Mistrunner - Chapter 36 - Sacrifice (Patreon)

Once upon a time, being alone in the wilderness was a terrifying thing. But as civilization reared its ugly head, nature’s sharp edge was blunted. The onset of the Mist once again changed that, bringing it back to the natural order. Once again, we fear the world around us.

Jeremiah Braddock III

Fire coursed through my veins as every nerve in my body was set alight. The agony, heedless of my Pain Tolerance, was nearly overwhelming, and as I was dragged deeper into the ocean, panic overcame rational thought. After a few seconds, though, Combat Focuscame into play, and I regained enough of my wits to realize that I wasn’t so much being squeezed by tentacles as I was entangled in a forest of stinging tendrils. And with every thrashing movement, I became further trapped.

It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to stop moving, to reassess my situation, and react accordingly. Somehow – probably with the help of my abilities – I managed to summon my nano-sword and start cutting. Every movement resulted in a cascade of agony, but I was already in so much pain that a little more didn’t matter. In the past, I had been able to sink within myself and ignore pain as I put one foot in front of the other. But this was different. This agony was so all-encompassing, so insistent, that all I could do was embrace it.

And I did. Somewhere in the back of my mind where all reason had fled, I knew I couldn’t escape the pain. The only way out was through, so I marshalled those stray rational thoughts and bent my will to doing just that. My blade sliced through water and tendril alike, its subtly glowing blue edge making easy work of the forest of tentacles.

The creature – and it was a monster, I was sure of it – reacted in kind. Suddenly, electric shocks arced through the tendrils, sending my muscles into spasms that almost made me drop my sword. But I held fast, redoubling my efforts at cutting myself free.

I don’t know how long I bent myself to that task, but by the time I swam free, descending deep into the murky water, the pain had faded into a dull numbness and my rational mind had retreated before the sheer weight of my fight-or-flight instincts. When I was twenty or thirty feet down, I glanced up to see the monster that had attacked me.

Above me was a canopy of glowing blue tendrils, blanketing the surface in every direction and casting the water in what, in another situation, might have been a pleasant light. Throughout that tangle were corpses of fish and other sea life unfortunate enough to have found themselves in its grasp.

And at the center of it all was a bulbous mass of translucent flesh. At least fifteen feet across, it had a massive, striated crest peeking just above the water, and the entire thing glowed with malevolent, blue energy. If I wouldn’t have been running so low on oxygen, I would have gaped at the monstrous thing, but as it was, if I wanted to escape its clutches, I needed to get moving.

Pushing the lingering cramps and stinging pain to the back of my mind, I kicked my legs. With my enhanced constitution, each kick propelled me through the water as quickly as a normal person could run on dry land. On top of that, it gave me the ability to hold my breath far longer than should have been possible. The combination of the two gave me just enough of an advantage to escape the area dominated by the monster’s deadly tendrils.

I don’t know how far I swam, but by the time I resurfaced, the shore was little more than a thin, slightly darker strip on the horizon. Without my HUD’s map and the compass that had come with it, I felt certain that I wouldn’t have even noticed it in the scant, silver light of the moon.

Treading water, I gulped air, thanking my uncle for pushing me into such a rigorous training program. Without it, I would have been dead a hundred times over. Not only had he given me the willpower to drag myself through that sea of stinging agony, but he had also forced me to develop my constitution to the point where I had the means of escape. For the thousandth time since my Awakening, I had to acknowledge that my uncle knew what he was doing. Going forward, I would devote myself even more fully to the training regimen he prescribed.

But first, I needed to get to shore and take stock of my injuries. So, angling myself to the northeast, I swam toward land. In the distance, I saw the lights of Bayou La Batre, but my path would only take me further away. For a moment, I considered going back for Hadley and Kacie, but it didn’t take me long to discard that notion. Sure, Hadley had helped me, but judging by how badly he had been beaten, he had screwed up somehow. Or maybe he had betrayed me the moment things got hairy. I had no way of knowing, but I didn’t think I owed him - or Kacie, who’d been dead set on killing me not that long ago – anything. Even if I could get in without being seen, which was a tall order, considering that, even in the dark, I could see Savanna’s drones swarming around the village, I had no way of getting either of them out. The bottom line was that, even if they were healthy and hale, they would slow me down way too much. Their injuries further exacerbated that impossibility to the point where I’d have been a fool to even try.

It was one of those situations my uncle had so often warned me about. Was going back for Hadley the right thing to do? It probably was. But sometimes, doing the right thing had to take a backseat to doing what was necessary. Or maybe I was just making excuses so I wouldn’t have to acknowledge my guilty conscience. Either way, my decision was made, and I continued the long swim to shore.

While I did, I flinched at every piece of seaweed, thinking that the tendrilled monster had returned. But fortunately, it didn’t seem to be hunting me. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure if the thing had a means of locomotion, because during my brief observation, it hadn’t moved at all, save for drifting in the current.

