Chapter Fourteen

You heard the crowd but didn't expect to smell them well before you caught sight of the assembled strikers.

Cargo containers were piled by the half-dozen, forming an impassible forest that your group had to navigate around, the depot premises not meant to play host to so many pieces at one time, but having been paralysed and truckers not pausing in their deliveries, daily deliveries accumulated upon each other.

That you could navigate by smell was an indictment of the quality of workers and civilians who resided in Santo Domingo, which is ironic since you lived here too, and in a shitty area too!

Gasoline, alcohol, sweat and rotting food, it was such a pungently strong odour that the more civilised captains among your number had to pause to start retching, unaccustomed to such barbaric smells and sights; already, they were complaining to one another in their foreign language about filthy unwashed gaijin.

Nevertheless, moving between the spaces of a few cargo containers that had been left abandoned in the area most close to the depot's main building, you arrived at the parking lot; and to the assembled crowd of indignant workers, who seemed to have expected your arrival.

You'll swear on your life if any Corporate Suit in HR asks, you categorically deny the allegations that you pointed and laughed at your Japanese superior when he got nailed in the head with a bag of dog shit, and whoever implied you did is a liar, and you'll throw down if he's game.

A lot of colourful language was thrown your way as you and the rest of the Arasaka strikebreakers began to fan out, four groups forming a long line separating the strikers from the Depot's main building, whilst two other groups formed up into what could be passably called a wedge, intent on driving a hole through the crowd and securing the entrance.

You saluted the fools unfortunate enough to have been placed under the two gung-ho Japanese officers; already, one was nursing a bruised forehead from a rock thrown his way by a heavyset civilian.

A few younger individuals were counted among the crowds, often with speakerphones and standing on a few crates or a trashed car, shouting catchy slogans and encouraging the much older union members to fight for their rights.

You think you may know one of them, your eyes narrowing as you ignored the spittle from a lanky blonde in a stained wifebeater who thought your youth would imply an easy target for intimidation.

That fucker got his jaw cracked with your baton alongside your delayed order to the now injured man to "cease and desist!" utterly oblivious to the fact that you were whaling on a defenceless man; your comrades moving to scare away a few of the crowd who thought to try and help the fallen man.

After finally ceasing your harsh beatings on the near-comatose man, you and your co-workers pulled back towards the safety of the wider group, and you thought to give one of the provocateurs a second look, trying to remember where the hell you saw her before.

"First, it's them, then it's us! Make a Stand! Fight for your right to work!"

The voice of the dark-skinned, lithe woman was most definitely familiar, the silver crucifixes that hung from her ears alongside that very distinctive afro-style hairdo that was tinted with a subtle crimson dye that only revealed itself under direct sunlight, causing it to glitter.

Shit, that's Dani! Huh, guess you owe Amanda fifty eddies; you always thought she'd become some soulless charity organiser, but your ex was right; that bitch doesn't have an iota of self-preservation.