Chapter 2: I hate wildlife

The light covering Mitch’s vision slowly began resolving. Resolving into a greenish hue that is. Mitch felt a bout of nausea as gravity suddenly reasserted itself on his corporeal form. His inner ear quickly informed him he was upside down.

Mitch looked down from his flipped position seeing a wide stream of green water flowing down a smooth rocky riverbed. It was banked on both sides by a thick covering of massive trees. Trees so massive even from his high vantage point of a hundred feet high, he was looking at branches and trunks flanking his accelerating vision instead of the top of a canopy.

The sound around him was quickly drowned out by the wind ripping by his ears as he fell face first directly towards the riverbed. But Mitch swore he heard a far away female scream.

That thought was quickly tossed away as Mitch focused on trying to get his feet under him before full facial impact.

Mitch contorted his back and forced his legs down into a skydiving posture within a second. The fall only took around three seconds to reach impact. Mitch, fighting the building air resistance and the wind slowly pushing him forwards, ended up in a kneeling position instead of a standing one when he made his graceful landing.

A landing so graceful he tumbled head over heel nearly a dozen times before impacting a gray boulder in the riverbed with a meaty thump.

The world in my head goes round and round, round and round, round and round!

Mitch quickly recovered from the blunt force trauma and dizziness enough to dislodge himself from his impromptu bolder perch and drop gracefully onto the river stones below.

Alright. Limbs, check. Head, check. Skin, check. Countless bruises, check. Headache, check.

First things first, where in the hell am I? Also what just happened? I know warp pads have a concerningly high failure rate due to some mumbo jumbo technical excuse I never understood, but this is ridiculous! That cunt only kicked me a few feet out of the center!

Mitch, with his pounding headache, kicked one of the numerous rocks in the riverbed. It shot out of the large ditch with blistering speeds.

So much speed, Mitch didn’t manage to see where it landed. But there was a concerning noise that came with the rock shooting between the gigantic trees. A loud ass SQUAWK!

Hah, actually hit a bird, lucky. Anyways, where am I? Did I get dumped on a random planet within the next sixty thousand light years or am I actually in the Achird system? Will I get charged for escaping prison? Why are these alien trees so god damn tall? Come to think of it, I do feel oddly invigorated, there must be a much higher oxygen content here than back in Palihen. Does that explain the trees? No, not really.

God dammit Mitch focus, what do I do? Wait for rescue? I’ve never heard of someone coming back from a warp incident… Alright well at least I think I heard a human scream while falling, I hope it wasn’t mine coming through the panic. That most likely means, if I can get some food, water and shelter and explore around for a while, I can find some civilization? Do I want to go back to civilization? What if a facial scan brings up my id and I get tossed back into prison again?! But what other choice do I have? Stay here in the woods for the rest of my life?

Mitch upon formulating his basic plan to find civilization after getting some survival elements set up had his attention ripped away from his monologue. Ripped away by branches fifty feet high rustling dramatically.

The branches suddenly gave way to a massive bird? A bird with a wingspan at least twenty-five feet across. It looked to be an eagle vulture mix, a partially naked head, but a very bulky build. Its feathers were black in color. The weirdest part was with every flap of its wings, foot across glowing white circles floating mid air would explode in soft shockwaves under its wings. The circles had odd runes populating their centers. The exploding circles gave the angry bird extra oomph behind every flap. So much oomph Mitch was now panicking seeing a flying angry dinosaur accelerating at him like a fighter jet.

Are those hard light constructs?! Birds can make hard light holograms which explode? BIRDS?! Was all Mitch managed to think before nine hundred pounds of angry bird slammed into him talon first.

The bird’s talons made thin bloody lines across his chest before slipping off the graphene. The bird, unluckily for Mitch, found a grip holding onto Mitch’s shoulders, dragging him across the river bed for a dozen feet. The bird’s oddly metallic talons created bright orange sparks as they ate into the river stone below.

Now under the talons of the vulture eagle, Mitch found himself being pecked in the face. Not only pecked in the face but with every peck one more of those damned exploding hologram circles would materialize and blast him with a concussive shockwave.

This thing, better taste like chicken.

