Li was forced to fall back on his throwing knives and silently killed Kodak agents in the hallway. A blade with neurotoxin to the eyeball was the surest way of ending any fight. Li had used his x-ray vision to detect additional enemies on the floor. He found numerous silhouettes within several hotel suites scattered throughout the hallway and knew he couldn’t just shoot aimlessly. Even his silenced shots weren’t completely silent. And any missed shots would leave bullet holes in the walls that would easily be noticed by a passing individual.
The next problem Li had to deal with was finding a vacant hotel room so that he could hide these two fresh corpses. Li was still passing by occupied rooms, trying to find one he could access. His search was halted when he saw movement at the end of the current hall. A Kodak agent stepped into view and stopped momentarily to look up at a painting on the wall at the end of the hall. Luckily, he didn’t spot Li.
Any moment, that agent would turn around and spot him and the two corpses he left in the hallway. Li still hadn’t found a vacant hotel suite to dump the bodies into. Up ahead, he saw the doors to two public bathrooms. He quickened his pace until he reached one of the doors. Li halfway opened it while keeping an eye on the agent still admiring the painting on the wall. He took this moment to scan the agent stats.
Agent: Jude Predator
Age: 24 M
Shard: Kodak-Cresh
Rank: Tier 2 | Level 26
Strength: 38
Agility: 32
Endurance: 34
Intelligence: 26
Healing Factor: n/a
Li’s heartrate increased, so much so that he could feel the organ ready to burst out of his chest. The last enemy Li wanted to encounter was an agent a full tier above him. While Jude was only five levels higher than he was, Li knew there was still a chasm between the two in terms of raw power.
The two corpses he left were now too far away to quietly walk back to and drag into the bathroom to hide. The only thing Li could do was continue studying this agent in case he had to fight him.
Even from this distance, Li could easily tell the weaponry this agent carried. The Kodak agent had a machete slung across his back and what appeared to be either rifle with an elongated barrel of a pump action shotgun. Such weapons would be a death sentence for Li in these cramped interiors.
Jude turned on his heel and faced down the hall. Li immediately staggered into the bathroom and quickly tried to get out of sight. In this uncommon case of panic, Li let the door shut abruptly. Throught the closed bathroom door, Li could hear the loud footsteps stomping outside in the hall. The tier two agent rushed down the hall and was most likely checking out the bodies of his fellow dead agents.
Li stepped deeper into the bathroom, hoping to find a hiding spot and possibly waiting out the situation. But he also knew he might be equally screwed in the long run if that tier two agent wasn’t dealt with right now and called for backup. The entrance to the bathroom had a view of the row of sinks and mirrors. Beside Li was a wall that he knew could be used to hide behind.
His ears picked up more footsteps coming closer to the bathroom door from outside and Li frantically walked and turned the corner, rushing behind the wall before the Kodak agent swung the bathroom door open.
“Whoever you are, I know you rushed in here,” the agent’s raspy voice said. To Li, this agent sounded more like a pirate than a professional agent. “I don’t care if you’re emptying your bowels in here. You saw the dead bodies outside. You will tell me what you know and who did this.”
Li remained still as he kept his breathing slow and consistent. If that tier two discovered him, he was as good as dead.
“Refusal to cooperate is punishable by death, worm!” the agent yelled. Li heard the slapping of metal on metal contact wondering what the agent was doing. The agent walked slowly, emphasizing every step with a loud stomp on the floor tiles. Li’s ears were met with a sound akin to nails on a chalkboard.
Li held his breath as he saw the Kodak agent come into view, emerging out from the wall separating the two of them. The agent still faced forward with his back to him, thankfully not spotting him yet. Li saw the source of the grating noise and watched as the agent dragged the blade of his machete across the wall of the bathroom. The blade carved deep incisions into the wall and the mounted mirrors above the sinks. The bottom half of the cut mirror fell and shattered into pieces over the sinks.
“If you won’t come out, I’ll drag you with your pants down and dick hanging out, fool,” the agent threatened.
Li watched as bursts of white static sparked from the blade and his worst fears were confirmed. That machete was a modified blade designed for higher cutting ability than a standard blade. He studied the agent further and found a small gap in between the shoulder piece and upper arm.
The agent turned and Li had to react fast. Mid-turn, Li threw one of his neurotoxin blades and the knife found its target through the gap and into the flesh of the agent’s arm. The Kodak agent’s eyes immediately widened at Li, an enemy agent. He then looked at his left arm, surprised to see it go limp.
“What the fuck?”
“Neurotoxin,” Li stated coldly. “Not even your enhancements make you fully immune to its effects. You won’t be moving that arm for a while.”
Jude looked up at him with gritted teeth, but then his mouth twisted into a smile. “Losing an arm won’t stop a beast like me. You just sealed your fate, you Alpha trash!”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Even with a paralyzed arm, the Kodak agent rushed Li with incredible speed. Li barely had time to dive out of the way of the charge before the tip of the machete buried itself into the wall behind where Li had just stood.
Li was still on the floor when he looked over his shoulder and saw the machete’s blade sunk halfway into the wall. The Kodak agent pulled the blade out of the wall and looked at Li. “Lucky bastard. You won’t be dodging anymore attacks from me.”
Barely getting back to his feet, Jude’s blinding burst of sudden speed shocked Li as he coughed up the air out of his lungs from the agent shoving him.
Li was lucky that the shoulder spikes of the Kodak agent didn’t penetrate him. His relief was shortlived as his back slammed against the wall behind him and Li slumped down to the floor. From combat instincts built since he was sixteen, Li leaned to the side and put his body flat on the ground, narrowly avoiding s wide slash that would have decapitated him.
