The first thing that greeted them was the humid air pouring out of the compartment—the air that made their armors turn on the warning sirens, screaming signals about biohazard danger. The factory itself wasn’t a cold space. Its air conditioning system kept the place at a comfortable temperature for most workers and protected the nutrient solutions from a potential virulent outbreak. But the thick, almost oily wind gushing out of the converted hall felt straight out of the tropics. It overloaded the outer coolers, and traces of rust grew on their edges.
The invaders had altered the hall, removing sprawling assembly lines and throwing away industrial automatic repair complexes, uprooting them along with the wires and leaving gaping holes in the floor. Most of the mechanical craned arms on the ceiling got repurposed to hold a massive vat with a bubbling substance in it, and another arm held a round object over the disgusting soup. Something akin to a curling black snake slithered out of the object and disappeared beneath the waters.
Barricades made of lined equipment and removed assembly lines barred the entrance further into the hall. A network of suspended metal walkways spanned the ceiling, with men and women wearing body armor and gas masks. Filthy sweat ran down their necks, soaking plain civilian clothes. At the sight of intruders, they either jumped behind the barricades or took aim, preparing to fire the weapons taken from the dead guards.
“Keep your armors sealed!” Ratcatcher screamed, zooming in on a terrorist’s scarred face and noticing bloodshot eyes and leaks coming out of nostrils. Sick. And not terrorists at all. Worse. Numbers.
Behind the barricade was a metal pillar with a ramp leading up to it from the center of the room. The invaders made the ramp out of metal pieces welded together in a hurry; it had a platform leading to the suspended vat. Entangled terminals, servers, and other computer systems composed the pillar, connected by a messy mass of black cords and sparkling wires. A man without a gas mask, dressed in a black bodyglove, stood at the very edge of this ramp, typing on a panel protruding from this entangled, glittering jumble of machinery.
Ratcatcher spotted the hostages, no less than thirty men and women, above the bubbling liquid, all hanging from an arching metal limb by chains that bit deeply into their wrists. Someone had brutally torn the sharp limbs of the captured Insectones, and their wounds inflamed, and their ichor dripped into the vat, somehow giving the impression that its contents rose hungrily to snatch the blood sooner. The severity of their wounds and blood loss rendered the wounded unconscious. Next to them wailed Normies, beaten and bruised, with cut wounds covering their arms and crying yellowish tears. Several Trolls hung among the captives too, speaking pleas for mercy in calm voices.
But this wasn’t the worst change in the compartment. Ratcatcher grew used to seeing amazing things in her life. She experienced awe at Lada’s hard-light holograms, figures, and things made of the very light that gained solidity. Artificer genius made gravity weapons possible; his keen mind had created weapons of destruction that could fit in hand and yet destroy a mountain. But there were limits. Some things couldn’t happen because, well, they were impossible.
This illusion was shattered. Streaks of pus hissed, sprouting out of walls and the floor, and strange substances corroded the metal and stone. Billowing fumes stormed out of cracks in the air, gathering above the vat and merging with the moving waters rather than enveloping the crying prisoners. The walls crumbled in several parts, releasing dried-up creepers that unfurled with cracking noises and started covering their surroundings. Bulbous, cancerous growths sprouted everywhere, and she saw how one of them burst, releasing a trembling shambler from within.
The creature turned thin; its worker clothes merged into skin, and black claws pushed out of fingers. He exhaled, releasing a puff of steam that reduced a piece of metal nearby into dust. The thing swayed its arms back and forth and trotted to the intruders lips parted wide enough to reveal rust-colored teeth. More growths exploded, releasing maimed bodies fused with metal parts. The changes weren’t complete; the trainee saw how a generator exploded within the belly of one such shambler, setting it aflame, and the body toppled. Bare feet slapped against the wet floor, converging on the Avengers.
“They took the entire mainframe from the control room,” Wivin stated. “Trainees…”
They didn’t need to hear anything else. This was the thing the Numbers and Hustler had used to control the facility. Ratcatcher saw a familiar device below the display, a device that the Condemned had used in Birchshell to jam the communications. Destroy it, and reinforcements will come. She aimed her shot at the back of the Number working on the keyboard and fired.
A life. Inside this freak lived a screaming and hurt person. She remembered it—oh, how Ratcatcher remembered the pain and the flash of regaining conscience in the eyes of the poor police officer Mark—a surge of panic and agony when his body inflated. The enslaved man deserved to be saved; he should have been saved! But that is not to be. Ratcatcher could think of thousands of excuses for her actions, but the true reasons why she shot were her fear for the allies and intentions to give the enslaved man a clean and less painful death. To not allow the Number to turn him into… a bloody skeleton from her nightmares. And so she fired, refusing to let others bear the guilt alone.
