Sly stayed crouched in front of the construct, showing no outward signs that he was hit. The volunteers reached him a split second later, as a small storm of bullets entered the thin shaped forcefield, the field itself becoming more visible with each hand that touched one of the drawstone which had been roughly mounted to the construct. The forcefield was rippling, especially around the points where the bullets impacted it, the trajectory of the slowed rounds changing as they passed through the constructs area of effect.
Most of the rounds hit the small team manning the construct, but they’d been robbed of most of their velocity and Hunter was relieved to note that they seemed to bounce off the volunteers bodies.
“Cover your eyes with your free hands,” Sly yelled, his voice raspier than normal. Hunter nodded. That was smart. Just because the bullets couldn’t penetrate skin, didn’t mean that they weren’t a hazard.
Hunter approached the construct. He wanted to keep an eye on it, and prepare to disengage the safety of their surprise gift. He was careful to cover his eyes, but left enough of a gap with his fingers to watch the abolitionists do their best to try and overwhelm the construct with brute force. Most of them were gathering, coming into view from both sides of the hallway leading to the hostages, which meant more guns and bullets peppering the volunteers.
When they realized that their guns weren’t proving effective, they tried to push past the shaped field themselves. Some tried to find gaps along the edges of the field where they could aim their weapons through, and Hunter felt a moment of dread. He suddenly saw the face of the volunteers and Sly, bloodied and staring at him with gazes of accusation.
Why hadn’t he thought about the width of the entrance? Would the force field be big enough?
He sighed in relief when the guards probes proved ineffective. Hunter was feeling that most of his survival was coming down to sheer luck, he couldn’t believe how careless he’d been.
But this wasn’t the first time he’d been careless today, was it? He could have avoided this whole situation if he’d just done the smart thing and finish packing back at the hotel. Hunter glanced at Sly, and saw a wet, dark streak running down his shirt. His eyes traced the streak to a spot just below the armpit of the arm he was using to shield his eyes.
Sly was watching him as well.
“Don’t worry about me, Hunter. How’s the construct holding up?”
Hunter forced his attention back to the construct. He was having trouble feeling it the way he usually could; he felt overwhelmed with all of the anxiety and adrenaline pumping through his blood. The forcefield was powerful enough to distort the soundwaves travelling through it, and the shouting of the terrorists seemed muffled. He closed his eyes, deciding to trust his work, believing that he was safe enough to relax and focus, if only for a brief second.
It didn’t take long, merely a moment to exhale and close his eyes was enough of a split-second distraction from the situation that he could start to get a sense of how the construct was working.
He frowned.
It was working, but it was starting to show some worrying signs. That being said, he couldn’t say how long it would hold up for. It would hold for a little while, but whether that meant 10 minutes, or 40, he couldn’t be sure.
“How long can we rely on this for?” one of the volunteers asked, as if reading his mind. Hunter wished he could give him a solid answer, and he felt embarrassed by the fact that he couldn’t.
“I don’t know,” Hunter said. He could feel a few potential points of failure in the construct lighting up as he spoke, any one of which could cause a fatal cascade, “I’m sorry, it won’t hold indefinitely.”
“What do we do now?” another of them asked.
“We wait,” Sly said, “Hunter, are you ready to use the contingency?”
Hunter nodded, double checking that all the battery connections were ready, and triple checking them just to be safe. Now that he had time, he noted over a dozen small mistakes he’d made in his rush to make the construct. He tried to etch each and every single one into his mind. He tried to be fair with himself, but when his life was on the line, it felt like every mistake was a potential loss of an innocent life due to his own incompetence.
Sly sighed, and winced.
“Does anyone here know how to treat a gunshot wound?” Hunter asked the rest of the people in the room.
“Never mind that,” Sly said, raising his voice. “Everyone, there is a small room behind the styrofoam rock. I want you all to get inside and barricade the door with whatever you can find. That means you as well, Hunter.”
“No, you need me for the contingency,” Hunter said, shaking his head— half in protest and half because he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. Part of him was screaming to take the excuse to run and hide. But he couldn’t just leave Sly and the others here.
But what could he possibly do to help them? His AR wasn’t high enough to take over any of their positions. And a selfish little voice in the back of his mind was telling him that Sly was more than capable of managing the contingency himself.
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It seemed that Sly and the little voice were in agreement.
“How hard can it be? I just need to remove one of these little rods, right?” he asked, nodding his head towards one of the small pin-like rods Hunter had used to keep the battery’s etherium buffers in place.
“Yeah, but you’re hurt—”
“—then I'll get someone else to do it,” Sly said, his voice lowering. He seemed to be getting tired, and incredibly annoyed.
“Come on,” Hunter heard someone say as they put a hand on his shoulder, it was the mother of the screaming child from earlier, whose dad was probably dead around the corner. Her eyes were red, and mascara ran down her cheeks, but she looked at him with a genuine warmth.
“You’ve done enough to help us. You need to trust that it’ll all work out,” she said. Hunter could hardly believe the words coming out of her mouth. Was she delusional?