Mitch, even through the quickly building concussion, managed to turn off the mental limiters on his graphene musculature, grabbed onto the chicken like legs of the bird, and squeezed.

He squeezed and twisted, his back and crushing grip working in tandem to shatter the bird’s leg bones and tear them in half. The bleeding bird sinew stretched then snapped as Mitch got to the end of his range of arm motion.

Hands now red and slick with blood Mitch realized he didn’t think this through… The nine hundred pound bird, now legless now just sat on him.

Mitch found himself trying to breathe through a bunch of undulating feathers and dawn clogging his nose and mouth as the screeching legless bird flapped around in a panic on top of him.

The bird eventually began flapping off of him, slowly rising into the air right above him. It had a look of mixed rage and fear. Blood poured from its messily amputated legs as it looked down at Mitch, a building white light engulfing its pupils.

A gigantic elliptical rune hologram began materializing between Mitch and the bird. The symbols in the rune seeming oddly sharp.

Mitch seeing this decided he’d rather not see what the bird would do in desperation. He dashed forwards now behind the flapping hovering bird. He crouched and leaped twenty feet upwards to grab onto the feathers of the bleeding fella. Then like a cracked out monkey he scaled up and around the bird’s side onto its head.

The vulture eagle all this time was bucking and flipping trying to tear off Mitch. Little could be done as the giant feathers acted as perfect grip points as Mitch reached the head of the vulture eagle. There were no longer feathers to grip so instead, Mitch dug his fingers directly into its flesh and bone. Reaching its teacup sized right eye Mitch struck his right arm forwards like a javelin. The slimy white orb burst like a grape. His arm did not stop at the eye though, following the momentum his carbon fingers blasted a jagged hole through the bird’s thin orbital bone. Reaching its brain, Mitch then swished around his arm until the screeching & bucking bird dropped from the sky.

The bird and man duo then fell towards the river bed. The elliptical sharp rune circle still was floating midair. Unluckily, The rune burst just as they got in front of it. A condensed and sharp blade of air with a sharp squealing sound shot forwards. The high energy blade decapitated the dead bird, just barely missing the bottoms of Mitch’s feet as he was still attached to the heavily bleeding head.

Mitch tumbled through the air on the massive bird head, the detached head landed on the stones with a wet thwack.

Mitch unlatched himself off of the dead mangled head. He then glanced down at his overly bloody hands and his right arm covered in blood, goopy eye humor & clear cerebrospinal fluid all the way up to the shoulder.

Step one complete, Killed massive bird. Step two, figure out how to cook the damned thing… Wait. Do I need to cook it?

Mitch paused, looking around the oddly quiet woods around him. A soft screech came from the far distance from who knows what. Also Mitch finally took this chance to examine the canopy above him.

The nearest trees were similar to massive redwoods but with brown bark. They seemed to be around two hundred feet high. There were also lots of smaller trees between the giants, thriving on the small patches of light leaking through. However, the interesting thing was Mitch could see something far above the canopy even beyond the massive brownwoods. He could see a white barked tree growing to a mind boggling height. The damned white god tree looked almost infinite in height, but if he had to guess it looked around a mile and a half high. So high the blue atmosphere made it hard to see any details at the top. But it almost looked like a massive swarm of black dots were flocking around the tippy top of the tree.

Okay, focus Mitch. Think about the trees later. Am I cooking the bird? I did include extra acidic stomach acid in the modifications. That should take care of most of the pathogens, but also my boosted engineered immune system should be able to deal with the rest… I’m sure the taste won’t be all that bad.

Mitch made his way over to the headless corpse of the bird, he decided to get his fill now as there was no way to know if bigger fish would come along and try to grab his kill.

Mitch began tearing off fistfulls of feathers and dawn off the bird's chest. He quickly made a nice pink bald patch on the massive right peck. He began tearing into the white bloody meat like a toddler tearing apart a cooked chicken from Costco bare handed. The taste was very, iron heavy as Mitch decided that the impromptu beheading was enough blood draining. The odd thing was that the meat tasted heavenly, every few bites Mitch would get a flash of euphoria. With the flashes came almost a sixth sense, it felt like he could see the inner workings of his body flash in his mind’s eye. His stomach tensing, his heart pounding, his veins squirming. He could see all of it for split seconds at a time. And… odd milky white microscopic crystals being absorbed through his gut and lungs over time.