The stream of energy splattered against the air, failing to reach the Number. Other munition followed: a grenade and several armor-piercing shells all crashed and exploded against the hardened space. Another Number stepped closer to the typing man—a woman in a simple white shirt and black pants, her long, messy hair dappled with blood. She stood unbothered by the virulent outbreak in the air, her skin pale and her eyes burning with hatred.
“Shields!” Wivin shouted, and the Avengers rammed their heavy tower shields into the wet floor.
Ratcatcher had no more time to think. One way didn’t work? Time for another! Elina snapped her fingers, sending a shockwave, casting the advancing shamblers on the ground, and making the Numbers duck to save themselves. One of them peaked out, aiming a rocket launcher, and Ratcatcher nailed the bastard in his shoulder. The simple body armor evaporated under the heat ray, and it reached all the way to the bone, disabling an arm. A second later, an Avenger shot his cannon. The heavy projectile smashed through the launcher, exploding munition, and tore everything above the man’s waist.
Was it my… Irrelevant. She ignored an urge to vomit. A human died, and all she could care about was how to survive. Two laser shots curved off the wall above the entrance, hitting Ratcatcher in the back. The power armor’s intelligence had changed the surface of the assaulted area to reflective material in time to dissipate the attack. I can’t save everyone. But I can try to save these workers! I can keep my friends and allies safe!
Ratcatcher glanced behind in confusion, witnessing a perfectly smooth mirror. It wasn’t there before; one of the Numbers had to use some sort of power to change the dirty, pus-stained piece of metal too. Another beam hit the mirror and curved, linking to a joint on an Avenger’s armor. Where the Iternian nanomachines had endured the heat, the woman’s weak spot gave in, and the troll sighed, enduring pain in an elbow. Ratcatcher saw the source of this beam—a man hiding behind a large conveyer. His shot wasn’t an accident; she saw how he peaked out again and fired, wounding the Avenger even further. Either he could calculate the curving of the beam arc on a fly, or he used some sort of assistance.
Regardless of the reason, it has to stop.
“Elina, Vasily! Fire at these coordinates!” She contacted the teammates.
Elina, sticking like glue to a Troll’s back, fired and shattered the mirror, and Vasily launched a grenade, exploding the hiding the man and one of his allies. Vasily didn’t even bat an eye at the murder; his hands were reloading his weapon, and a silent request passed through fighters for a new target. Ratcatcher took after his example, weaving through allies and making holes in the approaching shamblers.
The Avengers formed a circle, igniting their shields with sparks of electricity. Their shields weren’t normal husks of metal. Once activated, the magnetic repulsion systems installed within them caused bullets to slow down mid-flight and energy whips to lash out of the shields, exploding the rockets. The defenders all but forgotten melee and leveled the high-powered fire-leveled part of the barricades, driving the Numbers to a second line of defense. The explosions on both sides created a wall of destruction, keeping the shamblers at bay.
A figure leapt from the enemy land, moving fast enough to turn into a blur. The Avengers fired on it without hesitation, and a bubble of an energy shield devoured the shells. The figure bounced off the wall above the Trolls and landed in the middle of the group, battering the group aside with its square-shaped fists.
It was a heavily modified industrial exosuit, a special harness that allowed workers to pull the heaviest vehicles back from the fields when needed. The moving harness stood six meters tall, still in pristine condition, despite the rot permeating the compartment. Someone nestled an energy shield amidst the two round generators on its back; the Numbers had replaced its fingers with whirling drills, bringing them upon a Troll, bearing sparks as it pinned the crusader and began opening his power armor.
A woman hung inside the harness, somewhat chubby in build. A black body armor protected her; she coughed out a yellowish sputum on the visor of her gas mask. She dismembered the crusader in half and raised the heavy machine leg to finish him when Wivin crashed into her side, taking the leg on the blade of her claymore.
The countymeister’s power armor wasn’t a regular thing. Unlike Iternians, Reclaimers and Oathtakers had gifted their champions suits that remained from the ancient era, often cannibalized from various parts. Wivin’s power armor was a marvel. Even lacking a sleeve, even having its backpack destroyed by an artillery shell, the bundles of the artificial muscles grafted newfound strength to the Troll, and she stopped the leg mid-swing, pushing it back. The exo-suit regained balance and slashed with the drills, somehow knowing about Wivin’s attempt to circle around it despite a lack of a line of sight. The countymeister blocked the blow; its force sent her back, leaving traces made by the friction of her armored greaves against the floor. Servomotors roared in Wivin’s joints, and her blades flashed, breaking metal chunks off the moving drills.
