Without any idea where he was going, Dan simply continued running, leaving the carnage behind him. It didn’t take long for pursuers to pick up on his trail and start chasing him. He briefly looked over his shoulder and saw three Kodak agents coming after him, including the same female agent who’d called dibs on killing him earlier.
Dan could still hear the distant gunfire and even a few explosions. Not knowing the fate of his team, he continued running. His heart rate was up and he felt the same sense of dread he once did when he was still living in his hometown, being chased and hunted down by gangsters like it was a game.
He turned the corner at an intersection and reached into his pocket to pull out an impact grenade. He pressed the button on the side and threw it the moment he saw someone’s leg stick out from the corner of the building.
The grenade hit the Kodak agent and immediately exploded right in his face. The agent’s lifeless body flew out onto the street and flopped like a fish as it landed. He didn’t get back up.
Dan’s HUD began reading out text, something about his first kill with the impact grenade, but Dan didn’t fully read it. He was too busy running.
The explosive kill had slowed down his pursuers, and Dan took cover behind a van to start shooting at his enemies once they caught up. He peeked his head out, checking the corner he had just left. Sure enough, he saw several Kodak agents turn around it and run straight down the sidewalk.
Dan leaned out and fired several bursts from his CMA rifle. His rounds shredded the neck of one Kodak agent and impacted the torso of another, knocking them to the ground. Dan’s advantage didn’t last long as the mob of agents returned fire. He ran out into the street to get away from the van and find a different position. He dived beside another parked vehicle and crawled along the pavement. Once he was behind the nearest car, he reloaded and leaned out to fire at the Kodak agents again.
More depleted uranium rounds shredded the face of another Kodak agent, and the rest of Dan’s magazine forced the others into cover once again. Dan crouched and leaned against the car, loading another magazine. He extended the barrel of his rifle out before stepping out from behind the car, and the rifle was shot and shattered to pieces.
Dan’s only decent weapon was now scattered across the sidewalk in pieces. “Oh great,” he muttered.
Before he fell back behind the car, his HUD managed to pick up one of his enemy’s stats.
Agent: Ricky Crash
Age: 24 M
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 1 | Level 20
Strength: 26
Agility: 20
Endurance: 22
Intelligence: 18
Healing Factor: n/a
Another set of stats ran down his peripheral vision.
Agent: Samantha Striker
Age: 23 F
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 1 | Level 23
Strength: 26
Agility: 25
Endurance: 28
Intelligence: 22
Healing Factor: n/a
Dan saw the stats of the chick who was so eager to kill him back there. On paper, Samantha was on the upper end of the tier one category. If he recalled, level twenty-five was when agents were officially a tier two and deemed superhuman.
As a lowly tier zero, Dan knew he had no chance against her or any of her friends in a straight up fight. Like his fights against the Kodak agents during his recon, Dan knew his only chance to survive was exploiting opportunities and being unpredictable.
He scanned his surroundings, trying to choose where his next destination would be. He saw a three story building that stood out on the street and would make for a good place to get to high ground. The only problem was he needed to make a dash across the street to get there.
He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out his second and last impact grenade.
He stood up and ran. The moment he heard voices shouting out his whereabouts, he tossed the grenade behind him and bolted. Dan didn’t have time to celebrate the explosion as he ran for his life across the street and dived through the front open window of the building.
Dan grabbed one of his pistols and moved through the building as fast as he could. He reached the staircase and looked up. His ear immediately picked up footsteps, not from outside, but from the floors above him. He ran up the stairs anyway, ready to take on whatever threat he encountered on the way up.
A few steps away from reaching the second floor, he saw silhouettes along the railing armed with rifles, which told him everything he needed to know. Before they could aim their guns at him, Dan had already raised his pistol and fired at the silhouettes. Two of them dropped to the ground, and the last one fell over the railing and to the ground floor.
More frantic noises assaulted Dan’s ears. A door slammed open, voices shouting about the Alpha agent, and rapid footsteps all around him. He had to make it to the roof and fast.
Dan briefly pulled up his own stat menu and hastily upgraded his speed.