Every flash of internal anatomy, Mitch saw larger and larger amounts of crystals flood his central nervous system. There would be a flash of odd ghostly green gas in his frontal lobe accompanying each sixth sense moment. The flashes of anatomy would cut off within a fraction of a second each time as the building cloud of green gas would suddenly be sucked into the center mass of his brainstem and disappear. The cycle continued a hundred times over throughout the gorging session.

The birds and air here just have natural opioids floating around or something? Was it using heroine crystals to make those holograms? With a satisfied burp thirty minutes later, Mitch looked down at his progress. He had managed to pick clean all of the meat on the upper ribcage all the way down to the bone. He was stuffed beyond belief and already had to go relieve an accelerated bowel movement in the trees.

Curse you engineered body and stupid calorie requirements!

I really don’t have a way to preserve the meat, no salt, no freezer, no nothing? I wonder if there’s any cave or something around here to use as a den to cool this body? Knowing my luck so far there’ll probably be a hologram slinging super bear waiting for me if I find one. If only those crystals worked as a preservative.

As Mitch was sitting there on his bloody kill picking at a few more scraps of meat, he heard… more rustling of leaves on the riverbank.

Oh no no no no no. Not this shit again. It better not be a flier!

Mitch spun around to see an eighteen foot long, metallic furred mountain lion flying off the elevated river bank directly towards him. Its claws were gleaming steel, reflecting the white sun in all directions. Its fur looked to have more in common with steel wool than hair.

Mitch, actually paying attention this time, leaped out of the way of his ambusher. The mountain lion sailed past the bird corpse and Mitch landing paws first in the river gravel. It quickly spun around, growled at Mitch and began its chase.

Just have the fucking bird! I’m not risking one of those claws through an eye! My seeing orbs are just as fragile as the day I was born!

Mitch hoofed it. He leaped out of the river bed, up the fifteen feet into the woods and began sprinting. He couldn’t go his top speed of fifty miles an hour due to all of the tripping hazards. Mitch now just passing the river treeline took a glance backwards to see the lion on his tail.

Mitch quickly scrambled over a massive brownwood tree root in his way and dashed forwards and began zig zagging through the trees hoping to lose his feline pursuer.

That drugged meat is really trying to come back up right now. I should not be sprinting full tilt right after eating that much. Mitch thought nauseated, his feet pounding dirt below him.

Mitch slowly heard the pattering of the lion’s footsteps get closer and closer over the next twenty seconds of sprinting and clambering. Mitch actually spotted a clearing on his right filled with gigantic boars with gleaming steel tusks. A problem for another time, he just kept running.

The sound of the lion dashing over roots and hopping over rocks behind him, had gotten concerningly loud. Mitch was too scared to glance over his shoulder as he was positive it was inches from clawing distance.

Mitch broke through another wall of thick green brush to find himself dashing towards a hundred foot wide ravine which fell for who knows how long. It was just blackness past a hundred feet down.

Fight giga mountain lion or risk the pit? Who the hell would pick the pit?! Ha, I’m going to give that Lion a ne…

Mitch was flying tackled in the back by the mountain lion, its massive two feet across paws launching Mitch and itself directly into the ravine.

“You stupid ass cat! You better be dead at the bottom!” Mitch screamed as he fell into the darkness, he made sure to fall feet first this time.

Stolen story; please report.

At around the five second mark of freefall, Mitch felt himself hit a steep rough rocky slope. He heard the lion yowl as they both began tumbling down the slope for at least the next ten seconds. The nausea and pain prevented Mitch from really paying attention to how long it lasted.

The adverse duo finally hit the bottom and it seemed they tripped some sort of motion sensor as the entire ‘cave’ was immediately lit up by blinding white led lines lining the back wall. A back wall nearly three hundred feet away. To say the least, Mitch and the lion were immediately blinded as their darkness adjusted eyes were blasted with light.

What the hell is that loud whirring sound?

