Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 17 - Pyramids on the Horizon (Patreon)

Shoot first, ask questions later. That’s Mira’s motto. I don’t know if she got it from her uncle or if it’s the result of a mountain of experience, but I sometimes wish she’d just stop and think things through. Of course, her general policy has saved my life more times than I can count, so maybe I’m the one who needs to change.

Patrick Ward

“Look,” I said, looking down at the little girl. Because of her diminutive size, I had no real context for how old she was. If she’d been human, I might’ve pegged her as three or four years old, but because she was a gnome, my perception was probably a little skewed. I just hoped she was old enough to understand logic. I knelt in front of her, continuing in as calm of a voice as I could muster, “I’m going to take you home, okay? I’m here to…uh…rescue you from the bad guys.”

“Y-you are?” she sobbed, fixing me with a wide-eyed gaze. The little girl sniffed loudly, then wiped her nose on her sleeve. Maybe she really was just as young as she looked. Who knew how Dingyts aged? The girl looked around at the other people, then her gaze found Askar’s dead body, and the sobbing intensified.

Suppressing an eye roll – why did I have to deal with an annoying little kid? – I hooked my hands under her armpits and picked the sobbing mess of gnomehood up. That proved to be a mistake because she immediately stabbed me in the shoulder. The blade only got a quarter of an inch before it hit my subdermal armor, but the fact that it had gotten that far – through my infiltration suit, no less – was surprising enough that I let out a yelp.

I pushed her to arm’s length only to see a snarling face that held none of the innocence of a moment before. In her flailing and tiny fist was a dagger that looked more like an ice pick. It sizzled with Mist, telling me that it was no mundane blade.

“What the hell?!” I spat, resisting the urge to toss her across the cargo bay.

She screeched again and tried to stab my forearm. That was far as her reach would allow. Otherwise, she might’ve attacked my face. Now that I was on guard, I was able to twist just enough to send the blade skittering off my infiltration suit’s armored surface, but she was undeterred, aiming another attack at whatever piece of me she could find.

I wasn’t in the mood to endure any longer, so I quickly shifted so that my grip found her upper arm. Then, I slammed my palm into her throat and latched on. Releasing my other hand, I grabbed her wrist and twisted. The dagger clattered to the ground.

I growled, “If you’d stop trying to kill me for just one second –”

She screamed like a wild animal and tried to claw at my arm. Her efforts were ineffectual, but they were more than a little annoying. Besides, we didn’t have time for the little girl to throw a tantrum.

With an annoyed sigh, I said, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to knock you out. It won’t really hurt that much – not until you wake up. But when you do, your interface will be completely inert for at least a day. Maybe longer if it’s poor quality.”

She didn’t give an answer – or at least not one I could interpret as anything but a feral scream – so I shrugged and used Misthack to infiltrate her system. I found it a little odd that a little girl would have an interface at all, which suggested that she was older than she looked, but I quickly discovered that she had a Nexus implant, too. So, unless the Dingyts did things differently than everyone else, she was technically an adult.

Which made me feel a lot better about what I was about to do.

Her interface was more complex than average, and her defenses were stouter than what I usually encountered, but I still tore through them with frightening speed. My constant training, it seemed, had borne fruit. After only a few seconds, the last node fell, and I was able to upload a Ghost I’d fittingly named Knockout. It only had one purpose, but it did it extremely well, knocking the victim unconscious for a period of time that varied based on Constitution. So long as the subject had less than a hundred attribute points in the category, they’d be out for about a day. Over that, and the duration rapidly decreased. If I used the Ghost on someone with attributes similar to my own, it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds.

Still, judging by everything I’d seen, the little girl would be out for quite some time.

I used the Ghost, and after only a few seconds, she went entirely limp.

“What did you do?” asked Avery, a bit of surprise and horror in her voice.

“Just knocked her out. She’ll be fine.”

“How, though?”

That’s when I realized how it must have looked. To them, I’d only stared at the girl for a few seconds before she fell unconscious. It must’ve appeared like magic.

“A girl’s gotta have her secrets,” I said. Then, I looked the others over before my gaze settled on Rex, and I asked, “Any other questions before I go? No? Okay, then. Hopefully, we’ll never see one another again.”

With that, I threw the little girl over my shoulder and walked toward the opening cargo bay. Once there, I summoned my Cutter, mounted up with the Dingyt girl draped over the fuselage in front of me, and sped off. Before I’d gone even a dozen feet, the Leviathan lifted off, and within a few seconds, it had started moving in the opposite direction. Soon enough, it disappeared over the horizon as I sped toward New Cairo.

