Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 46 - Bad to Worse (Patreon)

I wish I could take some of the burden from Mira’s shoulders, but I know I couldn’t bear the weight. In most ways, she represents our only hope, and if she fails, Earth falls. That is a lot to take on, but the harsh reality is that she can do things nobody else can. I just hope she can endure the crippling expectations she’s put on herself.

Patrick Ward

A vast cityscape stretched out before us, looking like a jungle of concrete, glass, and steel. Huge and hollow skyscrapers stretched toward the grey sky, monuments to a distant and more prosperous past. Or perhaps they were memorials of a culture long lost to the Mist and human neglect. Some of those skyscrapers ended in jagged peaks, but a few remained intact. A couple had collapsed altogether, and the only remnants of those once-great structures were huge piles of rubble.

I saw quite a lot of green scattered throughout the city, but it wasn’t as much as it should have been.

“What is this place called again?” I asked.

“New York,” Patrick answered. “Or that’s what it used to be. Remy talked about it before. Apparently, it was the greatest city in the world before…well, you know. He said that it was one of the first to fall, too. With everything having changed, people went crazy. Suddenly, the worst of the worst had the power to do whatever they wanted. They overwhelmed the city’s government and took over. Different groups took over different territories, but Remy said none of them were good guys.”

“I can imagine,” I said. If there was one thing I’d learned about human nature, it was that people would eagerly take advantage of the weak and powerless. “What happened after that? I don’t see any signs of habitation.”

Indeed, from our position high above the city, I couldn’t see a single glowing light. That made me wonder where the aliens had set up shop, but I was more interested in the place’s history at the moment. I would worry about the aliens soon enough.

“War,” Patrick said. “They fought among one another. Eventually, they weakened themselves enough that when a surge of Wildlings swept through the area, they couldn’t adequately defend their territories. Most of them died, but some got out. By the time they tried to come back, the area had gone wild.”

“So, you’re saying there are a bunch of Wildlings down there?” I asked. I didn’t see any, but their Mist auras were much harder to detect than normal humans. It was similar with the beasts who tended to blend into the environment. By contrast, humans – especially ones with Nexus Implants – blazed in my awareness like fiery beacons of blue Mist.

“Underground,” Patrick stated. “You should have read the packet on the way over here.”

“Why? You’ll give me the highlights, right?” I said with a slight smirk. “Otherwise, why do I keep you around?”

He returned my smirk with a smile of his own, saying, “I don’t think I need to defend myself in that area.”

“You’re not that good at –”

“I mean, clearly, you keep me around for my cooking and brewing skills. You liked that last beer, right? It added more hops.”

“It was…uh…great. Good. I could really taste the extra…um…hops.”

“Ouch.”

“I liked it!”

“No. It’s okay. I’m an unappreciated genius, and I’ve long since resigned myself to suffering for my art,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “You are so dramatic,” I said. Then, I added, “We should probably find somewhere to land. You sure they didn’t detect the ship?”

“I’m just as positive as I always am.”

“Fair enough,” was my response. It still felt a little odd, knowing how competent Patrick had become. I still remembered a time when he was a liability, like when he’d nearly gotten killed by a group of backwoods bandits. That was just after we’d left Mobile, and back then, he could barely even protect himself. Now, he was flying a ship within a few miles of an enemy position, and he could confidently say that they had no idea he was there.

As I gave that some thought – through the lens of nostalgia – Patrick guided the Leviathan to an open space just outside of town. Once he’d set the ship down, I asked, “Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ll stay back,” he said. His armor gave him some degree of stealth, but it was easily bypassed by anyone with appropriate skills. And that was saying nothing of the enemy mystics we knew were down there. “I’ll keep the ship running so that when you need a pick-up or some cover, I’ll be in good position.”

He knew that it was the right choice – we both did – but he didn’t like being left behind. Likely, it would prompt another furious bout of enhancements for his armor. He’d already improved it a hundred times since he’d first created it, and I knew he’d barely scratched the surface of what was possible. Due to his abilities, he could seamlessly integrate new materials as well as advanced weapon designs.

Even Gala had been impressed, and she’d already lent her expertise in firearms to his efforts. When the two of them got going about one gun or the other, they lost track of everything else. It would have been annoying if it wasn’t so endearing.

Well, as endearing as talk about deadly weapons could be.

In any case, once we’d established our protocol for what to expect, I headed to the back, where I donned my gear. Often, the infiltration suit had proved useless. Anything that could get through my natural defenses wasn’t getting stopped by the flimsy armor. Yet, I wore it anyway. Probably out of habit, but there was a healthy dose of that same nostalgia involved as well. Either way, I quickly dressed, adding a set of no-nonsense, black fatigues on top of the skintight suit. Then, after saying goodbye to Patrick, I left the Leviathan and set off towards the city where I hoped to rescue the captured team and destroy the dig site the aliens had established within the ruins.

