Mistrunner 2 - Chapter 69 - It All Falls Down (Patreon)

I had always hoped she had survived. I took solace in the idea that she might be out there somewhere, living her life to the fullest. Free of Jeremiah and his insanity. But now? I just wish she’d been there with him when he fell. It would have been kinder.

Nora Lancaster

I hefted my assault rifle, aiming it at Nora as I said, “Or I could just do what I came to do. My way seems easier.”

“How did you do it?” she asked, ignoring my statement. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to just squeeze the trigger. I wanted answers. I wanted the satisfaction of hearing her explain why she had betrayed my uncle.

And she clearly knew it.

“Do what?” I asked, my weapon never wavering. I wouldn’t immediately kill her, but if she made one wrong move, I would do what I had to do. It wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying, but that was just how things worked out sometimes.

“The people you killed,” she said. “The ones guarding the ramp. Most of them weren’t even wounded.”

“As if I would tell you,” was my response. I had no interest in revealing any of my secrets. Obviously, Nora had some sort of plan; otherwise, she would have reacted very differently. I’d seen how she confronted threats, and talking it out really wasn’t her go-to move. So, if she was willing to engage in conversation, there had to be a reason.

Of course, that reason might’ve just been that she was backed into a corner, and she had no clue how she was going to survive. For some reason, the notion of her cowering in fear brought with it a spark of joy.

“I think it’s some special class ability,” she went on, leaning forward. When she did, I saw a bit of wiring leading to a metal plate at the base of her neck. Perhaps she’d gotten a new, powerful cybernetic, and that was why she seemed so relaxed. “With that Tier-7 implant and the training you went through, I’m sure you were offered some special options. What was it? Did you follow in Jeremiah’s footsteps? You do seem to favor your rifles. But then again, I saw recordings of your fights in the Emporium. Jeremiah never would’ve bothered letting any of those people close. But you…you enjoy slicing them up, don’t you?”

“Do you have a point?” I asked, cutting in before she could start in on another thought. The last thing I wanted was to reveal my class – clearly, Gunther had kept a few of my secrets to himself – and I didn’t like being interrogated by a woman I intended to kill.

“Not really,” she said, leaning back and throwing her arm over the back of the couch. I noticed that her limbs were much thinner than I remembered. “Just catching up with an old friend.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Aren’t we? Or maybe our connection goes deeper,” she said with a slight smirk. “Like sisters. Or maybe cousins. I was there for you when nobody else was. Do you remember that, Mira? All those days I was assigned to protect you? Those times I was your shoulder to cry on? The hours I spent listening to you whine about how unfair your uncle was? And we got even closer during your training. You can’t deny that.”

“And then you got Jeremiah killed. You sacrificed an entire town, and –”

“As if you haven’t done much worse,” she spat, finally showing something other than feigned friendliness. “How big of a number is your body count? Thousands, surely. Maybe tens of thousands. So, you don’t get to take the moral high ground, here. Your hands are just as bloody as mine. Probably more.”

I had no response for that.

What’s more, I was tired of talking it out. So, I did what I had come to do, and I shot her in the face.

The kinetic force of the burst of gunfire sent her flipping backwards over the couch, and she skidded backwards a couple of extra feet. I fired again at her prone form. And again. Over and over until the magazine was spent. I had no intention of failing due to lack of gunfire, that was for sure.

I reloaded, intending to add a few more rounds to the barrage. However, as the dust settled, I couldn’t help but notice a shimmering blue film hovering an inch above her body. Then, she twitched.

So, I fired again, emptying another magazine into her.

It wasn’t until I reloaded for a second time that she growled, “Are you done yet? None of that’s going to kill me, but it sure doesn’t feel great.”

As she spoke, Nora pushed herself upright and, once she’d reached her hands and knees, twisted around to sneer at me, adding, “You really are like him, aren’t you?”

“What…”

“Top-quality personal shield,” she said. “Cost more than this building, but I’d say it’s worth it, considering you don’t have anything strong enough to get through it.”

“I…I don’t…I don’t understand…”

“Look – you got your equipment from some small-time arms dealer,” she said, finally climbing to her feet. “And it’s good gear. Better than most. But you have no idea what else is out there just waiting for anyone willing to go the extra mile. This shield, it runs on raw Rift shards. Costs a damn fortune, even when it’s idling, but there’s nothing that comes even close when it comes to defense.”