She darted past a swing, ignoring the thundering cascade of metal and stone collapsing when the arm hit the wall. Wivin made a stab, aiming at the woman’s face, and the shield formed again, blocking the hit. The machine kicked, dropping the countymeister onto her back. Wivin stood; the drills lacerated rifts on her helmet, damaging the visor, but the crusader evaded the brunt of the attack and slashed again, the steel of her claymore facing the energy shield of the smirking woman again.
“In vain, reject,” the Number mocked. “Act befitting your rank, make a stand, feel despair, perish with a noble cry, and stop wasting everyone’s time.”
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“We’ll see about that,” Wivin sang, reactivating her emotion modulator, and boiling rage sounded in each sentence. “Come, honey. I declare you guilty of invading my nation and harming citizens entrusted to our protection. Today you have incurred a blood debt to the Avengers. Pay up.”
A crimson whip slithered on the ground, striking the bisected crusader below his exposed ribs. The Troll trashed, gasping for air, and went limp, dying even before the whip came out, dragging his spinal column out. It wrapped around the legs of the crusader, burning its way through metal, and the soldier found himself jerked to the floor.
The Number who did this tried to drag the Troll closer to the approaching shamblers, but a grenade from Vasily made him release the whip and retreat. The freed crusader let go of his tower shield, taking his gladius in both hands, and rose in a burst of violence, bleeding out of his exposed ankles and cleaving through the skulls of the surrounding shamblers. Ratcatcher and Carlos supported him from afar, letting Elina and Vasily to concentrate on the Number wielding the energy whip and keep him at bay.
Suddenly, the closest Troll pushed Ratcatcher and Carlos aside, and a brilliant energy beam connected to his neck. The blue bean kept on going, tracing the recoiling Troll, melting its path through the gorget, and burning through the skin. The Avenger made one last, desperate attempt to lunge away, but his body refused to listen, and his head fell off the shoulders, getting cooked as it fell.
“Mosquitoes drawn to a festival. If you had any idea what was coming, you’d have fallen on your own blades.” Hustler stepped on a walkway above the Avengers, blowing on the steaming barrel of an energy cannon mounted on his left hand. He patched the holes left by Ratcatcher with abraded metal, his long tail pierced the ceiling, and swung the Oracle out of the returned fire. “Resist me? All the better! I haven’t had my fill of the Oathtakers’ woes yet! If you won’t join willingly, your own corpses shall bring poxes to Stonehelm!”
The Oracle unleashed another beam at the Avenger, overheating the man’s shoulder cannon and exploding the munition. The Troll fell, struggling to give up, and another beam struck him, trying to merge the armor plating on his back.
“Hustler!” Ratcatcher roared, firing her gun. The Oracle reacted in time, freeing his tail and pirouetted out of the beam’s way, but she didn’t care. Murderer. She won’t let him get away with it. Not this time.
Furious, the trainee tightened the muscles in her legs, soaring high in a single leap and reaching the edge of the wall. She holstered the gun, grabbed the corroded metal, almost feeling her fingers sucking inside the wet structure. And jump off it, landing on the walkway in time to block the stinger with her mancatcher. Its edge slid closer to the helmet, drawing sparks across the mancatcher’s pole. She gritted her teeth and released the block, diving to the side.
Her bet paid off; the stinger bit the metal grating of the suspended walkway, and Ratcatcher darted toward Hustler, leaving dents in the grating. The bridge trembled violently at the destruction wrought by the tail, but she ignored it, bringing the mancatcher to the scowling face.
Ratcatcher didn’t care why Hustler was here or what his plans were. All she cared for was caving in that blasting face—to make him pay for every life taken by his damned hands, bringing an end to the war that had never been hers, but the one in which she would eagerly fight. To break him so completely, he will never be able to kill her allies, any innocent or anyone at all, ever again.
The blades of her weapon crashed against the moving tail, and Hustler’s lenses opened wider. Didn’t expect it, bastard? I am healthy now! Hustler kicked low; his sweep parted the walkway’s floor like a halberd, tearing through the floor. She jumped over it, remembering well his insane might, and landed to his side, firing the laser gun. Hustler’s claws pushed the weapon aside, opening him for the mancatcher’s swing.
