A blinding arc of light struck the wall separating the bridge’s floor as Hustler charted a line across it. Distracted by Elina’s shot, he missed Ratcatcher, but his true target was Carlos. If Carlos had stayed unmoved, the beam would’ve sliced across him. An arc of blur raced toward Hustler, regaining form as a kick in the knee buckled the Oracle. The clawed hand rose, aiming for the helmet in anticipation of a bullet, and found the empty air as the teen leaped back, dodging the slam of a mighty tail.
And Hustler’s lenses whined, focusing on Ratcatcher before she could reach him.
“Vasily, do it!” she roared.
The remaining lenses flashed, focusing on the confused trainee below. Ratcatcher pushed herself to the limit, blocking the swinging back tail and weaving past the elbow. Misdirection. Hustler had pulled a quick one on Wivin with his babbling. It’s his turn now.
Her fist slammed into the side of his lower jaw at full force. She didn’t hold back anything; she was no longer held back by a fear of killing a person. Point one: a torn jaw won’t kill someone right away. And point two. He was tough. The punch landed at the temporomandibular joint, tearing the ligament that connected the lower jaw to the upper. The shock that reverberated through the Oracle’s head sent his brain rocking; rather than standing up, he fell on the railing, taking a shotgun blast in his chest and wheezing in pain.
Carlos grabbed the cannon’s barrel, pushing the Oracle’s arm back, and slammed his foot at the joint of his elbow. The teen’s sheer speed and force far exceeded that of a normal jackhammer; his merciless stomping continued, crumpling the metal and damaging the bone. Still reeling from the concussion, Huster swung his claws at Carlos’ face.
Ratcatcher let go of her gun and brought the mancatcher down. She could’ve pierced the bastard’s neck; his armor wasn’t tough enough to resist the cutting edge of Iterna’s cold weaponry. But something deep inside, a memory of a pleading person, held her back. And she closed the blades at Hustler’s arm, around his shoulder, turning off every safety and letting it cut deep and in full.
Hustler gasped in pain, his chest still riddled by Elina’s shot, blood filling his lungs, one elbow turned into bone dust, and another hand missing at a shoulder and crimson blood, so pristine compared to the rest of his servants, fountained out of stump.
They thought him beaten. Ratcatcher began a sweep, and Carlos readied himself for knocking out the enemy by dealing an intense head trauma once he fell. Hustler turned, covering Ratcatcher’s visor in blood pouring out of his shoulder, and his tail crushed down, missing Carlos but bringing the section of the bridge down.
“Not… yet…” Hustler whispered, his strained voice barely audible amidst the falling metal. The oracle sliced off his broken arm with his own tail and jumped, landing on the ramp. Vasily fired at his back, and the stinger met the grenade. The explosion sent Hustler sprawling, his tail shredded into flesh and metal. Hustler stood up, waving a small splinter of bone protruding out of the remaining segmented remains of his tail. “Almost… Can’t die… yet… His Majesty is…”
Ratcatcher and Carlos leapt off the falling bridge and reached an intact section. The battle below still went on, but the crusaders had reached the Numbers, advancing protected by their heavy shields. Streams of acid, lightning shooting out of palms, floating fireballs, and even moving vines met them.
The Trolls marched through all of it, breaking shamblers under the armored greaves, firing at the Numbers trying to retreat, and cleaving the ones who tried to stand and fight. There weren’t any noble duels anymore; when a Number attempted to transform or enlarge muscles, the survived Avengers riddled the immobile foe with the shoulder cannons.
She saw an Avenger fall. A shambler closed on the man, grasping the edge of his pauldron with its black claws. The gladius bisected the fiend at its waist, spilling foul-smelling entrails on the floor, but the thing kept its assault, spearing its mouth wide, and a corrosive cloud exited its throat, leaving a hole in the Troll’s neck. The brave warrior’s legs gave in and the poisonous fume had damaged the nerves in the spinal column. His arms let go of the gladius and grabbed the thing by the neck, lifting its head. Without hesitation, the Avenger plunged his thumbs into the rotting neck, tearing through sinews and muscles and breaking the creature’s neck before the strength left him.
