Chapter — 30
Even though she was injured, Rei decided against using her single medical nanite injector or whatever mystery spray she'd nabbed from Ben.
[Self-Repair] will fix me up eventually, and I don't know what lies ahead.
She rode the elevator up two floors before moving to the side as its doors opened, cautiously peeking out and seeing that the coast was clear.
Not bothering with stealth, she ran down the corridor, one part of her mind on her map as she flashed past door after door until eventually stopping at the correct one.
It was closed and locked.
Rei supplied the key to the door she'd gotten from Ichiro by manually breaching it since she wasn't automatically loosely connected to every device in her vicinity; the lock clicked before it slid open.
She hadn't even stepped toward the trashed interior — the apartment having likewise been searched — before the third elevator next to the first and second let out a quiet ping that barely registered to her auditory implants.
Rei whipped her head around, looking down the corridor.
Oh. Fuck.
I can't let that thing trap me in the apartment.
She ran, but she wasn't nearly fast enough.
With a deafening burring of a machine gun and the sounds of casings hitting the elevator floor, projectiles flashed down the corridor toward Rei. It was too narrow, and there was just no way for her to dodge all of them.
Rei felt one of her legs, her back as the backpack swayed, and one arm smart — the combat drone, vaguely shaped like a black spider the size of a large dog, had hit its mark.
It wasn't bullets meant to kill her, though, but something else.
Each projectile worked as a miniature taser that stuck to her, its electric payload thrashing its way down into her muscles as she spasmed, falling forward. She turned her head as she did, looking backward from the corner of her eye and seeing the combat drone advance for a few steps before it shimmered — optical camouflage reengaging.
Now I can't even see it! Wait...
Rei scanned with her eyes, seeing the nodes throughout the corridor outlining in her vision before something else got picked up. It was the combat drone swiftly making its way toward her, and Rei saw no other option than to try her luck as a Magi.
Using her split stream of consciousness, she began breaching it, the other part of her mind doing its best to rip the projectiles off of her as she continued to spasm.
Rei felt her mind strain under the effort of breaching its ICE, the other part of her mind coming to support it after she'd removed the taser on her leg and arm — not able to reach the one on her back.
She wasn't alone in the machine, though; whoever was behind it did everything they could to thwart her attempts.
NO! I. Will. Stop. It, Rei thought determinately as she got slowly to her feet and backed away — unable to dedicate enough of her mental faculties to move away with more alacrity.
Code and data flashed in her mind, so much of it that barely a thought was spent on anything else. She spliced the ICE from two different directions, spreading her offense as the defender's attempts at obstruction became increasingly hasty and sloppy.
The spider drone was still closing in fast, its twitchy legs making it move side to side as if to confuse her even though she couldn't see it visually.
There were patterns to the ICE, as there were to all programming, and she dedicated part of her thoughts to solving it — to understanding what made it tick.
It was strange and rigid but brutally efficient, yet it felt stale in a way Rei had come across before. It was challenging to put into actual words, but there was just something to it that felt... manufactured?
「Notice:
[Data Analytics] skill level has increased.
Level: 9 → 11」
「Notice:
Skill level ceiling hit. Governing attribute: Mind, insufficient for further progress.」
At the realization, two notifications slammed into her mind, bringing new knowledge that opened Rei's eyes to the truth.
She struck.
Rei's limbs of code spliced from two directions and into two weak points in the patterns of the ICE's programming — depositing data that would serve as a temporary back door that she rode further into the programs beneath.
Noticing what she'd done, the person controlling the drone fed data that Rei could read the purpose of:
The drone would open fire at her once more unless she diverted some of her attention to stop it.
Screw that.
She intercepted the data by sneaking a thin thread of her splice into the targeted code, receiving it, and altering the tracking data slightly as it arrived. When the optical camouflage dropped, and the machine gun on top of it began to whirr, its barrel swerved into the left wall, opening fire at it instead of at Rei.
The other part of her mind — not halting the other Magi — was wreaking havoc on its different systems. Finally, whatever self-corrective algorithms supported its underlying programming failed, and the now fully visible drone stumbled, one of its legs having frozen.
Rei moved slowly down the corridor while engaged in the digital battle between minds. As she entered a three-way intersection, she dumped all the viruses and malware she could support with her cyberdeck.
