After the strange warning Allen had given him about Kate, Dan continued on with scouting the area without another word. His HUD popped up a message.
Your scouting of this area is 76% complete. Please continue and report back to your squad leader.
“Just two more blocks,” Allen said. “Aside from those rebels on the roof, I haven’t seen anything else in this section.”
Dan looked around and continued letting his HUD scan his surroundings. He watched to his left as his HUD outlined a list of miscellaneous items littered around that might be of some interest. Since nothing on the list were any good weapons, Dan ignored it after that point.
“This is strange,” Dan said. He tightened his grip on his two pistols. “If those rebels saw us, wouldn’t they be getting ready to launch another attack? That’s assuming you didn’t just kill them all.”
Allen looked back at him. “I didn’t. Two of them managed to slip away. You’re right that news of our presence here has probably already made it back to their leadership and the rest of their forces.”
“So wouldn’t their next move be to launch an immediate counterattack to repel intruders on their turf?”
“It’s the most reasonable course of action. Why they haven’t is the real mystery. I think you’re on to something, kid. Something just isn’t right about this mission. I think we better—”
Allen suddenly spun around and tackled Dan to the ground. Before Dan knew what the hell was going on, he saw tracers slashing the air above him.
“I guess you spoke too soon,” Allen said. He rolled off Dan and remained flat on his stomach. “Follow me.”
Allen slowly crawled along the sidewalk and grabbed his minigun, then placed the bulky weapon on his back. Dan crawled closely behind him. He looked up and could see gunfire coming from a building about fifty meters ahead, right in the center of two bends in the road.
Dan opened a channel with Allen. “I don’t like crawling around like this. I’m getting my nice coat dirty.”
“You got a better idea?”
Dan’s mind briefly flashed to the grenades he bought, two of them being smoke grenades. “Actually I do. Recall when you were laughing your ass off at me spray painting my smoke grenades?”
“You’re still on that?”
“You know what I mean, asshole. I’m gonna throw one and obscure their view of this street. Then we reposition and get a better angle before the smoke clears.”
“Not bad, kid,” Allen said. “Just one smoke should be enough to blanket the street in front of us. Save the other one, you don’t know when you might need it.”
Dan reached into his inner pocket and pulled out the black-painted smoke grenade. He pulled the pin out of its side and tossed the grenade onto the street in front of him. After a few seconds, he heard a hiss and saw the thick clouds of smoke beginning to obscure the view of the building.
The gunmen from the building still rained down fire on their position, but soon their shots became more sporadic and spread out.
“Now’s our chance,” Allen said. “I’ll go this way and you go the other.”
Dan immediately hopped over the trunk of a car and ran across the street as fast as he could. Once he reached the other sidewalk, he ran down the street to get as close as possible to the building where the enemy was.
He ran past the clouds of thick smoke. Having no clue how long the smoke would last, Dan dived towards the side wall of the building and made sure to keep quiet. The smoke remained for another ten seconds before it dissipated and the entire street was visible again.
It didn’t take long for a stream of high velocity rounds to pepper the front of the building. Dan peeked his head out from the side and saw Allen had climbed one of the buildings and found himself a nice window to let loose with his minigun.
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Chunks of bricks and other debris fell in front of the building. Dan’s enhanced hearing could pick up the glass shattering on the top floors and faint screams. To give their enemies credit, they fired back. The entire street was now an exchange of gunfire. With the dark skies, the excessive gunfire from both Allen and the building looked like a light show of tracers and muzzle flashed.
Dan got both his pistols ready, took a few steps away from the wall and walked around to the front of the building. From where he stood, he saw two dark silhouettes in two separate windows. He pointed his pistols and squeezed the triggers, firing his own stream of hell into one of the windows.
The immediate feedback was shattered glass along with a surprising amount of blood splatter. A message popped up in front of him.
Congratulations. You have killed your first Kodak-Cresh agent.
Bonus experience rewarded.
