heel of his black military boot.

Alex knew that if it wasn't for Bomen and his request, he wouldn't have lived to see the sunset. Alex's actions had been a great insult to all of the men and women who had died protecting the camp. Such a man was worthless, even in the camp.

But Bomen was the leader of the Lazoole Society, and he had also been good to Ajax.

"My ear! My ear..." Alex crazily muttered as he tried to lift Ajax's boot in an attempt to save his severed ear.