Nick was sitting inside his office as he read through a file.
The file was filled with detailed information about the Riker Strikers and was several times thicker than the original one.
It had been about 40 days since Nick had tasked the Investigators to investigate the Riker Strikers, and they had finally gathered enough information to give Nick a major report.
As Nick read through the file, he kept taking gulps from his mug.
Coffee with sugar.
A couple of weeks ago, Nick had ordered a coffee machine and also asked Wyntor where he could get sugar and milk.
When Nick heard about the price of these things, his heart nearly stopped.
The coffee machine, luckily, only cost around 30,000 credits.
However, the amount of beans necessary to make one cup cost nearly 500 credits!
Half a gram of Zephyx for one fucking cup of black coffee!
And the sugar was even more ridiculous!
A tablespoon of sugar cost over 150 credits!
And milk!
Milk was 10,000 credits per cup!
Nick had purchased all of this to see how it tasted, and he hated that it tasted so amazing.
Because now, he had to spend a ton of money on this.
But then, a twist of fate happened that made it much easier to bear.
Nick found out that his bowels really weren't the biggest fans of milk.
That was when Wyntor told him that he knew that would happen.
Apparently, there was something in milk that caused issues in people who weren't used to drinking milk since childhood.
People in the middle and top layers of the Inner City generally didn't have that issue since they grew up with milk, but people in the lower layer and the Outer City would have issues whenever they drank some milk.
However, there was a way to get rid of this problem.
Becoming a Veteran.
The body of a Veteran had already changed so much that the thing inside the milk couldn't upset the digestive system anymore.
In the end, Nick decided against drinking milk. Maybe, when he finally became a Veteran, he would drink some milk again.
But not for now.
As Nick read through the report, he made a couple of interesting discoveries.
'There are more people in the Riker Strikers than I thought,' he thought as he furrowed his brows.
'They have 50 main members and over 150 honorary members.'
According to the report, the main members were the ones who actively caused trouble in the Dregs.
They were the ones that raped and robbed people in public.
They often also just destroyed stuff without any reason whatsoever.
According to the report, the main members of the Riker Strikers were the craziest and most violent people in the Dregs.
Not only was the environment promoting their craziness, but insane people from other places could see that if they joined the Riker Strikers, they could live a life without having to suppress their innermost urges.
There were not many rules among the main members.
They just had to give a bit of money each month to Riker himself, and they needed to be "badasses".
That last part was how Riker explained it.
He said that only the 50 biggest badasses in the Dregs were allowed to be the main members of the Riker Strikers.
And how did one become a badass?
Show their strength!
Rob someone!
Rape someone!
Kill someone without being noticed!
Burn someone!
Destroy things!
Violence was hilarious, and enacting violence on others made one feel great and superior!
That was the philosophy that Riker hammered into his gang.
Meanwhile, the honorary members were comprised of two kinds of people.
First, people that wanted to prove themselves and become a main member.
Second, people that were close to one of the main members.
Parents, siblings, friends, and so on.
Children were not included because having a child was perceived as soft, warm, and disgusting in the gang.
Well, unless it was a child conceived by rape.
At that point, it was seen more as a trophy since the victim would be constantly reminded of what happened whenever they looked at their child, which was hilarious to the Riker Strikers.
It was like tormenting someone without even being there.
Nick remembered the time he had killed a woman who had been wearing the emblem of the Riker Strikers.
'She was most likely an honorary member. She was probably the relative of one of the main members,' he thought.
After reading through the file for a while, Nick came to the most interesting part.
'Presumed way Riker becomes more powerful,' Nick thought.
The Investigators had listed three possible ways in which Riker could become more powerful.
Number one: Fear. The more people feared him and the stronger that fear was, the more Zephyx Riker produced.
Number two: Suffering. The stronger the suffering of the people, the more Zephyx Riker produced.
Number three: Money.
Number three was a surprising one since it was very different from the first two.
However, there was a good reason why it could also be money.
Riker was getting a lot of money from his gang members.
And the most interesting thing about that…
The money never reappeared.
Riker almost never bought anything.
He didn't have any close ones that used his money.
Nothing.
Riker was getting a ton of money, but that money had seemingly just vanished.
Either Riker was sitting on a literal hill of credits somewhere, or the money was being destroyed.
'But it doesn't really make perfect sense,' Nick thought.
'If Riker were only interested in making money, he would create a gang similar to the Peddlers, the Hub, or the Insurance Gang. He would make far more money like this.'
'On top of that, from the looks of things, the Riker Strikers mainly exist to cause as much mayhem as possible.'
'The entire money thing seems secondary.'
After reading through that part, Nick read through the closing thoughts in the report, and when he read a certain line, his eyes narrowed.
It might be possible that Riker is in cahoots with a Manufacturer. In exchange for letting Riker do his thing, they were pocketing all the money he stole.
'It's possible,' Nick thought.