“You move fast for a piece of trash,” Jude spat. The agent bent down and buried his machete into the floor beside him. With his hand now freed, he grabbed Li by the neck. The agent hoisted him up and tossed him back into the wall beside the bathroom entrance. Li’s entire world spun and then crashed to abrupt halt as he impacted the wall and landed back on the floor.
This was a fight Li had almost no chance of winning. Li watched Jude as he grabbed the handle of his machete and ripped the weapon out of the ground. His stealth armor only provided him with a limited degree of protection from such an intense force that was the throw of a tier two agent. It was a miracle that nothing was broken.
Jude gazed upon him in such fashion that truly lived up to his codename. The Kodak agent was aware of his superiority over Li in raw stats alone. Tier two agents were universally considered superhuman and Li being a tier one still hadn’t reached that level yet. Li slowly got himself back on his feet. The fact that Li still breathed instead of Jude simply killing him while he was down merely came down to a predator playing with his food.
“Back on your feet already,” the agent said. “I would hate for this to be over so quickly.”
Jude’s arrogance was the only thing Li had in his favor in this situation. Only one move popped up in Li’s mind, one that would end this fight in an instant. Li mentally braced himself, knowing he would not walk away unscratched from this fight with what he was about to do.
“Unfortunately, I have plans I need to get back to. I’ll have to make short work of this,” Li said.
The predatory smile on Jude’s face quickly vanished and now the agent stared at him in disbelief.
“You think you really have a chance? And ‘I have plans.’ It seems you are deliberately trying to provoke me. You can’t win this fight. I’ll have your skull put on a pike, you Alpha trash.”
“I would love to hear a more original insult, but I guess we won’t since you’ll be dead,” Li said, smiling beneath his mask.
The Kodak agent stared at him for another few seconds, seconds that felt like hours to Li. “You just sealed your fate.”
To Jude’s surprise, Li was the first to rush him. With the short distance between the two in such a cramped bathroom, this final charge would end in a flash. Jude met Li’s challenge and also charged with his machete in his hand, aiming to impale Li straight through the torso.
At the last possible moment, time slowed and Li stepped right into the path of the machete’s tip and took the blade’s full rampage. Deliberately.
Reflex ability used. Cooldown: 135 seconds.
Li felt the waves of pain blast throughout his arm and the edges of his vision pulsating with red. His HUD blared warning messages of the seriousness of his arm wound. Li regretted the decision as he felt the blade tear through the coat and undersuit and straight into his upper left arm. But this was necessary.
“What the fuck?!” Jude shouted. Even he stood there, stunned at what just happened.
Li reached into his coat’s inner pockets and grabbed two throwing knives. He jammed one poisonous blade into the gap above Jude’s kneeguard, paralyzing the agent’s leg. The agent grunted as he struggled to maintain his balance on one good leg. Li’s second knife found its way into Jude’s other arm, the one holding the machete.
Inevitably, the agent released his grip on the machete and his other arm went limp. “How the fuck? How did—”
Li showed no hesitation even with the immense pain in his upper arm. He grabbed the silenced pistol off the side of his coat and blasted a silenced round directly into the face of the Kodak agent. Li watched the shower of blood and gore as the tungsten-tipped ten millimeter round shredded through the face of the tier two agent.
Jude fell backward with his whole body slamming into the floor with a hard thud. The colliding impact of ceramic and armor and flesh blessed Li’s ears as Jude’s tough armor and its sharp spikes clashed against floor tiles. The fight was over and Li had emerged as the victor, though just barely.
Congratulations! You have won against an agent higher level than you!
Your immediate superior will be notified of this tremendous accomplishment!
Bonus experience rewarded.
You are now Tier 1 | Level 23.
You have earned 5 stat points!
The blade of the machete didn’t embed itself as deeply into his flesh as Li thought. Still, feeling the blade sliding out of Li’s upper arm as he gently removed the archaic weapon and dropping it onto the ground wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.
Watching the blood leak from his upper arm and spill onto the floor, Li knew this was a serious wound. Just moving the arm sent blinding pain throughout the limb. His HUD chimed in on the extent of his injuries.
Torn deltoid muscle.
Fractured humerus bone.
Substantial blood loss.
Seek immediate medical attention!
Li had nowhere near the expertise of being a field medic. All he had to fall back on as an agent was the use of his healing stims. Li took one such tool out of his coat’s inner pocket and rammed the syringe into his upper left shoulder.
The ice cold sensation jolted him, then he relaxed as the frosty feeling of the miracle substance spread through his arm and eased the pain of his wound. Li looked down at his wound and watched in awe as his shredded arm mended itself in real time. His flesh knitted itself back together and the bleeding stopped before his armor performed its self-repair routine. The breach in his undersuit quickly sealed itself while the silver coat’s sleeve still remained with a gaping tear in the fabric.
Left arm at 80% effectiveness.
Recommendation: see a doctor after the mission.
After healing, Li stood in place while staring at the dead body of the tier two agent he had somehow survived and won against in the deadly confrontation. By all accounts, Li was outmatched in everyway possible by this higher level agent.
In such a grim scenario, Li knew the only way to win against an enemy who was stronger and faster was to exploit their lowly perception of you as an inferior combatant. He lured the Kodak agent into recklessly meeting his challenge in one final charge. Li chose to purposely take a direct hit and get the enemy into a position more favorable to him. Only then, did Li manage to barely manage a victory.
Without his armor, the Kodak agent’s machete would have easily cleaved through his entire arm and skewered him. Even with his armor, the deadly blade still inflicted serious injury and now Li was working with reduced effectiveness. The win didn’t come without great cost. Li’s left arm felt weaker even supposedly at eighty percent according to his HUD’s diagnostics.
“I hope Dan is having a nice nap,” Li whispered as he slowly walked out of the bathroom. He had two corpses in the hallway he still needed to hide.