Agent: Mark Slasher
Age: 20 M
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 1 | Level 17
Strength: 18
Agility: 16
Endurance: 17
Intelligence: 16
Healing Factor: n/a
What the hell? Dan thought. Was his kill another agent?
Dan shifted his attention to the second silhouette in another window and reloaded his two pistols. Even in the middle of this chaos with gunfire blaring in his ears, he reloaded both of his handguns with speed and efficiency.
Your reload speed: 2.6 seconds.
Dan aimed his pistols and fired seven or eight rounds into the window, shattering the glass and frame. This time, an entire corpse fell out and smashed into the ground beside him.
Agent: Taylor Redout
Age: 23 M
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 1 | Level 19
Strength: 22
Agility: 15
Endurance: 19
Intelligence: 14
Healing Factor: n/a
Congratulations. You have ranked up.
Your current rank: Tier 0 | Level 6
You have earned 5 stat points.
The gunfire from Allen ceased and the street became eerily quiet. Now that the chaos had died down, Dan slowly approached the corpse on the ground and saw it was indeed another agent. But this one was different compared to the regular Alpha agent.
First, this Taylor who lay face down on the ground in a puddle of his own blood wasn’t an Alpha agent at all. According to the readout of stats from his HUD, the agent was from a different shard called Kodak-Cresh.
Dan scrutinized the dead agent, though he had no desire to touch him. He only had a good look of the Kodak agent’s back. From what Dan could tell, this agent also wore a black armored suit. However, while Alpha body armor was sleek and contoured, the armor on this agent was bulky, with large shoulder pads and much heavier-looking plating all around. Dan also spotted spikes on the agent’s shoulder pieces.
He was reminded of the brief sight of similar-looking gunmen shooting at Michael Cynosa when he was fading in and out of consciousness.
Dan was disappointed that the agent’s weapon didn’t fall down with him.
He received a notification of an incoming call from Allen. His HUD automatically accepted.
“Kid, tell me what you see.”
“I see a dead guy in front of me. He’s an agent, but not one of us. My HUD told me he’s from a shard called Kodak-Cresh. Who are they?”
When Dan didn’t receive an immediate reply, he wondered what made Allen pause for so long.
“Why the hell are they here? I knew something was up. I’ll have to tell Jane about this,” Allen said. After a few seconds, Dan heard Jane’s familiar serious voice fill the channel.
“Go ahead, Allen,” Jane said.
“Bad news, ma’am. The kid says Kodak are here. We just blasted the shit out of a building and it was some Kodak agent who shot at us.”
“Are you saying the rebels could be working together with Kodak?”
“Why else would Kodak be here?” Allen said. “I knew I smelled bullshit when I heard a mere resistance group was responsible for raiding our supply routes and stealing our goods. If it was Kodak aiding them, that makes a lot more sense.”
“Then the mission has taken on new parameters,” Jane said. Even with a new enemy introduced, Jane’s voice remained the exact same. “We disrupt the rebels and counterattack Kodak’s forces if we can. Keeping a low profile is no longer a priority. Allen, be selective on your targets and choose your battles wisely. We still have no idea how much presence Kodak has in this area.”
“Yes ma’am,” Allen said.
“Wrap up recon of your section and regroup with the rest of the team.” Jane cut her side of the line.
“Well, Dan, it’s your lucky day. You wanted some action to increase your stats, now you got it.”
“Nice,” Dan said. “You mind if I go up this building? I’m gonna check out what gear I can loot from these Kodak agents.”
“I’ll stay out and keep a lookout. Be careful, kid. The second you get ambushed by any stragglers inside, I want you out of there. And don’t take too long. I can’t have you being picky about a dead man’s gear.”
“No worries. I’ll take what I can get,” Dan said. He looked up at the building one more time before he walked in through the front entrance.
“Wait a minute,” Allen said. After another few seconds passed, Allen got back to him and said, “No hidden explosives. I just did a scan of the building. You’re free to head inside.”
“You can do that?”
“I’m the heavy weapons expert. How could I not?”