Chapter 40
The CEO Boss
Careful to stay hidden, Leo moved as close as he could to the front of the line of buses, killing two more stray Afflicted in the process. There were a lot of Afflicted bodies around the buses and far too many living ones. The four big guys, Low-Level Bosses, were rapidly approaching. One of the Bosses picked up a living Afflicted and threw it at the leading bus, hard enough to leave a dent in the bus's iron grating.
Pyro Mage 43:2: We need reinforcements! We're under attack and I'm still in cooldown!
The last time Leo had encountered Low-Level Bosses, he'd been lucky to escape with his life. Hopefully, he could do better this time around.
The Bosses moved forward, pushing through the mob of their own kind, killing the ones who didn't get out of the way quickly enough.
Leo waited. He'd have to time this perfectly.
He activated Time Freeze, putting all his remaining Demon Tears into it. Thanks to Augment, Time Freeze would already be fifteen percent more effective and would last that much longer. The Demon Tears would improve on that.
You realize that by using Demon Tears in this way, your recovery time will be many times what it would be otherwise? Imp asked.
“Yes.”
Everything around him froze. Time Freeze didn't freeze time, but it sped up his own time, seeming to slow the time around him. Guardian class had its benefits.
Before adding Demon Tears, his skill would have lasted 20 seconds in real time plus 15 percent from Augment, giving him 23 seconds. 32 Demon Tears would increase this time by 50 percent if he was lucky. So, 31.5 seconds? He guessed.
He ran as if his life depended on it, counting ten, eleven, twelve of the Afflicted whose throats he slashed along the way. He wished he had his previous Agility: 8.5 plus 15 percent would give him close to a 9.8 agility. Very good for an ordinary human, but not even close to the 79 of his previous life.
A bullet whizzed by, smacking a nearby Afflicted. In Time Freeze, bullets seemed more like buzzing insects than deadly pieces of metal.
The largest Boss (the known CEO of a major charity) spotted him instantly and spun to face him. He wasn't as fast as Leo, but much faster than an ordinary human. This was what made Low-Level Bosses so dangerous. They were a lot faster than they looked. A bullet bounced off the CEO Boss's forehead. He didn't seem to notice.
This Boss held a jagged piece of iron that looked like the remains of a large signpost he'd pulled from the ground.
Instead of fighting the CEO Boss, Leo ran up behind one of the smaller Bosses and stabbed the inside of its thigh. If he severed the main leg artery, the monster would bleed to death in minutes.
He missed.
From his previous life, he knew a few weeks from now, this same Boss would be covered with bonelike armor, making it much harder to damage. No time like the present.
Dancing back to avoid its swing, he jumped up and slashed at its neck. Blood sprayed around the cut in slow motion.
The CEO Boss, who'd noticed Leo earlier, kicked the smaller Boss out of the way and swung his weapon.
Leo ducked, backing away, drawing the CEO Boss away from the buses using the surrounding Afflicted for protection, letting the CEO Boss take out the smaller Afflicted on its rampage to kill Leo. This was not a good, long-term strategy. The Boss could rampage a lot longer than Leo could dodge. He needed to end this.
The CEO Boss used its signpost like a spear, jabbing it through two of the Afflicted at once, trying to get at Leo, getting his spear get caught on their bodies in the process. Leo took this opportunity to attack. Running forward, he stepped on the jagged iron spear the Boss was trying to dislodge, and used it to jump up and slash at the Boss's throat.
The CEO Boss dodged Leo’s slash, dropped his weapon, and swung at him, but it was too late. Leo had already used the spear to jump over the CEO Boss, slashing his neck again as he went over the Boss's shoulder. Finally successful, blood sprayed from the Boss's neck.
Leo was looking for his next target when Time Freeze ran out. Sounds went up several octaves as sound waves sped up again, and things around him began to move quickly. A thrown stone flew by his head, missing him by millimeters. Something struck him in the back hard enough to send him flying.
A nearby Afflicted burst into flame as someone grabbed Leo and dragged him to the nearest bus.
