Episode 8: Our Women Lead: Women Arbiter in Cyber Age

"If the law is too far from justice while the gun is closer, then we use the gun to uphold justice."

--Minerva Aydana

Minerva is probably in her 40s or 50s and seems to have a Central Asian origin with black hair and black eyes. This elegant lady who looks like an experienced fashion designer is actually the leader of the famous mercenary organization OWL (Our Women Lead) and one of the chief judges of the Mercenary Olympics and the New Triathlon World Cup. She reminds people of the famous British Prime Minister, "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher. Although they do not look alike (especially after the prosthetic modification), their perseverance and uncompromising temperament are terribly similar.

Compared to other mercenary organizations, the OWL is tiny, perhaps only a few hundred people. It looks pretty secretive, sneaky, and careful, leaving no traces. This is an army of women, and their expertise is not in regimental combat, but in special operations, assassination, sabotage operations, and intelligence service. Whether it be combat skills or guts and intelligence, female mercenaries stay caught up to the elite male mercenaries of other organizations.

Why are there so many outstanding female mercenaries here? It could be that the OWL uniforms are just too stylish, and these ladies are here for these glamorous uniforms. They even have different ones for each season. Minerva actually paid a designer from a high-end luxury brand to work with her on them. Obviously, she really understands the girls' picks. These uniforms are stylish, comfortable, and extremely concealing (invisible at night even with infrared sights). More than one person has suggested Minerva set up her own fashion brand and promised her it would be a big success, but Minerva has turned it down because she has no time for that. Only the successful streetwear brand operator, Andrea, president of Andean Condor, has not given up on trying to persuade her so far.

"Hey, ladies! This is a man's race, not a fashion show! Finish your catwalks and go home to mommy!" A rude, tall, bearded male mercenary sniper dressed as an ancient Spartan warrior said with contempt as he watched the OWL shooting delegation enter the arena while smoking his e-cigarette at one of the mercenary Olympics.

The ensuing competition smacked the man in the face. The women mopped up almost all of the medals in the shooting events. After the awards ceremony, the male sniper stood on the field in a daze. The Spartan Legion commander, Diamondagis, came down from the judge's box and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Bro, if our Spartan ladies can be as good as them, how lucky would that be? Oh, and please watch your language as a Spartan warrior. Do respect all those ladies, just like how we respect our mothers, wives, and sisters. Respect them even if they are from our opponents.”

“I understand. Thank you, sir, for your words. I will be extremely proud if my wife is as fierce and courageous.”

Many years ago, when Minerva was a female sergeant of the Task Force at the Vitmusk police headquarters, she found little Veronika unconscious outside the burning orphanage and took her to the hospital. When she was not on duty, she took care of her at her bedside until the poor little girl regained consciousness and was able to speak.

……

“Sweetie, why were you in the orphanage? Can you tell me?”

“My dad and mom died in a car accident last winter.”

“Poor girl. Do you have any family left?”

“Where is my little sister? Is she in the hospital too? I have to see her. I also have an older sister who ran away from home a couple of years ago.”

“No hurries, dear. You haven’t recovered yet. You have to rest now. I will bring you to your sister once you get well…”

Minerva has always wanted a daughter, but she is so focused on her career that she has no time or interest in starting a family. If she really had a daughter, she would like her daughter to be as cute as little Veronica. If possible, she would do anything to adopt this little girl ...... but she was so busy, and how could she take care of her?

Like all shrewd and strong female officers, while being warm and fuzzy, Sheriff Minerva's meticulous, calm mind is on duty . Veronica's words alerted Sheriff Minerva, but of course, out of compassion, she didn't tell Veronica about her sister's death. It was a careless male officer who spilled the beans. Veronica said that their parents were killed in a car accident. However, today's cars are mostly self-driving. After years of iterations, vehicles have developed a perfect safety design. It was unlikely for the car to skid even on a snowy day. Let alone scurrying to the sidewalk and killing people. But her colleagues from the traffic department said that similar things had happened several times last year, and the car company would pay the compensation and promise to improve the safety system to settle the matter. However, similar things are still happening. The victims are all young and middle-aged humans with abled legs, none of them were cyborgs, robots, or elderly, which is suspicious.

As for the disappearance of her sister, there are similar cases in recent years, and most of them remain unsolved. People just disappear into thin air, never found. Runaways of rebellious teenagers addicted to the virtual world are common, just like disillusioned adults having suicidal thoughts. But the strange thing is all surveillance that might have caught these missing persons’ last trace would be either broken or could only present meaningless snowflakes. Besides, satellite signals would also be interrupted; the ubiquitous Skynet would somehow fail whenever it is needed. It happened several times. The police department's technical team would report finding GPS location signals of missing persons and the Task Force would rush to the scene. Nevertheless, whenever Minerva arrives at the scene, they would find nothing but dismantled GPS devices on the ground or stuffed in cracks in the walls.

