Mistrunner 2 - Chapter 63 - Demolition (Patreon)

Gunther never took her seriously. He just thought she was a silly girl with some expensive toys. I knew better. I had seen parts of her training. But more, I knew the depths of Jeremiah’s desire to prepare her for the harsh realities of the world. Even half-trained, Mira was a grave threat. Gunther couldn’t see that.

Nora Lancaster

Six identical thumps, all in quick succession, resounded, and a sextet of explosive rounds flew through the air. I was already reloading before they found their mark, and when they finally hit, they did so with what felt like a singular explosion that blanketed the entire area in fire and concussive force. I was thrown backwards by the shockwave, but because of the effects of Blast Shield, which reduced the severity of the effects on me from my own explosions, I was otherwise unharmed.

The same couldn’t be said for Gunther’s small army of mooks. The two dozen or so Operators who were unlucky enough to find themselves at the epicenter died instantly. However, there were plenty of others who were less affected. A cloud of dust born of shattered concrete billowed into the air, and when the sound of the explosion faded, it was replaced by the creaks of the Dome’s unstable foundation.

After all, when I’d first acquired the BMAP, Gala had described its capability as being sufficient to tear down buildings, and it definitely lived up to that description. But the Dome wasn’t just any building, and I felt certain that, reinforced as it was, it would continue to stand. Otherwise, I would never have risked using the BMAP indoors.

Still, I knew there was still plenty of danger from the damage wrought by the mobile artillery platform. The Dome’s overall structure might’ve remained sound, but the same couldn’t be said for the building’s other parts and pieces. Punctuating that thought, a giant chunk of cracked concrete fell from the ceiling, sending a wave of force to ripple through the dust cloud.

I dragged myself to my feet, my ears still ringing from the explosion and my body protesting its ill treatment. I still had broken ribs. My organs were, at the very least, bruised. At worst, I was bleeding internally.

But I was alive, and given my Pain Tolerance as well as my Regeneration ability, I felt confident that I could still fight.

It was a good thing, too, because the moment I found my feet, a clatter of cascading concrete sounded in front of me. A moment later, a battered and bruised Gunther stepped out of the cloud of dust. And he looked even worse than I felt. His leather suit was torn to shreds, one of his arms hung limp by his side, and each step came with a pronounced limp. Half his face had been pulverized into a mass of bruises, broken bones, and lacerated flesh, and his eye was entirely missing, leaving a gaping hole in its wake.

But he was alive.

And he was angry.

Still twenty feet away, he thrust his spear at me with one hand, growling, “You little bitch! Do you have any idea what this is going to cost me? Dierdre was a masterpiece of modern technology and –”

I leaped, using Engage to cover the distance in an instant. As I did so, I dropped the BMAP into my arsenal implant; I didn’t have time to summon another weapon. Nor would I get my pistol or nano-bladed sword out before I reached him. But that didn’t matter. I still had the Hand of God at my side.

Gunther tried to react as I closed on him, but to the naked eye, Engage was so quick that it seemed almost a teleport, and I was on top of him before he could bring his spear to bear. Without his stealth ability or his army of goons to back him up, he was practically powerless before my charge.

I landed with a mighty, if unimaginative, punch that took him directly in the ruined half of his face. To my surprise, I didn’t feel bones shattering beneath the blow. I’d put everything into it – the entirety of my Constitution as well as the momentum of Engage – but the result only staggered him back by a couple of feet.

It was a good thing I’d activated Combination Punch, then.

The next blow – an uppercut with my other hand – took him in the stomach, bending him double. The one after that was a hammer blow that hit him in the back of the head. And the fourth was a knee to his descending face that forced him upright so he could receive the final attack – a simple hook with the Hand of God that hit with enough force to send him rocketing into a wall ten feet away.

A spiderweb of cracks spread from the point of impact, but when Gunther dropped to the ground, he was still moving, albeit with the sort of drunken lack of coordination that came from a severe concussion.

I stepped forward, my fists clenched in anger.

I’d always expected Gunther to betray me. That was who he was. The moment betrayal became more profitable than cooperation, he was always going to turn on me. Even so, he’d managed to surprise me. After all, he’d made thousands of credits off of me, and as far as he knew, thousands more were still to come. I thought it would’ve been some time before the balance tipped out of my favor.

Clearly, I was wrong.

Unfortunately, when I reached Gunther and kicked him over to lay on his back, I saw the damage I probably should have expected. The flesh on one side of his face had been ripped away by the sheer force of my final blow, exposing the layer of metal armor beneath. However, it bore an imprint of my fist, which dented the subdermal layer out of shape. I was certain that the skull beneath it had been completely shattered, and his brain had followed suit.