It was true. She’d basically taken a shield powerful enough to guard an entire city and tasked it with personal protection. By contrast, the shields I’d considered before buying my Sheath ran off of a combination of ambient Mist and a person’s natural stores. It was the same with my subdermal Sheath as well as any other widely available armor.

But I knew that the cost wasn’t the only issue. I could feel the density of the Mist around her; it was like having a personal Dead Zone the size of her body, and I suspected that the concentration of that much Mist was enough to slowly poison her body. I wondered if she realized that her shield was killing her.

Probably not.

“Had to empty the coffers for this bad boy,” she said, making a dramatic show of dusting herself off. Pointedly, her hands never actually reached her body. Instead, her fingers skated along the surface of the shimmering blue shield. “But it’s totally worth it.”

“What do you want?”

“You came here, remember? I should be asking you the same question,” she answered.

“You know why I’m here,” I said, slamming a magazine into the R-14’s well. It slid home with a satisfying click. “And if you think that little shield’s going to protect you, you’ve got another thing coming. Everything has limits. And I’ll keep going until it shatters. You had to know that.”

“Ah, but that’s the thing – if you kill me, you’re killing everyone else in Nova City, too,” she said, a smug expression on her face. “Didn’t expect that, did you? Of course not. Because you’re just an automaton who’s been programmed to be what Jeremiah wanted you to be. Don’t you see that? He was a monster, and he created you in his image.”

“He…he wanted me to be better. He said so –”

“You’re not that naïve,” Nora said. “You and I both know that actions speak far louder than words. Look at it objectively. He said he wanted you to be better, sure. I heard it, too. But then he turned you into a killer. That was his priority because he just wanted another weapon to control. He did the same to me. Pumped me full of bio-enhancers and aimed me at his enemies.”

“You chose to put that trash in your own system,” I said. “He never –”

“I had no choice!” Nora screamed, slamming the palm of her hand against the back of the couch. “He pushed me into it! I had to do something – anything – to make myself stand out. He could have given me that implant, but he made me take a different…he forced me down this path, Mira. Can’t you see that? He pushed and he pushed, always expecting more. And the only way to satisfy his ridiculous standards was to make bad choices. I won’t live past sixty. You know that, right? Everyone else is going to end up living for centuries. But me? That poison…

“But that was before. That was when Jeremiah was in charge,” she said. “Now, though? The aliens are going to help me. They’ve already promised that when they come down, I can use their facilities to undergo treatments that will undo all the negative aspects of the bio-enhancers. I’ll be…I’ll be whole again.”

That’s when everything clicked into place. I’d always wondered why Nora had betrayed my uncle. Part of me was satisfied with thinking that she’d done so for power, to gain control of the Specters, but that had never really felt like it was enough to prompt her actions.

But the combination of shifting the blame for her bad choices onto Jeremiah and the aliens’ promise to fix the damage she had done to herself? That fit almost perfectly with Nora’s personality.

“You’re pathetic,” I said.

And I meant it. I might’ve been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, but at least I’d never blamed anyone else for making me do it. My choices had led me down my path. Nobody else’s. The mere idea of foisting that responsibility onto someone else left me nauseated.

But Nora, she’d always looked for someone else to take responsibility for her failures. And in the end, it had gotten my uncle killed. No matter what happened, there would always be someone else for her to blame.

It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for her, but that line of emotions barely even got started before it was smothered by the reality of all the pain she’d caused.

“Pathetic?! I took hold of my own fate, and –”

“I’m not here to debate, Nora,” I said, shaking my head in resignation and interrupting what would likely be a tirade of specious justification. “I’m here to kill you. Plain and simple. Once I’m done, I’m going to move on.”

“And you think you can?” she demanded. “With my shield –”

“Shields take energy,” I said. “That’s a fact. So, unless you’ve got a backpack full of Rift shards, I think I can get through that shield.”

“And how would you do that?”

“A copious application of firepower,” I stated. “And I think you know it. So, cut the crap and just tell me what else you’ve got hidden away.”

“Maybe I’ll just beat you to death, same as I have with –”

I laughed. “If you could have done that, you already would’ve,” I said. “Do you know what I think? You’ve been getting weaker for a while, haven’t you? Suddenly, all that strength has faded. You’re a shadow of what you once were.”

“There’s no –”

“I poisoned your bio-enhancers, Nora,” I cut in. “For months now, you’ve been shoving a useless chemical into your body. It might’ve even been detrimental. I don’t know.  You feel it, don’t you? That weakness. You always hated it. I doubt you could hurt me even if I gave you a free shot or two.”

