Marsten.D: It’s back again.

Draden.Y: What is?

Marsten.D: Tried to remove some code from our routing protocols.

Marsten.D: It’s blocking some channels from being used for data.

Draden.Y: Which channels?

Marsten.D: The xmc65 channels

Draden.Y: Those are phone primary. You’re on the data side of things.

Marsten.D: Yeah, but they are idle like 80% of the time; we’re losing bandwidth that we need.

Marsten.D: I don’t understand why

Draden.Y: Forget about it. Your up against the Didir Protocol

Marsten.D: The what?

Draden.Y: That code started showing up some time after the JDF quake and any attempts to remove it just… fail. When it first appeared, some folks tried to fight it and got a nasty gram, or fifty, via malware delivery. All it said was, “The separation of Data and Phones shall remain inviolate.” And it was signed by Didir.

Marsten.D: JDF quake? I don’t know what that is.

Marsten.D: Didir as in the Samurai?

Draden.Y: Juan de Fuca earthquake. A plate just off the coast that threatened to flatten all of Cascadia. Sometime back in the late ‘20s a couple Sams did something to set it off. Made a big quake, followed by a bunch of littler ones. Not nearly as bad as it could have been, but a 6.8 quake is nothing to play around with. How do you not know about this? It’s a major historical event. Way more than the exploding whale that is still on the internet.

Marsten.D: Yeah, I’ve seen that video. It was hilarious despite the crappy quality.

Draden.Y: Lots of people that should have been warned of the quake didn’t and got harmed, blocked due to spam blocking phone lines.

Draden.Y: And afterwards people died because they couldn’t get a line… though they should have been able to. All of the bandwidth was getting used up by Spam from insurance companies trying to take advantage of the situation.

Draden.Y: I suggest you drop it like a hot potato. The last guy to awaken the ire of Didir lost his job, so I suggest you drop it.

Draden.Y: You there?

Draden.Y: Not getting any response, you still online?

--Internal Chat for Cascadia Mesh and Telecom, 2048

***

On the lower floor of the store, the trail of blood led through an emergency stairway and down to the basement. I followed the trail through a large storage space with high shelves stacked with pallets of stuff, like a local warehouse. An abandoned maintenance cart held a spray can of paint. It only took a few minutes of backtracking to leave a trail of marks, showing the way out and where I thought good ambush points were. If I had to retreat in a hurry, I didn’t want to be dealing with an app or risk getting lost on the way.

In a long corridor, half filled with boxes, I encountered the next alien wave. For some insane reason, the boxes were scattered on both sides of the hall. I wasn’t complaining, though. It made for a natural serpentine that would slow down the antithesis, like the two M-3s that were coming into the hallway.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I took the first down with a headshot before its buddy turned and started running my way. Three more M-3s joined, followed by a pair of M-4s with their long tentacles. I shot the second M-3 in the hallway and started working on the ones in the lead of the second set. They had pushed their way halfway up the corridor when my phone rang. By habit, I tapped the side of my glasses to answer it.

“Hey Barry.” I’d recognized the ringtone of my supervisor. Two more shots cleared the last of the Threes.

“Marcus, are you going to make it in today? You’re late.” On the phone, the gravelly texture of his tenor was more noticeable. The M-4s continued to advance. The boxes did not slow them as much as the M-3s. By using their long tentacles, they could step from top to top.

When the first was only ten meters away, I switched to automatic fire. They were too close for me to switch weapons, and I needed the extra hits with the P5-AT to take them down.

The phone was quiet for a second. “That was automatic fire; you don’t do full automatic.”

He wasn’t wrong. While not up to the long ranges of a sniper, I did pride myself on my marksmanship. Both in online games and on the range, I usually had at least a ninety percent kill-to-shot rate. Even more, I taught my customers to leave the spray and pray on the big screen. However, sometimes you needed a bigger hammer, like when an M-4 was getting dangerously close.

“Sec,” I replied as I backed away from the last antithesis, still firing. The beast finally fell to the blunt instrument called volume of fire. When the hall was clear, I stepped back up to my shooting position and reloaded. “I ran into a situation on my way to work. I don’t think I’ll make it today.”

“What could have you switching to automatic?”

Sometimes sending a screenshot was the only way to explain things, but manually transferring a screenshot took several stages, from glasses to tablet to phone to the recipient. It was such a pain to do it manually that I’d bought a macro to do it all. A couple more M-3s turned the corner. I took half a second to trigger the macro, and the image was on the way. “That kind,” I said, and fired three times. Two more corpses joined the others in the hallway. Between my own shots, I heard several rapid gunshots ahead of me.

“What the f...” Barry started, but I cut him off.

"Sorry, I have to go. We’ll talk later.” I hung up and rushed forward to the sound of a woman screaming around more gunfire. To the left, a door had been opened into the hallway before it continued on. From the door came the sounds of fighting.

I ran into a large room filled with dead machinery and live antithesis on the floor, a story and a half below. To my left, back the way I came, a long catwalk ran along the long side and one short end of the room. At the other end of the catwalk was a large counter, presumably the controls for the machinery. Two women stood at the counter, firing into the antithesis that swarmed toward them on the floor below us. Another cowered behind the console, screaming. To my right, stairs dropped 5 meters to the room’s floor with an M-3 climbing them.

After killing the stair climber, I fired on the ones trying to get to the women, starting with any on the catwalk between us.

As I cleared the catwalk, I traveled down it until I reached the corner opposite them. Another set of stairs dropped down beyond the console. When I paused at the corner, we caught the antithesis in a crossfire. Shortly, I heard the women’s fire end, and one of them yelled out. “We’re out of ammo!”

I nodded and continued to kill the antithesis, reloading several times. After the last few aliens fell to my shots, I moved to join the women. I was nearly there when a door I hadn’t noticed burst open and spewed aliens onto the walkway between us.

Several M-3s were on me before I could react, their teeth dripping with saliva. Dropping my P5-AT, I drew both pistols and fired on the Threes, alternating hands and trusting in the heavier rounds to drive them back even as I pressed forward.

An M-3 dodged a shot, and I winced when the round hit the wall near the women. “Get down!” I yelled, running forward. Another carefully aimed round, and there was only one left between me and the women. If I could get between them and the aliens, I could concentrate on only one direction and might have a chance.

A weight landed on my shoulders, knocking me face down and sending my pistols skittering along the catwalk. I landed on the back of the one between us briefly, but the weight on my back pulled me to the side as the claws caught and then released. I rolled over to my back in exchange for more gashes on my side.

The M-3 on top of me was wounded; I’d grazed it before, and its green blood dripped in my face. Its three-part jaw opened, and saliva dripped on me. As it plunged its head at me, I pushed to the side, moving my body more than its head. The move shifted its bite to my shoulder instead of my neck. It savaged my shoulder, but I held on, preventing it from letting go and running after the ladies. From above me, I heard my pistol firing once, then twice more, followed by a click.

"Knife.” I gasped. One dropped on the beast’s back, laying flat and sliding toward my free hand. I grabbed the handle and thrust it into the beast’s neck repeatedly. It finally collapsed on top of me, and I felt blackness starting to take over. "Healing,” I called out to my AI. A box dropped beside me. I reached for it, but the world faded to black before I could do more than twitch.