Mistrunner 3- Chapter 41 - An Uncomfortable Journey (Patreon)

Sometimes, I wonder how it all started. Someone had to have created the Mist. Were they responsible for the Nexus Implants and the system? Or was it someone else? Did it all just spontaneously manifest, created by the Mist itself? There’s so much we don’t know, and I don’t know if we’ll ever learn the truth.

Patrick Ward

Whoever categorized the Ithids as elves or fairies had clearly never encountered either. To me, they looked more like humanoid mosquitoes than anything else. At a foot or so tall, they were almost human in form, save for a long, rigid proboscis jutting from their faces. Aside from that, each one was also equipped with a set of transparent wings that further solidified their insectoid appearance.

And there were thousands of them in the settlement spread out below me.

As I watched, I wanted nothing more than to send a few insecticide bombs – I’d seen them used in various cities when they were infested with mutated roaches, mosquitoes, or other pests – down there and kill them all. However, there were two major problems with that. First, I had no idea if that would even work, but, given that they had access to Nexus Implants and the system, I had to expect that they had some way to mitigate such poisons. Second, I hadn’t come to kill them. Instead, I was there to watch and wait until I saw a means to my end, which was to infiltrate the Pacifician city called Olympus.

Still, even knowing that I had multiple reasons not to kill them, I struggled to keep my weapons in my arsenal implant. If I had seen any human exploitation in the settlement, I don’t think I could’ve kept to that resolution. Thankfully, all I saw were Ithids.

Most were just living their lives, not unlike I’d seen in countless human cities. Others cycled through the nearby Rift aperture where they were mining shards. There were no humans present, and on approach, I hadn’t even seen any ruins of the Earth’s fallen civilization. No – the Ithid settlement was in the middle of nowhere; I reasoned that its isolation was probably the point. After all, they didn’t look particularly powerful, and as such, they clearly wanted nothing to do with conflict – either with humanity or with the other alien invaders.

Even so, as I watched them from afar, I found myself growing increasingly hostile. I wanted to kill them. Not for anything they had done, but rather for what I suspected they would do in the future. Given the chance, would they be any kinder to humanity than the E’rok Tan? Would they take over the Earth and enslave the native population? My experience with aliens told me that they would.

But was that really the case?

Alistaris’s claims, which I’d verified with Gala and Kith, suggested that there were plenty of aliens who had no interest in exploitation, oppression, or enslavement. Instead, the Ark Alliance fought against it. So, perhaps the universe wasn’t quite as hostile as I’d been taught by my uncle.

Or maybe it was just a different form of exploitation.

I really didn’t have enough information to make a determination. However, I was beginning to come around to the idea that my view of the universe was, at best, incomplete. At worst, it was needlessly pessimistic.

In any case, the Ithids were not my ultimate target, and waging a war against them – no matter how satisfying – would accomplish nothing. So, I continued to watch, noting the patterns of movement within the settlement.

Over the next two days, I gathered as much information as I could, but there was a limit to the effectiveness of my surveillance. In the end, there was only so much I could see, and once I’d exhausted those limits, I decided to go ahead with my plan. So it happened that, two days after my observation began, I found myself creeping forward under the dim light of a half moon.

Cloaked in Stealth and Camouflage, I approached the wall surrounding the settlement. Unlike what I had seen in previous alien compounds, it wasn’t made of plasti-steel. Instead, it was composed of some natural compound that the insectoid Ithids secreted from their proboscises. During my surveillance, I’d watched them squirt the yellow liquid into molds, where it hardened into similarly colored bricks they used as building material.

Even as I drew closer, I could feel the Mist incorporated into the wall. But it didn’t feel like a Mist shield. Instead, it was more akin to what I associated with an ability. Perhaps that was what it was, given the source of the material.

In any case, it presented a problem – largely because, due to its natural origin, it was immune to my Misthack ability. However, during my surveillance, I’d seen enough to come up with a plan to get around the ocher wall.

To that end, I took a deep breath, backed away to get a good amount of momentum, and then set off at a dead sprint. Just before I reached the wall, I jumped high into the air. My leap took me about halfway up the wall, and at the peak of my jump, I used Teleport to take me even higher.

My range wasn’t impressive. Just a couple dozen feet, really. And using the ability drained every last drop of my Mist. However, it was enough to help me crest the wall; the only problem was that all my momentum was going upward, so unless I only wanted to get a peek over the top of the wall, it was useless.

Thankfully, I had a way to get around that.