Not for the first time, I cursed my ignorance. Like all children in Nova City, I’d attended school, but aside from learning the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, my education had been woefully inadequate. The history lessons had already proved themselves to be inaccurate, and what I’d been taught about zoology had been woefully inadequate. With a little distance, I understood the reasoning. Kids who grew up in Nova City would likely never leave, and so, they didn’t need to know those things. Still, it rankled on my nerves, knowing just how ill-prepared I was for the wild lands outside of the city.

In an effort to distract myself from the pain still coursing through my body, I focused on such thoughts. It worked passably well, and soon, I had dragged myself ashore. When I was completely free of the salty water, I flipped onto my back and just lay there for a long few minutes, catching my breath. As I did, the full weight of my injuries pressed down on me.

Not only had I sustained whatever damage those tendrils had wrought, but I’d also been shot. Again. That was definitely a habit I needed to break. Eventually, one of those bullets was going to hit something vital, and when that happened…

I didn’t even want to think about taking a gut shot in the middle of a fight, and if a bullet found my heart or head, that would be the end. Probably. I was still a little fuzzy on how much my enhanced constitution affected my durability, and I wasn’t all that eager to test things out.

Either way, as I lay on that beach, I stared up at the night sky, thankful I’d made it out alive. The escape from Bayou La Batre had been difficult enough on its own, but tangling with that sea creature had hammered home precisely how far I still had to go. If random wildlife was that deadly, how strong would the aliens be after the Integration? More, what about people like my uncle? Or the amigos? Or the Enforcers back in Nova City? Surely, they’d had all the best opportunities to enhance their power.

After a while, I dragged myself to my feet and fled into the nearby wilderness. The tree line came right up to the edge of the beach, so I soon found myself under the canopy of the semi-tropical forest. The ever-present kudzu, as well as the gloomy darkness, made traversal slow and difficult, made even more so by the constant backtracking I did to disguise my trail. When I found a stream or a creek, I followed it for a few hundred yards before leaving it behind, hoping that it would throw off any pursuit that might stumble across the evidence of my passage. It wasn’t perfect – Jorge would’ve only called my efforts passable – but in my condition, it was the best I could do.

Hours later, just before the sun rose, I stumbled across an abandoned building. Due to the creeping vines that covered most of the walls and the collapse of the roof, I had no idea what the purpose of the building had been, but, to me, all that mattered was that it was devoid of the signs of wildlife and the sturdy brick walls were still intact. So, after making certain the building wasn’t home to some vicious monster, I settled down to make camp. More importantly, I needed to inspect my wounds.

Once I’d barricaded the lone door, I undressed and looked at my arms and legs, which were covered in angry, red welts from the tangle of tendrils that had ensnared me. I had no idea how to treat such injuries, so I used a med-hypo to bolster my immune system and cleaned them as best I could with a disinfecting solution I had in my Arsenal Implant. Then, I turned my attention to the gunshot wound in my calf. Fortunately, though it had taken a good chunk of my calf with it, it hadn’t hit the bone. So, it was a simple task to disinfect it before applying a foam bandage. Hopefully, it wouldn’t scar too badly.

As I worked, the effects of Combat Focus began to fade. Pain Tolerance was still in effect, but the sheer volume of stimuli I’d been subjected to had overwhelmed the ability to such an extent that, without the calm granted by Combat Focus, I would have long since fallen. With it fading a little more by the passing minute, I had a hard time keeping my mind on the task at hand.

But I managed to keep my wits about just long enough to finish my triage, hastily eat a ration bar, and drain a bottle of fresh water before I let myself surrender to unconsciousness. I slept poorly, which wasn’t really a surprise, given my injuries and my uncomfortable accommodations. I had lived through worse injuries. I had endured worse pain. I had been more exhausted. And I had slept in more uncomfortable places. But I had never been forced to endure all of them at once. The result was a predictably difficult bout of unconsciousness that, when I woke just after night had fallen, felt like I hadn’t slept at all.

Even so, my wounds felt a little better, and after checking the welts, I reapplied the disinfectant before donning my customary black fatigues. After that, I engaged in some calisthenics to stretch out my overworked muscles, checked and reloaded my weaponry, then sent a message to my uncle, detailing my actions.

His reply was devoid of any judgment and was limited to a simple message: come home.

In the back of my head, I’d hoped for a pick-up, but I had been well aware that I wasn’t likely to get one. It was a test, after all, and a trek through the wilderness – complete with all the dangers that represented – was an appropriate way to cap things off.

So, I set off, continuing as I had the night before, utilizing Jorge’s teachings to conceal my path as best I could. It was slow going, and eventually, at around noon the following day, my injuries caught up to me. When I almost stumbled into a feeding canine – which I killed with a swift sword strike after it attacked – I realized that, as eager as I was to get back to civilization, I wouldn’t make it there in a single day. With that thought, I found another appropriate campsite and went through my routine of treating my injuries and eating my dinner before falling into another restless sleep.

