Dan

The renewed vigor and energy Dan possessed after dealing with that crew of Kodak agents and saving the lives of that mother and child had long run its course. Dan walked with the weariness of someone who had run a marathon. A light drizzle still pelted every surface Dan’s eyes could see, creating a calming wet shimmer on everything. It didn’t help much with his mood.

He took one lethargic footstep after the other, holding his looted ZK-77 rifle by the stock and hearing the dual bayonets drag against the concrete. Benjamin was dead and Kate turned out to be a traitor. Some mission this turned out to be, Dan thought.

Dan still couldn’t reach out to any of his teammates through the private channels nor could he access his current mini-map within his HUD. All he would see on his map was a square filled with static. For all he knew, everyone else was dead.

He knew that playing Ben’s death over and over again in his mind wouldn’t help his current situation. All it did was remind him of what he had lost. Not just future experiences working together with the medic, but also the last memories of his mom.

It didn’t happen too long ago, but the emotions and gruesome details were still fresh on Dan’s mind. He and his mom were on the run once again by a bunch of savage gangers. Both of them managed to find a brief few seconds of rest to plan their next move. Dan remembered cursing himself out under his breath for getting into that fight with that same crew the week prior. He had smashed the kneecap of one of their members and now they were out with their machetes with his name on it.

Dan’s mom had taken two machete slashes, one to her upper arm and one around her hip. His mom pleaded with him to go without her while she stayed behind to buy time for him to get away. Life is worth living. Don’t throw it away, were her last words to him.

His mind transitioned to the gruesome image of Kate having Ben in a chokehold and snapping his neck while he ran away. Dan had no time to do anything heroic to save his teammate. He was scared, underequipped and lacked the power to do anything. Kate and the Kodak agents would catch up and eviscerate him if he had stopped.

In both situations, he was saved while he left someone he cared about behind to die.

Dan stopped his slow walk through the light rain and rested his fist against a light pole. He straightened his back and lifted his head up to watch the dark skies as it continued to rain. The light shower drenched his hair and upper half of his face as he watched the weather simply taking its course. Looking around, he saw the road and sidewalks covered with reflective oily sheens, bouncing wavy reflections of street lights and glowing neon.

Narrowing his eyes, he stopped admiring the scenery and focused his mind on what to do next. If he couldn’t reach out to his teammates or access his map, then he would have to find his way through this city by relying on himself. He spotted the tallest structure in the area, a six story building about fifty meters ahead. At the very least, he could enter the structure and get to higher ground to get a better view of his immediate surroundings.

Dan picked up the pace and jogged his way toward the building. He periodically looked from side to side anticipating potential ambushes. He was still in a city filled with rebels and enemy agents.

Crossing the fifty meter distance to the building was oddly quiet, even tranquil. The soft rain rhythmically tapped on all surfaces along with the occasional splashes of light and its reflection off the sheen along the ground made for an oddly peaceful trek on the streets.

Dan reached the building and to the surprise of no one, the front door were locked shut. He didn’t have time or patience to be subtle or quiet so he winded his fist back and easily punched through one of the front windows without much trouble. He climbed into the building and navigated through the dark interiors. Dan stepped into a small lobby and walked past a vending machine. That’s when he was reminded of how tired he was.

Without another healing stim to give him an energy boost, as well as wanting to save the booster he received from that traitor Kate, he would have to settle for some regular food.

Dan took the sword off his back and simply shoved the tip of the blade into the front of the machine. He dragged the blade easily through the vending machine and made a rough square-shaped hole in the front. He dug his fingers through the cut and ripped out the small section of the vending machine. The grin under his mask was hard to contain, as looting vending machines back in New York proved to be more annoying and difficult without a badass sword.

A limited selection of some canned energy drinks and small bags of snacks ranging from chips, energy bars and candy was all he had available. A message popped up in his vision.

An agent's digestive system is much more optimized to absorb as many nutrients from foods than that of a baseline human. Eat to your heart's content to restore some of your energy.

“Better than nothing I guess,” Dan said.

Making haste, he gulped down four cans of energy drinks and ate seven energy bars and two bags of chips before he resumed his mission. Dan walked to the staircase, taking himself all the way to the sixth floor. Once he made it up, he slowly walked down the hall eyeing the window at the end with his seventy-seven rifle equipped in his hands. If anyone had heard the noise he made downstairs and wanted to make trouble, he would have no choice but to throw his weight around.

He reached the end of the hall and peeked through the glass. Droplets of water stained the glass along with a few downward streams and Dan had to hold back his temptation to simply smash the window. He didn’t want to attract more attention to himself with more noise. Then he felt like an idiot when he saw the latch on the bottom and could simply just slide the pane upward.

Looking at his surroundings outside, the added height didn’t seem to help much. The rain had picked up in intensity and now hammered the streets. Small streams flowed along the sidewalks and road, pooling in potholes and other depressions in the ground before overfilling and drenching the ground. Beyond the block, Dan only saw more buildings he could barely distinguish from each other. A few had some glowing advertising banners or signs but that was it. No noteworthy landmarks for Dan to get his bearing. Everything looked the same.

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New York wasn’t any better, he thought to himself.

Dan stepped back from the window and leaned against a nearby wall. If looking down at the streets didn’t help in finding where to go next, he could at least do a weapons check on his current gear.

He took a look at his seventy-seven rifle and did a scan of the weapon. His HUD fed his eyes some details.

ZK-77

Manufacturer: Emissary Armories

30 round magazine

7.62 x 57mm depleted uranium rounds

Description: The standard workhorse of the Alpha Corporation. A solid starting rifle with depleted uranium rounds in a manageable size and weight. While reliable and widely available, many veteran agents consider this rifle a mere toy compared to the higher-end firearms offered by the Alpha Corp and its rivals.

