Fenway accompanied them on the assignment. Apparently she had a degree in something called ‘Applied Mysticism’, whatever that meant, and insisted that she would prove useful. She argued that, given the scale of the operation at hand, they needed every pair of hands they could get.
Jacob wasn’t completely comfortable with it. She herself had admitted that there was nothing guaranteeing that she wasn’t with the Red Right Hand. Then again, if she was spying for them the whole operation was compromised anyway, so what did it matter?
They dressed in ugly beige jumpsuits and piled into an old maintenance van, tools and weapons and bombs hidden in boxes in the trunk with Bob. Fenway was the driver, Sonny in the passenger seat, and Jacob in the back seat with Fenris sprawled out over his lap. He wore a cap to conceal his odd-colored hair and some of his face, but he would have to do his best to stay beneath notice, allowing the others to do the talking while they infiltrated Green Meadows.
It was a long drive. Not a lot of talking. Watching the sunrise was nice.
Presumably in an attempt to dispel some tension, Bob would dispense random facts with a precise five-minute interval, until Jacob threatened to rip his voice box out if he didn’t shut up.
Sonny turned on the radio through the car’s System node. Some news broadcast came on about how one of the S-Rank heroes, Sage, had predicted the end of the world through the use of his Blessing. 20th of October, 2105, apparently.
“Turn that off,” Fenway said.
He switched over to a music station instead. Some old 70s love ballads. Bob started rattling off music facts, so Jacob leaned back and smacked him over the head. That shut him up for a little while, at least.
They reached Green Meadows by mid-morning, stopped well outside and let Fenris bound off into the woods before proceeding to the town proper. It was a quaint little place, a few hundred wooden residential buildings—mostly painted red and white—surrounded by scattered farmhouses and large crop fields in green, yellow, and brown. Everything was well-kept and neat. Fences freshly painted. Lawns mowed short, with vibrant flower beds and colorful summertime garden ornaments standing on porches and hanging from trees. Wide, clean streets.
Children attended by parents waved at them from the sidewalks. A trio of smiling women pushed baby strollers. There was a small park with a cascading fountain and budding apple trees. A man stood there flying a bright-red kite, a gaggle of children clapping their hands and laughing as it drifted lazily through the air. The only odd thing about the place was that all the children had a string of numbers tattooed on the side of their neck.
Everything else was completely normal.
Way too fucking normal.
“This is the creepiest shit I’ve seen in my life,” Jacob muttered. “I’d have assumed this place was a cult even if I didn’t know anything about it.”
“They use various means to keep people from ever coming here,” Fenway explained. “This facade is just their final line of secrecy.”
They parked near the center of town, at the edge of an open square, and piled out of the van. This visit was just to survey the area inside the town and get an estimate for how many enemy Users were inside and who might pose a problem. Then they would leave and come back at night to strike at them unawares.
Two men appeared to greet them almost the second they got out, well-groomed and wearing friendly smiles. One was short and the other was tall, and their clothes and gloves were dirty from outdoor work. The Hidden System automatically flagged them as hostiles and placed a red outline around them, right on top of Jacob’s vision.
“Hello!” said the tall one. He had a number on his neck. “My name’s Fred. Welcome to Green Meadows. Who are you guys?”
Jacob pretended to help Bob inspect something near the back of the van so that his appearance wouldn’t set off any red flags. Bob was disguised as a regular helper bot with yellow and orange caution tape stuck to him.
As agreed, Fenway headed up the talking. Her entire demeanor had changed in an instant, from a prim and proper office lady to a down-to-earth blue-collar worker. “Hi there! Hot as shit today, ain’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the short one, making a dramatic gesture of fanning his face. “I’m Jim. Welcome to Green Meadows.”
“So, what brings you here?” Fred repeated, his tone just as friendly. “We don’t get too many visitors around here. Too far from the highway, you see. Not many people bother coming this far inland.”
“Ah, well, I got a call from my boss like an hour ago,” Fenway said, gesturing to the forearm that held her System node. “He says to stop by here and do a check on a possible water contamination issue.”
