Mistrunner - Chapter 55 - You Can Never Go Home Again (Patreon)

I’ve always known that I wouldn’t go without a fight. All I can hope is that when my life catches up to me, there won’t be too much collateral damage.

Jeremiah Braddock III

“Dead?” I muttered. “You…you’re lying…”

But I knew she wasn’t. I could see it in her eyes, in her expression. My uncle was gone. Dead. Somehow, they had gotten to him.

In the back of my mind, I considered the possibility that she was simply mistaken. After all, it would have taken more than a squad of Enforcers to kill Jeremiah. But then again, a hundred of their best didn’t sound like a small squad. And she had mentioned bombardment. But maybe he’d just tricked them. Or she was ill-informed.

So, looking for confirmation of my denial, I delved into her memory. And what I found was, in a word, disturbing. The Enforcers had been told where they could find Jeremiah, and they’d spared no expense in taking him out. Seven gunships had been sent to shell Mobile into oblivion, but even with the town having crumbled all around him, Jeremiah was still alive. Wounded, but still alive. That lasted until the Enforcers had swarmed him, taking heavy losses along the way. But eventually, they’d strung him up and hacked him to pieces. Even that hadn’t killed him. Not immediately, at least. He’d hung there for almost a week – little more than a few chunks of his torso and a head – before finally succumbing. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen, and when I retracted my cord, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks.

“W-what are you going to do to me?” came the woman’s voice.

In that split second, my anger ignited. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the morality of killing a helpless prisoner. Against what I had seen in her memory banks, such concerns held no water. Before I even knew what I was doing, my fists were descending on her face. I didn’t use proper form. Nor did I activate any of my abilities. But even so, I pummeled her until there was nothing left but a mass of still-quivering and bloody flesh where her face had once been. It was unrecognizable, but she was still alive.

I quickly took care of that, too, smothering her until she went still.

It didn’t help, though. It did nothing to assuage my grief.

I’m not sure how long I knelt beside that nameless Enforcer, but by the time my tears ran dry, night had fallen. More importantly, my resolve had stiffened, and I had established a plan. There were more Enforcers around, which was something I intended to change. I wouldn’t suffer the continued existence of anyone who’d had a hand in my uncle’s death. Maybe he deserved it. Certainly, he had never been an angel, and I suspected that I only knew a fraction of the things he had done. But that didn’t matter. Not to me. He was the man who’d raised me. The man who had given me everything. He’d loved me like a daughter, and it had taken his death for me to realize that he had been the father I had never really had. I’d loved him.

And now he was gone.

Whatever else my training had given me, it had bestowed upon me the ability to avenge that death, and I intended to use those skills appropriately. So, I picked myself up off the floor and mechanically went through the Enforcers’ equipment. There was nothing quite as high-quality as my own gear, but it was good enough that I decided to take it all with me. I didn’t worry about maintaining their dignity as I stripped them all down to their own skin, piling their clothes, equipment, and spare ammunition into one of the corners. Then, I went to work on their bodies, cutting them into pieces, which I threw into their own pile. When I was finished, they’d been reduced to so much meat and bone.

I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to bury them, and what’s more, I knew that someone would eventually come to relieve them. When they got there, I wanted to send them all a message. The dismembered bodies would do that just fine.

Logic dictated that I should hide my presence, but I wasn’t in any mood for reason. Instead, I wanted to scare them. To make them wonder what kind of monster had gotten their friends and colleagues. I wanted them to dread the day that same monster would come for them. I told myself it was because fearful people made mistakes, but the reality of it was that I just wanted revenge. I needed them to suffer.

Once I’d finished with that, I gathered the equipment, putting as much of it in my Arsenal Implant as I could, then bundling the rest so I could carry it on my back. Then, I set off through the ruins of the old city, moving away until I found myself nearing the Africatown sign my uncle had shown me what felt like a lifetime before. Nearby, there was an old building that had once been a church; it was all far enough away from the city proper that I felt confident that I could shelter there unmolested. So, after depositing the equipment inside, I settled down for a few minutes to review the files I had downloaded from the Enforcer’s memory.

There wasn’t much there. Apparently, the individual Enforcers were on a need-to-know kind of system, and the one I’d interrogated hadn’t needed to know much. Still, I got some basic information about numbers, locations, and suspected pockets of survivors. There were distressingly few; the rest of the city’s occupants had been killed during the Enforcers’ bombardment or their subsequent assault and occupation. I could only hope that some of my friends had managed to survive.

But I didn’t expect it.

Once I’d internalized the information, marking everything on my map, I left the old church behind. I had some hunting to do.

I covered the ground in a hurry, flitting from one deepening shadow to the next as night began to fall. In the past, I’d avoided being out after the sun went down, but now, with the help of Observation, I found that I didn’t mind so much. The darkness fit my mood as well as my purpose as I methodically made my way toward my first target – another sniper’s nest nestled in the top floor of another of the abandoned city’s buildings. I didn’t approach it directly. Instead, I set up in a much taller building almost a mile away. From there, I settled down into a firing position, my Kicker in its sniper configuration, and I waited.