They lay side by side, an immobilized crusader and a fiend whose body convulsed and twisted, trying to regain some mobility to reach the wounded with its claws or to spit acid at him again. Vasily’s stomped on the corpse’s head and put a hand on the Troll’s chest, showing him fingers. The boy confirmed the Avenger was conscious, and together with Elina, they dragged him away from the battle to let the man regenerate and rejoin the fight later. They seated him on the wall, entrusting his safety to his automatic cannon.
Wivin got pushed to the far wall. The shamblers who pursued the group had tried to assist the Number driving the exosuit, and two Avengers left the advance, striking at them from behind. One of the suit’s hands had already lay on the ground, and the countymeister has raised the claymore for the final strike.
And staggered. The stump of the suit’s hand pressed against her side, while the intact hand grabbed the blade. Arcs of electricity raced across Wivin’s battleplate, creeping into the exposed areas. She spasmed, letting go of the blade, and the suit tossed it into the air, catching it with a smooth accuracy so unbecoming for a civilian-grade industrial walker. The bubble of the shield reappeared, blocking the Avengers’ and Elina’s shots and shockwaves.
“All too easy. Your every move is predictable,” the Number said. And rammed the blade into Wivin’s chest plate, piercing it thanks to the walker’s immense strength. The blade went deep, pinning the countymeister to the ground. “Suffer. Don’t worry, I do remember about the need of…”
“Miss Wivin!” Ratcatcher yelled, adding her darts to the allied fire and seeing them bounce off the shield. Damn it, no! She charged after Hustler to prevent deaths! Why is it that no matter what she does, people are still dying?!
“P…” Wivin said, her pained voice sounded more like a gasp over the communication.
“What?” The suit leaned closer, and the Number turned her head. “Are you begging for your life, genetic waste? Fret not; you won’t be dying alone. The rest of your kin shall soon follow the same drain…”
“Predictable,” Wivin said through a mouth of blood.
Her mechanical arm, that long and nimble appendage wielding the useless gatling gun, came to life and buried the weapon’s barrels in the Number’s chest, right above the place where the mechanical part of her harness protected her. The speed of the attack caught the snatched body by surprise, and her light body armor did nothing to stop the stab.
“But… How? I pierced your heart…” The Number forced the words.
The barrels whirled, breaking the Number’s thorax and cracking bones. Whatever vital organs they hadn’t hit, they ruptured with the body’s own bones, driving the woman to vomit blood and go limp. Wivin raised her trembling hand, pushed away the suit’s electric torch, and pulled out the blade, pushing the machine off herself. Then she stood up, using the sword as a long walking stick.
“Countymeister Wivin!” Ratcatcher contacted her, hearing the heavy breathing. Her vitals came on the HUD; the woman had lost her heart, but torn arteries had already started reknotting, merging to form new veins, and a lump of meat, a faint shape of a future heart, had started its appearance. Syringes in the armor needled Wivin’s skin, bringing in adrenaline and nutrients. “Can you breathe, ma’am? I have a special medicine; just wait….”
“At ease, Eliza, and no need. I’ll yet outlive you all. In my youth, my teacher often called me a heartless buffoon, despairing of the futile struggle to instill in me a love of poetry. She feared that if I couldn’t appreciate art, I couldn’t cherish life enough to protect it.” Wivin swallowed blood and kept speaking calmly. A hiss of electricity came out of her open chest. The countymeister seemed oblivious to the gunfire and the battle raging around, but amidst her speech, a command came out, and the two crusaders left her side and rushed to aid their allies. “So I paid to replace the wretched organ just to spite her. A silly prank. Trolls and implants rarely mix well, and I’ve grown skin coverage over it. The teacher was so worried… Heh, it was then that I saw more than care from her. It was love, Eliza. She kept a sleepless vigil by my bed while the doctors examined me. She read me poems and stories, and I liked them. I kept the implant out of respect for her, a reminder of a hidden nobility in a stern soul. It’ll be a novelty to be one with flesh again. Forgive my delirious ramblings. Yes, I’ll live; my brain is undamaged, and I have enough fat to regenerate. You should check your own wounds.”