The next thing Leo knew, he was on a crowded bus surrounded by Trent, Angie, and several others. All of whom looked pissed.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” shouted an older guy Leo hadn't met. Or maybe he had? A memory flashed through his mind. “You are support! Anyone with half a brain knows the support guy stays behind the other fighters. He does not go running ahead of the other fighters to get himself killed! And that's not counting the fact that you're the Leo Edwards who's supposed to be saving our asses.”
Angie and Trent glared at Leo, clearly in agreement.
“I was trying to help,” Leo said, defensively. “You guys looked like you were in a jam.”
“We were doing fine.” Angie glared at him. “We did not need your help, and we certainly weren't asking for it.”
“Osmond messaged us, saying he believed you were off doing something stupid, and what do you know, he was right.” The older guy glared at Leo. “When we get to the stadium, we are all going to have a talk.” He stood up and turned to the bus driver. “My Crowd Control skill is off cooldown. I'm going to throw my skill out there, and then I want you to floor it.”
“You got it, Frank,” the bus driver said.
Frank stepped out of the bus. An Afflicted bounced off him, no doubt thanks to his implant armor. Then things around the bus grew quiet. Leo looked outside. The Afflicted in front of the buses were still and silent.
“Floor it!” Frank shouted, jumping back on the bus.
The driver put the old bus in gear and stepped on the gas pedal. The bus roared, surging forward, crushing countless frozen Afflicted underneath it.
“Nice skill,” Leo shouted over the bus engine.
“Yeah, it is,” Frank said. “Shuts down their cognitive processes. Assuming they aren't killed, they'll wake up in a few minutes and feel like no time has passed for them.”
“Nice,” Leo said. “Are you a knight?”
Frank laughed. “Hardly. I'm a Guardsman/Epic. Got some pretty nice skills.”
“I remember you from the previous future. We never met, but I remember you were running around taking charge of stuff,” Leo said.
“If they were putting me in charge of anything, we're in worse trouble than I thought,” Frank responded. “Trent, you're up! Give 'em hell!”
Trent stepped forward and launched six fireballs in close succession, aiming for tightly packed groups of the Afflicted, causing them to burst into flames. The line of buses and armored trucks moved forward unimpeded and didn't stop until they reached the stadium.
As soon as they stopped, Trent and Frank grabbed Leo and dragged him from the bus.
Angie followed them out. “You got anything for me to kill? I want to kill something.”
“You got guard duty, Angie. Keep these people safe,” Frank said, fist-bumping her as he and Trent dragged Leo away. “Don't worry, you'll find lots of stuff to kill.”
It occurred to Leo that it had been fifty years since he'd seen the stadium, and he wasn't sure what to think. If anything, the stadium looked nicer than he remembered. Of course, the last time around, it had taken him days of following other refugees to find the place, and he'd had to sneak inside, finding an unobservant adult and letting the guards think he was their kid. If someone had suggested back then that people would be dragging him inside the stadium, he'd have thought they were insane.
They took him into an office next to a locker room and sat him down. The office was packed. Mr. Osmond, Gretchen, Howie, Shank, and at least twenty other adults stared at him in silence.
Gretchen was the first to speak. “Leo Edwards. Do you have a death wish? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
What the hell? Leo stared back at the crowd of faces in the cramped office, having no idea what to say. “I've been trying to save the world.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
There was an explosion in the distance.
Future Man 10/16: Shank. Please tell me Lydia's okay!
Shank 66: Lydia's fine. They put her to work in the kitchen to help out. Your friend Jason's fine, too. They have him pulling guard duty with Angie.
Leo breathed an audible sigh of relief.
“I think I speak for everyone here in saying I was hoping you were either insane or mistaken, with your end of the world predictions,” Gretchen responded. “But now we know you're not. We also know you're not mentally challenged. But you've done more stupid things to put your life in danger in the past month than most people do in a lifetime.”
“I needed the implant rewards and the Demon Tears,” Leo said.
“The first day you got back, you picked a fight with a boy twice your size, who had a knife,” Shank said. “As one of the people investigating you for the Agency, I saw the drone footage.”
“He started it,” Leo responded.
“You could have reported that Early Bloomer Afflicted to Trent,” Shank said, “or the police. Instead, you killed it, on your own, in full view of government drones. What about that isn't insane, suicidal, and stupid?”
“I needed the implant rewards and Demon Tears,” Leo responded again. “Why are you badgering me about this now? Shouldn't we be focusing on saving the world?”
