Mistrunner - Chapter 42 - A Long Year (Patreon)

I have to apologize to you all.  It was recently brought to my attention that I'd missed a chapter (39), and after looking at it(on my phone, because I was out and about), I thought I'd just mis-numbered things.  That was not the case.  Basically, the reader who pointed it out (thanks!) was right, and I'd somehow completely skipped over Chapter 39 while posting.  So, this morning, I fixed it.  Doing so means that, instead of getting 3 chapters this week, you're getting 4.  The negative is that you'll have to go back to Chapter 39 and read it out of order.  I know that's probably annoying, but it's the best I can do to fix my mistake.  I apologize for my mistake and the inconvenience it might cause.

It was ten years after the Initialization when I realized that I was a cut above the rest, but when I thought about it, it made sense. While they’d been content with defending territory or hunting down individual targets, I had been busying myself with murdering every single alien I could find. I didn’t care if they posed a threat. I didn’t care whether or not they were doing anything morally wrong. To me, they were all the same. Enemies, every single one of them. And I knew how to deal with enemies.

Jeremiah Braddock III

It was a week after the Hunter’s attack before I let myself relax and go back to normal, but that event always hovered in the back of my mind. That nameless woman served to remind me that, as much power as I had gathered, I still had a long, long way to go. She had been entirely out of my league. My shots had been completely ineffective against her. It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered such a situation. Horace Lafontaine had been similarly protected by subdermal armor. However, I suspected that if I were to have employed the same tactics as I’d used against that tiny, mini-gun wielding man, I wouldn’t have left a scratch on the Hunter. She was just too far above me.

Once I came to grips with that fact, it lit a fire under me that served to push me even harder during my training. If I was dedicated before that, then I became wholly obsessed after that disastrous encounter. And over the next four months, my efforts bore fruit in monstrous gains in basically every category. Not only did my attributes progress, but each of my skills followed suit.

But that success only made my trainers push all the harder, which was how I found myself in the forests surrounding Mobile, trying to evade a relative army of amigos. I was armed with a modified rifle that, rather than spitting out normal ammunition, fired tiny pellets that would mark my targets as being wounded. It was training, but not of one single skill. Rather, the open-ended competition was intended to force me to utilize everything I’d been taught so far.

And to my surprise, I was winning.

The amigos were still far more skilled than I was, and most of them had well-developed abilities. However, I’d soon discovered that, because of my ballooning attributes, I could easily keep up with them on a purely physical basis. It shouldn’t have been surprising. Most were Tier-2, with only one or two being at Tier-3. Not only did that severely limit their potential, but it also made training that much more difficult.

It brought to mind a rare lesson from Jeremiah, this time on the nature of skills, levels, and attributes. During that hour-long conversation, he’d stressed the importance of choosing the right options when I had the opportunity to evolve my skills. However, he also covered some ground in regards to my attributes. Most notably, he had talked about training.

“It’ll always be easier and more effective for you, Mirabelle,” he had said. “With greater potential comes easier progression, at least in regards to your attributes. I’ve talked about how, when you get close to your potential, your progress slows. You have to train harder and longer to get the same gains that came so much easier when you were far away from reaching your potential. For you, so long as you keep leveling, you’ll always have a long way to go. That is an advantage in that you’ll probably never reach the point where progress slows down. Not like the rest of us, who end up stuck on the edge of reaching our potential. There are ways around that, like with Nora and her bio-enhancers, but they come with side effects as well.”

It made sense, then, that my attributes, which had continued to climb, had begun to exceed the lower-tiered amigos. The result was that, while I didn’t put them to shame in the realm of raw ability, I did have something of an advantage. Most of the time. The sparse Tier-3 amigos out there could still run circles around me. But I was getting there.

I dipped into a shallow gully, predictably finding a stream that I followed for a few hundred yards before leaping. Twelve feet up, I grabbed the hefty branch of an oak tree, sending a frightened squirrel – thankfully, one of the normal, non-carnivorous types – scampering away. It chittered at me angrily, but it disappeared into the forest’s leafy canopy as I climbed onto the thick branch.