“She is right. Stand still.” Carlos put a hand on her shoulder. “Ratty, you are bleeding like a pig…”
“It can wait,” Ratcatcher interrupted him. She could feel it—the fever rising in her body. It was almost impossible; as an Abnormal she enjoyed a strong immune system. Getting sick so soon was crazy. Her eyes found the prisoners above the vat. Wivin seemed to think the same; the countymeister tried to hobble in that direction. “They can’t.”
She leapt off the bridge, landing near a Number firing at the crusaders. She rendered him unconscious with a single blow to the temple with the flat of her blades. The trainee fired at another Number, burning a hole in the woman’s knee, and an Avenger closed on the wounded. Out of respect for the trainee, he had bludgeoned the woman into unconsciousness, no doubt cracking her skull but leaving her alive. The Troll drew himself high and fired at the shambler, killing it before it could reach the trainee. The battle scattered the terrorists, opening a path to the towering pillar, and Ratcatcher rushed after Huster, aiming to stop whatever this bastard was planning.
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The oracle stepped closer to the vat and fell to his knees, the remnants of his tail twitching in pain. He exhaled and leaned back. The armor on his chest shifted, revealing tortured bits of pale skin and dark wounds oozing red blood beneath. Energy beams struck an invisible wall separating him from Ratcatcher, and Hustler sucked in air, swallowing pieces of broken teeth.
“What... you... have... given... to me. I... give... back,” Hustler spoke through the red bubbles on his lips, and black smoke poured out of his body. “Do… it. Activate the elixir.”
“It is already done, fool. You are spending yourself in vain,” the female Number said.
“How…foolish you are,” Hustler gurgled out a laugh. “We greet the return of a god! Such things require… a… certain spiritual touch. My life, power, body, and soul… will facilitate his manifestation in this realm of ours.”
“You speak of superstitions; I speak of reality, degenerate.” The Number surveyed the battle, curling a lock of blond hair with her elegant fingers. “Human personality consists of ego and memories. Everything else is irrelevant. Lose ego, and a copy is not guaranteed to have the same personality. Lose memory, and even despite ego, different life experiences can shape personality in another way. When we, our individual selves, die, the energy traveling between the synapses of our brain dissipates, and the person is gone. We have gained immortality by hopping into a different dimension that can store and preserve these invaluable things. The chemical process of our recreation in this world is merely an anchor to call upon the energy containing our data.”
“How foolish you are!” Hustler giggled, slumping on his knees as more smoke poured from under his faceplate and out of his cracked lenses. “You think you know all there is in the world... Flesh is but a home for a soul… and my soul is the price I pay, so the spirits will open a path for the one true god. Look around you… Witness their work at changing… this place to one worthy of His return.”
“I do not know everything. Not yet.” The Number spread a hand across the room, speaking with no regard for the raging combat: “These things you mistake for displays of divinity are merely a mix of dimensional distortions and the effects they have on reality. The result of a power, its exact working is yet unknown to me, but not the countermeasures against it.” She pointed at her fair skin without a trace of sweat and inhaled a portion of the fumes coming out of Hustler. “There are many forms of immortality. I have heard of a woman who can regenerate from of a drop of blood, her power imprinting her memories in every cell of her body. But your master doesn’t have this power, and there are no ghosts in his employ—none at all. Why do you think his diseases stopped evolving after his death? Because none of them were sentient to begin with. They shamble—what an apt name—according to the embedded commands of a dead person, but they cannot exceed their programming. You give out the power handed to you. Fool, can’t you see that all you have is an imprint of his will? An imitation, a shadow of his personality, not the real thing, never the real thing, because his brain has been destroyed. There is no soul, no afterlife, only a life and ways to extend it. Once you lose it, that’s it; there’s no coming back.”