Rei passed behind the intersection's corner, and then she ran.
Needing all her focus, she disengaged from the combat drone by undoing her splices and batting away another attempt to breach her through them. The drone had been temporarily incapacitated, but with the help of whoever the unknown was, it wouldn't be long before it was back to full functionality.
I wish I'd managed to blow the power source fueling it...
Now mentally free, she took stock of her body. The taser on her back had stopped cramping the muscles there, but her blood was now near-boiling. Hoping for the best, she retrieved her last nanite injector, jabbing it into her stomach after lifting her hoodie and shirt enough to get to the skin.
Her ribs snapped back into place with horrible cracks before mending, but as the medical nanites spread, what Rei had really hoped for actually came to pass:
Her temperature lowered at the cost of moisture. It was as if an almost invisible cloud of steam escaped her body, soaking her clothes.
It was barely lowered by any appreciable degree, but it made her mind clear up somewhat from the haze she'd not even noticed start clouding it. Her mouth had gone dry as a desert, and her throat felt raspy, but it was manageable for a time.
Without lava running through her brain, Rei realized that she needed another exit strategy, not relying on the elevators or the stairwell next to them.
There has to be emergency exits.
Connecting to the public mesh, she brought up her map, her mind working overtime to find her location by extrapolating her position relative to Ichiro's apartment and the path she'd taken after that. When she did, she searched for a path out.
There!
Just two corridors away, there was an emergency stairwell, and she made for it. She'd just passed around another corner when the recognizable burring of a machine gun rang out behind her, bullets flying down the corridor visible in the corner of her eye.
Rei ran faster, putting everything she had into moving her legs.
Just barely turning another corner, another burst of gunfire rang out from behind. It was getting closer.
Coming upon the door with a green neon sign above it reading 'Emergency,' she barely even scanned the door before breaching it. The pressure spurred her on to completely tear the security apart before forcing the door to open — it did so excruciatingly slowly to her senses but barely took a second in reality.
Come on.
The clinking of metal on plastic-like flooring came closer.
Come on, just fucking open.
The sound of tapping limbs came from just out of sight.
Rei squeezed through the doors as the space became large enough, nearly ripping her backpack, and Mr. Nibbles off in the process. With the stairwell in front of her, she didn't hesitate:
She leapt, vaulting the railing.
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She moved down one floor, then down another, not daring to slow even as her bones felt like they cracked a tiny bit on each landing.
The whole stairwell suddenly began repeatedly flashing with light as the drone opened fire down on her from above, the projectiles bouncing off the railing and steps with plinks and cracks that rang in Rei's ears.
Still, she didn't stop moving.
One of the projectiles eventually hit one of her arms as she was mid-vault, the arm spasming as her hand clutched involuntarily onto the railing and halted her momentum just a fraction.
Her reduced speed made her fall two whole floors instead of one, landing on her side, the spasming arm breaking but luckily cushioning her head while it felt like her right ribs and hip had broken.
Rei forced herself to stand through the agony.
「Notice:
[Pain Tolerance] skill level has increased.
Level: 6 → 7」
「Notice:
Skill level ceiling hit. Governing attribute: Body, insufficient for further progress.」
As she couldn't do any parkour with her hip — if not shattered, then at least fractured — she began limping down the steps instead, keeping to the wall to hide herself from the enemy above. Still, she heard its clicking limbs come ever closer in a blatant attempt to regain sight-lines on her.
This isn't working. I'll never outrun it like this.
Thinking with one part of her mind while searching the map for a new route with another, she found what she thought might be her only chance. Many floors were left before she reached ground level, and she needed to get there fast.
The elevators are the only way.
The elevators no longer had a monstrous black combat drone in the shape of a spider guarding them with a mounted machine gun; instead, it was on her heels.
As she reached the closest door on the floor below, she broke through the ICE and waited the painfully long second it took for it to open before limping through.
I should have waited to use my nanite injector. I really need it now.
She was growing healthier with each passing moment as her stomach growled and the pain lessened, but she still couldn't run.
A man walked in the corridor in front of her, and getting a crazy idea, she limped toward him, coming up from behind as she put her unsheathed dagger to his throat, making him stop dead.