“We haven’t been told about any municipal work being done,” Jim said, speaking slowly as though picking his words with care.
“Yeah, my boss is too cheap to reimburse a team for driving all the way out here, so he said to us to deal with it while we were in the area. Look, I know it’s short notice and all, but do you think people would mind letting us come into their homes and check the taps? I see you got a water tower over there too, I’d like to get some readings from that.”
Did Fenway actually look something up about this stuff, or is she talking out of her ass? Jacob wondered while shuffling around some miscellaneous scrap inside the trunk to look busy.
“I sense great hostility from these men,” Bob whispered, cupping his mouth—or the place where a mouth should have been—with one hand.
“Yeah, no shit!” Jacob hissed back. “Shut up for a minute before you tip them off. And don’t do that with your hand when you’re whispering, you look like a cartoon character.”
“Okay, Jacob.” He gave a thumbs up instead.
Jacob rolled his eyes and gave him one back.
Jim and Fred made some vague statements about how it probably wasn’t best to disturb people without calling ahead a few days in advance, but Fenway was persistent, saying that she didn’t want to leave without getting anything done only to have to come back in a few days.
They looked at each other for a long time. Fred nodded and began to remove his gloves.
“Are you sure?” Jim asked.
“Yeah,” Fred said. He stuck his gloves in his back pocket and offered a handshake. “Of course, ma’am. We’ll accompany you around town and get you access to the water tower.”
Fenway reached out to take his hand.
“Watch out!” Bob called. He withdrew his broom from the trunk and stepped away from the van, his Armament raised.
A powerful squall issued forth from the broom and knocked Fred off his feet, dragging him away several meters across the ground. Others in the road stopped and turned their attention toward the commotion.
“Fuck,” Jacob hissed, rounding on the robot. “Why’d you do that?”
“His hostile intent suddenly spiked,” Bob explained. “I believe he meant to harm Ms. Fenway.”
Jim reached into the back of his pants. Going for a weapon. He was within arm’s reach of Fenway. Jacob ran at him to intercept.
A hard boom echoed out over the town, and Jim fell dead with the top of his head blasted clean off, bits of charred gray matter scattered everywhere. Fred got to his feet a ways off, a viscous substance dripping from his hands that sizzled and smoked when it hit the pavement.
A User, Jacob thought, shifting gears to deal with him. Looks like acid or something. That has to be his Blessing. Probably meant to get Fenway with it while shaking her hand.
He needn’t have bothered theorizing. There were two more booms, two golden flashes of light, and Fred fell down with two fist-sized holes clean through his torso.
Sonny held his battered revolver high, its flaking gold paint shining dully in the sun. The end of the barrel burned with a smoky flame.
“Commence operation,” Fenway said. “Mr. Farraday, eliminate hostiles. Mr. Sorenson, fetch weapons. Bob, prevent retaliation.”
Sonny was technically in charge of the operation, but everyone complied with her orders regardless. Jacob yanked several boxes out the back of the van and ripped them open. One of them had pistols and ammo. He took one for himself, loaded it, got four spare magazines and stuck two in each front pocket. He threw an unloaded pistol to Fenway and followed up with magazines one after the other. Lastly he strapped on a leg holster.
The town was all quiet for a long moment, townsfolk all staring at them, still as death.
Then there was chaos.
People pulled out concealed weapons, pistols and knives. Children ran, all in the same direction down the street like it was a well-rehearsed procedure. The adults ducked for cover behind cars and buildings. It was impossible to get an accurate count, but at least twenty, probably more.
Gunfire was as good a signal as any Jacob could make. Fenris would know it was time.
Whenever a hostile peeked out, Sonny fired one shot like a fiery comet and that person fell down and moved no more. Sometimes he fired into solid barriers, punching straight through and hitting whoever was unfortunate enough to be taking cover behind it.
Not one miss.
He never had to reload, either—just kept firing.
Seeing him at work, Jacob could finally believe the S-Rank rating.