Like that, I made my way back to Mobile. Along the way, I killed a number of monsters. There were a few more wild dogs, a full-fledged wolf, a black bear, and a couple of bobcats and pumas. I even ran into a horde of squirrels with metallic teeth and red, demonic eyes which proved to be the toughest foe I faced during the whole trip. They weren’t that dangerous individually, but the swarm acted like land-bound piranha, devouring anything that got in their way. Luckily, I ran across a half-rotted corpse of some large animal that distracted the swarm long enough for me to get away.

The most nerve-racking experience came when I had to cross a sizable creek, though. I hadn’t forgotten about my experiences in the ocean, near the bay, or in the swamp on my first day outside of Nova City. Hulking alligators the size of dinosaurs, giant, bone-crushing snakes, and unnamed monsters that cast their stinging tendrils hundreds of feet in every direction – it seemed that water was the catalyst for truly dangerous predators. But I didn’t have much of a choice; if I wanted to get back to Mobile, I needed to cross the thirty-foot-wide creek.

It was a harrowing experience, crossing that narrow body of water – especially when I saw a long, slim figure swimming toward me. I sped up, barely making it to shore before a giant snout, probably four-feet long and sporting a mouth full of snaggled teeth, chomped down where I had been only a moment before. At first, I thought it was another alligator – its head was a similar shape – but then I realized that its body sported fins that identified it as a fish.

Which was good news, because if it had been one of the scaly reptiles, it could have followed me onto the muddy bank of the creek. As it was, as soon as I was on land, the monstrous fish turned around and swam away.

Eventually, after six days of traveling through the wilderness, I approached what had once been the downtown area of the city. The buildings weren’t as large as what I’d grown up with in Nova City, but after spending so much time in the area’s forests, they seemed oppressively huge. What’s more, I got my first sighting of people since leaving Bayou La Batre.

Or that was my first assessment. Upon further study, I wasn’t sure if that categorization was wholly appropriate. They had the right general shape, but most were skeletally thin and sported a wide range of metallic additions. It was as if the same process that had transformed the wildlife had infected human beings. Later, I would find out that this was precisely what had happened. Mist was naturally corruptive, and without the guidance provided by a Nexus Implant, it mutated people just like it did with any other life form. They were called Wildlings and were only nominally human; most people considered them on par with apes, monkeys, and other primates. After watching a pack of them – from afar – descend upon a giant possum that had wandered into their eyeline, I couldn’t really argue with that assessment. They attacked with metallic claws and teeth, ripping into the poor creature like wild animals. It was simultaneously the saddest and most disgusting thing I had ever seen.

Sad, because they had once been people. Either they’d received corrupted Nexus Implants or they hadn’t gotten one at all, and the Mist had turned them into something less than human. Disgusting, because you can’t see a man, regardless of how much he had diverged from the path of humanity, tear a possum’s intestines out with his teeth and not feel the bile rise in your throat.

I gave them a wide berth, slipping past them to approach the walled town of Mobile. When I finally reached the gate, I called out for the guards and, once my identity had been confirmed, I was let inside via a small door that led to a passage through the gate. Once inside the city, my first stop was Kimiko’s medical center, where I was greeted by her granddaughter, Ellie.

The little girl wore a self-serious expression as she led me to the examination room. When I was settled into place, she announced, “Granny is gonna teach me to be a healer, just like her. I wanted to be a warrior, but this is better. She says I’ll get more mangoes this way.”

I smiled at her and said, “I’m sure she’s right.”

With that, I laid back and, for the first time in what felt like forever, fully relaxed.

It didn’t last long, though, because after only a couple of minutes – during which I almost fell asleep – Kimiko herself made her appearance. When I told her about my injuries, she had me strip down to my underwear before she inspected my wounds.

“You are a lucky girl,” she said, her face only a couple of inches from one of the welts on my arm. I was decidedly uncomfortable with her proximity, but I wasn’t going to risk angering the doctor by showing it. “Portuguese man o’ war. Or the new variant of it, at least. It was deadly before the Initialization, but it’s even worse now. Any less constitution, and you would be dead.”

“That’s me,” I muttered. “Lucky.”

She glanced at the bandaged wound on my calf. “And you were shot again, I see,” she said. “You should think about getting some subdermal armor. It would still be painful, but not as life-threatening.”

I thought back to Horace Lafontaine. He’d had some kind of subdermal armor, and it had rendered him almost invulnerable to my gunshots. Going forward, that might be a good idea, provided that my uncle was willing to pay for it. Even though I had some top-notch equipment and cybernetics, I had no money of my own. Perhaps I could change that at some point.

“Yeah. That might be a good idea,” I agreed.

She frowned, then mercifully produced a med-hypo and jabbed it into my neck. With a hiss of compressed air, I felt a little prick before a numbness spread across my body. Kimiko patted my shoulder, saying, “Rest now. You will be better when you wake up.”