Anyone else, and I’d have been worried about firearms. But Nora had always disdained their use, famously preferring her own two hands when it came to combat. As a result, she had no modifiers for ranged combat or certifications. So, her options for powerful weapons were limited, and even if she’d managed to acquire one, I suspected that, without modifiers backing her up, she would be incapable of quickly finishing me off. By the time she managed to get through my defenses, I could turn the tables.

No - I was in no danger. Not from her, at least.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than she started to laugh. It lasted only a few seconds, and she cut off just as quickly as it had started – meaning it was probably feigned. When she finished, she said, “You are so like him. He was sure of his own power, too. He thought he was invincible.”

“To you, he was.”

I could hear her teeth grinding before she hissed, “And who’s dead, huh? If he was so invincible, how come I’m the one still standing tall?”

“You call this tall?” I asked, gesturing all around. “How long do you think it’ll be before they all turn on you? Not long, after all this. Even your own people are on the verge of abandoning you, and that’s not even counting the pound of flesh the other tribes will demand. Even if I walk away right now, you’re done, Nora. And you’re the only one who can’t see that.”

She shook her head, then, in a quiet voice, said, “You’re right. And do you know what, Mira? That just means I have nothing to lose.”

I didn’t like her tone of voice. “What does that mean?” I demanded.

She smiled, and for a moment, I wondered how things had gone so wrong. In that smile, I saw hundreds of previous conversations. I saw all the advice she had given me. All the comfort she had provided. I saw my friend.

I saw family.

“It means if I can’t be on top, I might as well tear the whole thing down,” was her response. She tapped the metal plate on the back of her neck, continuing, “Called a kill switch. Had it made special a few weeks ago. I didn’t think I’d use it for this, but…well, let’s just call it a happy accident. I got the idea from you, you know. At the time, I didn’t know it was you, but you were definitely the inspiration. Seeing those Silos destroyed, it opened my eyes to the power of a good explosion. So, I had this thing made.”

“So, if you die, the building goes down,” I guessed.

“The building? God no. I’m going to bring down the whole city.”

For a moment, I couldn’t respond. Instead, my mind raced as I tried to process her claim. Was it possible? I had no idea. But in my experience, if you used enough explosives, you could blow just about anything up.

“The pillars are the point of weakness,” she said. “Relatively speaking, of course. The whole thing is reinforced by Mist, but that can be overcome. The point, Mira, is that if you kill me, you’ll be killing everyone else in Nova City. The aristocrats up in King’s Row. The shopkeepers in Bywater. The poor addicts in Algiers. The few holdouts in the Garden. All of them.”

At its height, Nova City had been home to millions of people, so even now that so many had left, there were at least hundreds of thousands left. The city only felt empty because it had been built to accommodate a much larger population.

“What’s your revenge worth, Mira?” she asked, a smirk playing across her smug face.

She thought she had won. I could see that much. The Mira she knew would never have made the kind of sacrifice she’d suggested.

But that wasn’t the person standing in front of her.

I sighed, letting my weapon fall to my side. “I thought I’d be allowed to change,” I said. “I thought I had turned a corner.”

I shook my head. “But this world, it’s not built like that, is it? It keeps pushing and pushing until we’re buried in nothing but bad decisions,” I said. “That’s the secret, isn’t it? You have to…I don’t know…just make the best of one bad situation after another.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged. “It is what it is,” I stated, looking up and into her eyes. “You know, I kept thinking that this would be like a fairy tale. Or like one of those parables Jeremiah used to tell me when I was little. Like the one with the good Samaritan. As if every situation would resolve itself with some moral lesson. But that’s not real life. Not in this world, at least.”

Then, without another word, I hefted my rifle and fired. Over and over, one burst after another, I assaulted her shield. It easily stopped the superheated plasma, but the sheer kinetic force of each shot sent Nora tumbling to the floor. I kept going, squeezing the trigger with metronomic precision until the magazine was spent. Then, in a swift and practiced motion, I exchanged it for another and continued the bombardment.

Like that, I kept going. I didn’t expect the shield to easily fall, but in the absence of any resistance – Nora was kept off balance by the constant barrage, and even if she wasn’t, she had become a paper tiger; she looked tough, but there wasn’t much real strength backing it up – I had the leisure to steadily wear the shield down.

Which I did.

One magazine after another until my entire stock of R-14 ammunition was spent. Then, I stowed the weapon for Ferdinand II and continued my assault. The sound of constant gunfire filled the air as I emptied my arsenal implant of pistol ammunition. Then, I switched to the scattergun. It was less effective than the others, but more impactful than I might have expected. Still, when the last canister was spent, the shield remained intact.