“Heresy…” Hustler’s blood stained his gorget, pooling in small puddles on his shoulders. “I… hear him. The commands of His Excellency still permeate this reality…”
“The correct word is ‘linger’, shaman of a non-deity. Believe whatever delusion you want; your goals are aligned with mine in this regard, and thus you succeed to your disappointment.” The Number rolled her eyes. “The procedure is nearing its end. Soon it will be time for the bodies…”
“Screw you!” Ratcatcher yelled, understanding what was about to happen. She fired two darts and the energy beams, and they splattered against the empty air, sending sparks flying. An explosion followed when a grenade hit that barrier, and Vasily joined her side, pushing ahead of Ratcatcher and shielding her with his body. Elina and Carlos flanked her, and all four of them darted to save the people.
The smoke pouring out of Hustler’s body had gathered the vat, and for a split moment, a bent figure wearing a shattered crown manifested above the waters. It disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared, sucked into the sludge, and Hustler screamed, shaking and falling, the smoke leaving him had thinned to small streaks.
Elina sent an update on their helmets, and the trainees’ vision changed. One side of their helmets’ visors still showed the picture of the ordinary world, but the other side turned red, highlighting a wall of hardened space that separated them from their enemies. A wall that could easily be jumped over, and all at once they leapt, preparing to fire.
The Number who worked on the keyboard typed twice and disappeared. Ratcatcher struggled to comprehend such speed; his feet left footprints on the metal. The sound reached them, and along with the sound came pain. Kicks and punches broke weapons, disarming the group before even Carlos could pull the trigger. Ratcatcher received a kick across the shoulder, Elina’s visor got smashed in, and Vasily cried out in pain at the crack in the armor shielding his groin. Carlos alone reacted in time, taking the incoming leg on his forearms, but even that attack sent him cartwheeling back.
Ratcatcher landed on her feet, hearing the scratch of metal. She caught Vasily and set him down, letting her friend take a few breaths and calling up his vitals on her HUD. It wasn’t pretty. The attack squashed one of his testicles, causing Vasily immense pain. His armor had already injected painkillers into his bloodstream, helping the teen keep his mind focused. Elina fared a bit better; the helmet cushioned the damage, and Carlos opened and closed his hands, hissing in pain. Ratcatcher glanced to the side, noting her mancatcher lying away from the ramp and clenched her fists, opening the seam at the back and releasing the tail.
“We meet again, rat thing.” Her blood froze. A man in the black body armor landed softly, without a sound, and struck a golden earring, producing a musical tone. “It seems you have regained your ugly tail. Shall I shorten it again?”
She didn’t dare to say anything. For a brief while, they were all silent, their bodies chained by the dread emanating from this calm man. The memories of his overwhelming superiority reignited with the casual ease with which he had disarmed them. She remembered the fear of seeing the deadly metal finger hovering over her. Carlos gritted his teeth, no doubt remembering his own pain-staking nightmares about recovery.
It was Elina who broke the silence, taking a single step forward.
“Eight.” Elina dropped low. “Snap out of it, all of you! He is just a man, without a suit of armor to boot. And we are no longer children.”
“No need to tell me twice,” Carlos snapped. “I have a score to settle. Dad will never let me live this one down until I tear this vile ruffian limb by limb and pulverize every single bone in his body before sending his ass to the Rhos for processing!”
“Ah, the fervor of the young. Could it be true?” Eight tilted his head. He wore a new body, a new face, but the calm look in his eyes and the keen awareness of the whereabouts of every opponent filled Ratcatcher with dread. A monster out of her nightmares, he stood ready to swallow them whole. “I had expected to meet one survivor. Not all three. Fate is indeed a pleasant mistress. It has gravitated you all to me to conclude the unfinished business between us.”