“You told me you had Paladin/Epic, Leo,” Mr. Osmond said. “Which is impressive. So why did you choose Guardian/Common?”
“Guardian/Uncommon,” Leo responded. “And yes, I have a good reason for doing that.”
Mr. Osmond leaned forward, glaring at Leo. “You'd better explain it to us, because it seems like you're being a fucking idiot!”
Leo glared back. “I figured out how the School's Out programmers intended for players to win the game. And I've figured out how the human race survives.”
“How?” Mr. Osmond asked.
Leo stood up, facing his audience. “I can't tell you everything, and the answer isn't what any of us wanted to hear. But, I can tell you this: there is no win for the six players in School's Out, just as there is no win for the hundred thousand approximate implant wearers.”
“Significantly less than that now,” Mr. Osmond responded.
“Exactly,” Leo said. “There is no win for that number of implant wearers. So in both situations, our only option is to change the game board until a possible win appears. There was never a way to stop the Change from happening. There is no Kryptonite or major weakness in the Bosses for us to exploit, and nobody is more pissed off about this than I am.” Leo paused and took a breath. “But I can tell you this. You need to do what you should have been doing ever since you got your implants. Activate the implant replication feature and tell your implant to replicate itself continually. This will slightly reduce your implant's functions, but it's a small price to pay. A High-Level Boss needs decades to reproduce, but any of us can create another implant wearer in 30 days.”
“I didn't know that feature existed,” Frank said.
“And it takes only one of your High-Level Bosses seconds to kill an implant wearer.” Mr. Osmond said. “I'm not liking this brilliant plan of yours.”
“You're much smarter than I am, Mr. Osmond. I look forward to hearing your better ideas.”
“Everybody, please calm down,” Gretchen said. “Leo. A big part of this meeting is to say we understand you've gone through all kinds of hell in your previous life, and while years of therapy are needed for you to get over this, we don't have years, or a therapist. You need to suck it up, get over your trauma, and quit doing stupid stuff to get yourself killed. We are here for you, Leo. If you need someone to talk to, my door is always open.”
Leo sat down again. He didn't agree with Gretchen, but suspected she also wasn't completely wrong.
“What's the story with Mr. Al? That crazy drug addict you had us rescue?” Mr. Osmond asked. “Where does he fit into this?”
“I thought I told you,” Leo responded. “Thirty years in the future, an Assassin told me a story. He and a few friends somehow snuck up on a High-Level Boss and injected it with a huge amount of hallucinogenic substances. We're talking enough to kill an entire city. Their plan seemed to work. This giant tentacled being started twitching and hopping up and down in its own little world. They believed the High-Level Boss thought it was a rabbit. The Assassin and his friends were quietly cheering when five minutes later, the injection wore off, and the Boss began to recover. They had two more syringes with the same dose of hallucinogen, and they immediately used them. Those doses did absolutely nothing, and as you can imagine, when the High-Level Boss fully recovered, it was not happy. The Assassin was lucky to get away with his life. The Assassin's companions were not so lucky.”
“Not much of a weakness,” Mr. Osmond responded.
“True,” Leo agreed. “But a team of implant wearers can do a lot of damage in five minutes. Most drugs and poisons don't do much to a High-Level Boss, but if you can give it something its system doesn't know how to handle, you can take it out of commission for a short time. And sometimes a short time is all you need. That's why I told you to get Mr. Al. If anyone can make, or get their hands on, something that can mess up a High-Level Boss, it would be him. I already messaged Mr. Al about this, and he's happy to help. And it goes without saying you should give him the hits of serpent jelly my sister scored for you guys.”
“Why didn't you mention this earlier?” Mr. Osmond asked.
“I did mention it to the Professor, but I didn't want them to find out. It's an easy weakness for a High-Level Boss to prevent or correct if they know about it.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us, Leo,” Gretchen said. “Every bit helps. I speak for everyone here when I say we're terrified. And we'd appreciate anything else you remember that might keep us alive. In addition, we want to make it clear -- you do not get to run off and get yourself killed. You are to stay behind the other fighters and use your Augment and Healing skills to support them. Furthermore, our makeshift hospital desperately needs your healing skills. We have several healers, but you're the only one we know of with a group healing ability.”