After returning to the police station, Minerva began to privately investigate the relationship between these accidents and disappearances, and soon made progress. She used her authority to access the archived social accounts of the victims and discovered that all of them had posted negative comments against large technology companies (including Faun and Thoule), and many of them were also former employees of technology companies, just like Veronica's father and sister:

Her father, Dimitri: bioscientist, and former middle-level manager at the Faun Group. He was forced to leave the company because his project team got cut. He later became a minor influencer as a science blogger. Although Faun once offered a considerable amount of "hush money" when laying off employees, Dimitri still revealed some of the shady practices and implicitly criticized some of the company's ongoing research projects in addition to his science talks.

Her sister, Victoria: student, cosmetics and gaming blogger. She once criticized one of Thoule’s games in her livestream before missing, claiming that “it was a fool on OG players and was not a good value of money”. Her live clip was on top of a video platform’s timeline for a while.

These people have no gang backgrounds, they are law-abiding nice citizens, why such a tragedy?

“If we cannot solve the problem, or we just don’t want to deal with the problem, then we solve anyone who reveals the problem.” This is Thoule’s long-lasted notion. What an elephant in the room.

Through integrating and analyzing information, Minerva somehow bypassed the Skynet and got together a profile of Dave that was a little bit different from the “agri savior” and “generous grain god” Dave.

Dave only trusts his university alumni, and this "alumni association" completely occupies the group's upper management team, interfering with projects, manipulating the stock market and virtual currency markets, embezzling public funds, transferring assets, you name it.

Dave thinks very highly of himself, neglecting his last bit of humanity. Humiliating his employees is a common thing. As for complaints and protests from users and netizens, he would ask his PR to deal with them. If it fails, he would just force them to shut their mouths, or simply, vanish them.

Dave spends much more time buying and selling virtual currency and cyber artwork than he does managing his company. He hands the management completely over to the alumni association while he lives his luxurious but rotten life.

Dave is a neat freak by genes. He has a phobia on the genetic modification products of his company. He would clean himself with a huge amount of biochemical agents to clean himself every time he has done his “show” in greenhouses, corrals, and labs.

Other than his OCD, Dave is also extremely afraid of disease and death. Therefore, he intakes a lot of drugs to strengthen his genes. Under the side effects of these medicines, his mood is extremely unstable. His so-called management becomes daily walks on segways with his workers. If he’s happy, then everyone gets a bonus. If he’s annoyed, he would assault these workers. If the side effects become too severe, he would just grab a guy and pour out his “difficult journey of entrepreneurship” for a couple of hours while crying. Every worker surrounding him must also show their admiration. Or else, he would be furious.

Faun has a heavily invested secret project which they claim is led by Dave. Internal staff is not allowed to ask anything about this project. If anybody does, they would be fired.

Most of the charity projects at Faun are used by Dave as a laundry machines for black money.

It was super difficult to investigate Oswin from Thoule. Even his employees rarely had the chance to see him. Meetings and conversations were usually conducted through holograms. Therefore, Minerva chose to put her focus on the investigation of the Faun Group and Dave.

As Minerva's investigation went further, other female officers with a sense of justice and similar doubts joined her and made an even more alarming discovery - all the accidents and disappearances could be linked to the human and organ trafficking network on the dark web, or what the police call the "blood market". The Faun group needs a large number of living people, dead bodies, and organs (commonly known as "goods", and are coded with uncorrelated names like display cards, hexagonal wrenches, soapboxes, etc., depending on their parts) for their human modification projects and "secret projects". Many of the old and disabled Uranus is also desperate to renew their organs. These old bellies can no longer afford genetic and prosthetic modifications, so they go to Faun. There is quite a significant supply of "goods" from gang members, mercenary prisoners of war, and prisoners, but due to drug abuse, genetic enhancement and human modification, such "goods" often fail to meet testing and transplantation standards. Therefore, the Uranus turn their attention to the protestants and rebels and carry out unscrupulous assassinations and kidnappings. After Veronica's parents were killed by the Uranus, she was told that their bodies were sent to the funeral parlor for burial. But instead, they were actually sold to the Uranus as "goods". After genetic purification to eliminate rejection, each of their intact organs can be sold for a good price. As for her sister Victoria, she really disappeared without a trace, as if she had traveled to another universe.

The just Sheriff Minerva did not want any innocent citizens to get hurt, thus, she was keen to solve the problem from its root. She applied for a special investigation on these cases but got denied by the deputy. He even warned Minerva “do your job and do not be nosy. Especially the blood market, stay away from it. This is overstepping, I have the right to penalize you.”

Not long after, the deputy demoted Minerva in the name of “overstepping to access electronic files”. Minerva, out of anger, chose to leave the police department where she worked for over 10 years. A few other female officers who realized the dark side of law and politics and lose their hope decide to leave with Minerva. Those are the OGs of OWL. Each of these female officers has their own grief; some have a missing son; some have a missing husband who is probably still on the battlefield; some have an advocator brother who was arrested by police from other cities, not knowing if he’s alive or dead. Others have witnessed crimes and debt forced by the social system, pushing good citizens into gangs. As law imposers, they could not even protect justice and the people they love with the law.