A series of deafening pops echoed through the cave as Mitch blinked frantically to adjust his vision. Mitch’s eyes adjusted just in time to witness a stream of tracer rounds fired from the far wall turn the ribcage of the metallic lion into spiky mush. The rounds did not stop in the lion, they still had enough energy to slam into the backing stone wall. The projectiles create even more crack spreading holes in the shale.

AH FUCK!

Mitch dove to the ground behind a white boulder hoping to not be turned to mush. A quarter second later the ear bursting buzzing of the machine gun turret stopped, Mitch glanced over to his right and thirty feet away was the mangled corpse of the giant lion. The scariest part wasn’t that though, it was that Mitch realized the boulder he was cowering behind was actually a massive skull of what looked like a lizard. The skull also had… a few hundred inch diameter bullet holes in it. Inch diameter holes that he was positive whatever camera on the turret could see him through.

A loud foreign slightly robotic voice then emanated from the far wall, “Human identified. Citizen of the Empire, walk forwards slowly with your hands above your head for identification and verification. Cooperation is mandatory.” The voice repeated this three more times as Mitch caught his breath.

Empire?! Empire…? What? There’s a human empire? As in with an Emperor? As in… not the federation? As in the only human civilization I knew existed? What is happening right now? Did that warp pad send me back in time or something?

At least I found civilization in record time! Mitch thought before standing up and putting his hands above his head.

He shimmied around the lizard skull. His hands kept high. Thankfully he did not hear any more whirring sound building from the far wall.

Mitch eventually reached halfway to the light covered wall, at this point he was now being blasted with enough light that he’d consider it equivalent to the sun. The robotic voice then switched on again.

“Facial and body scanning in progress. Stay still.” The voice said. Then repeated two more times.

Three red laser beams then materialized from three different points on the wall. The lines sweeped mitch up and down. The red lights seemed to penetrate his skin, like a flashlight subsurface scattering through a fingertip. Mitch could see the gleaming of multiple camera lenses on the far wall, he spotted at least an array of a dozen.

Huh, long range diffuse optical imaging… I sure hope my graphene bones and inorganic muscles don’t cause a problem.

“Basic identification complete, mortal body modifications found, face not found in base records. Genetic sample needed. Off-base contact requested. Citizen please make your way to the base doors to your one o clock.”

Ookay. Reminds me of going into work in Palihen, the locked down military base vibe n’ all. Surely this’ll go well.

Mitch made his way towards the lit up wall, after getting out of the hundreds of spotlights, Mitch was finally able to see the wall in its full glory. Well, glory might be an overstatement. It was just a grey stone like wall. It was covered in black camera lens dots and two gigantic three barrel machine guns. The guns were concerningly large, so large in fact, Mitch doubted his protection could stop multiple shots. The barrel diameters looked in excess of an entire inch. Touching the wall near the door for a split second, Mitch could tell at least the outermost gray stone like layer was a spray on plastic of some kind.

Mitch entered the doorway. The door gave way to a blue steel hallway with dotted rectangular LED strips lining the corners like the walkway in a movie theater. The lights had moving green dots going forwards telling him which direction to follow. The voice said as much.

“Citizen follow the green path to the lab. Genetic testing is mandatory to confirm identification.”

Wait, that’s something I just ignored earlier. He called my mods mortal body modifications. That implies there’s immortal body modifications? I mean I know the fusion walkers back home were gods among men but still, it seems like an odd classification system. Given that almost everyone is functionally immortal. I better not just get blasted to smithereens if they determine I'm not actually a citizen of the Empire.

Mitch followed the green lights. The surroundings around him slowly passed as he walked. There was little to talk of in the hallway as every numbered or labeled room was closed off by thick steel doors. Each set of doors had an accompanying eye scanning lock pad on the side. One interesting thing he did notice though was that the ‘marine equipment room’ was unlocked as he was walking by. Unlocked may not be the right term as the keypad seemed nonfunctional and the door was slightly agape. Mitch bet he could cram his fingers in there and pry it open.

Who am I kidding? I'll get shot immediately if I try to steal something.

