I jogged towards the building where the final confrontation was going to be taking place. The city had grown unusually quiet now with the Antithesis threat largely petering out, so the only sounds were my own footsteps and the occasional distant gunshot. Along the way I passed a pair of shot up Humvees clustered against the wall of a building I realized was the one I was heading for. The entrance was a bit further and around a corner.

“This is the hole Alana’s team used to get inside! It has been heavily mined by the corporate security forces to prevent you from using it!” Juny provided helpfully. So, Haley made the hole. Who else would it be?

“…let’s find a less explosive way in,” I replied, continuing on my way. Just as Juny had told me, I encountered no resistance. The exterior of the building had been fortified, especially around the front, but it was a rush job with portable cover and there was no one manning the defenses. The instant I stepped in the front door, I heard an explosion and my body rocked slightly to the left, but my shield took the hit. I looked at Juny.

“You totally knew that was there and didn’t tell me, didn’t you?” I accused.

“I have no idea what you mean!” she replied from conspicuously outside the blast radius. I was pretty sure that was meant as a lesson to watch out for traps. I wasn’t exactly used to fighting people. The Antithesis used traps, but mostly in the form of ambushes or sabotaging the environment. Landmines and the like were the sort of thing I used against my enemies, at least until now.

I turned to look in the direction the explosion had come from and found a blown-out box alongside a laser emitter with no visible beam. I was using thermal imaging and still wasn’t seeing anything, so did that mean it was using ultraviolet? Some kind of claymore mine, I supposed, at any rate.

The lobby was just as abandoned as the exterior. There were a few barriers but they’d probably used most of them outside. I did my best to scrutinize the room for signs of any other traps, but this wasn’t a video game- there were no blinking discs openly placed on the floor. Anything there was probably like the claymore, hidden behind an object or wall and using a trigger I couldn’t see.

“Even if I’d been looking for it I wouldn’t have been able to see it. Just show me where they are, please?” I asked, and a moment later objects throughout the first floor of the building were highlighted. They must have used every single device they’d been able to carry here just on this, because every doorway leading to the stairs down was mined. Some of them had enough bombs planted around them that they might actually be able to threaten me. “Oh. That’s great. And where’s the bunker?”

“Below us and further into the building. There is a single entrance that can be accessed by going downstairs, which is heavily guarded and mined!” Juny replied, showing me the possible routes on a map of the building. Her sensors also gave me a look at what type of ordinance I was up against. Two heavy machineguns pointed right at the door, several mines, and a few rockets launchers I was pretty sure shouldn’t be fired indoors. Which probably would stop anyone if they were desperate enough. I compared that map to the locations of the explosives and realized Haley had given me the solution to both problems at once.

“There’s only a single entrance for now.”

----------------------------------------

Multiple explosions rocked the building as shaped charges detonated in multiple locations, blowing holes in the floor separating the first level from the basement. I could have made it cleaner, but the rubble was the point- I had placed charges right above the enemy machinegun emplacements and heavy weapons, along with the largest clusters of their troops. They’d been well prepared for a frontal assault but couldn’t possibly have defended against this.

One hole opened up directly in front of me without exploding. That one I’d made with a rift bomb that had teleported the floor to parts unknown. I didn’t need anything disturbing my footing when I dropped down, and I wanted Thompson, who was near where I’d be dropping, alive. For now.

While the corpos were still reeling I jumped down, both SMGs already raised and ready to fire. More than half of them were already dead or wounded and I wasn’t going to give the survivors time to recover. I started by shooting the team that had been trying to cut through the door to the bunker, then turned around and opened fire on anyone that wasn’t already on the ground. Their defenses were facing the wrong way, their only weapons capable of harming me were buried, and their command structure was probably still a mess from all the casualties I’d inflicted. It didn’t take long.

Soon there were only two living souls in the room and I holstered my weapons. I turned towards Major Thompson as he drew his sidearm and walked in his direction as he started shooting at me. His aim was immaculate and he landed twelve shots in a row right to my head that barely depleted my shields at all. I just stared him in the eyes while he did it in order to make the point that he was well and truly fucked. The moment his magazine ran dry I snatched the gun from his hand and whipped him across the face with it, sending him to the floor.

It would have been cool if I could have crushed his weapon in my hands, but since I couldn’t, I just threw it over my shoulder. As I looked down at Thompson while he nursed his cheek, one of my hands came to rest on the grip of a handgun- that replica magnum I’d purchased on day one. The first weapon I bought, which I used to make my first kill as a Samurai. I hadn’t even realized I’d moved its holster to the waist of this suit, but apparently some part of my subconscious did.

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Maybe this was symbolic, in a way.

“Juny, give me a magazine with one bullet. Something powerful enough to make sure he doesn’t get back up.” Silently, she placed the magazine in my hand and I removed the original, empty one from the magnum to load it. As I pulled back the slide to chamber my single round, Thompson managed to rise to a seated position. I placed the barrel to his forehead. He was bleeding where I’d struck him and it looked like he’d cut the inside of his cheek with his teeth or bitten his tongue judging by the bloody lips.