After a few minutes, during which I hit a dry riverbed that was straight and flat enough that I could push the Cutter to top speed, Patrick’s voice came over the Secure Connection. “They changed direction,” he stated. “It looks like they’re coming for you.”

I resisted the urge to swear. I’d expected that they were tracking the Dingyt girl somehow, but I’d hoped that it was tied to the container in which she’d been traveling. To combat that, Patrick was going to dump the box over the ocean. But it looked like that strategy would do little good.

“Guess the tracker’s in the girl,” I said. “I’ll lose them in New Cairo.”

“You sure?” asked Patrick. I could hear the other unsaid question in his tone. I could just dump the girl in the desert and get away. However, I suspected that if I didn’t smooth things over, the Dingyts would continue to pursue the people stupid enough to have stolen the granddaughter of one of their leaders. It would be infinitely better to frame myself as a rescuer.

And if that failed to do the trick, I had no issues with going full scorched-earth on the gnomes. I’d done it before, and I wouldn’t lose a bit of sleep if I had do it again. Still, that was definitely not Plan A, if only because I’d gotten a glimpse of their combat capabilities and I really wasn’t sure if I could kill them off without incurring massive collateral damage.

Or ending up dead myself.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” I said.

Then, I continued on my way, tearing through the desert at speeds that would have been impossible without the increased reflexes I’d gained via my inflated Mind attribute. I’d seen fighters who’d ignored that attribute, focusing instead on their bodies. Doing so had hamstrung their progress because their brains simply couldn’t handle their physical potential, except in short bursts.

Some had chosen to shore up that weakness via various cybernetic enhancements to their minds, but even that strategy had its limits. I preferred the more natural approach. Sure, I loved my Hand of God and subdermal armor, but I wasn’t completely useless without them, either. A few times, I’d been forced to do without, and though it was uncomfortable, I could make it work.

Most serious warriors couldn’t say as much.

After a couple of hours’ worth of speeding across the desert, I saw a river glittering on the horizon. It flowed northward, and because of my map, I knew that it would lead me to my destination. As I approached the bank, flora began to appear, and with every few hundred yards, it grew thicker until it became a veritable jungle of vegetation.

I continued north, passing various crumbling ruins and some wildlife that never had a chance to react to the speed of my passage. As the sun began to set, Patrick announced that he’d hit the ocean and dumped the crates; apparently, Avery, Rex, and their nameless henchmen had been busy unloading and sorting the stolen goods. The fact that they hadn’t found any obvious trackers put my mind at ease.

I wasn’t exactly happy with being tracked, but it was better me than Patrick and the Leviathan.

Just before the sun set, I got my first view of New Cairo.

And it was breathtaking.

Huge pyramids reached for the sky, glittering in the dying sunlight. At first, I wasn’t sure of their construction, but as I drew closer, I realized that they were built entirely from gleaming metal and reflective glass. There were other, much smaller pyramids nearby – three of them, in fact – but these were clearly far older and made of stone. They made even the ruins I’d already passed look new, which was impressive enough all on its own. Not only had those stone pyramids survived the Initialization, but it looked as if they’d managed to endure thousands of years before that.

Not for the first time, I realized that humanity was far more complex than I knew, and I found myself wondering just how much history and culture we had lost when the Mist descended upon the Earth. In a lot of ways, it was a depressing thought, but in others, it filled me with hope. If even ancient humans could build something as impressive as those pyramids, even before all the technology that came with our inclusion in a wider universe, then we were capable of just about anything.

Even resisting the incoming invasion.

Or at least, I hoped that was true. My uncle hadn’t believed it, but then again, he’d always been a pessimist. Most of the time, I was too, but I wanted to be better. I wanted to be different. I wanted to hope, to believe in the human spirit. I just hadn’t seen much evidence to support that faith in humanity.

I slowed a little, mostly because it probably wasn’t a great idea to try to get into the city at full speed, especially given that explaining the presence of the child-like Dingyt in front of me was going to be a bit tricky. As I cruised through the area, I saw a few of the residents. Some were out on the river, where they were fishing; most had deployed some buoys nearby. I’d seen their like before, and I knew that they would agitate the Mist to warn large predators off. They weren’t perfect, and they tended to make fishing a bit more difficult – after all, many of the smaller fish were frightened away, too – but it was a necessity for any fisherman.

The people themselves were predominantly dark of skin, with thick curly hair much like my own. However, there were plenty of other ethnicities apparent as well. Most were fisherman, but there were people gathering fruit from the vast orchards on the other side of the river, too. I expected that somewhere nearby, there were farms where they grew grain and corn. A city the size of New Cairo couldn’t survive without it, regardless of how much fish they managed to catch.

