MidReal Story
Metal Heart: Redemption in Autumn Creek
Scenario: The story of Rafe Cavanaugh, a lawyer-turned-vigilante in a dystopian neo noir cyberpunk urban hellscape known as Autumn Creek. He metes out justice, fighting back against the criminal underbelly of the corrupt city, while interacting with a cast of characters such as the corrupt Mayor Horace "Slim" Callahan, the Playboy Millionaire Victor Sterling, a colorful pimp named Sylvester "Sly" Pompey, and a jazz lounge singer and femme fatale Eve Monroe, while he still carries with him the baggage of a troubled past, including his ex-wife Sarah. Rafe was once a part of the corrupt justice system until one day a thug's bullet piearced his heart. Now an artificial metal heart beats within his chest.
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I’m a vigilante with a metal heart.
I was a lawyer once, but that was before the incident that nearly killed me and left me with an artificial heart.
Now I’m a symbol of justice in a city that’s forgotten what it means.
When I see the signal, I go out into the dark alleys of Autumn Creek and fight crime.
Sometimes I win.
Sometimes I lose.
But I never stop fighting.
And I never stop looking for the woman who left me to die in the street.
The woman who betrayed me and walked away without a second glance.
The woman who broke my heart—my real one—when she tore it from my chest and left me for dead.
I’ll find her one day, and when I do, she’ll pay for what she did to me.
But until then, I have work to do.
The signal pulses in the night, and I follow it to the most dangerous part of town.
Autumn Creek is a dangerous enough place in broad daylight, but when the sun goes down, the real monsters come out to play.
I navigate the darkness of the alleys, moving silently and quickly, keeping to the shadows so that no one will see me.
No one ever does.
And that’s the way I like it.
The signal has led me to the industrial district, a place that used to be full of factories and jobs until the companies moved away, leaving nothing behind but empty buildings and broken dreams.
Now the only work to be had in this part of town is illegal.
The Sterling Casino is just a few blocks away, and I can see its bright lights in the distance, but I have work to do before I can go there.
I move quickly through the abandoned warehouses until I find what I’m looking for: two rival gangs exchanging drugs and money.
And it looks like they’re about to have a problem.
One of the men is reaching for his gun while the other is talking on his phone, and it doesn’t take long for things to go south.
A shot rings out, followed by several more, and soon both sides are firing at each other, caught in their own private war.
I let them go at it for a while, using smoke grenades to provide cover before I start taking out the bad guys.
I’m not trying to kill anyone tonight—just stop them from killing each other.
But sometimes these things don’t go as planned, and I’m forced to take lives even when I don’t want to.
Which is exactly what happens when I see her.
She looks too young to be here, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she falls to her knees.
She’s wearing a red dress with matching shoes, and I can see blood seeping through the fabric as she clutches her stomach.
I run over to where she fell and throw a smoke grenade at the men who are shooting at her while I take out the others with my gun.
There’s too much blood, and she’s not moving, but I can’t leave her here, so I wrap my arms around her and carry her back to the warehouse where I’ve set up my makeshift clinic.
I lay her down on the bed and cut away the fabric of her dress, revealing a bullet wound in her abdomen.
The bullet must have hit something important because there’s a lot of blood and she’s going into shock, but I don’t think it’s too late for her—yet.
I take out my limited medical supplies and do what I can to stop the bleeding, but it’s not enough, and she’s still losing blood fast.
The good news is that I know where I can find more supplies that might help her, but that means leaving her alone, and I don’t want to do that—especially when I don’t know if she’ll be alive when I get back.
But I don’t have much of a choice, so I leave the warehouse long enough to grab what I need from my hidden stash before returning to Sonia and trying again to save her life.
It doesn’t take long for me to realize that she’s not going to make it.
The wound is too severe, and I’m not a doctor, so I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing as I try to suture it closed, but it doesn’t matter because nothing is working.
She’s not responding, and her breathing is slowing down as the light fades from her eyes, and I feel a crushing sense of despair as I realize that I’m about to lose her, too.
I keep trying even as I know it’s too late, but she’s so small and fragile, and I can’t stop the bleeding or get her heart to start beating again no matter how hard I try.
And then it happens: one second, she’s breathing, and the next, she’s not.
“Come on,” I say, trying to revive her as I press on her chest, but it’s no use.
She’s gone, and there’s nothing more that I can do.
I press my fingers against her neck to make sure that she has no pulse before closing her eyes, a ritual that I’ve become far too familiar with over the years.
Another life cut short because of me.
Another person who won’t be going home tonight, and another family who will never know what happened to their loved one.
But there’s nothing more that I can do for her, so I take out my phone and call my contact, Sarah.
She answers on the first ring, and there’s no need for me to tell her what happened because she already knows.
“The signal went out,” she says.
“I’m sorry, Rafe.
I’ll send someone to collect the body.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I say, my voice rough as I try not to think about the fact that Sonia is dead.
“There are too many eyes on the street right now, and if they see anyone taking the body, they’ll come after her family.
So tell your people to stay away for now.
I’ll handle it.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line before Sarah says, “All right, Rafe.
We’ll do it your way.”
Then the line goes dead, and I’m left alone with my thoughts.
But the silence doesn’t last long, because soon after, the lights go out in the warehouse, and the surveillance cameras start to go dark as well.
The city is trying to protect itself from me, but it won’t work, not when there are so many cameras and so few people who know how to turn them off.
And if the city is watching me—and it is—I’m going to make sure to give them a show they won’t soon forget.
I stand up from the bed and walk over to one of the cameras before adjusting my mask so that it covers my entire face.
Then I look right into the lens and say, “Hello, Autumn Creek.