“Why’d you have to go and make me do this, Thompson?” I asked coldly.

“She killed my friend,” Thompson growled out, which I supposed was a good enough reason for most. My own motivation wasn’t far from his. Of course, understanding and forgiveness were two separate matters.

“How’d you even contact them? You were supposed to be locked up,” I interrogated.

“You think I just had a company of troops in my back pocket this whole time? Fuck no. Must have been one of their other collaborators. A company the size of Appalachian Ventures wouldn’t just plant one agent,” Thompson denied.

“Don’t suppose you’ll tell me who they are,” I replied, the question more of a statement since I already knew the answer.

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Max might’ve known, but, well…” he said, trailing off. “It was need to know, and I didn’t. So the information never even crossed my desk.”

“Then where do you factor into all of this? I’m not buying that you’re innocent.” I pressed the barrel of my gun into his forehead just a bit harder to remind him of his position.

“I had no idea they’d even shot that bitch until they came and broke me out in the confusion. I just followed my orders when they told me to take command and call your plan off. Way they phrased it I thought you were both out of the way until you came onto the comms,” Thompson ranted. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that he’d said he only found out Alana had been shot when they picked him up. Not that he didn’t know they were coming, or at least that they might be.

“Did it never even cross your mind that it might be a better idea to side with the two Samurai?” I wondered aloud.

“Sure it did. But you’ve been on the job for what, less than a week? How many Samurai do you think even make it seven days? If they’d gotten here a day sooner you’d be dead.” Thompson worked his jaw like he wanted to spit, but he was smart enough to keep his head right where it was. “Besides, I wanted revenge. We were so close. Just a few more minutes…”

Thompson trailed off. I kept my eyes on him, but I knew that if I looked at the bunker door, I’d find a bright line right down the center where the corpo goons had been cutting through the locking mechanisms. It was pretty close to the bottom. But Thompson wasn’t done talking.

“And if it wasn’t me it would have been someone else…not that I had a choice. I didn’t want to be turned into one of those…things.”

Now that was interesting.

“What things?” I asked him, keeping my weapon right where it was.

“They showed me a video when we took this job. There were these twisted monsters, failed experiments, they said. All they could do was scream. They did it until they were hoarse and kept on going. Screamed and begged for death. At least if I cross you I just die.” Thompson sounded haunted as he spoke. Afraid. I’d assumed on some level he was scared of something other than me, Alana, or the Antithesis, but I would have guessed it was torture at worst.

“What were they?” I pressed, suspecting I was going to have to deal with this at some point too. Whoever sent their security forces here certainly wouldn’t be less mad after I’d wiped out half of them.

“I don’t know. All they told me and Max- Colonel Tavish- was that we’d be their next test subjects if we didn’t do our job and keep everyone out of the outer city.” I searched Thompson’s face and decided he was probably telling the truth. So even the contract Juny had presented during that meeting hadn’t been the full picture, then? Tavish hadn’t been corrupt at all. We just misunderstood what his job was from the start. I’d be willing to bet what we thought was ‘embezzlement’ was actually just part of his compensation.

“Not too smart of you to give up all your bargaining power by admitting you don’t know anything else,” I pointed out. Not that anything he could have said would have made me spare him. He’d proven himself too dangerous to leave alive. Before now he’d been annoying and shown no love for Alana nor I, but he hadn’t been an active threat. Now, though, he’d brought a company of hostile troops into our midst and nearly prevented us from destroying the Antithesis at the cost of the city.

All to protect some stupid corpo secrets.

“You would have found out anyway. But you still don’t have to do this. You’d-”

“Are you about to spout off with a cliché ‘if you kill me now you’ll be just as bad as me’ line? Fuck you. I killed dozens of people just getting here. Seventy, at least. I know as well as anyone that they weren’t just faceless minions. Those people had lives, families. And I killed them because it was either them or myself, Alana, and her people, and I chose us. Your life isn’t worth more than theirs’ were. If I let you walk out of here alive then I killed them for nothing,” I told Thompson in a cold, flat voice with no inflection. His mouth began to move, but no sounds came out.

Behind him, the bunker door opened. I kept my eyes on Thompson as it receded into the wall and members of McIntire and Alvarez squads stepped out and began securing the room. Alana must have still been out of commission because it looked like Alvarez was giving the orders.

“Thanks for the rescue. We saw and heard everything from here. You don’t have to do this.” As he spoke, Alvarez raised his hands in a placating gesture, than reached for his sidearm with one hand, keeping his other still raised. “I’m not telling you to let him live. Just let me do it for you.”

He must have seen my hesitation and mistaken it for reluctance. Thought he was doing the kind thing and taking the weight of this deed off my shoulders. I’d made my peace with what I was about to do though.

“You’re wrong. I do need to do this. I just needed to prepare myself for it. This is the first time I kill a man while looking him in the face. I ain’t no fink.” I pulled the trigger before anyone else had time to talk, splattering Thompson’s brains across the room behind him. I didn’t catch how anyone reacted because I was too busy yanking my helmet off my head.

It was barely out of the way before I threw up.