I wasted no time in darting down the length of the sturdy branch, my balance more than up to the task of keeping me upright, and leaping to another tree before repeating the process. Like that, I made my way through the forest, my feet never touching the ground until my path crossed my well-laid trap.

Climbing higher, I straddled the branch, hooking my foot beneath it. It was as stable of a firing platform as I was likely to find. So, I shifted my weapon off my back – it wouldn’t fit in my Arsenal Implant – and settled in to wait for whoever was tracking me.

I hoped it was Stupid Hat with his stupid hat.

Earlier, with Observation, I’d heard someone approaching, so I’d decided to use the situation to my advantage, laying a false trail, then doubling back to set the trap. The whole thing, with my attributes, had only taken a couple of minutes. Hopefully, I hadn’t missed my opportunity.

In my perch, I waited, remaining completely motionless until, finally, I heard a rustle in the nearby brush. Only moving my eyes, I focused on the appropriate area, and a few seconds later, one of the amigos – I didn’t know her name – stepped into view. Without Observation, which had quickly become one of my favorite abilities, I never would have heard her footsteps. She was clearly skilled in stealth. However, with that ability on my side, she never stood a chance. After waiting a few moments to make certain that she was alone, I fired a quick burst that took her in the chest.

She cried out, which ruined my position, but according to the rules of the game, she was counted as dead. So, I quickly used the forest of limbs to make my escape. It was a lucky thing, too, because only a second after I’d vacated my perch, a series of shots rang out, and the branch itself was rendered into splinters.

My trap had become a counter-trap.

Without looking back, I doubled my speed, leaping from one branch to another faster than most people could run. Unfortunately, none of the amigos were normal people, and a hail of gunfire followed my path. I couldn’t escape.

So, I dipped around a particularly thick-trunked hickory tree. Thrusting my back against the trunk, I focused on my hearing, and I was rewarded with the sound of the amigo sprinting past my hiding place. Obviously, he’d assumed that I had kept moving through the canopy, but I knew my ruse wouldn’t last long. So, catching the slightest glimpse of him, I activated [Mistwalking] and focused on my Misthack ability.

Misthack Successful. C-Grade defenses detected. Attempt to bypass? [Yes] or [No]

Under my breath, I swore at my luck. There was only one amigo with those kinds of cybernetic defenses. Otherwise, I could have Misthacked my way in, disabled cybernetics, and gotten an easy kill. It was my misfortune that I’d run into Jorge himself, who I’d learned was the highest tier of all the amigos.

In the split second that it had taken me to find his rock-solid defenses, he had whipped around, aimed his weapon at me, and fired. The shot took me in the chest, and I tumbled to the ground. The leafy undergrowth cushioned my fall. Physically, I was uninjured, but my pride had definitely taken a blow.

“Ow.”

I lay there for a long moment, cycling through all the mistakes I’d made. I had done almost everything right, and as a result, I’d lasted for a full six hours this time, which was far longer than usual. Still, I’d lost. I had been “killed”. And my failure rankled on me. After almost a minute, I opened my eyes to see Jorge standing over me. He extended a hand, and I took it. After he helped me up, he said, “What happened?”

“Didn’t realize it was you,” I said. “Went in for a Misthack, and I saw your C-Grade defenses. Even if I’d have been successful in the hack, it would’ve taken me a few minutes. By then, you’d have shot me. And if I wasn’t successful, I’d have been out of commission for at least a week.”

That much was true. Of late, Helen had forced me to try to infiltrate higher-graded defenses, and I failed at least as often as I succeeded. But it always took a subjective eternity, and failure meant dealing with overwhelming migraines and a kind of artificial illness that made me feel weaker than I was even before my Awakening. To say I was hesitant to attempt it in the middle of a battle was an understatement.

“And what would you have done differently?” Jorge asked. I could see a flash of something in his eyes. Doubtless, he was busy messaging all the other participants in the day’s training.