Bob waved his broom again, and five hostiles drifted into the sky some ten meters off. Sonny fanned the hammer of his revolver and fired five times from the hip. Then there were five corpses in the air. Bob let them drop back down, hitting the ground like sacks of flour.
The remaining hostiles got a few shots off. Bullets whizzed past Jacob, too fast to see but marked by loud whines when they came close. Bob got shot in the head and stumbled back, but righted himself and signaled that he was fine with a thumbs up.
Nothing important in there, eh?
Fenris crashed into the town like a bristling black hurricane of claws and fur and teeth, tearing into the nearest man and scattering him into pieces before moving onto the next and the next.
A child—somewhere between eight and ten—wandered out into the square. He raised his hands and geometric patterns appeared on his palms, intersecting as they swirled about each other. They separated from him and took form in the air while remaining two-dimensional.
“I’ve got this one,” Jacob said. He went into another box and found cases of knockout needles, little syringes filled with blue liquid. He grabbed a handful and ran into the square. He felt a sharp tug as a bullet went through his side, but he didn’t slow.
As he drew closer, the boy’s geometric patterns began to twist and warp, reaching towards him. Jacob cleared them with a Dash that finished right beside the boy. Jacob grabbed him by his collar, and the boy tried to claw and bite him, but he ignored it, thumbing the cap off the syringe. He plunged it into the boy’s arm, and within moments he fell unconscious. The patterns unraveled and disappeared.
Jacob gathered the boy up in his arms and put his back to the hostiles to shield him from gunfire. He went past the van and brought him out into a field about a hundred meters off at the edge of town, laying him down in the grass. Out of immediate danger, at least.
Jacob returned to the fighting and found more hostiles pouring in from all over. Dozens were already dead, scattered about the square and the surrounding buildings, but it didn’t seem to deter them at all. Three of them piled on Fenris with knives and tried to bring him down, stabbing at his flanks and neck. He bit down on one and threw him aside like a ragdoll, tore out the neck of the second, and pounced on the third, worrying at him until his entrails were spilled out over the street in a gory red mess.
“This is taking too long!” Fenway shouted over the din of gunfire as she came over to where Jacob was standing. She fired off two shots of her own. “We need to get into the facility and get that data before they decide to destroy it. Mr. Sorenson, with me. Bring your monster. Tom will be fine here with the robot’s help.”
“You sure?” Jacob shouted back. He felt like he was going deaf with all the noise.
“We have to try. If we get this data, we might be able to learn the locations of the other Red Right Hand cells. STF is on their way, so he only needs to hold out a little while.”
“All right. What do we do?”
“We’ll go door-to-door until we find an entrance to the underground facility.”
Fenway went to inform Sonny what they were doing. He gave a grave nod, shooting the heads off two approaching hostiles without even a glance in their direction.
Jacob put his fingers to his lips and whistled. Fenris’ head shot up, the fur around his mouth matted with blood, and he came running. After gathering a supply of knockout needles and four-point cuffs, he moved away from the square with Fenway and the wolf.
They found a few children cowering in the nearby residential houses. Some of them went willingly when Jacob told them where to go to be rescued—the field where he had dropped the first kid—while others refused or even tried to fight back and had to be restrained hand-and-foot with four-point cuffs. No hidden entrances, though. They kept looking.
The town school lay ahead at the end of a cul-de-sac, and they headed there. Three hostiles tried to stop them. Jacob removed his sunglasses and moved in close, striking them stiff when they saw his eyes. He shot two of them dead with the pistol—his first time firing one—and Fenris eviscerated the third.
Firing a gun wasn’t so hard, it turned out. At least not at point blank range.
Since most of the hostiles were gathering around the square, they didn’t encounter much resistance. They walked down the empty idyllic road. Green-leafed trees rustled in the breeze on either side, caressed by golden sunlight. The three-story school building loomed large, freshly painted with murals on the walls. A big school for such a small town.
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All of it would have made a pretty picture if it wasn’t disturbed by the sounds of distant gunfire and the screams of the dying.