Mitch finally found himself looking at the end of the green path. It led into a massive set of steel doors labeled ‘lab intake’.

“Citizen please wait in the designated area. A lab bot will be with you in a moment. A microscopic skin sample will be collected for testing.”

Mitch, listening to the robotic voice made his way over to an obviously marked waiting area.

A few minutes later a humanoid droid made its way to the lab reception desk. It had an elliptical head, moved with more grace than a robot should have and a spinning mini lidar on the top of its head. Its two green glowing eyes panned over to Mitch.

“Citizen, please make your way to room twelve. I’ll be right with you.” The droid said in a robotic voice exactly the same as the one on the PA system.

“Sure, sure.” Mitch said before walking through the glass doors which led into a quaint white walled hallway with a dozen rooms all labeled. Room twelve was the first one on his left thankfully.

An automatic opaque door later, Mitch found himself looking at an odd familiar sight. A patient medical chair and one of those shitty two feet across corner desks.

Reminds me of my time in civil medicine. In the Palihen gene mod base, the patient rooms were much larger to accommodate… larger people.

Mitch sat down mulling over the fight with the bird and the odd holograms it was generating.

I mean I don’t want to call it magic since I've seen similar stuff outside of vr sims but the runes really make it seem like magic. Why weren’t the force holograms just like white balls or something instead of runes? Also why was I getting flashes of my insides when eating the bird? What were those milky microscopic crystals in its muscles? Too many questions.

The receptionist droid made its way into the room. It was oddly cute, the way it skipped forwards instead of walking.

“Citizen, bio-identification first then paperwork after. Are you ready for a quick skin sampling? It’ll just feel like a quick poke.” The droid said, walking forwards with what looked like an oddly shaped injector.

“Sure… If there’s really no way around it.” Mitch decided to not even try with the questions as he was fully sure he’d be stonewalled. Military & Medial AI’s never spill the beans. Usually…

The droid walked over directly next to the chair.

“On three. One… Two… Three.” The droid said in a monotone voice before quickly jabbing him with the sampler. A green LED appeared on the device.

“Perfect, Citizen. Please wait here, the overseer will inform you of your results and next steps” The droid said before walking out of the hallway.

Mitch decided to take a quick nap on the medical bed as he knew for a fact this was definitely going to take longer than expected.

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“Citizen! Bio-identification has come up with positive results. Classified geneseed results! Procedure 75b33I3 Coma Stasis has been initiated. Citizen please say where you are, a procurement agent will be at your location in t-minus one minute!” The overseer AI voice said surprisingly jolly.

Mitch rubbed his eyes, yawned then jerked forwards.

Wait what the fuck did he just say? Classified geneseed results?! Procedure coma stasis?! Procurement agent?! I’m not gonna be tossed into stasis for a thousand years on some planet backwater!

Mitch felt a jolt of adrenaline shoot through his system as he shot out of the medical bed. He tried leaving the room but the thick automatic plastic door didn’t open. So instead with a snap kick Mitch cracked the thing in half and dashed to his right directly through the glass door. Fragments of glass flew through the air as he entered the reception area.

There were two different steel doors, one of them slowly closing the other slowly opening. The closing one was the one he originally made his way through to get in here. From the slowly opening hallway Mitch heard loud metal clanking of what sounded like four very heavy feet pounding against the steel ground to reach him.

Mitch without a second thought dashed through the closing door which he came through originally.

Alright, On the spot plan making go! What are my options? One. Go back to the cave where the minigun turrets are? Bad idea. Wait here and get tossed into stasis for who knows how long? Not happening. Next, make my way to that ‘marine equipment room’ and either hide and plan or if there’s a weapon in there blast whatever is coming after me. Good idea.

Mitch bolted down the hallways back to that broken door of the Marine Equipment Room.

“Citizen! You have left the medical reception! This is in violation of Code 8322b3! Legal actions will be handled after transfer! This is your last warning to cooperate!”

Mitch ignored the overseer’s intimidation and shoved his hands into the gap of the ‘marine equipment room’ and wrenched, his back went into full tilt forcing the broken door a foot down its very broken rails with loud screeching.

Mitch slipped into the room and kicked the reinforcing beams on the door to seal it closed.