Leo nodded. “Fine. I'll do that. I didn't mean to scare everyone earlier. I thought I could help.” He checked his stat sheet. He'd gotten quite a few Demon Tears from the previous fight, and he'd have to decide what to do with them.
“Good.” Gretchen smiled. “Next question. When are these High-Level Bosses going to show up looking for Leo? And what are we going to do when this happens?”
***
The large electric car moved quietly down Main Street, the engine quiet enough to avoid most Afflicted attention and fast enough to outrun the few who noticed.
“I'd just like to say, again, that this may not be one of your better ideas,” Jason said from the back seat of their borrowed electric car. “And I distinctly remember we're supposed to be on guard duty.”
“This is my best idea ever, Loverboy,” Angie said from the passenger's seat of the car, a large broadsword on her lap. “We get to take out a High-Level Boss. All by ourselves. We'll get more Demon Tears than we'll know what to do with.”
“If we don't take this thing out, now, it'll be a lot harder to kill later, and more people will die,” Charlotte said. Leo had told them about High-Level Bosses needing more time to get accustomed to their new abilities.
“While I agree with our course of action, I wonder if it might be wise to wait for reinforcements,” Liam said from the driver's seat.
“It might be too late by then,” Angie said.
“What happened to your sister, Jessie?” Jason asked.
Angie's cheerful facade broke, and she started crying. “Jessie changed. I told her not to take that stuff, but she never listened. Turned out she went to a bunch of Bio-Blessed parties, where big shots and gangsters handed out Bio-Blessed to pretty, underage girls. I should have killed her when she Changed, but I couldn't. I locked her in a closet and left her there.”
“Sorry. My brother Changed, too,” Jason said, reaching out and putting a hand on Angie's shoulder. “He tried to kill us with chainsaws.”
Liam turned off Main Street and continued for several blocks before pulling to the side of the road. It was easy to tell a battle had taken place here. The roots of a large tree could be seen poking out of a nearby house, as if the tree had been pulled from the ground and thrown. The wreck of a car next to the tree looked like it had bounced off the asphalt several times before reaching its current destination, and there was a frightening red stain coming from underneath it.
“According to the team that got their asses kicked,” Liam said, “this Boss was floating over that elementary school. And now it's gone. Too bad, I know I was looking forward to getting killed -- I mean, destroying this High-Level Boss.”
“It's still there,” Charlotte said. “It's using some kind of stealth camouflage. If you look carefully, you can barely see it still floating above the school. They didn't say how big it was, maybe thirty feet across. Shit.”
“Any chance we could go back for Leo?” Liam asked. “He's actually dealt with these things.”
“Leo's confined to the stadium, and he'd call us idiots and tell us not to do this,” Angie said.
“Any chance he might be right?” Liam asked.
“Anyone know why we took Mr. Al with us?” Jason asked, looking over at the man. He was doing something with a case filled with bags of unlabeled, unidentifiable powders and glass test tubes containing equally unidentifiable fluids.
“If we have to run, we're leaving him behind to get eaten,” Angie said, glaring at the man.
“I have a very specialized skill set,” Mr. Al said, speaking for the first time since he'd joined them. “And you're welcome for saving your asses by the way. Leo explained everything to me this morning.” He pulled out two large test tubes, protected by several layers of plastic baggies. “Do not touch these tubes with your bare skin. If these tubes break, do not inhale the vapor, and run like hell.” He handed the baggies and tubes to Charlotte. “Get these inside that thing.” He pointed at the floating monster.
“Will they poison it?” Charlotte asked.
“For a short time, yes. Those vials should slow the monster down so you can kill it,” Mr. Al responded. “I'll wait for you guys in the car.” He seemed to lose interest after that and stared off into space.
“Okay.” Angie scratched the stump of her left forearm. “My arm itches! Anyway. Here's the plan. Jason's our sniper. He finds a good place and covers us. Charlotte will sneak up on the Boss and get Mr. Al's stuff inside it somehow. Once it's drugged and distracted, Liam is going to fly me above the monster and drop me on top of it so I can kill it. Go, team.”
“Well, this plan seems foolproof. Let's get started.” With a sigh, Liam pushed the button that unlocked the car doors.