He was still alive, but his one remaining eye stared forward sightlessly. He twitched a few times, but even if I left him as he was, there was little chance he’d ever regain full consciousness.

Which put a bit of a damper on my plan for interrogation.

So, it was fortunate that I didn’t need to verbalize questions in order to get information out of him. With my foot, I turned Gunther’s head to the side, exposing his information port. Then, I knelt beside him and dragged the braided black-and-gold cord out of the Hand of God, inserting the exposed end into the small slot.

I kept part of my awareness trained on my surroundings; with Observation flared, I could tell that the Operators who hadn’t been killed were still out of the fight, but that wouldn’t always remain the case. So, I’d need to extract Gunther’s information as quickly as I could.

But the moment I connected, I found a problem.

Gunther’s system sported what was easily the most robust set of defenses I had ever encountered. There weren’t just hundreds of nodes; there were thousands, each as complex as the ones I’d found in the aural sensors around the octavangian camp. I was sorely tempted to chance it and dive into those defenses – I hated admitting defeat, after all – but my better judgement won out, and I disconnected. I experienced a slight backlash, but the spike of mental pain was easily ignored. If I’d done so after diving into the defenses, it would have been much, much worse.

Either way, Gunther’s secrets would remain his own.

Not that it mattered so much. I could guess the high points of his betrayal. But I’d hoped to find some information I could use to rob him blind. With the shards Patrick and I had mined in the Rift, we were very wealthy, but one could never have too much funding. And I had a sense that, once he bought a ship, our riches would be sorely depleted.

With a sigh of disappointment, I retracted the cord back into my artificial hand and turned my attention to the survivors. In the Rift, I had resolved to be a better person who wasn’t solely driven by a quest for revenge. However, that resolution didn’t include mercy towards those who had directly attacked me, if only because leaving an enemy alive in your wake was a terrible idea.

Nora had made that unwitting mistake, and I’d spent the past months steadily weakening her entire organization. So, who was to say that the same vow of revenge couldn’t be aimed at me? No – it was better if I ended any potential threats before they had a chance to blossom into anything serious.

So, over the next few minutes, I engaged in the unsavory task of finishing off my enemies. As I did so, I took the extra time to snatch any credits they might have accumulated, but because my arsenal implant was still full of Rift Shards, I couldn’t loot anything but the virtual currency. And even that wasn’t possible with each of them; some had secured their credits by locking them behind a set of impregnable defenses, and I had neither the time nor the inclination to spend hours solving equations and puzzles just to get a few thousand extra credits.

Once I’d finished my task and taken what I could, I used the secure connection I’d created to contact Patrick.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Me? What about you? I didn’t –”

“I’m fine,” I said. “The bad guys are dead, so I’m coming to you.”

“Uh…probably not a great idea,” he said. “If it’s even possible…”

Then, he proceeded to explain that, once the attack had commenced, the Dome’s security protocols had engaged, locking him behind a set of steel doors. There were dozens of auto-turrets, a few drones, and a couple of advanced robots guarding the area around the Bazaar’s access point. However, the good news was that he was completely safe, even if he was basically a temporary prisoner.

After administering a couple of med-hypos to help me deal with the pain of my injuries, I hurried down the hall in his direction. Soon enough, though, I found the defenses he’d described. The exterior was only guarded by a couple of auto-turrets, both of which opened fire the moment I came into view. I was ready, though, and I avoided injury by quickly ducking behind a corner.

I spent the next few minutes deactivating the auto-turrets. They were more advanced than anything I’d seen before, but my {Mistrunner} abilities had progressed far enough that tearing through their defenses wasn’t more than an inconvenience.

The doors were a different story altogether.

If I wanted to get through them, I had two options. I could either spend hours dismantling their defenses, or I could use force – which might’ve actually taken even longer. Neither option seemed attractive to me.

But then I realized that I didn’t need to get through at all. Patrick was safe for the moment, and what’s more, he was precisely where we wanted him. Nothing about his mission had to change. In fact, the situation was probably better than anything we could’ve hoped to encounter. With the strength of the defenses surrounding him, Patrick could head up to the Bazaar and buy our ship without having to worry about his own safety.

Of course, when I told him to do just that, he wasn’t happy about it, but he eventually saw reason and agreed to do his job.

Meanwhile, he dropped another information bomb on me.