I need to remember to leave two of these people alive. Don’t want to miss out on 10 000 flora.
The wide double doors of the school were thrown wide open, so they stepped right through, Jacob going first and Fenway second seeing as how he was a little less allergic to bullets.
The interior was abandoned, their footsteps echoing through the halls. They looked inside the classrooms, which looked normal except the posters hanging on the walls and the writing on the old-timey blackboards.
‘YOU ARE HUMANITY’S VENGEANCE!’ one poster read, with a picture of a child holding high a flaming fist.
‘BE COURTEOUS TO THE LESSERS, BUT NEVER TRUST THEM’ read another.
‘YOUR SACRIFICES MAKE YOU OUR BRAVE HEROES’ read a third, showing a child with one eye and one arm wearing a golden crown.
One of the blackboards detailed step-by-step instructions for self-flagellation, and instructed the children to find a partner so they could clean each other’s wounds. He flipped through a textbook left on a desk, which detailed the process for achieving a perfect society where every human was a User. This would be achieved through the deaths of an estimated 99% of humanity, or ‘the lessers’ as they were called in the book.
Jacob was no bleeding heart, but seeing all this made him sick to his stomach.
They moved on. At the back of the first floor—behind a pair of locked metal doors that Jacob pried open—was a staircase leading down with a cargo elevator on the right. They descended the stairs and were met with another large door, this one a solid slab of reinforced steel. It wanted a keycard to open. Of course.
Fenway promptly produced one, and the door swung inward on heavy hinges when she touched the card to the sensor panel. A long, almost endless hallway stretched out before them, with sterile white walls and a lime-green floor. Long light strips cast the space in harsh, bright light. There were countless doors on either side and intersecting corridors further down. Fenris immediately walked inside, sniffing along the floor.
“Where’d you get the keycard?” Jacob asked.
“Taken from one of the ones we killed,” Fenway replied. “Unlike you, I thought ahead.”
They stepped inside.
“You know, for someone whose whole job is dealing with people, your social skills are atrocious.”
“It’s not my fault that people constantly fail to meet my lowest expectations.”
“I think we’ll grow on you. Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Fenway admitted. “I wasn’t able to learn anything about the layout of this facility. The Red Right Hand’s intranet is not running off the System, so they’ll need a dedicated server room somewhere. Probably a bit further down.”
“Right. Down it is.”
They proceeded down the hall. Thankfully, the purpose of most rooms was labeled right over the door. Storage. Storage. Chemical lab. Testing facility. Growth chamber.
Fenway stopped at the last one and unlocked it with the keycard. Inside were eight glass tanks of a bubbling greenish substance, fed by tubes and wires that ran along the floor and up the walls. Something alive was suspended inside the tanks. One held a formless clump of flesh. A few others held small fetuses. One held a twisted wretch of a being that Jacob could only guess was meant to be human. And the last one held a small child, a few years of age, floating in suspension with his eyes closed.
“Smash it open?” Jacob asked.
“Don’t,” Fenway said firmly. “Could put too much shock on his system and kill him.” She approached the tank and began typing away at an interface extending from the front. Fenris laid down outside the room, a watchful lookout.
After a little over a minute, the tank gave an electronic chirp of approval and the fluid began to drain away into the bottom. The child slowly sank and was finally left laying in a heap at the bottom once all the fluid was gone. The glass tube retracted into the ceiling, leaving only the raised floor piece. Jacob found a lab coat hanging over a chair near some instruments at the other end of the room and covered the child in it, taking him into his arms.
“What do we do with him?” Jacob asked.
“Nothing,” Fenway said. “We have to leave him for now, I fear. We’ll take him on our way back.”
Jacob took the child to a nearby room, which was designated as a ‘happy place’. Here the walls were a powder blue instead of the usual white. It was evidently meant to be some sort of play space, but it had a depressing lack of toys, just a rubber ball and a few colored blocks. He laid the child on one of several thick foam mats laid out on the floor and closed the door behind him.
They continued, turned a corner, saw an elevator at the end of that hall. The lights above the doors indicated that it was coming up.