It didn’t take long for me to notice movement in one of the windows. Just a glimmer of motion, and I knew where my targets were. I focused in, my scope magnifying the area until it felt like I was on top of them. I counted four in my line of sight. All but the sniper seemed distracted and disinterested, which I expected to take advantage of. I shifted my sights from one figure to the next in quick succession, going through the motions of my attack. I needed to be quick. I had to be perfect. Nothing else would do.

Channeling my copious training, I took aim at the sniper, concentrated on Empowered Shot, waited the prescribed two seconds, and, then, fired. Before the bullet even hit home, I moved to my next target and fired again. The sniper’s head exploded, but I ignored it, moving to the third. I moved like a well-programmed drone, my motions smooth and perfect. And a moment later, all four Enforcers were dead.

A few gunshots rang out, but the shooter had neither the ability nor the knowledge to hit me from so far away. So, I settled down to wait. It took a further hour, but eventually, I caught sight of another Enforcer who’d been hidden behind a wall. My view was brief, but I didn’t hesitate before putting a bullet through his head. After that, silence reigned.

Again, I waited, forcing myself not to think about why I was doing what I was doing. If I just didn’t think about it, I could almost pretend that Jeremiah was still alive. He was just away. Off doing whatever it was that he did when he wasn’t around me. But that could only last for a few minutes before my stomach tightened, and I remembered the images attached to the files I’d downloaded from that Enforcer’s memory. My uncle’s familiar face, slack and bloody, with only a spine and a little bit of his chest dangling beneath him…

To distract myself, I trained my attention on my surroundings, focusing everything I had on Observation. That’s when I saw a pair of Enforcers, dressed in closer-fitting outfits than the ones I’d dealt with before, approaching my position. They moved like shadows across the landscape, and if I hadn’t been flaring my ability, I’d have never noticed them. But now that I had, I knew precisely what to do.

I shifted my focus to the first, who was clearly a woman. Then, I embraced Empowered Shot, waited two seconds, then fired. The shot took her in the chest, and she was thrown from her feet. However, it didn’t result in the fountain of gore I’d learned to expect. So, I repeated the process, putting another bullet in her before she even had the opportunity to react. Even then, she was still moving, albeit slowly. The third shot put a stop to that, but by the time she was dead, the second figure had disappeared.

“Crap,” I muttered, searching for the other assassin. In another situation, I might have panicked, but after everything I’d discovered, I felt too numb. So, when the assassin burst through the window, aiming a kick at my face, I reacted calmly. My arm darted up, knocking the kick aside, and he went flying past me. As I turned, he skidded across the floor, adopting a fighting stance.

“Who are you?” he demanded. Because he was wearing a black mask that matched his suit, but because of the skintight nature of the outfit, I could recognize all the hallmarks of masculinity. Any other time, I might’ve blushed at just how little it hid. But now, I just aimed my rifle at him and squeezed the trigger.

To my surprise, he blurred to the side, dodging my first burst, then darted to the other as I adjusted my aim. I fired again, but he moved so quickly that I could hardly track him. Luckily, Misthackwas too fast, even for him.

Initiate Misthack (trivial defenses detected)? [Yes] or [No]

With a flick of my mind, I selected the first option. As I did, the assassin reached me and aimed another kick in my direction. I ducked under it, moving to the next prompt:

Misthack Initiated. E-Grade Defenses Overridden.

I blocked a jab, then narrowly avoided a right hook as I waited the second it took for the Misthack to complete. Once it did, another prompt bloomed on my HUD:

Misthack Successful. Options:

· Reboot System

· Overload

· Breach

I selected Overload, and mid-kick, his body began to convulse. Smoke rose from the seams of his suit, and his momentum took him to the floor. He hit with a thud, scattering debris and dust.

I put up my rifle, exchanging it for my nano-sword. Then standing over him, I brought the blade down without ceremony or an ounce of regret. It took four hacking slashes before I separated his head from his body, but he died from the first swing. The other three just felt appropriate.

After searching his body – and finding nothing except his outfit, which I took – I cut his body to pieces, then relocated to my next position, which was about half a mile away. Once I was there, I repeated the process, taking out another sniper’s nest. It only took one volley, and I wasn’t stalked by any more Banshees, but it worked out much the same way as the first. So, I moved on to a third after that. By the end of the night, I’d taken out four nests and one more set of assassins.

Considering that a job well done, I retreated back to the old church, deposited the gear I’d pilfered, and set up the mines at the church’s entrance. Then, I settled down to eat, rest, and prepare for the next night. However, at some point, I started crying again, and I didn’t stop for hours more. By the time my tears ran dry, I was exhausted enough that sleep soon overtook me, and I slept through the rest of the day.