I didn’t bother summoning the Cutter. The hoverbike was still useful, and with it, I could travel incredibly quickly. However, it was also limited in a couple of ways. First, with all of my progress, I could reach incredible speeds on foot. I hadn’t tested it recently, but I estimated that I could exceed a hundred miles an hour on a straightaway. The big difference, though, was that I could corner much better than the hoverbike. That meant that in a ruined city like New York, traveling on foot gave me a lot more options without losing too much speed.

The second major problem with the Cutter was that its Mist signature was absolutely overwhelming. I wasn’t sure how sensitive the enemy mystics were, but for my part, I could sense the powerful Mist engine from miles away. I thought it was best to assume that they could as well.

So, I’d chosen to go on foot.

As I made my way into the city, I couldn’t help but marvel at the skyscrapers. Certainly, they couldn’t compete with modern structures like the megabuildings back in Nova City, but what they lacked in size, they made up for in presence. And variety. Some looked like they’d been constructed primarily from steel and glass, but others featured stone or cement façades that I found extremely interesting.

But more, I couldn’t help but imagine what life might’ve been like in the city during its prime. I saw plenty of rusted out vehicles, most of which had vegetation growing in and around them, and I recognized a host of openings leading to the tunnels Patrick had mentioned. The Mist was thicker down there, suggesting that that was where I’d likely find the Wildlings who’d taken over the city.

Gradually, I progressed through the city, eventually crossing a bridge that had miraculously survived, passing onto an island where the team was suspected to have been captured. That was where I encountered the first pack of Wildlings. They looked little different than all the others I’d seen during my travels, yet their auras were markedly stronger. If they were any weaker than the alpha that had nearly killed me outside of Biloxi years before, I would have been surprised. And there were a few that had even denser auras, giving me the impression that they would have rivaled the clown Wildling for sheer might.

Fortunately, I had impeccable control of my own aura, so, cloaking myself in concealing Mist – in my new version of my old Stealth ability – I could easily remain undetected. Still, I suspected that the more powerful of the Wildlings could sense that something was amiss, judging by the way they looked around in confusion, so I didn’t linger.

Even so, I found it fascinating, looking at them with my Mist senses. I’d never seen it before, but now that I had moved past my reliance on the Nexus Implant, I saw tiny tendrils of Mist extending from each Wildling. It seemed that the length of those Mist flows depended on the strength of the Wildling. Most only went three or four feet, but others were dozens of feet long. It was a poignant reminder that humanity didn’t really understand Wildlings at all. Even with the insight I’d gleaned, all I could say for certain was that they were much more than the beasts most people considered them.

Not that they weren’t wild, dangerous, and bestial. They were. But knowing that, if left to their own devices, they would eventually evolve and regain some semblance of humanity – many generations hence – I found myself wondering precisely what they might become. If they were so strong now, it didn’t seem unreasonable to expect that they would become a mighty force.

I moved on, exploring the island as I searched for the captured team or some signs of where the aliens had set up shop. But I found nothing, leading me to believe that they’d gone underground.

So, once I’d exhausted the possibilities aboveground, I found one of the entrances to the tunnel system, then descended into the darkness. Fortunately, I was more than capable of seeing in the darkness, so I had no trouble finding my way. As I did, I discovered three things.

First, the purpose of the tunnels soon became apparent when I stumbled upon an abandoned train. It was a design I wasn’t familiar with, and it clearly didn’t use Mist for propulsion. But the general shape was right, making the purpose of the tunnels obvious.

Second, large portions of the tunnels had been at least partially flooded, making traversal a pain. With my training, I managed, but it wasn’t pleasant. And it slowed me down quite a bit. Still, I made decent time.

The final discovery was one I’d already suspected. The city above was home to a large population of Wildlings, but the tunnels were absolutely lousy with them. It felt like I couldn’t go more than a hundred yards without coming upon a pack of them. Most of those groups were composed of only ten or so members, but there were a few with numbers climbing into the hundreds.

Thankfully, the vast majority were asleep.

Otherwise, it would have been an even bigger pain to avoid bumping into them. Still, I managed to do just that as I traversed those tunnels. As I did, the density of the ambient Mist continued to rise until, after a few hours, I finally came upon my destination. The tunnel just ended in a giant, gaping hole at least a quarter mile across. I leaned over the edge, and somewhere down below, I could see a powerful Mist signature.