“Be ready, boy,” Jacob said to the wolf as he approached the elevator. “We’ve got bad guys.”
The elevator doors parted with a ding. Inside stood a youth in a dull gray shirt and bottoms. He was maybe in his late teens, hair buzzed short. He carried a curved karambit knife in one hand. The System marked him as a civilian with a green outline, even though he was a borderline case at best.
Jacob didn’t have time to think another thought. In the space of one heartbeat, the youth had already slipped past him, a gray streak he could barely register. Jacob noticed a cut on his upper left arm welling with blood.
“User,” Jacob grunted.
Fenris rounded on the youth and tried to snap at him, but he disengaged nimbly, the wolf only catching a scrap of his shirt. Fenris, on the other hand, got a cut on his nose to show for it.
Fenway stood a ways back with her head down, muttering some unintelligible nonsense under her breath. Maybe the pressure was getting to her, but Jacob didn’t have time to worry about her at the moment.
The kid was definitely using Dash, and his supernatural dexterity suggested high points in Finesse. More than Jacob, definitely. It was possible that the knife was an Armament Blessing, or maybe he hadn’t revealed it yet.
If he would just stand the fuck still I could use the Death Glare on him.
Jacob let Fenris chase the youth around and tried to anticipate his movements. When Fenris made another lunge and the youth danced away, Jacob darted forward in a bear hug. But the youth Dashed again, bouncing off the wall, and leapt past him. Jacob ended up with a cut on his left thigh.
The youth was always spinning, twirling, jumping around. Never a good look at his eyes. He was too good at keeping his distance as well. Jacob had determined that the Death Glare was a close-range technique—it only worked up to a meter or two away.
He briefly considered shooting the youth in the leg to incapacitate him, but disregarded it. He wasn’t allowed to injure any target designated as an adolescent.
The youth did another pass, and Jacob got raked across the chest.
He’s using Dash pretty heavily. His body should start feeling the strain. If I just keep running him around, he’ll probably tire before me.
But how long is this going to take, exactly? We don’t have any time to waste.
Fenway finished speaking in tongues and raised her head. In the same moment, luminous white bands extended from the floor and walls to envelop the youth where he stood crouched. They bound him up tight, and he struggled against them to no effect.
“Applied Mysticism,” Fenway said as she strode past Jacob. She hit the youth with a knockout needle. The bands faded away after he fell unconscious, and she bound him with a set of four-point cuffs.
Right. I guess that’s what that means. She does magic. Good to know.
They deposited the youth in the nearest room and stepped into the elevator. The various sub-levels, just like the rooms, were clearly labeled. From the top, they were: Incubation, Habitation, Administrative, Technical, Educational, Penance, and Transportation.
Why’s Transportation at the bottom? Jacob wondered. Don’t tell me they have some kind of underground network spanning the whole HZ or something.
“The server room has to be in Technical,” Fenway said.
That seemed reasonable enough, so Jacob pressed the button for Technical.
And off they went.
Technical was similarly abandoned. They walked down empty halls, reading the signs above each door until, at last, they found one that said ‘server room’ above it. Fenway’s keycard didn’t have a high enough clearance to grant them access, but Jacob was able to bust the door down with a few good kicks.
Inside were racks of servers arranged like bookshelves, walls of black machinery with little blinking lights like twinkling stars. Fenway confirmed that none of it had been sabotaged and began trying to interface with the servers using her System node. Apparently it was proving difficult since the RRH networks were not designed to mesh with the System.
But Jacob didn’t know anything about that, and he figured he would just annoy her by standing around, so he went and sat on the floor outside to keep watch with Fenris. The wolf licked at the cut on his nose, head resting between his front paws.
“Just wait, Becca will make it better when we get home,” Jacob said, giving him a scratch behind the ear. “She’ll insist on putting some daft band-aid on you, though. Like with love hearts or unicorns. I’ll try to intervene, but there’s only so much I can do.”