The moment my Teleport completed, I jabbed a Mist booster into my thigh and discharged its contents. It took half a second for the Mist to flow into me, and when it did, I sighted in the roof of a building on the other side of the wall and used Teleport. Once again, the Mist drained out of me, sending a spike of pain through my mind as I appeared at my destination.

There, I knelt, waiting to see if I’d raised any alarms.

Ten seconds passed. Then thirty. By the time a minute had gone by, I felt confident that I was undetected. That gave me leave to deal with the consequences of my strategy.

When I’d first discovered Mist boosters, I’d had very little use for the incredibly expensive pneumatic devices. As my abilities grew more sophisticated, though, I’d come to realize just how valuable they really were. However, soon after unlocking my Teleport ability, I had discovered that, like everything else in the world, Mist boosters came with a significant limitation. Chiefly, that my body was not equipped to deal with the aftermath of rapidly draining, artificially replenishing, and then draining my reserves of Mist. In short, while I could use a strategy like I’d just employed to bypass the Ithid wall, doing so would leave me weakened and in pain that wouldn’t fade until my Mist had naturally recovered.

It was a painful process that wasn’t even remotely mitigated by my Pain Tolerance, but I’d spent plenty of time training myself to endure it. Still, it wasn’t pleasant, and it took almost two hours for the pain to subside. By that point, I was certain that my presence was entirely undetected, which meant that I could move forward with my plan without further interruption.

The buildings within the walls were mostly constructed of plasti-steel, suggesting that the bricks were unsuitable for the purpose. I could see how that would be the case; nobody wanted to go through what amounted to a natural Mist shield just to return to their quarters. And even if the Ithids would tolerate that inconvenience, the resultant noise – or Mist resonance – would likely drown out any warning the wall might give.

Or maybe it was some other reason. I wasn’t sure, and I was in no mood to investigate further. After all, I was behind enemy lines, and while I trusted my abilities to keep me hidden, I had no interest in testing their limits. So, as soon as I recovered, I slipped from the roof and headed toward my intended destination.

As I moved through the settlement, I got a better look at the Ithids, and while I was a little put off by their appearance – I couldn’t get the notion of a humanoid mosquito out of my head – I saw no evidence that they were the enemies I expected them to be. Most weren’t even armed, and they all seemed intent on completing their tasks and living their lives.

But they were allies of the Pacificans, weren’t they? Even if the Ithids weren’t evil, they had partnered with a race of aliens that wanted to subjugate and enslave humanity. As my uncle had once told me, you are who you associate with. And if the Ithids associated with the Pacificians, it just made them that much easier to paint with the same brush.

Then again, perhaps I was just trying to rationalize my own internalized hatred of all aliens.

In any case, I slowly made my way through the settlement, dodging Ithids along the way until, at last, I reached the supply warehouse that was my destination. It was a large, three-story building that contained all the materials the Ithids had mined from the Rift. There were shards, of course, but there were also other natural resources that were difficult to find elsewhere.

That was something else I’d learned in the previous three years. While Rift shards were the big money-maker for most Rift mining operations, there were plenty of other avenues of profitability. Some Rifts contained rare ores. Others were populated by beasts whose hides, bones, and even organs were extremely useful. I’d even encountered one that offered a perfect environment for farming. And the list went on and on.

With the Ithids’ Rift, the major export seemed to be a liquified metal that, according to the file I’d gotten from Kith, was useful for coating the hulls of spacefaring ships. I had no idea how it was supposed to work or what it was supposed to do, but I did know that it was the backbone of their relationship with the Pacificians – at least on Earth. And so, I quickly found my way to the section of the warehouse where they kept drums of the stuff.

When I got there, I was taken aback by the sheer volume on display. Hundreds of drums, all neatly stacked and waiting for transport to Olympus, stared back at me. What could Earth have done with those resources? What could humanity buy? I’d long since learned that money was the one true source of power in the universe. With it, even the weakest people could dig in and protect themselves. Money alone wasn’t enough to make anyone a true powerhouse, but with enough of it, it could elevate an entire planet.

But with Earth’s resources being plundered by invaders, we would never get the chance to establish ourselves. Nor would we have sufficient credits to protect ourselves. It was a vicious cycle that, once it started, was almost impossible to escape.

That was a problem for another day, though, and I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. With that in mind, I made my way to one of the barrels. Once I reached it, I used Misthack to open the lock and opened it up to reveal a shiny, green liquid. I could feel the Mist radiating from within. However, the moment the air hit the substance, it began to solidify. I watched as, in seconds, it became a solid brick of gray metal that emitted no more Mist than mundane iron.