Sparks flew around the combatants. Ratcatcher dodged and blocked, firing and attacking with her weapon, no longer using the long pole to keep Hustler at bay. This time, she clung to him, taking advantage of the narrow bridge space and his long tail. At this range, he couldn’t aim the energy cannon soon enough; his taller build made it harder to launch a kick that could’ve shattered her bone, while Ratcatcher utilized her shorter legs and arms to rain hell at the Oracle, not allowing him to gain distance.
The girl heeded Augustus’ words well, holding the mancatcher right under the blades. When an uppercut sent them skyward, she brought down the pole, dotting Hustler’s arm with bulges and drawing a hiss out of him after she landed a blow against the armored patch. At a blocked thrust, she fired an armor-piercing dart from the wrist, breaking metal on Hustler’s arm. She blocked a knee with the pole, firing a laser beam at the opponent, and he hissed, abandoning an attempt to cleave her head with his claws. Hustler was stronger than her. That was a fact. She gained control of his centerline and turned the combat around, making the Oracle think of dodging and retreating. Each of her blows flowed into another. No overthinking. No sticking to any style. Attack, strike, and cleave—nothing but pure rage in each blow. I am Ratcatcher, I am Eliza Vong, and I am mad!
A knee passed through her defense and hit the girl in the abdomen. She smiled through the bloody lips and headbutted Hustler, tearing his exposed chin. The kick beat the air out of her lungs, and the impact of his attack reached the solar plexus. She wanted to fall to her knees and gasp for air. Ratcatcher pushed on, toughing out the pain. To stay is to die. To move is to live. Her field of vision narrowed to that of the bridge, and she and her enemy cast each other at the guardrail; Hustler with an intent to gain distance and she to close the gap and get a chance to catch a wheezing breath.
This close, the poisoned man couldn’t repeat his trick with the tail from the Ascension Tower. In fact, his oversized appendage had become a hindrance as he turned and spun around, evading darts fired at him. Ratcatcher remembered their battle well. Her opponent enjoyed leading; the tail always danced above the fighters, waiting for a chance to strike. Why was it waiting? The answer was simple. Hustler relied on precision hits, planning each attack in advance. Faced with a berserker’s fury, he faltered, unable to adapt in time to the confines of their arena and all too worried to fall and end up near the surviving crusades.
Wait… am I strategizing? Ratcatcher could’ve sworn that she observed the fight from the sidelines; her heart still raced, pumping blood through the veins, the muscles strained. But the anger… She controlled it. It sustained her, amplified the physical blows, and helped to ignore fatigue rather than cloud her thoughts. Is this the zone that Augustus and Mom told me about? The state when a fighter acts instinctively, subconsciously choosing the best moves, leaving the mind unburdened?
She drove the Oracle to lean on the guardrail, and he froze, worried about breaking it and falling. A leg flew up; the upward kick almost tore the trainee’s head off. She dodged it and pushed forward, straight off the suspension bridge, reacting on pure instinct. A beam heated the metal on her toes, and the downward swing of Hustler’s leg had shuttered the section of the bridge. She wrapped a hand holding the gun over his other leg, swinging her whole body around him, and planted the kicks into the side of Hustler’s head, breaking two of his lenses. Ratcatcher raced after the stumbling Oracle, stabbing with the mancatcher and almost closed its blades on the risen for a block hand.
The battle raged below them. Shots hit both fighters, tearing chunks of armor. If she'd had even a millisecond to consider the situation, Ratcatcher might’ve frozen in fear. She wasn’t as brave as Elina, as quick-witted as Carlos or as talented as Vasily. Many things scared her. But seeing innocent people get hurt always pissed her off, and she let the rage course through the vein, flying amidst Hustler’s counterattacks sustained on the released adrenaline and enduring slashes that broke through the armor with the worry over her family.
Hustler smashed her across the head with the laser cannon, and she fell straight into a rising knee. Ratcatcher turned her head, letting the hit slide across the helmet and hit across the Oracle’s leg, throwing him off balance. She bounced off the grating, slamming into him with her helmet. And this time, he didn’t block.
Through the cameras of her allies below, she saw him smile. Hustler has used her own blow to gain the distance between them. And if he can do it… She slashed with the mancatcher, shifting her hold all the way to the bottom of the shaft, and the blades reached him, gouging a long and bloody gash from his left shoulder to the left hip. But it wasn’t deep enough, and Hustler landed, his stinger between the two and the cannon aimed at her.
What should she do? If she aims the laser gun, he’ll react, firing and striking at once. A charge will lead her into the beam. And he will dodge darts! What?! What can she do?!