“I should have let you pass, then turned around and run away,” I said. “Live to fight another day. Or at least wait until it was a more advantageous situation.”

He nodded. “Good,” he said. “The purpose of this is for you to learn, which you did.”

Having said that, he turned and strode off through the woods. I scrambled to catch up, asking, “How did I do, though? I got like six people, right? That’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

“It is…fair,” he allowed. Jorge was a lot of things, but effusive with his praise wasn’t one of them. Even so, I would take what I could get, and for him, “fair” was basically a pat on the back.

After that, I silently followed Jorge for a half an hour until we reached a clearing. There, I saw a series of tents and a couple of trucks with enormous, knobby tires. As we approached, a couple of the amigos – a man and a woman that looked like siblings – looked up. I couldn’t help but grin at their winces; they had been two of my first victims that day. To get to them, I’d hidden in a particularly foul-smelling stagnant pool of water until they’d passed me by, only to rise to the surface and pepper them with the mostly harmless bullets. They’d never even known what hit them.

Of course, I’d picked up a few leeches for my trouble, but, aside from being incredibly unpleasant, they weren’t really dangerous. I’d just make sure to run by Kimiko’s soon so she could give me something to prevent an infection.

Jorge wandered off, and I found a place leaning against one of the enormous tires. None of the amigos were particularly sociable, especially with me. I suspected that they resented me for some reason, but I wasn’t really interested in trying to get them to like me. When I’d asked Jeremiah about it, he’d said, “They are merely a whetstone upon which you are expected to sharpen yourself. Don’t get attached.”

And I had taken his advice to heart. In an abstract sense, I cared about them, but, despite spending so much time with them, that feeling wasn’t personal. It was the same thing I felt for any acquaintance. I wasn’t one of them. They knew it, and so did I.

For the next hour, we waited until everyone returned. During that time, the amigos packed up their gear. I had nothing to pack, so I spent my time doing number puzzles. I had to turn the difficulty up to the highest level to get any challenge, but doing so kept me from wasting my time just sitting around. Finally, everyone had returned, packed up, and piled into the trucks. I claimed a spot in the bed, and we set off back for town.

The amigos chattered away amongst themselves, but I didn’t join in. They wouldn’t have wanted me to, and I didn’t speak their language anyway. By nightfall, we arrived back in Mobile, where I wasted no time before reporting to the training building. I had plenty of time for a workout.

Pulling a pair of shimmering, blue Misteel cuffs from my Arsenal Implant, I slapped them around my wrists. The moment the clasp latched, I felt my attributes plummet. The cuffs acted as a restraint by rendering the Mist within my body inert. With those cuffs on, it felt as if I’d never been Awakened at all. More importantly, it made my workouts that much more difficult.

Of course, the restraints also came with a budding panic, and I had to remind myself that I knew precisely how to escape them. It wasn’t easy, but with my ever-increasing proficiency in Mist Manipulation, it was only a matter of time before I could override the effects of those restraints. Still, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling, so I quickly began my workout, as much as a distraction as a quest for improvement.

I started with a few laps around the building, increasing my pace with each revolution until I was practically sprinting. Once I finished that, I went to the obstacle course, which was incredibly difficult, given my enforced limitations. Still, I managed it as well as I could, repeating it a few times before moving to the free weights, where I put myself through a rigorous workout. By the time I finished, my every muscle felt like jelly, and I could scarcely move, my muscles were so pumped full of blood.

I went to the nearest wall and sank to my bottom before drinking a couple of bottles of water. Slowly, I regained some of my energy until, at last, I picked myself up and put myself through a lengthy stretching session.

When I’d finished, I ate a ration bar, removed the cuffs, and left the building. While I was inside training, the sun had begun to dip below the horizon, so the streets were crowded with people who were either on their way home after work or on their way out for a night on the town. Using my abilities, none of the other pedestrians even looked at me as I walked among them. I was sweaty, stank of stagnant water and body odor, and I probably looked terrible, but no one paid any attention to me. After a few minutes, I reached my destination.