With their uniforms off, these ladies were drinking and having the best time of their lives at the pub. That was where the half-drunk Minerva made her famous statement: "If the law is too far from justice while the gun is closer, then…we use the gun to uphold justice!"

What now? Let’s protect justice with our guns. Other than shooting with their guns, these ladies do not want anything else anyways. And to be honest, they do not know how to do other work. After all, they have been police all these years. With that said, they establish a mini mercenary organization.

The short form, OWL, is coincidentally aligned with Minerva’s family guardian angel: Owl. And owls happen to be the envoy of the Goddess of wisdom, who is also named Minerva. What a creative spark.

After the establishment of OWL, the organization mainly take assassination orders from resistance forces. They offer bounties to assassinate members of the Uranus group and key personnel from gangs. OWL earns a profit from the commission. They would also bring back and break up the dead bodies into pieces and make a handful by selling them to the "blood market" if lucky. Of course, they leave no trace of that too. Minerva is not only talented in criminal investigation, but also in business operations. The former cyber police transform into female hackers. They are familiar with the loopholes of Skynet and the police network. And information from the police database is also a great source of income. At the same time, they also use their contacts in the police department to get some of the captured resisters out of prison - they can at least smuggle out the cortical discs with the prisoner’s memories and consciousness if they fail to get them out. The women-only OWL is a thriving business with a growing reputation. Women from all walks join the group through the dark web, which is free of Skynet's supervision. But Minerva has strict requirements for her members and she always maintains small groups with superior ability. In addition to excellent professional skills, they should preferably be orphans and widows with no relatives, so that they can be attached to the organization and fully engage in combat. Moreover, they can undergo modification without any worries. The business of selling dead bodies as "goods" does not mean that they are in cahoots with the "blood market". In fact, it is a coverup for the investigation of the Faun group.

For minions other than the target, Minerva believes in a kind muzzle. As long as they do not pose a serious threat, then just let them go. Not killing indiscriminately is a good habit she developed during her police career. The majority of the female mercenaries are able to abide by this unwritten agreement. But there is one person who gives her a headache - Veronica, a girl who has somehow become a good sniper. When she was first recruited by OWL, she immediately recognized Minerva as the policewoman who had saved her life. The two were as excited as a long-lost mother and daughter hugging and crying at the scene. Veronica's marksmanship and awareness are top-notch, and she is extremely calm. But this shoot-to-kill thing upsets Minerva. At first, Minerva thought it was an impulsion, or Veronica just wanted to get more commission so that she could buy the best gun. Minerva had politely advised Veronica to "save some bullets so you can buy a gun sooner", but Veronica just ignored it. Even when the top-quality gun finally arrived, Veronica still did whatever she wanted to do. It was only then that Minerva discovered Veronica’s deep-seated hatred for the Uranus group, and anyone who wore the Thoule armband was treated as the murderer of her sister.

Another thing is Veronica’s extreme resistance to body modification. Not only does she rejects to do it for herself, but she also does not get along with girls in the organization who have gone through the process. This girl is too aloof and stubborn.

The steadfast and calm Minerva takes off her cool mask. She has been acting like a nagging mother as soon as she saw the girl as if she wants to inject all her life experiences into Veronica’s brain. The last thing she wants to see is to have such an excellent female mercenary immersed in hatred. For Minerva, people who fight with hatred can only be brave warriors, but not marvelous leaders who know how to judge and control the situation. Even if they somehow become a leader, it is difficult to convince the public. Minerva hopes that if she dies in battle or needs to retire one day, Veronica can take her place as the head of OWL. With that said, she must be able to take responsibility for the big picture and for the lives of all the sisters here. But Veronica does not seem to fit the job.

Veronica is not interested in the chief’s position. She is only interested in revenge. Maybe she couldn't bear Minerva's earnest expectation, or maybe she has a new pursuit. Either way, Veronica left without saying goodbye, just like her sister, into thin air.

Minerva shakes her head like an old mother who has just found her daughter running away from home. She sits in Veronica's dormitory for a while. She might have recalled the little girl lying on the hospital bed, or she might have felt that she didn't take good care of Veronica. But what she doesn't know is that this girl was born to kill. And her first show was that big fire at the orphanage.

Minerva does not have spare time to sob, she has more important things to do. On the one hand, she is relying on her own reputation and contacts to actively promote 3D bioprinting technology, so that this technology could destroy the "blood market". It may never be able to completely eliminate this bloody and evil business, but it at least minimizes the harm to innocent civilians. On the other hand, the "secret project" carried out by Faun has been thoroughly investigated by OWL, and Minerva plans to act jointly with other resistance forces to foil the shocking plot of the Uranus and liberate the Earth from the bondage and oppression of the poisonous vine that grows at Faun’s will.