Such a finnicky substance. Useful, I’d been told, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. In any case, I gently tipped the barrel on its side and set about removing the now-solid cylinder of metal. It was much lighter than I’d anticipated – far less dense than most metals – so, with my Constitution, I had little trouble with the task. Soon enough, the barrel was empty, leaving me with a large cylinder of metal to dispose of. Fortunately, I was prepared for the problem, and, over the next few minutes, I used my nano-bladed sword to slowly cut it into manageable pieces that I then stored away in my arsenal implant. It took most of my free space, but it really was my only option.

Once the metal had been disposed of, I pushed the barrel back into position and climbed inside, dragging the lid into place behind me. Once I was completely inside, I twisted the lid, then used Misthack to once again seal the barrel.

After that, I dragged another item from my arsenal implant. Even as the air inside the barrel dissipated, I placed a rubber mask over my mouth and nose and took a deep breath. I’d bought the respirator almost two years before when I’d targeted an underwater Rift mining operation populated by amphibious aliens. However, I’d never gotten the chance to use it because, before I’d attacked, they packed up and disappeared completely. I’d never discovered where they went, but I’d kept the respirator in my arsenal implant in case I came upon a similar problem sometime in the future.

The item worked by using a combination of ambient and personal Mist to create oxygen. I was a little fuzzy on the actual mechanics of the process, but I’d verified that it would work almost indefinitely, so long as I kept my Mist reserves topped off. And given that I wasn’t even using any abilities, that seemed like a given.

So, like that, I settled down to wait, occupying my mind by working on various Ghosts I’d neglected over the last few months. It was one thing to recognize that literally anything was possible with Ghosts, but it was something else entirely to expand my mind to the point where it was true. The fact was that everyone was limited by their own culture, personality, and creativity, and I was no different. My mind worked along fairly straight lines, and I had to stretch myself if I was ever going to create something truly different.

And as I’d discovered, that process was incredibly difficult.

The reality was that I just wasn’t terribly creative. But that wasn’t so bad, really. My Ghosts were still effective, and they worked well enough for me. That was all that really mattered, even if I knew I wasn’t stretching the limits of what was possible. Even so, I found that trying to force myself to think differently was a viable exercise, so I persisted even if I knew it would never really give me any viable alternatives to my normal strategies.

Like that, hours passed into days, and I fell into a sort of hibernation. My mind was nominally active – I continued to work on my Ghosts and train via my old puzzle program – but my body fell into a lethargic meditation that was only sustainable due to my inflated attributes. Without them, I never could have remained contorted in that small space for more than a few hours, especially considering that I neither ate nor drank during that time.

But I’d trained myself to go without. And even if it wasn’t pleasant, I was more than capable of eschewing bodily necessities for weeks at a time.

Still, when, almost a week later, I felt the barrel move, I had to suppress a sigh of relief. So long as the Ithids followed their normal protocol, my self-imposed ordeal would soon be over.

Another few hours passed, and during that time, I felt the barrel being jostled about. Eventually, though, I felt Mist gathering only a dozen yards away. That was my cue, and I immediately embraced Misthack and sent my senses out searching for the source of the swirling Mist. I quickly found it in the form of some sort of machine meant to scan the contents of the barrels. So, as I drew ever closer, I hacked into it, and when my barrel reached the scanner, I forced it to ignore my presence. Even though I trusted my abilities, I held my breath as it completed its scan, but I needn’t have worried because, soon enough, I passed through.

Over the next forty-five minutes, I remained in place as the barrel was transported from what I hoped was the town at the base of the mountain and into Olympus proper. Eventually, it came to a stop, but I still waited another few hours before the moment of truth loomed before me.

I’d planned as well as I could, given the information I had. However, I had no idea what security measures Olympus had enacted. For all I knew, when I opened the barrel, I’d find myself surrounded by cyborgs. But during my research, I’d discovered that the city was locked up tight, with no real weaknesses in its outward-facing defenses.

As such, my only chance of entering the city undetected was my current means of ingress. Sure, I could have blasted my way inside. Or maybe, I could have snuck in using Stealth and Camouflage. However, my previous experiences with the Pacificians suggested otherwise, so I’d taken what I considered a safer route. As I prepared to climb out of the barrel, I could only hope that I was right.

After taking a deep breath, I used Misthack to unlock the barrel, then twisted it. With a discharge of air, the barrel’s seal was broken, and I pushed the top off. I pulled the rubber mask from my face and took a deep breath before climbing unsteadily to my feet. Looking around, I saw that I was within a similar warehouse to the one where I’d started my uncomfortable journey.

And thankfully, I was alone.

With that, I climbed from the barrel and took my first step in Olympus.