Experience. Hustler had decades of combat over her. Here he stood, bloodied lips and the wound dealt by her blades, but the rest of the damage to his armor was superficial. And in her frenzied rage, she missed how the sharp claws charted crimson rivers on her body, dragging pieces of skin and fur from her and splitting a breast in two. Her legs grew weary, and she exhaled, slumping her shoulders and feigning defeat. It wasn’t hard. Her body ached, almost as much as it had when Wedge had accidentally elbowed her in the throat once. She rolled for half an hour, wheezing and crying and not allowing the frightened boy get her parents. If one way doesn’t work, try another. Ratcatcher smiled, looking at the image on her visor and noting the position of her allies. And asked for help.
The Avengers had regained their ranks, forming a wall between the shamblers and Numbers, leaving the undead advancing from behind to the trainees. Carlos thinned the zombies’ ranks, using his arms and legs to conserve the ammo, as Elina and Vasily hunted the Number armed with the crimson whip. The man kept to the edge of the battlefield, attacking from afar and ever shifting his position in an attempt to strike at the wounded crusaders. An unhealthy amount of explosion collapsed part of the wall on top of him.
“Hold on a sec!” Elina replied on a secure channel. “Carlos, Vasily to me.”
“You are getting on my nerves,” the Oracle said. “It’s a dangerous thing to do. Do you wish for me to decompose your intestines, leaving you to sob and defecate for several weeks? Shreds of divinity given to me by His Excellency can see it done.” He extended his clawed hand, and steaks of fume seeped from the palm.
“How’s the arm, Hustler?” she asked slowly.
“Seedling…” Hustler hissed, licking off blood. “And from Birchshell, no less. Am I to be forever haunted by the foul luck stretching out of this dumpster?”
“Don’t say that! I am sure many others are lining up to kick your ass too!” Ratcatcher teased. “Look behind me, Hustler! Do you see them? The souls of all those you have harmed and killed through your words and deeds! They are watching, waiting for retribution!” She pointed the mancatcher at him, buying time for Elina and Vasily to break free from their fight. Keep talking. Distract him. He has delusions of divinity; play on them! “And the hour is nigh! I am no champion. I am not even anyone special; there is nothing magical about me; I am just a human who refuses to let down these noble souls! I’ll show you how strong a human can be and make you repent for everything you’ve done!”
The whip moved unbound by the movement of a trapped hand. Its hissing energy melted through the rubble, letting the Number roll away out of the shotgun’s shot, stand up, and dodge the incoming grenade. The explosive didn’t reach the wall; the whip coiled around it and tried to toss the projectile at Vasily.
Elina fired, exploding the grenade above the Number and he screamed in pain, bathed in the contents of the acid grenade. His gas mask and face turned to moving mud, the eyes disappeared in a streak of pouring flesh that filled his open, agony-filled mouth. The Number slashed wildly, trying to get anyone or keep the trainees at bay. It didn’t save him; another grenade shot landed at the man’s belly; the sharp end of an anti-vehicle grenade bored itself through his abdomen and exploded, ending both the parasite and his poor host.
“They’ll fall, like you are about to. Tell me, do you feel it? The inevitability of the closing end, the desperation, and the futility of all your actions?” Hustler asked. “Hearken well what is about to transpire. I will leave a hole in your upper body. You may think that the armor will preserve you. It will not; the cracks in your wonder armor won’t close in time. First, you’ll feel pain; your outer skin will burn. It won’t last long; the heat will vaporize your pain receptors. Then it's your organs' turn. A hole in your lungs will ensure that you don’t have the thoracic pressure to draw breath. You’ll fall, gasping for air that will never come, dying in four to ten minutes, depending on your physiology. But that won’t be all. Oh no. I’ll raise you as a puppet for my Master, your brain rotted into soup and your body whipped to hunt your former friends.” He examined the stiffened trainee. “Understood now? Good, I hate it when young ones die brave.”
“Thanks for the lesson in biology, old man! That might’ve even happened!” Carlos laughed, jumping on the bridge behind Hustler. Elina and Vasily used their own shoulders to propel him to the needed height. “If I wasn’t about to wipe that smirk off your face, that is.”
Carlos’ gun rose. And shotgun shells pierced the metal grating, drumming against Hustler’s armor as he shielded his exposed face with his hand. But neither of the trainees had taken advantage of the Oracle’s distraction. The tail sliced around him in a blur, forcing both trainees to drop low as the stinger drew sparks out of the guardrails.
The last bout against Hustler has begun.