When I awoke that evening, I couldn’t remember any of my dreams, but I still had a deep sense of loss and foreboding; I wasn’t sure if it was due to the realities of the day before or some unremembered dream. Either way, I had a job to do and a plan for how I intended to accomplish it.

The previous night, I’d decimated the outer band of the Enforcers defenses. Those sniper’s nests would be replaced, but I didn’t care. I just wanted them to know what I had done so that they’d be concentrating on enemy snipers. While they did that, I would dress in one of their uniforms and use my abilities to adopt a new identity so I could infiltrate their base, which was located in the former museum where I’d spent so much time staring out at the bay.

So, I quickly found the least bloody uniform, which happened to have belonged to that second assassin I’d killed, cleaned it as best I could, then slipped it on. It fit just as snugly on me as it had on him, and if I hadn’t been so focused on the job before me, I might’ve been a little embarrassed. It was the sort of thing Nora would wear, though she would’ve subjected it to a few artful rips and tears before dying it some garish color.

I shook my head, hoping that she was still alive. Perhaps she’d already gone back to Nova City.

Once I was dressed, I used Mimic to take on the appearance of that very first sniper and Disguise to bring my apparent tier down to three. It wasn’t perfect – Hadley had proven that much back in Bayou La Batre – but I hoped it would keep me from being looked at too closely. And if not, I had plenty of firepower at my disposal.

Again, I set off into the night, harnessing my enhanced Constitution to cover the ground extremely quickly. Once I reached the ruins of the old city, I took all necessary caution as I navigated toward Mobile. Along the way, I passed a couple of new sniper’s nests, but I left them alone. I had bigger fish to fry, but when I’d finished with the base, I had every intention of coming back to finish the job.

It was interesting to me that, for all their apparent diligence, they didn’t even know when I was right on top of them. I suppose there was something to be said for the fact that I’d spent over two years in the area, much of that training with incredibly talented people, like the Amigos or my uncle, who were hunting me. By contrast, evading those Enforcer teams was child’s play.

Still, I knew the price of overconfidence, so I maintained my focus as I slowly made my way toward the reverse-pyramid shaped building in the distance. My first real obstacle should have been the wall that encircled the town, but when I reached it, I was disturbed to see that it had been breached in multiple places. The concrete-filled storage containers that had once been stacked together had been melted into so much slag. So, my route was unimpeded, and I quickly stepped through the first gap I found.

When I did, I was confronted with a scene of absolute destruction. Everywhere I looked, buildings had crumbled and fallen. It didn’t matter if it was a tenement, a more affluent home, or the seat of the local government – everything had fallen. It was difficult to imagine that anyone might have survived. But still, I picked my way through the rubble until I found myself facing what was left of the Dewdrop Inn.

It had fared a little better than its surroundings, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it was recognizable, but a curse because it allowed me to see what had happened to the proprietors – including Jo. I approached and knelt beside my friend’s half-buried corpse. From the waist up, she didn’t look much different from when I’d left. But below her navel was nothing but debris. Her eyes stared unseeing into the night sky. She had been dead for days. A week, maybe.

Once again, the tears came, and I was filled with so much guilt and regret. The last time I had seen her, she’d stormed off because Pick was paying more attention to me than to her. But now? She was gone, just like my uncle. Just like everyone else, it seemed. By the time my tears had dried up, my mind had refocused and my resolve had been reaffirmed. I was going to kill every last one of them.

I wanted to do something for her body. Bury it. Burn it. Something. But I couldn’t spare the time. Nor did I think it really mattered. Whatever Jo had once been, her body was just a hunk of meat, now. And nothing I could do would ever change that. So, I rose and left the Dewdrop Inn behind as I made my way to the Enforcers’ base.

When it finally came into view, I couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. It swarmed with personnel – far more than I could’ve expected. There were hundreds of them, most dressed in the same black-and-white uniform I’d seen before. A few wore similar, body-hugging outfits to mine, and the others gave these assassins a wide berth. I intended to use that to my advantage.

Taking a breath, I prepared to approach. I kept telling myself that my abilities were all the camouflage I needed, that no one would look at me twice. But it was still nerve-wracking to contemplate just strolling up to the enemy’s base. Still, I was wholly committed. It was either this or set up somewhere nearby and start picking them off, one by one – a losing strategy if ever there was one. No – I needed to get inside, first. I needed information.

Calming myself, I rose from where I’d been crouching and started forward. I got one step before my eyes found something that made me stumble. Just in front of the building was a ten-foot pole, atop which was my uncle’s disembodied head. Until that moment, I’d convinced myself that he might still be alive, that the Enforcer’s memories had been false. But with the evidence staring me in the face, there was no denying it.

Jeremiah was gone. I was on my own. And the longer I looked at it, the more I came to one, simple conclusion: they had fucked with the wrong family.