Agility: 11 (+4)
Congratulations. Your updated stats are now:
Agility: 15
You have 3 stat points left.
With that upgrade, Dan bolted his way up the stairs and continued moving up the building. He had no idea if his speed had significantly improved. He was focused on getting to the roof.
Dan reached the third floor and ran down the hallway. A door opened next to him and before the gun barrel could even point in his direction, Dan extended his arm and shot the gunman. Numerous doors busted open in front of him.
He didn’t have time for this shit.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Dan rushed forward and slammed one of the doors shut, causing a scream from the other side. A rebel exited the door ahead and turned towards Dan.
With little time, Dan raised his other hand and simply delivered the hardest punch he could across the rebel’s face, throwing the man onto the ground.
He stopped at the end of the hallway and kicked open the final door that said “exit” on it. Dan rushed up another set of stairs until he opened the door leading outside to the roof. As soon as he stepped out, he ducked and narrowly avoided getting pistol-whipped by a Kodak agent.
Before Dan could even counterattack, the agent smacked Dan’s hand, and he dropped his pistol on the ground.
Dan showed no mercy. He grabbed the Kodak agent’s wrist and delivered a jab to his throat. The agent staggered back a few steps before Dan followed up by shoving his knee into his groin.
Dan had no qualms about fighting dirty.
This weakened the grip of the Kodak agent, and Dan easily swiped the pistol from the agent’s hand. He aimed the handgun at the agent’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Dan was taken aback by the recoil. The agent was lifted off his feet before landing back down, his head gushing out blood.
Congratulations!
You are now Tier 0 | Level 8
You have earned 5 stat points. Total stat points: 8.
Whatever pistol this was, it packed more punch than the Initiate pistol Dan had. His HUD gave him a rundown of this new handgun.
CMA Ravager pistol
Manufacturer: Cresh Manufacturing (Kodak-Cresh Subsidiary)
12 round magazine
.50 AE rounds
Description: A lethal handgun that gets the job done when all other options run dry. Powerful enough to penetrate agent armor in a matter of a few shots.
He looked ahead of him and saw the row of rooftops all at the same level or a level below. Resuming his run, he leapt off the roof and onto the roof of the next building.
Dan heard shouting behind him and looked back. He noticed the vague red outlines indicating more Kodak agents chasing after him. But something felt off about it. If these Kodak truly wanted him dead, they shouldn’t have had any problem shooting Dan in the back while he was running.
He made another jump between roofs and landed. Either this particular group wanted him alive for interrogation later, or they were just like the gangsters back in his home town. They chased him only because it was fun to hunt down prey.
Samantha the Kodak chick led the three man team of Kodak agents chasing him.
“When I catch up to you, I’ll tear your balls off and chop them up in front of you,” she yelled.
This somehow drew laughter from the other two chuckleheads.
Dan continued his run before he stopped in his tracks. He looked down at the sizeable distance between the roof he stood on and the next one across from him. He took a few steps back. There was no way he could make the jump. He gritted his teeth.
The situation didn’t even allow him to panic as he heard footsteps landing behind him. He ran forward as fast as he possibly could, pushing his body to the limit. He leapt, putting every fiber of his being into that one jump. Dan soared through the air, and whether it was the stress or his enhanced senses at work, his time in the air felt slowed down.
Eventually, Dan felt his feet somehow landed on solid ground as he reached the other rooftop.
New record! You have performed a long jump of 9.1 meters.
Bonus experience awarded!
Dan briefly wondered how he managed to pull off such a jump. A nine meter long jump was about what one could expect from a peak athlete. While Dan had been no slouch before his recruitment, he knew he wasn’t that good.
He looked back and saw that Kodak agents had halted. If it wasn’t so dark outside, maybe Dan could have seen their reactions to him pulling off such a jump.
Samantha in her infinite wisdom decided to pursue Dan in the same fashion by taking a few steps back and executing the same jump, dragging her two Kodak friends along with her.
Dan wondered what possessed her to make such a poor judgment call. But he wasn’t so generous as to correct his enemy’s mistake. He raised his newly looted pistol and fired.
The round shredded through the neck of one of the agents. He plummeted to the ground like a bird with a broken wing.