Mitch turned around as the motion detecting lights flipped on. The lights gave him a mini heart attack after his recent experiences. To his surprise the equipment room was no room but a mini god damn warehouse. Nearly a dozen four pallet high steel shelves with well organized and labeled equipment.

There were multiple puck style robots cleaning the floors and under the shelves. Mitch ignored his first inkling to check the computers on the far wall for searching this mess as it would just show the overseer where he was. Thankfully so far Mitch could not even hear the metal foot falls of the ‘procurement agent’ yet. He’d rather not mess that up.

Avoiding the paths of the roombas just in case and paying close attention to any cameras Mitch made his way around the perimeter of the storage room.

There were a few things that caught Mitch’s attention. They were the ‘MK3833 Niatech energy assault rifle’, ‘Tranlarto, high efficiency, solar powered translation necklace by Neta’, ‘Holo-skin, solar powered hardlight disguise, by Neta.’ & ‘Xk9399 fission grenades by Niatech’.

The reason these caught his attention was that they were the only pieces of equipment that didn’t have the warning statement of ‘needs authorized neural implant’. There were literally a dozen and a half of different kinds of self aiming firearms and rocket launchers but every single one needed an authorized neural implant.

First thing Mitch did was dash for the clothes section to grab a trench coat to fill his pockets. After that, the first stop was the Xk9399 fission grenades as he intended to turn those turrets in the cave to slack.

Next was the holo-skin, he really hoped it worked as he hoped and could make him blend in with the gray plastic wall to get near the turrets.

Third was everything fucking else, since apparently he had time. Somehow that overseer managed to absolutely lose him. He grabbed a rifle. He put on the holo-skin which was a clip on belt which self adjusted, it had many black solar panels around the circumference and a floating holographic screen which appeared near his groin when turned on. He quickly set it to the auto camouflage setting and was in awe as his body and all of his gear turned into watercolor like shifting three dimensional representation of the background. Somehow it even projected the correct depth even if a bit blurry to all angles. He quickly shut it off to deal with the Tranlarto which was invisible before, he found it in his coat pocket, it looked like a gray metallic choker which he quickly snapped on around his neck and moved on.

I sure hope there’s no trackers in these.

It was at this point Mitch began faintly hearing the metal clanking of his presurer.

Surely whatever it is I can just blow it up with one of these four grenades right? I mean there’s only two turrets so I might as well use the others..? No, that's a horrible idea. Camouflage on. I’m hoofing it.

Mitch pried open the door as quickly as possible which slid open with a sharp creak. He slipped through the doorway, the hard light hologram around him quickly dimmed to a dark cloud of material surrounding him as he entered the dim hall. His night vision mod pulled its weight as his eyes quickly adjusted to the minimal lighting. He dashed down the hall the opposite way of the stomping.

He quickly passed the landmarks he remembered. Mitch quickly reached the steel door which stopped his path to the outside of the base. When it was a hundred or so feet in front of him he pulled out the fission grenade on a three second delay using the twist ring and shot it towards the door with a hefty overhand throw.

The grenade beeped and launched towards the door like a bullet. It bounced off the door then rolled back six feet back towards Mitch. It then exploded. It didn’t just explode, it vaporized the door and surrounding two dozen feet of solid steel and stone. Crumbling pieces of loose rock fell from the newly redecorated rock ceiling where the door used. The rocks fell into the newly created crater.

The shockwave from the explosion slid Mitch back two dozen feet. His rubber soled boots screeched in effort trying to find traction on the polished steel below.

The metallic feet pounding behind him steadily got louder and louder as he got his footing. Mitch turned around and finally saw the outline of the ‘procurement agent’ in the distance.

The agent looked to be some sort of robot dog, it was ten feet in length, its lowered head reached the ceiling of the hallway. Wiggling down it’s back were alien like steel cable tentacles reaching forwards as if hoping to grasp Mitch at any moment.

Mitch was almost relieved to see just a robot dog as a pressuer until he noticed how god damn fast it was closing the distance.