It took a few moments for me to make sense of it, but when I did, I let out an involuntary sigh. It was a drill, but not like the ones we’d already destroyed. No – this one was much larger and free-standing, which meant that it was more like a vehicle that could bore through the earth than anything else.

And it had already gone nearly a mile.

“Pick, this is bad,” I said.

“What’s going on?” he asked over the Secure Connection I’d just established. It had taken a little practice, but I’d managed to get the hang of using the ability without the benefit of the framework provided by an interface.

“They’re drilling,” I answered. “Straight down.”

“We’ve been destroying drills for a while,” he said. “What’s different about this one?”

“The bombs onboard the drill are strong. Maybe stronger than anything I’ve seen before,” I said. “If I were the one to set them, I’m pretty sure it would result in a bigger explosion than one we saw on the moon.”

Indeed, that had created a crater that was visible from Earth with the naked eye. If I were to detonate a bomb like that in the Earth’s core, the planet would almost assuredly rupture. And this looked much more powerful, judging by the Mist signatures I saw. If it was detonated by someone with even a moderate skill in demolitions, Earth wouldn’t survive.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“I have to go down,” I said. Then, I muttered, “God, this is going to suck.”

Indeed, not only was climbing down going to be a pain, but there was every chance that I was going to encounter a small army of mystics and Adjudicators. After all, the drill was half a mile wide. That was as big as a lot of bases we’d assaulted.

Standing there, I truly considered just dropping a few bombs on the thing and hoping it would all detonate. It would be incredibly damaging, but it wouldn’t destroy the Earth like it would if it got close to the core.

But I chose not to for two reasons.

First, that wasn’t my mission, and I still hoped to rescue the team that had been taken captive. I didn’t know any of them, but they were still human. And more importantly, they were part of the resistance. We needed as many people as we could get, and, if I was honest, I couldn’t stomach the idea of sacrificing them. That felt like letting the aliens win.

Second, I could see that the drill was protected by a Mist shield. I suspected that was to protect it from the heat and pressure once it proceeded closer to the core, but if it could stand up to those forces, then it could probably protect the drill from my bombs. And I wasn’t willing to take the chance of revealing myself for something that may not work.

So, that left me with one option – I needed to climb down a sheer wall, bypass the shield by manipulating the Mist, and rescue the people onboard. At the same time, I needed to destroy the drill. Oh, and I needed figure out how to escape with a dozen people tagging along for the ride.

“Sounds easy when I put it like that,” I whispered to myself.

“Be careful,” Patrick cautioned.

“Will do. Cutting the connection,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I’m on my way up.”

I’d made the mistake of using Secure Connection around mystics before, which was what had nearly gotten me killed in the system station after rescuing Alistaris. At the time, I couldn’t even see the thread-thin tendril of Mist connecting me to whoever I was talking to, but mystics of a certain caliber certainly could. I didn’t know if there were any down in the drill who could claim that level of power, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

So, I cut the Secure Connection, checked that I had everything I would need, then started the climb down. As I did, I cloaked myself in a thick layer of Mist that would hide me from any observation. Then, I retracted it to within a nanite’s width of my body, hiding the signature I knew the ability would emit.

At first, the climb was easy enough, largely because the rock was pitted with easy handholds. However, it quickly became much more difficult, and my progress slowed to an interminable crawl. That’s when I started to experiment with Mist. Until that point, I’d only used it for minor telekinesis and within the framework of my old skills. Yet, based on everything I had seen, the only real limit to what I could accomplish with Mist was my imagination and willpower.

I had plenty of the latter, but my imagination had always been lacking. So, I endeavored to change that, starting with my climb down the cliff left behind by the drill. To that end, I extended tiny tendrils of Mist – hundreds of them that were only an inch or so long – and forced them to grip the wall. Or rather, to adhere to the collection of Mist that infused the wall.

And to my surprise, it worked.

I could have hung there for days, if I so desired. However, when I tried to pull free, I got a bit of a surprise when the Mist resisted my effort. After a brief shock, I realized that the problem wasn’t with the Mist, but rather with the fact that I needed to manipulate it to let me go.

Shaking my head at my own stupidity, I took that extra step. It made things a little awkward, but I managed it. Right up until I reached a little past the halfway mark, when a powerful surge of Mist erupted from below and washed over me. It ripped my Mist tendrils free of the wall, and suddenly, I was falling. I knew I could survive a fall from that distance. From any distance, actually. But doing so would definitely leave me injured, not to mention that hitting the Mist shield would almost certainly expose me to the aliens.

My mind whirled with potential solutions, but as I fell, I could think of nothing. So, I braced myself for the inevitable.