It was a strange building. Three stories tall and shaped almost like an inverted pyramid, it was much wider at the top than it was at the bottom. More, it abutted the river, which meant that few people chose to go there despite the energy shield that ran along the waterway’s banks.

For my purposes, that made it perfect.

I quickly made my way toward the entrance, which was guarded by a huge slab of wood. I pushed it to the side, replacing it as soon as I was inside. The interior of the building was mired in deep shadow, but with Observation, that wasn’t such a big problem. I couldn’t see in the dark, but in the familiar building, I didn’t much need to, either.

According to my uncle, before the Initialization, the building had been some sort of museum. There had been a note of bitterness in his voice when he explained how it had been a waste of taxpayer money. I couldn’t really argue with his assessment, largely because the events in question had happened almost a hundred years before. That he still held something of a grudge about it was telling, though.

Either way, there was nothing inside to suggest its former purpose. It had been gutted, stripped down to the bare, concrete walls. Even the interior partitions were gone, either rotted away or torn down so someone could get at the building’s pipes. None of that mattered to me, and I soon traced a familiar path toward the stairs, which I hurriedly climbed to the roof.

Once I stepped out into the air, I took a deep breath. Up there, I could smell the nearby bay. I could see the surrounding area. And more importantly, I could be alone. For whatever reason, solitude had become very difficult for me to find. If I wasn’t training, I had Jo clamoring for my attention. Sometimes, I didn’t mind, but over time, it had become exhausting, largely because she never wanted to just sit still. For my part, that was exactly what I needed to unwind.

So, I traversed the roof, found my favorite spot, and lay on my back. As I did so, I turned on the album my uncle had given me, and stared up at the stars.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Hours, at least. And all the while, I wondered what marvels the rest of the universe held. There were aliens out there. Whole civilizations. Were they similar to human beings? Or were they completely unique? I had no idea, but there was a part of me that wanted to find out. Perhaps, one day, I would get the chance.

By the time I started to relax, it was well into the night. More importantly, I sensed that someone had found me.

“How long have you been standing there?” I asked, not bothering to turn my head. Jeremiah hadn’t tried to mask his presence, and as such, I couldn’t mistake him for anyone else in the world.

“Only a few minutes,” he said, finally joining me. He sat down, putting his forearms on his knees, and looked up at the stars. “What are you doing up here?”

“Decompressing,” I said. “All that training, it’s stressful, especially when I’m focused. After a long day, I sometimes like to come up here and just…unwind.”

Jeremiah didn’t say anything at first, which was a little surprising. I half expected him to chastise me for wasting time. But he didn’t. In fact, for more than a minute, he didn’t respond at all, and when he finally opened his mouth, he was onto a completely different subject. “Your friend, Jack, returned,” he said. “And he brought some friends.”

“What?” I asked. I hadn’t even thought about the former Tiger in months.

“Don’t worry,” Jeremiah said. “We’ve already taken care of him. Sloppy, leaving him alive. You should have just killed him and been done with it. That’s what I would have done.”

“If it happened now, I would to,” I said. Despite still being uncomfortable with outright murder, my training had instilled in me the pragmatism necessary to recognize when killing was the best choice. With Jack, I’d made the mistake of mercy. And to make matters worse, it was one I couldn’t rectify because he’d fled the city and disappeared into the wilderness.

“Good.”

“What did you want?” I asked.

“Oh. I came up here to tell you that Nora’s here,” he said. “She’s going to help with the rest of your training.”

My eyes widened, and I couldn’t suppress a grin. As much as I liked the people of Mobile – and I’d made at least one friend and more than a few acquaintances – Nora was different. Because I’d grown up with her around, she was like an aunt to me. Or a naughty big sister. Until Jeremiah mentioned her, I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed the hulking woman.

“Thought you’d like that,” he said. “Come on. Let’s head down to the Dewdrop. She’s waiting on us.”