Jacob inspected the wound in his side. The bleeding had decreased to a slow trickle. If it had caught something important, he wasn’t feeling it yet, at least.
After that he called Bob to make sure they were still kicking. The robot picked up with video enabled and gave a polite wave before taking two bullets and ending up on the ground.
“Hello, Jacob,” he said, rolling to his feet. “What is happening?”
“How are you holding up?” Jacob asked.
“It is going well. I am struggling with the concept of killing humans, but if I imagine they are trash it’s less difficult.”
“Okay, philosophical concerns aside, how’s it going?”
“I think we’re almost through!” Sonny shouted in the distance. “They’re running thin up here. Find any of the kids?”
“Only a few. They must have hidden the rest of them away somewhere. We’ll check the other floors once we’re done here.”
“Oh, look!” Bob said, looking to the sky. “It appears we are being reinforced. A—”
The call abruptly cut out.
What was that?
Jacob tried calling again, but Bob didn’t pick up. Sonny neither.
A minute later, he got a notification.
[ASSIGNMENT PARAMETERS UPDATED: FALSE SMILES]
[LEAD AGENT DEAD OR UNABLE TO PROCEED]
[OBJECTIVE 1: DESTROY ‘GREEN MEADOWS’ ENEMY FACILITY]
[OBJECTIVE 2: NEUTRALIZE ENEMY COMBATANTS, DEAD OR ALIVE]
Optional: Capture two or more enemy combatants alive
[OBJECTIVE 3: RESCUE ADOLESCENT CAPTIVES]
[OBJECTIVE 4: RETRIEVE ON-SITE DATA FROM ‘GREEN MEADOWS’ ENEMY FACILITY]
[REWARDS: 30 000fl]
[OPTIONAL REWARDS: 10 000fl]
Uh-oh. That can’t be good.
“Uh, Fenway?” Jacob said, getting to his feet. “I think we’ve got a problem.”
“Hold on, I’m nearly done!” she called back.
There was a loud crash in the ceiling a ways off. Jacob drew his gun and pointed it at the spot he thought it came from. Fenris tried to run over there, but he caught the chain and hauled him back, winding the chain a few times around his arm.
Another crash, and a big hole was blown through the ceiling, debris raining down along with a sparking light strip.
“I know you’re down there!” a voice called through the hole. “Wanna see something funny?”
A corpse fell through the hole and landed on the floor, limbs splayed. Despite extensive blunt trauma remodeling his skull, Jacob recognized him immediately by the beige jumpsuit.
Sonny.
“Some S-Rank he turned out to be,” the voice continued. “Pathetic.”
“Fenway!” Jacob shouted. “Get your fucking ass out here now! Sonny’s dead!”
She finally came out into the hall. “I’ve got the data.” She followed where Jacob was looking to Sonny’s corpse. “Oh, shit…”
The ceiling broke right on top of them, and a silver juggernaut bore down on top of them. Fenway opened her mouth to say something, but she caught a boot to the face and was driven into the floor, where her skull split open like a melon.
Starman towered over Jacob in his armor, the full helmet hiding his face.
“Hey there, kid,” he said. “How are you enjoying the hero gig so far?”
Jacob let go of the chain and threw a punch, but the blow was reflected and his fingers were the only thing that broke. Fenris went for his arm, but the hero batted the wolf aside, got him on the floor, and stomped on him. One, two, three times. Fenris gave a weak whimper, drawing in shallow, hissing breaths. His chest had been caved in.
Jacob Dashed into a flying knee to get Starman’s helmet off. It barely budged, and Jacob felt his knee crunch as his momentum carried him through the air past the hero, landing on his side a ways off and sliding to a stop.
Starman turned to face him. “I don’t mean to be rude, kid, but there’s honestly nothing you can do to hurt me.” He came over in a leisurely stroll, booted feet producing a heavy thump, thump, thump against the floor. He pointed to a chunk taken out of one of his pauldrons. “That Golden Son guy, he could’ve been trouble. Guess his aim wasn’t so good. But enough about him!” He threw his arms out. “Are you surprised? Shocked? Amazed? Come on, give me something.”