"Carry me toward the elevators, or you'll die."
"Wha-"
"CARRY ME!" She yelled, hearing the clicking of the drone reaching the emergency doors that were just about to close but had started opening again.
The man was heavily augmented, and he slowly turned, letting the dagger scrape uselessly against his throat while barely tearing his synth skin as its oscillation wasn't activated. Rei didn't know if she should activate it and slit his throat, but when his violet eyes didn't meet hers, instead looking behind her at the emergency door, she hesitated.
His eyes widened.
It was fortunate she did, as barely half a second later, he'd hoisted her into his arms in a princess carry and took off with speed Rei could never have matched, even without her crippling injuries.
The world around her seemed to blur as her dagger bumped uselessly against his throat with each one of his rapid and long strides. Before she'd fully realized what was happening, they were there, the man pressing the call button while looking behind the way they'd come.
"Why the FUCK do you have THAT after you?!" The man bellowed, his pupils — which seemed to drain the violet irises into them as if holes in space — flicking back to her.
"Someone wants to kill me?" Rei responded tonelessly as she began breaching the elevators, finding what she'd suspected.
The elevators wouldn't come on their own, as someone — her enemy most likely — was already in the system and had full access.
"If you don't want to die, too, then protect me while I splice the elevators. Someone is hindering them from working and coming to our floor." Rei said, completely unsure if he'd really be in danger from just carrying her for a short while.
She heard the man curse but didn't give him more thought. She didn't even feel herself lowering the dagger that had been ineffectively held to his throat as she put her whole mind into facilitating their escape.
The following digital battle was the most difficult she'd ever had.
***
The man looked down at the woman in his arms, whose creepy eyes had gone blank. She was staring unseeing ahead as she worked on the elevators.
The intelligent thing would have been to just run away when he'd spotted that... abomination, but he'd acted on instinct and just grabbed her — perhaps subconsciously prompted by her demand to carry her.
Her threat had been laughable to him, with her little dagger that seemed out of power and a peashooter at her waist, but he'd still helped her and, most likely, become a secondary target.
He felt her start heating up in his arms rapidly, more and more beads of sweat running down the parts of her face that were visible behind her half-face mask.
No internal heatsink or external cooling suit beneath her outer clothes? Did it take her by surprise in her apartment or something? He thought, mystified.
Suddenly, the elevator to his right made a soft noise, signaling its arrival, and he moved to it, practically forcing his way through the opening doors before jabbing a finger at the ground floor button.
The elevator doors closed, but he still caught a glimpse of the spider-like drone before they did. Three of its legs and half its body were invisible, as whatever optical camouflage they usually wore when not attacking from range had malfunctioned.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he could no longer see it clicking toward them but began looking around when nothing else happened.
Looking down at the young woman in his arms, he asked, "Why aren't we moving?"
She didn't respond, but he noticed that she'd begun panting, the hand holding the dagger moving as if she was trying to cut herself.
Oh, fuck. That's right.
She was overheating and needed to cool down but was too preoccupied to manage it alone.
Not too gently dumping her on the elevator floor, he grabbed the front of her hoodie before tearing it in two like it had been made of paper. This caused the woman's orange eyes to flick toward him for a fraction of a second before they seemingly went glassy again, her panting continuing as her chest rose and fell.
Damn, she's ripped. Almost unhealthily so, he couldn't help but think, seeing not a gram of fat on her body as veins stood out starkly beneath the skin as they sought the cool air.
The elevator began to speed downward with a jerk, and the man picked the woman up again. As it slowed and finally stopped — the elevator doors sliding open — the woman spoke:
"Run down the route I'm about to give you, and we should escape without further pursuit. There are also medical supplies at the end that will help me recover enough that we can split up."
He felt a prod to his agent as the woman's eyes swirled silver, and he deliberated on accepting the unknown data she was requesting to send.
She threatened me, but who wouldn't in her situation? It didn't seem malicious. And she did get us out of there when the elevators were interfered with.
"Or don't and just leave me here to die while you escape," she added tonelessly as one second passed into two.
With his own ICE, there was little she could do to him with a data package as small as she was sending, so he accepted, his map opening unprompted to highlight the route she'd spoken of.
He began to run, his feet effortlessly moving between crowds of people on the street outside as he made for the alley before speeding up further.