For her part, Nora tried to resist. She tried to run. Seeing that I didn’t care about her contingency plan had frightened her; I could see that much painted across her face, and she had no option but to try to flee. But under my barrage, that was impossible. She was pinned down and incapable of resistance.

Still, her shield was high quality and vastly overpowered for its purpose, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d have to veer away from brute force tactics.

That in mind, I exchanged the scattergun for the Pulsar, and started using Empowered Shot every two seconds. That had more of an impact, and each shot sent ripples of Mist to dance across the shield’s surface. But even after I’d used every last round in my Arsenal Implant, it still remained intact.

So, I pounced, intending to take a more direct approach.

I preferred it that way.

When I fell upon her, Nora attempted to throw me aside in a practiced motion, but my sabotage of her bio-enhancers had done its job well. A good thing. An innocent man’s life had been ruined so I could foist weakness upon her. If it hadn’t worked…

No matter. It had.

I repositioned myself atop her, activated Combination Punch, and went to work with the Hand of God. One punch after another, each one stronger than the last, fell upon that shield with monumental force. Four punches, reactivate my ability, and continue – for almost a minute, that was the pattern of my entire existence. I grunted with each strike, putting every ounce of my Constitution behind every punch.

Then, suddenly, my supply of Mist guttered out.

For a long moment, I just stared down at her. I’d thrown everything I had at Nora – or more accurately – her shield, but it wasn’t enough. The shield flickered and quivered, clearly on the verge of destruction, but it remained strong enough to protect Nora from my measly attacks.

For her part, Nora had long since lost consciousness. Even though my attacks had been blocked, some of the force had gone through, rattling her brain enough to knock her out. Maybe she’d go into a coma. Or experience brain damage. Perhaps that would have to be enough for now.

Plus, it would keep the kill switch from going off. It seemed like a win-win. For all intents and purposes, Nora would be gone, and Nova City would survive.

It was a deal I should’ve been elated to take.

But I couldn’t do it. I refused to let her continue to draw breath. Living the rest of her life as a comatose vegetable was letting her off light.

In the end, it was a decision I’d already made multiple times before. My need for revenge would not be satisfied by mere incapacitation. Nora had to die, and despite the character growth I’d thought I had experienced, I hadn’t come so far, I hadn’t sacrificed so much or so many just to stop short of my goal. I couldn’t live in a world where Nora continued to draw breath – not if I could do something about it.

So, for the last time, I made my choice.

Standing, I drew my blade from the sheath at my back. I took a moment to watch the blue energy dancing along its edge; for such an efficient weapon, it certainly was beautiful. Perhaps in another world, I could have appreciated that. But in my world, in a reality where fables and parables were just silly stories meant to keep children in line, the sword was just a weapon.

And I used it for its intended purpose.

Hefting it in a two-handed grip, I brought it down with furious speed. There were no abilities augmenting its damage, but even so, it cut into the weakened shield with predictable results. I could feel the Mist flicker as it drew more power from the Rift shards that fueled its function.

Another strike, and the flickers became a persistent shimmer. Still another, and the shimmers became miniature tidal waves of pure Mist. Another followed. Again and again. I put every ounce of my fury behind each strike. I was fueled by frustration, loss, and sheer determination, and unlike the Mist, my emotions were inexhaustible.

Finally, after what felt like my hundredth attack, the shield fell, winking out of existence as if it had never been. And at last, my revenge was at hand.

I’d imagined that moment a hundred times. In my mind, I’d always been an avenging angel, reaping justice as I struck down my hated foe. But the reality was very different. I was just an angry girl standing over an unconscious woman.

My sword fell one final time, biting into her neck with the precision borne of a thousand hours’ worth of practice. It didn’t stop until it hit the concrete floor.

Nora’s head fell free, rolling ever so slightly to the right.

Blood pooled, vibrant and red.

Tears fell down my cheeks as I felt overwhelmed by emptiness.

I was finished. I had gotten my revenge. Nora was dead. I should have been elated. I should have felt some sense of satisfaction. But I didn’t. Instead, I was just…empty.

Just as I was beginning to come to grips with my quest’s end, the ground rumbled. Once. Twice. Three, and then four tremors shook the megabuilding.

It was an important number, because I knew precisely what it signified. After all, the platform that held the Garden thousands of feet above the swamp below was supported by precisely four enormous pillars.

The kill switch, it seemed, had activated.