“Surprised?” Jacob worked out a bitter laugh as he got back up, keeping his weight off the injured leg. “I knew you were a prick the moment I met you. Does it matter what type of prick?”
With a single step, Starman launched into a blindingly fast charge. Jacob had no opportunity to dodge. His body crunched against the silver suit, and he was sent flying, crashing through the door at the end of the hall and coming to a stop against the table inside the room.
The pain was bad, which meant his injuries were really bad. His body wouldn’t move. Everything was broken or torn. He could just about move his head, looking up as Starman entered the room.
Of course he’d be with the crazy cult. Rotten piece of shit.
“You know, I actually like you,” Starman said. “Really. I had to say, well, some things I didn’t really mean to play up the whole noble hero schtick, but truth is I think you would’ve made a decent sidekick. I was the one who got you bumped up to A-Rank—bet you didn’t know that.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ooh, that’s that famous biting wit.” Starman reached inside his armor, his hand sliding through the metal like it was made of smoke, and pulled out a small black box. “This here’s a jammer, so don’t worry about trying to call anybody. It’s just you and me now.”
He put the jammer back inside his suit. He leaned down, grabbed Jacob by his hair, and started dragging him across the floor. “Honestly, I don’t even care about the Red Right Hand stuff. They’re all a bit touched in the head. But goddamn do they pay good.”
He got Jacob out into the hall, picked up Fenris’s chain, continued hauling both of them. They left twin blood trails along the floor.
“I’m not gonna kill you. Really, I’m not. See, the Red Right Hand, they’ve heard of you. You’re of some minor interest to them. What they want with you I don’t fucking know, but that’s good news, right? You get to live. Although I guess you can’t die anyway, so maybe it’s more of a lateral move. But hey, the dog gets to live, too, so be happy about that. Unless I was a bit too rough with him. I get a bit too rough sometimes.”
“I’m gonna kill you…” Jacob groaned.
“Knock yourself out. Give it your best shot.”
Starman got them into the elevator and elbowed the button for Transportation. “I know what you’re thinking. Something along the lines of ‘You’re not gonna get away with this!’, am I right? But you’re dead wrong. I mean, I showed up to help with your little operation as soon as I heard, alas I was just a bit too late. And they’d already destroyed the data on their servers, what a shame. And some of them got away, oops. Oh well, better luck next time. I did my best. I’m only an A-Rank, after all.”
The doors opened up to the Transportation floor, and he dragged them down another hall. “You know what I love about A-Rank, Jacob? Your name is Jacob, right? I’m not so good with names. A-Rank is great because whenever you do something good, like save a city, everyone is amazed. You’re punching above your weight. You’re doing something no one expects of you. But if you’re an S-Rank, nobody’s amazed. They’re scared of you. They start talking about ‘How can we keep this guy under our control?’ or ‘What if he turns bad?’. That’s why I’m never letting them bump me up to S, man. Fuuuck that.”
They entered a large chamber filled with people. Scientists mixed with people from town, dressed in casual clothes. Children, too. At one end of the room stood a large platform with a metal arch rising over it. Some kind of machine. About a dozen children stepped on, and the machine produced a great whirring along with a multicolored glow.
Then, in a flash of light, the children disappeared.
Teleporter.
Jacob hadn’t even known those existed.
The crowd parted for Starman and most of the children bowed to him. “Sorry guys, coming through.” He dragged Jacob and Fenris onto the platform and stood back, making a show of dusting off his hands.
“Say hi to Dr. Moraine for me. She’s gonna have fun with you two.”
With a great effort, Jacob managed to flip himself over so he could see Fenris. He could just about make out the wolf’s chest rising and falling.
Still alive. Please stay that way.
“I’m going to kill you,” Jacob hissed, glancing up at the silver hero.
Starman just waved.
Then Jacob was overtaken by light and sound, and the floor dropped out beneath him. He fell, suspended in a white void.
Becca, I’ll fix this.
I’ll make my way back to you, no matter what.