“She says the whole city’s after you, now,” Patrick said, referring to Cirilla Montague, his [Cybernetic Engineer]mentor. “She’s in hiding, but she wanted to…ah…she wanted me to…”

“What? Spit it out, Pick.”

“She wanted me to leave you,” he admitted. “She’s leaving the city, and she wants me to go with her to somewhere called Indiana.”

Suddenly, I realized that Patrick and Montague had grown far closer than I had previously thought. Not surprising, given how much time he’d spent with the woman. Still, I had to wonder about the nature of their involvement. Did she look at him as a valuable assistant? That made sense. I knew just how capable Patrick could be. Or did she see him as a friend? A little brother, perhaps?

Or maybe she liked younger men.

Certainly, she wouldn’t be the first with such tastes. Even Heather had been a mere fraction of my uncle’s age.

“And? What are you going to do?” I asked.

“What? We’re in this together, Mira!” he answered. The vehemence in his voice was all the assurance I needed. Or that’s what I wanted to believe, at least. Still, the fact that Montague had tried to steal Patrick away from me left a sour taste in my mouth. In the past, I might’ve killed her for it. But now, I just wanted to have a conversation – one that might end with her face swollen beyond recognition.

Yeah – that would definitely make me feel a little better.

But I didn’t have time for any of that, so I said, “Just get the ship. You know better than I do what we need, so I trust your judgement.”

We’d already discussed the parameters of the ship we wanted to buy, but we both knew that our options would be limited, both by our funds as well as availability. I could only imagine that the Bazaar’s stock was limited, so Patrick would have to use his discretion to determine what kind of trade-offs we were willing to make. But considering he’d be the one flying the ship, that was probably appropriate.

“Good to know,” he said, a hint of irritation in his voice, probably because he thought I was patronizing him. I hadn’t intended it that way, but I could see how it might seem a bit condescending.

“Alright,” I said. “I don’t think the secure connection will persist when you head to the Bazaar, so good luck.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I think it’s time I ended this,” I stated. “Nora’s not going to stop, and now that she knows I’m still alive, I’m not convinced my abilities will be enough to keep me under the radar. I need to take her out now, or she’ll have even more time to set up her defenses.”

“You’re going by yourself?”

Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, I couldn’t keep myself from shrugging. “What choice do I have? I don’t have an army, Patrick,” I said. “Besides, I work best alone.”

“We could wait. I could get the ship and come with you.”

“No. You’ll just slow me down,” I stated. “If what Montague told you is true, the whole city’s going to be gunning for me. I’m going to have to move fast. I can’t do that and worry about whether or not you’ll be safe.”

“I can take care of myself,” he argued.

“I know you can. This isn’t about you or your abilities,” I countered. “This is about me. I can’t…I can’t lose you too, Patrick.”

Silence reigned for a few moments before he said, “Fine. But…but take care of yourself. You get reckless sometimes. Just get to Nora, kill her, and get out. Nobody else matters. Once she’s dead, we leave the city and go on our adventures. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay – I’m leaving for the Bazaar. Stay safe, Mira. I can’t lose you either.”

And with that, the connection severed.

For a few seconds, I considered just holing up in the Dome and waiting it out. Once Patrick emerged, we could collect our ship and leave the city. It would have been the safer option.

It would have been the smart choice.

But as much as I thought I’d grown as a person, I couldn’t even consider abandoning my quest for vengeance without nausea twisting my insides into knots. I might have decided to abstain from the revenge-at-all-costs mentality that had driven me to kill thousands of innocent people, but I knew I could never live with myself if I left Nora alive.

And even if I could, I didn’t want to live in a world where Nora kept on breathing.

It wasn’t about vengeance. Not anymore. It was justice. She’d betrayed and killed my uncle, sentencing the entirety of Mobile to death in the process. And for that, she deserved to die. It was such a simple equation, but it was a profound declaration, nonetheless. More importantly, I didn’t need to clutter it up with any further plans to make her suffer. I just needed to act.

So, with that in mind, I turned from the great metal doors and headed toward the Dome’s exit. As I did, I saw quite a few cowering people, but I’d embraced Stealthbefore setting out, so they had no idea I was in their midst. When I finally reached the exit, I was unsurprised to find that it had been barred and was guarded by more auto-turrets. Apparently, that was part of the security protocol.

Hidden as I was, I took my time dismantling the defenses. The last thing I wanted was a failure caused by impatience. I needn’t have worried, though. I tore through the various Mistwalls without much difficulty, then deactivated the auto-turrets before commanding the doors to open.

When they did, I saw an army of Operators amassed before me.