Samantha had signed their death warrants as the agents seemed to fly through the air slowly. Dan watched them soar with unsettling clarity. There’s no way this is happening in real time, he thought.
Dan aimed his pistol at the other Kodak agent beside Samantha. He fired two rounds, one impacting the torso of the agent and the other burrowing itself in the agent’s eye socket. The Kodak fool flipped backward before landing on the ground like a bag of trash.
By the time he took aim at Samantha, time seemed to resume at normal speed and the female agent landed in front of him. Before Dan could do anything, she delivered a nasty backhand across his face.
By all accounts, Samantha was slightly shorter than Dan and barely looked above sixty kilograms without the armor. And yet the backhand from this girl sent Dan off his feet and landing flat on his ass.
When the enemy was an agent, all the normal rules about strength were thrown out.
“You little dipshit,” she spat. “You think you’re hot shit because you killed two of my teammates? They were nothing but fools who deserved to die.”
Dan rubbed his cheek and fired back, “Says the one who ordered them to jump in the first place. It was your decision to keep up the chase even when the situation changed and I gained the advantage. You’re a terrible leader, you know that?”
His constructive criticism was awarded with a boot to the face.
Dan should have run. But something about Samantha didn’t add up. Even with the nasty backhand, he felt she wasn’t as tough as she led on. He watched her closely. Up close, she had pale skin with bloodshot red eyes. She had dark hair tied back in a bun. Overall, if she didn’t look like a drug addict and wasn’t trying to kill him, she would have been cute.
Her physical aesthetics weren’t the only thing Dan noticed. Her intense stare was interrupted by a twitching of her eye. A flash of pain exploded in both Dan’s eyes that caused him to flinch. He had no idea what that was, but knew he was dead if Samantha took advantage of this strange pain. When Dan opened his eyes, he saw her fist was clenched, yet she was shaking. Instead of going in for the finishing blow, she kept her distance from him by a good seven or eight paces.
Either she was emotionally erratic, ready to explode at any moment. Or maybe it was…
Fear?
A spinning icon indicated an incoming message from his HUD. Dan had no clue what new info was waiting for him.
Glare ability ineffective.
Supernatural stat not yet unlocked.
Dan didn’t have the slightest idea what that message meant or what the pain in is eyes had to do with his locked supernatural stat. There wasn’t any time for that. In this moment, he couldn’t guess how or why Samantha would be afraid in this moment. She had him outclassed in stats and could easily win in a direct fight. So why was she hesitating? She didn’t even double down on the insults towards him. The only difference was that she was alone without her teammates to back her up.
Dan’s eyes widened.
That was it.
She was just a coward who hid behind superior numbers.
She continued staring at him until she finally exploded in an outburst. “What the fuck are you staring at?”
“You tell me,” Dan said. “You had plenty of opportunities just in the last few seconds to knock my ass out. And yet here you are, standing around like a fool. If you really were a better agent than me, you wouldn’t be hesitating right now, whether to kill me or capture me.”
That only seemed to piss off Samantha more. She rushed towards him and raised her boot to stomp on his face again.
Dan quickly rolled out of the way and got back to his feet. In that instance, Dan had somehow managed to see and follow her movements perfectly fine. He’d looked at her stats, and compared to his speed, hers was substantially higher.
It was Dan’s turn to attack. He raised his arm and smashed his elbow into her nose, returning her the favor and knocking her down to the ground.
Dan broke off and ran. He reached the edge of the roof and looked down, examining his options. On the road ahead, he saw two parked jeeps that were larger than the average car. He was getting sick of being on foot. He was going to hijack one of those.
A notification popped up in his peripheral vision. An incoming call from… Kate?
He didn’t have time to reject the call. What was there to talk about? But Kate’s voice entered his mind before he could say “Fuck you.”
“Stand down, Dan,” she said. “You have nowhere to run. If you cooperate, I’ll take you in alive and make sure you’re treated fairly.”
Bullshit. Nothing but bullshit. Dan had learned one harsh lesson while growing up. Never trust any negotiation attempts from the enemy.
He leapt off the roof, ignoring Kate’s offer.