“Think so?” Vasily asked. “It won’t end like the last time.”
“Sure it will, but… Who are you?” Eight examined the teen. “Do I know you?”
“No, but you will,” Vasily promised, straightening up despite the pain. “Back then, I got scared and waited for the police. Not this time.”
“Suit yourself. I seldom remember all runaways or my victims.” Eight shrugged. “When dozens of corpses are heaped on top of each other, when your kill score eclipses thousands, various examples of childish bravado tend to blend in together.”
“What are you doing here, Eight?” Elina held a hand, stopping the others. “Why are you working with the Hierarchy? I thought you served your own wannabe god, not bootlicking another.”
“Eight remembers his place well,” the female Number answered in a deep voice. A voice that they knew and not from the historical records. The woman stepped closer to the wall; the scars covering her face paled, dissolving into smooth skin. Her larynx grew and protruded into an Adam’s apple, her muscles enlarged, cracking the shirt’s sleeves. The woman’s facial features hardened; the face transformed, taking on masculine features while retaining feminine ones. Her eyes changed, turning black, back to blue, and later to brown, keeping shifting and becoming rainbow orbs. Maximilian ran a hand over his androgynous face, checking his lean limbs. “I am here for an amusing experiment, and that is all you need to know. Eight. We have achieved our goals. Amuse yourself if you wish or leave them to me. I don’t care which, just keep their hearts beating for now.”
“With pleasure, Creator,” Eight responded, not taking his eyes off the trainees. “Your death is nearing, yet in our last encounter, I suffered embarrassment. I had failed to uphold my promise, and it has bothered me ever since. For this, I’ll give myself a handicap.” He put his arms behind his back, with his elbows at his sides. “I’ll fight you without using my hands or my power. It should be amusing to test the limits of my body…”
“And what will we win if we force you to use your hands?” Ratcatcher broke her silence, putting a hand on Carlos’ shoulder and keeping the boy from rushing the Number.
She still trembled, but not at all out of fever. A substance soaked the space between her legs, comprising good old-fashioned piss and a musk of fear that her people occasionally released at the heights of utmost emotional turmoil. She was terrified; her entire life flashed in her beady and human eyes, the heart raced, and hands trembled. The tail slapped the ground again and again.
And through it all, she saw an opportunity. It was Elina who indirectly taught her this; the girl’s quick wits saved the group more than once and have helped Ratcatcher learn a different perspective. Eight was scary. Maybe even tougher than all of them combined. And he disarmed them with ease. Facing him head-on, with a wall separating them from the control panel and Maximilian standing at Hustler’s side, might well be suicide. But there were also other conclusions to be drawn based on their scramble.
Eight had destroyed or tossed away their weapons, thus proving he wasn’t invulnerable. In his arrogance, he viewed them as gnats, and well, he might even be there. Only these gnats had plenty of powerful allies ready to help them. Once Augustus arrives or the Avengers are done with a mop-up in the rest of the hall, Eight will go down. This much she learned from the history books. The Numbers, once a fearsome and tough opposition, became a cornered prey as more and more nations joined the worldwide hunt after them as the knowledge of how to spot them spread. These bastards thrived in chaos and lost order.
An opportunity turned into a plan. So, what should they focus on? Survival, of course. And saving the hostages. Can she rescue them from above the vat? No, Eight or Maximilian will kill some captives. That leaves the control panel. The craning mechanical arms are holding the hostages suspended above the poisoned sludge; if they can install a locksmith on the control panel, the armor’s computer intelligence will handle the rest. Not only will they be able to move the hostages away, but they will also turn off the jamming device and be able to call for reinforcements. Maximilian can’t keep his wall up forever, or he would have engulfed the entire area. Once the battle shifts, once the Avengers are free to help…
There will be a chance. All they need is a little more time. And luck.
“Pardon you?” Eight asked, and Ratcatcher grinned.
All or nothing.