According to the description, this rifle wasn’t anything special by Alpha’s standards. But Dan begged to differ. A gun like this would be going for absorbadent prices on black markets back in the States and a massive headache if any criminals or insurgents got their hands on it. The dual bayonets were a nice touch.

He put down the rifle and left it leaning under the window. He grabbed the hilt off his back and examined his new sword next.

Just eyeballing it, Dan guessed the blade measured around eighty centimeters. The black sword occasionally had a current of electricity flowing along the length of its single edge. His HUD chimed in one what made this sword so special from a regular one.

Basic Kodak Katana

Manufacturer: Cresh Manufacturing

0.83 meters in length

Description: As barebones as a sword could get, as far as agent weapons are concerned. The katana sports a current of energy flowing through it to significantly increase its cutting power, allowing it to cut through agent body armor, achieving the same cutting power as a regular blade against flesh. Combined with the generally superior brute strength of a Kodak agent, this basic melee weapon becomes a threat, even against energy shields. In the hands of a strong, yet disciplined Kodak agent, this katana is not to be underestimated.

Dan had never been the biggest fan of using swords. Back in New York, he always needed to be on the move or attack quickly if he encountered trouble. A sword simply wouldn’t mesh well with his fighting style. The lighter weight and smaller size of a regular knife suited his needs far better.

But a blade with this level of cutting power was something only a fool would pass up, especially for someone like him who was already traveling light on gear.

His last looted weapon was the grenade launcher. The launcher looked like a run of the mill cylinder that carried six grenades. When Dan looted the weapon of one of the Kodak agents, he noticed that the grenades were in individual casings rather than held in sixes. Reloading this thing was going to be a pain in the ass. Still, he couldn’t pass up an explosive weapon, especially if he encountered any higher tier Kodak agents.

His HUD popped up some information about the grenade launcher.

Roaring Death

Manufacturer: Cresh Manufacturing

40mm grenades

Description: A grenade launcher that fires 40mm grenades from a six-round drum. Generally a passable weapon for fighting against enemy agents. Will struggle against shielded opponents. The generally slow reload times and lack of destructive power against higher tier agents has been fixed with Cresh’s other line of explosive weapons.

While Dan was thankful he was as armed as he possibly could be, he couldn’t shake the feeling that death wasn’t too far away. He had no more healing stims, using up his last one to help an injured child. If an enemy like Kate or any of Kodak’s high tiers got their hands on him, he was done. And he was all alone.

Rain water from outside trickled in from the opened window and he took one glance outside. Dan was bored seeing at the same wet and dark scenery. Then he caught movement in the corner of his eye.

He looked down and saw a dark silhouette running across the sidewalk across the street. The figure entered the bright shine under a street light and Dan briefly saw the strange individual. A woman sporting combat armor with spikes along her shoulders and arms entered into the light. Her long dark hair stuck to the sides of her face in the rain. Dan noticed traces of red on her wet face, assuming it was blood.

Dan tried to get a scan of the woman and his HUD gave him the stats.

Agent: Lola Odyssey

Age: 27 F

Shard: Kodak-Cresh

Rank: ***ERROR***

For some reason, his HUD couldn’t tell him the rank and stats of this agent. He grabbed his ZK-77 from the floor and placed the grenade launcher on his back. There was zero doubt that woman was an enemy to him. Dan continued to watch her dark figure run along the sidewalk. But something about her was off.

Her stumbling gait and sluggish speed suggested she had been injured. Even though Allen told him Kodak agents were known for their brutality and bloodlust, it seemed that this particular agent was running from something. Since Dan’s map didn’t work and no one on his team could be reached, this Lola could potentially lead him somewhere.

Dan kept his eyes on her for another few seconds before his HUD placed a yellow triangle on her body along with an approximate distance measurement between him and her.

Person of Interest. Waypoint placed.

Recommendation: Follow Lola Odyssey. Do not alert her to your presence.

His HUD seemingly had the same idea. Lola had reached sixty meters away from him before Dan sprung into action. He lifted the window all the way up and climbed out. He casually dropped from the six story building and landed smoothly on his feet. He hopped over a sedan and followed the yellow triangle that marked Lola’s location.

The Kodak agent had cut through an alleyway and surprising wasn’t picking up more speed. Dan assumed the agent had to have been injured to be moving this sluggishly. He rushed through the same alley, not worried about her catching onto his presence. The rain along with the poor visibility should be enough to mask his presence to her. If not, Dan had the advantage of shooting her in the back.

Emerging out of the alley, Dan spotted Lola’s outline through the shifting sheets of rain and continued his pursuit of the agent. He slowly but gradually closed the distance meter by meter. According to the waypoint, he was just shy of forty meters behind the agent. She hadn’t looked back once, which made it all the more surprising when she increased her speed. The distance according to the waypoint was rapidly widening between the two, as Lola separated herself from him by an additional forty meters in less than five seconds. The agent was out od sight and the yellow triangle that marked her was now an annoying floating icon that drifted along the walls of buildings. Then her pace slowed down again.

His HUD did a basic calculation on Lola’s burst of speed.

Lola’s running speed: 50 kilometers per hour.

Dan knew that no tier one agent could possibly match the speed of a car while on foot. With Lola’s stats curiously blocked, he assumed she had to be a tier two, maybe even higher. Dan’s anger and desire to kill the Kodak agents in this city overrode the practical dangers of taking on a higher-ranked agent.

Wherever this agent was going, Dan was going to catch up to her and put a bullet in between her eyes. Or blow her up with a grenade. Either way, he would waste this enemy agent.