No reflex augmentations at all? He thought as he recognized the unfocused way the woman in his arms looked around, not truly seeing anything flashing by.
Or are her eyes incapable of transmitting that much visual data?
It didn't matter, though, as they soon came upon the 'medical supplies' she'd mentioned. It was a ULM vending machine, and as he moved toward it, the woman hopped unsteadily out of his arms, her eyes flashing gold.
An injector dispensed itself from the shute, and she picked it up and looked back at him.
"Thanks. I'd get out of here if I were you," she said.
"Your bones are broken. That won't fix you up enough to outrun anyone."
"Worried? That's sweet," she said, sounding as cold and distant as always, "but you've helped me enough without even asking for compensation. Go before you're further dragged into this mess."
Yeah, no. She's right. I don't want any part in whatever this is. Me helping her this much can already be seen as foolishly heroic. It was just because of the appearance of that drone...
He took one last look at her before he did as she'd suggested, flashing away with speeds he knew she'd never be able to follow.
***
One moment, Rei's valiant knight in shining chrome was there; the next, he wasn't. Their whole encounter and interaction had been strange, to say the least.
How much cyberware does he have? I could barely see him move, and when he carried me... Well, I'm not sure how much I'm not picking up due to the heatstroke I'm having.
She was thankful that her stupid stunt of trying to threaten him hadn't backfired spectacularly. It had been the only thing she could think of then and had now become another valuable lesson of her inadequacy.
So, too, had the fight with the two Piston members and the combat drone chase thereafter.
It would probably have been easy hadn't someone or something obstructed my mesh magic so vehemently. It's my greatest asset and would have been a potent weapon against a gang like The Pistons if the unknown weren't bolstering the gangers' defenses.
Limping away, she moved toward the nearest street with vending machines in the opposite direction of her old apartment. She needed food. Without at least filling her belly while the injector did its work, she wouldn't dare use it as she had no idea what would happen if she had no fat to burn or food to consume.
Would it just eat my muscles for fuel instead?
It was the only likely scenario she could think of.
Rei was watchful of her surroundings as she moved, her eyes scanning the mesh and physical world for any trace of pursuit. She was already far away due to her rescuer's immense speed, but she wouldn't rule out the drones zipping past above carrying packages or doing something else belonging to The Pistons or their backer.
Ears and eyes were everywhere.
After getting to the vending machine, Rei began wolfing down food while studiously ignoring everyone around her who didn't pose a threat.
She jabbed the injector into her hip after three food bars, one protein biscuit, and some water. Cracking sounds came from the area as the fractured bones realigned, but she continued eating, reviewing the notifications she'd pushed aside in the heat of the escape.
「Notice:
[Splice] skill level has increased.
Level: 10 → 11」
「Notice:
Skill level ceiling hit. Governing attribute: Mind, insufficient for further progress.」
「Notice:
[Strong Will] skill level has increased.
Level: 8 → 9」
「Notice:
Skill level ceiling hit. Governing attribute: Ego, insufficient for further progress.」
Nothing about her skill increases felt strange to her except [Data Analytics], which had almost forced its way into her consciousness mid-combat. Her usual skill levels came from progressively working on them or pushing past her limits.
That increase of two whole levels in one go, though, had come from some sort of epiphany.
She pondered this as she grabbed as many edibles as she could before beginning to jog, taking bites of food and downing drinks while trying not to choke.
I thought I could take on The Pistons soon, or at least start whittling them down to get some credits, but to do that, I need to increase my skill levels in everything related to combat. My [Melee Mastery], [Ranged Mastery], and every mesh magic skill must be raised far above where they're currently at.
Not to mention improving my ICE and programming some daemons and scripts to use against other people. Everything I have now is code I wrote for dismantling data and extracting it inside the mesh, not to kill my opponents in the real world.
Now, she had to do all the work manually, which was the height of inefficiency, making her overheat way too quickly.
Rei also needed to raise [Body], and even though it would pain her when [Merciless] receded, she knew it was time to distance herself from her siblings for a while.
A new apartment, physical conditioning, extreme amounts of skill and attribute grinding, and then it's time for my first proactive hunt. How long will it take for me to get ready?
Will I even get that time, or will they find me first?