This is Rafe Cavanaugh, and tonight, you killed a young woman in the industrial district of this city.”
“I just thought you should know,” I add before turning away from the camera and walking back to where Sonia is lying on the bed.
When Sarah calls me a few minutes later, I already know what she’s going to say.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she says.
“I know that you have to make a statement, but—”
“Was it worth it?”
That question stops me in my tracks, and for a moment, I can’t speak because all I can think about is the girl who is lying dead behind me and how young she was and how alone she must have been in those final moments.
But then I swallow back my emotions and say, “No, it wasn’t worth it.”
There are tears in Sarah’s voice when she speaks again.
“I’m sorry, Rafe.I know that this isn’t easy for you.I just…”
“I know,” I say before disconnecting the call.
Sarah is right, of course, but there’s nothing else I can do, not as long as the city keeps pushing me to my breaking point.
And if it keeps happening like this, the city might just get its wish, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this without losing my mind.
But I have to try, and I have to keep myself together long enough to make sure that Sarah is safe and that the city doesn’t find out what she knows about me.
They’d kill her if they ever found out, and even though I don’t know her real name or what she looks like, that doesn’t mean that I can’t put a bullet in her head myself.
Because Sarah is the only person who cares about me, and if something were to happen to her, then I’d have nothing left to live for.
My name is Rafe Cavanaugh, and I’m a vigilante with a metal heart—a man who was once a lawyer, but who can never go back to his old life because of the darkness that lives inside of him.
Once, I thought that I could make a difference by fighting for justice, but now all I see is a city that has forgotten what it means to be just and good.
The people here are more interested in tearing each other apart than they are in coming together to build something better, and I know that it’s only a matter of time until the whole thing comes crashing down around us all.
I don’t recognize the number when I answer the phone, but a man’s voice comes on the line a few seconds later and says, “I have information that you need to hear.”
“I’m listening,” I say.
“There’s a drop site down by the old steel mill,” he says.
“A new shipment of drugs is coming in tonight, and if you can get there in time, you should be able to intercept it and take down the dealers.”
“And what do you want in return?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“But if you’re going to stop them, then you need to hurry.
They’ll be there any minute now.”
“You know where this place is?”
I ask Sarah a few minutes later.
“There’s a lot of abandoned buildings down by the old steel mill,” she says.
I can hear the sound of her fingers as she types on the keyboard.
“I can pull up the blueprints for you in just a few seconds…”
“I don’t have time for that,” I say.
“I need you to get me the information on who owns the buildings down there so that we can find out who this anonymous tipster is.”
“On it,” she says.
Ten minutes later, the warehouse is empty and Sonia’s body has been taken away in a black bag, but there’s no sign of the person who called me and told me about the drop site that turned out to be a trap.
I stand in the shadows for a few minutes, waiting for him to show up or for some other sign that he was here, but nothing happens.
The street is quiet apart from the sound of my breathing, and when I close my eyes, all I can hear is the echo of my footsteps on the gravel as I left the warehouse behind me.
And then, all at once, it hits me that he’s not coming.
He called me here for a reason, but that reason wasn’t so that he could tell me about a drug shipment.
I open my eyes again and scan the area for any signs that he might have left behind, but there’s nothing here—no cars or other people, just a few stray cats who are digging through the garbage further down the alley.
I step out into the middle of the street and look around one last time before I turn away from the warehouse and start back toward the alley where I parked my bike, but then something catches my eye—a corner of paper sticking out from under a pile of garbage cans.
I walk over to them and reach down to pull it free, but it crumbles in my hand, leaving nothing behind except for a faint whiff of cologne and the faintest impression of ink on my skin.
I look down at my palm and see that there’s something written there, so I close my eyes and try to make it out, but it’s too faint, and when I open them again, it’s gone, replaced by an address that flickers in place like the ghost of a neon sign before disappearing into the night.
I know that address, just as I know this part of town, where everything smells like rust and decay, no matter how many times it gets cleaned away by the rain.
I know it without having to look it up, because I’ve been there before, but even if I hadn’t, I would have recognized it as soon as I saw it, because it’s not just an ordinary address—it’s a place that I’ve spent almost every night of my life trying to forget.
The Sterling Casino.
I stand in front of it for a long moment, staring up at the flashing lights, but that’s all I can see from here; the building itself is dark, with only a few windows lit up along the upper floors, like distant stars against a black sky.
It’s just as opulent as I remember it, with columns of marble rising up on either side of the entrance, but there’s something about it that seems almost familiar to me now, as though I’ve seen it somewhere before, in another life or another place, but when I try to remember where that was, my mind is as blank as a fresh canvas, waiting to be painted by some unknown hand.
I push open the heavy glass doors and step inside, but even though I knew what I’d find here, it still comes as a shock to me, like waking up from a dream only to realize that you’re still asleep.
The lobby is busy with people coming and going, but they all stop and stare at me, as though they can see something that I can’t, but when I look down at myself, I find nothing more than a man dressed in black—a stranger who looks just like any other man on the street.
I walk through the lobby, following the signs for the casino floor, but I don’t need them; they’re just there to help the tourists find their way around this place.
I don’t belong here; I never have.
I never wanted to come here in the first place, but someone took me against my will, and now that I’m here of my own free choice again, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever be free of this place.
I stop at the entrance to the casino and look inside for the person who called me here, but there’s no one here—no one except for the usual suspects: the drunks at the bar, the dealers at their tables, and the rich men who come here to make a show of themselves before returning home to their wives.
And there’s one other person here too—a fat man with a round face who looks like he’d be more at home selling used cars than running a city.
His name is Horace Callahan or “Slim,” as he likes to be called by his friends—assuming he has any—and he’s the Mayor of Autumn Creek.