Slowly, I made my way across the terrain until I found a wide, gravel path that looked like it would lead me to the city. Once there, I was forced to slow even further by the flow of pedestrians, hoverbikes, and vehicles. Like everywhere else in the world, the people were eager to return to the city before nightfall.

Because I was getting quite a few covetous looks, I dismissed the Cutter and threw the Dingyt girl over my shoulder. Then, I started jogging ahead, weaving through the traffic for a couple of miles until I finally reached the city gate. It was a massive thing, set in the center of a giant, concrete wall that must have been at least a hundred feet tall. I saw the telltale shimmer of a Mist shield dancing along its surface, and there were turrets – not the automated kind, either, but rather the sort that required an operator – every fifteen yards or so. I had never encountered their specific kind of gun, but I could recognize quality when I saw it. Finally, patrols with a mixture of combat bots, drones, and human guards walked along the top of the wall.

It was a fortress.

But it was one I needed to infiltrate. So, I found the line for entry into the city and waited a few minutes until it was my turn. When it came, I stepped forward and smiled at the bored-looking guard. He was wearing a deep purple uniform trimmed in gold, and he wielded a sleek assault rifle that looked as if it probably packed a pretty good punch. If I’d had to guess based on the feeling I got from him, I’d have put him at around Tier-4, and with a little Mist accumulation to back it up. A dangerous opponent, and he was only a random guard? New Cairo definitely took its security seriously.

The man looked me up and down, then asked, “Not from around here, are you?”

He’d clearly spoken another language, but my Universal Language ability had saved me from an awkward situation by translating his words in real time. So, I said, “No. Just visiting some friends.”

“With a little girl?” he asked, nodding to the unconscious Dingyt. Thankfully, he hadn’t looked too closely, or he’d have seen her slightly too-large eyes and pointed ears.

I shrugged my unencumbered shoulder, saying, “She got a headache, so I gave her a med-hypo. She passed out straight away, so I’ve been carrying her ever since.”

He poked her back, and she stirred slightly before saying, “She’s not contagious, is she?”

“Just a headache,” I assured him. To drive it home, I used Bluff. I saw it take hold immediately, and his eyes went slightly glassy before he nodded.

“Okay. Sounds plausible. Who’re you here to see?” he asked.

“Old friends,” I said, using Bluff again. I had no intention of telling him any more than that, and if it came down to it, I’d knock him out the same way I’d disabled the girl. Then, I would sprint through the gate and disappear once I reached the other side. With Mimic, Stealth, and Camouflage, they’d never find me.

He blinked, and for a moment, I thought he was going to resist the effects of Bluff. Some people could, but only if they’d worked on raising their Mind and Mist attributes. Clearly, this guard had, which spoke well for his competence. But in the end, whatever resistance he’d managed melted away, and he nodded again. “Alright. Carry on, then,” he said, waving us through.

I didn’t hesitate to do just that, and I hurried through the gate. As I passed through the wall, I couldn’t help but notice just how thick it was. It was almost thirty seconds before I found the other side. Thankfully, it was just in time, too, because through Observation, I noticed that someone had taken issue with how the guard had done his job, and she was berating him for it.

Before she could chase me down, I ducked out from the passage and into New Cairo.

In a lot of ways, it was a city like any other. But even the small glimpse I’d managed was enough to tell me it had a flavor all its own. Because there were pyramids everywhere. Sure, there were the massive ones I had seen from a distance, but there were only a dozen of those sprawling creations. Between them were smaller pyramids. Some were the size of single-family dwellings, but others were quite a bit larger than that, too. For someone who’d grown up in Nova City, where all the buildings were rectangular, it was a bit jarring.

But I regained my wits quickly enough that I managed to duck into an alley, where I embraced Mimic, changing my face to one of my standbys – a Tier-2 dark-skinned woman with long, flowing braids – and used Stealth. Camouflage came next, and finally, I deployed a tiny holographic display that I hoped would hide me from the authorities.

A moment after I’d finished my preparations, the objecting guard appeared at the head of the alley. She took a moment to look scan the area before moving on. Still, I chose to wait another twenty minutes before I gathered my holographic display, returning it to my arsenal implant before boldly striding out of the alley.

I was ready to fight a battle, but thankfully, nobody was there. I’d made it inside. Now, I just had to find Vanna’s bar. Hopefully, she could help me get my bearings so I could set up a safehouse. If not, my meeting with my Dingyt pursuers would probably be very unpleasant.

And from what I’d seen so far, I liked New Cairo. Its architecture was weird, but it seemed peaceful enough. It would certainly be a shame if I had to start blowing stuff up.