“Hunter, go!” Sly snapped, “I swear I will let go of this construct and drag you there myself. Is that what you want?”
“Fine!” Hunter relented. He allowed the woman to help him stand, the bruising from earlier was really starting to affect him now that their lives weren’t in immediate danger, “You better be alive when we come back out.”
The woman brought him to the room, which was already almost completely filled. As the door closed, he saw a sly smile on his bodyguards face.
Maybe that’s why his friends’ called him that.
----------------------------------------
“I’ve survived worse than this, kid,” Sly said as he contemplated the growing group of abolitionists on the other side of the forcefield. Now that he was sure that Hunter wouldn’t die from the hail of bullets that would inevitably meet them once the construct failed, he felt himself relax a bit. The wound under his arm was starting to annoy him, but he had a small moment of relative peace.
It was important to notice those moments and appreciate them when you could.
A change in the abolitionists posture attracted his attention. All of the terrorists were starting to straighten there backs. A few were even saluting, and making way for a someone that he recognized. It was the lady who’d taken his gun.
She walked up to the forcefield and sneered as she pressed at it. She shot at him and the volunteers a few times with his pistol. He gave her the most bored and disinterested look he could as the bullets flew around them.
He wouldn’t even care if he lost an eye to his bitch. He’d even smile at her if she managed it. In fact, why wait?
He flashed the most brilliant, full-toothed smile he could manage.
This, he thought to himself as she started to pull the trigger faster, until the magazine was empty, is what separates you from the pros. Lack of discipline, letting anger get the better of you and showing all of your guys just how unreliable you are.
As soon as he heard the gunshots and explosions, he knew that their time would be limited. Given what he knew about these terrorists, they would probably fight to the death, twisting their survival instinct into a twisted idea of honor. But before they did that, at least one of them would turn their aggression and resentment onto the hostages.
He’d seen it happen before. There wasn’t much in the way of human depravity that Sly hadn’t either witnessed first hand, or had been sent to bring a swift and sudden end to. He wished he’d had someone like Hunter on his team back then. Probably would have saved a lot of lives if he could puzzle together shield constructs out of spare parts.
He’d had some doubts about the construct being able to hold up this long, given the limited amount of time that Hunter had to craft it but Sly had to admit that he was surprised by the kid’s ingenuity. The construct had saved their asses so far, but t this point it didn’t matter how long the construct lasted. Oberon security forces were undoubtedly picking their way through the rest of these guys. Or else, this chick wouldn’t be here trying to fight a forcefield that had proven incredibly effective over the last couple of minutes.
Their motives at this point were one of two, as far as he could tell. Kill all the hostages in a final act of rebellion against their inevitable death, a final exercise of whatever power they think they have, or use the hostages as a buffer while they make their final stand.
They obviously hadn’t thought through their plan. These people had no idea how to use hostages effectively. He hadn’t been sure at first, but their in competencies ran just as reliably as well-maintained clockwork.
Sure, he’d been caught twice, but they’d also been severely adept at letting themselves get distracted. So far, he’d been relying on that to survive and protect his charge. He probably won’t be able to get away with it again, but it spoke of an even deeper problem in these guys’ organization. They weren’t prepared to handle the unexpected. They were undisciplined.
He considered the contingency which Hunter had installed into the forcefield’s emitter. So far, he had been underestimated. That was his advantage. He had one last card to play, but he wasn’t sure when he should play it. If he were her— the one waving around his gun like some hotshot, giving what he could only assume to be desperate, half-assed orders to her crew of brain-dead ‘freedom fighters’— he’d have used the hostages to negotiate their escape.
And by negotiate, he’d have used them as body shields, leaving behind some of his guys to make it seem like they were going to stick around and offer resistance, while he and the most useful of his underlings snuck away. Oberon would have the sky covered by a ship or two, and the museum would be surrounded, so that would leave something like a sewer system, or dressing up as a survivor who barricaded themselves in another room, so utterly thankful for the big and strong law enforcement men who came and saved them.
Were they winging it? It seemed to be all or nothing when it came to them. They hadn’t thought ahead. They probably saw a symbolic target in the museum, a shared history which the abolitionists had grown to despise. It had probably been a split-second decision made by the higher-ups, and he imagined they’d all congratulated themselves on the sheer tactical brilliance of attacking a domain’s historical aggregate.
He could admit that it wasn’t a terrible target, but they were clearly the wrong people for the job.
There was nothing more frustrating and insulting than sufficiently motivated amateurs.
But what they lacked in discipline, experience, and foresight, they made up for in danger. Although he could predict their actions, and play their inexperience against them to an extent, these guys were not to be underestimated. An animal backed up against the wall was not one you wanted to fight against without preparation or numbers.
And he’d just told his own numerical advantage to barricade themselves in a room, not that he regretted it the choice, and he didn’t have much in the way of preparation except for the forcefield, and one final contingency built into it that would ruin the construct, but would provide an opportunity to do something special.
At least, that was the hope. On the other hand, this could all continue to go very, very wrong and he would die a painful death at the hands a gang of unruly children.