Mitch quickly leaped his way over the superheated crater left by the grenade and banked right towards the machine gun turrets. The one closest to him didn’t have the range of motion to point in his direction but the other one on the far wall did not have such a problem. Thankfully the hard light disguise was doing its job at least a little. It managed to turn the turret’s unerring accuracy into a wide spread in his direction.

Quickly Mitch learned that, yes in fact he could survive a shot from one of these turrets… But just hitting his left forearm tore off a five inch streak of skin, caused immediate internal bleeding and instantly turned his hand completely numb.

Ow fuck. No time like the present.

Mitch quickly dove to the ground after grabbing another grenade from his jacket pocket and hurled it towards the far away turret with all of his might and momentum.

The grenade sailed overhead between a hail of bullets, it quickly flew above the trajectory of the storm before falling back down just five feet from the turret. The timer ticked its last tock and beeped. The turret and surrounding plastic covered steel wall turned into a noxious smoke filled crater.

Mitch smiled then turned around to see the procurement agent looking around for his position. It most definitely had thermal cameras or something as it locked onto the obscured Mitch almost immediately. At this point the agent was only a mere hundred feet away.

Mitch panicked, he still needed to nade the turret right above him and the dog was seconds away. Gritting his teeth Mitch formulated a split second plan, he grabbed a grenade, set the timer to five seconds, dropped it and bolted towards the crater that was the previous turret.

The procurement agent chased after him with little thought, it was screeching out “Citizen please hold for securement!” over tinny loudspeakers over and over again.

By the three second mark Mitch had reached the new turret’s range of motion, the machine began wiring to life. By the fourth second mark Mitch had taken two shots to the back. By the fifth second mark the procurement agent was right below the turret… BOOM.

The grenade exploded taking the turret and procurement agent with it in a smog bluming plasma explosion which made yet another smoldering crater.

Mitch would celebrate but his mind was on other things at the moment.

Ow! holy fucking shit! Holy shit! Did that just remove all the skin on my back?!

Mitch was making a bloody stain on the bone covered cave floor as all the epidermis above his graphene layers was blown off by the two shots on his back. It revealed a pitch black layer of graphene with microscopic red dots of blood vessels poking through. Quickly Mitch came to his senses and got up and dashed for the bottom of the ravine.

The gravel in his bare back gave for an uncomfortable experience. An experience turned agony as with all of his might and digested magic bird Mitch threw himself up the ravine. A hundred feet up Mitch quickly set the hard light hologram around his neck and head to bright white flashlight mode as to see the surroundings. Even cat-like night vision can’t see inside of pitch black.

Mitch heaved and coughed his way up nearly another three hundred feet until he saw a small ledge a dozen feet to his right. He pulled himself over to take a quick break. He took a breather for three minutes or so.

I need to hurry the fuck up. I need to skedaddle now, my chances of cooperating disappeared right when I activated that first fission grenade.

Mitch continued his climb as fast as he could, he launched himself up a dozen feet at a time making his own handholds in the stone with his crushing grip.

A minute later, a possibility he was dreading the most occurred.

Mitch heard the buzzing of electronic drone blades far below him.

Cave or something, cave, cave, cave. Gauruntenfuckingteed those drones have ir cameras, there’s no way they don’t if the overseer knows I stole the holo-skin.

Thank you Jesus! A cave!

Mitch climbed for another eighty or so feet making his way into a dark cave which seemed to keep going for a while. He settled down, turning the holo-skin back to camouflage and huddled down behind three different bends in the cave system sitting in a cramped dark deadend.

He sat there for around three hours until he was satisfied and heard no more drone noises or metal footsteps clanking around.

Mitch began shifting from his hiding spot and began making his way out of the cave until he heard a low boomy growling behind him. Along with a gust of unbelievably frigid air piercing his injured back and torn apart jacket. Frost seemed to build up on the surroundings in a split second.

HOly shit GIve me a goddamn flashlight NOW!

Mitch fumbled for the holo-skin controls, but before he could even turn on a flashlight the cave was lit up by something else. Something red.

Is that another hard light magic circle hologram?!

Am I about to die?

Why is it so goddamn cold?

Is that bear on fire?

Is that bear frozen?!

How is it moving?!

I hate wildlife.